Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 50

New numbers on jobs and deficit | Michael Tomasky

DATELINE, WASHINGTON -- The private sector added 64,00 jobs in September, the eighth consecutive month of gains, signaling that though still tepid, the economy is in fact in recovery...

Well, something tells me that ain't the headline and lede (that's how we spell it, at least in US journalism, I guess so as not to confuse it with the metal) you're going to be seeing and hearing today and tomorrow.

This is how the AP is actually touting things, which actually seems pretty even-handed to me:

WASHINGTON (AP, CHRISTOPHER RUGABER) -- A wave of government layoffs in September outpaced weak hiring in the private sector, pushing down the nation's payrolls by a net total of 95,000 jobs.

The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent last month. The jobless rate has now topped 9.5 percent for 14 straight months, the longest stretch since the 1930s.

The private sector added 64,000 jobs, the weakest showing since June.

Local governments cut 76,000 jobs last month, most of them in education. That's the largest cut by local governments in 28 years. And, 77,000 temporary census jobs ended in September.

State and local governments are cutting jobs, of course, because the Senate didn't act to pass the funding to prevent it. The Republicans blocked it. Gee...you don't suppose they blocked it knowing that doing so would lead to a lousy jobs report, in which the public-sector firing would more than offset the private-sector hiring, thereby leading to a raft of negative stories for the Obama administration, do you? You're so cynical!

Meanwhile, another report came out yesterday that will get far less attention. It seems that the deficit was, according to the CBO, reduced in fiscal year 2010 by $125 billion since the previous year. That's a single-year record. Receipts were $57 billion higher than previously, and outlays $67 billion lower.

Of course the deficit is still very high. Close to $1.3 trillion, and 8.9% of GDP. Here's a chart giving some history on that.

Substantively, this is probably the worst of all possible worlds, because I'd rather see more government spending to get us out of this crisis, but that proved impossible, so instead we have this mish-mash situation in which spending isn't high enough to spur recovery and slashing isn't low enough to satisfy the deficit hawks. I just point it out because if the R's were in the White House, "record deficit reduction" would be a major talking point, while I can guarantee you that you won't hear one Democrat use that phrase.

US politicsUS economyMichael Tomasky
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New numbers on jobs and defict | Michael Tomasky

DATELINE, WASHINGTON -- The private sector added 64,00 jobs in September, the eighth consecutive month of gains, signaling that though still tepid, the economy is in fact in recovery...

Well, something tells me that ain't the headline and lede (that's how we spell it, at least in US journalism, I guess so as not to confuse it with the metal) you're going to be seeing and hearing today and tomorrow.

This is how the AP is actually touting things, which actually seems pretty even-handed to me:

WASHINGTON (AP, CHRISTOPHER RUGABER) -- A wave of government layoffs in September outpaced weak hiring in the private sector, pushing down the nation's payrolls by a net total of 95,000 jobs.

The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent last month. The jobless rate has now topped 9.5 percent for 14 straight months, the longest stretch since the 1930s.

The private sector added 64,000 jobs, the weakest showing since June.

Local governments cut 76,000 jobs last month, most of them in education. That's the largest cut by local governments in 28 years. And, 77,000 temporary census jobs ended in September.

State and local governments are cutting jobs, of course, because the Senate didn't act to pass the funding to prevent it. The Republicans blocked it. Gee...you don't suppose they blocked it knowing that doing so would lead to a lousy jobs report, in which the public-sector firing would more than offset the private-sector hiring, thereby leading to a raft of negative stories for the Obama administration, do you? You're so cynical!

Meanwhile, another report came out yesterday that will get far less attention. It seems that the deficit was, according to the CBO, reduced in fiscal year 2010 by $125 billion since the previous year. That's a single-year record. Receipts were $57 billion higher than previously, and outlays $67 billion lower.

Of course the deficit is still very high. Close to $1.3 trillion, and 8.9% of GDP. Here's a chart giving some history on that.

Substantively, this is probably the worst of all possible worlds, because I'd rather see more government spending to get us out of this crisis, but that proved impossible, so instead we have this mish-mash situation in which spending isn't high enough to spur recovery and slashing isn't low enough to satisfy the deficit hawks. I just point it out because if the R's were in the White House, "record deficit reduction" would be a major talking point, while I can guarantee you that you won't hear one Democrat use that phrase.

US politicsUS economyMichael Tomasky
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Friday quiz: coming in from the cold | Michael Tomasky

If we grow up with something, and it's what we learn about the world as children, we think it's normal. But what, I ask myself in retrospect, was "normal" about a world in which two superpowers spent billions and billions of dollars amassing the weaponry to destroy not only each other but all known life not once, not even three or five times over, but a 100 or 1,000 times over?

The cold war – I would personally prefer upper-casing it, to give it its proper historical due, but that runs counters to Guardian rules – defined so many things about life from 1945 to 1990 that even quantifying it into that grim and incomprehensible figure above denies it its true place. And not just for Americans and Russians; perhaps not even chiefly for Americans and Russians. Ask a Guatemalan with a knowledge of her country's history about that, or a North Korean with an honest knowledge of his.

It touched everything – philosophy, fiction, film, art, advertising, comedy, you name it. And it seemed, didn't it, so immutable; when the East finally crumbled, it was one of those events that was simultaneously unsurprising (the whole apparatus had been standing on toothpicks for years) and completely shocking (history simply doesn't change like that before our eyes). Watching the hammer and sickle lowered for the last time from above the Kremlin – incredibly, it was Christmas Day 1991 – remains one of the most startling sights of my life, I think.

Loads of material, in other words. Twelve questions will barely hint at it. Since I know many of you are around my age or older, it would be fun to hear your memories of your personal cold war. And remember the rule of Friday-quiz threads. No political arguments! Let's not re-litigate the questions of who started it and who won it. All that said, let's go.

1. George Orwell was evidently the first to use the phrase "cold war" to describe the new US-USSR dominated era, in a 1945 essay. The American financier and statesman Bernard Baruch then used it in a speech in 1947. But this famous US journalist, who used the phrase as the title of a book of essays on the new world situation, is considered the person who really made it stick.
a. James Reston
b. Drew Pearson
c. Walter Lippmann

2. Probably the single most famous speech of the 1940s was given at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946. The speaker was being given an honorary degree, and he warned that "an Iron Curtain" had descended across Europe, "from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic." Who gave this speech?
a. General Dwight Eisenhower
b. Winston Churchill
c. General Bernard Law Montgomery

3. US Secretary of State Dean Acheson told President Truman, regarding a spring 1947 crisis situation, that his arguments to the American people had to be "clearer than truth," a phrase that some have argued opened the door to cold-war propaganda. About what countries was Acheson then concerned?
a. Greece and Turkey
b. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
c. Greece and Yugoslavia

4. Joseph Rotblat, a native of Poland but a British citizen who during and after World War II worked in America, is the only physicist to have left what on moral grounds?
a. The then-newly formed National Security Council
b. The Manhattan Project
c. The staff of the House Un-American Activities Committee

5. A helmet-wearing turtle named Bert was used in films and newsreels produced by the US Civil Defense Administration to alert American schoolchildren to the fact that if they saw a flash of blinding light as might be produced by an atomic weapon, they should:
a. Splay and pray
b. Crouch and count to 20
c. Duck and cover

6. Identify each of these third-world heads of state as a client of either East or West:
a. Syngman Rhee
b. Haile Selassie
c. Jose Eduardo dos Santos
d. Patrice Lumumba
e. Norodom Sihanouk
f. Suharto

7. For the 1962 premier of this work, it was intended that the principal soloists would be from Germany, Britain and Russia, as a show of global unity. But at the last minute, Russia refused to permit its soloist to travel to Coventry, and a substitute was found.
a. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem
b. Igor Stravinsky's The Flood
c. Aaron Copland's Third Symphony

8. Yulian Semyonov is not a name known to many Westerners, but he was very famous in Soviet Russia as what:
a. That rare figure, a defector from West (where he'd been the American scientist Julian Semon) to East
b. A spy novelist – basically the USSR's answer to John LeCarre
c. The USSR's first rock star, who recorded in 1967 a complete Russian-language version of Dylan's Blonde on Blonde

9. True or false: Joseph Stalin is the 20th-century world leader responsible for the most deaths.

10. What incident ended detente, the thaw in US-USSR relations during the 1970s?
a. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
b. The Mayaguez incident
c. The Moscow-backed Sandinista overthrow of Somoza in Nicaragua

11. Who joked during a radio sound-check that "we begin bombing in five minutes"?
a. Leonid Brezhnev
b. Margaret Thatcher
c. Ronald Reagan

12. The beginning of the end of the East, little-remembered today, came when border guards of what Eastern bloc country began snipping the border fence, permitting people to cross into the West?
a. Czechoslovakia
b. Poland
c. Hungary

So much I'd wanted to ask but didn't get to. Which leaves a lot for you all to discuss. Let's look at the answers.

Answers:
1-c; 2-b; 3-a; 4-b; 5-c; 6: a, West; b, West; c, East; d, East; e, East; f, West; 7-a; 8-b; 9-false; 10-a; 11-c; 12-c.

Notes:
1. The fake answers are both plausible, but Lippmann seems common-sense-ish to me.
2. Should have been easy. Certainly this was drilled into Americans, and I'm guessing into Britons too?
3. Resulting in the Truman Doctrine, the language of which ultimately committed the US to the war in Vietnam.
4. Interesting story, ripe for biography or screenplay.
5. Gimme for the Yanks, at least of a certain age. Did you have a similar figure in England? Here's a little Bert video.
6. Rhee (South Korea) should have been easy. Selassie, it might have been hard to remember which side he was on, but he sent troops to fight with the US in Korea. Dos Santos may have thrown many of you – sound Latin American but was actually the leader of the Marxist MPLA in Angola (Jonas Savimbi was the West's guy, from Unita). Lumumba should have been easy. Sihanouk and Suharto are confuse-able. The former was Cambodian, pre-Khmer Rouge, and tilted toward Moscow; the latter Indonesian and solidly pro-West (and yes, he had only one name).
7. I like this question. "Coventry" should have helped.
8. I never heard of this guy until this morning. Bears more looking into from the sound of things. My fake answers kinda rock here, though I figure if c) had happened, you'd have heard of it.
9. Not even all that close to Mao Zedong. Numbers are disputed but Mao comes out on top (as it were) in every list I've ever seen.
10. Remember the US boycott of the 1980 Olympics?
11. Total gimme, thought you might want one at this point.
12. The unsung role of Hungary is one of history's most untold stories, as I've probably mentioned on this blog before.

As always, tell us how you did, and share with the rest of us your non-belligerent cold-war thoughts and memories.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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And speaking of free speech, check out this tie | Michael Tomasky

Click here and have a gander at the tie Cleveland Cavaliers' coach Byron Scott decided to wear to media day.

He could have been confused, because looked at one way, this is one of those field-of-vision or frame-of-reference puzzles, like the famous one we all know from childhood about is-this-a-drawing-of-two-faces-in-profile-or-is-it-a-lamp. If one looks at the negative space in the tie, it could be taken for, uh, something resembling latticework. But not really. It's pretty clear what it is.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that Scott is not sending Cleveland and America a secret message here and just didn't know what that symbol was. And here I thought every guy watched a little Military Channel and History Channel.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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The Phelps family's free speech | Michael Tomasky

If you follow American politics and the right wing, you've probably heard of the Phelps family of the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, who believe that America is doomed to eternal hellfire because of her tolerance of homosexuality. The "church" seems to be attended chiefly by family matters, a hardened enough assemblage that even many dedicated homophobes keep arm's length from them. They've been a pebble in our collective shoe for a long time.

Well, now they've hit Broadway, or at least Washington, because they figure in a fascinating Supreme Court case. The church was sued by the father of a slain US soldier for $2.9 million alleging invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress. Reason? At the young man's 2006 funeral, some Phelps protested (as they do at other funerals of soldiers), holding signs and chanting that the young man in question died because G-d was punishing America because of its manifest homosexual sins. One of the signs said "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."

Protected speech? Alas, probably. Apparently the justice were very sympathetic, naturally, to the father, Albert Snyder, and not so nice to the Phelps lawyer, who was, not too surprisingly, named Phelps - Margie, the "pastor's" daughter. "Nation, hear this little church. If you want [the soldiers] to stop dying, stop sinning. That's the only purpose of this little church," Phelps argued.

Ruth Marcus mounts a solid case that the speech, however hateful, should be protected. I'm sitting here trying to think of reasons it shouldn't be. Justice Steven Breyer:

"I'm looking for a line" that would allow damages in outrageous situations yet not "prevent somebody from getting out a public message," Justice Stephen Breyer [said].

Not sure where that would be. There's an obvious. common-sense difference between political speech, expressing a viewpoint, and hate speech, aimed at a person. But this speech was sort of both.

But these Phelpses...what is it you say? Right nutters? When ranking American sins, their presence is surely right up there.

US supreme courtMichael Tomasky
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Lou Dobbs, evil idiot

From reporter Isabel Macdonald for the Nation magazine and the Nation Institute Investigative Fund, un-freakin-believable:

In Lou Dobbs's heyday at CNN, when he commanded more than 800,000 viewers and a reported $6 million a year for "his fearless reporting and commentary," in the words of former CNN president Jonathan Klein, the host became notorious for his angry rants against "illegal aliens." But Dobbs reserved a special venom for the employers who hire them, railing against "the employer who is so shamelessly exploiting the illegal alien and so shamelessly flouting US law" and even proposing, on one April 2006 show, that "illegal employers who hire illegal aliens" should face felony charges.

Since he left CNN last November, after Latino groups mounted a protest campaign against his inflammatory rhetoric, Dobbs has continued to advocate an enforcement-first approach to immigration, emphasizing, as he did in a March 2010 interview on Univision, that "the illegal employer is the central issue in this entire mess!"

His scheduled October 9 address at the Virginia Tea Party Convention will mark his second major Tea Party address of the year, reviving questions about whether the former CNN host is gearing up for an electoral campaign. He recently told Fox's Sean Hannity that he has not ruled out a possible Senate or even presidential run in 2012.

But with his relentless diatribes against "illegals" and their employers, Dobbs is casting stones from a house—make that an estate—of glass. Based on a yearlong investigation, including interviews with five immigrants who worked without papers on his properties, The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute have found that Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper.

Somehow, in a way, I'm less mad at Dobbs, of whom I expect nothing, than I am at Jon Klein's flabby b.s. about Dobbs' "fearless" qualities. Klein got the sack just a couple of weeks ago, as fate would have it. But anyone who watched that show, even if you agreed with Dobbs' positions and were being honest with yourself, could see that he was a demagogue and a not terribly intelligent life force.

This raises the question to me of whether major televisions public affairs hosts shouldn't have to undergo vetting similar to that which politicians get. These people are on the air every night spouting certitudes about life as they see it and dramatically influencing public opinion. If they go home and live the opposite of the values they propound, don't we have some kind of right to know? If I were their CEO, I'd want to know.

Obviously, we taxpayers aren't paying these peoples' salaries, so I'm not saying the vetting has to be public. But I should think that CNN, MSNBC and...well, just CNN and MSNBC, really...would actually like to have the comfort of knowing that their on-air spouters and sermonizers weren't total hypocrites, and would defenestrate hosts who violate basic standards. But that just isn't the world we live in.

Meanwhile, Dobbs says he's going to respond on his radio show. That will be interesting. He certainly would seem to be trapped. Assuming these allegations hold up, this is just about as flagrant as hypocrisy comes, and he really should join O.J. to become the second resident of that circle of hell that constitutes permanent banishment from public life in all forms.

United StatesUS immigrationMichael Tomasky
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The Democrats and America | Michael Tomasky

Here's my latest from the New York Review, on the elections, in which I posit a thesis about the Democrats' real problem that doesn't have anything to do with enthusiasm gaps or the other things you read about. I think the D's real problem has to with the fact that they fail repeatedly to couch their policies in a context of patriotism. You really need to click through to get the whole argument, which starts with the "My own answer" paragraph, but here's a little soupcon:

But now consider the specific problems facing Obama, a mixed-race (but visibly black) man with an exotic name and a highly atypical biography for a president. Add in also the greatest economic crisis in eight decades, and governmental responses to the crisis that, to an energized and organized right wing, seem to smack of socialism. One result is that we have a new faction, the well-financed Tea Party movement that has been able to arrogate to itself practically every symbol of Americanism and to paint the President, his ideas and policies, and his supporters as not merely un-American but actively anti-American. In a Newsweek poll released in late August, nearly a third of Americans actually agreed that it was "definitely" or "probably" true that Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world."2

In the face of all this, it seems not to have occurred to a single prominent Democrat, from Obama on down, to say something like: We love our country every bit as much as they do, and we believe patriotism means expanding access to health care, protecting the environment, and imposing effective new rules on Wall Street. Democrats have thus crippled themselves by adapting comparatively limited ideas of legitimate political action, and by ceding to Republicans the strong claim of love of one's country.

This is not the sort of thing that is measured by polls, but I believe the Democrats' hesitance to tie their programs to larger beliefs has been demoralizing to liberals and confusing or off-putting to independents. The impression is left with voters that Republicans are fighting for the country, while Democrats are fighting for their special interests. The pre-presidential Obama powerfully made this kind of broad, patriotic appeal, both at his 2004 convention keynote address and in his stirring Jefferson-Jackson Day speech in Iowa in November 2007. But any sense that the Democrats are now making a coherent argument about what kind of country they want has vaporized. Underneath all the Democrats' bickering about such issues as health care and the performance of Tim Geithner, that is their real problem.

Natch, we will endure our regular roster of contributors below who will say that the Democrats don't invoke America because they hate America. Back on planet earth, meanwhile, the rest of us might explore reasons why this is so, if you think my argument has any merit.

It's kind of mystifying to me. As I wrote above, Obama did exactly this well as a candidate. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the one thing that made liberals excited about him in the first place, the one thing above all others, was that he was able to articulate a liberal idea of patriotism (in that 2004 speech in particular, the one that made him a rock star) - love of country suffused with civic faith and belief that there is such a thing as a common good to which we all contribute and from which we all benefit - that just made liberals' hearts widen and swell. That it was a black man with that name doing it was frosting. But what I remember liberals talking about was, to paraphrase: Finally, we have someone who can articulate that we love our country, too!

Where's that framing been since he became president? Pfffft. I really think that if Democrats, led by Obama, had been saying from the start, over and over and over, that saving the auto companies and expanding healthcare and all the rest was about the kind of country we envision, they might not have lost those arguments so badly. Instead they mostly said (there were exceptions, but mostly) that the auto bailouts was about jobs (which could be and was read as special interests, unions) and healthcare was about containing costs (which sounded dubious to most people and suggested a hidden, special-interest agenda).

I remember that Mike Lind, author of The Next American Nation and Up From Conservatism, once wrote that broad appeals to a public for big change pretty much had to be made in the name of either God or country. The Democrats aren't going to invoke God much, because they believe in separation of church and state and come from different faith backgrounds. So they should invoke country aggressively. But they have let the Republicans lay claim to both mantles. It's only the GOP's policy extremism that even keeps Democrats in the game.

US midterm elections 2010DemocratsMichael Tomasky
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Anger versus irony | Michael Tomasky

The differences between the way liberals and conservatives think has always been interesting to me, as long time readers will know. Along these lines Shankar Vedantam at Slate has a piece up arguing that conservatives typically show their opposition to liberals via anger (something our little comment threads here would tend to confirm), while liberals tend to flash a certain kind of ironic contempt (which I confess a certain number of my posts will undoubtedly affirm). Vedantam:

If the dominant tone of conservatives is shrill, the dominant tone of liberals is sarcastic. The philosophical position of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, expressed in body language, would be a raised fist and a clenched jaw. The philosophical position of Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher would be a raised eyebrow and a wrinkled nose. Angry coverage on Fox News has become the standard bearer of the right. Irony and mockery on Comedy Central have become the standard bearer of the left.

Right-wing blogs reek of blood and guns, violence and revolution. The tree of liberty, they remind us, needs to be refreshed with the blood of patriots. Look at the weapons of the left—Colbert's sly smile, Maher's snigger, and the endless jokes about the stupidity of George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Christine O'Donnell. Even the bumper stickers of the right are grave in tone. They ask, "What Would Jesus Do?" Their opponents' bumper stickers respond, "What Would Scooby Doo?"

The right is convinced that the left is evil. The left is convinced that the right is retarded.

In general terms, this seems right to me. It points to yet another liberal disadvantage. The liberal posture requires irony, and a lot of the population just doesn't get irony. Whereas everybody gets anger. Next to love, nothing makes most people feel better, and for many people anger might top love.

Now, this being Slate, where (except for a couple of regulars) the standard posture is to be counterintuitive and avoid at all costs taking the predictable liberal political line, Vedantam goes on to argue that sarcastic contempt is actually more corrosive than anger, making an analogy to failed marriages, where new research indicates that contempt is a surer indicator of impending splitsville-ism than anger.

I say that's a stretch, as Vedantam semi-acknowledges. Political debate isn't a marriage. And here I will demonstrate why I've not often been asked to write for Slate over the years and take the predictable liberal political position, which is that anger is far more corrosive than irony. No, I am not saying that everything is all conservatives' fault, so please spare yourselves, and more importantly the rest of us.

But conservatives have made liberalism itself evil in their lexicon in a way that I don't recall liberals doing about conservatism. Glenn Beck actually wrote on his famous whiteboard that progressivism is an evil that must be scraped out like a cancer, eradicated from the earth. I don't remember prominent liberals talking like that about conservatism. If liberals wanted to really give it to Dubya and Cheney, for example, they'd call them fascists (ill-advised, I always thought, for the record, except perhaps during the Terry Schiavo episode, which was the only time during the Bush years I caught a small whiff of Nuremberg in the Washington air, but that was chiefly Tom DeLay and the Congress).

I don't doubt that many conservatives really do believe liberalism is evil. It's just pretty sick that it's come to that, especially as they daily take advantage of the emoluments the welfare state bestows on them. Move yourselves off the f----ing grid and go be completely self-reliant if that's how you feel and leave the rest of us alone. No irony there!

DemocratsRepublicansMichael Tomasky
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The 111th Congress' legacy | Michael Tomasky

Here's a poll number that Greg Sargent found shocking, and Ezra Klein was more blase about. I think I'm closer to Sargent:

[Findings among Democrats] Compared to recent Congresses, would you say this Congress has accomplished more, accomplished less, or accomplished the same amount?

Among those who say less: When you say Congress has accomplished less this year, is that because Congress hasn't done enough or Congress has done the wrong things?

More 33

Less and not done enough 18

Less and done wrong things 5

Same 37

So only one-third of Democrats thinks the 111th Congress hasn't done enough? It passed five major bills, four of which aren't popular overall (Tarp, auto companies, healthcare and stimulus) but certainly have better numbers among Democrats. I find this strange. I guess most people just look at the unemployment rate and the shape of their local economy and figure it's not too good and therefore Congress hasn't done much.

But I think this tendency in some liberal elite quarters to see the cup as half-empty has something to do with this perception too. As I've written many times, conservatives don't do this sort of thing nearly as much. If a Republican president and congress had done five things conservatives generally liked -lowered capital gains taxes, lowered corporate taxes, hemmed in the EPA in some way, taken some government services private, started a nice little war somewhere - even if they'd gotten only the proverbial half a loaf on all five things, most conservative commentators would be boasting about the revolution that was in the making and that would surely fulfill its triumph in the next Congress if only we got out there and voted in vast numbers and pressed the heel of our collective jackboot on the opposition's parched throat.

The legacy of this Congress is a complicated one. It did indeed pass more major legislation than any Congress in recent history. But as noted, most of that legislation wasn't popular. Not because it wasn't good - seen the Tarp numbers lately, about how it might even turn a profit for taxpayers? - but because the Democrats made absurdly weak arguments for their own case. But the facts is the facts. Four of the five biggies are unpopular.

On top of that, there were the things left on the floor that should have been done in some way shape or form. Climate or energy legislation. More stimulus, both as spending and tax cuts (payroll). So even though it did a lot, it didn't really quite rise to the challenges.

And on top of that, and related, is the paradoxical fact that even though it was the most active Congress in recent history, it was also the most obstructionist: more threatened filibusters, more cloture motions filed, etc. So it was the most maddening Congress too. And of course they're not done yet. They're coming back after the election but before the next Congress is sworn in, undoubtedly to extend all the Bush tax cuts to save small businesses like the Bechtel Corporation. Marvelous.

US CongressDemocratsMichael Tomasky
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Obama-Clinton 2012? | Michael Tomasky

Bob Woodward said yesterday for the first time (that is, it's the first time anyone has said it, not the first time Bob Woodward has said it) that the idea of a Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton ticket in 2012, long a subject of idle speculation among my sort, has actually been discussed in the higher precincts. The notion is that Clinton and Joe Biden would switch jobs. Politico's Laura Rozen picked this up:

"It's on the table," veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward told CNN's John King in an interview Tuesday on John King, USA. "Some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012."

Now. "On the table" could mean that it's some fantasy of Mark Penn's, and he's the only guy talking it up. So keep that caveat in mind. But basically, this is actually a rather excellent idea for four very compelling reasons.

First, Clinton brings more excitement and razzle-dazzle to a reelection effort that, even assuming a by-then-improved economy, will be tough sledding. She would help rev up women and Latinos, and she's raise the comfort level on a second Obama term inside the Beltway establishment, which generally speaking likes her a lot and consider the Potus a little unproven as of yet.

Second, Biden has always wanted to be secretary of state and would probably be a perfectly good one. One pictures him picking up the baton from HRC without much trouble or interference.

And here's good reason 2a with a bullet: Biden over the years has had an especially strong relationship with Bibi Netanyahu, despite their many policy differences. It's long been said that Netanyahu thinks Biden shoots the straight stuff. If Bibi is still prime minister, Biden could make some real progress with him.

Third, it tees Clinton up to run for president in 2016 if they win in '12. If elected, she'd be the same 69 when sworn in that Ronald Reagan was. That may or may not be reassuring depending on your perspective, but it certainly makes it hard for conservatives, who have beatified Reagan and his presidency, to argue that she's too old (although they undoubtedly will, also undoubtedly finding some sexist angle that it matters more because she's a woman).

Anyway she seems to me the obvious Democratic choice for 2016. Assume for the sake of argument that Obama is reelected (which, interestingly, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger just said he foresaw as a pretty obvious outcome; isn't it about time he just became an independent?). There aren't really any young star Democrats coming up who have a lot of sizzle, and Democrats and some (enough) independents might be ready in 2016, having knocked down the race barrier, to take a hammer to the gender one.

Fourth, and maybe most interestingly, it actually helps an administration, in inside-baseball terms, especially within one's own party, to have a vice-president who is the presumptive heir and nominee. Biden would not seek the presidency, presumably. That would mean that in 2014 and 2015, if he were still the veep, you'd have a dozen or so Democrats in Congress angling to run for president who'd be crapping on the White House when they considered it expedient to do so.

This happened to Bush with Cheney in the veep's chair, with regard to Iraq, Katrina, spending and other things. A sort of sub-narrative developed in the media in those days about how so-and-so, Huckabee or Romney or whomever, could differentiate himself from Bush. I think it helped weaken the Bush White House's position. Certainly by 2007, Bush was, though still president, yesterday's news, a very lame duck indeed.

That was of course more because of his comic approval ratings than anything else. Still, if you have a presumptive nominee as your vice-president, that kind of intra-party preening is largely a waste of time (question: if Bush had cashiered Cheney for Mitt Romney in 2004, would Obama be president today?). Plus, the White House still has, forgive me for employing one of those Beltway phrases I don't really like, skin in the game. It has a much more real stake in electing the next president than a White House with Cheney-Biden type figure.

The trick for all involved, of course, is to deny it, deny it, deny it - until the day they do it. But do it they should, when the time is right.

Barack ObamaHillary ClintonUS elections 2012Michael Tomasky
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