I had no idea Scott Walker was so popular

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

She has been completely in the Romney camp throughout the primary process. That being said so was I.

[The Mad Monk]

Krauthammer, Rubin, Will.

Feh.

Noonan pulls no punches.

What's Changed After Wisconsin The Obama administration suddenly looks like a house of cards.

By PEGGY NOONAN

What happened in Wisconsin signals a shift in political mood and assumption. Public employee unions were beaten back and defeated in a state with a long progressive tradition. The unions and their allies put everything they had into "one of their most aggressive grass-roots campaigns ever," as the Washington Post's Peter Whoriskey and Dan Balz reported in a day-after piece. Fifty thousand volunteers made phone calls and knocked on 1.4 million doors to get out the vote against Gov. Scott Walker. Mr. Walker's supporters, less deeply organized on the ground, had a considerable advantage in money.

But organization and money aren't the headline. The shift in mood and assumption is. The vote was a blow to the power and prestige not only of the unions but of the blue-state budgetary model, which for two generations has been: Public-employee unions with their manpower, money and clout, get what they want. If you move against them, you will be crushed.

Mr. Walker was not crushed. He was buoyed, winning by a solid seven points in a high-turnout race.

Governors and local leaders will now have help in controlling budgets. Down the road there will be fewer contracts in which you work for, say, 23 years for a city, then retire with full salary and free health care for the rest of your life—paid for by taxpayers who cannot afford such plans for themselves, and who sometimes have no pension at all. The big meaning of Wisconsin is that a public injustice is in the process of being righted because a public mood is changing.

Political professionals now lay down lines even before a story happens. They used to wait to do the honest, desperate, last-minute spin of yesteryear. Now it's strategized in advance, which makes things tidier but less raggedly fun. The line laid down by the Democrats weeks before the vote was that it's all about money: The Walker forces outspent the unions so they won, end of story.

Money is important, as all but children know. But the line wasn't very flattering to Wisconsin's voters, implying that they were automatons drooling in front of the TV waiting to be told who to back. It was also demonstrably incorrect. Most voters, according to surveys, had made up their minds well before the heavy spending of the closing weeks.

Mr. Walker didn't win because of his charm—he's not charming. It wasn't because he is compelling on the campaign trail—he's not, especially. Even his victory speech on that epic night was, except for its opening sentence—"First of all, I want to thank God for his abundant grace," which, amazingly enough, seemed to be wholly sincere—meandering, unable to name and put forward what had really happened.

But on the big question—getting control of the budget by taking actions resisted by public unions—he was essentially right, and he won.

By the way, the single most interesting number in the whole race was 28,785. That is how many dues-paying members of the American Federation of State, County and Municiple Employees were left in Wisconsin after Mr. Walker allowed them to choose whether union dues would be taken from their paychecks each week. Before that, Afscme had 62,218 dues-paying members in Wisconsin. There is a degree to which public union involvement is, simply, coerced.

People wonder about the implications for the presidential election. They'll wonder for five months, and then they'll know.

President Obama's problem now isn't what Wisconsin did, it's how he looks each day—careening around, always in flight, a superfluous figure. No one even looks to him for leadership now. He doesn't go to Wisconsin, where the fight is. He goes to Sarah Jessica Parker's place, where the money is.

There is, now, a house-of-cards feel about this administration.

It became apparent some weeks ago when the president talked on the stump—where else?—about an essay by a fellow who said spending growth is actually lower than that of previous presidents. This was startling to a lot of people, who looked into it and found the man had left out most spending from 2009, the first year of Mr. Obama's presidency. People sneered: The president was deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture! But you know, why would he go out there waving an article that could immediately be debunked? Maybe because he thought it was true. That's more alarming, isn't it, the idea that he knows so little about the effects of his own economic program that he thinks he really is a low spender.

For more than a month, his people have been laying down the line that America was just about to enter full economic recovery when the European meltdown stopped it. (I guess the slowdown in China didn't poll well.) You'll be hearing more of this—we almost had it, and then Spain, or Italy, messed everything up. What's bothersome is not that it's just a line, but that the White House sees its central economic contribution now as the making up of lines.

Any president will, in a presidential election year, be political. But there is a startling sense with Mr. Obama that that's all he is now, that he and his people are all politics, all the time, undeviatingly, on every issue. He isn't even trying to lead, he's just trying to win.

.Most ominously, there are the national-security leaks that are becoming a national scandal—the "avalanche of leaks," according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, that are somehow and for some reason coming out of the administration. A terrorist "kill list," reports of U.S. spies infiltrating Al Qaeda in Yemen, stories about Osama bin Laden's DNA and how America got it, and U.S. involvement in the Stuxnet computer virus, used against Iranian nuclear facilities. These leaks, say the California Democrat, put "American lives in jeopardy," put "our nation's security in jeopardy."

This isn't the usual—this is something different. A special counsel may be appointed.

And where is the president in all this? On his way to Anna Wintour's house. He's busy. He's running for president.

But why? He could be president now if he wanted to be.

It just all increasingly looks like a house of cards. Bill Clinton—that ol' hound dog, that gifted pol who truly loves politics, who always loved figuring out exactly where the people were and then going to exactly that spot and claiming it—Bill Clinton is showing all the signs of someone who is, let us say, essentially unimpressed by the incumbent. He defended Mitt Romney as a businessman—"a sterling record"—said he doesn't like personal attacks in politics, then fulsomely supported the president, and then said that the Bush tax cuts should be extended.

His friends say he can't help himself, that he's getting old and a little more compulsively loquacious. Maybe. But maybe Bubba's looking at the president and seeing what far more than half of Washington sees: a man who is limited, who thinks himself clever, and who doesn't know that clever right now won't cut it.

Because Bill Clinton loves politics, he hates losers. Maybe he just can't resist sticking it to them a little, when he gets a chance.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303753904577452793597495290.html

[Ben Kenobi]

It reminds me of che calling everyone he disagreed with far right

I always saw that as a term of endearment. If he was calling you out, then you must have said something to merit it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Noonan pulls no punches.

She pulled quite a few back in 2008. She was all in IIRC.

He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.

There is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton’s 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen “Obama Wins” and “Alabama.” She said, “Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school.” She said, “That’s where they used the hoses.” Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

This means nothing? This means a great deal.

[Elok]

Incandescent rage is hyperbole, however, I recall the Will article that Elok refers to and it did come off a bit like a scene from "Grand Torino".

Did you like the part where he referred to "so-called 'gamers'--young people who enjoy playing video games but are still for some reason allowed to vote"? It was so precious. I kept expecting him to ask me to stay off his lawn.

[The Mad Monk]

That just shows that she's fair.

Can you give me a link on that, please?

[Al B. Sure!]

oh no! We had this recall all wrong!

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

That just shows that she's fair.

Can you give me a link on that, please?

Sure.

http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=440

[notyoueither]

I found this interesting.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/06/labour-waning

Labour waning
Who will protect the public interest?

Jun 8th 2012, 14:12 by W.W. | IOWA CITY


EZRA KLEIN of the Washington Post sees labour's loss in Wisconsin as part of long-term trend in the erosion of union power, and is pessimistic about the possibility of a turnaround. Which raises a question:

[I]f you take labor's decline as a given, then another question presents itself: How do you limit the resulting corporate power over elections and legislators? And that's much more possible, even in a post-Citizens United world. There's legislation, like the Fair Elections Now Act, that could publicly finance elections. There's legislation, like the DISCLOSE Act, that could force so much transparency on corporate spending that it ceases to be an attractive option.

... [Tuesday] night showed that Democrats aren't going to get very far simply disputing Republican claims on this point. Rather, they should argue that all interest groups have too much political power, and unite behind legislation that would weaken them.

Kevin Drum sees a hitch in Mr Klein's suggestion:

Ezra himself points out the problem with this idea: as labor gets ever weaker and corporations get ever stronger, "Democrats will have to be that much more solicitous of business demands in order to keep from being spent into oblivion." So where does the backing come from to pass legislation that would weaken corporate interests? This is perhaps the big political/institutional question of the next couple of decades: what replaces labor as a broad-based, nationwide countervailing force against the power of business? The answer, unfortunately, remains elusive.

Matthew Yglesias intervenes to point out that corporate interests are not monolithic:

As the great metaphysician Mitt Romney put it, corporations are people and concrete political controversies often pit the interests of entire firms or sectors against those of others. This reality is somewhat obscured from view precisely by the fact that labor unions are so weak in the American private sector. But if there were a labor union representing the majority of rank-and-file insurance company workers, they'd have been leading the charge against the public option. The United Mine Workers stand up for the interests of mine workers versus mine owners, but also for the interests of the mining industry versus the broader public interest in preventing the coal industry from sapping the atmosphere's ability to absorb CO2 emissions.

I think the practical issue here is a very real, but substantially narrower one. Labor unions are a clear and consistent voice for progressive taxation and public services against high-income individuals' strong interest in paying less taxes.

That's a big deal. But the practical dynamics of countervailing forces in American politics are much more likely to pit sector against sector than "corporate interests" against labor.

Mr Yglesias is correct. I would add a few considerations.

First, in seeking to check the malign influence of corporations, it may be a mistake to focus too much on elections. Corporations often do their dirtiest, anti-competitive, rent-seeking work through the regulatory process. The manner in which corporations have influence on regulatory bodies, whether legislative or bureaucratic, may be entirely unaffected by campaign-finance reforms of the sort Mr Klein envisions. For example, publicly-financed elections won't bolt the revolving doors through which personnel from the regulatory agencies and the corporations they regulate pass back and forth.

Second, besides overlooking the diversity and rivalry of corporate and union interests, picturing politics as a battle between the opposing forces of big business and big labour badly overlooks the role of the beliefs and interests of ordinary voters. At its most cartoonish, the progressive vision conceives of voters as mere vehicles of class interest, or as dupes easily gulled by pernicious corporate propaganda that either is or is not counteracted by corrective anti-corporate propaganda. I'll just say that the truth is rather trickier than that, and that the determinants of public opinion are varied and complex. Our personal convictions and preferences are fixed at the convoluted intersection of native personality, ambient culture, level of education, faith, family structure, habits of media consumption, relations to the means of production, etc. Whatever the forces behind public opinion, public opinion matters, and it matters a lot. Policy is quite responsive to public opinion in democracies. If enough of us come to believe that we're exploited or harmed by this or that corporate interest, we can band together and exercise our democratic prerogatives to do something about it. Where does the backing come from to pass legislation that would weaken corporate interests? Well, where does the backing come from to pass legislation establishing same-sex marriage, or legislation banning late-term abortion? From the many millions of people who believe in it.

Last, I think it's important to acknowledge that efforts such as those in Wisconsin to weaken the power of public-sector unions is animated in no small part by the drive to improve democratic government by making it less sclerotic and more responsive. Reihan Salam points us to a revealing passage from a book by Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana who abolished collective-bargaining for public-sector workers in his state:

In Indiana our actions were only secondarily about finances. It is true that the freedom to restructure departments, consolidate functions, and so on saved Hoosier taxpayers tons of money. But the principal motive, and equally important gains, came in the transformation of state services. There simply was no way we could have revolutionized our Bureau of Motor Vehicles (more on this later), our state parks, our prison system, or so many other services if we had been hogtied by the old union agreement.

Mr Daniels goes on to explain how limiting the power of public-sector unions allowed his government to transform an inexcusably ineffective child-welfare system into something much, much better:

Fixing the department required making thousands of organizational, process, and personnel changes. Hundreds of workers either were reassigned or, in some cases, dismissed for poor performance. The agency of 2011 looks totally different, and operates in a totally different way from its predecessor. If every one of these steps had required union consultation or signoff, as the old agreement provided, we would still be trying to take some of the earliest actions.

It seems to me quite misleading to characterise this sort of reform as having anything at all to do with weakening checks on corporate interests. Union and public interests can conflict, just as corporate and public interests can conflict. Checking union interests can promote the public interest in much the same way checking corporate interests can. To the extent that the Democratic Party is beholden to public-sector unions, it is constrained to promoting policies and reforms not inconsistent with the unions' interests in preserving the often dysfunctional and unsustainable status quo. There's a good reason you don't hear many Democrats complaining about having their hands so tightly tied, but many of them nevertheless realise that, as Walter Russell Mead puts it, "the power of public sector unions among Democrats is a power that inhibits Democrats from putting forward innovative, future-facing ideas (about schools, health care, and so on) and keeps them focused firmly on the defense of the past." Reducing that power frees Democrats to get really serious about making sure government delivers on its promises.

[The Mad Monk]

Sure.

http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=440

Excellent. Thanks!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Did you like the part where he referred to "so-called 'gamers'--young people who enjoy playing video games but are still for some reason allowed to vote"? It was so precious. I kept expecting him to ask me to stay off his lawn.

Man, I remember that article too. How utterly embarrasing. Way to turn into "get those kids off my lawn" man in front of millions.

[Al B. Sure!]

Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six -- so far -- "Batman" adventures and "Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps," coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy's catechism of leveling -- thou shalt not dress better than society's most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism -- of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

-George Will

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I keep forgetting if it was Brooks or Will that was so impressed by the crease of Obamas trousers circa 2008.

[The Mad Monk]

I found this interesting.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/06/labour-waning

I think that has some great points.

[Elok]

Thanks, Al, that brought back memories. Weren't jeans really controversial clothing on young people back in the sixties or thereabouts? I know I read a short story in an old reader back in middle school about a girl who defied school dress codes by wearing them...help me out here, geezers of Poly.