Keeping the Republic Blog

State of the Union 2007 -- 1/24/07

Last night was President Bush’s State of the Union address and that seems to be the focus of all the papers today. President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union Address, 1/23/07

The general consensus seems to be that he didn’t say much new, made some domestic policy proposals, but saved his real energy for rallying Congress to get behind him on the escalation in Iraq, though he intends to go ahead (and in fact has gone ahead) with or without them. You can read some analysis here (Dan Balz, “The State of the President: Beleaguered, Washington Post, 1/24/07), and here (Kate Zernike, A Shift in Power, Starting with ‘Madam Speaker,’” The New York Times, 1/23/07.)

Freshman Senator Jim Webb from Virginia gave the Democrats' response with some economic overtones, but mostly focused on a war he thinks is wrong. As Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy and a former Marine himself whose son is serving in Iraq right now, Webb’s credentials make it hard for the Republicans to paint him as soft on terror or as lacking support for the armed forces. (Michael D. Shear, “Va’s Webb Offers a Blunt Challenge to Bush,” Washington Post, 1/24/07)

Bush gave this speech with approval ratings matching his lowest (for a sum of recent polls, see this), and facing a Democratic Congress for the first time. But on the issue that is causing almost all his trouble, he and his administration are unrepentant. See, for example, not only his speech, but this Wolf Blizter interview with the Vice-President from this afternoon.

In the last post I asked what is at stake in the issue of the war. With more and more Republicans starting to side with the Democrats (John Holushna, Senate Panel Opposes Troop Increase in Iraq, 12-9,” Washington Post, 1/24/07) the war is taking up all the air left in Bush’s presidency, and setting the agenda for the 2008 presidential race.

That race is starting to shape up, with two new Democrats (Clinton and Richardson) in this weekend, and John Kerry out as of this afternoon, and another Republican (Sam Brownback) joining in as well. More on all that soon.

Welcome Back -- 1/10/07

Welcome back to a new semester of news.

With a new House of Representatives and a new Senate, both headed by Democrats, President Bush has his work cut out for him tonight as he offers a new plan for Iraq – one he calls a strategy for victory and his opponents call an escalation of a war he can’t win. Watch his speech this evening, but read some analysis beforehand. This piece in the New York Times gives some sense of what the congressional response is likely to be (Jeff Zeleny and Carl Hulse, "Democrats Plan Symbolic Votes against Iraq," 1/9/07); this one from the Washington Post highlights some of the internal politics behind Bush’s plan (Michael Abramowitz, et al., "With Iraq Speech, Bush to Pull Away from His Generals," 1/10/07).

What is at stake for Bush in this speech? Why is he still trying to win a war with a strategy that over sixty percent of Americans oppose? What is at stake for the new Democratic majorities in Congress? Is Iraq an issue they want to deal with right now? Why or why not?

Is There a Speaker in the House? 10/21/06

No time to write much, but a pair of articles from the Washington Post to bring to your attention on the current Speaker of the House Micheal Grunwald and Jim VandeHei, Hastert’s Team Mentality to be Tested as Foley Scandal Unfolds, 10/16/06) and the woman who would like to replace him (Lois Romano, The Woman Who Would be Speaker, 10/21/06) . Nice analyses of their respective leadership styles.

Also, see this fun one on the origin and scope of “October surprises.” (Linton Weeks, Boo! An Inevitable October Surprise, 10/21/06)

Terror Bills and Party Splits -- 10/18/06

Yesterday President Bush signed the terror investigation bill that Congress passed nearly a month ago. According to the Washington Post (Michael A. Fletcher, Bush Signs Terrorism Measure, 10/18/06), here’s what the bill does in a nutshell: “The new law imposes tight limits on defendants' traditional courtroom rights, including restrictions on their ability to examine the evidence against them, to challenge their incarceration and to exclude evidence gained through witness coercion.” That alone is enough to dramatically change the traditional guarantees of procedural justice that the founders put in place to ensure that people could not be jailed and sentenced in the United States on purely political grounds. The Bush administration says it will use the new powers only to prosecute terrorists, but the trouble with altering the fundamental protection of rights is that, once you’ve done it, you can’t control how it will be used in the future. What might be the “unintended consequences” of this law?

Also in the news, but not “news” per se, is an article in the Los Angeles Times (Johanna Neuman, Some See “Pink Purge” in the GOP, 10/18/06) about the internal schism in the Republican Party between social conservatives who want the party to stay strictly to its anti-gay agenda, and the party policy of reaching out to moderate voters, some of whom are gay themselves or favor gay rights. Remember the discussion in Chapter 2 of KTR on the difficulties the Republicans have in holding together a collation that includes those with a substantive position on the role of government in establishing the social order and those with a more procedural position. The tension between the two sides, exacerbated by recent events like the Foley scandal and a new book that claims that the administration had privately mocked the evangelicals whose votes it has come to depend on, is likely to have repercussions in the upcoming election. The GOP is counting on its fabled GOTV (get-out-the-vote) machinery, but if social conservatives stay home in large numbers on Election Day, the Republicans will probably lose control of one or both houses of Congress.

Government by Which People? 10/15/06

Congressional elections are just over three weeks away, and much of the coverage in the papers focuses on last minute strategy, polls, and expenditures. A couple of interesting articles in the Sunday papers are this one in the NYT (Robin Toner, Democrats Have Intensity but G.O.P. Has its Machine, 10/14/06) on the edge Republicans believe they have on get-out-the-vote efforts despite intense Democrat anger against the Bush adminstration and this similar piece in the Post on the White House confidence that they will prevail on November 7 because of their superior vote mobilizing machinery (Michael Abramowitz, White House Upbeat About GOP Prospects, 10/15/06). They plan to spend the next three weeks hammering the theme that Democrats are soft of national security and urging conservative voters to get to the polls.

With polls showing widespread discontent with the Republican Party among the electorate, these articles raise interesting questions. What is it elections really measure – popular opinion generally or the opinion of those who can be scared, or excited, or angered enough to get themselves to the polls? What does “government by the people” translate into when most of the people themselves do not vote to register their sentiments and when leaders confidently believe they can motivate sufficient numbers to keep them in power despite the fact that they have lost the confidence of a majority of the public?

Also on elections more generally, see this piece (David Kirkpatrick, Voters' Allegiances, Ripe for the Picking, 10/15/06) in the NYT on voter identification, the increase of those who say they are political independents, and the prospects for a realignment of the electorate. Some interesting updates there to the discussion in KTR, Chapter 12.

All Foley, All the Time -- 10/8/06

Most of the news in the last week has been consumed with the latest developments concerning former congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate and possibly criminal behavior toward the high school-aged congressional pages who come to DC each year to work in Congress, and debates about how much Republican leaders of Congress knew about his behavior and when they knew it.

The coverage of the scandal has been a classic case of a media “feeding frenzy” (see KTR, p. 663) and rather than giving a minute by minute report of events as they have unfolded, I have delayed posting about this until we could see something of what the political fallout would be.

The short answer seems to be that, unlike the Abramoff scandal which involved fairly complex financial and lobbying improprieties, the Foley scandal resonates with the public. Sex scandals make for good gossip and the question of whether the House Republicans violated the public trust in failing to care for kids in their custody is one that strikes at the heart of the family values that the Republicans base much of their electoral appeal on. Since there are already issues of Republican competency in this election, this scandal has what news people call “legs” -- it won’t go away quickly.

Today’s Washington Post has a good piece (Michael Grunwald and Chris Cillizza, Foley Consuming GOP as Elections Draw Near, 10/8/06) on what this scandal means politically for the Republicans, especially on the chances that it will disillusion the party’s value-concerned base and keep them home on election day.

The Foley scandal has hindered Republican efforts to control the agenda in the days leading up to the election and the war news (casualties in Iraq are at a two year high ) will make that difficult even when the scandal begins to recede. That events are taking a measurable toll on Republicans is apparent as the first wave of post-Foley polls come in (See for example, Marcus Mabry, A Political Limbo, Newsweek, 10/7/06.)

Bush Wins Terror Bill and the Campaign Continues -- 9/29/06

Both Houses of Congress have now passed the terror interrogation bill. The WaPo does a good job of setting out what it entails. (R. Jeffrey Smith, Many Rights in U.S. Legal System Absent in New Bill, 9/29/06). The NYT explains why 32 Democrats in the Senate opposed the bill even though Republicans have vowed to use their vote against them in the upcoming election. (Carl Hulse, Democrats See Strength in Bucking Bush, 9/28/06) Bush is already accusing the Democrats of soft on terrorism and weak on repulsing the enemy, signaling the theme that his campaigning can be expected to take over the next month or so. (Michael A. Fletcher, Bush Attacks ‘Party of Cut and Run,” WaPo, 9/29/06)

The war will be an issue both sides will seek to exploit. That Bush will not have it all his own way was apparent with early reports on the Bob Woodward book that will be released on Monday. (Bob Woodward was one of the two Washington Post reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal through painstaking investigative reporting in the 1970s, leading to Nixon’s resignation. He has written a number of books about Washington since.) Though his previous two books on the Bush administration have painted a generally positive picture of Bush and the war effort, this one is much more damning (David E. Sanger, Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq, NYT, 9/29/06.) Woodward also has an appearance scheduled on 60 Minutes this Sunday. Advance reports of the interview indicate that it will be troublesome for Bush as well since he claims that the administration is concealing the worst news about Iraqi violence and the power of the insurgency from the American public. (Reuters, Woodward: Bush Concealing Level of Iraq Violence, WaPo, 9/28/06)

The Costs of War -- 9/28/06

A couple of things to note with regard to the Iraq war.

First, as I noted below in discussing the compromise between the White House and the Senate on the interrogation bill, it looks like Pres. Bush is getting much of what he wants, including quick passage of the bill so that he can sign it before Republican congresspeople go home to campaign against any Democrats who vote against it. The House voted on the bill yesterday and the Senate, having voted down Democratic amendments to beef up detainee rights, is set to do so today. (Charles Babbington, House Approves Bill on Detainees, 9/28/06)

An editorial in the more liberal New York Times is solidly against the bill but so is one in the usually-supportive-of-the-Iraqi-war Washington Post.

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative libertarian critic of a war he once supported, has a link on his blog to a YouTube of military, religious, and intelligence experts testifying before Congress on the harmful effects of the behavior that this bill will allow the military and the CIA to engage in. Sullivan’s blog is kind of eccentric since he covers a variety of issues, but it is the go-to place for anti-torture links and debate on the subject. He often gives a hearing to his critics, so it is not just one-sided (though there is no doubt about where he stands.)

Jonah Goldberg, in the conservative National Review Online, is one of Sullivan’s critics, claiming that he fails to consider some of the reasons why we engage in coercive interrogation techniques and thinks we are too quick to call them torture. (When Push Comes to Torture, NRO, 9/27/06)

As you read this stuff, think about the issues raised in Chapter 5 of KTR (p. 157) on the trade-offs between security and freedom. Thomas Hobbes showed what kind of government fearful people would choose – a Leviathan that protects them but demands all their rights in exchange. Anything short of that demands debate about how much freedom, how much security. By urging the quick passage of this bill as an election ploy and threatening to stop all interrogations if it isn’t passed, Bush is silencing the debate that should accompany any decision to reduce the liberties America values. Even Goldberg concludes his essay with these words:

“In the recent debate over torture, everybody decided to kick the can down the road on what torture is and isn’t. This argument will be forced on us again, no matter how much we try to avoid it. We’ll be sorry we didn’t take the debate more seriously when we had the chance.”

~~~

Another issue to follow today is the partial release by Pres. Bush, yesterday, of the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate), a report prepared by the US intelligence community that basically says that the Iraq war has had a negative effect on US safety. (Mark Mazzetti, Backing Policy, President Issues Terror Estimate, 9/26/06)

The report, issued in April, was leaked to the New York Times last weekend. Amid calls from Democrats that the report should be made public, Bush declassified a few pages of it, and now the two parties are both trying to spin the results their way. Most analysis seems to support the Democratic contention that the report paints a grim picture of the war and the impact it has had in breeding new supporters of terror. Here is the New York Times’ take, but you can find similar views in the rest of the mainstream media: David Sanger, Study Doesn’t Share Bush’s Optimism on Terror Fight, 9/26/06)

If Republican members of Congress plan to go home and campaign on Democrats softness on terrorism, the Democrats are headed home to complain that the Republicans’ policies are increasing it. Hold on to your hats and get ready for a wild ride to Election Day. The NYT has a nice piece on the increasingly negative campaign commercials that candidates are airing this season: Adam Nagourney, Theme of Campaign Ads: Don’t Be Nice, 9/26/06

Let's Make a Deal -- 9/22/06

One of the great blessings of politics is that it allows us to negotiate solutions to intractable problems, to cooperate, to make deals, to compromise so that all sides of a dispute can get something of what they want, even if they lose something in the process.

In the deal cut by Senate Republicans and the White House over the president’s interrogation bill, it’s difficult to see what the White House lost. Despite changes in the language, President Bush will still be allowed to redefine the terms of the Geneva Conventions for all practical purposes when he orders the CIA to interrogate prisoners, and classified information can still be kept from prisoners facing trial based on that evidence. On a first reading of the deal, what chiefly seems to have been gained by the Senate is deniability. They are not officially giving the president approval to redefine the Geneva Conventions, but he can effectively do so at his discretion.

I’ll post more on this as analysis comes in, but read the coverage in the Times (Kate Zernike, Republicans Reach a Deal on Detainee Bill, 9/22/06), the WaPo (R. Jeffrey Smith and Charles Babbington, White House, Senators Near Pact on Interrogation Rules, 9/22/06) and the LAT (Julian Barnes and Richard Simon, Bush Bows to Senators on Detainees, 9/22/06) whose headline, at least, sees Bush as capitulating more than the other papers do. Editorials in the Times and the WaPo are both strongly critical of the compromise.

What this deal appears to do is clear the way for approval of Bush’s bill before members of Congress go home to campaign. If Democrats vote with them, Republicans can claim a bipartisan victory for Bush. If Democrats vote against the bill, they can be cast as soft on terror and weak on defense – precisely the outcome Bush and Rove had hoped for in bringing up this issue now. Public opinion polls show that their effort to change the subject to national defense has shown some success as Republican fortunes have improved somewhat (at least, depending on which polls you read.)

Stay tuned….

Sunday Follow Up

The Sunday papers are often a chance to get follow-ups on the week's news, or longer pieces analysing events. A good piece this a.m. from the Sunday Washington Post on the continuing battle to set the agenda in the days before the election: Jonathan Weisman, Tribunal Dispute Could Ruin GOP Strategy, WaPo, 9/17/06.

Key Republican Senators Balk at Bush Push 9/15/06

Both the Times and the Post have excellent articles this a.m. on the Republican rebellion in the Senate Armed Services Committee over Bush’s proposals to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions to allow the CIA greater latitude to interrogate terror suspects and to set up military commissions to try those suspects. Read both pieces – there is much overlap but between them they do a terrific job of setting out just what is at stake in this dispute – what Bush intended his proposal to accomplish and what it has actually done so far.

Carl Hulse, An Unexpected Collision Over Detainees. NYT 9/15/06
Charles Babbington and Jonathan Weisman, Senators Defy Bush On Terror Measure. WaPo, 9/15/06

9/11 and Electoral Politics 9/14/06

With September 11 coming less than two months before Election Day every year, and immediately after the Labor Day launch of the campaign, it may be too much to hope that politicians would refrain from using it as a rallying cry to get voter support. Sure enough, on the fifth year anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center, Election Day politics got intertwined with memorials and remembrances and warnings against terrorists.

Tuesday morning, Dan Balz and Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post summed it up: “President Bush's Oval Office speech last night was the culmination of two weeks of efforts to rally the nation behind his policies and presidency by summoning the memory of Sept. 11, 2001.” (President Tries to Win Over a War-Weary Nation, 9/12/06)

Bush’s efforts were about rallying support for the war, as the Post points out, but they were also an attempt to set the agenda for the election campaign. The Republicans would much rather have people talking about the September 11 attacks and national security, issues on which they poll relatively well, than about a war that headlines remind us daily is not going as promised.

Last week, for instance, Bush gave a speech in which he dramatically tried to change the terms of debate by turning some of the most damaging criticisms of his administration into positives. (R. Jeffrey Smith and Michael Fletcher, Bush Says Detainees Will Be Tried, Washington Post 9/7/06) He has been criticized in the past by both Democrats and Republicans for overreaching his powers as an executive by setting up military tribunals to try terror suspects, for ignoring the Geneva Conventions, for incarcerating prisoners in Guantanamo bay, Cuba, without due process, for allowing the CIA to operate clandestine prisons around the world, for condoning the torture of prisoners of war and for permitting the NSA to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans.

In his speech last week he tried to turn those negatives into positives by declaring that his actions were necessary to keep American safe. He admitted that the US had had held terror suspects secretly and subjected them to controversial interrogation techniques (Bush doesn’t call it torture.) He defended his administration’s actions and said he was transferring 14 prisoners accused of perpetrating the 9/11 attacks to Guantanamo Bay and was asking Congress to give him the authority to order military trials of the sort the Supreme Court had called a halt to in June. Following his speech, Republicans said they intended to bring his proposals to a vote as soon as possible, hoping to force Democrats into either voting to support Bush or casting a vote against prosecution of the terror suspects, which would help to brand them weak on national security.

Debate on that vote is currently going on in Congress. Today (Thursday) Colin Powell, Bush’s former Secretary of State opposed the creation of military commissions for the purpose of trying prisoners, saying that “"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." (William Branigin, Powell Opposes Effort to ‘Redefine’ Geneva Provision, Washington Post, 9/14/06.) At the same time, despite Bush’s personal visit to Capitol Hill to lobby for the passage of his bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee rejected Bush’s proposal that would deny some key rights to prisoners in favor of one that grants them more protections. (David Stout, Senate Panel Defies Bush on Detainee Bill. New York Times, 9/14/06) Four Republican senators (McCain, Warner, Graham and Collins) joined with all of the Democrats on the committee to reject the president’s version of the bill.

If the Republican strategy is to drive a wedge between the two parties, it may not work if a bipartisan group continues to oppose Bush’s bill. At issue are whether prisoners have a right to see the evidence that is being used against them and whether statements obtained through torture can be sued as evidence. Part of the wider debate is whether the U.S. engages in torture, and what actually constitutes torture. See this video for Bush’s views as expressed to journalist Matt Lauer.

Although we do not address the issue of torture directly, we discuss the conflicts involved in protecting civil liberties and national security on pp. 157-158 of KTR. How do you respond to the criticism that if we torture prisoners and deny them their rights, we have become little better than the people we seek to protect ourselves against?

Playing Catch Up After A Busy Week 9/12/06

I am working on a post that will attempt to make some sense of the flurry of speeches given recently by White House personnel, including President Bush. These speeches, which aim to remind Americans of the horrors of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center are also designed to be the opening salvos in the electoral battle for the control of Congress. I’ll get that post up as soon as I can. In the meantime, here are some important articles to keep up with.

Dan Balz and Michael Abramowitz , President Tries to Win Over a War-Weary Nation, Washington Post, 9/12/06

R. Jeffrey Smith and Michael Fletcher, Bush Says Detainees Will Be Tried, Washington Post 9/7/06)

Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, In a Pivotal Year, GOP Plans to Get Personal Millions to Go to Digging Up Dirt on Democrats

Washington Post, 9/10/06.

Dana Priest and Ann Scott Tyson, FIVE YEARS LATER: An Elusive Target Bin Laden Trail 'Stone Cold': U.S. Steps Up Efforts, But Good Intelligence On Ground is Lacking, Washington Post, 9/10/06.

Charles Babbington and R. Jeffrey Smith, Bush's Detainee Plan Assailed Military Lawyers and Senators Call Proposed Rules Unfair, Washington Post, 9/10/06.

David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, Cheney’s Power No Longer Goes Unquestioned, New York Times, 9/10/06
Jeffrey Rosen, A Terror Trial, With or Without Due Process, New York Times, 9/10/06
Michael Abramowitz, Cheney: Domestic Iraq Debate Encouraging Adversaries, Washington Post, 9/10/06

More Midterms 9/5/06

One more Midterm Election piece to add to the mix from the Washington Post. In elections past the media have talked about candidates chasing the elusive “soccer mom” vote” and the “Nascar Dad vote.” These fictional voting parents stand for the 30 percent or so of the electorate who are swing voters –undecided voters who are not committed to either party and often make up their mind late in the election cycle, making them critically important to determining the outcome. (See KTR, p. 611.) This article by Jeffrey Birnbaum and Chris Cilizza, (‘Mortgage Moms' May Star in Midterm Vote, 9/5/06) singles out “Mortgage Moms” – mothers who want their families to be upwardly mobile but who are trapped by higher interest rates from being about to achieve their dreams. The gist is that the economy has a role to play in the upcoming election beyond the rising price of gas.

The LA Times has a nice piece on the politics inside Congress as the election heats up and each party tries to find a winning issue. For the Republicans, who control the agenda, the isssue is one that has worked for them before: national security. (Maura Reynolds, Security is Atop GOP's Agenda, 9/5/06.)

Let the Games Begin 9/4/06

I mentioned last week that the midterm elections are upon us (see KTR, p. 286) and as Labor Day is the official kick off of the election season, several papers run articles assessing the stakes in the election and the chances that the Democrats will take back control of one or both houses. Four pieces are especially worth taking a look at.

The New York Times is all over the subject this slow news weekend. Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg have a piece on the high stakes for Karl Rove, the president’s political advisor and the mastermind of Bush’s two successful presidential campaigns (Rove’s Word Is No Longer G.O.P. Gospel, 9/2/06.) The legacy of the man that some people call “Bush’s Brain” will be seriously damaged if the Republicans fail to hang on to Congress.

Historian David Greenberg does a good job of running through key midterm elections of the past, looking for lessons for Bush. (For Bush, Hope and Fear in Lessons of Midterms Past, 9/3/06)

Robin Toner and Kate Zernike do a recap of where things stand for the two parties at the start of the campaign (G.O.P. Seen to Be in Peril of Losing House, 9/4/06.)

Dan Balz and David Broder of the Washington Post cover some of the same ground, but look at how Republicans fortunes have changed (for the worse) since the start of the summer. (More GOP Districts Counted as Vulnerable: Number Doubled Over the Summer, 9/3/06.)

As you read these analyses, and the ones we will see in the future, remember that this election is not over until it’s over. Many pundits and reporters have made up their mind that the Republicans will lose control of the House of Representatives come November. That may well happen, but these folks are basing their predictions on factors that can change between now and then. Keep an open and critical mind as you read!