Little Boy Brown at One...

The late Ronald Reagan in 1982 (wikipedia)

It seems fitting that the junior US Senator from our home state should have been sworn in so close to Ronald Reagan's birthday.  In case you were unaware, Sunday would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, our nation's 40th president.  Only three days ago, Scott Brown, who won Massachusetts just as the Gipper did in 1980 and 1984, celebrated his first year in the Senate.  As conservatives fall to their knees nationwide to honor Reagan (even as they mythologize the man to their own benefit), we thought it appropriate to consider how Brown has done over the past year and how he may be for the next two.

It goes without saying that as Republicans patted themselves on the back last November, Scott Brown needed to think again about his own political posture.  Among the first things that came out of his mouth after the national Republican sweep that yielded only a few State House seats in Massachusetts was that he worked for Bay Staters and not for Mitch McConnell.  While his decision to vote for financial reform and a few unemployment extensions went against the will of Madman Mitch, for the most part Brown was a loyal GOP soldier.

Sen. Brown (wikipedia)

Some of that did begin to change after the election, however.  He joined forces with Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon to support an amendment to the Health Care Reform Law that would permit states to do basically whatever they want (within reason) to ensure all residents have health care as long as everybody has coverage that would under the current bill.  The measure is supported by Vermont independent Bernie Sanders whose home state would like to institute a single-payer system.  It also has support from market purist states that could seek a market solution in lieu of the exchanges like those we have here in Massachusetts.  Brown remains opposed to overall reform law and voted for a repeal measure that failed last week in the US Senate.

On the other hand, Brown remained in lockstep with his caucus' demand that tax cuts for all without finding the money to pay for it.  Meanwhile, a one year unemployment extension, which would cost a fraction as much, met a Republican demand, echoed by Brown, that it be paid for.  Brown proposed that the unemployment extension be funded using unspent money from past fiscal years, but that measure failed.  Brown would ultimately vote for the compromise reached between the White House and Senate Republicans.  Massachusetts Democratic Senior Senator, John Kerry voted likewise on the compromise.

Sen. Collins, left with Sen. Snowe both of Maine (wikipedia)

After the compromise, Brown voted to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell at least in part at the urging of Republican colleague Susan Collins, the bill's cosponsor.  Brown's support for the bill is not particularly surprising, but it is notable.  It is all but improbable that Brown actually thought he could shore up the gay vote in anticipation of the 2012 election.  However, it does spare him raising the specific fury of the state's large and influential gay rights community.

As for Brown's vote to ratify the New START treaty, it is hard to read any political arithmetic into this other than Brown could be painted as weak on national defense.  Just as likely, Brown, accepting his minimal foreign credentials, simply listened to the treaty's top Senate proponent, John Kerry, and realized it was the right thing to do for global nuclear security.

Other than these events, however, Brown has not gone too far off-script.  He remains adamantly opposed to tax increases and maintains the air of a fiscal conservative.  Even his vote for financial reform came at a price.  He demanded that a modest tax on banks to funded liquidation of insolvent banks be removed.  It was a concession he claimed had been aimed at protecting jobs at MassMutual and other financial companies (most shrugged at Brown's efforts).  However, it was a gift to true investment banks of ungodly size like Goldman Sachs or Massachusetts' own State Street Bank.  The fund, therefore, does not exist complicating future efforts to dismantle unstable firms before a bailout would be necessary.

Though Passion May Have Strained...

Yoda (Wookiepedia)

"Fear Leads to Anger.  Anger leads to Hate.  Hate...leads to suffering."


It is not everyday that the words of Yoda of Star Wars is quoted in the face of a national tragedy, but it seems that the George Lucas character may have said it best.  Perhaps this quote would be better known had it not come from the better forgotten Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

As of this writing, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords remains in critical condition.  She is alive and at the direction of anesthesiologists, unconscious.  Her brain function looks good, but it is still too early to tell.  Swelling, which remains the most dangerous threat to her recovery now, is still possible for the next few days.  Her long term prognosis may not be known for months.  Six people, including the Chief Judge of the US District Court in Arizona, a 9 year-old girl, her 30 year-old community relations director, and three retirees are dead.  A dozen or so were injured—some remain hospitalized.  Others have been released.



Cong. Giffords (wikipedia)

 The alleged assailant, Jared Loughner, by all accounts seems to be a very troubled, very probably mentally ill individual.  His online life, ostensibly his only solid outward connection to the world, is a patchwork of paranoid delusions and, yes, some off-kilter political ideology.  He has been charged with attempted assassination of a member of Congress as the evidence shows that Giffords was the target.  The last significant attack on an American political figure was John Hinckley's attempt on President Ronald Reagan's life in 1981.  Hinckley's motives were not really at all political.

The focus of this posting is not the ease with which Loughner secured his weapon and ammunition.  However, we will say that these events are not inconceivable or, as has been described "unimaginable."  Gun violence, even public assaults like these, is quite common and yet we do little to stop it.  The extended clip Loughner allegedly used had no purpose, but to as kill many people as possible.  Police carry the same weapon and use the standard 12 round clip as opposed to the 33 round clips Loughner had purchased from a Wal-Mart.  These extended clips had been banned under now expired Brady Bill provisions and are now readily available.  While passage is unlikely, sooner or later, we have to seriously ask ourselves how much safer we are with these devices, which serve no purpose, but to kill.  The issue is not banning guns wholesale, but whether their sheer preponderance in our society serves or undermines their stated purpose.

Jared Lougner (AZ Star)

Although Loughner's motives are probably at best remotely political, it has brought much, if not all of the political apparatus—politicians, newsman, and commentators—into a moment of reflection.  That reflection is needed and overdue.  Congresswoman Giffords was the subject of innuendo and outright threats of violence in the past.  A protester waving one of those misappropriated Gadsden flags dropped a gun that had been held in his armpit.  Her office was vandalized following the health care vote, which she supported.  Then there was Sarah Palin's "reload" campaign complete with cross hairs aimed at formerly Republican districts including Giffords'.  Indeed the number of members of Congress receiving serious threats nearly tripled in 2010 from the year before.  A man is currently incarcerated for threatening to kill Washington Sen. Patty Murray over her health care vote.

The right has responded stridently to the claims that it is to blame.  Truly, they are not directly to blame for the shooting in Tucson, but the vitriol and vile language that they—and some voices on the left—have stirred up has not added to the national conversation and certainly has made a climate that has only aggravated the fear, distrust, and aggression in our society.  Throw into the mix mentally ill or otherwise unbalanced people and you do have a recipe for disaster.

The tone in the national political discourse has certainly taken a turn for the worse.  Sarah Palin's reload/target graphic is the least of it.  Joyce Kaufman, a talk radio personality and Florida and nearly a freshman congressman's chief of staff, spoke about how if "ballots don't work, bullets will."  Tea partiers relish Thomas Jefferson's statement that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time withe blood of patriots & tyrants."  In typical fashion, however, the statement is out of context.  Jefferson was commenting on Shays Rebellion of all things.  Among the many gripes of Shay and his ilk were that ineffectual nature of the Articles of Confederation, which was replaced by our present Constitution its strong central government.



Cong. Richard Neal (WMassP&I)

This blog is not comfortable with the term hate speech, because it is too broad and lends itself to misinterpretation.  Moreover, we do not gain anything by going to opposite extreme and purge our political discourse of passion and live in a cacophony of political correctness.  However, we must tamp down the negativity and the demonizing of political opponents.  As Congressman Richard Neal said at his press conference today those on the other side are our "opponents, not our enemies."  In addition, Neal noted that many Congressmen need to remember that not every issue is "Armageddon."

Surveying the Wreckage: The Message from Obama...

Although it will probably not be the 11th, when most are reading this, we would like to take an opportunity to recognize that it is Veterans Day.  Unique among most federal holidays in that it does not float to the nearest Monday, Veterans Day was established to commemorate the end of major fighting in World War I.   Their sacrifice is not diminished or emboldened by the motives or reasons behind their mission, but that sacrifice is always worthy of our thanks and appreciation.

In our second part in looking at the midterms aftermath, we turn west on Pennsylvania Avenue the 1600 block.  Again, the conventional wisdom is that this election was a referendum on the policies of President Barack Obama.  That wisdom may be true to the extent that the left is disappointed and the right emboldened.

It is difficult to exactly place where the Obama administration went off the rails that led to some of the steepest midterm losses for a sitting president in recent memory.  The conventional wisdom does not fully explain what happened because the intuition is that Obama steered right (in the left’s eyes) while simultaneously unveiling his true malevolent side as an arch-socialist (in the eye’s the right, err, far right).  The answer lies in several places.
It should surprise nobody that this blog does not think that Obama sent this country flying to the left.  That sensation, especially for those on the right, is no doubt due to how we had drifted right ward during eight years of Bush.  In other words, if you start off eight feet from the center and suddenly get knocked ten feet left, you feel like you’ve just undergone a massive shift.  In fact you are a mere two feet to left; only a fourth as liberal as you were conservative.  This sensation, coupled with a worsening economy no doubt stirred the tea partiers to action; that and the investment of two uber-wealthy brothers.

Republicans made clear early on they had little interest in playing with the President…well almost all of them made that intention clear.  Little remained of any moderate wing of the Republican party and what did remain like Obama’s eventually successor in the Senate, Mark Kirk, had little or no motive to join House Democrats.  Why risk the leadership’s wrath? (although even common sense votes and cooperation would come back to bite some Republicans).  Some hope remained in the Senate.

While a broad Republican vote for health care was at beast, doubtful, a handful could have joined for at least some token bipartisanism.  Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, maybe even George Voinovich and some others could have joined, but something happened.  Yes, they walked away, but more importantly, the left began leaning too hard on some points like the public option.  But Snowe supported a form of the public option, so what happened?  Well, we are not sure, exactly, but what we do know is that the left began to circle its wagons on things like public option, only to not get it.

This is an Obama failure and here’s why.  Obama left too much legislating up to Congress.  He underestimated both the corrupting power (not corruption) of a massive mandate on liberals in Congress and the disparity of opinion within his party.  Consequently, the Democratic majority had become the vary thing they had abhorred under the Republicans’ thumb: a partisan majority.  Had Obama exerted his influence on Congress to keep Snow and Collins together at all costs, it might have at least left the appearance of bipartisanship while delivering other legislative achievements with the help of Maine’s Senators and Lindsay Graham.

It would be during this time that the tone reached fever pitch and the wheels came off the wagon.  The forces against reform, or really change of any kind, had been marshaled.  Deals would need to be brokered among Democratic Senators and then Massachusetts had a spasm catapulting a little known millionaire who drove a truck into the Senate.  The damage had been done, but Obama thought he could ride it out, until the economy started sputtering as state after state started unloading employees absent better tax returns.

Still, Obama is taking the whole mess a bit too hard.  One picture showed a picture of the president after the midterms, his often beaming face contorted into something uncharacteristically downtrodden.  If there is one coherent message to be gleaned from the election, it was a call for politicians to get something done and therefore work together.  That does not mean, however, that the President roll over and let the Republicans devour and leave him for dead in 2012.  No doubt, Obama, man before president, feels a great deal of guilt for the losses Democrats, perhaps some in particular, suffered.

However, Mr. President, the time has come to stand up, to prepare for war…or peace as needed.
Obama does not need to betray the spirit, if not all the promises of his campaign to recapture its spirit and deliver the American people some of the true changes that it needs and can ill-afford to go without.  Some of those things, he simply cannot achieve legislatively, but others he may.  We said before that John Boehner may not be a wholly unreasonable man or politically partisan hack.  Mitch McConnell probably is, but his caucus is more rambunctious than ever.  This arithmetic could be used to Obama’s advantage, yet.

The first battle lines to be drawn, a point where he can win, he is right, and it will give a semblance of life back to his base is tax cuts.  While some on the left say he should be uncompromising in letting the cuts on the richest 1-2%, the truth is he can compromise and still pull off the bigger win.

It is the opinion of this blog that no extension would have virtually no impact would be felt on the economy.  However, there is little doubt that the economy is fragile and keeping that tax cut intact for one year, and one year only, would be a small insurance policy for better economic health.  A longer extension of the other tax cuts would also permit the cuts on the wealthy be disconnected from the broader tax policy until the country’s temperament is such that an extensive revision of the tax code can be performed rationally.

Should tax cuts on all, but the wealthy be retained, the wealthy cut a tax cut, too.  One of the quirks of a progressive tax system is that a tax cut for the bottom bracket is really a tax cut on all brackets, just not a cut beyond the income threshold for the next bracket.  So a cut on all, but one bracket is a cut for the top bracket just not as big of a tax cut.

We may not have explained that in the best way possible, but that leads us to the next point that is point a retroactive criticism and a guide looking forward for the president.  Many in the president’s staff did their best work during a campaign, but made the mistake of thinking that once they were in office the onslaught would stop or at least people would love President Obama just as they loved candidate Obama.  Because of this and any number of other factors, the president machine simply failed.

Communications, political affairs, legislative affairs, and other image-making divisions of the White House failed to prepare for sharp, ideological opposition, unwilling to move and ever-willing to mutilate the truth to get power.  The president must recognize this and demand better from his staff or find advisors who can deliver it.  It may require parsing through the Democratic rolodex and even reshuffling some close advisors, but if successful, he need no resort to the “triangulation” that defined some much of the Clinton administration after the 1994 midterms.

The President can be firm, he can be passionate, and he can be a champion, the Republican majority be damned.  Indeed, he must be.  More conciliatory bipartisanship will simply encourage the Republicans to attempt making the President irrelevant (luckily they lack the Senate to do so).  He tried that these past two years and it did not work.  In fact, it delivered them the House.  However, even Republicans are calling their victories a “second chance.”  It is, which mean Obama has far more power than he realized.

Obama can take heart, too.  While not wildly popular, Governor Deval Patrick recovered from a nadir during a  recession, to defeat a seemingly unbeatable challenger.  Two years is a political lifetime or three and Obama has the advantage of sitting out a bloody primary.  Patrick’s victory shows how quickly a state (or country) can turn…and then turn back!

*All photos from wikipedia.  First Obama photo from 2010, Second photo from left Senators Collins and Snowe, Third photo of Obama during 2008 campaign.