Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 2

Obama, post-Osama

I know: Friday was my last day with the Guardian. But I haven't started my new gig yet, and if an event like this doesn't bring a journalist out of temporary retirement, then he better be checked for a pulse. So I huddled with Matt Seaton, and we agreed that a few hundred words on how the killing of Osama bin Laden will impact Barack Obama's political fortunes were in order.

First, the obvious: Obama is certainly a stronger president today than he was two days ago. I watched the ceremony today in which he bestowed posthumous medals of honor on two US servicemen who fought in the Korean war. The tributes to these two men, both of whom sacrificed their lives to save their men, would have been sincere and moving in any case.

But in the present context, I couldn't help but think: for those families, for all the military people in that room, for all the US military people in this country and around the world, Obama has a degree of credibility now that he'd lacked before. He's not a military man, not steeped in military culture. That's all still true. But now it's basically canceled out. He got bin Laden. Period stop. An utterly un-rebuttable statement of strength.

And I think we will see as more details come out, indeed as we have already seen, that a big part of this operation's success had to do with Obama himself. The national-security meetings he ran, the questions he asked, the decisions he made. I don't want bombs, he said; I don't want to kill children while we do this, and I don't want a leg there and a hand there. I want a body, and I want proof, before America and (more importantly) a possibly doubting world.

In addition to that, there is the point - often made by now, but virtually the first thing I thought of last night - that Obama had said back in 2007 that he'd take bin Laden out without telling Pakistan if he had to. He was mocked by everyone as naive, as needlessly offending our great ally. But that is exactly what happened, and it was exactly what was called for. (Some Pakistani officials adamantly deny this.) Obama looks smarter and braver than all those critics today (who included his own secretary of state, then running against him).

What does this historic event do for Obama at home politically? On the most obvious level, I suspect a quick poll bounce of around six points. That will be among independents, largely, and it will be a very important foundation that he can use to repair relationships with that bloc. For a while at least, those voters will lend more credibility in their minds to everything he says, whether it's about terrorism or Medicare.

It makes certain matters trickier for the right wing. Cracks and dog-whistle comments about his being a Muslim are going to sound awfully silly now. When the campaign hits full stride, the Republican, whoever he or she is, will want to attack Obama as weak, as Republicans have done to Democrats since the cold war. We can't predict the future of course, and it is possible at any time that there might be a terrorist attack on US soil. But barring such an attack, any Republican trying to call the man who got bin Laden in a mere two-and-a-half years, after tough guys Bush and Cheney couldn't get him in seven-and-a-half, is just going to look ridiculous.

Some of them look ridiculous already. In the statements I've seen, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and (of all people, but it was a pitch-perfect statement) Donald Trump were the only GOP president contenders to congratulate Obama as well as the army and intelligence services. The others refrained. Petty and stupid. Even Dick Cheney congratulated Obama. Barring unforeseen events, I don't see Cheney giving quite the speech at 2012's GOP convention that Karl Rove was probably hoping for.

The final question: how much does an event like this affect the making of domestic policy? Maybe not that much, once the initial excitement dies down. The budget crisis is still the budget crisis, and the fight with Paul Ryan and John Boehner will still be a tough one.

But it should give Obama a little more swagger across the board, and it should make the Republicans that much more cautious about how they try to belittle the president. The GOP narrative about Obama has been in part predicated on his exoticism, let's call it, and in part on this idea that he's a weak leader whom they can push around. Now, he's done the ballsiest thing that an American president has done since who knows when, and he succeeded at it. Perfectly. The ideas that he isn't really quite American and that he's soft on our enemies won't fly, so the GOP will have to find other subtextual points of attack.

How much will it matter if unemployment is 9% in November 2012? Probably not much. This does not change everything. But it sure gives the president the opportunity to start changing his political fortunes more broadly. He suddenly looks a lot less like Jimmy Carter.

Obama administrationOsama bin LadenMichael Tomasky
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Tomasky Talk: Farewell predictions for 2012 - video

In his last ever Tomasky Talk, Michael looks into the future of the 2012 Republican nomination race, the presidential election itself and how taxation will be the clincher

Michael Tomasky

Tomasky Talk: Farewell predictions for 2012 - video

In his last ever Tomasky Talk, Michael looks into the future of the 2012 Republican nomination race, the presidential election itself and how taxation will be the clincher Continue reading...

And, goodbye | Michael Tomasky

I don't want to make this long or sentimental. Given the previous announcement, the quiz, today's video and now this, I can see how one who isn't particularly moved by my departure could conclude that I'm milking this a little. But I still think a proper farewell is called for, as I have a few things to say and people to thank.

First of all, I am very excited about the new gig. Those of you who aren't from America may not be able to see it this way, but when you grow up in the America I grew up in, studying American journalism and dreaming of being one of those people whom everyone reads, there are basically five lodestars: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. They're still the biggest brands in US print news. And that makes "columnist for Newsweek" a well-nigh impossible position to turn down. Besides which, The Daily Beast is a pretty tasty morsel in its own right, I have always thought as a reader. And an opportunity to work for Tina Brown is a chance to work for one of the great editors of our time.

Mind you, I have been working for another one of the great editors of our time. I will certainly be cheering, as I assume we all will, for victory for Alan Rusbridger's vision of a no-paywall cyber-newspaper that still sends journalists out into the world and that takes culture and society seriously, and that talks up to its readers rather than down to them. It's a position with great integrity. And into the bargain, when Alan wins, Rupert loses. What's not to like? In any case I am extremely grateful to him, as I told him last week.

I extend that gratitude to all the Guardian colleagues I've met and worked with. I've worked at half a dozen places, and believe me, it's not always the case that you get to work for and with people who are a) very smart and b) really appreciative of what you do, and bother to tell you (that last part is the key). I won't single anyone out for fear of forgetting someone, but I thank them all. The Guardian has really enriched me in so many ways. I will miss it, and the people, terribly.

And finally, you lot. And here I refer not just to the regular commenters, but the regular readers who don't comment for whatever reason; I remember meeting several of you at our drinks session in Holborn, and I haven't forgotten you're out there. Again, I won't name any names because I'm sure to forget some people and hurt their feelings. But I'm very grateful to you all. Sure, the blog carries my name, but I really think of myself as the conductor of the orchestra; all of you are crucially important to the overall texture of the enterprise.

I won't be writing a blog at the Beast, but will be producing columns and articles. You'll all be free to comment of course, and I hope you'll follow me over there, and I'll sure smile when I see familiar names. But alas it won't be quite the same. I'm not sure we could quite recreate this anyway. When I started the blog, and was happy when I noticed that a post received more than 10 comments, I used to wonder how in the world I'd ever build an audience. Well, I didn't build it. We did. It took as much engagement, energy and imagination on your parts as on mine. I am in your debt.

Now let's go out with a song. "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day…" Remember? It featured in a quiz once. One of the quizzes you didn't like that much, because many of you said you hated old music. Honestly. What's the matter with you people?

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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One more argument: Trump and Obama | Michael Tomasky

Here's a little interesting news from Justin Elliott of Salon about the man who's always had great relations with "the blacks":

In an episode early in Donald Trump's career, his New York real estate company was sued by the federal government for discriminating against potential black renters. After a lengthy legal battle, it ultimately agreed to wide-ranging steps to offer rentals to nonwhites.

The story goes that Fred Trump, Donald's dad and the Trump who was really a self-made man, made his real-estate fortune building mostly middle-class housing in Queens. Donald became president of the company in 1971, and it was 1973 when the government claimed to have found evidence that the Trump outfit refused to rent to black applicants. Elliott:

The journalist Gwenda Blair reported in her 2005 Trump biography that while Fred Trump had sought to combat previous discrimination allegations through "quiet diplomacy," Donald decided to go on the offensive. He hired his friend Roy Cohn, the celebrity lawyer and former Joseph McCarthy aide, to countersue the government for making baseless charges against the company. They sought a staggering $100 million in damages.

A few months after the government filed the suit, Trump gave a combative press conference at the New York Hilton in which he went after the Justice Department for being too friendly to welfare recipients. He "accused the Justice Department of singling out his corporation because it was a large one and because the Government was trying to force it to rent to welfare recipients," the Times reported. Trump added that if welfare recipients were allowed into his apartments in certain middle-class outer-borough neighborhoods, there would be a "massive fleeing from the city of not only our tenants, but communities as a whole."

A federal judge threw out Trump's countersuit a month later, calling it a waste of "time and paper."

Trump might have a smidgeon of a point, if he was telling the truth, which, given the judge's words, seems like a might big if. But it doesn't end there. Trump came to an agreement with the Justice Department in 1975, promising to improve. Then, three years later:

In 1978, the government filed a motion for supplemental relief, charging that the Trump company had not complied with the 1975 agreement. The government alleged that the Trump company "discriminated against blacks in the terms and conditions of rental, made statements indicating discrimination based on race and told blacks that apartments were not available for inspection and rental when, in fact, they are," the Times reported. Trump again denied the charges.

It's not clear what happened with the government's request for further action (and compensation for victims), but in 1983, a fair-housing activist cited statistics that two Trump Village developments had white majorities of at least 95 percent.

If you think this man isn't consciously playing a race card today, you are in such deep denial that you've practically dug your way to China. The birth certificate was one thing. But the college grades business is just such an obvious signal to white conservatives that Trump doesn't even care what people think. You have not seen a more establishment Republican talk like this, and there's a good reason for that. It's obvious race-baiting.

No, Barack Obama is not above criticism, and no, all criticism of Obama is not racist. I think he's been a disappointing president, and I can see how people might think he's been an outright bad president, without race coming into the picture at all. And I think most Americans, a clear majority, are capable of making such judgments about him without race being materially important to the conclusion.

But this particular line of attack on criticism of Obama is plainly racist. Trump knows exactly what he's saying, and what fires he's stoking. David Remnick wrote:

The one radical thing about Barack Obama is his race, his name. Of course, there is nothing innately radical about being black or having Hussein as middle name; what is radical is that he has those attributes and is sitting in the Oval Office. And even now, more than two years after the fact, this is deeply disturbing to many people, and, at the same time, the easiest way to arouse visceral opposition to him. Let's be even plainer: to do what Trump has done (and he is only the latest and loudest and most spectacularly hirsute) is a conscious form of race-baiting, of fear-mongering. And if that makes Donald Trump proud, then what does that say for him? Perhaps now he will go away, satisfied that this passage has sufficiently restored his fame quotient and television ratings. The shame is that there are still many more around who, in the name of truth-telling, are prepared to pump the atmosphere full of poison.

It takes a certain kind of brains to make billions, and bravo for that. But it obviously doesn't take integrity.

Barack ObamaDonald TrumpMichael Tomasky
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Friday quiz: and in the end... | Michael Tomasky

Our subject this week: what else? Endings. Of all sorts, as you'll see. Let us just proceed, shall we? I've made it a bit easier than usual because I hope everyone scores well this week!

1. Scholars generally regard this as the last play Shakespeare wrote by himself, in 1611; source material included a contemporary account of a sailing trip to Bermuda written by an ancestor of Lytton Strachey.
a. All's Well That Ends Well
b. Pericles, Prince of Tyre
c. The Tempest

2. Which is the last of Trollope's six Palliser Novels, which opens with the unexpected death of the wife of the series' protagonist, Plantagenet Palliser, who is then forced to reckon alone with their offspring?
a. The Eustace Diamonds
b. The Duke's Children
c. Can You Forgive Her?

3. Match the famous last words (or alleged last words) to the person who spoke them (or allegedly spoke them) on his or her deathbed:
"Is it the Fourth?"
"The fog is rising..."
"Either that wallpaper goes—or I do."
"This isn't Hamlet, you know, it's not meant to go in the bloody ear."
"Drink to me."
"I have just had 18 whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record."

Pablo Picasso
Laurence Olivier
Emily Dickinson
Oscar Wilde
Dylan Thomas
Thomas Jefferson

4. What 5,126-year era ends on December 21, 2012, leading some people to predict total world apocalypse on that date?
a. The Mayan "Long Count" Calendar
b. The Pharaonic Sun Cycle
c. The Visitations of the Elders of the Han Dynasty

5. What was the last production year of the famous Ford Model T?
a. 1919
b. 1927
c. 1943

6. Match these memorable last lines to the films in which they were spoken. Take extra points for the actor or actress who spoke them.
"Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars."
"That's right, that's right. Attaboy, Clarence."
"Hello, everybody. This is Mrs. Norman Maine."
"Sing it out, men! Higher, you animals, higher! We open in Leavenworth Saturday night!"
"You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and - but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs."
"They say they're going to repeal Prohibition. What will you do then?" "I think I'll have a drink."

Annie Hall
Now, Voyager
The Producers
A Star Is Born
The Untouchables
It's a Wonderful Life

7. Respectively, what is the last stop in Brooklyn on New York's F Train, and the last stop at the northern end of London's Piccadilly line?
a. Brighton Beach, Tottenham Hale
b. Coney Island, Cockfosters
c. Bay Ridge, West Finchley

8. All four Beatles last worked together in Abbey Road studios on August 20, 1969, finishing and mixing what complex and much-overdubbed song that had also been the very first they worked on that February, when they started the sessions that resulted in the Abbey Road album?
a. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"
b. "Because"
c. "Oh! Darling"

9. What was the controversy that saddled Bill and Hillary Clinton as they left the White House in January 2001?
a. The White House/Chappaqua furniture "scandal"
b. The Marc Rich pardon
c. The missing W's from White House computer keyboards
d. The Borsheim's registry "scandal"

10. Match the last line to the song it's from.
"My aim is true"
"And after all this/won't you give me a smile"
"She was too young to fall in love/And I was too young to know"
"And when he died, all he left us was alone"
"Where's the confounded bridge?"

Papa Was a Rollin' Stone
Only Sixteen
The Crunge
London Calling
Alison

11. The last thing you do to this is take a torch and brown the top.
a. Scorpion Punch
b. A headgasket you're replacing
c. Creme brulee

12. As today happens to be the date of a fairly famous wedding, select which two of these five celebrity weddings did not end in divorce:
a. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard
b. Prince Aly Khan and Rita Hayworth
c. Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd
d. Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis
e. Dennis Hopper and Michelle Phillips

Pretty fun, no? And certainly easier than usual. I dropped some pretty major clues in there. Plus I put some extra work into it, so it's really about 20 questions, or more. For the last time, let's have a look at the answers.

Answers:
1-c; 2-b; 3: "the Fourth" = Jefferson; "fog rising" = Dickinson; "wallpaper" = Wilde; "Hamlet" = Olivier; "Drink to me" = Picasso; "18 whiskeys" = Thomas; 4-a; 5-b; 6: "Oh, Jerry" = Now, Voyager; "Attaboy, Clarence" = Wonderful Life; "Mrs. Norman Maine" = A Star Is Born; "open in Leavenworth" = The Producers; "we need the eggs" = Annie Hall; "have a drink" = The Untouchables; 7-b; 8-a; 9-all are correct!!; 10: "aim" = Alison; "give me a smile" = London Calling; "she was too young" = Only Sixteen; "and when he died" = Papa/Rollin' Stone; "confounded bridge" = The Crunge; 11-c; 12-a and d.

Notes:
1. The clue about the sailing trip made this obvious, but as I said, the point this week is for everyone to score well. Shakespeare reportedly relied heavily on William Strachey's account of a storm at sea.
2. A harder one, but a huge clue in the wording of the question.
3. They all made sense, I think. Jefferson died on the Fourth of July, as most Americans ought to know. "The fog is rising" just sounds like something Dickinson would say. The Wilde line is famous. "Hamlet" makes Larry O. the obvious choice on that one. Picasso's line is also famous, and as for Dylan Thomas, enough said. Yeesh.
4. I think reasonably easy. Not far away, is it? Stock up the basement.
5. My thinking here was: 1919 would seem too early to most of you, and 1943 way too late, because Ford was mostly making tanks by then anyway. So, process of elimination.
6. Fun. The Now, Voyager line used to be very famous in US pop culture, especially if you watched The Carol Burnett Show in the 1970s (anyone remember what I'm talking about?). The "Clarence" line should have been easy. Ditto Mrs. Maine. "Leavenworth" and "sing it out, men" suggests very clearly the last scene in The Producers, where they're rehearsing the convicts for their new musical "Prisoner of Love." And Prohibition and Untouchables should have been a gimme.
Extra credit: Bette Davis, James Stewart, Judy Garland (or, arguably, Janet Gaynor in the earlier version and Barbra Streisand in the later, go ahead and give yourself credit), Zero Mostel, Woody Allen, and Kevin Costner (the "I think I'll have a drink" part).
7. You only had to know one or the other. On the other hand, you certainly had to know one or the other.
8. Probably the toughest one today. I bet many of you chose "Because" because of those harmonies. But it was all those sound effects on the heavy guitar part that takes up the last three or so minutes of "I Want You" that they worked on that day.
9. A trick question, but the best kind because you couldn't miss it! It turned out that all but the Rich pardon were trumped up, so that's kind of the real answer, but they all count since all were big stories.
10. I think these were all pretty easy. Artists, of course: Elvis Costello, the Clash, Sam Cooke, the Temptations, Led Zeppelin. The Crunge is a pretty obscure song, but that last line is very funny and memorable, and anyway you might have known the other four.
11. You must fess up if you said headgasket.
12. Lombard died in a plane crash. Gable was totally distraught. And Jackie and Ari stayed together until his death. Rita and the Aly Khan were one of the great 20th-century celebrity marriages, I think. Eric and Pattie I figure you know about. And Dennis and Michelle lasted all of eight days. "Seven of those days were pretty good," Hopper is supposed to have said. "The eighth day was the bad one."

So, let's hear how you did. I'm looking for good scores today. And bring up any endings you like – the endings of novels or other songs or other films or historical periods or wars or anything you want. These have been great fun, and I hope you enjoyed this one. And remember: farewell post still coming, so don't get maudlin on us yet!

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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Obama to Alabama | Michael Tomasky

Obama's Alabama visit: every once in a while, politics can be put aside

It's good to see that President Obama is headed to Alabama Friday. These are the deadliest tornadoes in the US in 37 years, with more than 200 people dead in Alabama alone. Devastating. The thing to do was definitely not to stay in Washington and bicker with aides about what was actually happening, as this other president did in 2005 during Katrina.

That said, one can see in the pre-visit rhetoric how carefully the administration is pitching the federal government's efforts here. Read this, from Friday's Washington Post:

Late Wednesday, the president declared a federal emergency in Alabama and dispatched Craig Fugate, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency [Fema], to inspect the damage.

Fugate, a former Florida state emergency management director, said Thursday that the federal government will take its cues in offering aid from state leaders.

"This is a response being conducted by local responders," Fugate said, adding that Fema will maintain "a support role."

That seems rather odd. Fema is quite obviously the only agency, and the federal government quite obviously the only public entity, that has the capacity financial and otherwise to coordinate a sufficient response to something this calamitous. So why does Fugate have to say that Fema will play only a supporting role? Is this so as not to offend local sensibilities involving hatred of Washington?

Fugate, incidentally, seems to be a highly regarded emergency manager. According to Time, he's a Democrat but is most closely associated with Florida Republicans. He was tapped by Governor Jeb Bush in 2001 to run Florida's emergency response agency, and then reappointed by Charlie Crist. At least Jeb put a qualified person in the job. A shame his brother didn't do the same.

Interestingly, the Fema budget for disaster relief is one of those areas whose funding grew substantially in this year of "massive" domestic budget cuts, even above the agency's original request. The agency sought about $1.9bn for its disaster relief fund (see the table on page 115 if you're interested) and in the budget passed in early April ended up with $2.65bn.

Now, Fema is part of "security spending", broadly defined, so it gets a little more political protection from cuts. Even so, an unrequested 30% increase is a bit eye-popping in this political climate, no? Mind you, I'm not saying I'm against it. I'm all for it. I'm saying that it just goes to show that when you get down to specific functions of the government, even Tea Partiers and southern Republicans look at this stuff and see that a lot of it isn't half bad.

I invite you to scroll through Fema's description of what it does. Click on the hyperlinked $1.9bn above and read pages 107-115. It operates 10 regional command locations. Hardly seems excessive. It awards emergency preparedness grants to localities. It trains firefighters. It's building a "next-generation infrastructure of alert and warning networks". Doesn't sound like a waste of money to me. But I guess even Republicans consider all this acceptable, because they know that their region of the country, the south, tends to suffer the highest number of natural disasters and thus will need that money, especially since they won't tax their own people to raise any money of their own.

Be all that as it may, one's heart goes out to the people who've suffered here. One just wishes that everyone would acknowledge that the federal government's role here is a little more than "supporting".

Barack ObamaAlabamaNatural disasters and extreme weatherUS politicsHurricane KatrinaObama administrationGeorge BushUnited StatesDemocratsRepublicansMichael Tomasky
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Liberalism and bumper stickers | Michael Tomasky

Jon Chait has a funny post at TNR. He was reading Ryan Lizza's new New Yorker piece on Obama's foreign-policy shifts and quotes this Lizza passage:

"The project of the first two years has been to effectively deal with the legacy issues that we inherited, particularly the Iraq war, the Afghan war, and the war against Al Qaeda, while rebalancing our resources and our posture in the world," Benjamin Rhodes, one of Obama's deputy national-security advisers, said. "If you were to boil it all down to a bumper sticker, it's 'Wind down these two wars, reëstablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime.' "

As Chait notes, that's rather a long bumper sticker. He even had the TNR graphics folks mock up an image, which you can see if you click through above. Then Chait writes:

The bumper sticker problem is endemic for American liberalism. On foreign policy, it's actually a murky split, with ideologies cutting across both party coalitions. But on economics, there's a persistent phenomenon of conservatives having clear bumper-sticker answers and liberals lacking them. That's because, as I've argued before, conservatism is philosophically anti-government in a way that liberalism is not philosophically pro-government. "Market good, government bad" fits on a bumper sticker. So does "Government good, market bad." The problem is that the former pretty well describes the Republican philosophy, while the latter describes the philosophy only of a tiny socialist fringe operating mainly outside the two-party system.

Liberalism is forever in search of a philosophy that can fit on a bumper sticker. It's always failing, because a philosophy of leaving the free market to work except in cases of market failure, and then attempting to determine which intervention best passes the cost-benefit test is never going to be simple.

This, to me, is exactly right. When I was editing The American Prospect magazine, I came up with this idea for a reader contest: give us liberalism's elevator pitch. It's basically the same idea, but rather than fitting on a bumper sticker, it has to be something you can say to a potential convert (or donor) on an elevator to win him or her over.

We had lots of entries, and lots of perfectly good ones, but nothing that shouted out to us: YES! Because like Chait says it's not easy. We believe in the free market, but a regulated free market. How regulated? As much as proves necessary based on the dishonest and harmful behaviors that occur in the unregulated market. We believe in taxes. High taxes? No. Enough taxes. We believe in putting America first, of course, but not in such a way that....whatever. There's always a "but," a qualifier. So there'll never be a great liberalism elevator pitch.

I remember that some conservative bloggers mocked our efforts, and sometimes in ways that were genuinely funny. One guy wrote something that began with a ridiculously earnest and ponderous and somewhat hectorish appeal about compassion and justice and then wrote: "hey, why are you getting off on seven? I saw you press 32!" Points for that one, whoever you were.

US politicsMichael Tomasky
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Worst American of Tomasky blog era | Michael Tomasky

Well it's sort of a slow news day on the politics front, and since we're tying up loose ends around here, I thought I might write a more general post in which we all consider the question: Who is the most appalling American of the Tomasky blog era (back to mid-2008, I think)?

After giving the matter a full three minutes' consideration, my list of the top five contenders would look like this. And this is limited to people involved in politics, which excludes not only murderers and such like but also Bernie Madoff and the heads of all those banks who helped ruin the country:
1. Certain former half-term governor
2. Donald Trump (with a bullet!)
3. Michele Bachmann
4. Andrew Breitbart
5. Karl Rove

I'd say that is a pretty solid list. The Embarracudah, of course. What can we say. She's just like a giant lizard creature from the netherworld, out of one of those old Japanese sci-fi movies, standing above the United States pouring massive buckets of radioactive excrement over everything she sees. And she will appear in sequel after sequel alas.

Trump has made an impressively fast push to come from almost nowhere (in political terms) to establishing himself as America's most prominent and toxic race-baiter. Well played!

Bachmann: solid, reliable .290 hitter. Breitbart, partly for his lies and partly on style. And Rove just because.

Conservatives, of course you will see things differently, and we welcome your input. We all might as well have one last good and proper fight. Tomorrow we get a quiz and a farewell post, so I expect it'll be a bit touchy-feely, so let's get our ya-ya's out today.

And by the way, since I know our friend Erskine will have some thoughts about this post, let me ask something that's always bugged me. Erskine, what's with the handle? Because the real Erskine Caldwell, you see (and note the slightly different spelling), was pretty much a socialist, writing very popular novels in the 1920s and 30s denouncing poverty and racism. And if the answer starts "But if Erskine Caldwell were around today, he would be a..." then I'm sorry I asked.

US politicsMichael Tomasky
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The Gates Panetta Petraeus shuffle | Michael Tomasky

What do we make of this announcement, coming today, that Robert Gates will leave the Pentagon to be replaced by Leon Panetta, current CIA head, who will in turn be replaced by David Petraeus, who will himself be replaced in Afghanistan by Marine General John Allen?

First of all, Gates has been, I think, a very good Pentagon chief, as I've written before. It probably hasn't been easy for a Texas Republican to work inside a Democratic administration, but he's done so with to me eye very little of the kind of signal-sending that Republicans in those situations sometimes do, subtly undermining the commander in chief. He carried out the don't ask don't tell repeal. Where he disagreed, on Libya, he just said so plainly and somehow without being melodramatic about it. But when the order came he carried it out. He and Obama did disagree on the size of cuts to the Pentagon budget, and Gates' posture of $178 billion over five years fell short of what many Democrats and a small number of Republicans are looking for (the Pentagon budget is more than half a trillion dollars a year, equivalent in real dollars to its cold war-era heights).

In other words, he has been a public servant in the old and admired sense: a president called him to serve, and he served to the best of his ability and kept politics out of it. I acknowledge that it's possible that I've missed some episodes that cut against my theory that would be known to reporters who are in the Pentagon every day, but I think what I'm saying generally fits Gates' reputation.

Beyond that, let me turn it over to Tom Ricks, who wrote at Foreign Policy:

What does President Obama think he is gaining from these moves?

Defense Secretary Panetta: Yes, another alumnus of Congress. Ugh. But Panetta has a reputation of handling the CIA well, and that is not an easy job, as the place has the nasty rep of either undermining or capturing its outsider chiefs. I think this move signals that Obama plans to take the defense budget way down, and that Panetta's expected job will be to hold the place together and sell the spending cuts to the few remaining hawks in Congress.

CIA Director Petraeus: Honestly, I am a bit puzzled by this. Smart, hard-working, etc. But why this man for this job at this time, especially at a time when there is already reason to worry about the militarization of our foreign policy and diplomacy? Well, it gets him out of Afghanistan. Cynics think it also keeps him from being critical during next year's presidential campaign, but I actually don't think Petraeus has political ambitions, or even much of a desire to participate in electoral politics.

Gen. Allen commanding in Afghanistan: As a general, a lot of very Petraeus-like characteristics-cerebral, innovative, open to new approaches-- but without the political clout Petraeus carries on Capitol Hill. A bonus here, but not one I am sure the White House recognizes: Also, as a Marine, Allen is likely to be skeptical of Army support structure, and will likely be comfortable with an austere infrastructure during the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan.

He knows more about this than I do, but I'm surprised to read a sentence referring to "The few remaining hawks in Congress." There may be few in theory. But once Democrats start talking about cuts, Republicans will naturally start accusing the Democrats of hating freedom and wanting the terrorists to win.

It's always smart on one level, in this toxic atmosphere, for a Democratic president to have a Republican defense secretary. Bill Cohen worked out well for Bill Clinton. I don't quite see Panetta's experience as a member of Congress having much meaning down the road when it comes to selling defense cuts. Arguments from a Pentagon chief for military cuts would probably have more heft coming from someone seen more as a military-culture person and less as a Democratic pol. But Panetta has been navigating these waters for a while now. so maybe I'm wrong about that.

As for Petraeus, he may not have had political ambitions, but I know for a fact that there were and are conservatives who had political ambitions for him and will be bitterly disappointed that he now probably won't be available for political purposes next year. And it is a relief for Democrats, because he'd have been a formidable presence as a vice-presidential candidate, assuming he knew how to give a speech, which is a big assumption sometimes.

US foreign policyObama administrationDavid PetraeusCIAMichael Tomasky
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