Like many Establishment Republicans, I spent last weekend wondering what was happening to the world. Newt over Mitt? Why?

Because Newt is more conservative? No

Labeled “the least conservative candidate” by conservative standard-bearer George Will, Gingrich has often strayed from modern conservatism—here’s a (partial) rundown. He pushed the federal health insurance mandate long before Romney implemented a state mandate, and he later applauded the passage of Romneycare. He has savaged Bain Capital in particular and private equity in general, fundamentally questioning free enterprise and “embarrassing” himself in the Wall Street Journal’s estimation. He attacked Paul Ryan’s entitlement reform plan, the conservative political Bible, as “right wing social engineering.” He appeared in an ad with Nancy Pelosi pushing for climate change solutions, his immigration stance is well to the Left of Romney’s, and he was the victim of conservative rebellion as Speaker of the House.

If Gingrich had stood by his less-than-conservative beliefs, that would be one thing. He could say, ‘yeah I have some positions that don’t mesh with orthodox conservatism, but at least I’m being honest with you about what I believe.’ He hasn’t, though. He branded his support for a health insurance mandate “wrong,” called his denigration of Paul Ryan’s reform plan a “mistake,” and referred to the climate change ad as “probably the dumbest single thing I’ve done in recent years.”

So Newt isn’t more conservative than the alleged Massachusetts moderate, and he’s a flip-flopper too. We can rule out consistent conservatism as the reason for the Gingrich surge.

Is it because he is the populist in the race? No

Romney and Gingrich may both seem out of touch—Romney because he really is smarter and more successful than most, Gingrich because he only thinks he is. Romney is an elite by nature, Gingrich by choice. Newt is the author of perhaps the most elitist note in history in which he characterized himself as an “Advocate of civilization, defender of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization, arouser of those who form civilization, organizer of the pro-civilization activists, and leader ‘possibly’ of the civilizing forces.” He was pompous enough to suggest he is such a good historian, not just such a good Washington insider, that Freddie Mac paid him $1.6 million for his opinion, and he has revealed that he made $60,000 per appearance on the speaking circuit. Personal qualities in general can’t be driving the Gingrich surge given his history of infidelity, ethics charges, Tiffany’s expenditures, and more.

If voters were looking for the most non-elite candidate (Ron Paul aside), they would have gone to Santorum, not Gingrich.

 So is it because Newt is better equipped to handle today’s issues? No

The central issue of this entire election season is the economy—Romney markets himself as the turnaround artist and business expert who will fix it, but Gingrich has no similar case to make. Romney’s strengths and the needs of the country overlap well, but Gingrich has no business experience to bring to the White House. Instead, he is a Washington insider and former politician, and thus he cannot speak to the anti-Washington sentiments and economic frustrations many Americans are feeling.

Voters may be looking for someone who can debate Obama in the fall, and Newt is a good talker, but so is Mitt. It’s not critical current issues that are behind the Gingrich resurgence.

What the Gingrich appeal is really about

If the Gingrich appeal is not about conservatism, populism, or solutions for today’s pressing issues, then what is it about? It’s about anger. Gingrich has been successful because he has been the maddest.

Republican primary voters are furious about the Obama presidency and the direction of the country, and Gingrich manifests that anger better than any other candidate. His tirades against the liberal media and personal attacks on President Obama are met with standing ovations and roaring applause. Romney, meanwhile, channels Ronald Reagan, cheerfully focusing on American exceptionalism and optimistically looking forward to an “American century” guided by conservative ideals.

The problem is, this isn’t the Reagan era. Just look at how many times per day Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, “thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” is violated. Good candidates like Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty who didn’t embrace the doctrine of anger have failed. Huntsman’s characterization of President Obama as a “remarkable leader” was a near campaign-ender in its own right, and Tim Pawlenty was derided for refusing to repeat his attack line on Obamneycare in front of Romney. They weren’t mean enough, mad enough.

In South Carolina, this primary was really about, to the exclusion of nearly all other considerations, who showed the most anger. Gingrich’s indignation may score him more victories, but only if Romney doesn’t take note. All Romney has to do is start spitting some venom. Candidates for public office attack and question one another’s character and qualifications all the time, but this is different. This is about anger for anger’s sake.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

What the speaker calls an insult is a basic principle of economics acknowledged by top officials in the Obama administration. Federal unemployment insurance provides temporary payments to workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own and meet certain other eligibility requirements. While this eases the pain of workers who are laid off, it also increases the unemployment rate. Former Harvard University president Larry Summers, whom President Obama appointed to head the National Economic Council, has explained that such programs contribute to long-term unemployment by providing people with “an incentive, and the means, not to work.” Unemployment benefits, in other words, amount to a subsidy for people who have lost their jobs to remain out of work, enabling and encouraging them to delay finding another job.

The debate among economists is not about whether unemployment benefits generate additional unemployment, but the extent to which they do. Summers cites his and Kim B. Clark’s 1979 study estimating that the existence of unemployment insurance almost doubles the number of unemployment spells lasting more than three months. More recently, University of Chicago economist Bruce D. Meyer found that generous unemployment insurance has “a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment,” meaning the more people are paid to remain without a job, the longer they do so. He determined that a ten percent increase in the “replacement ratio,” or benefits divided by after-tax income received while employed, increases the length of unemployment spells by roughly 1.5 weeks. He also found that recipients are dramatically more likely to get another job just prior to when their benefits run out.

In 2006, Peter Kuhn and Chris Riddell of the National Bureau of Economic Research compared unemployment insurance regimes in environmentally and demographically similar regions of neighboring Maine and New Brunswick from 1940 to 1991. The Canadian province had dramatically higher long-term unemployment over this period, which the authors largely attribute to Canada’s more generous benefits.

Speaker Pelosi also claimed that unemployment insurance is a “job creator” because it “injects demand into the economy.” By this logic, since people without jobs are more likely to spend what money they have, more generous unemployment benefits lead to greater demand for goods and services, and thus more jobs. While it’s at least plausible that unemployment insurance generates greater demand for workers, the notion that such a program leads to more people working seems to be undermined by empirical evidence. The same Summers and Clark study estimates that if the program were eliminated, the unemployment rate would drop by more than half a percentage point. This is particularly significant given that less than half of the unemployed receive benefits since many do not qualify.

Pelosi is correct that unemployment insurance “helps people who’ve lost their jobs,” but her claim that it “creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name” is misleading inasmuch as empirical evidence indicates that it increases unemployment. Government can create jobs, as Pelosi clearly understands, by expanding the public sector; it can also empower private firms to do so by reducing taxes and regulation. Neither of these avenues entails the adverse incentives of paying people not to work. If the goal of policy is full employment, there are likely much better ways to accomplish this than unemployment insurance, and the drawbacks of this program are not to be rejected out of hand.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia.

Consider yourself enlightened. In The Times this week:

Buried deep in the health care legislation that President Obama signed on Tuesday is a new requirement that will affect any American who walks into a McDonald’s, Starbucks or Burger King. Every big restaurant chain in the nation will now be required to put calorie information on their menus and drive-through signs.

Now that the 2000-page health care bill has passed, we are learning all sorts of interesting things about the goodies, or restrictions on goodies, packed into its nooks and crannies like bits of the afikoman on the first night of Passover.

What is a “big” restaurant chain, you ask? According to the authors of Obamacare, the magic number is… 20. That is, if you own a restaurant chain with more than 20 stores, you’re on the hook.

I don’t imagine this will be particularly onerous for large fast-food corporations such as Pizza Hut and McDonald’s, which have already spent money on testing for calories and posted information online. But it will force a lot of businesses in the 20-30 range to incur heavy costs (chemical evaluations + menu changes) or cut down on the number of stores.  As Ed Morrisey notes:

The impact on businesses will be disproportionate to their size.  Large restaurant chains with standardized menus can handle this mandate less expensively per dinner sold, thanks to the economies of scale, which is why Chili’s has the information on their national website.  Chains under 20 locations will get exempt.  But what about those chains with just over 20 locations?

This might explain why the National Restaurant Association, probably more beholden to Big Fast-Food than Felipe’s Taqueria, supported federalizing restrictions which had already been adopted by several states and cities.

The impact of Calorie Cop regulation on small businesses shows up  in various subtle ways — price increases, wage decreases, slower growth – while the evidence for the efficacy of these restrictions is mixed at best.

To be fair, we were warned by Speaker Pelosi:

“I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket.  Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

Oh, that darned fog of controversy! How it seems to roll in whenever we try to remake a substantial portion of the U.S. economy in our image!

Now, I won’t grumble about the fact that these little nuggets of extra paternalism went mostly unreported until after the bill passed. With the news media strapped for cash, how could we expect them to pore through thousands of pages of Good-Hearted Legislation for the Less Fortunate Among Us as if they were Bush-era torture memos?

Image Credit: NYT Blog

Valerie Jarrett wowed the JFK Jr. Forum tonight. More than a few told me that it was their favorite Forum of the year, no small feat in a year of big names: Newt Gingrich, David Axelrod, and Nancy Pelosi.

But, it’s not all about political stardom. The senior adviser to the President charmed us with class and smooth talked our most pointed questions. At the end of the evening, she had managed to remind a skeptical audience that for all his (perceived, of course) faults, BHO was their best and only hope. Indeed, Ms. Jarrett used the Forum to her full advantage; her staging and delivery were pitch perfect. She wisely chose not to deliver an address from the podium. After all, what could she have spoken on? The Obama consigliere touches nearly everything in the White House, but she has no area of expertise or angle. Any speech would have been flat, generic, and broad.

Instead, she sat on stage and bantered with the presidential adviser extraordinaire, Professor David Gergen. The professor built up Jarrett’s allure, calling her the “First Friend” and labeling her “the one who is asked to stay behind after meetings.” While surrounded by Secret Service and some of the tightest security I’ve seen in the Forum, Jarrett constantly played up her image as the outsider in Washington. She told the audience how she urged Barack Obama to leave DC more often and do more town halls. She asked questioners to email her and make suggestions directly. In response to a question about torture, she even told the student to speak to her afterwards if he had any specific examples of extraordinary rendition she could investigate.

She told the story of how she first hired a promising young lawyer named Michelle Robinson and met her fiance over dinner. She harkened back to the campaign, reminding the audience how unlikely electing a black man named Barack Hussein Obama seemed. When asked by Gergen how the White House would act if the healthcare summit failed, Jarrett (only somewhat) jokingly said that the first thing she learned in media training was not to engage in hypotheticals. In response to a question about minority support, she mocked the Bush administration for having only two outreach groups (evangelicals and business) in the Office of Public Engagement; hers has 45. Overall, she demonstrated a deftness in being able to parry questions in a seemingly sincere way; she would tack a humble “it’s really tough—we’re working on it” to the end of most complex answers. But perhaps more importantly, she understood the role of an adviser and friend. At every opportunity, she pivoted to praise the president, lauding his even temperament, his dedication to women’s issues, and his analytical prowess.

The one portion that felt lackluster was her closing advice and hortation to our generation. She gave lip service to the way JFK inspired a generation to public service, and asked the audience to help contribute and create a “groundswell” to change Washington. Instead of platitudes, a simple explanation from the heart of why she chose government over private law practice would have been more than enough. The reason? She wanted to make a difference for her daughter.

Jay Cost has a passionate response to recent liberal criticisms of the filibuster. In his view, it’s a good thing to pass legislation that has broad (and perhaps bipartisan) support, rather than to pass legislation with increasingly partisan “simple majorities.” But there are several little problems with Cost’s argument that need to be pointed out, and I think they add up.

First, perhaps it’s true, as Cost argues, that ideological polarization has led to the increased use of the filibuster, but it is also possible that the existence of the filibuster has enabled ideological polarization, creating a vicious cycle. Senate leaders on both sides have discovered, to put it crudely, that they don’t need to win elections in order to win legislative battles. As long as they man the barricades to preserve 40 safe seats, they can achieve a lot — or, what is the same, prevent the other party from achieving a lot. And those 40 seats, sought for their safeness, are likely to be filled by very partisan, ideological senators.

Second, I’m unconvinced that the filibuster has really led to “moderate policies,” instead of just nonsensical ones. I don’t really understand Cost’s position on this issue: he admits that he finds the compromised Senate health care bill “highly objectionable,” but implies that it’s better than what we would have gotten if the Dems only needed 50 votes. I think that this assumption is quite wrong, and wrong not just from my own liberal perspective but from a “moderate” perspective as well. Sure, you would have gotten a public option if there had been no filibuster. But you might also have gotten more serious attempts at cost-cutting: tough choices of the sort that serious moderates like Cost and Ross Douthat desire, but which stand no chance in the polarized, minority-rule Senate. You would also have avoided the sweetheart deals to “centrist” senators that Republicans have spent the last week decrying.

See, if you have liberal senators cutting deals with center-right senators, or conservative senators cutting deals with center-left senators, what you are likely to get is not moderate legislation — precisely because the parties have become so polarized, and their most extreme members, their Boxer and their DeMints, also have effective veto power. Rather, you will either get the same old “partisan” legislation but with sweetheart deals to bring the centrists on board, or you will get watered-down legislation, catering to the centrists’ overwhelming imperative to extract their pound of flesh from all legislation no matter the policy implications. In the case of the stimulus and health care reform, half a loaf was/is better than no loaf, but that will not always be the case (consider cap-and-trade, for instance). Sometimes a bill that can attract Boxer and Franken, as well as Nelson and Landrieu, just won’t make sense. Ditto if you replace the first two with DeMint and Inhofe.

Third, I just don’t find Cost’s concern about violent policy swings all that convincing. The fact is, if we got rid of the filibuster, it would still take a lot of work, and a lot of electoral success, to swing policy sharply in one direction or the other. Imagine that the Democrats had only 53 seats at the moment, and there was no filibuster, and they passed “extreme” liberal health care legislation. Now imagine that the Republicans win five seats in 2010, take the Senate, and pass narrow, partisan bills to repeal health care reform and privatize Medicare. You’d still have to assume that the House has changed parties too, because Nancy Pelosi’s majority, even if neutered, would never consent to those bills. And you’d never get those bills past the desk of President Obama. So, the extreme changes would have to wait at least until 2012, and we’d have to assume the (I think unlikely) defeat of President Obama. (And all this without considering political culture and the likelihood that many laws, once passed, are not so easily repealed.)

In other words, what Cost forgets is that bills have to get by three different institutional sets of eyes, a fact which, on its own, limits the amount of legislation and, yes, ensur

es consensus. The people decided, over the course of two biennial elections, to put Democrats in charge of the entire federal government. That’s a consensus! Cost’s persistent reference to a “bare majority” passing legislation overlooks the fact that you need a bare majority in effectively three legislative bodies (the executive branch included) and that, per the founders’ wisdom, the members of these bodies have different constituencies, and are elected in different ways and at different times. There are a lot of checks on the passions of bare majorities in the American system. Cost’s fallacy, in understandably pointing to Federalist #10, is that he suggests that because some checks were desired, all checks must be justified. But

we can require varying degrees of political consensus; we don’t have to choose between government-by-filibuster and government-by-faction. By any measure, even without the filibuster, our system would require a substantial degree of consensus. But the filibuster goes too far.

One last thing. Cost argues that the filibuster doesn’t prevent change, it just makes it less likely. He says, if your party has only 55 senators, and can’t get anything done, you can always try to enlarge your majority in the next election. But voters punish ineffectiveness, and they are not likely to be favorably disposed to cries from the majority party that they couldn’t get anything done because of dastardly filibusterers. Yes, the argument could work in extre

me circumstances, but the most likely outcome is that the minority party says “you gave them a chance, and they couldn’t handle it” and that the voters buy that. In other words, the filibuster not only allows the minority party to stop legislation, but (and it should be obvious that this follows) to politically hurt the majority in doing so. You can see this on a small scale in the recent furor over Ben Nelson’s sweetheart deal: the deal would never have been needed without the filibuster, or without the Republican threat to use it, but instead of blaming the institution or the Republicans, people are (predictably enough) blaming Nelson and the Democrats. So, I think Cost overestimates the likelihood that “they’re filibustering for

political reasons” will be a winning electoral argument, and so the filibuster might not just make legislative change less likely, but make it impossible for a long time. Is there any doubt that health care reform wouldn’t happen in 2011 if it doesn’t happen in 2009?

]]> http://hpronline.org/last-decade/no-seriously-get-rid-of-the-filibuster-2/feed/ 0 http://hpronline.org/books-arts/play-on/ http://hpronline.org/books-arts/play-on/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 06:11:30 +0000 Jonathan Yip Music, politics, and celebrity in the age of Bono

Bono jumped eagerly across the stage, swinging his microphone. The Edge launched the guitar intro for “No Line on the Horizon,” the drum line paused, and the towering stage lights flashed, and Bono began.

In front of me soared a 160-foot tall, $25 million claw-shaped stage. With a production cost of $750,000 a day, the U2 360° Tour is every bit the dazzling spectacle one expects from the band that will not stop growing. Around me, 80,000 dancing fans had come to worship the only mega-band left. In DC, NYC, and Las Vegas, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Clinton have all paid their respects to the tour. Today, U2, like its monstrous stage in Gillette Stadium, straddles our musical-and political-landscape. For the 33-year old U2, there does seem to be no line on the horizon.

Last of the rock stars

Despite a few close brushes with irrelevance, U2 has somehow managed to stay at the forefront of the popular psyche. In an age when the musical scene is fragmented and changeable, U2 continues to leave an outsized footprint on pop culture that neither Coldplay nor Kanye West can approach. This September at Giants Stadium, Bono humbly pointed out that U2 filled more seats than the Pope’s mass held there previously.

Why does U2 still have such allure? It is not merely popular music and a brilliant front man, but a reflection of a culture that has allowed U2 to become more than just a band. It has allowed the group to expand out of the musical sphere and into the political, becoming a phenomenon only the 21^st century could have created.

Bono opens for Conservative Party leader David Cameron in the UK. Movie theaters show U2:3D. Ten million people across the globe watch a U2 concert live on YouTube. Bono shared Time’s 2005 Person of the Year award with Bill Gates and founded the pervasive Product (RED). U2 has been uniquely poised to breach the crumbling walls between pop culture and policy, cultivating pure cultural power.

“We built this spaceship on rock and roll.”

Since its start at an Irish high school in 1976, U2 has always written deeply political songs, from “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” commemorating Northern Irish violence, to “New Year’s Day,” in honor of the Solidarity movement. All the same, though U2 had a big break at Live Aid charity concert in 1985, the first thing that concerned the band and their fans was music.

At the time, no politicians took musicians seriously. There never could have been meetings with senators or working partnerships with Harvard professors, as Bono would later develop with economist Jeffrey Sachs.

During U2′s early 90s ZooTV tour, a massive, media-saturated, ironic series of concerts, Bono called President George H.W. Bush on stage every night, knowing full well that he would be rejected each time by the White House.

Bono was making a point: politicians are inaccessible, irresponsible, and worthy of mockery. Musicians and politicians were on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, never to cross paths.

Walk On

After the relative failure of 1997′s Pop, an experimental electronic album, the band seemed to be flagging. Its frontman, in particular, began to explore side projects, eventually latching onto Jubilee 2000, a campaign to lobby for third-world debt relief.

Bono grasped something that would change the way the world dealt with and interpreted fame. He realized that he could deploy his celebrity to galvanize and glamorize almost any issue.

Bono had to prove himself, of course. By all accounts, the frontman is more intelligent than the average pop star. President Clinton once recounted to Time an instance in which the Secretary of the Treasury, Larry Summers, mentioned: “Some guy just came in to see me in jeans and a T-shirt, and he just had one name, but he sure was smart. Do you know anything about him?”

Since then, Bono has founded two successful NGOs, and has been summoned to the White House many times, toured Africa with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Recently, he has become a popular guest columnist for the New York Times, but also finds common ground with conservatives, often turning to scripture to successfully appeal to President Bush or even the late Senator Jesse Helms.

Bono, after years of concentrated smooth talking and dedication, managed to inject himself into the world of policymaking as a man to be taken seriously. He, unlike almost any other star, has deftly melded the worlds of politics and celebrity, becoming a powerhouse in both, casting aside the convention that once kept them separate.

“Sing with us.”

U2 has allowed this passion for politics to pervade its live performances. U2 360° is three parts rock spectacle and one part motivational preaching. From dedicating “Sunday Bloody Sunday” to the Iranian freedom movement, to singing about Aung San Suu Kyi, U2 has become an overtly political band.

By all appearances the audience laps it up. They eagerly text the ONE campaign, sign up at the Amnesty International booth, and cheer for a deposed Burmese leader that most have never even heard of. Some, apparently, are even willing to appear on stage wearing masks with the house-arrested Prime Minister’s face.

While Bono and U2 have done a great service by raising awareness for the Millennium Development Goals and Africa’s plight, the concert gives the audience good vibrations without actually assigning any real responsibility. At worst, the political content of the performance actually absolves us of action.  It’s unclear what good it does to have Nobel laureate and real hero, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, tell the audience, while name-dropping the tour, that the “same people who marched for civil rights are the same people who protest Apartheid in South Africa … are the same beautiful people when I look around this place tonight in 360°.” In all likelihood, we are not the ones who fought against apartheid or for debt relief. Praising us for having done nothing seems counterproductive, even duplicitous, but for me or any concertgoer, it is a hard deal to resist. We pay for a concert ticket, listen to our favorite music, and get lavish moral praise for struggles we never participated in.

The tour and band’s politics have been stretched so thin it is hard to perceive U2′s message as anything more than “doing good.” U2, for better or worse, has become diluted beyond recognition, standing only for stardom and righteousness.  Perhaps the formula for everlasting relevance is to shed all irony and embrace star power. Bono has developed the perfect celebrity persona for our age: political, passionate, and pervasive. We all want to be a hero and rock star at once: U2 puts us on the stage.

* I don’t recall Fox News taking a principled anti-federal stance during the Bush Administration’s expansion of federal power, which is weird.  I probably just missed it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) and his deputy, Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.) were called to Pelosi’s office late Thursday night and ultimately prevailed in their argument that Democrats should try to salvage the bill, which includes critical spending increases for vital agencies. But the heated, sometimes profane, exchanges were described as “ugly” by Democrats on both sides of the Capitol. Staff, kicked out in the hall, could hear the yelling, and Pelosi herself seemed a little abashed the next day, joking that nothing her leadership could say to her now would match the night before.

In one sense, this story really doesn’t mean very much. As any college student can tell you, long hours plus high stress plus (very likely) over-caffination mean incredibly nasty fights. Just ask my roommate about the time I sto…er, borrowed his food without any immediate intention of returning it.

But this isn’t the first sign we’ve seen of a split between the north and south side of the Capitol. And it is extremely unusual for two leaders of the same party to be so hostile, at least in public. So what’s really going on here?

I suspect part of the tension might be the inherent difference between the two chambers. The rules of the House of Representatives allow it to be run by a simple majority. If Pelosi can find 218 votes she wins. Always. Senate procedure forces Reid to finagle 100 supposedly free agents. Further, since the time of Thomas Reed, the Speaker has enjoyed enormous power to manipulate the House and its proceedings. Even Lyndon Johnson found that the Senate Leader is just primus inter partes. Thus, we see the House vote in hours and the Senate in weeks.

But it seems to me something much larger is going on. Power on Capitol Hill has long fluctuated between the House and the Senate. In 1994, Bob Dole enjoyed a much narrower majority than Harry Reid does today. Yet Newt Gingrich dictated the terms to Dole; it fell to the Kansas to shepherd much of the Contract with America through the Senate.

It’s not hard to understand why Pelosi and the House leadership would now feel outrage that the Senate, not the House, is the hurdle legislation must cross. It is not hard to guess that Pelosi might view Reid’s vacillation between pushing for the omnibus spending bill and cutting off the vote to find Senator 60 as a fundamental sign of weakness. That Reid and Durban met in Pelosi’s office rather than the other way around or in some neutral setting suggests Pelosi’s perception may hit its mark. It’s important to remember that news in Washington is as much a tool as a neutral observer; people tell stories for a reason. In this case, the message seems quite clear. Pelosi and Reid are fighting a turf war.

What are the consequences of this struggle between House and Senate? I personally find it unlikely that Pelosi will succeed in wresting power away from the Senate. As long as the Constitution mandates legislation to pass through both bodies, the greater prestige, spotlight, and rules of the Senate will continue to pose the greatest hurdle to the Democratic agenda. But what of the third party? After all, power in Washington general is a zero sum game. Any enmity between the two may ultimately weaken the President and his plans. I find it interesting that Obama has not yet intervened to stop the bloodshed. Perhaps the President plans to triangulate in a Clintonian mode. Or perhaps Obama sees disunity in Congress as an opportunity to build his own coalition, hence Rahm. Yet few Presidents have suceeded with weak Congressional support and Obama may soon need all the whips he can find.

Nonetheless, this struggle may prove most difficult for its main actors. Both Pelosi and Reid face potential threats within their caucus, Pelosi from the Blue Dogs, Reid from the moderates. If the two faces of Democratic leadership on Capitol hill do not desist in their feud, the result may be one of mutually assured destruction.

W., Directed by Oliver Stone, Lions Gate, 2008. 129 minutes.

Oliver Stone’s latest film, W., offers a fresh, revisionist look at many of the major players in the life of George W. Bush. The movie’s assessment of the Bush administration’s legacy, however, is a decidedly mainstream one. Though at times this biopic feels like a Saturday Night Live retelling of Bush’s most famous mishaps, W. is one of the first of what are sure to be many historical analyses of the last eight years. Cutting between scenes of deliberation in the White House and selections from Bush’s life before his arrival on the national stage in 2000, Stone connects key moments in Bush’s personal history, filled with the difficulty of meeting family expectations, with the defining decision of his administration, the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Growing Up Bush

The first scene of the future president’s youth is a pledging ceremony in a secret society. Bush is called upon to name the members of the organization who are present after a fellow pledge fails at the task, and Bush effortlessly rattles off a list, including nicknames. In this context, Bush is far from the stuttering, clueless, dependent caricature that typically appears in pop culture representations. Rather, this W. has moments of warranted confidence; in social settings, he is at ease, such as at the barbeque where he meets and charms the liberal, intellectual Laura Welch, his future wife. Certainly, W. demonstrates his trademark casual attitude, calling his Cabinet members nicknames like “Rummy” and “Brother George,” but the movie is careful to distinguish this attitude from stupidity. He is quick on his feet: When Karl Rove, coaching him for a debate, asks him to defend his “swagger”, he replies, “In Texas, we call it walking.” His greatest weakness is not his ability to apply himself but his desire to do so.

The young George’s hesitance to apply himself as an entrepreneur, an academic and, especially, a politician is a manifestation of the rebelliousness toward his father that is one of the most prominent motifs in the film. Early on, the elder Bush criticizes his son for a range of faults, from his desire to become Commissioner of Baseball to a rumor that W. had impregnated a young woman. His father, then the United States’ Ambassador to the United Nations, pulled strings to get his son into Harvard Business School, but it would be several more years before W. decided to enter the family business by running, unsuccessfully, for Congress from Texas.

Even when W. came around to the idea of a life in politics, tension with his father remained high. His father invited him to come to Washington to work on his presidential campaign but only chose to extend the invitation because George’s younger brother, Jeb, was unavailable. George’s personality inevitably clashes with his father; in 1992, when Bill Clinton defeats the first President Bush, W. lashes out at his father’s failure to continue the Gulf War long enough to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Then, in 1994, when W. announces his intention to run for Governor of Texas, his parents scold him for not waiting his turn—Jeb was planning a run in Florida in the same year—and forcing them to divide their time between the two campaigns. This early tension between Jeb and George’s political careers foreshadows the catastrophe that the last eight years were for the Bush name; few Americans today think of Jeb as a future national political figure.

The Farcical Years

The film features a number of Bush Cabinet member look-alikes who build the political framework in which Bush operates. Because of the film’s obvious emphasis on finding actors with convincing physical resemblance to their characters, some clearly fail to capture the persona they are supposed to embody, instead coming across as black and white. Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell, the lone voice of dissent against invading Iraq, is almost hauntingly sage in his pragmatic stand against a hastily prepared war. The character of Condoleezza Rice spends most of her time smirking and nodding sycophantically at the President in a highly unflattering manner. Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney perfectly captures the principle for which the vice president stood: brazen willingness to finish the job started by the Gulf War. He also articulates the aspiration to eventually become involved in Iran, and is perhaps more influential in the film’s simplified administration than he is in real life. In one scene of deliberation in the Oval Office, Cheney lurks in the doorway, arms folded, contributing little but surveying the entire group with a clear air of superiority. At another point in the film, Bush has to remind his second-in-command: “I’m the decider.”

Casting a Long Shadow

In W., the planning and execution of the Iraq war receive far more detail than the life of George W. Bush. The former is a blow-by-blow account of major decisions, while the latter is an anthology of symbolic moments. The movie opens with a Cabinet discussion of the phrase “axis of evil,” during which the President largely disregards the nuanced differences among the countries he is about to lump together in favor of a more ideologically compelling message. The result: an invasion justified using the same vague logic to conflate fundamentally different forces. It is telling that the film mentions little of the Sept. 11 attacks; rather, details like presidential speechwriters arguing over the word “yellowcake” truly comprise the build-up to the Iraq war. When Bush finally delivers his address on Iraq to a joint session of Congress, the film cuts away to footage of the audience from the actual address. These clips focused exclusively on prominent Democratic leaders—Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden—a reminder, perhaps, of the party that stood to gain from this blunder.

The collegiate George W. Bush, enjoying beer and barbeques, shirking work opportunities, seems drastically different from the force behind the Iraq War for which he is now best known. Even as Bush’s political ambitions rise, personal aggrandizement never seems to be the driving factor in his life choices, even up to the invasion of Iraq. He is far more motivated by the expectations, whether real or perceived, of his family. Bush watched his father win a war but lose an election, and he never forgot it. Ironically, the son followed the opposite trajectory: a questionable war was enough to re-elect him, but an inability to end it will, if W. is any indication, leave an indelible mark atop the Bush legacy.♦

First there was this web ad put out July 29 by the RNC right after Barack Obama’s Berlin speech. Take note of the Euro-techno soundtrack (it’s awfully hard not to), the epilepsy-inducing mockery of Obama campaign buzzwords, and the copious David Hasselhoff references. Juvenile? Most definitely. And I doubt that a commercial that seems designed solely to rip on Europeans is going to score John McCain votes he wouldn’t have gained anyway. But give the GOP credit for putting out something good for a one-time chuckle, even if it does reek of spite and cynicism.

Not content to let the presidential campaign steal their thunder, that same week House Republicans made good on a longstanding threat to bring the Democratic majority to its knees and force a vote on comprehensive energy legislation before Congress left for summer recess—by getting outvoted on an adjournment legislation and then sticking around for another week and a half (and counting) to complain about it. Regardless of what you think about offshore drilling, or whether you believe any of the leaders of the GOP revolt when they proclaim that they’re serving any cause higher than getting as much media coverage as possible, I think there’s something we can all appreciate in this.

What these House GOP diehards—the original protest involved almost 50 of them, but subsequent days typically see about 20 appear on a rotating basis—are doing right now is probably the most entertaining thing that’s happened in the lower chamber in decades. When the Democrats cut the mics in the House chamber, the Republicans brought megaphones. When the C-SPAN cameras darkened, the GOP Twittered . And uploaded homemade videos from their cell phones that seemed to have been pulled straight from the Blair Witch Project. The protesters even yanked people away from their Capitol tours and brought them to the floor so their speeches could have a live audience.

On the floor, the Republicans yelled. They waved prop gas tanks in the air. Rep. Steve King of Iowa was thoughtful enough to bring along a blown-up, comically unflattering photo of Nancy Pelosi labeled with the caption “I want to save the planet.” They slapped each other on the back. They bro-hugged. The first session—along with many subsequent ones—ended with group sing-alongs to “God Bless America.”

The funniest part of all this? They started claiming that what they were doing was actually helping lower gas prices.

You may find what the Republicans are doing to be ridiculous. And to some degree offensive (in all seriousness, the King photo was pretty reprehensible). But I insist that it’s still something to admire, at the very least simply because politicians don’t *do* stuff like this anymore.

So what’s the point of all this musing? Why do I care that Republicans are suddenly being funny? I don’t think it’s going to win them any elections this fall. After all, what does it say about the McCain campaign that it’s relying on ad hominem attacks—witty ad hominem attacks, yes, but still personal and not substantive—to make its point against Obama when the economy’s in the tank and we’re still worrying about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran (and now the Russians)? And the polls continue to indicatethat even as voters express unprecedented dissatisfaction with Congress, they’re even more dissatisfied with Republicans—it seems like not even their stalwart stance on the drilling issue can save them from electoral doom in both chambers of Congress, even if it may get them the vote that they want. (Side note: sometimes in my nightmares I picture Chuck Schumer huddling in the offices of the DSCC wringing his hands in maniacal glee, throwing his head to the sky like some Bond movie villain and bellowing “SIXTY! SIXTY! YEEEEEEEEEES, AT LAST!”)

I guess the point of this post is more personal than anything else—even as I marvel at it, it *bothers *me that the party of such legendary effetes as Janeane Garofalo and Alec Baldwin is actually getting outsnarked this election cycle. When Paris Hilton musters up a wittier response to those “Celeb” ads than the Obama campaign or DNC—that’s a problem. When the funniest joke Barack Obama makes as the nominee of his party is reversing his stance on seating the Florida and Michigan delegations at the convention—that’s a bigger problem. Maybe there’s something that the Dems can learn from their opponents this time around. I’m not arguing that Obama or anyone else needs to fight the GOP’s brand of election humor with cynicism of their own. All I’m saying is that it’s better to at least try to be funny in a way that people can identify with—and seem, you know, *human*—than to run away from humor entirely. And I can’t help but feel that Democrats in 2008 have resigned themselves to the latter approach. They might win anyway, but it seems to me like it might be more fun to win laughing.

––Joey Michalakes, Interviews Editor