Had Obama only listened to Rahm

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post argues that Obama needs to listen to Rahm more. Which raises the question of just who has he been listening to the last year:

Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter.

The president would have been better off heeding Emanuel's counsel. For example, Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig's effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, arguing that it wasn't politically feasible. Obama overruled Emanuel, the deadline wasn't met, and Republicans pounced on the president and the Democrats for trying to bring terrorists to U.S. prisons. Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco.

Obama's greatest mistake was failing to listen to Emanuel on health care. Early on, Emanuel argued for a smaller bill with popular items, such as expanding health coverage for children and young adults, that could win some Republican support. He opposed the public option as a needless distraction.

The president disregarded that strategy and sided with Capitol Hill liberals who hoped to ram a larger, less popular bill through Congress with Democratic votes only. The result was, as the world now knows, disastrous.

Had it gone Emanuel's way, a politically popular health-care bill would have passed long ago, leaving plenty of time for other attractive priorities, such as efforts to make college more affordable. We would have seen a continuation of the momentum of the first half of 2009, when Obama followed Emanuel's strategy and got 11 substantive bills on his desk before the August recess.

Let's correct the record a bit.

1. President Obama didn't lift a proverbial finger for the public option, so spare us the Rahm talking points about "but for the public option, health care reform would have been done in a snap."

Health care reform wasn't done in a snap because the President didn't fight for much of anything in particular, and when the GOP went ballistic, the President and the Dems in Congress refused to fight fire with fire. Yes, President Obama gave a number of very good speeches that included general principles that could have applied to pretty much anything the Congress passed. And while he was giving a few speeches, Republicans had their operatives shutting down health care forums across the country, freaking out Democratic members of Congress, and seemingly the White House as well.

Secondly the GOP didn't block health care reform because it included the public option - it didn't include it. They blocked health care reform because they decided early on to block the entire Democratic agenda in order to win the Congress and the White House back. That wouldn't have changed had we not talked about the public option. We still would have heard about death panels had the President simply proposed sending a box of Band-Aids to every American.

2. More importantly, and more generally, Rahm's "advice" seems to have been for the President to abandon all of his campaign promises and go the easy route in order to "claim" a large number of small victories. Yes, that might have fooled the public for a while, and it's a trick the administration (and their non-profit allies) have been using to try to con the gay community into not noticing that none of the President three top promises (repeal of DADT and DOMA, and passage of ENDA) are going anywhere - but hey, they have a long list of things we never asked for, including cocktail parties, ceremonial resolutions, a federal employees benefits bill that might help a handful of gay federal employees (which is nice, but not a substitute for the actual promises that aren't being kept), and an Easter Egg hunt. If the administration and its non-profit allies can just build a big enough list of small successes, maybe nobody will notice that the big stuff that actually matters is going nowhere.

Too much ambition is the last thing that doomed health care reform. Read the rest of this post...

Newsweek Poll: Public opposes Obama health care reform plan... until they find out what's in it, then they like it

Their.

Messaging.

Sucks.

When asked about Obama's plan (without being given any details about what the legislation includes), 49 percent opposed it and 40 percent were in favor. But after hearing key features of the legislation described, 48 percent supported the plan and 43 percent remained opposed.

The NEWSWEEK Poll asked respondents about eight health-care-reform provisions that Obama and many Democrats in Congress have generally supported. It found that the majority of Americans supported five of those provisions, three by particularly large margins. Eighty-one percent agreed with the creation of a new insurance marketplace, the exchange, for individual subscribers to compare plans and buy insurance at a competitive rate. Seventy-six percent thought health insurers should be required to cover anyone who applies, including those with preexisting conditions; and 75 percent agreed with requiring most businesses to offer health insurance to their employees, with incentives for small-business owners to do so.

It's clearly not the details of the plan that's the problem if, when people hear about it, they like it. Hell, 70% of the American people liked the public option. But the White House, for whatever reason, refused to do anything to push for its passage. And now, large majorities like many of the major details in the remaining Senate and House plans. So what's the problem?

The same problem that leads only 6% of the American people to believe that the stimulus created any jobs (it did, according to CBO and every other authoritative study). Messaging, messaging, messaging.

And no, it's not excuse to say the Republicans are so gosh-darn mean. They've been that way for a while. They've been liars for a while. They've been willing to shut down meetings for a while, just for show - remember the Florida electoral folks trying to count the dangling chads when the astro-turf GOP mob shut it down for the cameras? As for mean and nasty, does anyone remember Newt Gingrich in the 90s?

The only thing that's changed this time around is that, for some reason, Democrats in the White House and the Hill have lost their ability, or willingness, to fight back. And they'd better recognize that soon, and fix it. There's no one else to blame but yourselves.

I'll be on CNN tomorrow morning, on Howie Kurtz's show, about 11:40 am Eastern saying the exact same thing. Read the rest of this post...

Ahhh, what a nice family environment

Guns allowed in national parks starting Monday. What could possibly go wrong? I used to think that people would demand change after the latest horrific gun incident but somehow, it only gets worse. It's probably the fault of the left wing who always seem so out of step with family values. What rifle would Jesus carry?

Loaded guns will be allowed in Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and other national parks under a new law that takes effect Monday.

The law lets licensed gun owners bring firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges as long as they are allowed by state law. It comes over the objections of gun-control advocates who fear it will lead to increased violence in national parks.

The national parks law takes effect in a climate that favors advocates of gun rights. The debate shifted dramatically in 2008, when the Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., and declared that individuals have a constitutional right to possess firearms for self-defense and other purposes.

Read the rest of this post...

Some good news on the foreclosure front

It's nowhere close to the end but an improvement is an improvement. On the downside there are quite a few who are at least one payment behind.

The drop means the number of people losing their homes will start to fall. But some pain from the crisis is sure to persist. Because millions of people are already in foreclosure, deeply discounted houses will put pressure on home prices for years.

"Housing is on a path to recovery," said Mike Larson, a real estate analyst with Weiss Research. "It's going to be a very long, gradual process."

In high-foreclosure cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami, homes have lost roughly half their values from their peaks. But a report Friday from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed Nevada, Arizona and Florida had some of the biggest declines in new delinquencies.

Read the rest of this post...

Was health care reform Obama's white whale?

I don't buy it.

“I sort of reject the notion that there is a communications problem with President Obama,” Cook said in an interview with National Journal, when asked about the long-term damage to Democrats of the health reform effort.

“I think it's just fundamental, total miscalculations from the very, very beginning. Of proportions comparable to President George W. Bush's decision to go into Iraq. While Bush went, ‘We're going to go after Afghanistan as a reaction to 9/11,’ and then just pretty soon got distracted and obsessed with going into Iraq with varying rationalizations that sort of evolved over time.”

Cook was unrepentant. “Yes, I think choosing to take a Captain Ahab-like approach to health care — I’m going to push for this even in the worst downturn since the Great Depression — is roughly comparable to Bush’s decision to go to war,” he told me. “It basically destroyed the first year of a presidency.”

White whale? Not even a white guppy.

I don't think the President truly pushed for health care reform. He claimed it as a priority, then he sat back and gave a few speeches but otherwise let Congress take the lead. (Gays will recognize this approach from the Don't Ask Don't Tell debate.) I think it's naive to suggest that the biggest fault of the last year was pushing for health care reform, or that the President's woes are all because of the economy. I think the President has an aversion, for whatever reason, to fighting for his professed beliefs. And that aversion has permeated the White House staff, whether by direct order or osmosis, so that the White House messaging machine is now muddled. This permitted the GOP, and especially the Teabagger wing of the party, to define Obama's presidency, while at the same time scaring Democrats in Congress, and the White House, into further backing off from the President's promises.

Congress deserves some blame as well. At the very least, they ceded far too much control over the agenda to the White House, which ironically didn't want the job. Again, leading to muddle. As for the Republicans in Congress, yeah they suck, they're obstructionist and extreme and care more about politics than policy. But when haven't they? I've been reading a lot lately about small dog syndrome. It's when you let a miniature pooch think it's the king of the world by not putting it in its place, not setting boundaries, not showing it who's in charge. The little guy gets awfully yappy, and ends up bossing you around. I think the GOP has small dog syndrome. And guess who enabled it?

I've said it before, and it's a bit of an over-generalization, but only barely. The American people don't care much about substance, they care about leadership. Someone with good ideas who refuses to lead is the public's worst nightmare. That doesn't mean you chuck your good ideas. It means if you want your good ideas to be enacted, you'd better lead. Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The CPACers are leaving DC today. There was a lot of crazy, nasty talk at the gathering. A lot. But, I'm still a little stunned by the reaction the ranting homophobe got. He got booed. Loudly. In years past, he would have gotten a standing ovation.

KarenMrsLloydRichards has some more haikus for the Obama administration:

Repeat history:
Do 1937.
A sure vote-getter!

It's getting crowded under the bus:

Obama's bus lane---
Littered with the Sacrificed -
The bus thuds, grinds, stalls . . .

And, I really like this one:

This "fierce advocate"
Sashayed down Christopher Sreet -
Now creeps down Wall Street

This political story of the upcoming week is going to be all about the health care summit. Obama makes another plea for bipartisanship and working together in his weekly address today. It's here.

Let's get started.... Read the rest of this post...

The Specials - A Message To You Rudy

I'm always listening to The Specials. I had no idea who they were when I saw them at my first concert. Then again, I didn't know who Oingo Boingo was nor did I know The Go-Go's. They played before The Police opened at the start of one of their tours. I don't listen much to The Police (or Sting) but still enjoy the others. Read the rest of this post...

The medical miracle that wasn't

Everyone was really hoping that this was for real. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

The sceptics said it was impossible – and it was. The story of Rom Houben of Belgium, which made headlines worldwide last November when he was shown to be "talking", was today revealed to have been nothing of the sort.

Dr Steven Laureys, one of the doctors treating him, acknowledged that his patient could not make himself understood after all. Facilitated communication, the technique said to have made Houben's apparent contact with the outside world possible, did not work, Laureys declared.

"We did not have all the facts before," he said. "To me, it's enough to say that this method doesn't work." Just three months ago the doctor was proclaiming that Houben had been trapped in his own body, the victim of a horrendous ­misdiagnosis, and only rescued from his terrible plight thanks to medical advances.

At that time Houben was pictured using the technology, which involves a speech therapist being guided by a patient to write words using a keyboard. A basic test appeared to prove it was indeed Houben who was communicating. "I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me," Houben apparently tapped. "It was my second birth. I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead."

Note from John: That's a hell of a detailed "oops" they got out of the guy, if he wasn't really typing it. Geez. Read the rest of this post...