December 22, 2008

Bush and the (housing) bubble

Posted by johnmcquaid under George W. Bush, government | Tags: , , , , |
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Once again, the New York Times promises a bit more than it delivers with Sunday’s White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire. It is true that, as part of Karl Rove’s grand design to bring minority voters into the Republican fold, Bush promoted various questionable schemes to facilitate low-income homeownership. It’s also true, as the story spells out, that Bush did the finance industry plenty of favors, treated whistle-blowers capriciously, appointed incompetents to key positions, and (as many others did) ignored the potential dangers lurking in the mortgage markets.

But the headline implies some kind of grand unifying idea behind it all, and there just isn’t any. Making it easier for low-income earners to get mortgages isn’t a philosophy, it’s (in the absence of other meaningful economic policies aimed at this group) using government resources to buy political support. Doing favors for the big players in the financial system isn’t a philosophy either, it’s just patronage. Reading the article, you’re struck by just how incoherent the whole White House economic policy was; there was little guidance from the top (other than: do this group or that business a favor), and none from the Treasury Department (until Paulson arrived and demanded some authority as a condition for taking the job – and then he was slow to grasp how bad things had gotten). As a result, a lot of bad actors were free to do what they wanted; people with more responsible views were ignored.

The one time that ideology did determine decision-making it foreclosed the outcome that Bush wanted – the president opposed a viable House version of a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac reform bill in favor of a tougher, less viable Senate version. It failed.

Again contra the headline, the article also makes clear that Bush’s “philosophy” didn’t cause our current predicament. The White House, like many other institutions, did contribute to the bubble mentality; but mainly, it sought to tap the housing market bubble for its own purposes.

 

December 19, 2008

Science is back

Posted by johnmcquaid under Barack Obama, environment, George W. Bush, government, science | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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After eight years of political interference, it appears that science is poised to make a comeback in the executive branch. Barack Obama”s appointments to most top energy and environmental posts – Steven Chu at Energy, John Holdren as White House science advisor, Jane Lubchenco at NOAA – are all recognized experts on climate change and articulate advocates for sensible policies.

It’s hard to underestimate the damage done over the past eight years as Bush political appointees mounted a bureaucratic trench war on government scientists, doing all they could to stifle any meaningful policy debate on climate change and a variety of other issues including endangered species and pollution. Much of this was done for the crassest of reasons – to placate various interest groups that would have taken a hit had the government acted.

This quote from Bush’s science advisor, John H. Marburger III, sums up the strange psychology of denial in the White House:

“There are stupid and foolish things that have been perpetrated by employees of the federal government in the executive branch, but it doesn’t mean that the president is anti-science,” he said. “The president is getting blamed for every little thing that happens that people don’t like in the administration.”

The statement is almost beautifully ambiguous. Is he saying that Bush appointees did “stupid and foolish things” for which Bush should not be held responsible (which doesn’t make sense – obviously Bush is responsible for what his appointees do). Or is he saying the opposite: it was stupid and foolish for civil service professionals to resist the interference of the Bush appointees?

The delay on climate change will likely be seen, in historical terms, as one of Bush’s biggest mistakes. But another striking thing about this is how the Bush administration – taking the Republican Party with it for the ride – abdicated its responsibility to seriously engage these issues. The Republican Party was once able to mount credible critiques of environmental regulations and other fixes – which are, after all, no panacea, and should be vigorously debated across party lines. Instead, the Bush administration routinely shut out scientific findings it didn’t like. Meanwhile, many Republicans in Congress and the Republican policy establishment more or less took a holiday from thinking seriously about how to approach environmental and scientific problems. Of course there were exceptions. But the GOP will have do some work to be taken seriously on the climate debate and other scientific issues of our time.

 

September 29, 2008

Things fall apart

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I hope, and expect, that we will get a bailout bill out of Congress within a week. There’s simply too much at stake, the political and economic pressures too high, and the possibility of mass public backlash too great, for it not to happen. It’s easy to be against something when your constituents are angry and the consequences of voting no are vague. But when everybody’s 401K tanks, the political consequences become instantly concrete.

Having said that, though, who knows? With each passing day, the crisis deepens and Congress and the White House – abetted last week by John McCain – continue to fumble. Maybe we really are a banana republic. But this has to be seen as a logical consequence of the failures of the Bush presidency, a reductio ad absurdum of Bush-era GOP politics – government doesn’t work, so let the markets – which are always right – burn. And throw in some tax cuts.

The leadership vacuum in Washington right now has made it impossible for the government to act decisively. The president is supposed to step up, lay out the right thing to do, mobilize public support. And Bush has, ostensibly, been doing that. Except, not really, because nobody gives a damn what he says. Bush never really tried to lead the nation or Congress – he got what he wanted by coercion and manipulation. He spent most of his time in office not listening to anyone. Is it really surprising no one is listening to him now?

Executive power now lies not with Bush but in the technocracy headed by Hank Paulson – the professionals whom Bush did his best to marginalize and mock for most of his presidency. So it’s not surprising that they are very nearly a spent force as well.

Bush may have finally cast his lot with the realists. But his natural allies, the House Republicans, are still standing up for the kind of rigid, detached-from-reality approach – an increasingly incompatible mashup of blustery populism and pro-business policy hokum, capital gains taxes and such – that Bush pushed for most of the past eight years.

 

September 19, 2008

The end of the “ownership society”

Posted by johnmcquaid under George W. Bush, government | Tags: , , , , |
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During the 2004 presidential campaign, the White House was pushing the catchphrase “ownership society” to sum up its economic philosophy. The policies included limited privatization of various government-run programs including Medicare and Social Security, incentives to increase homeownership and, of course, tax cuts. This is mostly forgotten now, but it’s an interesting window into how George W. Bush and Karl Rove overlooked the brewing troubles facing the country and, more surprisingly, emerging political trends.

The ownership society had a composition similar to many Bush initiatives: about 50 percent giveaway to Republican interest groups, 30 percent campaign razzle-dazzle, 15 percent GOP anti-government shout-out and 5 percent functional policy proposal.

The underlying idea here was ambitious: to break the traditional alignment in many voter’s heads between the largest, most popular government social welfare programs and personal economic security. Playing on looming entitlement troubles, Bush was saying in so many words: the government won’t be there for you down the line. But the solution is not to fortify those programs but to begin dismantling them. You won’t need them because you’ll have ownership in your own private health care account, your home, and the stock market.

The ultimate aim was to break the back of the Democratic Party support by dismantling, or altering beyond recognition, its signature achievements and “brand.” It would be replaced by a Republican brand whose message was: you’re on your own, but that’s good, because you’ve got a stake in these robust markets. It had a kind of superficial appeal – the New Deal and Great Society are so 20th century, and the 21st is all about markets and globalization, etc.

But this was a radical and, it’s obvious today, crazy idea.

Markets are risky. Sometimes you lose your shirt. The whole idea of 20th century government social welfare programs is to cushion those blows, not say “bring ‘em on.” And today, the blows are raining down. “Ownership” is out – except when the government’s buying at the fire sale. And it’s not individuals the feds are bailing out, but the guys who helped bankroll the Bush campaigns and the “ownership society.”

 

July 29, 2008

Priorities

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Another telling bit of evidence of the Bush administration’s politicization/de-professionalization of government – the Lexis-Nexis search string used to vet Justice Department applicants (the exclamation points sub for any/all suffixes that might follow):

[first name of a candidate] and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

 

July 29, 2008

The White House reality manipulation project

Posted by johnmcquaid under George W. Bush, government, science | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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For the past eight years, the way the U.S. government communicates with citizens – the people who pay for it, and to whom it’s ultimately accountable – has been systematically politicized, corrupted and degraded. Sound over-the-top? Just take the two examples in the news today:

1. A Justice Department spokesman committed misconduct, according to an Inspector General’s report, by lying about the politicization of hiring practies. We know the sad story of Monica “what is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?” Goodling. When a reporter called the DOJ press office to ask about this, John Nowaki called the notion “crap” and wrote up a categorical denial. (Fortunately, no one was dumb enough to sign off on it, so it wasn’t released.) Later, when questioned by investigators, like everyone else, Nowacki admitted the right-wing vetting was going on.

2. The EPA has tightened its grip on career managers, instructing them to refer all questions from the media, congressional investigators, and even the EPA IG to political appointees. This on the heels of an April report by the Union of Concerned Scientists that showed that political interference in the work of scientists is running rampant at the agency.

In the overall scheme of things, these are minor stories. But they reflect a corrosive trend - the government-wide project originating from the White House to control information – i.e., to make facts that conflict with the Bush administration’s political aims go away. As a political strategy, this was dumb – White House attempts to redraw reality on Iraq and Katrina failed so spectacularly the president and vice president lost all credibility with the public.

But the reality-denial project went on anyway, and its damage should not be underestimated. The one remaining area where the Bush administration has power is in its ability to mold and manipulate the bureaucracy in the service of various GOP interest groups. This goes on below the radar, every day, across the government. A thousand Henry Waxmans, ProPublicas, and concerned NGOs couldn’t uncover it all. And it will certainly increase in pitch and intensity in the days between now and Jan. 20, as Bush appointees try to lock in various rules that favor their constituencies and finally, cover their own tracks.

The question going forward is, how much damage has been done, and how easily can it be undone? Many mechanisms of accountability have broken down. The public thinks – knows – that government officials, never the most credible of voices, habitually lie.

Walking this back will take more than just clearing out the Bush appointees (I’m talking about an Obama administration – it’s doubtful McCain, however earnest he may be about government accountability, would conduct a thorough housecleaning). The government’s own credibility on matters of fact – science in particular – has been eroded. Bad habits in conflict with an increasingly information-rich, transparent age – classifying everything under the sun, massaging data, gagging professionals – are hard to break because they have political advantages for whoever’s in office.

 

July 22, 2008

The media, Obama, Iraq

Posted by johnmcquaid under 2008 campaign, foreign affairs, George W. Bush, media | Tags: , , , , , , |
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Why have the media been so reluctant to acknowledge Iraqi PM Maliki’s all-but endorsement of Obama’s Iraq plans? Only today, after three days of faux-controversy, are they getting it right.

There’s the standard left-blogosphere explanation, which I think is pretty accurate: the media grant more credibility to Republicans in general and John McCain in particular on matters of foreign policy and terrorism. Obama’s margin for error on these things with the press is razor-thin. McCain, meanwhile, can get basic world geography wrong and still get a pass. (For the record, I don’t think McCain’s verbal miscues merit a feeding frenzy – nor should Obama’s.) 

This double standard iis a deeply ingrained habit. It dates in its current form back to the 1980s, but really all the way back to Nixon. In the minds of the media, the principal political legacy of Nixon and Reagan, and to a lesser extent Bush 41 (who lost due to a sour economy), is the iron linkage between Republicans, an attitude of American “strength,” a policy of interventionism abroad, and victory at the ballot box.

But during the past eight years, the practice of projecting “strength” in foreign policy changed. Instead of a single, rather amorphous feature of the president’s foreign policy, “attitude” became nearly the whole damn thing.

Meanwhile, the quality of our foreign policy as policy – that is, government decisions taken with some intelligible long-term strategy in mind, some understanding of the world – declined precipitously. Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 (and while we’re at it, Ford, Carter, and Clinton) had their failings, but all ended up conducting foreign policies that look pretty good compared with what we’ve got now.

This is pretty obvious, and more an objective truth than any presumed correlation between bluster and winning elections. The public has recognized it: we’re in a ditch. But in covering Obama and McCain, the media still behave as if the various strategic blunders of past eight years never happened. This requires making a value judgment, which the media can’t, and won’t, do. So it’s very hard for them to credit Obama for foreign policy insight, even when – especially when – events align rather well with his policies.

The other driver here is fear. Political journalism is basically 25 percent facts and 75 percent interpretation and speculation. (Which is why it’s stupid.) There is a great premium placed on seeming “out in front” of the pack in interpreting events – but not too far out, in case the pack starts moving in a different direction. And in terms of crowd dynamics, traditional media outlets revere nothing more than their sometime foes in the conservative media. Drudge, Fox, Rush Limbaugh and the rest have the ability to spontaneously (or not-so spontaneously) align on a particular topic, creating the illusion of a populist wave. The MSM bought the Karl Rove view, mistaking this narrow intensity for broad, popular sentiment. They envy it. Consciously or not, they hew to its conventions. To give Obama too much credit on foreign policy risks a mocking, pseudo-popular backlash from the conservative media – based on some minor Obama gaffe, say (as Jon Stewart so artfully lampooned last night) – that spills over into the mainstream.

It’s all the stranger because what’s coming out of Iraq is great news not just for Obama, but for the United States. Look at the Bush administration’s ridiculous fumbling over Maliki’s statements. Take Obama out of the picture: from the standpoint of U.S. Iraq policy, this is a very positive development. Things are stabilizing to the point where we can talk about withdrawal. Bush did something right! Holy crap! But the White House is so heavily invested in … making Obama look bad? Military bases forever? … that it cannot acknowledge even its own apparent success. In other words, the stated aims of U.S. policy and the actual aims are not the same, and the contradiction is tying us in knots. Alas, the media haven’t noticed this obvious tension either.

 

July 18, 2008

Throw Rummy from the train

Posted by johnmcquaid under foreign affairs, George W. Bush | Tags: , , , , , , |
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I have a Guardian piece up discounting the possibility of war crimes trials for Bush & Co. in the United States. I do think, though, that a Pinochet scenario – a torture indictment by a zealous foreign prosecutor – is probable at some point from 2009 on for Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld, most likely the latter.

There is just too much to be gained, in terms of international opinion, political stock, and, well, justice itself, for some enterprising European civil servant not to go after those big, big fish. You might think that outrage in the United States, and the various forms of diplomatic pressure that would follow on that, would render this impossible. But once Bush leaves the White House, he will lose the symbolic cloak of office that makes him a symbol of America and still buys him a measure of respect and deference. No one of consequence will rise to his defense. Pinochet at least had Margaret Thatcher – who will speak for Bush? Most of the country will be so relieved to see Bush go they will quickly forget he ever existed, and won’t care a whit if he or his associates are indicted in absentia abroad somewhere.

 

July 10, 2008

War crimes

Posted by johnmcquaid under foreign affairs, George W. Bush | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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Should members of the Bush administration – Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, primarily – be put on trial for war crimes because of the torture regime they have created? Should we have a South Africa-model Truth and Reconciliation Commission to sort through the wreckage of the past eight years?

The stream of commentary on these topics is increasing as we near the end of the Bush presidency. There is merit to these ideas, but there are serious obstacles to anything like this happening in the United States. The obvious problem is that there is nothing approaching a national consensus on the specific issue of torture, or more generally, the actions of the Bush administration on terror. Certainly there is a consensus that the Bush administration has been disastrous and that the Iraq war was a mistake. But this doesn’t translate down to finer-grained issues such as torture – even if they are of transcendant importance – or the matter of criminal culpability. See Kevin Drum’s post on why this is not Watergate: a well of political support remains for Bush’s terror policies.

This goes beyond politics. I hate to sound cynical, but Americans aren’t much interested in accountability, truth, or reconciliation. Our national motto is “move on.” The buzzword of the decade is “truthiness.” Trials or commissions on war crimes would force a reckoning that many people don’t think is necessary and/or would rather not have.

Of course, another feature of American culture is its disposability: What seems set in stone today won’t be tomorrow. What once seemed an issue of high principle to many conservatives – embracing torture and defending Bush & Co. – may quickly become passe once Bush leaves office and other issues come to dominate.

Still, I think the most likely outcome is a Pinochet-type situation in which an international organization or foreign government indicts one or more of the big three. Americans will be outraged – but not really; the U.S. government will try to head it off, but won’t be able to do much. No one will actually go on trial, but the indictees would humiliatingly see their travel options curtailed, and go to their graves knowing the phrase “charged with war crimes” will be next to their names in the history books.

 

June 27, 2008

Bring ‘em on, Khrushchev

Posted by johnmcquaid under foreign affairs, George W. Bush | Tags: , , , , |
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Amid the bluster about Iran and Islamic extremism, it’s useful to recall that the nation has faced some genuine existential crises, and our leaders had the common sense and maturity to deal with them. And we’ve been very lucky that the current administration has not been put in a situation like the Cuban missile crisis, a quickly escalating confrontation with unthinkable consequences. From Richard Holbrooke’s review of Michael Dobbs’ One Minute to Midnight (by all accounts, an excellent book):

It is hard to read this book without thinking about what would have happened if the current administration had faced such a situation — real weapons of mass destruction only 90 miles from Florida; the Pentagon urging “surgical” air attacks followed by an invasion; threatening letters from the leader of a real superpower and senators calling the president “weak” just weeks before a midterm Congressional election.

Life does not offer us a chance to play out alternative history, but it is not unreasonable to assume that the team that invaded Iraq would have attacked Cuba. And if Dobbs is right, Cuba and the Soviet Union would have fought back, perhaps launching some of the missiles already in place. One can only conclude that our nation was extremely fortunate to have had John F. Kennedy as president in October 1962. Like all presidents, he made his share of mistakes, but when the stakes were the highest imaginable, he rose to the occasion like no other president in the last 60 years — defining his goal clearly and then, against the demands of hawks within his administration, searching skillfully for a peaceful way to achieve it.

You have to assume, though, that most other presidents in history would have had the same general strategy as Kennedy: defusing the atmosphere of crisis so that the parties could back off, with the ultimate aim of getting the missiles out of Cuba. Bush/Cheney would of course have the latter goal. But they have made confrontation their default foreign policy tool, which presents a problem when a crisis arises that could result in a world war with millions dying. Even if the Bush White House was facing armageddon and (one hopes) suddenly realized cool-headed diplomacy was required at the highest levels, it would have a very hard time creating the circumstances for a resolution. It would quickly run into trouble trying to rein in its own hotheads in neocon circles, the military and Congress. Then the guy who said “bring ‘em on” would have to do the sensitive negotiating required. So even if Bush pursued a sensible course of action, he’d be much more likely to fail.

It’s worth noting here that the White House has finally worked out a nuclear deal with North Korea, something Bush deserves credit for. But this is an example of the grown-ups gradually gaining the diplomatic/bureaucratic upper hand with the White House – something that wouldn’t hurt, but might not make much difference in a fast-moving crisis.

 

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