Politics

by publius

A few more thoughts relating to McCain’s tone deaf statement:

First, I think that McCain today got his first taste of a united Democratic party firing at him. In particular, he got a taste of how quick, powerful, and efficient the Obama operation is now that it’s free from primary distractions. I agree with Andrew that it’s important not to let the surrogates get out of control. But generally speaking, today looked like a strong, simple, quickly-assembled, well-coordinated attack that had the McCain team flailing about for most of the day.

And for that, you can thank Clinton. One benefit of the endless primary is that the Obama team is truly a battle-tested organization. Fighting off Romney or Huckabee statements just doesn’t provide the same type of trial by fire. It’s almost like Obama’s been training in the mountains and has come down to normal altitudes to battle Rick Davis’s ragtag operation.

Second, it seems odd that McCain is stressing Iraq so much at this stage. It’s extremely unpopular, it ties him to Bush, and it keeps him from moving into the centrist independent territory that would presumably play to his “core competencies.”

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by hilzoy

Stunning:

“MATT LAUER: “If it’s working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?”

SEN. MCCAIN: “No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are. But the key to it is that we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way.”

The McCain campaign says: “John McCain was asked if he had a “better estimate” for a timeline for withdrawal. As John McCain has always said, that is not as important as conditions on the ground and the recommendations of commanders in the field.” But, as Greg Sargent notes, McCain did not in fact say that when the troops come home was less important than something else; he said it was not too important, period.

Several thoughts: First, my initial reaction to this was fury. There are men and women over in Iraq, in the middle of nowhere, counting the days until they come home. There are families who jump out of their skins every time the doorbell rings. There are spouses trying to keep their marriages together while they’re thousands of miles apart, soldiers wondering whether anyone will really understand what they’ve been through and kids growing up without knowing one of their parents. How could anyone say it doesn’t matter when they come home?

Of course, I’m sure McCain didn’t mean it that way. But this only goes so far. Suppose, by analogy, that I were giving a talk at a company that had announced a big wave of layoffs, and that was rumored to be preparing more; and I said: you know, it really doesn’t matter who gets fired and who doesn’t. Suppose further that I didn’t mean to be cruel: I was talking about macroeconomics, and from that point of view, the identities of people who get laid off are indeed irrelevant. That would show that I was not intentionally hurtful. But it would not begin to show that I wasn’t callous or thoughtless. The best explanation of my remarks is also the best explanation of McCain’s: namely, that I just wasn’t thinking about how they might sound to some of the people most obviously affected by them. Those people just sort of slipped my mind.

As Brandon Friedman says:

“What do the troops in theater think of a statement like that? What does the young sergeant on the 14th month of his third tour think when John McCain says it’s “not too important” when we come home? In fact, this kind of talk is devastating to the morale of the troops. And this type of careless, flippant remark demonstrates unmistakably that McCain clearly has no idea what it’s like to serve on repeated deployments. While he suffered much in his own war, he can neither empathize with, nor relate to today’s troops in Iraq.”

Nor with their families and friends. The fact that it’s a lack of empathy, not deliberate cruelty, is not much comfort.

Second, even taking McCain’s comments strictly on their own terms, they make no sense at all.

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by hilzoy

I was reading blogs late this afternoon when I found a post by Steve Benen asking: why is John McCain still going on about a gas tax holiday? After explaining again why it’s a gimmick that would do nothing to help actual consumers, Steve wrote:

“When pondering why on earth McCain would continue to push obvious nonsense about an important issue, the answer came to me: it’s because he has nothing else to say.

I went to his website to check on his energy policy. On his home page, there’s plenty about golf gear, but nothing about energy or gas prices. Eventually, after digging around for a while, I found this:

John McCain Will Help Americans Hurting From High Gasoline And Food Costs. Americans need relief right now from high gas prices. John McCain will act immediately to reduce the pain of high gas prices.

That’s not an excerpt of a longer position paper, that’s the entire text of McCain’s position on gas prices. He’ll “act immediately.” How? No one knows. With what kind of policy? It’s a total mystery. (In contrast, Obama has a detailed policy page on oil and energy.)”

A bit later, I ran across a post at AmericaBlog titled “Why doesn’t McCain have a national energy strategy?” With gas prices headed through the roof, I thought: hmm, maybe I should check this out. So I did.

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by publius

So enough of the primary — let’s talk general election. Here are a few random observations:

Is “Bush III” a Wise Strategy?

Obama’s narrative is — to his credit — very simple. McCain is Bush III. Easy to explain, easy to understand.

Several people have, however, questioned the wisdom of this strategy. Because McCain’s brand is “Johnny Maverick,” the argument is that Obama can never make Bush III stick. For instance, one of my favorite conservative bloggers, Patrick Ruffini, has argued that Obama should instead adopt a “depress the base” strategy by highlighting McCain’s disputes with the conservative wing. In other words, Obama should use “Johnny Maverick” to remind conservatives why they dislike McCain.

Personally, I think Obama’s strategy is correct. Plus, he’s already unveiled it and a “depress the base” message at this point would conceptually undermine everything he’s already said. In any event, I think Ruffini is overlooking how much Obama’s Bush III strategy will indirectly depress the conservative base by forcing McCain to disown them. In short, “Bush III” will kill two birds with one stone.

Whatever the merits of the Bush III strategy may be, the McCain team clearly feels like it’s damaging them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be pushing back so hard on it. Thus, as the general election goes on, McCain is increasingly going to feel the need to play up his maverick side. Of course, all candidates move to the center in the general. But McCain will feel more urgency about it than, say, Bush did. And each time he does so, it will rankle an already-rankled base. And let’s be honest — it’s hard to imagine the base knocking on doors this fall to get him elected as it is, much less after several months of hearing him run away from Bush.

Social Security — Use It Early and Often

So apparently old white people don’t like Obama so much. You know what they do like? Social Security. You know what they don’t like? Private accounts. And though he’s recently flip-flopped, McCain has supported Bush’s private accounts. He told the WSJ this March:

“As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

When the WSJ informed him that his website only favored private accounts as “supplements,” he told the WSJ that he would change the website. (He didn’t, perhaps because McCain wasn’t grasping the policy details at the time).

He’s since flip-flopped, but Obama should still hammer him on this — if for no other reason than to show that McCain doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. I haven’t dug up his 2005 statements during the original privatization debate, but I’m sure there’s some goodies in there.

If I were Obama, I would literally start putting the commercials up in Florida tomorrow. I mean, if only people had had a chance to invest a third of their Social Security benefits in the roaring markets over the past three years — just imagine the returns.

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by publius

The more I think about it, the more I admire Clinton’s speech today. It’s impossible to imagine how difficult the speech must have been for her — yet that very difficulty is what made it so poignant. She left no ambiguity today — and she spoke in touching and personal ways. So kudos to her and her campaign.

So what’s next for her? I think her actions over the next few months will determine her political future — and today was a very good start. At this point, the single-best thing she can do for her career is to denounce Larry Johnson go all-out for Obama in the months ahead. She should work as hard as any surrogate. It’s not merely the right thing to do, it’s also in her political self-interest. That last part is the key.

I’ve just started Perlstein’s Nixonland, and it offers a useful comparison. Nixon very much wanted the nomination in 1964, thinking — correctly — that he was a superior candidate. At the time, the Republican establishment was treating Goldwater like a pariah.

But Nixon eventually came around and worked his tail off for Goldwater. After the inevitable crushing, it appeared that Nixon had squandered whatever capital he had left. But the chessmaster knew exactly what he was doing. Goldwater conservatives were taking over the party and he got out in front of the movement, positioning himself perfectly for 1968.

Moving ahead to 2008, you can see some interesting parallels. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Clinton would be objectively better off if Obama loses. Clinton’s potential problem is that she can’t capitalize on the loss if people blame her (e.g., if lots of older liberal women stayed home and Clinton did little to get them out). More critically, she can’t capitalize if she is a persona non grata among key blocs of the emerging Democratic coalition — particularly African-Americans, young liberals, and netsrootsy urban knowledge-workers who make up a big part of the small-donor base (and there is of course overlap among these groups like a Venn diagram).

That’s why Al Gore’s much-derided embrace of Dean was politically astute. Gore — being years ahead of everyone, as usual — saw which way the wind was blowing.

Clinton — ever the savvy politician — shouldn’t ignore these trends. She has, frankly, taken a hit in the eyes of these blocs (though today helped a lot). But she can position herself well for the future. More below…

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by hilzoy

Recently, two more articles about Phil Gramm, “McCain’s Economic Brain“, have appeared. MSNBC had reported a week ago that Gramm was a paid lobbyist for UBS, one of the banks most heavily involved in the subprime scandal, until six weeks ago. Now Newsweek adds this:

“NEWSWEEK has learned that UBS is also currently the focus of congressional and Justice Department investigations into schemes that allegedly enabled wealthy Americans to evade income taxes by stashing their money in overseas havens, according to several law-enforcement and banking officials in both the United States and Europe, who all asked for anonymity when discussing ongoing investigations. In April, UBS withdrew Gramm’s lobbying registration, but one of his former congressional aides, John Savercool, is still registered to lobby legislators for UBS on numerous issues, including a bill cosponsored by Sen. Barack Obama that would crack down on foreign tax havens. “UBS is treating these investigations with the utmost seriousness and has committed substantial resources to cooperate,” a UBS spokesman told NEWSWEEK, adding that Gramm was deregistered as a lobbyist because he spends less than 20 percent of his time on such activity. Hazelbaker said the McCain campaign “will not comment on the details … of ongoing investigations and legal charges not yet proved in court.””

A new article in the Texas Monthly Observer is even more interesting, and worth reading in its entirety. It begins:

“In the early evening of Friday, December 15, 2000, with Christmas break only hours away, the U.S. Senate rushed to pass an essential, 11,000-page government reauthorization bill. In what one legal textbook would later call “a stunning departure from normal legislative practice,” the Senate tacked on a complex, 262-page amendment at the urging of Texas Sen. Phil Gramm.

There was little debate on the floor. According to the Congressional Record, Gramm promised that the amendment—also known as the Commodity Futures Modernization Act—along with other landmark legislation he had authored, would usher in a new era for the U.S. financial services industry.(…)

With the U.S. economy now battered by a tsunami of mortgage foreclosures, the $30-billion Bear Stearns Companies bailout and spiking food and energy prices, many congressional leaders and Wall Street analysts are questioning the wisdom of the radical deregulation launched by Gramm’s legislative package. Financial wizard Warren Buffett has labeled the risky new investment instruments Gramm unleashed “financial weapons of mass destruction.” They have fed the subprime mortgage crisis like an accelerant. While his distracted peers probably finalized their Christmas gift lists, Gramm created what Wall Street analysts now refer to as the “shadow banking system,” an industry that operates outside any government oversight, but, as witnessed by the Bear Stearns debacle, requiring rescue by taxpayers to avert a national economic catastrophe.”

One part of that bill was what’s called the ‘Enron Loophole’:

“The impact of the “Enron loophole” has been enormous. Since its passage, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has concluded that the loophole contributed to inflated energy prices for American consumers. In 2006, its report found credible expert estimates that the loophole—by encouraging speculation—accounted for $20 of the price of a barrel of oil, then at $70. In 2007, the same committee blamed the loophole for price manipulation of the natural gas market by a single hedge fund, Amaranth Advisors.”

But Gramm’s legislation also seems to have legalized what are known as ‘credit default swaps’:

“Prior to its passage, they say, banks underwrote mortgages and were responsible for the risks involved. Now, through the use of credit default swaps—which in theory insure the banks against bad debts—those risks are passed along to insurance companies and other investors.

Maryland law professor Greenberger believes credit default swaps “were a key factor in encouraging lenders to feel they could make loans without knowing the risks or whether the loan would be paid back. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act freed them of federal oversight.”

Before passage of the modernization act, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was attempting to regulate the swaps market through rule-making. The modernization act, Gramm noted in his remarks on the Senate floor, provided “legal certainty” for the growing swaps market. That was necessary, Greenberger says, because at the time, “banks were doing these trades in direct violation of federal law.””

There’s a decent explanation of credit default swaps here. As I understand it, the basic idea is this:

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by hilzoy

Geraldine Ferraro wrote a horrible op-ed in the Boston Globe. She says a number of things about the effects of sexism on the Clinton campaign, which I do not propose to consider here. But she also claims that the concerns of Reagan Democrats have not been heard:

“As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama’s historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you’re white you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory “Our Time Has Come” they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn’t do it. They don’t identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they’re not stupid. What they’re waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won’t leave them behind.”

I’m going to accept Ferraro’s claims about Reagan Democrats for the purposes of this post, not because I believe them to be true, but because I’m interested in the state of mind that would lead her to write this. I’m sure that some such people exist — when Ferraro says that they have stopped her on the street, I have no reason to doubt her. I am also sure that her all Reagan Democrats are not as she describes them, both because no such simple picture could cover such a diverse group of people, and because hers seems to me slanted in some specific ways. But leaving aside the accuracy of her sociology, and focussing on Reagan Democrats as she imagines them:

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by Charles

Within the first weeks after receiving enough delegates to secure the nomination, Barack Obama should go to Iraq and meet with General Petraeus without preconditions. There would be a lot of preparation. The first steps would not be to pre-judge all the items on the list.

More below the fold…

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by hilzoy

From the NYT:

“Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, distanced himself from the Bush administration on Tuesday by vowing to work more closely with Russia on nuclear disarmament and by calling for a reduction in tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

In what his campaign promoted as a major speech on nuclear security policy, Mr. McCain told a largely friendly crowd at the University of Denver that he supported a legally binding accord between the two nations to replace verification requirements in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, which expires in 2009. The Bush administration has refused to accept such binding limits on nuclear weapons, which the administration’s critics say has created paranoia in Moscow.”

You can read the full speech here. This is one of those times when it really helps to know the context. For starters, McCain does not have a very strong record on nuclear disarmament. He did vote for Nunn-Lugar and START II, but he also voted against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and against making it a precondition of our deal with India that it not contribute to nuclear proliferation. And while in this speech he comes out against the development of nuclear bunker-buster bombs, he fails to mention not only that funding for that project was cut three years ago, but that he voted against those cuts at the time.

Moreover, McCain’s other policies would make the ones he announced yesterday a lot harder. Ilan Goldenberg gives the short version on Democracy arsenal: “McCain’s basic plan is to slap the Russians smack across the face and then ask them for a favor. Somehow I don’t think that will work.” The longer version is below the fold.

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