Pufferfish

To The Crooks, The Spoils

Matt Taibbi's take down of Rubinites in control Obama's economic agenda is getting tough criticism from the usual suspects, which serves as a great lesson on how to mount a political counter attack: first, attempt to discredit the journalist and his article, then shift blame. But from my reading of Taibbi's article and the fairly weak critiques from administration apologists it looks like they've failed to discredit a fairly obvious charge: That Obama is beholden to the people who bear direct responsibility for the financial crisis.

While defending his piece, Taibbi makes a couple crucial points that illustrate just how top-down the economic thinking is in this country:

We could have paid off every subprime mortgage in America for about $1.4 trillion and instead shelled out at least ten times that to Wall Street, primarily to pay off derivative bets made by bankers on those assets.

Most of the bailouts came in the form of very cheap money lent out to the same banks that caused the crisis, who then took that money and lent it out at market rates, pocketing the difference. That’s where all these billions in bonuses for the major banks are coming from this year. It’s almost impossible to not make mountains of money when your cost of capital is next to nothing because you’re borrowing your money from the government basically for free.

Sure, Bush is responsible for the bailouts and Tarp program, but the Obama team has done little to deviate from that course, with the choreographed anger over bonuses being little more than political theater.

The upshot of all of this is that the co-optation of regulatory reform by Wall Street is a crucial story that deserves more attention. And Taibbi--because he's a great writer who can break down a complicated story into an accessible article--delivers big time. My only issue stemming from Taibbi's article (besides calling Obama's actions a "sellout" when really he's not deviating from the norm) is with liberal bloggers intent on shifting blame onto the left's favorite bogeymen: Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman (please don't read this to mean those two aren't completely insufferable tools). Sure, those two centrist yahoos have enjoyed garnering plenty of Sunday morning talk show attention for rear-ending the White House's agenda. But this scarecrow building doesn't work with regulatory reform. Taibbi is talking about Obama's economic team. That team has been in office for 10 months and hasn't done a damn thing to address the most glaring problem this country faced when it took office. And the inaction isn't to assuage the moderate tendencies of Ben Nelson.

-- Update --

For more bomb throwing check out the work of Dylan Ratigan.

Nobel Stuff

 

While managing to piss everyone off with his Afghanistan move, Obama made everyone happy with his Nobel speech. Weird. Here's what peeps are saying:

Clive Crook:

He did not glide around the awkwardness of the occasion. He acknowledged it and dealt with it. He was straightforward and unembarrassed about his lack of achievements--no taint of false modesty in the way he expressed it. The award was a "call to action". A little more to my surprise, he confronted head on the oddity of the peace prize going to a leader who had just announced a major escalation of a war. Still more to my surprise, he dwelt on this at some length, putting his decision in the context of "just war" theory. He defended his approach more forthrightly than he had at West Point. A good part of the speech was a lecture on why wars still have to be fought. Not an obvious theme when you're accepting the Nobel peace prize.

Green footballs:

Yes, that’s right — he acknowledged that there is true evil in the world, and made a strong case for the United States as a defender of freedom. Not exactly the words of an America-hating commie traitor, are they?

Kevin Drum:

Given that he was, after all, accepting a peace prize, it was a surprisingly robust defense of war and America's military role in the world. Surprisingly Bushian, really, with one obvious caveat: among the many wars he mentioned as necessary and justified, there was one that was deliberately conspicuous by its absence: Iraq. So neocons have that to gripe about if they're in a griping mood.

James Fallows:

Those trademark elements include: The embrace of contradictions (in this case, a defense of war as a means to peace); the long view; the emphasis on institution-building; the concern about the distortion of religious and ethnic loyalties; and above all a consciousness that was once called Niebuhrian and at this rate will someday be "Obamian," which emphasizes the importance of steady steps forward in an inevitably flawed world.

Gawker:

Because George W. Bush so brazenly co-opted the utopian rhetoric of liberal internationalists, no current politician can speak of the courage and heroism of those who protest oppressive regimes without unintentionally evoking that jackass in all his smirky vainglory.

Joe Klein:

How does a rookie President, having been granted the Nobel Peace Prize, go about earning it? Well, he can start by giving the sort of Nobel lecture that Barack Obama just did, an intellectually rigorous and morally lucid speech that balanced the rationale for going to war against the need to build a more peaceful and equitable world.

Sarah Palin:

I liked what he said. I talked too in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times.

Freedom!

Jane Hamsher goes all William Wallace:

It’s time that people took off the rose colored glasses and faced the fact that Obama’s “leadership” on health care was empty and passive. He went for the corporate-friendly “win” that enriches the insurance and drug companies, just as he has enriched the banks and failed to hold them to account. Those who look first to others as scapegoats for his actions have apparently not come to grips with the fact that as President of the United States, he’s a very powerful man who is not using that power to advance the progressive agenda they attribute to him.

Best part of the "passive" complaint is that Hamsher states a few graphs earlier that Obama has been "intimately involved in the process of crafting the health care bill." So, uh, apparently he's passively orchestrating the whole thing.

Anyway, I find it odd that someone positioned as a steely-eyed realist is continually let down by candidates once they get into office. I get that Hamsher has her shtick: a) get Democrats elected and b) get better Democrats elected. But we're getting close to poisoning the well here. From the outset this entire process has been an elaborate dance to figure out how to pay for reform without significantly cutting into the profits of private industries. Yet people who know this continually act betrayed every time a Blue Dog member of Congress leg humps an industry talking point. I guess its what you have to do to rile up the troops. But count me out. I'm fine with a reform package that covers everyone while laying the groundwork for expanding cheaper insurance in the future. (Lowering the Medicare age is an obvious Trojan Horse on that front, which is why it's probably not happening.)

Like it or not, politics is the art of the possible. And Obama is on the cusp of accomplishing what was previous not possible. Liberals screaming reform should be done in one fell swoop and that anything short of Obama and Emanuel throwing on war paint and charging up Capitol Hill on a suicide run need to dial it down. We elect presidents, not kings.

Whatever Sells

Yglesias has this completely backwards:

Fred Hiatt Wants The Washington Post to Go Out of Business. What other explanation could there be for deciding that he wants to run an op-ed by Sarah Palin about how Obama should “boycott” the Copenhagen conference?

Sure, the WaPo's decision to publish an op-ed by Sarah Palin's ghostwriter—that can charitably be described as misleading and more accurately categorized as total bullshit—isn't good for journalism. Palin is rolling with the premise that the "the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point" after "leading climate 'experts' deliberately destroyed records" and "manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures." This of course isn't true. The science community agrees the earth is getting warmer and people are to blame. Hiatt undoubtedly knows this but he'd much rather garner the attention, Web hits and verbal sparing a Palin editorial creates than worry about the accuracy of her opinion. I happen to think that fact-checking in a newspaper should extend to the editorial page. Hiatt clearly does not. But in a perverse way he wins, because here I am talking about his green-lighting propaganda under the guise of journalistic opinion writing.

Communist On Communist Crime

Over the past couple of days, Andrew Sullivan has posted a few protests from liberals distraught that "the left" is giving President Obama the dirty hippie business. No shocker that Greenwald isn't buying it:

Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom are similar in kind to those whose reaction to Obama is dominated by their view of him as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual. These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies. But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important. They're also far more potent. Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one's life who -- like a loved one or close friend or religious leader -- must be protected and defended at all costs.

I happen to think Greenwald is being a bit too hard on those who still defend Obama's overall performance, even if they don't agree with several key policy decisions. But what's really worth pointing out is that the left is actually having this debate instead of flooding the echo chamber with a cottage industry of apologists and spinners intent on making every decision Obama makes sound like preordained common sense. That's the difference between liberals falling in love and conservatives falling in line. Right now Greenwald is most likely working on a post accurately cataloging another transparent Obama Justice Department decision that covers-up misdeeds by the Bush crew or embraces the lame "state secret" line, John Aravosis is no doubt furiously pounding out another screed on the importance of immediately turning over DADT, and you can bet Jane Hamsher is once again fitting Harry Reid's testicles into a sling over his handling of health care reform. When it comes to blind devotion within the ranks of the two warring factions, there really isn't a comparison. Engaged liberals are clearly more likely to think for themselves. And if conservatives want to take exception to that then first explain what was going on from 2001 to 2008 when the only internal dispute seemed to be over who could give the sloppiest rhetorical blowjob to a Bush decision and how quickly a boycott of the Dixie Chicks could be organized.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Politico

And no, I'm not making this up. The Politico's editor in chief has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board:

“In many ways, the Pulitzer Board is on the same mission as POLITICO: to embrace new media while fighting to protect the highest standards for writing, reporting and accuracy. I am honored to be a part of this effort,” VandeHei said.

Also, this:

Politico reporter Daniel Libit sends me this query:

Working on a story with another reporter about the increasing similarity between Barack Obama’s policies and Hillary Clinton’s primary platform and whether Democrats might have viewed the primary differently if they knew then what they know now. Would love to get your thoughts on the state of buyer’s remorse. Might you be able to send me something before day’s out?

There are two types of stories: those written following hours (if not weeks) of cold calls and talking to sources on background (which is occasionally referred to as "reporting") and those with narratives dreamed up while bullshitting in an editor's office in the desperate hours before an impending deadline. Libit's piece would be the latter. It's also Politico's pièce de résistance. Which is apparently Pulitzer material.

Sometimes I miss journalism. Then I read something like this.

Flathead

This isn't exactly surprising, but still troubled me coming from the Big Dog:

Tom Friedman is our most gifted journalist at actually looking at what is happening in the world and figuring out its relevance to tomorrow and figuring out a clever way to say it that sticks in your mind-like “real men raise the gas tax.”

Here's partly why:

Friedman is a person who not only speaks in malapropisms, he also hears malapropisms. Told level; heard flat. This is the intellectual version of Far Out Space Nuts, when NASA repairman Bob Denver sets a whole sitcom in motion by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" in a space capsule. And once he hits that button, the rocket takes off.

Apparently Bill Clinton likes his thinkers to be entrenched in 1990s global corporate navel-gazing. Heh. No surprise there. Tom Friedman is the archetype of the lazy, first person narrative. His columns often rotate around someone Friedman had lunch with in a far off city who said something terribly obvious. He's the Mustache Spice of journalism prose. Worse still, his ideas aren't particularly new, enlightening or provocative. But, hey powerful people read him. So, uh, I guess Friedman could just tell me to suck on this.

Republican Race Relations Update

Xenophobic conservative is the new black:

And this brings up the question of whether "teabagger" could be kind of a conservative N-word: to be used in the family, but radioactive outside the family.

It's pretty easy to envision George Will and David Brooks greeting each other with some dap and a "sup, Teabagga."

Morons.

Spin Me Right Round

Good to see Chris Matthews stepping up and admitting it was obnoxious and stupid to say Obama gave his Afghanistan speech at West Point to the "enemy camp." On Tuesday night Matthews wondered aloud why there wasn't more pompom waiving from military cadets; a comment so stupid I had to remind myself to breath. But the larger issue is that Matthews feels free to parrot Republican talking points and assume the military is a "skeptical audience" when a Democrat is commander in chief. Beyond empty Rovian rhetoric there isn't much in the way of evidence except, well, this:

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain.

I realize that's just a snap shot. But it's the most recent snap shot. And it indicates Matthews wasn't just an ass. He was flat out wrong.

And as long as we're on Afghanistan, I need to make a few broader points. After Obama's speech, Dan Senor, former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and general war fanboy, said with a touch of glee: “If you had told me Obama would have doubled the number of troops in Afghan and not significantly reduced our presence in Iraq, I would have had a hard time believing it.” Throw that together with Bill Kristol's ebullient reaction and it's enough to ask how different our Middle East policy is today than it would have been under a third Bush term.

Now, the fundamental problem I have with Obama's Afghanistan plan is that a) there is no achievable mission (other than temporarily delaying a Taliban resurgence) and b) the initial objective of kicking out al Qaeda has morphed (predictably) into reinventing Afghanistan as a “modern state.” That gets us back to Colin Powell's Pottery Barn maxim on invading Iraq: we broke it, now we own it. And if we're to learn anything from history it's that nation-building is a fool’s errand. The idea that Afghans will be ready to assume control of the country in 18 months would be hilarious if it wasn't the actual stated policy goal. The upshot is that Obama's plan has almost no chance of fundamentally changing the country's long-term prospects. I suppose one could argue that's better than a zero chance. And so in an effort to pacify the military and the GOP, Obama is sending in more troops while using the time line for withdrawal to appease his own party and foreign allies, who wouldn't sign on for an indefinite occupation.

As for the GOP's sad attempts to paint Obama as soft, it's Obama who is doubling the troop levels in Afghanistan while the right neglected the country for years. Earlier this week Dick Cheney attacked Obama’s "weakness" for ordering more troops into Afghanistan—despite being presented with the same request from Gen. David D. McKiernan a year earlier and leaving the decision to be made by the next administration. More worrisome is that the GOP establishment thought we had Afghanistan taken care of years ago. In 2005, John McCain declared victory when he said: “The facts on the ground are we went to Afghanistan and we prevailed there.” It was assumed Afghanistan had been locked down. It wasn't. What confidence should we have that this time will be any different?

Serenity Now

One of the big story lines following Obama's trip to China is less about reality-based foreign policy concerns with America's Sugar Daddy and more the systemic failings of the Washington press corps. Former New York Times Shanghai bureau chief Howard French explains: “There’s a growing reflex of instant punditry and reflexive reaction that works counter to more meaningful analysis. We’re in a state where we’re very often privileging the gut or the knee, as in knee-jerk, rather than thinking more meaningfully about things.”

Scott Horton goes further:

The result is reporting on foreign relations issues that is a dullard’s replay of the last presidential campaign. The trivial is magnified beyond all significance, and the core issues are often simply missed. The coverage of the Obama trip to China was a textbook demonstration.

Moving away from China, it stands to reason that the 24 hour news cycle and rise of blogs are the central catalyst in the increasingly angry and myopic rhetoric coming from the right. Sure, there's crazy-eyed resentment that a black guy is reshaping a sixth of the economy. But the Republican spin machine's focus on the outrage of the day--if not the hour--creates an increasingly toxic environment. There's a common lament among Democrats that the GOP is simply better at the spin war. And I think that admission goes a long way in explaining the media's reflexive adherence to GOP talking points: the Washington press corps is in search of an outrage and the GOP is readily willing to give them one. That we spent more time talking about Obama bowing before foreign dignitaries than we did on the White House's success at expanding our relationship with China while furthering cooperation on clean energy and climate change, cleanly underscores that point.