One thing Geithner doesn't have much background in is economic policy other than financial policy (at Treasury his big job was jetting around the world fighting the emerging markets financial crises of the late 1990s). So the other names on the economic team that Obama is set to announce Monday are going to be important. They're likely to be the ones designing a stimulus package while Geithner spends his days trying to make the banking system work again.
Linda Barnett, mother of of slain U.S. Army Sgt. Jon Stiles, clutches a U.S. flag during Stiles funeral at the Fort Logan National Cemetery November 21, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. Stiles, 38, of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, was killed in action in Jalalabad, Afghanistan November 13 when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle. He had survived a suicide bomb attack just the month before and had refused medical leave in order to rejoin his unit. By John Moore/Getty.
How insufferable will Arianna get in the next few years? Maybe this insufferable:
“I only text three people - my two teenage children and Barack
Obama.”
I might as well confess: I don't know the president-elect personally and don't intend to get to know him socially. I do intend to watch him like a hawk, as I have now for two years. And I hope he is everything his first supporters saw in him. So far, the solid conventionality of his cabinet picks - with the sole exception of torture apologist Jim Brennan - seems exactly what I'd expect from a serious man intent on serious government.
Which must stagger Sean Hannity, Stanley Kurtz, Jonah Goldberg, Hugh Hewitt, et al. I mean: this far left, Islamist, terror-loving America-hater just picked ... Timothy Geithner. Noam Chomsky was unavailable?
That's what the Times is reporting. Ackerman is afraid that Clinton will fill the State Department with loyalists:
Obama loyalists wonder whether the same people who attacked Obama on foreign policy during the primaries can implement Obama’s agenda from State Dept. perches. “Look, Clinton and Obama are both smart people,” said one Democratic official who would not speak for the record, “and I’m sure their one-on-one relationship would be OK. But when you hire a Clinton, you hire more than just that one person, you get the entire package.” If Clinton becomes secretary of state, it’s possible that the fissures between her loyalists and Obama’s would be a significant undercurrent of the administration’s foreign-policy decision-making.
Drezner thinks the outcry is overblown. Me too. The differences between Clinton and Obama were always exaggerated; and we need all the talent we can get. I defer to no one in Clinton Derangement Syndrome, which is why I believe it's good for them to have their hands full and to be kept under surveillance. But it's not a done deal yet, anyway. Bill could still derail it.
Goldberg explains why he likes Clinton at State. I do think that the Clinton appointment will utlimately come down to the Israel-Palestine question. And Clinton enables Obama to overcome unnecessary resistance and paranoia from the Israeli right. She credentializes him with Israelis and American Jews - which will help build support for a sustainable compromise before it is too late for the Jewish state. I remain a fan of the pick, but wonder if Clinton has the poise to accept it.
James Pethokoukis suggests that Obamacare could kill the GOP:
Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."
Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."
There is always the feeding frenzy when a new president takes office, especially if the break for the party in question is 8 years or more. You have this entire universe of super-talented, ambitious and supremely focused players who’ve gone into the exile of think tanks for the long winter, cranking all manner of—admittedly—pretty dull books (you want to say careful things) and attending conference after conference to network like crazy, and never turning down any commissions or what not. So when the floodgates open, it’s not pretty. I mean, you’re talking about true addicts to power—as in, people who’ve organized their entire lives around these moments of possibility.
Yes: it's not pretty in DC right now. But at least, unlike the Clinton transition, people aren't openly buying their appointments.
Some Republicans believe that their reputation for intolerance is
costing the party the votes of the next generation of Americans. But
that argument got harder to make when California, one of the most
liberal states in the country, passed a ballot initiative banning
same-sex marriage.
But the next generation of Californians, even after the dreadful No on 8 campaign, still favored marriage equality by huge margins. Ramesh may be right that gay-bashing can still produce some small gains for the GOP (although in most states, it cannot be banned any more than it has been), but California sure didn't disprove the generational argument.
And assume also that banning marriage rights is popular for a while. Does the GOP not realize that it needs openly gay people in its ranks to show that it is not completely anachronistic or regional?
Brian Doherty isn't happy that Obama is moving slowly on DADT:
I imagine if Obama makes this change cleanly at any time in his term, he'll be fondly remembered. Still, his apparent unwillingness to be bold on something he considers a matter of both justice and wise policy--and that he has clear political support on--should be disconcerting to his fans.
It is. Because it is a caution based on caution - not reality.
While I agree with you that Brennan would be an awful choice at CIA, for both substantive and symbolic ("branding") reasons, I do see one significant ray of light appearing from this "Dark Side" guy: He wants to have a real debate on these issues:
"It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use? "
He wants the American people to be forced to make explicit moral choices, instead of acquiescing implicitly to the soft dictatorship of a secretive and dishonest "unitary executive". This is closer to Democracy, at least. Where there is openness and truth, there is hope.
Agreed. But it disturbs me that this man, while urging debate, never tells us which side of the debate he'd be on. I fear he'd be on Tenet's side. As he has been.
I don’t expect many good things. I do expect a lot of spending and even more debt. To really cut spending and balance our budget, we need to change foreign policy. Obama’s rhetoric on foreign policy is better than what we have gotten recently, but don’t expect any real change.
But not the M-word. A key member of the religious right backs civil unions containing all the rights - federal and state - that apply to civil marriages. So if the far right now favors comprehensive civil unions at the state and federal level, why won't Obama propose a federal civil unions bill? Or will the Human Rights Campaign try to dissuade him?
Now, after eight years of Bush, Glenn Reynolds is suddenly worried about big government. Now that defending libertarianism will not hurt Republican power, he will rediscover his "principles."
Matt Miller, a former "deficit fetishist," claims that the current economic situation demands a large deficit:
The key (and here you'll see I haven't really changed my stripes) is to enact a long-term framework for fiscal sanity even as we test the limits of how much debt the Treasury can peddle.
Here's a very helpful and insightful piece by Tim Montgomerie. I'm drawn to two elements in particular. The Conservatives returned to a concern for civil liberties:
Once the party of authoritarianism the Conservatives have about-turned and become a vigorous opponent of Labour's plans for a national ID card and for an extended period of detention without charge. A more respectful view of same-sex relationships has also bought David Cameron greater opportunity to make the case for traditional marriage.
And if I were part of the degenerate "conservative" think-tank-magazine establishment, I would also note this:
The two think tanks that have had most influence on Project Cameron
didn't exist when the Conservatives were last in power: Policy Exchange
and the Centre for Social Justice. Policy Exchange
(or PX as it is known) was founded by Nicholas Boles and Michael Gove.
Boles now runs the Conservative Party's preparation-for-government unit
and Michael Gove MP is the party's education minister-in-waiting with
an ambitious programme for schools reform in his briefcase.
And Nick Boles is openly gay. Imagine that in today's Dixified GOP.
Via Catherine Rampell, a study on division of labor among ants:
My results indicate that at least in this species, a task is not primarily performed by individuals that are especially adapted to it (by whatever mechanism). This result implies that if social insects are collectively successful, this is not obviously for the reason that they employ specialized workers who perform better individually.
Mark Thoma thinks through why Smith's theory doesn't apply in this case.
The universe of people who have the experience and expertise necessary
to competently oversee our enormous intelligence apparatus is very
small. When looking for someone to run our intelligence agencies, a
candidate's competency from an operational standpoint is arguably more
important that his policy views (remember that policy decisions are
generally made by others, a point I'll get to in a moment).
I understand this point. But any confusion about a clear break with Bush-Cheney destroys Obama's potential for a fresh start with our allies and muddies the rule of law. It is going to be very difficult to take over what have been lawless and criminal policies without some taint. All the more reason to get someone at the top who is clearly not on the "dark side." Brennan does not do that. And this core, central mandate for Obama cannot be muddied. There must surely be someone capable of running the place who isn't implicated in the defense of war crimes.
Felix Salmon says the stock market slump isn't another meltdown:
The TED spread today is 213bp -- more or less exactly where it's been for the past few weeks. Which says to me that for all that financial stocks are being crushed, this is no reprise of the financial crisis we saw in the wake of Lehman's collapse. Rather, it's an old-fashioned economic crisis, which severely erodes the equity of leveraged banks, but where money still flows and even the occasional IPO can get away if it's priced at a discount. Or, to put it another way: it's a bear market, not a financial meltdown. Which might be little solace to anybody whose stocks have been crushed of later, but which might help reassure policymakers at least a little.
To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due process rights for all detainees, ending rendition, restoring safeguards on surveillance powers). Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years.
Nate Silver wonders which websites that were extremely popular in the election season will retain their readerships in the aftermath. I'm delighted to see that the Atlantic has so far done the best of all of them. Because we're still working our butts off.
Two major Clinton hacks are among the transition team - Fred Hochberg, perhaps the central pillar of the Human Rights Campaign and Clintonite dead-ender, and Roberta Achtenberg, formerly at HUD. The legacy of these people was DOMA, a doubling of the rate of discharges of gay servicemembers, and the perpetuation of the irrelevant Human Rights Campaign. Appointing people like these Clinton retreads and establishment Dems is of a piece with pushing DADT repeal back years.
Let us review the politics of this: the most recent poll shows 75 percent of the American public favors lifting the ban, including 64 percent of Republicans. But Obama cannot go there until 2010. It's sooo controversial. I understand the need not to repeat Clinton's errors, especially at the very beginning of an administration. Delaying and consulting is fine. But the way in which gay servicemembers, risking their lives for their country as we speak, are still regarded as radioactive in the Democratic establishment, enabled by the internalized homophobia of the Human Rights Campaign, is appalling.
Marc reports the Republican, former chief-of-staff for George Tenet (who authorized war crimes as CIA head), admirer of Dick Cheney, CEO of the company one of whose contract employees improperly accessed Obama's and McCain's passports, and defender of renditions and "enhanced interrogations" is still Obama's front-runner pick to head the CIA. No, I'm not making this up. Brennan was high up in the agency during the run-up to the Iraq war and has since conceded this about the intelligence he was in part responsible for:
Looking back on it now, as we put pieces together, it probably is
apparent to some, including Paul, that it was much more politicized
than in fact we realized.
So Brennan was complicit and naive in the run-up to the Iraq war. And Obama wants to reward him? Brennan is also a believer in Cheney's term "the dark side," wishing merely to have some limits within it. He clearly has a mindset that has far more in common with the war crimes of his former boss than with the clear, and indisputable beliefs of the Obama movement. Listen to the ambivalence about torture here:
I think George [Tenet] had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was
that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who
are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not
be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed
by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other
things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice
review.
But at the same time, there is a question about how aggressive you
want to be against terrorism in terms of, what does it mean to take the
gloves off? There was a real debate within the agency, including today,
about what are the minimum standards that you want to stoop to and
beyond where you're not going to go, because we don't want to stoop to
using the same types of standards that terrorists use. We are in this
business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect
freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.
When it comes to individuals who are determined to destroy our
nation, though, we have to make sure that we take every possible
measure. It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really
needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic
spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They
can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society
have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be
eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are
either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to
go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use?
Hopefully, that "dark side" is not going to be something that's
going to forever tarnish the image of the United States abroad and that
we're going to look back on this time and regret some of the things
that we did, because it is not in keeping with our values. ...
Sometimes there are actions that we are forced to take, but there
need to be boundaries beyond which we are going to recognize that we're
not going to go because we still are Americans, and we are supposed to
be representing something to people in this country and overseas. So
the dark side has its limits.
The simple answer to the question - what length do we want to go? - is to abide by the rule of law. Why is that so hard to understand? And yet Brennan and Tenet didn't. They authorized clear torture sessions. Why is such a man even considered for the post under Obama? This man cannot end the taint of Bush-Cheney. He was Bush-Cheney. In fact, if Obama picks him, it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation. It would be an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters and his ideals. It would be an acknowledgment that Tenet himself is not a war criminal, while the facts indisputably prove that he was.
I'm certainly no fan of Gov. Palin's, but the widespread reaction
to the turkey-slaughter backdrop -- the horror, the horror! -- is
pretty amusing to me. See, when I was 14, I took a job at a turkey farm
near my parents' house. Part of the job included working in the
slaughterhouse. I didn't kill the birds myself, but I was privileged to
yank out their still-warm innards with my bare hands. This tends to
shock people when they find out -- they can't hide the disgust that
flashes across their faces. Yes, it was truly disgusting. But all these
people are excited to sit down to their piping-hot turkey dinners next
week! That food has to come from somewhere.
Holder, Obama's AG, has unapologetically supported the war on drugs in the past. Radley Balko talks to drug policy reform groups about the pick:
The consensus seemed to be mild disappointment tempered with cautious optimism that despite his recent staff selections, Obama will keep his campaign promises to end the federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries and work to ameliorate the discrepancy in crack/powder cocaine sentencing...Who Obama ends up choosing to head up the DEA and ONDCP will be a far better indicator of whether he intends to continue the Bush administration's aggressive prosecution of the drug war, or if he's looking at a more tempered approach.
Kevin Walsh loves Drudge's design. Althouse seconds:
There's something about Drudge that makes us want to look at it all the time. The sense that this is what the news looks like right now feels so right, even if you know it's wrong. Even that wrongness is part of the addictive power. Everything works exactly as it should.
Many years ago, on a pilgrimage to meet the Yoda of the web, Drudge told me how proud he was of how ugly his site was. He vowed never to change its tabloid crudeness or its sublime simplicity. It remains a model of economy and panache. Remember: only two people really run it. Think of how many people contribute to HuffPuff, how bewildering the design is, how impenetrable it can seem to a newcomer. But Drudge is as accessible and as simple as ever. It's a brand he created out of thin air. And changed the media for ever. By courage and sheer hard work.
If only he hadn't screwed up the election coverage. He missed the story. Drudge never used to miss the story. But he'll recover.
This problem is not, repeat not, a matter of conservatives needing to abandon their core convictions in order to win elections, as right-of-center reformers are often accused of doing. Rather, it's a matter of conservatives needing to apply their core convictions to questions like "how do we mitigate the worst effects of climate change?" and "how do we modernize our infrastructure?" and "how do we encourage excellence and competition within our public school bureaucracy?" instead of just letting liberals completely monopolize these debates, while the Right talks about porkbusting and not much else.
I agree we need to get much more policy-specific. I haven't, really, and the big difference between my book and Ross' and Reihan's is they get in the policy weeds. I felt and still feel that the deeper philosophical questions need confronting first if we're talking about a revived conservatism, as opposed to a revived Republicanism. But I hope to lay out an agenda for the right in the coming months and air the policy questions more thoroughly.
Jon Henke defends libertarianism from Mike Huckabee:
This is easily as contemptuous, as offensive as anything Kathleen Parker has written about social conservatives. So, yeah, a columnist express disdain for social conservatives. Cry me a river. We libertarians had a social conservative Governor and Presidential candidate call us the "real threat" and "smug", and brazenly misrepresent our views before calling our message un-American.
Social conservatives have to realize that they need the fiscally conservative, socially moderate/tolerant voters if they want to be a part of a winning coalition. The limited government message won revolutionary victories for Republicans in 1980 and 1994; it is the only viable organizing principle for the current Republican coalition.
Another call for the leading gay groups to understand that they were a reason for the success of Proposition 8. But they are incapable of self-criticism. Which is why their strategy has remained all but unchanged for twenty years, while the gay movement has had to bypass them to succeed.
A reader makes a point that isn't made often enough:
I am another gay man who has no problem with a church refusing to
conduct a same-gender marriage rite. What I don't understand is why
the conservatives/fundamentalists can't get it through their collective
skull that their insistence upon enforcing in civil law their
particular interpretation of theology is also an excercise in religious
discrimination.
The Unitarians have been marrying same-sex couples for
some thirty years, and likewise some congregations of the United Church
of Christ, the Metropolitan Community Church, and I'm sure a number of
other religious groups I don't even know. Why do the fundamentalists get to discriminate with the force
of civil law against the U/U, the UCC, and the rest? When did they get
the right to have their religious interpretation enshrined in civil law
at the unavoidably explicit expense of the others
' interpretation?
When did they get the right to be the government's de facto Department of Inquisition?
This struggle is not just between secularists and Christianists. It's also between Christians.
"...placed in the middle of a rapid stream, we obstinately fix our eyes on the ruins that may still be descried upon the shore we have left, while the current hurries us away and drags us backward towards the abyss," - Tocqueville.
"But how do those who are ready to live in this modern world
coexist with those who still believe that it is not only misguided but
evil? And, of course, vice-versa? There is only one way."
In fact, there is another way, the way chosen by the Mennonites
and the Amish: to turn away from some, or even most, elements of the
modern world, rejecting them as tools of the Devil, and to live in
communities of like-believers allowing at most few contacts with
outsiders. Of course, in doing so, that community surrenders any
pretensions to remake society at large in their own image. They have to
settle for the old fashioned strategy of influencing others to their
point of view by persuasion, and let the Devil take the rest. I don't
think the theocons would ever settle for that, of course.
Agreed. I think that's where Rod is headed and I respect anyone who chooses it. But it is not a political solution for the whole. It is a spiritual one for the part.
Today a federal district judge ordered that five Gitmo detainees be released. Greenwald:
The five men ordered released today have been imprisoned in a cage by the Bush administration for 7 straight years without being charged with any crimes and without there being any credible evidence that they did anything wrong. If the members of Congress who voted for the Military Commissions Act had their way (see them here and here), or if the four Supreme Court Justice in the Boumediene minority had theirs, the Bush administration would nonetheless have been empowered to keep them encaged indefinitely, for the rest of their lives if desired, without ever having to charge them with any crime or allow them to step foot into a courtroom to petition for habeas corpus.
And Obama wants an apologist for this - John Brennan - at CIA? Has he lost his mind?
Yes we did. The true dimension of the revolution that Obama realized in American politics is now quantified. This changes everything in every future campaign, and has just as much resonance for media and fundraising in general. I don't believe that Obama would have ever been able to become president in the era before the Internet. And I don't believe the implications of that have yet to fully sink in.
A girl smiles as she plays around near temporary shelters at a camp for Internally Displaced People in Kibati, just north of the North Kivu provincial capital city of Goma on November 20, 2008. Hundreds of thousands of people living in the region have been displaced from their homes due to armed clashes in the region. This particular camp houses some 60,000 refugees. By Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty.
I am a 26 year old heterosexual, white male who is in the best
relationship of my life. She is a 26 year old Egyptian woman. We're
very happy and recently she met most of my family and extended family.
They loved her as well. We even hope to
marry someday. I am so grateful that I live in a country that would
honor that bond. As you know, it wasn't too long ago that our
relationship would not be recognized in many states.
That being said, I've taken the stand that I do not want to join the
institution of marriage until it is one that allows ALL loving couples
to join.
When even the Cheney-Addington fan writes the following, you have some idea of just how dumb and counter-productive Bush's detainee policy has been:
It seems pretty clear that the Bush administration did not help matters here. Nearly seven years ago, the President publicly claimed the Algerians were planning a bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. Last month, however, the Justice Department suddenly informed the Court that it was no longer relying on that information. We've seen this sort of thing happen too many times over the last seven years, and the effect can only be to reduce the confidence of the court and the public that the government is in command of the relevant facts and can be trusted to make thoughtful decisions.
Does anyone now believe what Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld have stated as fact: that their administration captured the right people, treated them humanely and brought them to justice? They failed on all three counts. They committed, to paraphrase Talleyrand, a crime and a mistake. We are all less safe as a result.
While you have always celebrated your attachment to conservative thinkers like Michael Oakeshott, your views often strike me being most closely aligned with John Rawls. Your discussion today about modernity smashing the social good into little bits could have been a passage out of Political Liberalism. You captured the essence of the book in this sentence:
"That way is to agree that our civil order will mean less; that it will be a weaker set of more procedural agreements that try to avoid as much as possible deep statements about human nature."
Rawls found that in the modern world we've come to accept that the differences between comprehensive theories of the good embodied in various religions, cultures, and individual belief systems (i.e. the "deep statements about human nature") will never be conclusively resolved. They are too much contingent upon traditions, inherited cultural values, superstitions. The questions these theories purport to answer are fundamentally irresolvable--no one comprehensive theory is going to ultimately triumph over all the others. Consequently, all must recognize that their own comprehensive theories have no special claims any other people.
SurveyUSA writes that the prop 8 protests "have not changed many minds":
Of the those adults who tell SurveyUSA they voted FOR Prop 8, 90% of them told us recent rallies held by “No on Prop 8″ Protesters have not changed their minds about the issue. 8% say protesters have changed their minds.
But an 8 percent swing among Yes on 8 voters would have made the difference. Imagine if we had run ads with gay couples in them and revealed our conviction before the vote. This campaign could have been won. Our bad.
Today, for example, I’ve gotten emails urging me to "Save Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly Before It Is Too Late" and — one of my favorites so far — an offer to teach me how to "Obama-proof" my financial portfolio. Part of me still worries that this sort of paranoia, which isn’t new (wacky political newsletters of all political stripes were huge in the 80s and early 90s), but is now far more accessible thanks to the internet, will be used to unfairly discredit the right. So I’m a relieved to see that it’s tapered off slightly since the election. But I can’t help but be a little disappointed, can’t help but hope, in some small way, that it never fully goes away...
Delaying and consulting is fine. But the way in which gay servicemembers, risking their lives for their country as we speak, are still regarded as radioactive in the Democratic establishment, enabled by the internalized homophobia of the Human Rights Campaign, is appalling.
It's fine not to uproot the entire agency and to have some continuity. But for Obama to appoint a Bush-Cheney apologist to the CIA? How on earth did this idea get this far?
My advice to the theocons: by picking solely on homosexuals to force back the sexual and spiritual freedom of modernity, you look awful, you are losing the next generation and you are buttressing cruelty and pain.
