US Politics

Obama’s Passion Deficit

June 29, 2011 10:33 pm by Clive Crook

Joe Klein interviewed David Axelrod at the Aspen Ideas Festival yesterday. It was an outstanding session. Klein explained that he and Axelrod were friends; he did not need to explain that he, Klein, has also been an Obama supporter. But he asked–and kept pressing–pointed, difficult questions about Obama’s unforceful leadership. It was a memorable proof of how a sympathetic and courteous interviewer can be a more probing and more dangerous interlocutor than a straightforward enemy.

Axelrod of course is unflappable. He sustained his note of immovable calm and reason throughout: we take the long view, the pragmatic view; in extremely difficult circumstances, made more difficult by an intemperate and unreasoning opposition, we make progress where we can; being loud is not the same thing as being effective; look at our record of achievement (fiscal stimulus, financial reform, health-care-reform, education reform); we will let history be the judge. But Klein kept coming back. Obama is failing to explain himself, failing to make his case. Where is the president on this? Where is the president on that? His rhetorical skills are clear. Why isn’t he using them? Good questions. I felt that Axelrod had no answer.

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Posted in Current Affairs, Obama, US Elections, US Politics | Permalink

George Will on John McCain

June 24, 2011 9:36 am by Clive Crook

It’s a good thing that Americans are war weary, says George Will: John McCain’s never-ending war.

What kind of people would they be if they were not? U.S. involvement in the Second World War lasted 1,346 days. U.S. fighting in Afghanistan reached that milestone six years ago (June 14, 2005). America is fighting there, in Iraq, in western Pakistan, in Yemen and in Libya. Where next? Under the McCain Doctrine, wherever U.S. “values” are affronted — and those who demur from this global crusade are isolationists, akin to those who, 70 years ago, thought broad oceans and placid neighbors guaranteed America’s security from Hitler and Japan.

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Posted in Current Affairs, Foreign policy, Obama, US Politics | Permalink

Obama and Afghanistan

June 23, 2011 3:42 pm by Clive Crook

Obama’s address on Afghanistan was a notable political success. The tone was terse and confident. The plan calls for faster force reductions than the military wants, but slower than much of the country would like–a position that is easy to cast as a responsible middle way. And the president is keeping the promise he made when announcing the surge at the end of 2009, with the withdrawal of the 33,000 extra troops starting now, and complete not just by the end of 2012 but in time for the election.

The underlying philosophy outline in the address also strikes me as right.

[T]onight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way. We’ve ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country. And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end.

As they do, we must learn their lessons. Already this decade of war has caused many to question the nature of America’s engagement around the world. Some would have America retreat from our responsibility as an anchor of global security, and embrace an isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face. Others would have America over-extended, confronting every evil that can be found abroad.

We must chart a more centered course. Like generations before, we must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events. But we must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute. When threatened, we must respond with force –- but when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas. When innocents are being slaughtered and global security endangered, we don’t have to choose between standing idly by or acting on our own. Instead, we must rally international action, which we’re doing in Libya, where we do not have a single soldier on the ground, but are supporting allies in protecting the Libyan people and giving them the chance to determine their own destiny.

“…as pragmatic as we are passionate.” A difficult balance to strike, obviously, but right nonetheless. The characteristic emphasis on pragmatism–on balancing ends and means–is surely correct.

Politics and underlying approach aside, however, I question the wisdom of the details on Afghanistan.

Continue reading: “Obama and Afghanistan”

Posted in Current Affairs, Foreign policy, Obama, US Elections, US Politics | Permalink

The long-term budget outlook

June 22, 2011 7:32 pm by Clive Crook

The CBO’s new report on the long-term budget outlook is gloomy reading. Something has to give, is the message. CBO director Douglas Elmendorf summed it up this way in a recent presentation at the NY Fed:

Given the aging of the population and the rising cost of healthcare, the United States cannot achieve all of the following objectives in the future:

Keep federal revenues at their average share of GDP during the past 40 years.

Provide the same sorts of benefits for older Americans that we have provided in the past 40 years.

Operate the rest of the federal government in line with its role in the economy and society during the past 40 years.

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Posted in Current Affairs, Debt, Economics, US Economy, US Politics | Permalink

From FT.com June 19, 2011

FT column: America flirts with a fate like Japan’s

The stalling of the US recovery raises big, scary questions. After a recession, this economy usually gets people back to work quickly. Not this time. Progress is so slow, the issue is not so much when America will return to full employment but what “full employment” will mean by the time it does.

Posted in Economics, Obama, US Economy, US Politics | Permalink

The GOP’s pleasant debate

June 15, 2011 10:13 pm by Clive Crook

The New Hampshire GOP debate was, as Carl Cannon writes, a surprisingly friendly affair.

Now that was more like it. Seven Republican presidential candidates showed up Monday night to debate one another at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College, where they looked — if not entirely presidential — then at least poised, collegial and in command of their talking points.

All seven managed to express their differences on public policy without being uncivil to one another, or even disagreeing directly with their fellow candidates. This was made easier by the their shared antipathy for the Obama administration — and because their differences are pretty nuanced: In case there was any remaining doubt, Monday’s session underscored just how conservative the modern Republican Party has become, whether one hails from Ron Paul’s libertarian wing, Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party Caucus, or the mainstream establishment of Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty.

Of course, the format almost ruled out any possibility of actual debate, with its quick-march question-and-sorry-to-cut-you-off approach. But the tone of mutual respect was still unexpected and, as everybody has pointed out, it certainly helped Romney.

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Posted in Current Affairs, US Elections, US Politics | Permalink

Weinergate

June 10, 2011 7:17 am by Clive Crook

I’m not with those who admired the views, or the macho bluster, of the pre-scandal Anthony Weiner, and I’m certainly not with those who find what he did inoffensive. (Andrew Sullivan called it “on-line flirting”. How sad.) Weiner showed such lack of judgement I even wonder about his mental health. I think he should resign for the reason Joshua Green and Jim Fallows say: he has let his allies and his constituents down. As Josh puts it:

Weiner had so little regard for his office, his constituents, and his duty as a member of Congress that he apparently thought nothing of tweeting pictures of his genitals to random women. Does the analysis really need to go any further than that?

Only in this respect: the leering sanctimony of the US media is worth noting and deploring. Writing about the DSK scandal, the economic historian Harold James said in passing that the US is a country both more prudish and more prurient than France. Yes, I thought at the time, like Britain, only worse. Weinergate has carried this to a new extreme.

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Posted in Current Affairs, US Politics | Permalink

Tim Pawlenty’s ingenious economic plan

June 9, 2011 2:55 pm by Clive Crook

I want to take Republicans seriously, but they do make it hard. The moment I say something kind about Mitt Romney (“He is in many ways a capable and effective candidate”) he criticises Obama for throwing Israel under the bus by uttering the phrase “1967 borders” in the course of reaffirming long-standing US policy. That learned me. Now Tim Pawlenty soars to far greater heights of nonsense with his proposals on the economy.

Let’s start with a big, positive goal. Let’s grow the economy by 5%, instead of the anemic 2% currently envisioned. Such a national economic growth target will set our sights on a positive future. And inspire the actions needed to reach it. By the way, 5% growth is not some pie-in-the-sky number. We’ve done it before. And with the right policies, we can do it again.

Between 1983 and 1987, the Reagan recovery grew at 4.9%. Between 1996 and 1999, under President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress the economy grew at more than 4.7%. In each case millions of new jobs were created, incomes rose and unemployment fell to historic lows. The same can happen again.

Growing at 5% a year, rather than the current level of 1.8%, would net us millions of new jobs. Trillions of dollars in new wealth. Put us on a path to saving our entitlement programs. And balance the federal budget…

5% economic growth over 10 years would generate 3.8 trillion dollars in new tax revenues.

I’m wondering why nobody thought of this before. Just grow at 5% a year. Job done.

Continue reading: “Tim Pawlenty’s ingenious economic plan”

Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, US Politics | Permalink

The Peter Diamond scandal

June 7, 2011 4:51 pm by Clive Crook

Peter Diamond’s decision to withdraw from contention for a seat on the Fed board is a very low moment in US politics. Diamond is an indisputably brilliant economist with no ideological baggage and highly relevant expertise–contrary to what his GOP critics say, and as he explains in his NYT article. It ought to be shocking, but it no longer is, that a man of his distinction could not get confirmed to the position. At times the US seems a country hell-bent on its own failure.

It’s enough to make Paul Krugman regret the “polarisation of our politics”. Not something you see every day. Or am I misreading him?

The thing is, the Fed was supposed to be above and aside from the partisan brawl. It never was, completely — but that was an ideal to be striven for. No more.

Was that really an ideal to be striven for until just now? On the view that one side in US politics is irredeemably evil and the other basically right about everything–on Krugman’s view, I mean–why would one want the Fed to avoid taking sides? That’s the kind of thing you’d expect a feeble centrist to say. You know the type.

I expect Paul is expressing nostalgia for a long-vanished past. In that case, though, he can hardly criticise the GOP for today’s partisan brawling. That’s what Washington is for nowadays, is it not–a fight to the finish by any means necessary? It is the one thing the two tribes seem to agree about.

God help the country.

Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Financial markets, US Politics | Permalink

Alain Enthoven on Ryan’s Medicare plan

June 3, 2011 11:29 am by Clive Crook

Alain Enthoven, pioneer of “managed competition” and esteemed authority on health-care economics, has an excellent column on Ryan’s premium support plan (What Paul Ryan’s critics don’t know about health economics). Echoing arguments made by Alice Rivlin and Henry Aaron, he argues that the premium support approach would encourage the spread of accountable care organisations, and that these could make a big contribution to improving efficiency and lowering costs. Ryan’s indexation formula is too severe, Enthoven says, but the basic idea is sound.

At the root of the waste and excess is Medicare’s open-ended fee-for-service system, which pays health-care providers for doing more and more costly services, whether or not they’re in the patients’ best interests. Last year’s health-care reform legislation acknowledged that fundamental change is needed from the traditional fee-for-service model to a system in which doctors and hospitals team up to offer coordinated care and are held accountable for per-capita cost and quality. Hospitals and suppliers may participate in this Shared Savings Program by creating or joining an Accountable Care Organization (ACO).

Unfortunately, the incentives to form ACOs and to dramatically cut costs are far too weak and the regulations far too complicated…

A better way to encourage accountable care is the “premium-support” model proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, among others. This is a managed competition model in which government would make a defined contribution and beneficiaries would have a choice from a variety of health plans with no discrimination based on health status. Standard coverage contracts would make comparisons possible for ordinary people. Competition would drive health plans to innovate in ways that cut waste and improve quality. And the use of exchanges would drastically reduce marketing costs, so insurance companies would not be taking 20% off the top, as is currently the norm.

This is not “the end of Medicare,” as some would have you believe.

One thing I don’t understand is why Enthoven, like Ryan, takes such exception to the use of the term “voucher” in describing the premium support approach. Premium support is, to all intents and purposes, a voucher. What’s wrong with calling it that?

Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Healthcare reform, US Politics | Permalink