Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 11

Wisconsin: we don't need no stinkin' judges | Michael Tomasky

Can they really do this? For the second time now, a Wisconsin judge has blocked implementation of the "repair" bill, Governor Scott Walker's union-punishing bill that's supposed to fix state finances while slashing corporate taxes. After the first injunction, the Walker administration proceeded anyway, with a sneaky move in which they had a state agency not covered by the judge's injunction publish the bill, which meant that the state could declare it law within a day.

Now the same judge has enjoined implementation a second time. WisPolitics blog:

The departments of Administration and Justice say they're still reviewing a Dane Co. judge's order blocking implementation of Gov. Scott Walker's collective bargaining bill.

"We will continue to confer with our legal counsel and have more information about how to move forward in the near future," Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch said after Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi issued an amended temporary restraining order yesterday.

The court will take continued testimony in the case Friday before deciding how to proceed.

Sumi stopped short of signing off on a proposed declaration that publication by the Legislative Reference Bureau does not make the law take effect. But she made clear during her ruling that "further implementation of the act is enjoined." She also warned that those who act "in willful defiance of a court order" not only may subject themselves to sanctions, but endanger the financial and governmental health of the state.

DOJ said it continues to have "serious concerns about the court's decision to continue these proceedings under the current set of circumstances. We'll take the time between now and the next scheduled hearing to decide what our best options are to protect the State's interests, as is the Department of Justice's statutory duty."

Now I'm sure conservatives are scouring the record books for precedent on this, and I'd reckon they'll find it somewhere or another, but it sure seems odd to me to see an executive-branch administration simply say to a court, eff off, we're not listening to you. The state says it plans to start as scheduled on April 21 taking the larger deductions in the repair bill out of state workers' paychecks, and not deducting their union fees.

When you're flouting the law and the governmental process, what do you do? You do what conservatives have mastered so well in these recent years and accuse the other side of doing exactly what you're doing. From the AP:

Attorneys for the Department of Justice, which is representing the Republicans, contend the case means nothing because legislators are immune from lawsuits and Sumi has no authority to intervene in the legislative process.

"Her action today again flies in the face of the separation of powers between the three branches of government," Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, said in a statement.

I'm no expert on Wisconsin law, but legislators are immune from lawsuits? Evidently, they are, while a legislature is in session. How'd they get that deal? That doesn't much like any separation of powers with which I'm familiar.

And remember, there's a state supreme court election in the state on April 5 that could tip the balance of the state's high court. But I guess that even if the Democrat wins (she's behind), and the full court enjoins the law, Walker can ignore it, too.

US politicsWisconsinMichael Tomasky
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Shutdown update | Michael Tomasky

All right, let's peek in on what would under normal circumstances be the biggest story in town, the looming government shutdown. As you know, the deadline for a deal is April 8, which is next Friday. But if you read this article from today's WashPost by Paul Kane, you get the sense that a shutdown isn't maybe so looming after all:

Having difficulty finding consensus within their own ranks, House Republican leaders have begun courting moderate Democrats on several key fiscal issues, including a deal to avoid a government shutdown at the end of next week.

The basic outline would involve more than $30 billion in cuts for the 2011 spending package, well short of the $61 billion initially demanded by freshman Republicans and other conservatives, according to senior aides in both parties. Such a deal probably would be acceptable to Senate leaders and President Obama as long as the House didn't impose funding restrictions on certain social and regulatory programs supported by Democrats, Senate and administration aides said.

The fact that Republican leaders have initiated talks with some Democrats shows some division within House Republicans just two months after taking over the House. Speaker John A. Boehner's leadership team recognizes that legislation that meets with approval from his most conservative flank — what Democrats call the "perfectionist caucus" — would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Remember now, the most recent two-week continuing resolution that kept the government functioning as talks continued passed with 186 out of 241 Republicans supporting, along with 85 out of 194 Democrats. The nays consisted generally of the tea-party Republicans who thought the resolution was a sellout, and the more liberal Democrats who found the cuts unacceptable.

Now, 186 plus 85 equals 271, which is 53 more than a bare majority. So it looks to me like the pro-deal coalition has a pretty big cushion for defections. And they may need it. Eric Cantor, the number two GOPer in the House, is making some unhappy noises. He opposes, for example, another two-week measure. Whether this means that on a budget vote, he'd actually defy John Boehner and stick with the angry t.p.ers is another question. All this sort of thing has to do with the chemical balance in the air at the time of the deal. Somebody could say something on cable that rankles the GOP base, and boom, you've got 20 more votes against a deal that, remember, gets them only half ($30 billion) of what they were looking for, an original figure that was itself pretty weak tea as far as they were concerned.

Me? I think $30 billion in cuts to non-defense domestic spending is probably (depending on exactly what ends up in the bill) a pretty big win for the Republicans. Averting a shutdown is a win for both sides. How the Republicans manage their angry tea-party base is a problem for them, but one that frankly I think some liberals are over-hyping, because the Democrats are split themselves and are still a long way from having a decent shot of taking back the House. Besides which, it's useful for Boehner to have extremists angry at him. Basic rule of politics.

But then will come the vote on raising the debt limit...

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Newt Gingrich, moral leader | Michael Tomasky

Nick von Hoffman, the great liberal columnist of an earlier era, once called Richard Nixon the dead mouse on America's kitchen floor, by which he meant that while we were repulsed by the site of him, we couldn't help staring in a kind of fascination.

The dead mouse of our era - well, there are a lot of them, but on balance I have to say Newt Gingrich. You can watch him for hours, and he even emits a certain odor. I never tire of the man.

Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell rounded up Gingrich's recent television appearances in which he was asked by his interviewers about his extramarital dalliances, specifically cheating on his second wife exactly while he was calling Bill Clinton a moral monster. After stringing together three or four clips of Gingrich explaining that he was now 67 years old, O'Donnell explained what that really means:

"Newt is the only 67-year-old presidential candidate who has ever stressed his age. He's stressing it only when making the point that he thinks maybe he can now finally be trusted to maintain sexual exclusivity with his third wife. He's basically saying, 'I'm too old to do it the way I used to do it, Viagra can't work miracles, you don't have to worry about me anymore.' It's the only part of newt's questions that is absolutely consistent, the I'm 67 and a grandfather bit. He is the only candidate that wants you to think he's old. You didn't hear John McCain reminding you he was 72 when he ran for president. Bob Dole was not fond of mentioning that he was 73 when he ran for president."

But the really unbelievable clip came from a Fox News interview last Sunday, when Chris Wallace asked Gingrich if he wasn't being a hypocrite in going after Clinton while he was off picking nonmatrimonial daisies himself, to which Gingrich replied: "I don't know what you would have had me do."

Well, uh, as O'Donnell noted, how about, you know, not do it?

Then there was this:

"I have two grandchildren -- Maggie is 11, Robert is 9," Gingrich said at a church in Texas, according to Politico. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

An aide, evidently reasoning to himself that America could either become a secularist gomorrah or an Islamist's Eden but scarcely both at once, clarified that there should have been an "or" before that "potentially." Fine, that's an aide's job (I hope he's being paid well). But Gingrich doesn't care about that "or" one way or the other. He has this special dialectic unfolding in his own head by which America can indeed be both securalist and Islamist. The rest of us, to whom this seems a contradiction, just aren't on his plane.

I notice that he now seems to be mentioned in the first-tier of GOP candidates. How did this happen? He'd certainly be a delightful nominee. I'm also warming to Herman Cain. More on him later.

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A great idea on taxes | Michael Tomasky

We talk a lot on this blog about taxes and government. You know that I think we had a better society when we were paying higher taxes. And you know that I find most of the right's arguments against taxation and government to be dishonest and cynical, and I spent a lot of time wondering how we can possibly return to a place where people maybe won't mind quite so much contributing their share to the common weal.

Part of the problem with taxes, I'd say a big part, is that people don't know where their money goes. They think it goes to foreign aid and poor people. Well...how about if people actually knew where their money went? Wouldn't be so hard.

As my regulars know, I also edit a quarterly journal, called Democracy, and in our new issue, just out, we have a great article by David Kendall and Ethan Porter proposing precisely this: an itemized individual taxpayer receipt from the IRS showing Taxpayer X, who earned A in taxable income and paid B in federal taxes, exactly where his money went, to the penny. Click here to read their article. Embedded within their article is a sample receipt to an average taxpayer to show what a receipt would look like, and a link for you to click on to see larger PDF. You can also visit the web site of Third Way, the group with whom we worked on this project (Kendall is a fellow there), to play with their tax receipt calculator.

The numbers show what you and I know but 97% of Americans don't. Their "Jane Q. Taxpayer" earned $50,000 and paid $6,883 in income and Social Security and Medicare taxes. Her bill breaks down like this (I'm not listing every category, just some interesting ones):
1. Defense $1,375.40
2. Social Security $1,334.78
3. Medicare $845.70
4. Low-income assistance $617.16
6. Interest payments $433.11
13. Environmental protection/natural resources $72.26
19. Foreign aid $42.81
30. Arts and culture $4.92

And so on. Is this not an excellent idea? It actually has congressional sponsors and could one day become law.

Mind you, I don't think this knowledge would lead inevitably to progressive political outcomes. The low-income assistance, the bulk of which goes toward four policy areas (earned-income tax credit, supplemental security income, food stamps and low-income housing supports), may be deemed by some taxpayers to be high. But at least we'll have a debate based on facts.

I think it's a fantastic idea, and I am very proud to publish it. And while I'm braggin' on Democracy, give yourself a treat and read, also from the new issue, the luminous review of the Mark Twain autobiography by the esteemed historian David Levering Lewis, the two-time Pulitizer winner for his biography of W.E.B. DuBois. Now that is what they call writing.

US taxationMichael Tomasky
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Against grand strategy | Michael Tomasky

Fred Kaplan of Slate liked Obama's speech more than I did, although I liked it fine without being bowled over. But Kaplan makes another important point:

First, the canard of a grand strategy. True, Obama's staff seems bereft of a latter-day George Kennan, peering through the fog of the postwar (or, in our case, post-Cold War) world and devising sound principles for navigating its thickets. But Kennan was dealing with a world of two main powers; today's world is one of fractured power, much of it still very much in flux. Carving firm guidelines in stone would probably be not only impossible but dangerous.

Yes yes a thousand times yes. In fact it has always been dangerous. The foreign-policy establishment in Washington wants Big Ideas all the time, world-historical grand strategy. We've had them. They've tended to do terrible damage when misapplied and made more universal than they were ever meant to be.

Kennan articulated the "containment" doctrine, a grand strategy aimed at containing the spread of communism. Then a couple years later, Harry Truman and Dean Acheson gave us the Truman Doctrine, when the issue was Stalin's adventurism in Greece and Turkey, and control of the Dardanelles, which held that the US must come to the aid by whatever means of any subjugated people.

Then, a generation later, came Vietnam. Containment, the foreign-policy establishment cried! The Truman Doctrine!

But then George Kennan himself says in 1966: hey wait a minute fellas, I only ever meant that to apply to Europe, not Southeast Asia. And the Truman Doctrine worked in Greece and Turkey, but its application to Vietnam was absurd, nay, tragic. Ho Chi Minh's people weren't subjugated by Moscow. They were fighting a war of national liberation against the French. We couldn't see that, because by cracky we had a grand strategy in place.

These questions are always hard. But they are always case-by-case, and should be judged on that basis. Obama is right to resist a grand doctrine. They create horrible situations. If you apply the principles of the Libya incursion to Syria, you are at war with Iran. Do we want that? Each situation is different. Let's learn from history instead of yearning for a great soundbite.

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Republicans on the speech: more war | Michael Tomasky

I don't know why, but I am genuinely surprised to read comments like these:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), characterized Obama's comments as "puzzling," adding that "Qadhafi must have been somewhat comforted by that."

"If we end up in a situation where Qadhafi is able to cling to power, then we could easily see a reenactment of the first Gulf War: stalemate, a no-fly zone that lasted for 10 years that didn't bring Saddam Hussein out of power"...

Texas Senator John Cornyn: "President Obama failed to explain why he unilaterally took our nation to war without bothering to make the case to the U.S. Congress. And now he's splitting the difference—telling us Gaddafi must go, but refusing to do what it takes to remove him."

Former half-term governor: "If we're not going to oust [Qaddafi] by killing or capturing him, there is no acceptable end state."

Do these folks really want a third ground war in the Middle East? They can't possibly. They just want to drive home a "weak Obama" narrative. Or do they want a third war? Maybe they actually do. Well, first of all, you know who is way out of her depth, as this involves a country you can't see from Alaska, so let's just toss her out. McCain and Cornyn are pretty big GOP honchos, though, and they represent a pretty strong current within the GOP.

Not all Republicans picked up the non-regime-change thread. John Boehner's spokesman didn't. He and a few others just complained about the lack a coherent mission etc., i.e. the usual stuff. And Mitch McConnell, speaking a few hours before the speech, definitely parted company with McCain and Cornyn, saying:

"Will America's commitment end in days, not weeks, as the president promised? What will be the duration of the non-combat operation, and what will be the cost? What national security interest of the United States justified the risk of American life? What is the role of our country in Libya's ongoing civil war?" McConnell asked.

"The president made clear that our combat forces' role in Libya will be limited in scope and duration. Tonight, I hope he will reiterate that pledge — or ask Congress before extending the duration or scope of our mission there."

One has to assume McConnell is a satisfied man, as Obama made these things abundantly or at least reasonably clear and certainly reiterated that pledge. So it'll be an interesting GOP Senate caucus meeting this week. Are they going to push the war button or not?

One hopes, not just for Obama's sake but for Libya's and the world's, that Gaddafi loses support and seeks exile somewhere fairly soon. If not, we're stuck with a deeply fraught situation. As I've said a hundred times, we should not seek Gaddafi's ouster. That's up to Libyans. But if he stays, he's a useful tool for the GOP to bash Obama with, and Obama will have to stand up to them.

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Barack Obama's address on Libya | Michael Tomasky

Having previously undersold the reasons for military intervention, the president did a credible job. But he will be judged by results

First of all, it was good that Barack Obama and his people did not permit applause or reaction of any sort until the very end of his speech on the intervention in Libya on Monday night before a military audience in Washington. A high school pep rally for a war, even a small war, is a distasteful thing. At least we've learned that from the last decade.

What else have we learned? To cut to the chase, according to the president, we learned to keep our goals more modest than regime change. This was, for me, the most powerful and direct part of tonight's speech: where he said openly and plainly that the goal of this exercise was not to oust Muammar Gaddafi. "To be blunt," he said, "we went down that road in Iraq." It took eight years and cost 5,000 American lives – and many tens of thousands more Iraqi lives. Regime change isn't our job.

But this could be a hard sell, in no small part because of the way both his political foes and the media tend to simplify things: if Gaddafi is still in there, Mr President, doesn't that mean you've failed?

Barack Obama made, for my money, a credible case as to why that wasn't so. This was a humanitarian effort designed to prevent a slaughter and weaken Gaddafi to the point that the rebels have a fair shot at excising the guy. But that is their job, not the US's, or the UN's, or the Nato-led coalition's: "They will be able to determine their own destiny, and that's as it should be."

Pundits won't go for this, by and large. Pundits want to see a winner and a loser. Only then are things clear. Also, pundits want something they can call an "Obama Doctrine". But that wasn't here, on Monday night. The doctrine was: yes, we should, when we can … but it depends. And though punditry won't like it, that's the right posture.

As for the American public, it's a new concept for people to wrap their heads around. Is a limited mission something people can understand? Is it something they'll accept? It's a little bit like having as one's ultimate goal getting to kiss your girlfriend by the third date. It's human nature to have something more ambitious in mind.

I think a majority of Americans will go with it – provided this doesn't get messy and complicated. The rebels are gaining. Let's say that, in the near term, they capture a Gaddafi stronghold or two, and the dictator's battlements are so degraded by coalition bombing that some of his people see the writing on the wall and desert him. That doesn't seem implausible to me. If it goes something like that, Libya goes down in history with Grenada and Panama. Nice little war. Nice little speech.

But if we hit 90 days and Gaddafi is still holding on, and those $100m a day are starting to add up to something meaningful – and in the meantime, we've had a government shutdown, driving home how broke we are – then the war and this speech may be looked at rather differently.

Obama, of course, hopes for the former scenario, and in this sense, the speech was very Obama. He appealed to his countrypersons' better angels, believing that they should and would care that thousands of Libyans (wherever Libya is) were about to be butchered. (This, I thought, was not very strongly presented and could have been made much more alarming.) He is counting on them to respond in kind, bah, to what the cable yakkers say.

They will, but only if time demonstrates that this has worked. That, in turn, reflects more generally where Obama stands right now with the public. There is still good will, from a majority, but it is an impatient good will, and one that demands positive results without much delay. As his day of facing the voters again draws nearer, you can bet he and his people are profoundly aware of this.

The "points for trying" era is over – in Libya and on the economy. Humanitarianism is all right. Provided it works.

Barack ObamaUS foreign policyLibyaUS militaryUnited StatesMuammar GaddafiUnited NationsArab and Middle East unrestMiddle EastIraqObama administrationMichael Tomasky
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The cost of Libya | Michael Tomasky

I was sitting around thinking about the costs of Libya and the timing of this war. One reads that it could be as much as $100 million a day. Then you have the downed F-15E jet from a while back. Those are about $32 million per. That's a lot of sacks of potatoes.

But Loren Thompson, a military analyst writing in Forbes, says that the daily operational costs really only scratch the surface. Why? Well, I'll let him tell it:

...it might be worthwhile to focus some thought on what Admiral Mulloy was really saying. He didn't say Libya was cheap, he said most of the bill had already been paid. And therein lies the crux of a fiscal dilemma that politicians and policymakers will face as they struggle to reduce the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world. Can America continue to sustain the kind of global military posture that enables it to simultaneously execute a no-fly zone in Libya, a counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, disaster relief in Japan, and a host of other operations from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf to the Horn of Africa? While its European allies seem hard-pressed to cope with a modest military challenge on their own doorstep, America has embraced a global role that requires its forces to be pretty much everywhere there is a threat of instability. So what looks like an inexpensive military operation in Libya is actually costing taxpayers about $2 billion per day, because that's what the Pentagon and other security agencies of the federal government spend to maintain a posture that allows the military to go anywhere and do anything on short notice.

It's weird that we almost never ask "can we pay for it?" when we're talking about matters military. We debate whether it's the right or wrong thing to do in moral and historical terms. We never talk money.

This is the precise opposite of our domestic politics, is it not? We never talk about whether it's right or wrong to let people sleep in the street. Or, some people do, and they're dismissed as bleeding heart saps who are after your wallet. But we always talk about what it would cost to get them off the streets. Or to have cleaner air, or healthier children, or whatever it is.

How did the military become completely insulated from cost-benefit analysis? This is after all the home of the proverbial $600 toilet seat, and that was back in the 80s. I'd imagine it's a $2,000 toilet seat by now.

Anyway, here we are. And now, of course, we are in the midst of intense budget negotiations and on the cusp (allegedly) of a government shutdown as Republicans push for $60 billion in non-defense domestic discretionary budget spending. The Pentagon's budget has increased for 11 years in a row now, after a few post-cold war reductions, and this is the only 11-year period in decades that it's gone up up up every year. Would a budget crisis change that?

Not when there's a little war on. Carrie Budoff Brown reporting in Politico:

Just as the debt debate ramps up on Capitol Hill, the lead role the United States is playing in the military action against Libya threatens to scramble an emerging consensus over the need to trim defense to reduce the deficit. Despite the broad coalition targeting the Pentagon budget, cuts were always going to be a tough sell at a time of two wars — let alone as the military intervenes in a third country.

"It is just plain vanilla that it will make it harder to cut defense in the near term," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist with close ties to congressional Republicans. "We're going to have to fund more of this than you realize."

I'm a little doubtful that there was any such consensus in the first place, but let's just say that even the voices calling for Pentagon cuts will be pushed that much further to the margins.

The only long-term cure here is for Europe to start absorbing more of these costs. Let's have you people police the world for a bit, then your flabby socialistic welfare states will see what it's like to be a real power with real responsibilities, sez I. Harrumph.

But seriously, it is the case, as Thompson notes, that the US has absorbed a greater share of the world's military expenditures even as our GNP accounts for less in global terms. If Libya succeeds in some way shape or form and we decide we want to more of these kinds of quick interventions - that the countries of the west will take seriously "responsbility to protect" - then we're going to have to spread the burden a little more equitably.

US foreign policyUS domestic policyMichael Tomasky
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Geraldine Ferraro among recent veep candidates | Michael Tomasky

As you noticed, Geraldine Ferraro died over the weekend at age 75, after a 12-year battle with blood cancer. What you heard over the weekend was that she was a history-making vice-presidential candidate. What you probably didn't hear, or had to suss out between the lines, was that, if you don't mind my being this blunt, she was not a very good one.

Let me start by saying that she was obviously thrust into an intense and harsh spotlight with little preparation. She was just a three-term member of Congress. Walter Mondale's campaign was intent on choosing a woman. Actually, there was more to it than that, from the NYT obit linked above:

On July 1, [1984], the National Organization for Women threatened a convention floor fight if the Democrats did not choose a woman, and three days later a delegation of Democratic women went to Minnesota to urge Mr. Mondale to do so.

It says a lot about the Democratic Party of that (relatively recent) time that the female bench was awfully thin. There was Dianne Feinstein, then mayor of San Francisco. Patricia Schroeder, a congresswoman from Colorado. The now-little-remembered Martha Layne Collins, then the governor of Kentucky. And Ferraro. That was about it in terms of plausible choices.

Electoral considerations were a little different then too. There was no way Mondale was going to take California against Reagan, so DiFi probably seemed kind of pointless. Schroeder had backed Gary Hart, so she was out, although she shouldn't have been, but that's how small-minded campaigns sometimes work. And Collins had only been elected the previous year. That left Ferraro. Even New York was in doubt for the Democrats, so they thought, well, maybe she'll help us win New York, and with white ethnics in general.

She undoubtedly ate a lot of you-know-what, had to listen to a lot of stupid sexist remarks and so on. Some of this was well meaning, some not. Adele Stan in the American Prospect:

In fact, to Reagan Democrats, the pro-choice, Catholic Ferraro -- a feminist who had kept her birth name after marriage, no less -- was nothing short of a traitor. John O'Connor, archbishop of New York, declared that no Catholic could vote for Ferraro in good conscience because she was pro-choice. At the time, this was a new political tack; countless male politicians had escaped the same condemnation from church leaders. Given this lack of support, perhaps it should be no surprise that from her vice-presidential run, Ferraro's takeaway was that being a woman trumped all other identities.

This is true. It was around the persons of Ferraro and Mario Cuomo, New York governor in the 80s, that O'Connor specifically and the Catholic Church generally started to play hardball abortion politics. Hadn't been a factor in our public life until then. And O'Connor was careful never to make it a factor for pro-choice Republicans like Rudy Giuliani.

So she had a tough time of it. But she was still a pretty bad candidate.

The stories that broke about her and her husband's finances were devastating. Yes, she was cool at the press conference. But you don't want your veep candidate becoming a days-running negative story, or her husband becoming a Johnny Carson punch line. That's what they became.

Mondale was going to get clobbered anyway. But she didn't help anywhere. Reagan carried women by 10 points and New York state by 8.

Alas, she went on to a dismal career in New York politics, losing two Senate elections, in 1992 and 1998, after starting both with big leads because of her name recognition and celebrity. Sadly, she rode off into the sunset lending her communications skills to Fox News as a resident Democratic Obama critic.

As I was thinking about all this over the weekend, I got to thinking that she must have been one of the worst veep candidates in recent history. Then I sat down and made a list of both parties' candidates since 1960, and alas she winds up firmly in the "okay" category. I mean, her presence on the ticket did excite and inspire millions of women. And men too. I was excited, at first.

Bad veep picks: Well, we know who's the worst of recent history, right? Erskine, you there? SP hands down. Also: Dan Quayle, ridiculous. Spiro Agnew, a basically known crook. Those are pretty much the worst.

Yes, I know, they're all Republicans. But I can't think of any truly horrible Democratic choices. Oh yes I can: Tom Eagleton. Youch. A slightly more complicated case because he was not an intellectual lightweight or a gonif. He was a serious legislator. Still, electroshock treatments, about which he did not inform the McGovern campaign, definitely go in the negative column.

You want to say John Edwards, I know. But based on what we knew about him in 2004, he was the right and most plausible choice, and he'd earned it. Incidentally, for the sake of fairness and balance, I always thought Dick Cheney was the best choice Dubya could have made. Obviously I think he was a horror show as actual vice president, but he was a logical and very shrewd choice as candidate.

Any other thoughts, people? Here's the whole list from what I think of as the modern era to jog your memories:
1960: Lyndon Johnson, Henry Cabot Lodge
1964: Hubert Humphrey, William Miller (who? go check it out)
1968: Ed Muskie, Agnew
1972: Eagleton/Sargent Shriver, Agnew
1976: Walter Mondale, Bob Dole
1980: Mondale, G.H.W. Bush
1984: Ferraro, Bush
1988: Lloyd Bentsen, Quayle
1992: Al Gore, Quayle
1996: Gore, Jack Kemp
2000: Joe Lieberman, Cheney
2004: Edwards, Cheney
2008: Joe Biden, Former Half-Term Governor

Discuss.

US politicsMichael Tomasky
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Obama's speech tonight

Obviously, Obama read my scathing post from last week and decided he'd better give a speech on this Libya business. So tonight he speaks at the National Defense University here in Washington at 7:30.

This still isn't quite right to me. First of all, it's too late, as I noted previously. Second, it isn't quite appropriate. There should be no audience for such a speech. You sit at the commander-in-chief's desk in the Oval Office and you tell the American people what we're doing and why. There should be no applause lines in such a speech. This disturbs me.

So be it. At least he's talking. Here's what he needs to say:
1. We prevented a slaughter. In the past, we've failed to prevent slaughters and have faced proper criticism. This was the right thing to do here.
2. This was done the right way internationally, with the UN and the Arab League (he can fairly brush aside the doubts about either body's enthusiasm; the bottom line is they gave their consent).
3. Here are the specific goals. To prevent slaughter, which we did. To give the rebels a chance for a fair fight, which we're doing. But we're not fighting their civil war for them. That's up to them.
Hovering here is the question of whether Gaddafi must be ousted as part of Odyssey Dawn. I say no, and I say he should say that outright, but he probably won't.
4. Oh, and by the way, we really seem to be succeeding.

He should ignore this silly demand for strict timetables. That's a pundit thing, not an American people thing. Okay, I will obviously watch and write it up tonight.

Barack ObamaLibyaMichael Tomasky
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