You’ll Never Convince Your Crazy Uncle, So Why Waste Time Trying?

A brief rant. I am generally loathe to link to that fetid abyss of Washington media insider-ism known as Politico, but this article really appalled me more than usual and my object of derision isn’t the reporter so much as the whole point of this event and the White House staff/president that orchestrated it.

President Barack Obama battled with Senate Republicans in a tense closed-door meeting Tuesday, facing tough criticism from his GOP adversaries — including John McCain — on issues ranging from health care to border security.

Senators and other sources inside the meeting described the gathering as “testy” and “direct” — and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) accused Obama of acting two-faced by asking for GOP support on regulatory reform only to push forward with a bill supported mainly by Democrats. Others felt that the meeting may have made already tense relations between the two parties even worse.

"The more he talked, the more he got upset," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said. “He needs to take a valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans and just calm down, and don’t take anything so seriously. If you disagree with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re attacking their motives — and he takes it that way and tends then to lecture and then gets upset.”

The White House said that Obama made a plea for bipartisanship on some of the country’s most pressing issues — and he urged Republicans to stand up to their base and compromise with the Democratic Party.

Assuming the president’s time is valuable, what is the point of attending an off-the-record, or at least media-excluded publicity event with your political opponents in an election year? Honestly, I’m looking for answers here. Does it help Obama? It’s not televised, so we don’t get to see him dissect his opponents as he did the House Republicans previously or even have a substantive public debate as was done (at times) at the Health Care Summit in February (or as is done almost daily with members of Congress inside the White House). Does it allow Republicans to leak to their media accomplices like Politico who write stories about how testy and “thin-skinned” Obama was? Check. Does it let John McCain pretend he’s still running for president? Check. Even McConnell, while he seemed to enjoy lunch and appreciated that the head of the executive branch had to trundle down to the Senate to visit the minority caucus on their own turf, admitted nothing was agreed to or could be agreed to at this meeting. Will it stop Republicans or creatures of the Washington media from saying Obama isn’t trying hard enough to work with Republicans? You are hilarious.

Look, I’m not against the parties having dialogue and as I mentioned they do so every day, but in an election year where the benefits of compromise are near zero and the opposing party’s base thinks you are the Anti-Christ, it would seem one could find a more productive use of the president’s time. Instead of trying to make Republicans comfortable with you, why not spend more time trying to get your base excited about voting in November?

Craziest Utterance of the Week Award

This has been a remarkable week for the crazy and it's only Wednesday. Just in the last two days we've seen John McCain and Peter King decrying the Mirandizing of American suspects (sadly, but not surprisingly, the media isn't pointing out that Miranda is about the constitutional protections afforded everyone regardless of nationality under US jurisdiction); we've seen Joe Lieberman suggest that law enforcement be empowered to strip an accused (merely an accused) of their American citizenship. But the award has to go to Michael Brown, former FEMA director. Brownie has a theory about President Obama and the BP rig oil spill:

This is exactly what they want, because now [Obama] can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm gonna shut it down because it's too dangerous.'

Brownie believes Obama wanted a spill like this -- delayed acting on it (Brownie of all people is accusing Obama of delaying his response to an environmental emergency) -- simply because he wanted to score points with environmentalists and stop offshore oil production forever. Chris Matthews, and Anderson Cooper have called Brownie out on this madness, but he's sticking to his guns. This crazy theory might have a little less of the crazy stink to it if President Obama in April hadn't both opened up large portions of the East and Gulf Coasts to future drilling and mentioned in a town hall how safe this drilling was, much to the annoyance of environmentalists. But maybe that was his plan all along, to do a reverse double fake?! It might also help Brownie if Obama was now foursquare against new drilling ... but unfortunately he's not there yet.

I have a crazy theory of my own. It involves a disgraced former Bush official hoping to endear himself to the teabagger crowd in order to goose his talk radio ratings.

More Proof Conservatives are to Blame for Everything

Via Ezra Klein, a very interesting academic paper by J. Lawrence Broz, political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Broz finds some striking correlations between financial collapses and the politics of the governments that bring them. Fancy that? And conservatives have been telling us for decades that it's just a natural cycle. Cycle? Yes. Natural? Not so much.

Financial cycles of boom and bust are as old as finance itself -- a fact that has led some observers to infer that human nature may be a fundamental cause of financial cycles. But “politics” also influences financial cycles by way of government policies and regulations. I argue that policies and regulations vary predictably with the partisan character of the government, creating a partisan-policy financial cycle in which conservative, pro-market governments preside over financial booms while left-wing governments are elected to office after crashes.

This is something I think most people who have been around awhile feel instinctively, so it's nice to see research backing it up.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Kim Strassel managed to get under my skin Sunday morning. Somehow she landed on the This Week roundtable and tossed a smoke grenade on the topic of violent, anti-government rhetoric on the Right.

(http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/roundtable-financial-regulation-10406844 about 1 minute, 30 seconds in.)

The question was raised following former President Clinton’s remarks about how all of this reminded him eerily of the anti-government rhetoric of the ‘90s (which of course led to the Mura Federal Building bombing). Strassel’s ‘argument’ was that liberals seemed to think it was fine when Code Pink interrupted congressional meetings and back then it was just “public discourse” and “considered good.”

Just a small pet peeve. If one of the central arguments you dust off whenever someone argues a principled point with you is, ‘well the other side was bad once too,’ then you represent a not so serious political perspective. And if your points of comparison are substantially dissimilar, then don’t expect anyone to consider your perspective serious at all.

Look, I’m not arguing liberals are inherently morally superior when it comes to overheated rhetoric versus people on the Right. America has seen violent, anti-government rhetoric from the Left in the past, but now, as in the ‘90s, it’s primarily from the Right and the troubling thing is that conservative politicians are embracing these folks rather than distancing themselves. When Congressman Steve King sympathizes with the nut who flew his plane into the IRS building or suggests the Tea Party come to DC and take over the place and prevent the elected government from functioning, he should be ostracized by others on the Right. They should be coming forward to say this is unacceptable. Instead we hear crickets.

PS-I have yet to find a liberal that has a positive thing to say about the antics of Code Pink. No congressperson I know of thought their interruptions of hearings were a good thing. And as annoying as Code Pink was/is, I don’t recall them ever calling for a violent revolution.

Grave Robbers

This week, if you were to meet a Republican time traveler from the 1860s or 1980s, you would discover them more shocked than usual. They would stumble on notables of their party, officially celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy in the state of Virginia. A governor of the Grand Old Party saying, before finally relenting after a chorus of criticism, that mentioning the role of slavery in the conflict was “not significant” enough to be included in the original proclamation.

They might be confused to find a black Democratic president who considers himself an inheritor of their legacy, and who began his long path to the White House from the same old granite steps in Springfield that gave rise to President Lincoln’s career, being pilloried by members of Lincoln’s own party with terms of “secession”, “interposition” and “nullification.”

In fairness, they would also find a comically out of his depth leader of their party who was also black and while not knowing the details of how he came to that post and how he remains there, they may reassure themselves for a moment that their party has made some racial progress.

The 1980s time traveling Republican would be delighted to arrive the week of the largest nuclear arms control agreement since the 1980s, but to the startling awareness that such agreements are no longer proudly bipartisan consensus. Rather they would learn that the leading lights of their party are now against the very idea of nuclear arms reductions and consider those who are, dangerously weak and naive (all while continuing to fetishize the Reagan name, if not his actual foreign policy principles). Reagan would be more confused than usual as to why we hadn’t reduced these unusable weapons even further, given the absence of the Soviet Union the last 20 years.

What are they and we to make of this? Nixon’s grand project is now complete. Congratulations GOP, you are now proud owners of the legacy of the Confederacy. Enjoy that. Continue to court the intemperate, red-faced crowds with their misspelled signs and see how history will judge you.

You have also this week betrayed your beloved Ronnie. And as divisive a figure as he remains, you‘ve managed to abandon his one issue that previously all sides had agreed upon. You are now the party of Bolton and Cheney, Fox News and Palin. I guess you can now stop trying to put Reagan on the $50 bill (although I’m sure you would still love to stick it to that Union general).

You’ve managed to scare off the icons you worship. They’ve gone back through that wormhole, glad to be rid of you.

Jake Tapper is a Douche

I'm proud to announce a new blog. You will find here the sort of thoughtful, insightful cultural and political analysis that one only finds rarely these days. With that, and with the warmest Easter greetings, I would like to say, without delay, that Jake Tapper is a douche.

The name of this blog and the nom de guerre I've purloined are of course from P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster stories. Psmith (the P is silent, an affectation Rupert adopted to distinguish his surname) was one of Wodehouse's favorite characters. He was rare in the Wodehouse universe for his sly intelligence and socialistic leanings. From wikipedia:

Psmith is a somewhat selfish young man; however, he is generous towards those he likes. In a typical example from Leave it to Psmith, he perceives Eve, trapped by the rain under an awning, and decides, chivalrous gentleman that he is, to get her an umbrella. Unfortunately for Psmith, he does not, in point of fact, possess an umbrella. He solves this problem by appropriating another man's umbrella; when confronted by the umbrella's owner, Psmith attempts to comfort him by saying it is for a good cause, and, later, when relating the story, says, "Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it." (Another of Psmith's quirks is his penchant for nominal socialism, observed mostly in his casual use of "Comrade" as a substitute for "Mister.").

Welcome, Comrade! Let the games begin!