Brian Beutler

Hastert's last hurrah

Whereas Michael Gerson waited till it was too late to do anything meaningful RE: climate change, Dennis Hastert's at least saying that, after years of obstructionism, he'll get on board with Pelosi as a capstone to his career. I guess I'll believe it when I see it. And if I see it, I'll try to be happy for the support and contain my anger about the fact that it took this degree of lame-duckery to bring him around.

Gerson for cap and trade?

Readers probably know that I think a pundit's ideas are only influential inasmuch as they're useful to people who actually control stuff. Thomas Friedman, for instance, is the brunt of heaps of opprobrium for being "an influential pundit" who supported the Iraq war even as his consistent writings on the need for a green revolution fail to make a dent in national policy.

People with high positions and a great deal of respect inside the White House, on the other hand, are much better placed to change things. At least in theory. In practice, of course, they say nothing at all while they're actually inside the White House and wait instead until they retire to the punditocracy before breaking with the line.

Rove the anti-renaissance man

Read Harold for another good take on the end of Rove. Here particularly:

At bottom, he and Bush overlooked the epochal growth of economic insecurity in America. They refused to see that the very economic changes they celebrated had made Americans understandably nervous and pessimistic to an unprecedented extent about the nation's long-term economic prospects. And so, as employers were abandoning their provision of retirement benefits to employees, Bush and Rove called for abandoning the government's commitment as well. At a time when ordinary Americans' incomes were stagnating, and when growing numbers of Americans understood that they were in some nebulous competition with millions of lower-paid workers in other lands that the government seemed powerless to mitigate, Bush and Rove proposed legalizing the undocumented immigrants who had flowed across the border.

Could there have been a more profound misreading of the American temper?

Indeed it seems unlikely. At the same time, I see Rove's demise as yet another predictable example of what happens when a crony--in this case a fairly smart crony with at least one identifiable skill--is elevated into a position of power for which he has no training and, as a crony, has no real desire to carry out the true demands of his position. Rove was perhaps a masterful electoral tactician and deeply loyal to President Bush. But he knew as much about domestic policy as Michael Brown knew about Emergency Management, or as Elaine Chow knows about labor, or as Harriet Miers knows about constitutional law. He got his appointment, like so many others, because he understood that his function was less to design domestic policy than to use his power to advance the interests of powerful people and, he thought, to secure the future of the Republican party. That he seemingly didn't realize that his diktats translated into real-world hardships for millions of people--Republican voters among them--is precisely why he'll be on his way to Texas in ignominy a couple weeks from now.

Banal observation of the day

When the op-ed writers for the New York Times take the day off, it's hard to write a morning round-up the night before. Especially when they're Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman.

Where do we go from here?

When we're in a "war on terrorism" and we label another country's army a terrorist group, then we're reaching the limits of escalating rhetoric

The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran's nuclear program, officials said.

Moreover, if Bush's policy remains an unwillingness to distinguish between terrorists and the countries that harbor them, then he's all but compelled to strike. There's obviously no coherence here. It's completely insane. But for the reasonable people out there--journalists, bloggers, etc.--who are not insane and who can't fathom that we're moving in this direction, it's not your hawkish colleagues who are in control of our government. It's still the Bush administration.

Off to do stuff

Vancouver calls. It's a really beautiful city. You should all check it out. Friends, readers, those with bigger blogs than mine, if you'd like to kick a link my way, I won't complain.

When you have a hammer

Every problem looks like a nail:

In DefenseNews (subscription required), Maj Gen Charles Dunlap (AF Deputy Judge Advocate General) has this flash of inspiration on how the Air Force can contribute to the Global War on Terror using its overwhelming air power. Since we know that Iran is funding and supplying the Shi'ia insurgents in Iraq, we need to bring the fight to Iran.

Pop psychology

When a David Brooks column starts like this, "Last Saturday evening, I found myself at the counter of a truck stop diner in Caroline County, Va. I was sitting next to a weathered trucker whose accent betrayed an East Texas upbringing and a lifetime devoted to tobacco products," you can be fairly certain you're about to learn a profound lesson about the soul of America.

Today's lesson: Not all social and economic classes value wealth and prestige to the same extent as David Brooks and his media colleagues presumably do. There it is.

Fighting back

Duncan:

The most fun the Democrats had in this entire decade is when they stood firm on Social Security, not only refusing to support some version of the non-existent Bush plan, but also refusing to put up an "alternative" so that some middle ground compromise could be found which was 90% what the president wanted. They defied the pundits, they stood together, they beat Bush and the Republicans.... [K]illing Social Security wasn't just a plan to kill Social Security, it was a key part of the plan to destroy Democrats. Miraculously, they didn't let themselves be destroyed. Sadly, they seem to have forgotten how fun that was.

Notwithstanding the facts that Social Security is incredibly popular and that can't be easily tied to national security and that Bill Frist was a uniquely dim Republican leader, this is true. Democrats need to be prepared for harder fights than Social Security.

St. Giuliani

On the one hand good for Rudy Giuliani for trying to prevent his personal religious faith from becoming an issue in the campaign. In a long-term sense I think this is important.

On the other, bigger hand, I don't think deeply devout people like Obama and Edwards would dodge that question and I would vastly prefer either of them as the next president over Giuliani, whose secularism makes him no less alarming candidate than he would be if he was as religious as candidates are expected to be.