Jonathan Chait's Blog, page 151

A Banner Day For The Bush Library

The Bush Library faces a crucial decision:

As former president George W. Bush broke ground Tuesday in Dallas for his presidential library, officials weighed whether or not to display one item that few know is being held in storage there: the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

The banner was the backdrop aboard the USS Lincoln during Bush's televised speech May 1, 2003, to proclaim the end of major combat in Iraq. It caused controversy in the months that followed when violence in Iraq spiraled.

The banner now sits in storage and will become part of the library's collection. A decision on how or whether to display the red-white-and-blue banner hasn't been made, said Alan Lowe, director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

I think the decision most in keeping with the administration's principles would be to hide away the banner, deny it exists, and accuse people who claim it does exist of smearing patriotic librarians.

Obama, Tax Cuts, And The Bully Bulpit

Ezra Klein is ready for a Democratic Plan B on taxes:

Reid and Pelosi have settled on a strategy for the Bush tax cuts: Split them up. The tax cuts for income under $250,000 will come up for a vote, the tax cuts for income over $250,000 won't -- or will possibly get their own vote. But this strategy isn't expected to work: Republicans in the Senate are expected to join with a few conservative Democrats to block any effort that allows the expiration of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

If you define "working" to mean getting the Republicans to capitulate immediately, then no, it's not going to work. The plan will work only if President Obama makes clear that he will only accept a result that decouples the upper-bracket tax cuts from the rest. Then, when Republicans block an extension of tax cuts for all income below $250,000 -- and remember, rich people would benefit from such a tax cut, too -- then he has to hammer them for holding middle class tax cuts hostage. And he has to keep hammering them, using the power of the bully pulpit to set the agenda.

The Republican position on taxes is deeply unpopular and Republicans know it. You can get away with an unpopular position if the issue is technical, or if the opposition lacks a platform to highlight it. But if Obama decides he's going to highlight the Republican position, eventually the pressure will be too great for them to bear. There's no way they're going to spend the next two years opposing a very popular tax cut on the grounds that it doesn't also include a very unpopular tax cut.

Partisans often overstate the power of the presidential bully pulpit to change public opinion. Changing peoples' minds is very hard. But using the presidency to highlight an issue where the president already has a popular stance, thus putting pressure on opponents, is a classic function of the office.

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What Are Republican Leaders Reading? The Worst Book Of the Year.

Former Bush staffer Tevi Troy, continuing his campaign to burnish the intellectual credentials of the Republican Party, has a piece about the deep and wide intellectual curiosity of the House GOP:

Another big reader is Paul Ryan, likely chairman of the Budget Committee. He is one of the many House GOP fans of The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future, by AEI president Arthur Brooks. In fact, he teamed up with Brooks to debate the New York Times’s David Brooks on the op-ed pages of the Times and the Wall Street Journal in September. Arthur Brooks and Ryan argued for what Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin called a “course correction” to Obama’s economic model. David Brooks, in contrast, found the Brooks/Ryan approach too “Manichean.” While the outcome was inconclusive, it was AEI’s Brooks who found himself the preferred Brooks among House GOP leaders. When the Republican Study Committee hosted him at a private dinner, Rep. Michele Bachmann held up a copy of the book and insisted that each of her colleagues take a complimentary copy from the stash Brooks’s publisher had provided.

The apparently central role played by Brooks' book in Republican circles, in fact, a damning indictment of the state of conservative thought. I reviewed the book, and it's difficult to find the words to convey just how low the intellectual caliber of Brooks' argument is.

Will Republicans Shut Down The Government?

I think a lot of people are underrating the potential for a government shutdown. Here is the dynamic. Republican leaders in the House recall the 1995 government shutdown as a disaster and do not want to repeat it. They want to avoid exposing the party to charges of overreach, prevent any economic recovery measures, and put themselves in position to win the 2012 election, at which point they can move their agenda forward.

On the other hand, shutting down the government is the only alternative to passing legislation that conservatives find totally unacceptable, and indeed would keep in place policies that they have been railing against in apocalyptic terms. You can't convince your base that the president is destroying freedom, undermining capitalism, and threatening 1920s Germany-style inflation, and then turn around and tell them to just wait things out for two years.

What's more, it's worth delving a bit deeper into the GOP's historical understanding of the government shutdown. The Republican view of this episode -- and I remember this at the time, from my GOP staffer housemate -- was that the whole idea that Republicans shut down the government was a big lie concocted by the Clinton administration and abetted by the liberal media. Clinton, they believe, is the one who shut down the government. After all, if he had agreed to the Republican terms, there would have been no shutdown.

This is actually, as far as I can tell, a fairly unanimous belief among Republicans. The split lies between those who think it's a losing battle, and those who think this time they can defeat the Big Lie:

Norquist, however, is convinced Republicans could win the showdown this time around.

“There’s now a Fox television network. There’s now the Internet, in a way there wasn’t back then. So ... when Bill Clinton vetoed the budget and closed the government, saying the Republicans had closed the government, ... [that] is not something you could sell again,” Norquist told POLITICO.

He added: “If Obama can’t learn to be like Clinton and back off his agenda, which the American people rejected, then a clash is clarifying.”

Norquist also said Republicans have another advantage in today’s environment — a new leader.

“It was able to be sold the first time because everybody thought Gingrich was running the entire country because of the way the coverage [of him] had gone and because Gingrich acted as if he was running the country. Boehner’s not going to do that,” Norquist said.

Now, substantively, they're totally wrong about this. If Republicans refuse to let the government continue running at current levels while they negotiate with Obama, then they are indeed the ones who are shutting down the government. But as a matter of political reality, it's true that the existence of Fox News and the power of other Republican organs gives the GOP a better chance to spin a shutdown as Obama's fault -- or, at least, to lose the battle for public opinion less decisively. Norquist is also right that Boehner is not acting like, and being treated as, a kind of prime minister, and that factor would also reduce the degree to which Republicans are held accountable for outcomes like the shutdown.

I don't know if it will happen, but it should be interesting to watch.

&c

-- John Judis: Obama doesn't understand independents, and that could cost him.

-- CAP's Michael Linden says the Rivlin-Domenici plan is less progressive than it looks.

-- But Paul Krugman is okay with it.

Harold Ford's Shocking Advice

Only Harold Ford has the guts to take to the pages of Forbes and stand up for the principle that the richest people in America should get everything they want:

The most important thing our leader can do is to push the reset button with business and not raise taxes on companies in a time of economic hardship. The U.S. economy and workers benefit from a strong, healthy relationship between government and business. America's most powerful job-creation engine, the private sector, remains under intense pressure from the uncertainty surrounding tax rates and new regulations, among other things.

As a part of the reset, the President and Democrats should make permanent the current middle-class, capital gains, and dividend tax rates; extend the current rate on top earners for two years; cut the corporate tax rate by half; and suspend the payroll tax -- for both employers and employees -- for six months starting Jan. 1 for all businesses with 500 or fewer employees. And as a compromise on raising rates on the top earners after 2012, the affected income level should be raised to $1 million from $250,000 -- and Republicans should accept a nine-month extension of unemployment benefits for those hardest hit by this downturn.

I hope this kind of truth-telling doesn't hurt Ford's chances of securing a plush gig at one of the well-heeled institutions dedicated to punishing the rich and powerful. Hopefully some private equity firm can take him under their wing and allow him to continue to speak truth to power.

Dems To Hold Middle Class Tax Cut Vote?

Greg Sargent, who's been all over this story, has the scoop:

Steny Hoyer, the number two in the House Dem leadership, told Democrats at a caucus meeting this morning that they would get to vote this year on just extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, a senior Dem aide tells me, signaling support for a confrontational move towards the GOP that liberals have been pushing.

Asked if Democrats would definitely get a chance to hold this vote, the senior aide responded: "Definitely."

Hoyer's declaration comes as Democrats have been debating the way forward on the Bush tax cuts, and another aide tells me that "more than half" of the Dem caucus supports this course of action.

I say that if they want a separate vote on tax cuts for income over $250,000, they can have one.

Republicans vs. Climate Science

Pew has a new survey that shows Republicans don't believe climate change is happening:

The belief is especially stark among pro-Tea Party Republicans:

Have a nice day.

Life In Ohio, A Continuing Series

They have come home to roost:

Police responded to a N. Harmony Street home Nov. 10 after a report of loose chickens running around on the property. Officers received a similar complaint the previous night, but could not locate any chickens or residents of the home upon arrival that evening. On Nov. 10, police informed the resident of a city ordinance which requires chickens, within city limits, to be held in an enclosure.