There Is No Plan

Fire Geithner, Fire Bernanke, Fire that Assistant Under Secretary in the Wot-not department!

Yes, it’s the season of the Political Pinkslip.

And I’ve got a new Pink Slip all printed up.

Someone call Axelrod and get him over to Human Resources, pronto.

Cut to his exit interview. We join it mid-way in.

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HUMAN RESOURCES

David, what were you thinking? I mean you totally dropped the ball.

DAVID (sniffing, he was crying earlier)

Barack shares a ton of the blame for this, but we thought, you know that bi-partisanship would be popular with the people. You know they’re always saying how they want us to ‘work together to solve America’s problems’.

HUMAN RESOURCES

And you believed them.

DAVID

We’re not supposed to listen? You can’t blame me for listening. Jeez.

HUMAN RESOURCES

Dave, there was a massive populist tsunami on the horizon and you missed it. The people are confused. They just want an enemy. You know, someone to blame. And you guys didn’t point the finger. That’s the reason we’re letting you go.

DAVID

Oh, and who’s the enemy we missed?

HUMAN RESOURCES

Wall Street. The people got stiffed. In 2009 Unemployment skyrocketed, and so did the Dow. Bonuses, bailouts, sweetheart deals with AIG. You name it. That GOP pretty boy tapped into the independents in Massachusetts and exploited their anger, and you lost your super majority.

DAVID

One word. Coakley.

HUMAN RESOURCES

Granted she was a poor candidate, and you should have done something about that. You got complacent. You thought she was a shoo-in.

DAVID

Great, I’m being fired for thinking we’d win Massachusetts.

HUMAN RESOURCES

No you’re being fired for taking chances at a critical time. If the President you put to work in the last week, at the State of the Union, and in that GOP meeting had been working the line for the last nine months pounding Wall Street, Coakley could have ridden his coattails. It might have been close, but you didn’t nationalize that campaign. You let local personalities define the difference between getting the Senate healthcare bill through and losing it.

DAVID

Can we talk about my severance package?

HUMAN RESOURCES

And one more thing. Your boss made a big deal about not getting it right on healthcare, not listening, not getting in front of it. But that’s your fault. The guy listens to you. Why weren’t you getting him on the road earlier, fronting for this thing?

DAVID

Like that would’ve worked.

HUMAN RESOURCES

It might have if you’d sent your guy to healthcare town halls in Connecticut and Nebraska. He made the GOP house caucus look like third graders yesterday. You’re saying that charming the people, firing back at the hecklers, and being a real stand-up guy wouldn’t have influenced Lieberman and Nelson. This President is tailor-made for the bully pulpit, and you didn’t sic him onto the bad guys until it was too late.

DAVID

If he’s such a smart guy why didn’t he figure it out.

HUMAN RESOURCES

Ever heard the term “surplus to requirements”?  Enjoy your flight back to Chicago.

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In the old days, policy used to have at least some potential to become reality, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that in America at least, those days are over. Nothing anybody seems to suggest from the President on downwards seems to mean a hill of beans anymore. It’s as if the country is set on a course for planet “slow decline into mediocrity” (or worse) and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. All this despite some soaring rhetoric from the President, and plenty of hot air from just about everyone else.

Here’s a rundown of the current bullshitian landscape.

Jobs.

Anyone who thinks a $30-40bn Jobs bill is going to pass without being watered down to meaninglessness is dreaming. And it’s not certain why it will fare any better than the $800bn dollar stimulus package which was supposed to rebuild the economy and create, yes, that’s right. Jobs. The problems that the US economy is facing are profound and structural. Just throwing money at the problem without deep and lasting changes to – industrial, fiscal, and budgetary policy – sorry about the ‘P word’ again – needs to rethink very, very quickly. We don’t make stuff here. Some people suggest that manufacturing in the US isn’t “cost effective”, but my question is this. Why is it cost-effective in Germany?

Any-way, moving on to…

Wall Street

The President talks a great game about beating up onWall Street, especially now he’s been sobered up to the problem by the Massachusetts debacle. But it’s a tad too late. In January of 2009 the banks were still sinking in the quicksand. That’s the time to make them an offer they can’t refuse. After we’ve pulled them out, and they’ve put on fresh $500 shirts is not the time to be making a deal with them. And yet this is what we did. We had our boot on their necks and we blew our chance to make the single most destructive force in this country pay. And now, in the cold light of day, is anyone in the 41 strong Republican Senate caucus going to vote for meaningful financial reform? Uhh, Nope. Will Wall Street be constrained from ruining the nation again? Nope.

Healthcare

What was once a burning need is now a footnote that’s about to be buried ahead of the mid term elections. The Democrats thought that Healthcare reform was a winner, but after being thoroughly outmaneuvered by GOP demagoguery that idea is now going the way of another smart idea…

Stopping Global Warming.

Let’s get this straight. The world is waiting for America to get its act together on controlling greenhouse gases. But is 41 strong Republican Senate caucus going to vote fr meaningful climate legislation? Uhh, Nope. It will die.

Education

Ah, what’s the point. Nobody cares.

Finally, on domestic policy, my personal favorite…

High Speed Trains

California just got $2bn dollars of Federal Stimulus funding to build a high speed train network. Sounds great, right? Except for the fact that the total bill (and that’s before the usual corruption, incompetence, delays and overruns) is $42 billion. Chances of this happening in a state with a perennial budget crisis? Nil.

Moving abroad now…

Iraq

At a certain point in time, the United States is going to have to face the rather unpleasant moment when our last grunt gets on the last transport plane out of Baghdad Airport. Cue the bombs. Cue the resurgence of the insurgents and the reemergence of the Mahdi Army. Hello, reality.

Afghanistan

One day conference in London. Karzai tells us he’s going to end corruption and undo a millennia’s worth of being a basketcase that’s swallowed up empires, as well as buying off the Taliban recruits without guaranteeing their protection. He’s got 18 months before the troops we’re about to land there ship out. You do the math.

Iran

Sanctions work. And if you believe that, you think Sarah Palin is a closet liberal. Will the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 be able to justify NOT attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities? Unlikely.

Haiti

Will the outpouring of aid from Americans be matched by a long-term commitment to fix Haiti? Watch the BS flow. Ain’t nothing gonna change in Haiti.

So you see, on just about every front, there’s an awful lot of talk about how we’re going to fix things.

And then there’s reality.

Welcome to the Bullshit Era.

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Make some travel plans, Mr. Obama

People are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.

Which is about as close to coherence as the populist groundswell is likely to get. The President’s failure to get ahead of the tidal wave has really hurt him. His Spock-like reasonableness has not served him well. His soaring rhetoric is falling on deaf ears. Worse still, after the debacle in Massachusetts, tomorrow’s State of the Union address and the administration’s worrying signs of rightward retrenchment are unlikely to improve the President’s standing.

There are a ton of bold solutions out there in opinion-land. Many of them make great sense, but as our politics rushes headlong into an ephemeral haze, symbolism might be as – if not more – important than substance.

My interest is in stopping the rot that seems to be invading the psyche of this young adminsistration, which seems like a hot-shot rookie that’s just hit his first batting slump and just can’t seem to find a way out.

To continue the baseball metaphor, it’s often ideas out of left field that end the slump. A bunt single that you leg out, a goattee grown or shaved, the blessing of your favorite bat by your favorite zen master.

So in the spirit of strange, I suggest the President give the following a shot.

Mothball the White House. What? I hear you say. Yup. Leave it behind, and go on a “Main Street” road trip. Run your office out of Air Force One as you tour the country for six months. Go to the diners, gas stations and big box stores. Talk to the people, and hear what life’s really like in this recession. Find out what they want, ask their advice, and conduct the people’s business on the road.

What would this “Main Street Tour” achieve? A huge amount. It would put the President back in campaign mode where he’s at his best. It would represent the ‘change’ in the way politics is done. It would enable a dispassionate president to find his passion and connect with the people. And it would enable him to recapture some of the populist wind that’s been owned – absurdly – by Scott Brown and his truck, “Independent Conservatives”, the rest of GOP and of course Tea Party Loons.

And what’s the message that he’s got to take along with him? Tax incentives to create jobs. Oh, and sticking it Wall Street with regulation that will protect America from any future rapaciousness by the “fat cats”.

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Haiti's Presidential Palace will be rebuilt and we will all know about it. But so will the shanties. Without the cameras.

Haiti. A tragic, profoundly unlucky nation, poster child of colonial brutality and exploitation – right on America’s doorstep.

Every few years or so, Haiti pings the heartstrings of the world’s wealthy nations and donations flood in – along with every journalist worth his or her salt.

The scale and magnitude of this latest catastrophe is truly appalling, but its hard to imagine that its going to be any different this time. The Presidential Palace will be rebuilt and its new found glory will no doubt be photographed as a symbol of Haiti’s resurgence. But the photographers will be less present when the shanties are rebuilt too on the same hillsides they once stood on.

It’s possible that this time it will be different, that Haiti will be rebuilt by the world community, but it’s far more likely that Haiti’s misery will likely continue when we go back to business as usual, with our own jobs and futures on the line too.

It’s all just a tad ironic. I mean, nation building is something that we’ve been getting pretty good at recently. Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of miles away are works in progress, to put it kindly, with literally tens of billions of dollars frittered away on projects that are blown up, mismanaged, or simply abandoned as soon as the US contractors have cut their corners and pocketed their profits and then left. Read the rest of this entry »

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in the next couple of years you are going to get very sick of this picture

Attorney General Eric Holder made the sobering announcement today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (henceforth KSM) would be tried in New York for masterminding the 9/11 attacks.

It’s a bold move that’s been well received by progresssives as an opporunity for America to show that no matter what the crime, justice and due process will always be served.

Even though There is No Plan is a card-carrying member of the American left, it takes a very different view.There are no upsides in bringing KSM to America to face trial. Not one.

But let’s examine why many people think there are.

The argument put forward is that America will be able to show the world and in particular the Islamic street that we’re giving this guy a fair shake, so they won’t think he’s being martyred if and when he’s executed.

Think again. We can’t buy a break with Islam, literally. We build them roads, schools and institutions and they hate us. We buy their oil and accept their undemocratic and they hate us. The idea that they’re suddenly going to say, “You know America gave this guy a fair trial so if they say he’s guilty, he deserves to be executed” is total delusion. It doesn’t matter whether we drive the guy to the death house in a limo, or sentence him to death in the brig at Gitmo, he’s gonna be a martyr to Islamists and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. And as for the rest of the world, whether we try KSM at Gitmo or in downtown Manhattan will not change anybody’s opinion of us a jot, apart from the Europeans who are sure to whine about the death penalty.

Another argument is that the crime that KSM committed took place in New York so that’s the jurisdiction that should try him. Legally correct. Let’s give this guy due process. But sadly, this is no ordinary case. Firstly, we waterboarded the guy nearly two hundred times so admissibility of evidence is going to be in doubt. Secondly, KSM will make sure that it’s a show trial, and you can be pretty sure that torture will get the headlines in this case, not American justice. Thirdly, it will take forever, draining, dragging us all down with it, and finally, we might not even get a conviction. Think about that for a second. The guy who was behind 9/11 could walk free or do jail time? That’s a risk we’re prepared to take? To say that notion is red meat to the Republicans is the understatement of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

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nothing changes in afghanistan

Obama’s Afghan Dilemma is only vexing because it pits one conventional approach against another, when neither holds much hope for success.

Both the COIN + CT approaches are what I call “perfect world” approaches. They rely on countless variables going right, and if history in Afghanistan has taught us anything, it’s that banking on anything there is a bad idea.

So what to do. First, we need to establish the prism we’re seeing the problem through. Is it humanitarian prism? Or a principled ideological prism? Or through the prism of securing the strategic interests of the United States via realpolitik. Ideology, in the form of neo-conservative export of American Democracy was tried, and failed. After eight years, we’re dealing with a deeply corrupt prime-minister in Kabul with zero credibility at home and in Washington. As for humanitarianism, we have to examine what it is we want to achieve. There is tremendous hardship in Afghanistan, but it’s been there for millenia. The place is now and always has been essentially Medieval. A true humanitarian mission would be massive, would require a stable government in Kabul with reach across the country, and a commitment to accelerate the course of Afghan history at great cost to the United States, and with no real guarantee of success. All that would beg the question. The third world is full of desperation. Why should Afghanistan be singled out for saving, at the expense of so many other countries that need our help.

Finally, there is the prism of realpolitik. Some might call realpolitik amoral, but there is a view – and one that I subscribe to – that only America has the power and reach to keep the world stable and relatively peaceful, and this new realpolitik is built around the understanding that America’s interests are served by serving the interests of the world at large.

Sadly, America is not omnipotent. Its resources are limited. It must decide where it can best advance the cause of world stability.

So does adding to our troop levels in Afghanistan represent the best use of American resources. The answer to that is clearly no. The major threat to world stability in the Central Asian region is not in Afghanistan. It is in Pakistan to the east and Iran to Afghanistan’s west. With Al Qaeda a shadow of its former self, and the Taliban more interested in internal control than reestablishing the Caliphate, we can safely divert resources to Pakistan and Iranian wings of the theatre. Read the rest of this entry »

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Healthcare Reform has become a Swamp Thing. Not Good.

Let’s face it, things have got a little out of hand. Obama’s recent press conference pretty much capped off a bad few weeks for the President on Healthcare. It’s almost as if part of him wanted to derail the whole healthcare discussion with an idiotic debate about whether it was right to cuff Professor Gates as he tried to break into his own house or not.

But it didn’t have to be like this. It could have been much smoother.

The great Congressional meltdown on healthcare has been a sorry sight to watch. The bickering Blue Dogs threatening to side with the GOP, the at once vacuous and victorious comments by the likes of Senators Baucus and Grassley that we “can” reach a deal, the seemingly inexorable slide into debate over which healthcare facts are in facts facts and which facts are in fact fiction.

We’re scratching our heads. We have a smart, committed, still popular President with command of the issues, a man who can actually make a press conference interesting, and we have a nation that’s hurting for real change in the way healthcare is dispensed. So what’s the problem?

There are actually a few.

The first is that for all the talk of wanting to overhaul healthcare, there are millions who like their own healthcare just the way it is. The second is that the healthcare special interest group is very, very smart, insidious, and rich. The third is that the President made the unwise move to try and make healthcare reform deficit neutral. I can hear the laughs of derision now. How could he not? But the answer is yes he could. (with apologies to the President himself).

The derisive laughter goes up a gear. How? It says. Go on, tell us.

By telling the nation that healthcare reform is an investment in America’s future that makes US companies more competitive in world marketplace. And that like any investment – it costs money upfront, but will earn a rich return of 6-7% of GDP, or hundreds of billions of dollars a year poured back into the US economy, money that will get us out of the rut, money that will enable us to take on the Europeans, the Chinese, the world.

Social Justice is about as popular to Americans as a root canal. It’s not the way to sell anything. Sure people like to look as if they care about each other, but they don’t. In this country, despite the odds, we’re all gonna make it big – and usually at the expense of our neighbor. So tell people that it’s good for business, and everyone loves the idea. It appeals to the reptilian in us. Never mention the poor, becuause that just makes the rich really nervous, and as they have more influence, it’s a bad idea.

Avoid the issue of rationing healthcare. Of course we’re going to have ration healthcare. We ration it now. Just ask anyone with a pre-existing condition. But when private companies ration stuff, it’s just the market at work. If a government does it, well that’s a whole other story. Healthcare in America is treated as a personal issue. In other countries it’s a national issue. In order to make it a national issue here, we need to talk about it in terms everyone can agree on, and that means seeing it as an investment in everyone’s chance to be a millionaire.

Some might say that this is calculated rhetorical idea that’s cynical and low. I’d completely agree. But at least it has a better chance of working than the tortured technocratic approach we have now. Republicans and Special Interest can’t argue with it without trying to disprove it – which is impossible. It’s a trap they don’t want to fall into because it’s empirically correct. Right wing Democrats will be able to keep their seats in swing districts and as for the Progressives, they’ll go along, they always do.

And if anyone complains about the costs, we should just give them this. We just paid out billions upon billions to keep Wall Street afloat. Isn’t it time we actually paid for something that helped America rather than its fatcats for a change? Democrats and Republicans in the heartland can all agree with that. Rich and poor are all looking for a break right now.

Obama has shown his great skill with words. But he’s an honest man not a “sales” man. And right now we desperately need the latter. We need a pitch, a simple pitch, just a few words is all it takes. Something to fire up the masses. But we ain’t getting it from the President, who by leaving the “details” of healthcare to Congress threw an opportunity for change into the swamp, from whence its unlikely it will ever be retrieved.

Leadership is what we needed. Simple, forthright leadership.

All we got a guy trying to break into his own house.

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gates, are you trying to tell us something?

It was a reminder of the bad old days.  But it was today in Baghdad. Big suicide bomb, coordinated attacks on rescuers, dozens dead and wounded, and the customary “bears all the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation designed to ferment sectarian strife”.  It’s doubtful whether it had any effect on the tone of Robert Gates‘ interview on NPR this evening, but I’m sure the bombing was on the Secretary’s mind.

We’re not sure whether his boss is on board with this, although it seems likely, but Gates might have given us a little glimpse of reality during the interview. In response to a question about differences between him and the President on a final departure date for our troops from Iraq, Gates was less than convincing about the finality of that. From the NPR report. (My italics)

With regard to Iraq, Gates noted that under the Status of Forces agreement, all U.S. troops will be out by the end of 2011. Gates says he’s on the same page as Obama with the withdrawal and, barring a new agreement with the Iraqis, there will be zero troops in Iraq by that time. But he also speculates that the Iraqis could ask for logistical and intelligence support.

“The president’s statement is absolutely clear and it conforms to our current commitments, that is, according to the agreements we have signed, we will have everyone out of Iraq by the end of 2011,” Gates said. “And unless something changes, that is exactly what will happen. …[A change] would have to be at the Iraqis’ initiative. And the president will have to determine whether or not he wants to do that.”

“Logistical and Intelligence” support might well be a good cover-phrase for something a little more, shall we say, effective. In other words a new agreement ‘at the Iraqis initiative’ to guarantee some “we need your firepower because we’re getting our asses kicked” type support. Obama suspects that Al Qaeda is just waiting for us to shut the door after us before going all out again, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the President could make a judgment that keeping a few brigades on base for selective “logistical and intelligence support” might just be the insurance policy we need.

There’s been an awful lot of talk about the President’s philosophy. Nobody seems to know what it is. The reason is simple. His philosophy is the absence of a philosophy. Pragmatism.

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time to talk to the taliban. (eye patches are optional)

Talking to moderate elements of the Taliban in order to undermine its unity is a great second prong of attack – to be combined with a more money-driven attack on Taliban control of Afghan opium. Obama was wise to caution that the complexities of Afghan tribal culture made the mapping of such talks much harder than even in Iraq. There are a number of interesting points embedded in the concept and Obama’s response.

Firstly, the Taliban rose to prominence precisely because they were able to bridge tribal divisions. Clearly they are suscepible to a divide and rule strategy, but we have to get a far better of idea of how to create it. Asking Americans on the ground to accurately understand and act on the landscape of highly complex tribal rivalries might be asking a little too much. And then there’s the question of the time it will take to build this system, and whether picking off local Taliban leaders piecemeal approach is the best way (after all, from then on they will have to be protected).  The best means may be to short-circuit that with standard procedure bribery. After all, the Sons of Iraq turned on the more extreme (Al Qaeda) elements of the Sunni insurgency because they were paid to do so. Read the rest of this entry »

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accountability, shmaccountability. just make the damn plan work already

I’m a huge fan of accountability, I think it’s great. But government is a big place. The idea of opening up all government business to accessible public scrutiny adds little value. It will only create confusion. Sifting through and understanding the data remains the key, and guess who’s going to be able to do that. The same people who knew how to access the information before it was put on recovery.gov. In short, it’s 10% useful, 10% public relations, and 80% window dressing.

Accountability to the public has its place. And that place is called democracy. Every two years we get to hold our legislators accountable and every four years the President and his party gets the same treatment. It’s not a great system but it kind of works.  The dirty little secret is this. Too much ‘demos’ in democracy is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, in these perilous times when leadership has never been more important, it might actually spell disaster at precisely the wrong moment in our history.

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