Author: terencef

Super-Kaput

The dysfunction of the American government has never been so transparent.

With the so-called Super-Committee kaput, more market instability looming and the distinct possibility of another recession, the absolute inability of Washington to solve the nation’s fiscal problems is inescapable.

The task was not that difficult: cut $1.2 trillion out of the budget over the next 10 years to begin to reduce the $15 trillion national debt. The common-sense answer was obvious to ordinary Americans: trim entitlements slightly and increase tax revenues modestly. Combine that with an extension of the payroll tax cut and the soon-to-expire unemployment benefits and there is a good chance the recovery will accelerate. Repeal the senseless Bush tax cuts on the wealthy and the economy could step on the pedal.

But the Super-Committee proved to be no more able to do that than the divided and dysfunctional Congress as a whole. So the blame-game has begun, with plenty to go around. It is a favorite sport in Washington, Capitol Hill’s Thanksgiving gift to the nation. As predictable as a Redskins defeat.

The public will surely spread the blame, charging both parties with the failure, as well as the executive branch. As it should. The Republicans are likely to get the lion’s share and pay the heavier price, but the Democrats, especially the so-called leadership, will pay as well. As it should.

President Obama will not escape this latest debacle. He may have been off in Asia reasserting the U.S. role in that region, but he wasn’t far enough away from the disaster in D.C. to avoid his share of the responsibility. The painful reality of the President’s current situation is that he has a plan: a jobs bill, proposals for an infrastructure bank, tax reform, etc. , that would surely help, but he lacks the political chops to get it enacted. So, ill-served by a weak staff, he fritters around the edges of the problem. His base sticks with him, but the independents he needs to get re-elected are drifting away.

Nonetheless, from the Las Vegas bookmaker’s point of view, he remains the odds-on favorite to be re-elected. Why? The disarray in the Republican field, mainly, and the growing sense among voters that divided government is part of the problem, not the solution. It is inescapably clear that in our system, as it functions today, real progress can only be made when one party or the other controls the White House and Congress.

It is up to be the public to decide which party should be in control. The voters need to give that party the political clout to pursue a solution. If the public doesn’t like the result, they can change it in the next election.

But at least there could be movement, instead of gridlock.

TERENCE SMITH IS A JOURNALIST. HIS WEBSITE IS terencefsmith.com

My Republican Friends

My Republican Friends…

…are embarrassed by the field and the foibles of the current crop of Republican candidates for the party’s presidential nomination.

My Republican friends — and I do have them — are past patience with the Hermanator, who can’t seem to recall the difference between Libya and other Arab states, what he is for and what he is against. All he knows is that whatever President Obama did with that country, wherever it is, was wrong, and The Herman would have done better. His brain freeze with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is only the latest evidence of his lack of preparation and credentials for the top job. Never mind the sexual harassment accusations, serious as they may be. The Presidency is not a starter job in politics, with the notable exception of Dwight Eisenhower.

My Republican friends have taken to laughing, bitterly, about Rick Perry. Not only his erratic performance in New Hampshire, not only his inability to remember the third federal department he wants to eliminate (he need only have referred to his own stump speech for a clue.) It is the whole Perry package: the walk, the talk, the hair, the Texas twang, the whole deal. That dog won’t hunt, as they like to say in Austin, not after W, and my Republican friends know it.

My Republican friends have already dismissed Rick and Ron and Michelle and Sarah and when I ask them about Newt, they tend to sigh. “Ah, Newt,” they say, “so bright, so gifted, but no, we can’t have Newt, not after the checkered marital history, the questionable money-making schemes.” Sadly, they say, Newt’s too old, his moment is past. Newt, we hardly knew ye. Jon Huntsman? Terrific guy, really knows his foreign policy, great daughters, why doesn’t anyone notice him? David Petraeus? Now, there is a general! A regular Ike. But is he even a Republican? Anyway, he just got a new job, for Obama, of all people, and its too late to start in Iowa, with the caucuses just a couple of months away.

My Republican friends then turn to Mitt. They just look blank for a moment. Well, yes, of course, there’s Mitt (there’s always, Mitt, or at least it seems that way.) Fine guy, great family, did a hellova job with the Olympics. The Massachusetts thing? Well, he was just doing what he had to do to govern that hopelessly blue state. We can count on Mitt to do the right thing, or at least the thing he needs to do to get nominated. “He’s our guy,” my Republican friends say. “He’ll be great.

“Won’t he?”

TERENCE SMITH is a journalist. His website is terencefsmith.com

NEWT’S MOMENT

NEWT’S MOMENT

Fair warning: my record as a political prognosticator is checkered, to say the least.

I established my credentials in 1980 by declaring on live television in the midst of the lopsided Presidential race that…”The American people are not going to elect a failed, B-movie actor to the highest office in the land.”

Since then, I’ve been wrong more often than right.

That said, I have a sense now that the current, confused state of the Republican race is opening an opportunity for Newt Gingrich to move up in the polls. By contrast with the others, he seems confident and experienced in the debates, with his sense of humor intact. I still expect Mitt Romney to bore the Republican electorate into the conclusion that he is their best prospect to defeat President Obama in the general election. He’ll get the nomination eventually, but Newt has a moment here, an opportunity to move up from the second tier of candidates, a chance to be viewed as adult among children.

Why?

Because the others are all self-destructing, each in their own distinctive fashion. Can you still spell Tim Pawlenty? Do you still take Michelle Bachman seriously? Can Rick Perry ever be seen as more than a Texas cartoon, all hat and swagger, no cattle? Will Ron Paul ever be a double-digit candidate? Can Jon Huntsman ever gain traction? Why is Rick Santorum still in the race? What is Herman Cain thinking? I think you know the answers.

So that opens the avenue for Newt to move ahead. The Hermanator’s problems are his opportunity. To be sure, Gingrich has his own well-documented capacity for self-destruction. He talks faster than he thinks and often gets in trouble. He certainly has had his own, highly publicized marital history. And he is probably too old to get the votes of many younger voters.

But he has been around the block more than once and it shows in his confident responses in the debates. He won’t likely be the nominee by next spring, much less President, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Republican race become a Romney-Gingrich contest, with Mitt eventually getting the nod.

Remember, you read it here, from the same sage that forecast the 1980 race so accurately.

TERENCE SMITH is a journalist. His website is Terencefsmith.com

SHEER FOLLY

I took a break from the endless debt-ceiling debate over the weekend.

We attended a wedding in Massachusetts, stopped by the wonderful FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park on the way back to Washington and even dug into some family roots around Morristown, NJ. Five days on the road, mostly away from television news and the back-and-forth between Obama and Boehner. It was a relief, frankly.

I fully expected that the crisis would be history by the time I returned last night. But no, the President and the Republican leaders in Congress are still standing firm and the clock is ticking more loudly as default approaches.

What are they thinking?

Politically, this standoff is a loser for both sides. Pubic confidence in that fictional monolith, “Washington, ” has never been lower. Of course the markets are nervous, the dollar is falling and gold is adding value every day.

What are they thinking?

It is sheer folly to believe that voters will reward one side or the other.. All the public opinion surveys show that Americans want a solution that avoids a destructive default, even with a compromise that involves tax increases or spending cuts that they might not fully support. The message to Congress and the President is clear: “Get it done.”

What are they thinking?

Instead, “compromise” has become a dirty word, a sign of political weakness, at least in the minds of those being asked to accommodate. Can they really believe they will be applauded for standing firm? Politically, it seems suicidal.

Never in the 40 years that I have been writing about Washington has the atmosphere been so poisonous, the language so bitter, the vision so blinkered, the concern for the national good so — dare I say it? — compromised. I recognize that the debt and deficit are important issues. Not nearly as important as jobs and the economy, but significant for the much-advertised “full faith and credit” of the United States.

It seems like sheer folly to diddle with dollar. The most creative idea I read over the weekend was to do away with the debt ceiling altogether. There is no requirement in the constitution that we impose one. Many nations do well without one. But that idea is not on the table.

What are they thinking?

TERENCE SMITH is a journalist. His website is terencefsmith.com

Lose-Lose

LOSE-LOSE

There was no way that President Obama could win with his speech last night on Afghanistan.

His compromise drawdown–10,000 U.S. troops by the end of the year, 23,000 more by the end of next summer– was bound to disappoint the McCain School, the military men who want to keep as many boots on the ground as possible, and the Biden School, which wants to sharply reduce the U.S. footprint in favor of targeted, counter-terrorist strikes. The first group wanted a nominal, 3,000-5,000 troop withdrawal over time, the second a major, swift, pullout.

Obama himself may even have been disappointed, since he knows that the 10-year-old Afghanistan war is now inescapably his war.

“Tonight, “ the President said from the East Room, “we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding.” His lack of conviction as he delivered that statement was revealing. He must know that under the long goodbye he articulated last night, it will be a very long war indeed.

The President may also privately believe, as so many do, that our Afghanistan adventure is a fool’s errand. He surely recognizes that the outcome will be a disappointment to all sides, most especially the Afghan people. And yet, after a serious, thoughtful, three-month policy review last year, he concluded that he had no choice but to soldier on. Hence, the surge.

He also realizes that even after the withdrawals announced last night, the U.S. will have 70,000 troops in Afghanistan and nearly 100,000 contractors (soldiers-for-hire) in country and involved in an on-going struggle between Afghan factions with no end in sight. No surprise that the President’s demeanor was subdued and serious.

He also knows that the cost, estimated at $10 billion a month, is ruinous. Gamely, he spoke of increasing investment in America’s crumbling infrastructure and creating green energy projects that could lift the economy. But even as he spoke, it was painfully obvious that the country cannot afford guns and butter, not in this economy, not with this debt. Even the Tea Party School has reached that conclusion.

The irony is that this President is the same person who as Candidate Obama, campaigned against the unnecessary, unjustified war in Iraq and was elected on a promise to bring those troops home. He is fulfilling that promise, but replacing one quagmire with another.

TWO GOOD COLUMNS

Two of the best columnists writing in America today have written excellent pieces in recent days that caught my eye. The first was by Tom Friedman in the NYT in the wake of Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the second is Eugene Robinson’s piece in today’s Washington Post on the futility of the war in Afghanistan.

Friedman’s point was that the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is moribund because the respective leaders, Netanyahu and Abbas,  are stuck in the past. Each is recycling tired old demands and preconditions that effectively stall any progress towards a solution. Totally true.  Neither has had an original idea in years and both are playing to their respective constituencies. CYA politics, Mideast-version.

No wonder George Mitchell resigned as Obama’s envoy.  He had the patience to hammer at the Northern Ireland problem for six years until both sides agreed to the Good Friday Accord. But two years of beating his head against the Israeli-Palestinian intransigence was enough.  No surprise.

Eugene Robinson’s column today, “Declare Victory — and Go,” is an eloquent appeal to common sense.  “What on earth are we doing?” in Afghanistan, he asks.  “We have more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan risking life and limb, at a cost of $10 billion a month, to pursue ill-defined goals whose achievement” can only barely be imagined.

“We wanted to depose the Taliban regime, and we did,” he writes. “We wanted to install a new government that answers to its constituents at the polls, and we did.  We wanted to smash al-Qaeda’s infrastructure of training camps and havens, and we did. We wanted to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, and we did.”

“The threat from Afghanistan is gone,” he concludes, “bring the troops home.”

That is so clearly the right course of action that it is strange that the Obama Administration does not adopt it immediately.

THE ANSWER IS NO

On Meet The Press this morning, host David Gregory hammered away at the same question over and over to all his guests.

“Is it in America’s vital national interest that Gaddafi go? he demanded repeatedly of guests as diverse as White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley and the demagogic Tea Party Queen, Rep. Michelle Bachmann. He put the same query to commentators David Brooks and Eugene Robinson.

Interestingly, none of them, not even Michelle Bachmann, took the bait.

Eugene Robinson came the closest to saying yes by conceding rhetorically that you could make that argument, but would then have to answer the more difficult question: what do we do about it?

The answer, David, is no, not on your life. An alternative answer is “Hell,no.”

Gaddafi’s Libya is an important oil producer, but not so important that a cutoff of Libyan oil would trigger an oil shortage by itself. Libya’s military might is a factor, but does not affect the larger balance of power in the region, much less the world. Under pressure, Gaddafi has dismantled his weapons of mass destruction, so he is not going to serve as a conduit to Al Qaida or other rogue groups.

The removal of Gaddifi and his murderous regime, no matter how desirable, does not rise to the status of a “vital national interest” of the United States.

Remember, please, that President George W. Bush used that argument in late 2002 and early 2003 to justify the invasion of Iraq. His specific formulation was that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq threatened the national security of the United States. It didn’t, of course. But Congress, and the media, essentially accepted that proposition and allowed that needless war to proceed.

Perhaps that is why none of David Gregory’s guests answered yes to his question. Michelle Bachmann must have been tempted, because it offered another opportunity to criticize President Obama, but even she held back. Perhaps even she can recognize the madness of getting the United States involved in another military adventure against an Arab nation.

Bill Daley gave the right answer. He said it was in the national interest of the Libyan people to get rid of Gaddafi. It is first and foremost a Libyan problem, he implied. Let’s not lose sight of that. David Brooks made a valid point that President Obama, having called for Gaddafi to step down, having applied sanctions in an effort to undercut him, now needs to stress the U.S. commitment to democracy and peaceful change. Fair enough, but that is a far cry from sending in the Marines.

Whatever the United States does to hasten Gaddafi’s much-to-be-desired departure, it should do so multi-laterally, with United Nations endorsement and NATO cooperation and carefully. The Libyan revolt is one act in a larger drama, one that is taking place across the entire Arab world.

It is a “vital national interest” that we not blunder into another misadventure in the desert.

No Cheering in the Press Box, Please

Here we go again.

These days, the mainstream media are openly cheerleading for the rebel forces in Libya. Before that, they were in love with the demonstrators who occupied Pearl Square in Bahrain. And before that, the protesters who brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak. And even before that, the crowds who sent Tunisia’s Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali packing.

Forgive me, but I’m gagging at all the gushing.

Without defending any of the Middle East’s more despotic rulers, is it too much to ask for a little straight reporting? Journalists tend to fall in love with a good story, and the revolution sweeping the Arab world is a great story. But openly taking sides, which is what has happened repeatedly in recent weeks, diminishes the reporting and the reporters.

It’s a familiar phenomenon, a kind of journalistic puppy love with arresting images and appealing characters. They have been in abundance in the Arab revolt, from the vendor who set off the Tunisian tumult to the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo, to the 70-something American woman defending her apartment with her rolling pin and big knife.

NBC’s normally professional Brian Williams and the estimable Richard Engel were positively giddy as they larked through Tahrir Square among the protesters. It was a party, a picnic, a love-in. Most of all, it was Great TV.

When it was learned that CBS’s Lara Logan had been stripped and sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square, the pro-democracy forces didn’t seem quite so admirable. But by then, Mubarak was gone and the camera’s eye had shifted to Bahrain’s Pearl Square. Then it was on to Yemen, briefly back to Tunisia, and then, suddenly, to a new story: Libya! Tobruk had been liberated, now Benghazi! Tripoli must be next! Gaddafi can’t last long.

But now Gaddafi is fighting back and what seemed at first to be an irresistible popular revolt is turning into a grinding civil war. It is going to take a while before this story plays out. And even longer to see what develops in Egypt.

Extraordinary winds of change are blowing through the Arab world. Sclerotic regimes are collapsing. It is huge news, so let’s treat it with the professionalism and independence a truly monumental event deserves.

No cheering in the press box, please.

OBAMA IN THE CROSSHAIRS

OBAMA IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Barack Obama is getting hell from the left and the right for his handling of the people’s revolution in Egypt.

Critics on the left, like Niall Ferguson, in a new column in Newsweek today, argue that the President should have pulled the rug from beneath Hosni Mubarak and openly aligned the U.S. with the protesters in Tahrir Square from the outset.

Critics on the right, like Glen Beck and others, chastise Obama for failing to publicly support our “ally” Mubarak .

Since Obama did neither, Obama’s performance is being dubbed a “foreign policy debacle” and a “colossal failure.”

Wrong, on both counts.

This was a case, not uncommon in diplomacy, where ambiguity was the highest and best use of the bully pulpit. If the President had come down decisively in favor of the protesters, it would have pushed Mubarak out all the more quickly. But it would also have given the revolution a “Made in America” label and stripped it of its legitimacy.

Instead, the President spoke repeatedly of the need for an orderly transition that would accommodate the legitimate desires of the protesters and all Egyptians. Going forward, he should do exactly the same thing. Rather than endorse this candidate over that, or even this general over that general, the Administration should stick to the principles of democracy and openness and equality.

If the U.S. adopts and stays with that posture there is a chance — just a chance — that this extraordinary, grass-roots revolution will result in elections and a democratic government later this year. It is crucial that the outcome be seen as the choice of the Egyptian people, not that of Washington-based foreign policy commentators from the left or the right.

EGYPT AT THE CROSSROADS

EGYPTIAN PATIENCE WEARS THIN

“We are a river country,” an Egyptian friend once told me when I marveled at his country’s patience with corrupt, incompetent and repressive regimes. “We go on and on.”

Perhaps. But that legendary patience with the bumbling but stubborn, 82-year-old President Mubarak seems to be wearing out.  Change is coming to Egypt, either very soon or shortly thereafter. And what happens in Egypt matters, to Egyptians, of course, but also to the U.S., Israel and the entire Arab world.

Diminished as it may be today, Egypt remains the centerpiece of the Arab world. With its population of 80 million, it is not only the largest Arab country. It is historically, culturally and intellectually the heart of the Arab crescent from Morocco to Lebanon. An old saying in the region is that there can be no peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors without Syria, and no war without Egypt. It is still true today. No surprise that President Obama chose Cairo for his first major speech on relations between the U.S. and the Arab and Muslim world.

But now Obama confronts the ticklish task of encouraging change in Egypt without seeming to abandon the Mubarak government .  Egypt has served as a crucial counterweight to Syria and Iran. It has received tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S. aid over the years and carved out a cold but diplomatically important peace with Israel. As Egypt goes, so go Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The stakes are enormous.