Winners & Sinners

The Conservative Political Action Conference is the marquee event of the conservative movement, which  this year was sponsored in part by the far-far-right John Birch Society.  The audience seemed to be dominated by the Tea Party Movement.

The way it was covered tells you a lot you might not want to know about the mainstream media in Washington.

Sinners Adam Nagourney and Kate Zernike of The New York Times led their first-day story with Mitt Romney’s “systematic indictment of what he described as the failed presidency of Barack Obama” and mentioned some “coy allusions” to Barack Obama’s youthful experimentation with cocaine, while Sinner Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post thought Romney “sounded every bit the party leader, denouncing the Obama administration as a ‘failure.’”

On the other hand, if you wanted to learn anything about the substance of Romney’s remarks–or anybody else’s at the conference–the person to listen to was Winner Rachel Maddow, who performed that oh-so-out-of-fashion journalistic function of fact-checking the remarks of the principals.  A few examples from the transcript of Maddow’s program the day the conference opened:

Romney: “Let’s ask the Obama folks why they say…no to malpractice reform” and “no to tax cuts that create jobs.” The former Massachusetts governor added, “On our watch, the conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words ‘You have the right to remain silent.’”

The Facts:  Obama is actually in favor of malpractice reform, and the year-old stimulus program included one of the biggest tax cuts ever enacted.  As for the suicide bomber, as Maddow pointed out, “Unless, of course, that would-be suicide bomber is would-be suicide bomber Richard Reid, who was told that he had the right to remain silent roughly five minutes after he was arrested back in 2001 when Republicans were running the show.”

Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCoutter: “When the American people asked for smaller deficits and a reduction of the debt, the Democrats said no.”

The Facts: As this chart reminds us, by far the biggest increases in the national debt took place under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush:

Former Congressman Dick Armey of Texas said Obama was “getting away with peddling” the notion that there is a crisis in health care, “despite the fact that America has the greatest health care in the world.” 

The Facts: As Maddow pointed out, in such a fake crisis, national spending on health care goes from 5 percent of GDP in 1960 to 7 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2000, and is expected to reach 20 percent in 2020. Maddow added, That‘s the crisis President Obama has apparently created out of thin air for his own political gain.  He apparently started working on this in 1970 when he was 9 years old.  He was very precocious.

But if the Times reporters had chosen to illuminate even one of these lies, that would have left them with less space for the jokes that were made about Obama’s cocaine use.

Meanwhile, network news reports like two from NBC’s Mike Viqueira on “Nightly” were virtually content-free, although Viqueira did manage to  include a tiny soundbite of Glenn Beck’s speech to CPAC, which at least hinted at the Fox News host’s absolute insanity.

Update: for a good piece in the MSM about the dark side of the Tea Party Movement, see Jonathan Capehart’s post.

Second Update: The only way to feel all of the love at the CPAC confab (including the Glenn Beck out-of-body experience) is to watch Jon Stewart–as usual.

Winner: Newsweek national security correspondent Michael Isikoff for revealing that a crucial CIA memo constantly cited by Dick Cheney as the source of his certainty that torture produced crucial intelligence actually contains “plainly inaccurate information” that undermined its conclusions.  Cheney has frequently demanded the publication of the still-classified document, but Justice Department investigators have now concluded “that it significantly misstated the timing of the capture of one Al Qaeda suspect in order to make a claim that seems to have been patently false,” according to Isikoff.   The reporter continued:

The memo also omitted any references to a notorious incident in which another high level CIA detainee, Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi,  provided ‘false information’ about Al Qaeda’s supposed connections to Iraq in order to stop his Egyptian interrogators from abusing him, the Justice report states.  (Al-Libi was transfered by the CIA to Egyptian custody under the agency’s “extraordinary rendition” program.)

Sinner: The normally-reliable Clyde Haberman, for a column in The New York Times about Harold Ford, the former Tennessee Congressman threatening to run for the Senate from New York.  Haberman left the clear impression that Ford’s early claims to having paid New York taxes were true. Haberman wrote:

One question raised about Mr. Ford is how diligent he has been in paying taxes in New York. Several weeks ago, he said in an interview with YNN, a cable news station in Buffalo: ‘I pay taxes there. And once you pay taxes there, you feel like a New Yorker.’  That’s an awfully limited definition. I worked for years in foreign countries, paying their taxes, yet somehow never felt like a Japanese, an Italian or an Israeli.

The trouble is, Haberman’s column appeared exactly seven days after Gawker’s John Cook had done a thorough investigation proving that Ford had actually assiduously avoided paying New York State Income Taxes.  Asked by FCP if he had missed the fact that Ford was a New York tax dodger, Haberman replied, “As you surely could tell, that wasn’t really my focus this time around”–an answer which neither answered my question, nor explained why Haberman had implied that Ford had paid these taxes when he really hadn’t.

Update: A spokesman for Ford telephoned FCP today (Tuesday) to dispute the notion that the former Congressman had ever tried to avoid paying New York State income taxes.
Earlier this year, Congressman Ford told reporters in Buffalo, and his spokeswoman told John Cook of Gawker, that Ford would file a New York State Income Tax Return for the first time in April,  2010, although he began working for Merrill Lynch in New York City in 2007.

    The spokeswoman then contacted Cook again to say that Ford would actually file his first New York State resident tax return in 2010.

    Ford spokesman David Goldin told FCP today that Ford had filed a non-resident New York State tax return for 2007 and 2008.   You can only file as a non-resident if you can prove that you spent at least 182 days outside New York State.  So although Ford was working for Merrill Lynch in New York, he apparently was careful to stay out of the state for more than half the year, to limit his New York tax liability.

Winner: Environmental reporter Margot Roosevelt of The Los Angeles Times for two beautiuflly written and thorougly nuanced stories (here and here) about the continuing destruction of the Amazon Forest–and the chances that developed nations will spend enough quickly enough to end that destruction. The ghastly bottom line:

Slash-and-burn deforestation accounts for about 15% of humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions. Despite activists’ efforts, forests have been disappearing at the rate of about 34 million acres a year for the last two decades. Globally, Indonesia and Brazil are the third- and fourth-largest emitters respectively of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S., because of their breakneck pace of forest destruction.

The stories demonstrate that even though it remains in bankruptcy, The LA Times will sometimes still invest a substantial sum to send a talented correspondent abroad to write about a crucial subject like this one.

Sinners: The editors of the op-ed page of The New York Times for printing, and their contributor, Lara M. Dadkhah, for writing, a fiercely incoherent argument in favor of sharply increasing civilian casualties in Afghanistan–by reversing the very wise directive Gen. Stanley McChrystal issued last July, which stipulated that air strikes (and long-range artillery fire) would only be authorized under “very limited and prescribed conditions.”

Besides the idiocy of the piece, there was the problem of who it was who had actually written it.  Times editors identified the previously unknown Dadkhah as “an intelligence analyst,” while the author herself slipped in the fact that she was “employed by a defense consulting company.”

Oddly, neither Dadkhah nor the Times recognized the obvious journalistic imperative to name that company.

Update: This afternoon, deputy editorial page editor David Shipley provided FCP with this explanation via e-mail:

We found Ms. Dadkhah from work she did in Small Wars Journal, work that was part of her Ph.D. dissertation at Georgetown.  Ms. Dadkhah only recently took a job at Booz Allen. We tend not to mention the names of companies – as it can run the risk of seeming self-promotional. I thought it was sufficient to have the author say, as she did high up in the piece, that “While I am employed by a defense consulting company, my research and opinions on air support are my own.” It’s worth underscoring that Ms. Dadkhah’s research regarding close air support came entirely from her doctoral research, and that these are issues she has written about over the the last couple years for Small Wars.

Second Update: The estimable Glenn Greenwald, who was one of the very first people to post about this monstrosity, adds these essential details in response to Shipley’s explanation:

Shipley’s answer strongly suggests that Dadkhah did not submit her Op-Ed unsolicited, but rather, the NYT purposely sought out an Op-Ed to urge more civilian deaths in Afghanistan (“We found Ms. Dadkhah from work she did in Small Wars Journal”).  Why would they do that?  Maybe tomorrow the NYT Editors can actively solicit an Op-Ed urging the use of biological agents and chemical weapons on civilian populations in Yemen.  After that, they can search out someone to advocate medical experiments on detainees in Bagram.  Perhaps the day after, they can host a symposium on the tactical advantages of air bombing hospitals and orphanages as a means of keeping local populations in line…Dadkhah’s employer – Booz Allen – has more overlapping ties with the Pentagon than virtually any other corporation on the planet.  The very idea that Dadkhah’s employment with a company that has its hooks in virtually every aspect of war policy need not have been disclosed, when she’s advocating greater use of air power, is absurd on its face.  And Shipley’s claim that the companies which employ Op-Ed writers are not typically mentioned by the NYT is insultingly false; just today, Newt Gingrich’s short Op-Ed contribution is accompanied by this tagline:  “founder of the Center for Health Transformation, a health-care policy consulting firm.”  Yesterday, the NYT published an Op-Ed from the “former general counsel of the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses,”  and throughout the month, the NYT had Op-Ed writers identified as “chairman of Convers Group in Moscow,” “a vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004,” and “the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.”  Suffice to say, concealing the employer of the Op-Ed writer is not customary policy.

Read the rest of Glenn’s latest post here.

Third Update: My brother David Kaiser, author of the excellent History Unfolding blog, informs me:

The work Dadkhah did in Small Wars Journal consists of exactly one article, makig the same basic arguent at greater lenght.  That article actually takes a considerably more balanced view of the issue. At the end of the article she is described as follows.
   Lara M. Dadkhah is a graduate student in Security Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She has worked as an open source analyst covering biodefense issues in Iran and Afghanistan, and as a data analyst for current coalition information operations in Afghanistan.
 
Winner: CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper, for leading his network’s superb coverage of the Haiti catastrophe.  Whether he was pointing out the critical shortage of medicine, or the absence of any organized system to take care of the newly orphaned, Cooper and the rest of the CNN team set the standard for coverage which was both detailed and empathetic–and thereby earned Cooper the Hillman Foundation’s Sidney Award for January.

Winners: Michelle and Barack Obama, for hosting one of the most spectacular musical events in the history of the White House–a Celebration of Music of the Civil Rights Movement.  The evening was pushed up 24 hours because of an impending snow storm, and broadcast nationally by PBS.  Morgan Freeman hosted, and the president offered this eloquent introduction:

The civil rights movement was a movement sustained by music.  It was lifted by spirituals inspired by the Bible.  It was sharpened by protest songs about wrongs that needed righting.  It was broadened by folk artists like a New York-born daughter of immigrants, and a young storyteller from Minnesota, who captured the hardships and hopes of people who were worlds different from them, in ways that only song can do. It was a movement with a soundtrack – diverse strains of music that coalesced when the moment was right.

A brilliant Bob Dylan stole the evening with a haunting The Times They Are A Changin’, accompanied only by piano, bass, and the bard’s own acoustic guitar.  (Dylan refused to tell the concert’s organizers which song he would sing until 20 minutes before his performance; Blowin’ in The Wind was naturally another finalist.)  Dylan was immediately followed by an equally powerful rendition by Smokey Robinson of Dion’s great lament of 1968, Abraham, Martin and John.  Obama thanked Dylan for being “a man who was good enough to take a night off from his never ending tour;” then the president shook the great man’s hand after he sang.

Astonishingly, it was the first time Dylan had ever performed at the White House.

Dylan first recorded The Times They Are A Changin’ in 1963,  four weeks to the day before JFK was assassinated.  On November 13, 1985,  Dylan told me,  it was “definitely a song with a purpose.  I knew exactly what I wanted to say and for whom I wanted to say it to.  I wanted to write a big song in a simple way.”

The evening ended when Obama joined all the other performers (except Dylan, who had exited earlier) in an unbelievably poignant rendition of Lift Every Voice and Sing. Chris Richards of The Washington Post called it the “most stirring concert” ever performed at the White House.

Score 1 for the mainstream media.
                                                                              -30-

To view the entire broadcast of the concert go here.

To read about and watch the original musical triumph of the Obama administration, provided by Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen, go here.

My name is Michael Anthony,  I am an Iraq war veteran and having spent six years in the Army, at the age of twenty-three, I have spent more than a quarter of my life in service to this country.  I have four older brothers and an older sister, all of whom have been in the military: Air Force, Marines and Army.  My father and both my grandfathers were in the military. 

Hailing originally from a small sheltered town just south of Boston, Massachusetts, I say this in all earnestness: the only gay people I know have all been in the military.  This is not a joke or some talking point, it’s literal.  Generals, Commanders and Civilians can talk all they want, but the fact of the matter is, the only gay friends I’ve had have all been in the military; in fact, my only experience of gay people (outside of the military) is when I once watched an episode of the TV show Will and Grace (it was kind of funny).

For the policy known as DADT, there is one thing people often forget.  People forget that the policy doesn’t preclude gay people from entering the military it just precludes them from talking about their homosexuality.  In short, someone can be gay in the military; they just can’t talk about being gay in the military. 

If people are already in the military and gay­–from my former unit alone I know close to a dozen–­what is it that people are afraid will happen with the repeal of DADT?  Are people afraid that the day after DADT is rescinded,  gay soldiers are going to walk in wearing a feather boa and buttless fatigues?  The uniform policy will still be in effect so we can cross that option out.  Are people afraid that it’s going to hurt troop morale?   The Military suicide rate is at a thirty-year high having consistently risen for the past five years, with eighteen veterans killing themselves every day (according to the VA) so it seems like it can’t get any worse.

With all that said, there is a negative aspect to repealing DADT.  Having been in the military all my adult years, my peer group is filled with Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.  Several of these war veterans, having done two or three tours, have sworn that they will never go back to Iraq or Afghanistan.  Upon further questioning on how they plan to get out deployment if called, their answer is simple: “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Expounding further, they say that if they’re called up, they will simply kiss a member of the same sex­in front of their commander.  So how is repealing DADT going to affect the military?  The answer is simple…my friends who jokingly suggested using DADT as a way to get out of a deployment are now stuck going to Iraq or Afghanistan.

And please don’t even get me started on the escapades that go on overseas.  But hey, what happens in Iraq stays in Iraq…ahh not quite.

 ——————————

 Michael Anthony is the author of   MASS CASUALTIES: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception and Dishonor in Iraq.  The book is drawn from the personal journals of Anthony during the 1st year he spent serving in Iraq. It is a non-partisan look at some of the escapades that go on behind the scenes, from suicides, mail fraud, attempted murder, to gang bangs, orgies, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

 Above the Fold

“I think the US does itself a favor by showing the world who these people really are in a legal process whose legitimacy is beyond question.”

                                                    –Jane Mayer, in a live chat today at NewYorker.com
                                                       
    The most important and the most depressing piece of the week is Jane Mayer’s brilliant illumination in The New Yorker of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other terrorists in Federal Court in Manhattan.

    Thanks to the abject cowardice of Michael Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer, and Lindsay Graham–and just about every Republican in Washington–Holder has now been forced to rescind that decision.  Unlike Bloomberg and Schumer, at least the Republicans weren’t basing their position on the idea that the views of the lower-Manhattan real estate establishment should always trump the United States constitution.

    Mayer makes it abundantly clear why this is a terrible outcome for moral, practical and constitutional reasons.   As she said in her live chat at NewYorker.com today,

    Fear was really whipped up, and with it, the estimated costs of the trial. The whole thing required some level-headed counterpoint, but, for some reason, there was very little. As a result, the business community in lower Manhattan, and some residents turned on the plan. The irony is that there is another Al Qaeda trial taking place there as we speak - and no one’s even paying any attention. Clearly, the atmospherics were disproportionate to the threat, but, once scared, it’s hard to calm people.

    Here are the relevant facts from Mayer’s piece, most of which, of course, have played no part at all in the arguments of those opposed to trying the terrorists in Federal Court:

    * The Bush Administration prosecuted many more terror suspects as criminals than as enemy combatants.

    * According to statistics compiled by New York University’s Center on Law and Security, since 2001 the criminal courts have convicted some hundred and fifty suspects on terrorism charges.

    * Only three detainees—all of whom were apprehended abroad—were convicted in military commissions at Guantánamo.

    * The makeshift military-commission system set up by Bush to handle terrorism cases never tried a murder case, let alone one as complex, or notorious, as that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who will face the death penalty for the murder of nearly three thousand people.

    * The Bush Administration obtained life sentences in the criminal courts for two terror suspects arrested inside the U.S.: Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was planning a second wave of plane attacks. (Reid was read his Miranda rights four times.)

    * There is no evidence suggesting that military commissions would be tougher on suspected terrorists than criminal courts. Of the three cases adjudicated at Guantánamo, one defendant received a life sentence after boycotting his own trial; another served only six months, in addition to the time he had already served at the detention camp; the third struck a plea bargain and received just nine months.

    * The latter two defendants—Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as Osama bin Laden’s driver, and David Hicks, an Australian who attended an Al Qaeda training camp—are now at liberty in their home countries, having been released while Bush was still in office.

    * The main reason that Rahm Emmanuel (and the rest of the White House political apparatus) opposed the trial of terrorists in Federal Court in Manhattan was because Rahm wanted to make Lindsay Graham happy.

    * Graham actually favors closing Guantánamo–but he told Mayer he would keep it open, rather than to allow “these guys civilian trials.”

    * Behind Graham’s opposition was an insistence that Obama not treat military commissions as second-class justice.  But given the commissions’ erratic track record, the argument seems dubious.

    * The trouble is, when the Obama administration decided to keep the commissions going to try some terrorists, while sending others to Federal Court, it put itself in an impossible bind–because Obama had forfeited the option of openly criticizing the commissions.

    * David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, said, “They can’t say military commissions are less legitimate, because they’re still using them. But if they tried K.S.M. in a military commission, they’d lose any chance of having a conviction seen as legitimate by the rest of the world.”

    *Holder assigned eight experienced criminal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia to build the best criminal case they could against Mohammed and his co-conspirators. The prosecutors gathered fresh evidence from around the globe, rendering the military’s case comparatively weak.

    * Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney who represents Virginia’s Eastern District, participated in the process, and said, “The prosecutors came together, and produced hundreds of pages of analysis that was granular, and evidence-specific.”

    * Many countries–including France, Germany and Great Britain–which had refused to coöperate with military commissions at Guantánamo, were much more willing to provide evidence and witnesses for court prosecutions.

    * Last May, Obama declared that the Bush Administration’s legal approach had created “a mess.”  Another source put it more bluntly to the New Yorker writer: “We were buried in an avalanche of shit.”

    Despite the determination of Maine Senator Susan Collins and so many others to humiliate themselves by repeating their idiotic criticisms of the way the Obama administration has handled the questioning of the Christmas bomber–“wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again,” as Rachel Maddow characterized the Maine Senator’s remarks–the fact is the civilian system almost certainly elicited more information from him than any military torturer could have.

    As the Justice Department revealed a couple of weeks ago, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is now coöperating with the F.B.I.  A Justice official pointed out to Mayer, “He has an incentive to talk in the criminal-justice system, which the other system doesn’t offer.’  The key to gaining Abdulmutallab’s coöperation was the F.B.I.’s ability to enlist his family in getting him to talk.”

    That’s the kind of common sense observation which almost never makes it into the debate about what is actually most effective: friendly interrogation, or violent torture.

    Holder asked Mayer, “Would that father have gone to American authorities if he knew his son might be whisked away to a black site and subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques? You are much more likely to get people coöperating with us if their belief is that we are acting in a way that is consistent with American values.”

    Which brings us to the essential fallacy in all of the arguments in favor of torture from Dick Cheney and his loud-mouthed camp followers: there is no evidence that torture is more likely to produce actionable intelligence than the techniques which are actually allowed by the United States constitution–and the anti-torture treaties which are supposed to bind us to legal behavior.

    During Mayer’s appearance this morning on  Joe Scarborough launched into one of his typically mindless rants about how the Bush administration was much more interested in obtaining information that would prevent another attack on America than it was in trying terrorists in civilian courts. 

   “It’s just a myth that the military is like Jack Bauer,” Mayer retorted.

   Then Scarborough claimed that we couldn’t know what the CIA had learned through torture, because much of it remained classified.

    Mayer replied that Senator Jay Rockefeller had read everything in the CIA’s files, and he had told her that the CIA actually got nothing important through torture.  When Scarborough dismissed Rockefeller as a partisan source, Mayer responded with the coup de grace:

    “What does FBI Director Robert Mueller III say was gained through these techniques?” Mayer asked.

    The answer, of course, is nothing–something which even The New York Times finally managed to report, after FCP repeatedly berated it for ignoring the FBI director’s view that no information was obtained through torture which prevented any new attacks on the US.

    How did Scarborough respond to Mayer when she reported Mueller’s position?

    The TV man  changed the subject.

    Of course.

                                                                  -30-

Above the Fold

    Now, in the wake of the Massachusetts result, Congressional Democrats seem to be running for the hills instead of making every possible effort to pass a health care reform bill.
                                 –FCP, January 22, 2010

    To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.
                                –Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2010

    There was quite a lot to admire in last night’s State of the Union speech–a combination of plain truths and worthy policy proposals.   These were some of the highlights:

* The lobbyists are trying to kill [the financial reform bill passed by the House.] But we cannot let them win this fight.

* We still need health insurance reform

* From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument -– that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away. The problem is that’s what we did for eight years. That’s what helped us into this crisis [although that’s what created this crisis would have been stronger–and more accuate.]

* Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

* With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests–including foreign corporations –to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.  They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps  to correct some of these problems.

* Let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years –- and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service to correct some of these problems.

* This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.  It’s the right thing to do.

    These were all admirable declarations–and none more so than the president’s reminder to the Senate Democrats that even after their defeat in Massachusetts, they still have their largest majority in decades. 

    Of course, Obama has never had a problem giving a fine speech.

    The problem, so far, has been follow-up.

    I always thought the fact that Obama was the product of the Chicago Democratic machine was one of the most appealing parts of his resume–because it made it plausible that this freshman Senator could be strong enough to become an effective president.

    Confronted by a Republican minority which is reflexively committed to going for the jugular, what the Democrats have needed for years is a comparable toughness.   If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can’t provide that, the White House somehow has to find a way to provide that missing backbone.

    As Frank Rich pointed out last Sunday, in one of his most powerful columns, patricians like FDR and JFK never hesitated to battle their own class.  Rich wrote that Obama desperately needed something like JFK’s U.S. Steel moment–the president’s broadside against the steel maker after its chairman decided to “break a White House-brokered labor-management contract agreement and raise the price of steel (but not wages).”  Kennedy’s assault left reporters “literally gasping,” according to Dick Reeves, and U.S. Steel backed down two days later.

    So populist rhetoric against the banks–“We all hated the bank bailout”–is fine as far as it goes.  But what this administration needs more than anything else right now is proof that there will be serious consequences for anyone who derails its agenda.  It needs actual results, on health care, and financial reform, and it needs them well  before Washington’s cherry blossoms reach their peak at the beginning of April. 

    Up until now, the hallmark of Rahm Emanuel’s political management has been a terror of replicating the mistakes of the Clinton administration.   That’s why Obama waited much too long to roll up his sleeves, and involve himself directly in the health care negotiations.  And that is also why Obama’s campaign promise to repeal Clinton’s idiotic don’t ask, don’t tell policy for gays in the military remains unfulfilled twelve months after Obama took office–even though the political climate (and the poll numbers) are dramatically different in 2010 than they were in 1993.

    Instead of reflexively avoiding Clinton’s mistakes, it’s time to emulate Lyndon Johnson’s mastery at manipulating the Congress.   Rahm Emanuel played a big role in creating the large majorities the Democrats enjoy right now in both houses.  Now it’s time to make them produce the kind of legislation we can all be proud of.

    If that doesn’t happen soon, all the predictions of disaster for Democrats in the fall are certain to come true.

                                                               -30-