Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 40

Obama and 2012 | Michael Tomasky

Yesterday's Washington Post carried an opinion piece in which authors Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen, "Democrats" of long-standing, appear to be seriously making the argument that Obama should announce that he will not seek reelection but will instead concentrate on spending the next two years challenging the orthodoxies of both parties and imploring everyone to come together for the sake of our great nation. By doing so, they write, he can revive the great promise and hope of his campaign and perhaps go down in history as a brave truth-teller:

If the president adopts our suggestion, both sides will be forced to compromise. The alternative, we fear, will put the nation at greater risk. While we believe that Obama can be reelected, to do so he will have to embark on a scorched-earth campaign of the type that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election, which divided Americans in ways that still plague us.

Obama owes his election in large measure to the fact that he rejected this approach during his historic campaign. Indeed, we were among those millions of Democrats, Republicans and independents who were genuinely moved by his rhetoric and purpose. Now, the only way he can make real progress is to return to those values and to say that for the good of the country, he will not be a candidate in 2012.

Should the president do that, he - and the country - would face virtually no bad outcomes. The worst-case scenario for Obama? In January 2013, he walks away from the White House having been transformative in two ways: as the first black president, yes, but also as a man who governed in a manner unmatched by any modern leader. He will have reconciled the nation, continued the economic recovery, gained a measure of control over the fiscal problems that threaten our future, and forged critical solutions to our international challenges. He will, at last, be the figure globally he has sought to be, and will almost certainly leave a better regarded president than he is today. History will look upon him kindly - and so will the public.

This sounds very appealing to people at first blush, because after all, everyone is sick of our partisanship and poison. In addition, this sounds so romantically attractive: It's like something that would happen in a movie, and in that movie, everything would work out, after some initial turbulence, just the way Caddell and Schoen say it would.

In actual life, unfortunately, this is ludicrous nonsense. The day Obama made this announcement, especially in the current weakened state, he'd be a total lame-duck president. So the Republicans would gather together and say to one another, "Gee, guys, he's right! Since he's made this selfless move, we should make a selfless move too and agree to sit down with him and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and meet them halfway on stuff, following Barack Obama's example."

That is just from another universe. Republicans would just wait Obama out and put all their marbles into electing a Republican in 2012. Democrats would largely do the same thing, albeit less aggressively. You can call it a sad fact if you wish, but it's a fact: whatever leverage a first-term president has resides largely in the fact that he might win reelection, and people might have to deal with him for six more years instead of two. Leverage has nothing to do with nobility of gesture.

The thing about this piece is: Caddell and Schoen surely know this. They're not this stupid. So maybe they're up to something. They're both "analysts" for Fox News, which tells you plenty about what kinds of Democrats they are, because Fox basically has two types of Democrats: weak extremists who make the Democratic Party look like a bunch of asylum escapees, or people willing to denounce the Democratic Party as extreme and captive of special interests and out of touch and elitist and so on. Caddell and Schoen are the latter. Both have long histories along these lines.

In addition to this, Schoen was a consultant to Mike Bloomberg in 2001 and 2005. Bloomberg is interested in seeking the presidency. I'll just say that it would be convenient for Bloomberg if the incumbent president suddenly took himself out of the running.

There is no Hollywood fix for the polarization problem. Just isn't. It will perhaps crest and recede at some future point, when the Republicans finally go so far to the right that they've reduced themselves to 40% of the vote, and someone will come along and make the party more moderate. The Democrats will respond by fighting harder for moderate voters and will themselves be thus pushed toward the middle.

I could see this happening, under the right circumstances, in about 2024, under the following scenario. The economy recovers (enough) and Obama wins reelection. Then let's say Hillary runs and wins. The Repubs go ape trying to destroy her, but she survives, serves two reasonably successful terms.

The GOP has thus been shut out of the White House for 16 straight years and has lost control of the national agenda completely and is at a real low point. The party may at that juncture nominate a moderate: attentive to Latino concerns, as they'll have grown substantially as a part of the voting population, and more socially moderate, as today's socially liberal young voters become 2024's homeowners and parents and swing voters.

That's when it could happen. Unlikely before. Bleak, yes. But there you have it. It certainly wouldn't happen under Caddell and Schoen's preposterous scenario.

Barack ObamaUS elections 2012Michael Tomasky
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Cantor and Bibi | Michael Tomasky

This one percolated a bit over the weekend and might heat up this week. It's most unusual to put it mildly. Politico's Laura Rozen had the scoop last Thursday:

Last night, Netanyahu met in New York for over an hour with incoming House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who is set to become the highest ranking Jewish member of Congress in history. The meeting took place at New York's Regency Hotel, and included no other American lawmakers besides Cantor. Also attending on the Israeli side were Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and Netanyahu's National Security Advisor Uzi Arad.

Israeli sources characterized a one-on-one meeting between an Israeli prime minister and a lone American lawmaker as unusual, if not unheard of. Cantor's office did not think that Cantor and the Prime Minister had held a one-on-one meeting before...

..."Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington," the readout continued. "He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other."

Veteran observer of U.S.-Israeli relations Ron Kampeas said he found that statement "an eyebrow-raiser."

"I can't remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president," Kampeas wrote at JTA's blog -- an interpretation which Cantor's office later disputed to Kampeas.

Ron Kampeas has been on this beat a long long time. If he can't remember it, it likely didn't happen.

Now, Cantor's office can dispute Kampeas' description all they want. But isn't what Kampeas describes pretty much exactly what Cantor's office openly said, albeit in prettier words? It certainly reads that way to me.

A little context. This seems to bear a bit of similarity to Nancy Pelosi's infamous trip to Damascus shortly after she became speaker of the House. In that case, Pelosi certainly did interject herself, perhaps inappropriately, into foreign policy. I have no idea what her agenda was then.

But it seems to me that at least she did it out in the open. And while she...how to say it...meddled in foreign policy, suggesting to Bashar al-Assad that then prime-minister Ehud Olmert was ready to engage in negotiations with Syria (which Israel quickly denied), she wasn't directly going behind a sitting administration's back and telling a foreign head of state, if the administration does X, we've got your back.

This appears to be precisely what Cantor did, though. Cantor's defenders will point out that Bibi, while in New York last week, met also with Chuck Schumer. All right. But what's important here is not the fact of a meeting. What's important is what was said. It's the words that matter. Any number of members of Congress could meet with Bibi or Sarkoszy or Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore (no, I didn't know) and say: we love your country, we wish to foster better relations, what can we in Congress do to help.

But Cantor did not do just that. The key words are "will serve as a check." With those words, it seems to me, Cantor said, if Obama f----s with you, come to us. We'll take care of you. I doubt very very much that Schumer said anything remotely like that.

What do we call that? I'm not prepared to call it treason. But it's way out of bounds.

It's a very serious substantive breach. As a political matter, the Democrats should attack Cantor and the Republicans over this. Bush himself rebuked Pelosi over Damascus. So Obama himself, or at the very least Hillary Clinton, should call Cantor out.

If the situation were reversed, Beck-Limbaugh et alia would indeed be yelling about treason. It practically goes without saying, of course, that it's doubtful the Democrats will say a word.

US foreign policyBinyamin NetanyahuMichael Tomasky
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Now she tells us | Michael Tomasky

So yesterday was a day of frantic reaction in Democratic and liberal circles to Axelrod's comments about possibly agreeing to the GOP position on the Bush tax cuts, which I flagged yesterday morning. A few things you need to know/consider.

First, I'd love to know whether Axelrod said what he said intentionally or just went too far or was floating a trial balloon. If option three, it was a terrible trial balloon, and they've done this before and I wish they'd stop doing it. It makes them look like they don't know what they want to do. I know, I know. Maybe that's the reality of the situation. Even so...

Second, I see that Nancy Pelosi said she was against extending the cut for the upper-brackets:

"It's too costly. It's $700 billion," Pelos told NPR this morning. "One year would be around $70 billion. That's a lot of money to give a tax cut at the high end. And I remind you that those tax cuts have been in effect for a very long time, they did not create jobs."

All right. I agree with this, as you know. But, but, but...Uh, Nancy Pelosi was (still is) the speaker of the House of Representatives. She had the ability to force a vote on this before the election and did not do so. Repeat: She had the ability to force a vote on this before the election and did not do so.

I was one of many who argued at the time that the D's should have forced such a vote, making the R's choose between tax cuts for upper-income households and deficit reduction; put their cards on the table. But she did not force that vote.

One Democratic Senate staffer wrote in to TPM the other day to say:

...the White House and the Democratic congressional leadership made a terrible political mistake by avoiding a fight with the Republicans on this issue before the election, when it could have clearly demonstrated the hypocrisy of the GOP's constant harping about deficits, as well as their most critical concern: the "plight" of the poor rich people.

Astonishingly, instead of pressing our political advantage--which was also clearly the right policy choice, as well -- we flinched (in truth, in response to the political concern of members from high-income states). Voters could have had a last and important impression about who was on their side and who wasn't, but gracious to a fault, we didn't want to anger anyone, and the result was predictably awful.

They flinched. For two reasons. First, as the staffer writes, members from higher-income states were concerned. Why were they concerned? For the precise reasons I've been raising - 250K is often not rich in New York, California, Maryland, Massachusetts. So this is interesting to me: Even though the public position of the Democratic Party is that 350K is rich, privately, some Democrats were arguing that it's not, and they obviously won the day. So when you get to brass tacks, the Democratic Party does not in fact believe that 250K is rich.

However, this staffer leaves out a second bloc, and I would suspect probably more important, the Blue Dogs. Pelosi didn't force that vote for one simple reason: it would have lost. Why? Because enough Democrats would have voted with the GOP to make it fail. These Democrats were afraid of being called tax increasers, even if it was only on the top 2%. But a lot of them also simply believe in the Bush tax cuts as a matter of policy.

Now, does Pelosi think she's going to have the votes? Remember, this upcoming lame-duck session during which the vote will be held will be the same people who were in Congress these past two years; the new Congress will convene after this vote. So does anything make Pelosi think she'll have the votes in December that she couldn't muster in September?

Maybe now that some of these moderates lost, and they're finished anyway, they'll just cast a what-the-hell vote against the top brackets. But I think that's wishful thinking on liberals' part.

It seems obvious that what's going to happen here is that they're going to make the middle-bracket cuts permanent and extend the higher-bracket cuts for probably two years. Obama is positioning himself such that he can try to call this a compromise and not come out of it looking too silly. Pelosi, though, is now basically calling her president's compromise position unacceptable.

This sets up the possibility of a compromise agreed to by Obama, Harry Reid and the Republicans, but blocked by Pelosi's House Democrats. It's a slim possibility, but it exists. And if it happens, could it blow the whole deal apart, such that taxes for everyone go up on Jan. 1? That's a nice gift for the liberals in the House to hand their president: the breaking of one of his major campaign promises. On taxes.

Mind you, I am with Pelosi on the merits. But as bad as the outcome of extending the upper-bracket cuts is, by far the worst outcome would be increasing middle-class taxes. Obama has enough problems without that.

Obama administrationNancy PelosiMichael Tomasky
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Friday quiz: the play's the thing | Michael Tomasky

When I first started thinking I might be a writer, around 15 or 16, I thought maybe: playwright. I'd just discovered Tennessee Williams, and I thought they were just the most amazing things, his plays. Memorable characters, dialogue as hard as coal. I remember that for some reason or another, Streetcar, which was originally released as a movie in 1951, got a second cinematic run in the late 70s, when I was in high school. It must have had something to do with some of revival of interest in Brando, and it came somewhere in between Missouri Breaks and Superman.

Anyway I was really excited about this and dragged three friends along. They sort of went with it, but I think they were basically confused about what we were doing contemplating Blanche DuBois instead of the talent at the local pizza parlor.

These days, I don't go to the theater much. When I have seen recent serious drama, it has often felt...a little overbaked to me. Tom Stoppard, say. Maybe he's not representative of anything but Tom Stoppard, though. I confess I speak in near-total ignorance. And while I love the old musicals dearly, the last few I've seen have mostly left me cold. I've often felt I was being marketed to. Needless to say I have grand theories about all this, but since I fundamentally don't keep up with the current states of the thespian and terpsichorean pursuits, it would be the better part of wisdom for me to keep them to myself.

Anyway, there is plenty of theater I have loved loved loved. And, what with the little one now, I fully understand that I have years of theater-going ahead of me. And finally, plays and playwrights fall firmly within the scope and purpose of these quizzes: the idea that there are certain areas of human endeavor about which we should all have some base-line knowledge. So let's dig in. And again, we'll stay pretty modern. And drama only; we'll get to musical theater one of these days soon.

1. This late-19th century drama features a protagonist who shocks majority opinion in his town and refuses in any way to compromise; it includes the famous line, "The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."
a. Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
b. Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People
c. August Strindberg, The Father

2. Frank Wedekind, the fin-de-siecle German playwright, has been rediscovered by a new generation of theatergoers today because his first play, from 1891, was recently:
a. used as the source material for the smash-hit musical Spring Awakening
b. mentioned by Lady Gaga as a work that inspired her, setting off local productions all over the US and England
c. used as the basis of the children's film Coraline

3. George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell is often performed separately and in its own right. But it is actually an act within what larger Shavian work?
a. Major Barbara
b. Man and Superman
c. Arms and the Man

4. When something is called "Brechtian," what does that mean, really, anyway?
a. It refers to Bertolt Brecht's belief in extraordinarily long soliloquies by his protagonists; so, it means a work in which great emphasis is placed on a thundering closing summation by the lead character.
b. It is a reference to Brecht's Marxist political views, and more specifically his penchant in his works for an eventual squaring-off scene between a proletarian character and an upper-class one; so, a work that is specifically class-oriented.
c. It pays homage to Brecht's conviction that the audience should be regularly reminded that what it is watching is not real, but that it is in a theater watching a play; so, it refers to techniques in any play that induce that response.

5. This playwright wrote many plays more famous than Strange Interlude, but it was that 1920s play, an experimental work that deals with insanity and abortion, that won him his only real-time Pulitzer Prize (he won a second posthumously for one of those very famous works):
a. Eugene O'Neill
b. Clifford Odets
c. George S. Kaufman

6. The original script of this Noel Coward play called for a scene in which the family at the heart of the play's action would be listening to the news of King Edward VIII's abdication on the radio; the Lord Chamberlain, Britain's official play censor until 1968, ruled that the scene be struck because it might embarrass any member of the royal family who might see the production.
a. Blithe Spirit
b. Present Laughter
c. This Happy Breed

7. One critic wrote of this play that it "achieved a theoretical impossibility – a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice."
a. Exit the King, Eugene Ionesco
b. The Room, Harold Pinter
c. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

8. In the Tennessee Williams play, which character is the "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," implored by another: "Jump off it. Cats jump off roofs and land uninjured. Do it. Jump."?
a. Brick Pollitt, the secretly homosexual football star
b. Maggie Pollitt, his long-suffering wife
c. Big Daddy Pollitt, the wealth family patiarch

9. Match the David to the play.
David Mamet
David Hare
David Rabe

Hurlyburly
A Map of the World
American Buffalo

10. This 1982 play is famous for its dreamlike opening sequence in which the protagonist, Marlene, meets several famous women from history, including Pope Joan, the woman who was believed to have disguised herself as a man and been elected Pope in 854:
a. Children of a Lesser God, by Mark Medoff
b. Crimes of the Heart, by Beth Henley
c. Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill

11. John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation inspired a trivia game in which players were meant to connect their lives in six steps to the life of what actor?
a. Edward Asner
b. Kevin Bacon
c. Hank Azaria

12. Who are the chief protagonists of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen?
a. physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg
b. philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and linguist Otto Jespersen
c. Hamlet and Hitler

Pretty good stuff methinks. Let's look at the answers.

Answers:
1-b; 2-a; 3-b; 4-c; 5-a; 6-c; 7-c; 8-b; 9: Hurlyburly = Rabe, A Map of the World = Hare, and American Buffalo = Mamet; 10-c; 11-b; 12- a.

Notes:
1. I just read this play not too long ago. Title should have helped.
2. Saw Spring Awakening last year. Love the fake b).
3. Mostly just wanted to use the word "Shavian."
4. Very plausible fakeroos, if I say so myself. And excellent question.
5. The posthumous Pulitzer was for Long Day's Journey Into Night. I figured you could guess that neither of those other two, famed though they were, won two Pulitzers.
6. Makes sense somehow because only in c) was the family middle-working-class, so it's somehow easier to picture them gathered around the radio for something like that.
7. Should've been easy.
8. They called her "Maggie the Cat" at a few points.
9. Loved this question.
10. I actually don't know this play and wouldn't have known this. A savvy friend suggested its inclusion.
11. Is this widely known in England? It is in America.
12. I saw this and found it ponderous. Maybe a play featuring Hamlet and Hitler would've been better.

So give us your scores. And share with us your theatrical enthusiasms, experiences, likes, dislikes, et cetera. Especially experiences: a great night in the theater can be a truly transformative and memorable evening, no doubt about it.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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On admitting when a line has been crossed | Michael Tomasky

More on Joyce Kaufman, the radio-chat-hater-congressional-chief-of-staff-both-at-the-same-time of whom we spoke yesterday. From TPM:

Did Joyce Kaufman, the South Florida right-wing radio talk show host who was named (and then unnamed) as Republican Rep.-elect Allen West's chief of staff, inspire the deranged person whose threats led to yesterday's lock down of Broward County public schools, libraries and post offices? It looks that way.

As you might recall, someone emailed Kaufman's radio station, WFTL, declaring that he or she was planning a violent act against some kind of government building, possibly a school. A phone call to the station yesterday, from a woman identifying herself as the e-mailer's wife, later warned that this man could potentially commit a terrorist act against a public school. That prompted a countywide lock down of all public schools.

The local Fox affiliate since reported that the threat-maker had said he was inspired by none other than Joyce Kaufman, who had received publicity in the last few days for her previous calls for violent action against the government in order to protect citizens from the tyranny of the Obama administration.

Reports in the South Florida press contain slightly differing accounts of the precise connection between Kaufman's earlier calls for violence against the United States government and the threatening statements that led to the school lockdown.

Well, it's nice to see local Fox affiliate doing some actual reporting. Kudos. Kaufman, as you may have read, will not be going to Capitol Hill after all but staying at her Florida job.

Ya know, it'd be nice to see some of the conservative commenters from yesterday who sassed me back and had some half-witty thing to say about how this was no big deal write in now and say well, I guess maybe she does cross a line that shouldn't be crossed. Try it. Once. It doesn't hurt. You do yourselves and your belief systems no honor by defending people like this. You'll have a lot more credibility with the rest of us, too, if you're capable of saying once in a while, my side went too far here (and you'll note, I hope, that the liberals on this sight, while clear in their anger at conservatives, are constantly critiquing their own side).

And if you can't bring yourselves to do that, then fine, hold your silence. Or attack me again if it gives you jollies. Trust me, it washes off me fast. But imagine what might have happened if this deranged person had acted and children were dead. This will obviously not stop Kaufman, but I would hope it might give pause to one or two of you.

US politicsFloridaMichael Tomasky
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Armistice Day | Michael Tomasky

So it's Veterans Day here in the states, a federal holiday, and of course we all take the occasion to stop and pay a moment's tribute to soldiers past and present, "good" wars and "bad" ones because they didn't make the policy after all, for the risks they undertook.

My father was a veteran, serving on a carrier in the Pacific during the second war. He volunteered. He wanted at those Nazis. But they sent him out toward Japan. It's been many years since I talked with him about his experiences. He didn't see direct action, as carriers, which were damn expensive, tended to stay back out of harm's way.

The only detail I remember, perhaps regrettably, is an insignificant (but nevertheless human) one; his story of how he (trained by the Navy in electronics) rigged a homemade phonograph turntable so that they could play records on deck. At 14 or whatever, besotted as I was with my own little stereo at the time, I thought that was just marvelous, that my father, a man of books who was shall we say other than enthusiastic about working with his hands (a trait I have firmly inherited), had accomplished something as concrete and inventive as that.

Before this was Veterans Day, it was Armistice Day, which as you Brits know better than we marked the end of our troubled race's first modern descent into hell. I was looking around this morning for some writing along those lines, but my shelves at home are total chaos, so I couldn't find this little volume I used to have of writing about the Great War, with Sigfried Sassoon and such like. But as we know from last Friday, poems are all online! So I give you"At Carnoy":

DOWN in the hollow there's the whole Brigade
Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow
I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played,
And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low.
Crouched among thistle-tufts I've watched the glow
Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade;
And I'm content. To-morrow we must go
To take some cursèd Wood ... O world God made!

Just a little taste. We forget today what an existential horror that war was for the young people of that time, who had bounded into the new century on the exhilarating pulse of electricity, the motor car, bright belief in the limitless future. The mass introspection of the 20s certainly brought us a boatload of great literature to enjoy, but it sure came with a price, thanks to "Willy" and "Nicky" (have you ever read the Willy-Nicky letters? horrifying) and their kind.

Share your thoughts: on veterans, which several of you are, if I'm correct; on the Great War, its aftermath, its legacy (did any of you actually know any World War I veterans?); on war generally.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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New Tomasky blog feature: The Pinkerton file | Michael Tomasky

A couple of months ago, our redoubtable Matt Seaton wrote a column in which he asked for reader input about CIF. I read through the comments, some of which were from my regulars, and noted that a goodly number of people said that they'd like to see more variety of opinion on CIF, which I take to mean a little more conservatism in evidence.

Well, let it not be said that I do not listen. With this post, Tomasky blog starts a new semi-regular feature in which my friend Jim Pinkerton, James P. Pinkerton to you until you get to know him better, will write two posts a week responding to something I wrote previously.

Jim was a White House aide to Bush Sr. and is a conservative commentator whom I began reading back in the mid-90s when I lived in New York and his column was carried in Newsday. Still is, I think.

When I moved to Washington, I got to know him, and he's very smart and very well-informed on history and policy, and quite conservative in his views but quite old-school in the sense that he writes what he believes and not what he thinks will advance the interests of the Republican Party. So with Brer Matt's approval, I contacted Jim, and he will read through the blog and two times a week, he will write a response to something I've written, so you get another viewpoint. And I'll encourage Jim when he has time to look through the comment threads and join the fray.

All that said, we proceed to his first entry, about Paul Ryan's roadmap, which I tackled Tuesday. Like any nice house guest, he's polite to me the first time out, but I think we can assume he'll have at me at some point. It'll be interesting for you, and it'll force me to make better arguments too, not that the current ones aren't uniformly excellent of course.

Herewith, below the fold for added drama, the inaugural Pinkerton file:

11/10/10

On Tuesday, MT warned his readers against the Paul Ryan "Roadmap." The Ryan plan has garnered an enormous amount of positive buzz from the conservative and libertarian punditariat - on economic issues, the two groups are now synonymous. But as I wrote recently for National Review, the Ryan plan is not going anywhere, because elected Republicans won't vote for it. There's a big and growing split between the rightist chattering class and the the rightist politicking class.

In detailing the privatization and voucherization elements of the Ryan plan, MT included an interesting and revealing aside as he addressed his readers: "Now, you may think private accounts and vouchers are good ideas." That's revealing because, indeed, many on the left, or at least the center-left, have come to agree with the libertarian right on matters of "choice" and "empowerment."

That was the story of the "New Democrats," and also "New Labour." On both sides of the Atlantic, market forces were celebrated, and similarly, the old focus on the working class was seen as just that--old. The new idea was freedom--personal freedom for the individual, more freedom for the market. Defending New Deal-type solidarity programs was regarded as a chore; "modernizing" those programs was seen as an exciting challenge to brainiacs in the cognitive elite.

And the impact of that semi-libertarian thinking is felt to this day: In the US, a many elite Democrats have praised the Ryan plan, because they approve of vouchers, or they approve of deep cuts in entitlements--or both.

Alice Rivlin, the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, also Office of Management and Budget director in the Clinton administration - and seemingly a member of every blue-chip deficit-reduction group ever convened - said to Ryan at a Brookings Institution event, "I think absolutely you've done a huge service in getting [the plan] out there." National Journal noted that Ryan had gained fans even in the executive branch; as reporter Brian Friel observed, Ryan has been able to "attract the attention and admiration of figures as diverse as Obama and [former OMB director Peter] Orszag" (not linkable, subscription only)

Yet on the left as well as the right, enthusiasm for Ryan is stronger among the intelligentsia than among elected officials. So no, not to worry, the Ryan plan is not going to go anywhere anytime soon, because politicians with their ear to the ground are ultimately more attuned to voters than to avant-garde thinkers.

Yet the Ryan plan is not dead. Inside a suitably august fiscal commission, where regular folks are few, it would be easy to see a Ryan-ish plan sweeping the mahogany table. There's a reason why elites like commissions. But most folks - and most voters - don't like the elites.

With respect to the deficit commission: you won't be able to decrease entitlements till you increase health, especially for seniors. If people are physical wrecks, they will need to retire. And blaming them for being fat or smoking or not exercising--while satisfying to snobbish elites--will not change that political reality.

Unfortunately, the establishment (at least this establishment) lacks the bandwidth to incorporate a two-cushion shot into its policy proposals. First cushion: improve health. Second cushion: save money on health, just as it's cheaper to treat heart disease via statins than it is via open heart surgery. And the bonus third cushion is that you could move toward raising the retirement age as part of a Grand Compromise: better health, and in return, work longer.

US economyMichael Tomasky
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Axe gives in on taxes | Michael Tomasky

In an interview with HuffPo's Howard Fineman and Sam Stein, David Axelrod confirmed what we've been suspecting around these parts, that the administration is going to cave on the tax cuts for the upper brackets.

The slightly surprising element is that Axelrod appears to reject the idea of a temporary-only extension for households above $250,000. This has been the "compromise" under discussion here and there: make the Bush rates permanent for those under the 250 mark, and temporary for those above. But:

President Barack Obama's top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers.

That appears to be the only way, said David Axelrod, that middle-class taxpayers can keep their tax cuts, given the legislative and political realities facing Obama in the aftermath of last week's electoral defeat.

"We have to deal with the world as we find it," Axelrod said during an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office, steps away from the Oval Office. "The world of what it takes to get this done."

"There are concerns," he added, that Congress will continue to kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again. "But I don't want to trade away security for the middle class in order to make that point."

Well, this is not surprising but it's depressing all the same to see this little dog scurry over to the corner of the room and whimper like this. It makes me think about a broader rethink of how Democrats talk about taxes.

To cut to the chase, they have to give up on this idea that $250,000 is rich in this country. It's just not. it's certainly well off. The average two-income household is somewhere around $70,000, last I checked. So 3.5 times that is a lot, no doubt.

But as I've written before, a married cop and high-school principal can make a combined 250K after enough years of work. This couple is not a good symbol of excess. Especially if they live in a more expensive urban region - which, in fact, they are likely to, because cops' and principals' salaries are higher there.

Lots of liberals get furious at talk like this. But politically, it's just stupid to lump this couple in with Bill Gates and LeBron James and hedge-fund managers.

The other problem is, lots of people, couples in their 30s and early 40s, think to themselves: well, my spouse and I could one day make 250. If I get that promotion, and her small business takes off...The numbers show that 90% of them (or whatever) won't get to 250, but that doesn't change the fact that many of them have that dream, and there's no harm in having that dream.

The Democrats should aim at millionaires, meaning households with annual incomes above $1 million. That's clean, it's easy to grasp. Very few households make a mil, and very few of those striving couples in the above graf think they're going to hit the million mark. Most probably don't even want to, in the sense that they know it's basically impossible, so they've shut it out, as we do with youthful dreams of being athletes and rock stars.

So, I still do not understand for the life of me why Obama won't come back from Asia and say here's my deal. I'll give you Bush rates on every household under $1 million, but they pay 39%. It may not generate as much revenue, and it may even lose, but at least they took a shot at something and reframed the debate a little bit.

As things stand, we're back to Martin Seligman Land, a place the D's know all too well.

Obama administrationUS economyMichael Tomasky
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Conflict, what conflict? | Michael Tomasky

The next Congress will have two whole black Republicans. Bill Maher said the other night: How big a rout was this? It was so big the Republicans actually elected two blacks, and seven gays. Of course, we don't know who the gays are yet, but we'll find out when they're busted at the rest stop...

But I digress. Allen West of Florida is one of the African Americans. Godspeed, Allen. I wish the man well. But this seems odd.

He hired as his chief of staff a woman named Joyce Kaufman. Now, chiefs of staff, it can be argued, ought to know things. About how to run staff, of course. But about how the Hill works. Most newbies to the Hill bring in chiefs of staff from back home whom they trust, but most of those folks have worked in state legislatures or something, something that makes the boss feel they can hit the ground at least trotting if not running.

But not our Joyce. Her qualification? Twenty years are a vitriolic right-wing radio host:

Joyce considers herself fiercely independent and is not ashamed of putting America first, like real liberals used to and our weak-kneed politicians and some so-called conservatives claim to.

She has been evolving into an outspoken critic of the "new-left" who she believes view America as a failed state populated with a helpless, ignorant people in need of reeducation and government rescue. She is also sick and tired of those in power who are afraid to stand up for our nation's Judeo-Christian values and the values of those who, through their faith, seek only to better themselves and their fellow man.

Well, maybe she's going to put her nose to the grindstone, you say; learn the folkways of the Hill. Even try to show people that bombastic radio hosts have another side to them.

Oops!:

A newly named GOP chief of staff called the outgoing Democratic majority — and in particular Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — "garbage."

Joyce Kaufman, the incoming chief of staff to Rep.-elect Allen West (R-Fla.), said: "Over these months I have been blessed to form very wonderful relationships with the West family. I looked at this family and [told] myself, 'How do you not fight and put them up on the pedestal when we've got this garbage up on the pedestal now, people like Nancy Pelosi?' "

But these, friends, are only appetizers. The main course comes from Think Progress:

"Her 20 years of experience on the political scene in South Florida (always as a radio host) will give me helpful insights and perspective," West said. "As chief of staff, she'll be my right-hand person."

WFTL said in a statement that Kaufman will continue to work for the station but not as a host: she has been "retained as our Washington correspondent, with details on her new exciting schedule to be announced soon."

Carol Dixon, counsel for the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, told ThinkProgress that she had not heard of Kaufman's situation in particular, but said that generally this setup could be "potentially problematic." "There may be potential confidentiality issues — some of the issues she's reporting on may be gained by virtue of her House status. At a staff level it seems problematic," Dixon said. The committee's rules also say Kaufman must earn a fair market salary from WFTL, and refrain from using any office equipment for her radio duties.

I'm sure Kaufman more or less honestly sees no conflict at all. Her job as a media person is to attack quislings and leftists. And her job as chief of staff is...to attack quislings and leftists. What's the problem?

I don't know how many times I can end a post by saying I thought nothing shocked me anymore...so I won't.

US CongressFloridaMichael Tomasky
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