58 And Counting

November 18, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Obama administration, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

From Alaska tonight comes word that with all but a handful of ballots counted Mark Begich appears to have defeated Sen. Ted Stevens by less than a percentage point.  Thus ends Stevens’ 40 years in the Senate, the longest period served by a Republican, which saw him usually re-elected by large majorities but concluded with his felony conviction and the threat of expulsion from the chamber (now a moot point, it would seem).

And so the Democrats, counting independent Sens. Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman (who was today reprimanded, after a fashion, for campaigning with Sen. John McCain, but kept his committee chairmanship), have 58 votes.  Two remain to achieve a filibuster-proof majority and bring about the rebirth of the Great Society, the New Deal redux, or at least a second wind for the New Frontier.  (And if the Dems come up one short, is anyone up for the return of the New Foundation? For an explanation Google “Jimmy Carter,” “1979,” and “State Of The Union.”)

In Minnesota, the minions of Al Franken, somewhere between St. Cloud and Hibbing, perhaps carefully cradle the box numbered 13, which contains several hundred ballots cast by Mia L. Frankin,  M. E. Alfranken,  etc, as well as the dreaded deleted scenes from Stuart Saves His Family. In Georgia, during the next few weeks until Saxbe Chambliss faces a runoff vote, we’ll see an avalanche of ads and a lot of crossed fingers as Democratic bigwigs from Macon to Athens, and up in Washington, hope that GOP voters are just too exhausted and dispirited to show up at the polls.

And, meanwhile, the question lingers: will Sen. Hillary Clinton go to Foggy Bottom or stay put? Today came some vague reports that the junior senator from New York might decline the chance.  I’m inclined to think she’ll remain where she is.  William Jennings Bryan comes to mind.  It was unlikely that the “Boy Orator of the Platte” would be renominated after he lost his third presidential run in 1908, but when Woodrow Wilson made him Secretary of State in 1913, it was a signal that at the age of 53 he had risen to the status of Statesman and left the cares and travails of electoral politics behind.  I doubt Hillary wants to run a similar risk.

An Encouraging Word From The Widening Gyre

November 17, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress | Leave a Comment 

The center may hold after all. According to “Huffington Post,” Sen. Lieberman is expected to keep most of his privileges after the Democratic caucus meets tomorrow. The reason: The President-elect wants it that way, plus Lieberman evidently threatened he might caucus with the GOP. Republicans would be lucky to get him. But it’s also good news that sanity may prevail in the majority.

Bush Angry….Bush Bartering?

November 11, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration, Congress, Economic issues, International Affairs, Obama administration | 2 Comments 

Drudge is reporting Bush Administration officials are angry that Pres.-elect Obama leaked details about their White House meeting yesterday, violating a long-standing tradition of honoring private conversations during Presidential transition. Sources close to the situation reportedly claim that the two disagreed over a Detroit bailout. As I wrote yesterday, The Obama Team and Democrat Congressional leaders are urging Bush to sign an additional stimulus package in order to receive cover from a union-backed, but very unpopular measure.

Pres. Bush is no dummy, especially since the International Herald Tribune is reporting that he might just hold out for a deal that would revive a Colombia free trade deal that Congress killed earlier this year. A treaty which Obama repudiated in his third debate with Sen. McCain this October because of outstanding security guarantees for labor leaders, potentially dangerous political actors who have revolutionary roots in the FARC.

Gingrich Misconstrued

November 11, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Adam Nagourney’s whither-the-GOP article in today’s New York Times contains this odd paragraph:

But Mr. Gingrich, a veteran of what turned out to be damaging Republican wars with President Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1994, cautioned against that, saying the party would be wiser to offer a broad idea of what it stood for and how it would lead the country, and pick its battles carefully.

Whatever Newt Gingrich said, I’m pretty sure he didn’t caution Republicans against winning the House back in the next midterm election, as they did under his leadership in November 1994.

Covering Detroit and Ourselves

November 10, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Congress, Economic issues, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Barack Obama will be visiting the White House today, among other items, it is reported that the Pres. elect will ask the President if he will support a 5 billion dollar bailout package for the automotive industry. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to the White House demanding relief funds under TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), the same relief package that includes the Wall Street banks implicit in the current sub-prime crisis. Another bailout package, especially to subsidize the inefficiency of the poorly managed and labor hampered industry, is likely to draw ire from the American people. Which is why, like the elimination of secret union ballots, they want to set it on the Oval Office Desk before it becomes Pres. Obama’s.

From the WSJ:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met last week with company and union officials, and they later sent a letter urging Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to bestow cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp) on the companies. Barack Obama implied at his Friday press conference that he too favors some kind of taxpayer rescue of Detroit, though no doubt he’d like to have President Bush’s signature on the check so he won’t have to take full political responsibility.

We hope Messrs. Bush and Paulson just say no. The Tarp was intended to save the financial system from collapse, not to be a honey pot for any industry running short of cash. The financial panic has hit Detroit hard, but its problems go back decades and are far deeper than reduced access to credit among car buyers. As a political matter, the Bush Administration is also long past the point where it might get any credit for helping Detroit. But it will earn the scorn of taxpayers if it refuses to set some limits on access to the Tarp. If Democrats want to change the rules next year, let them do it on their own political dime.

Rebuilding Conservativism

November 5, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Congress | 2 Comments 

The first step: elect Eric Cantor as Republican whip.

Which Dream Job?

November 5, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Election 2008, Obama administration | 1 Comment 

Barack Obama wants Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) as his White House Chief of Staff. While he mulls his decision, he might want to be patient and wait it out for another dream job. With only three House Representatives in front of him, all in there late sixties (Reps Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn), Rep. Emanuel would — in due time — take the reigns as Speaker of the House.

Then We Came To The End

November 3, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, International Affairs, Iran, National Security, Public Opinion, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

The title (itself borrowed from the opening words of Don DeLillo’s Americana) of Joshua Ferris’s much-acclaimed debut novel, set in a Chicago ad agency staggering through the end of the 1990s boom, seems to fit the national mood today.  After eight furious weeks of nonstop TV ads (especially those funded from the seemingly bottomless coffers of Sen. Barack Obama’s organization) and innumerable words and images and charges and countercharges, the 2008 presidential race reaches its conclusion tomorrow when all those who are registered and have not taken advantage of early voting (ie, most of the country) cast their ballots. 

(That is to say, the election will hopefully reach its conclusion tomorrow. A situation in which Sen. Barack Obama receives a majority of the popular vote, by however thin a margin, and Sen. John McCain prevails in the electoral college by a few votes would be a nerve-wracking one indeed.  And if only nerves were shattered, that would be the best-case scenario.)

As Americans get ready to vote, McCain’s campaign is focusing increasingly on Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and stressing one final point: that Obama, in an interview some time ago, spoke in terms that seem to indicate that his planned campaign against global warming would entail a scaling-down of coal production, the backbone of the economy in much of western and northeastern Pennsylvania, southwestern Virginia, and parts of eastern Ohio.  If McCain can get these three states, he just might prevail even without Florida and Missouri.  If Obama can hold them and make inroads into the South (as in North Carolina), the White House is his.

McCain’s campaign has also emphasized Obama’s remarks in a 2001 interview on a Chicago public-radio station in which he spoke of the courts as being a less than ideal forum to pursue “redistribution.”  Did he mean that word in a strictly legal sense of Federal court decisions which “redistributed” civil liberties and social equality to minorities and women, or in an economic sense? The overall context of the interview suggests the former, and to judge from the poll data, the argument hasn’t produced much traction in the electorate.  McCain’s introduction of Joe the Plumber into the political discourse helped tighten the margin between him and Obama, but in recent days the GOP candidate has been unable to narrow the margin beyond the five or six points shown in most surveys.

It may be that the most powerful argument the McCain campaign has now concerns Sen. Joe Biden’s closed-door prediction some weeks ago that Obama, like John F. Kennedy, would be tested in the foreign-policy field, in a big way, very early in his presidency.  Kennedy’s response to events such as the Bay of Pigs and the construction of the Berlin Wall was far from decisive, and this led into the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Biden’s implication, seemingly, was that with the assistance of a foreign-policy expert like himself Obama could display strong leadership and make the right decisions.  But there’s a big difference between talking foreign policy in the Senate and actually making it on the executive level.  Would an Obama-appointed team, headed by Biden and (as sometimes mentioned) Bill Richardson as Secretary of State, adequately handle the challenges posed by Iran or North Korea or even Venezuela?

There’s also the question of what might happen with a Democratic President and the sort of Democratic majority that appears possible in both the House and the Senate after Tuesday.  The chances seem good that, with such a combination, this country would see an expansion of government intervention in everyday life - and, before too long, an increase in taxes - of a kind perhaps unprecedented in American history.  And it can hardly be overemphasized that an Obama presidency would result in the most liberal appointments to the Supreme Court in forty years, perhaps starting with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Are the voters ready to accept all these things as the price of change?  Stay tuned. 

Counting Noses In The Pews And The Senate

October 25, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Congress, Episcopal Church, Faith | 7 Comments 

From Julia Duin of the Washington Times, reacting to George Will’s recent superior-sounding column in celebration of former Episcopal bishop Robert Duncan, who left our church to get away from the homosexuals, more news about dwindling TEC attendance in the wake of the ordination of an openly gay bishop in 2003. Instead, Duin notes, people are flooding to Pentecostal churches (where they can enjoy being ridiculed not by Will but the New York Times).

As a priest and a vicar of a congregation, I find it a manifold blessing when people come to church. If TEC is making the wrong choices about giving gay and lesbian people a full life in the church, then it would be a shame to lose membership for that reason. But if the choices are correct, and people leave because of them, what does that say about us and them?

Either way, the numbers aren’t the issue. The issue is the most high God’s love and will for his people. Often enough in human affairs, justice isn’t necessarily on the side of the majority. After all, political conservatives, counting the smaller number of pews they are expected to retain in the chamber of the U.S. Senate after Nov. 4, are unlikely to give in to discouragement. Nor should TEC, if it’s sure it’s right.

Says a thoughtful letter to the editor writer in Pennsylvania,

Is it necessarily “evidence of spiritual vigor” when a diocese leaves the Episcopal Church, sincere as a departing bishop may be? Doesn’t it also take “spiritual vigor” to rise above dissension?

Those 650 bishops at the Lambeth Conference differed, often widely, in their views. Yet from reports of their meetings it seems they were able to discuss, and then set aside, their differences, and focus on prayer, meditation, and all that unites them as Anglicans.

Mr. Will says “The Episcopal Church… today… is ‘progressive’ politics cloaked — very thinly — in piety.” No church is perfect, of course, and our leaders can be as flawed as any others, religious or secular. But in the pews I see believers of various backgrounds, drawn together by a desire to seek God and live as much as possible in the spirit of Jesus. While fostering tradition and keeping core Christian doctrines (we say the Nicene Creed weekly), the Episcopal Church has room for various understandings of what the Christian life means for us today.

Some, though not all, of these understandings are new; and who is to say the Holy Spirit isn’t prompting them, on occasion? Didn’t a new understanding lead, for example, to the abolition of slavery?

The Black Helicopters Are Coming Again

October 25, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Congress, Culture, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

David Frum, who argues that the GOP should stop trying to win the White House and shift resources to preventing massive losses in the Senate and House. Why? Preservation of our freedom of speech, for one thing:

[T]he political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There’s a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC’s evening line-up — and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.

Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named “fairness doctrine”; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not.

Democrats Set To Rehabilitate Joe Lieberman

October 25, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Congress, Democratic Party | Leave a Comment 

“Salon,” Oct. 20: Should Democrats punish Sen. Lieberman for supporting Sen. McCain?

New York Times, Oct. 25: Lieberman may hold the keys to the kingdom. Democrats will say: Let’s not punish him and say we did:

A 60-vote majority would give Democrats the power to roll over Republican objections to legislation, executive nominations and judicial appointments, at least on paper.

But the number might not be the legislative panacea some envision.

One of those 60 would presumably be Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the independent who has backed Mr. McCain this year.

Congress’s New New Deal

October 14, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Congress, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

Martin Kady II talks about a permanent bureau to regulate capitalism:

Come next year, the new administration and the new Congress may be able to build an entire new bureaucracy to govern the economy for decades. Essentially, Democrats want to put some institutional permanence behind the sweeping executive actions taking place as the Bush administration moves to shore up banks and other financial institutions with Treasury’s new powers.

“This is the equivalent of what FDR had to do with the SEC — to regulate capitalism,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “A failure to regulate the economy appropriately is what led to this mess. … We need to do what we can to prevent it from happening again.”

Does this mean that Sen. Obama would be a new FDR?

Will the Trend Continue?

October 10, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, Faith, History, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Religion, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

With just a little more than three weeks to go before America goes to the polls to elect the next president, Barack Obama maintains a lead in the polls. To use a Richard Nixon phrase from election night in 1960, “if the trend continues…” he will be our next president. And he will most likely be working with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress.

But will the trend really continue? Can the momentum in this roller coaster race shift back to McCain? Might Obama be peaking too early?

The fact is, with all the dynamics of this historic political year – including recent economic developments - the election should really be over. The lights should be turned out. Oprah should have finished her final chorus by now.

Yet John McCain remains within striking distance, despite the fact that he is the candidate perceived as representing a very unpopular incumbency.

Why? Possibly it is because Americans are afraid, not only of what is happening on the road from Wall Street to Main Street, but of the idea of turning the reins of leadership over to an unproven neophyte.

Or maybe it has something to do with a growing reluctance to give one party the run of the place during chaotic times.

If Mr. Obama and a Democratic Congress are, in fact, elected, they will be well positioned to launch a top-down government-knows-best blitz of socio-politico activism. They would be able to reinvent America in their image – or at least try. This has only happened a couple of times in the past century: 1932 and 1964. And in those cases the government’s hegemony over all things individual grew exponentially. First, there was the New Deal; then there was the Great Society.

Any questions?

This is a theme John McCain should return to again and again between now and November 4th. He should ask Americans at every turn:

What do you think is better for the nation during these extraordinarily difficult days – one party in control – or a two-party system working in the best interests of the people?

Harry Truman campaigned, quite effectively in fact, in 1948 against the “do-nothing” 80th Congress. He seldom even mentioned the name of his opponent (the infamous Mr. Dewey) – not even calling him, “that one” – “the one” – or “that man.” But he did not mince words when it came to blasting the Republican Congress.

Harry was the original comeback kid.

Far from a “do-nothing” Congress, however, the looming 111th version promises to be a “do-everything-for-everyone” Congress. That is, unless there is someone in the White House with the courage to say “no” - a lot.

Everything we know about Barack Obama suggests that he would have a difficult time resisting a Democratic Capitol Hill. His tepid handling of certain associations (Ayers, Rev. Wright, etc.), suggests that he has difficulty being decisive and confrontational. It is very hard to imagine a scenario where Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi would be stonewalled.

One suspects that what he had to say about labor unions in his book, The Audacity of Hope, indicates how responsive he would be to political cronies:

I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way; I don’t mind feeling obligated.

“Feeling obligated” – the motto of an Obama White House.

The problem with a candidacy that promises everything is that it is hard to say no when pledges come home to roost. Possibly there will be a scene on election night, somewhere in the Obama suite at Hotel Change, reminiscent of the ending of the 1972 movie, The Candidate. Bill McKay, played by Robert Redford, a surprisingly successful aspirant for a U.S. Senate seat from California, takes a few of his staff into a room after learning he had won and asks: “What do we do now?”

Mario Cuomo used to talk about politics being “poetry,” with actual governing being “prose.” He was right. And Barack Obama is a pretty good poet. He can arrange words in a way that inspires audiences. When asked what the poet actually said, however, many misty-eyed hearers are at a loss to explain. It is that way with poetry, the trick is to figure out what the poet really meant. Some poets have stumped students for centuries.

John McCain can actually still win this thing. But he has to kick his campaign up several notches. It is time for an aggressive political fourth-quarter offensive, culminating in an energetic two-minute drill. He has to manage the clock, move quickly, and put the Obama campaign on the complete defensive.

One issue to seize is found in the answer Barack gave in the last debate on the issue of health insurance. He clearly said that he believed health care was a “right.” Really? Is a “right” something that is done for you, or something you are granted in general but must exercise yourself? He believes all of us have the right to have health care given to us. This is new ground.

What’s next? Is there a housing right? How about food? Thomas Jefferson wrote in The Declaration of Independence about our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On the last one, he borrowed from John Locke – “happiness” being a euphemism for property – the “pursuit of property,” in other words.

The key word back then was “pursuit.” Property was not conferred as a “right” – but we had the right to go for it.

Americans have always had a right to obtain health care, in the sense of not being legally prevented from having it. Whether it is accessible or affordable is, of course, another matter – and the pertinent issue. But calling it a “right” implies entitlement.

Mr. McCain should also, during these final three weeks of campaign 2008, rally the values voters on the right. As I listen to my “oldies” station in the car, I have heard many radio ads warning that John McCain wants to take away the “right to choose.” These ominous sounding words are always followed by the voice of Barack telling us he “approved this message.”

I often wonder what it would be like for someone to have been frozen in time, or castaway on some island, to come back and hear some of this. Right to “choose” what? Why don’t they finish the sentence? Why not just come out and say: “the right to choose to have an abortion?”

It is probably because of the effective audacity of deliberately incomplete mantras.

The facts are, that Barack Obama has consistently supported and voted for, not only abortion rights, but also some of extreme and abhorrent examples of the practice – including voting three times in the Illinois Legislature to thwart bills protecting the rights of clearly alive survivors of abortion. In the U.S. Senate he stood against a bill requiring parental notification if a minor had an abortion across state lines.

He has also intimated that early on in his presidency he would sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would not only re-legalize partial-birth abortion, but also lead to tax-payer funding.

And is there any doubt about what kind of jurist Mr. Obama would appoint to the Supreme Court? It is very likely that the next president will have a shot to replace a current liberal member of the nation’s highest court. In a chronically 5-4 court, the next appointment will define its direction for years to come.

Pro-life conservatives are very close to critical mass on the court – but that is only possible with a John McCain presidency. This is a vital thing for the current evangelical Diaspora to seriously consider before bailing on the Republicans this time around in favor of “change” they really can’t seriously believe in.

Rick Warren, who moderated the best debate of the year back in August, told the Wall Street Journal a while back that the notion that the evangelical vote is “up for grabs” and “over-hyped.” And he held up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart when asked about the “significance of the evangelical left.”

I hope so.

There is much talk about the Bradley Effect this year – the idea that polls may be deceiving and some will simply vote differently than they have been indicating to pollsters. The theory is that these votes will reveal a secret reluctance to vote for Obama because of his race.

Frankly, I do not think this will be much of a factor at all. I hope – and very much believe – that we are better than that as a nation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. longed for a day when a person would be judged, “not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.” Race is not a legitimate political consideration.

Character, however, is.

On the other hand, I do wonder about what I might call the Carter Effect. By this I mean the idea that some, who have been enamored of Mr. Obama’s charm and charisma, and have connected with the whole idea of change, will have an awakening in the voting booth. Will they remember how conservative faith-voters believed in Jimmy Carter and thought he was one of them?

Those 1976 voters soon felt betrayed. And so will some who abandon long-held values for short-term political gratification this time around.

Though Barack Obama has reached out to evangelicals this year (particularly younger ones) in a way not seen by a Democrat in 32 years, this should not be interpreted to mean that he is, in fact, an evangelical. He is not.

Stephen Mansfield, author of the book, The Faith of Barack Obama, recently told Christianity Today:

There is no question Obama is a Christian, but he is definitely of a post-modern, liberal, and, to some small extent, black liberation theology perspective.

It is a free country, and I certainly believe he has the right to believe what he believes. My point is simply that it would be wrong for evangelicals to vote for him because they buy into the idea that he thinks like them. He does not.

Mr. McCain has his own history with evangelicals – and it has not always been a friendly one. But his clear pro-family positions and fervent “country-first” patriotism is very Ronald Reagan.

And Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter, who after four years in the White House, had proven himself to be – well – Jimmy Carter.

The Amusing Speaker Pelosi

October 3, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Speaker Pelosi on the ever-absent and teleprompting rhetorician’s involvement in the bailout bill:

“Barack Obama really gave them the confidence that this was the right decision for the American people,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) said.

Herman Perry’s Letter to Richard Nixon

September 29, 2008 by Michael A. Moodian | Filed Under Congress, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Sixty-three years ago today, businessman Herman Perry wrote a letter to Richard Nixon asking him if he was interested in running for a seat in the House of Representatives. At the time, incumbent Democrat Jerry Voorhis was representing the 12^th congressional district of California. Nixon was a young up-and-coming attorney, a graduate of Duke University Law School, and a naval officer during World War II who had returned to his hometown of Whittier to work at an established law firm. “I am writing this short note to ask you if you would like to be a candidate for Congress on the Republican ticket in 1946,” Perry’s letter said. “Jerry Voorhis expects to run—registration is about 50-50. The Republicans are gaining. Please airmail me your reply if you are interested.”

On October 6, 1945, Nixon drafted a reply. “I feel very strongly that Jerry Voorhis can be beaten and I’d welcome the opportunity to take a crack at him. An aggressive, vigorous campaign on a platform of practical liberalism should be the antidote the people have been looking for to take the place of Voorhis’ particular brand of New Deal idealism. You can be sure that I’ll do everything possible to win if the party gives me the chance to run,” he wrote. “I’m sure that I can hold my own with Voorhis on the speaking platform, and without meaning to toot my own horn, I believe I have the fight, spirit and background which can beat him.”

In 1946, Nixon defeated Voorhis for his first political victory. The rest, as they say, is history.

A Few Of The Very Few Things That I Do Know For Sure

September 22, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Bush Administration, Congress, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008 | 1 Comment 

I don’t know much about history.

Don’t know much biology.

Don’t know much about a science book.

Don’t know much about the French I took.

Come to think of it, I don’t know much about most things.

And in the hierarchy of all the things that I don’t know much about, economics and finance are right up there at the top.

But here are a few of the very few things that I do know; indeed, that I know for sure:

• 43 days before an election is the absolute worst time for any major decisions to be made, but especially unprecedented decisions involving the national economy.
• All the people who will be making the decisions —with no exceptions— will have as their primary focus getting elected or re-elected. Where getting elected or re-elected isn’t a relevant criterion their primary focus will be the electoral advantage of the party they belong to or support.
• All the people —with no exceptions— who will be making the decisions regarding the economy over the next few days are responsible, to greater or lesser degrees, for the problems that created the crisis. Some will outright deny this; most will merely try to obfuscate it. The media will accommodate those they like and pinion those they don’t like.
• As recently as July 2006, the man to whom everyone is now turning to fashion the solution was one of the most prominent, and lavishly rewarded, parts of the problem.
• Secretary Paulson is asking for extraordinary and unprecedented powers without providing even the modicum of information that would be required in any other circumstances except those that obtain in the last weeks before a national election when everyone wants to be able to say that they have done something and no one wants their fingerprints on anything. The shared bipartisan goal is to kick the can down the road until the last swing state precinct closes on 4 November.
• In a town where shamelessness is a cottage industry, the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and the Chairmen of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Budget Committee are shamelessly compromised.
• The President continues to be AWOL. He has completely abdicated his vital roles of keeping the nation informed, and sustaining national confidence and morale. Having long since ceased to be The Decider (and who knows if he was ever this anywhere other than in his own mind) he has also ceased being The Explainer.
• The media has abdicated all of its vital roles —of providing information, of monitoring public performance, of maintaining neutral balance— and is complicit in shaping and spreading the “Wall Street/Main Street” trope that completely distorts the situation but has already become the touchstone by which any solution will be analyzed and judged.
• Whatever happens, and after all the blathering and posturing and…..let’s be real, after the voting six weeks from tomorrow……no matter who is elected or re-elected the result is going to be the same: the usual fair deal for the hapless middle class taxpayer.

OK — My Bad — But I Get To Keep My Job

September 10, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Ethics, News media | Leave a Comment 

“I really don’t believe making mistakes means you have to give up your career,” Representative Charles B. Rangel said at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday.

Already dealing with the backdraft from several other scandals, eternal Harlem Congressman and immensely powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Charles Rangel has now acknowledged that he failed to pay tax on rental income from a Dominican Republic resort condo (the acquisition of which is already under separate scrutiny). That’s a long sentence, I know, but it’s carrying a lot of information; just as the jaunty, dapper, gravelly-voiced Chairman appears to be carrying a lot of baggage.

The 19-term Congressman was first elected in 1970, replacing the legendary Adam Clayton Powell; his first assignment was to the Judiciary Committee, and in 1974 he was part of the Impeachment Inquiry.  He has been re-elected with scarcely even token opposition ever since.

The rental income-tax story is reported in today’s New York Times:

Representative Charles B. Rangel paid no interest for more than a decade on a mortgage extended to him to buy a villa at a beachfront resort in the Dominican Republic, according to Mr. Rangel’s lawyer and records from the resort.

The loan was given to him by the resort development company, in which Theodore Kheel, a prominent New York labor lawyer, was a principal investor. Mr. Kheel, who has given tens of thousands of dollars to Mr. Rangel’s campaigns over the past decade, had encouraged the congressman to be one of the initial investors in the project.

In fact, it was the New York Post that broke the story — and that has been on “Tricky Charlie’s” (as they style him) finances and living arrangements like a Weimaraner on a pork chop for the last several months.

Chairman Rangel is far and away the biggest recipient of contributions from lobbyists in the New York delegation (and that sets a very high standard indeed.)  In the first half of this year he took in almost three quarters of a million dollars in this manner.

The DNC returned a $100,000 check he gave from the money raised at his 77th birthday party  fundraiser.  (The party, held at The Tavern on the Green in August 2007, raised more than $1 million.)  The technicality was that it went against the Obama campaign’s decision not to accept any PAC-related money, but it was widely seen as a serious slap at the formerly sacrosanct Chairman.

Its namesake’s way of supporting the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York doesn’t, in the words of the Washington Post, “pass the smell test”.  The paper editorialized about “Rep. Rangel’s Tin Cup”:

In the corridors of money and power in New York City, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), is called simply “Mr. Chairman.” Everyone knows that he’s chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. With his sway over tax and trade policy, captains of industry around the country are eager to have his ear. So when a letter from Mr. Rangel, especially if it’s on his congressional stationary, arrives, the 19-term Harlem congressman receives close attention.

As Post staff writer Christopher Lee reported Tuesday, Mr. Rangel has been requesting meetings with business and philanthropic leaders since 2005 to discuss the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York. It’s a $30 million facility Mr. Rangel says is dedicated to ensuring that the next generation of public servants reflects America’s diversity and “will allow me to locate the inspirational aspects of my legacy in my home Harlem community.” So far, $12.2 million has been raised. That includes a $1.9 million earmark, $690,500 in grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $100,000 from the New York City Council, $7.1 million from foundations and $2.3 million from individuals. The largest single gift ($5 million) came from the C.V. Starr Foundation, which is chaired by Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg, a former head of insurance and financial services giant AIG. Mr. Rangel and college officials had a separate meeting with AIG this year, and another gift is under consideration.

Mr. Rangel’s actions raise a couple of red flags. First, House rules forbid solicitations on official letterhead, even for nonprofits. At a minimum, he should stop this practice. Next, Mr. Rangel says that congressional business never comes up at his meetings. We’ll take him at his word. But those with business before Mr. Rangel’s committee could try to curry favor with him by donating to the Rangel Center. The appearance problem here is huge.

Charlie Rangel is a colorful and engaging figure.  He’s the first to admit that “modesty is not really my best trait.” Before the 2004 he joked to voters that, if he became a powerful Committee Chair, “I don’t want to be treated differently than any other world leader.”  You can get an example of his winning ways on this interview given just as he was poised to assume his Chairmanship back in 2007.

Last July it was revealed —again by the New York Post— that Mr. Rangel, whose declared net worth was in the high six figures, was living in four apartments in Manhattan that were rent-stabilized in order to help low income tenants find decent housing.  I wrote about this story here at the time.

Even The Times’ usually restrained prose (especially where powerful Manhattan Democratic Committee Chairs are involved) showed some righteous indignation at the patent unfairness (and political foolhardiness) of Mr. Rangel’s living arrangements:

While aggressive evictions are reducing the number of rent-stabilized apartments in New York, Representative Charles B. Rangel is enjoying four of them, including three adjacent units on the 16th floor overlooking Upper Manhattan in a building owned by one of New York’s premier real estate developers.

The Olnick Organization and other real estate firms have been accused of overzealous tactics as they move to evict tenants from their rent-stabilized apartments and convert the units into market-rate housing.

The current market-rate rent for similar apartments in Mr. Rangel’s building would total $7,465 to $8,125 a month, according to the Web site of the owner, the Olnick Organization.

Mr. Rangel, the powerful Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, uses his fourth apartment, six floors below, as a campaign office, despite state and city regulations that require rent-stabilized apartments to be used as a primary residence.

Mr. Rangel, who has a net worth of $566,000 to $1.2 million, according to Congressional disclosure records, paid a total rent of $3,894 monthly in 2007 for the four apartments at Lenox Terrace, a 1,700-unit luxury development of six towers, with doormen, that is described in real estate publications as Harlem’s most prestigious address.

It’s one thing to to have a sweetheart deal of a questionable nature.  It’s quite another thing to flaunt it in a lavish rich-and-famous lifestyles coffeetable book.  What could have been the thought processes behind inviting the photographer over for that gig?

Me?  I’m of two minds about all this.  At least I think I am; and, if I am, then it’s at least two.  As a New Yorker, I’m long-accustomed to Mr. Rangel’s colorful ways and means and have developed what amounts to an affection for him.  He can be bombastic and he can be outrageous.  He’s one of the last lions left over from the old days when outsize personalities were not uncommon; and, if you had the right stuff to back them up, they were widely admired.  He is known as a prodigiously hard worker; a good boss; an excellent constituent services provider; and as the kind of all around good guy that is sadly missing and sorely missed around Washington these days.

He is a heart-on-sleeve liberal partisan, many (if not most) of whose positions I couldn’t disagree with more.   But whether you agree with him or not, you know where he stands and you can depend on him to stand up for what he believes in.

Given the unbelievable extent to which all Congresspersons —much less senior Democrats and powerful Committee Chairmen— are isolated from the realities of ordinary daily life while their asses are kissed six ways til Sunday 24/7/365, he has remained refreshingly accessible and good-natured.  And, at least based on what has surfaced so far, he is probably still only in the mid single digits on a ten point run-of-the-mill congressional corruption scale.

He has a very compelling personal story that he set down in an autobiography published earlier this year: And I Haven’t Had A Bad Day Since.  It got such good reviews and word of mouth that I actually bought a copy.  Although I ended up skimming a lot of the political boilerplate towards the end, the earlier sections were vivid and candid.  They include the tales of a somewhat misspent youth, a spell in the Army in Korea where he won a Purple Heart (his reaction to that incident gave the book its title), and the beginnings of a hugely successful career in politics.

But what about his current arguments that he didn’t know about his tax obligations and that he thought his accountants and lawyers were handling everything.  I suppose they’re OK as far as they go.  The question is: how far do they go?   After all, the man is generally acknowledged to be brilliant; he’s a graduate of NYU’s School of Commerce and St. John’s Law School; and he’s surrounded by very large and capable staffs entirely devoted to his continuance in office.  And he hasn’t got to where he is by being inattentive to details.

This ignorance defense is very popular on Capitol Hill these days.  In the last few months it has been invoked by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad to explain the highly favorable non-competitive rates they got on mortgages for second homes from a lender who had business with their Committees.

What level of responsibility —and accountability— should attach to legislators who are in charge of regulating the nation’s banks and writing the nation’s tax laws and who claim ignorance as their defense when serious questions are raised about their financial and tax affairs?

The tide seems to be turning against Mr. Rangel these days.  Slowly now, to be sure; but perceptively gaining speed. His fund-raising prowess, formerly admired, is under investigation.  Ethics Committee involvement is under way.  His ardent support for Senator Clinton’s presidential bid has left him naked to his enemies at the Obamaized DNC.  And it can never be a good sign when you hire Lanny Davis as your defense attorney.

The admirable philosophy that has brought him so far for so long is about to be sorely tested: Charlie Rangel is about to have some very bad days.

UPDATE 9/13/08: In today’s Wall Street Journal, Eileen Norcross has an interesting column about rent control and stabilization in the New York City housing market.

That’s A Pretty Big Goal

August 19, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Congress, Faith | Leave a Comment 

Pastor Rick Warren does not underestimate his gifts. He told Jeffrey Goldberg:

One of my three life goals is to help restore civility to civilization.

Everything You Need To Know About Nancy Pelosi

August 6, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress | 1 Comment 

In today’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus reviews two new books on the subject of Nancy Pelosi (one by her and one about her).

Ms. Pelosi’s own book (written with Amy Hill Hearth) is called Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters. They must both be very busy (we know Ms. Pelosi is) or not have very much to say, because between the two of them they have only managed to fill 180 pages of text.

Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi’s Life, Times, and Rise to Power, is by a veteran Pelosi watcher, former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Marc Sandalow.

Ms. Marcus is disturbed —as should we all be— by an anecdote that appears in both books.

Newly moved to San Francisco in 1969, bunking at her mother-in-law’s with four small children, Nancy Pelosi found the perfect house after months of desperate searching. She was ecstatic, until she learned that the rental had become available only because the owner was moving to Washington to work in the Nixon administration.

End of deal. Back to Nana’s.

This story appears in two new books about the first female speaker of the House, neither of which does a terribly good job at grappling with the implications of its spite-your-face partisanship. Pelosi tells the story on herself in the slight (in every sense of the word) “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters.” You might think, with the wisdom of hindsight, that her message to America’s daughters would be to clear out of the in-laws’, politics be damned.

Nope. “Our daughter, Alexandra, who hadn’t been born yet, often says to me that she knows everything she needs to know about me by hearing that story,” Pelosi writes proudly.

This kind of intense, visceral, and non- (I would call it anti-) intellectual partisanship has been the hallmark both of Ms. Pelosi’s political career and of her Speakership so far. And it tells you (and it should tell the House Republicans) exactly what can be expected from her.

Partisanship was bred in the bone chez Pelosi. From the earliest age, as the child of a Democratic congressman and Baltimore Mayor, young Nancy and her six older brothers were charged with keeping the “favor file” (which is what the press calls a Democrat’s “enemies list”).

Any Republican (indeed, any opponent of any party or stripe) hoping to be cut some slack (much less wanting a little sympathy) from Speaker Pelosi is in for a very long wait. Mr. Sandalow, who has known and covered her for two decades for her home town’s biggest paper, notes that she “did not make eye contact with me after I informed her staff that I was writing this book.”

Ms. Pelosi has an impressive amount of what Ms. Marcus nicely refers to as “chocolate-fueled energy”. And she is clearly capable of great charm. Maybe that is why the Republicans seem to be surprised each time she screws them anew. And maybe that is why otherwise tough reporters like Mark Sandalow are reluctant to draw conclusions.

Yet Sandalow seems reluctant to abandon the drilled-in objectivity of the daily news reporter for the analytical eye of the biographer; he refrains from making any judgments. “Pelosi regarded stopping President Bush’s Social Security plan as her biggest triumph as Democratic leader,” he writes — with no assessment of the merits of Pelosi’s determination not to offer an alternative to Bush’s private accounts. Pelosi herself is proud of that approach, crafted with the help of marketing experts who advised downtrodden Democrats going up against President Bush: “You can’t compete unless you take him down a few pegs first.”

Democrats listened. “In spite of repeated criticisms from the inside-the-Beltway crowd” — true confessions, I was one of them — “that we should have our own plan, our strategy worked,” she crows. Fifty pages later, Pelosi announces that the speaker she most admires is Democrat Tip O’Neill, because “he was able to work in a bipartisan way with President Reagan.” If there’s a contradiction there, it’s one the speaker chooses not to see.