Jan Brewer: No More Debates!

Jan Brewer's horrendous performance in the recent Arizona gubernatorial debate has become an Internet sensation. Brewer stumbled during her opening statement. She sat silent and uncomfortable or nearly ten seconds, unable to recall what she should say. And she repeatedly used incorrect grammar, describing what "we have did" for Arizona.

Brewer has now called it quits: no more debates. Brewer says she cannot perform well in an "adversarial" process (so why does she want to govern one of the largest states in the nation). She also foolishly admitted that she agreed to the debate only to qualify for state campaign assistance. Translation: I do not want the voters to realize that I have no answers when my ideas are challenged, but thanks for the campaign funding.

Here is video footage of Brewer's awful opening statement.

Video Footage of President Obama Speaking at House Republican Retreat

Most commentators have argued that President Obama scored major points by "debating" House Republicans at their recent legislative retreat. Think Progress reports that, off-the-record, some Republicans regret allowing cameras to capture the event. Alas, here is the video footage of the proceedings.

Would President Hillary Clinton Have Run Away From Healthcare Reform Like President Obama Is Reportedly Going to Do?

Would President Hillary Clinton have run away from healthcare reform like President Obama is reportedly going to do? Yes, I went there, but someone needed to say it. Unfortunately, I only have time to pose the question and to offer a few comments at the moment. I will provide more analysis tomorrow.

What provokes this question? Well, for starters, the White House has been a lot less than passionate about healthcare reform. The blatantly wrong and deceitful Sarah Palin has a louder voice on the issue than President Obama.

Also, Obama campaigned on "unity," while Clinton campaigned as a "fighter." I always thought true reform required a fighter. That is certainly how it has occurred historically. But people without knowledge of history do not understand or appreciate this reality. Change does not come from chanting, and an election is not a social movement.

During the presidential campaign, many of Obama's most ardent supporters were young Web users, who enthusiastically spread his positions across the Internet and smacked down those who stood in their way. Where are they now? Hint: Summer break. Another question: Where are all of those "guy" Senators who endorsed Obama and called for Clinton to end her "divisive" campaign?

Today, the wires are reporting that Obama is prepared to drop a public plan option -- with hardly any public debate on the issue. Yet, Obama was supposed to bring us the "better-than-Clinton healthcare reform process. Say what you like about Clinton (and most people have strong opinions either way), but no one can honestly assert that she lacks passion on healthcare reform and a true drive regarding the subject.

Obama is apparently retreating because a "Gang of Six" members of the Senate Finance Committee decided to vote against it, and one of them, Sen. Kent Conrad -- a North Dakota Democrat -- has said that the Democrats lack the votes to get over a likely Republican filibuster. Conrad's "no" vote virtually guarantees this result.

It is unclear, however, why the public should give six members of one Senate committee -- not even the full committee -- so much power over this important issue. Healthcare is not in the committee's general area of expertise. Also, the Gang of Six includes the wretched Senator Charles Grassley, who along with Palin, has repeatedly described the medically sound "end-of-life counseling" provision as a death panel. The Gang of Six deleted the measure from the committee's proposed legislation. Medical professionals, however, back the provision. The six Senators did not act in good faith when they dropped this provision, which raises questions about their judgment and their honesty.

Obama has apparently ceded what he described as one of his primary policy goals to six conservatives (3 Democrats and 3 Republicans) without public debate and without much advocacy from the White House. Where I am sitting, unity looks like capitulation -- or a clever way of letting six men on one Senate committee take responsibility for killing a measure that Obama really did not want in the first place. Neither option looks that good.

PS: I had planned to offer only a "few" comments, but they turned into "several."

OK, Kids: Protests = Good; Disrupting Meetings, Punching People, Hurling Racial Slurs, Etc. = Bad

Just added: Sarah Palin Is Latest Heartless Person to Attack Protestors.

I want to have a heart-to-heart conversation with the Left and the Right. Last week was truly one of those moments when shocking behavior by others made me feel like I was stuck in some horrific episode of the Twilight Zone (the ones where some unsuspecting person suddenly loses the ability to communicate with others).

The spooky feeling resulted from the headline story of the week: The, um, passionate behavior occurring at various healthcare reform forums. I blogged about the highly unsatisfactory nature of the public discourse even before the Tampa/St.Louis outbursts occurred. The same day, the Pew Center released a study demonstrating that 70% of the public believed that media coverage was poor or fair. That night, "the people" took to the streets in Tampa and St. Louis.

The Messy Details
The news from Tampa, Florida (my home state) emerged first. Apparently, opponents of the Democrats' healthcare proposals, many of whom are conservative, stormed a townhall meeting conducted by Representative Kathy Castor, a Democrat. As soon as she started speaking, protestors shouted and made it impossible for others to hear what she was saying.

Responding to my harsh criticism of the circus, several of my loyal conservative readers defended the protestors on free speech grounds. Today, the immensely popular and very open-minded Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit), mockingly reminded commentators that "protest" was a form of patriotism, a line often employed by anti-war activists to justify their protests against charges of treason and demands that they "support the troops."

News from St. Louis arrived later (much of it after I had analyzed the Tampa mayhem). Apparently, Democratic operatives and Democratic voters sparked much of the madness in St. Louis. In response to the anticipated presence of conservative protestors, liberals mobilized and brought out their supporters. During the meltdown, a black conservative was assaulted. Liberal media have not really covered this aspect of the event, although though they have portrayed conservative protestors as racists. And while many conservatives have used the racial assault in St. Louis to stigmatize liberals, a lot of these same commentators very recently decried "race cards" and vigorously dismissed allegations of racism by blacks themselves as nonsense and as continued victimology.

Hello, Kids. Today's Lesson Is. . . .
Since people are acting like kids and because I feel that meeting them on their own terms is probably more helpful, I will break things down in mental-age appropriate language for both liberals and conservatives.

1. Racism = Wrong. Racism is a pathology. Nevertheless, our society has denied its existence or the harms it causes even during slavery and Jim Crow (see Racial Exhaustion). But current events demonstrate that it persists.

Being liberal does not excuse a person of his or her racism, nor does it mean that other liberals should refrain from criticizing the person. In addition, being conservative does not mean that it is fine only to acknowledge or see racism when it impacts conservative people of color. If liberal racism exists (which it does), then so does conservative racism. Condemn it on all sides and assist, rather than impede, causes that seek to rid the country of racism and racial inequality.

2. Protest = Good; Disruptive Behavior and Violence = Bad. The First Amendment guarantees the right of individuals to engage in speech and to come together for expressive purposes. And while this includes a right to engage in boisterous speech, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is not absolute. Instead, so long as the government is not attempting to alter the content of speech, it can nonetheless regulate the "time, manner and place" of the speech (that takes place in a public forum).

Making governmental venues or other public spaces available for a townhall discussion is not the same thing as permitting groups to hold marches, parades, rallies, carnivals or other expressive activities. The townhall discussion requires a back-and-forth between participants. This can only occur when participants listen while others are speaking. This is not what the conservative protestors did in Tampa. This is not what liberals did in St. Louis. Both sides were wrong.

Commentators who attempt to justify the protestors' disruptive behavior by calling it "speech" are missing the point. Yes -- the protestors were engaging in speech, but their speech silenced the expression of others. The Constitution does not give us a private right to silence participants in a public political debate.

I have always been consistent on this issue. In fact, unlike many liberal bloggers, I never condemned the "tea party" movement. Granted, I found the groups' protests peculiar because their sudden concern for fiscal soundness seemed unprincipled -- or as Ron Paul would say, it made them look like "born-again fiscal conservatives." Nevertheless, the tea party protestors have the right to organize, mobilize, protest and criticize fiscal policy -- even in a way that is unprincipled -- until they collapse from exhaustion. The protests, however, were self-contained; they took place in locations where they did not silence the speech of others; the groups did not seem to break any laws with their activities. Rather than flooding local government and shouting down proceedings, they staged their rallies in appropriate venues and brought public attention to their cause. That is a model of advocacy. I do not agree with the advocacy, but the form in which it occurred is sound! The healthcare protestors used a different and unacceptable model.

Final Thoughts
I invite people to toss aside partisanship for a moment and actually begin the process of having a real discussion about healthcare reform. Due to lack of space, I will not delve deeply into the substantive issues of healthcare reform, but I will isolate two things that bother me on the Left and the Right.

First, when conservatives condemn the Democratic plans as "socialism," they are making a "nonargument." First, the assertion is purely descriptive -- and, given the definition of socialism espoused by people like, say, Karl Marx, the description is grossly inapplicable to this setting. Even if the liberal reform amounted to a "socialist" policy, this alone does not tell us whether the plan is desirable or not. Conservatives could replace the word socialist with "crazy," "zany," "liberal," "bad," "harmful," or "nasty," but these adjectives do not provide details. Instead, they simply seek to stigmatize the plans.

Second, to my fellow liberals, I share the opinion of those of you who want a public plan option (this is not the same as a "single payer" regime that eliminates private insurance altogether). The public plan option would likely reduce costs. I have not seen any reliable literature that disputes this. In fact, much of the conservative opposition to new public sponsorship assumes that a public plan would reduce costs and make private insurance nonviable.

Although I believe that conservatives are overstating their position, there are other implications of a public plan that warrant debate. In particular, the mix of services under a public plan seems highly relevant to these talks, but liberals do not want to engage this issue. Part of the cost reduction under a public plan would result from the government using its power to negotiate cheaper care from providers. Cost reductions will also occur if uninsured people begin to receive preventive care and, rather than obtaining expensive emergency room treatment of their illnesses, visit a primary care physician who can attend to their health needs.

Some of the cost reductions, however, could (and perhaps should) involve a changed mix in covered services. Congress could diminish this tradeoff potentially if it reduced its enormous subsidization of employer-sponsored (supposedly "private") plans. Nevertheless, the mix of services subject to governmental financing seems like a legitimate subject for these debates. Liberals have run from this issue, but evading an issue by running is as unhelpful as evading it by yelling. Liberals have also neglected to get input from nurses, who could play a much larger (and less expensive) role in the delivery of health care.

Here's hoping for a better week.

Obama Flip-Flop? Rejects McCain's Mortgage Plan As Too Costly

Yesterday, I analyzed Senator John McCain's shockingly liberal proposal -- which he admittedly borrowed from Senator Hillary Clinton -- for the government to commit 1/2 of the bailout funds to purchase mortgages of distressed homeowners and reissue them with more favorable terms. Under the plan, the reissued mortgages would reflect the depreciated value of the homes, thus freeing homeowners from an "upside down" status (i.e., having a mortgage that exceeds the value of the home). Late yesterday, McCain's campaign issued a slight amendment to its original statement, now saying that money to finance the plan would come from several pre-existing pools of money, including funds from the bailout. The basic points of the plan, however, remain the same.

Immediately following the debate, Senator Barack Obama's campaign issued a statement saying that the senator also supports and has advocated having the government buy individual mortgages to help homeowners, "instead of simply purchasing mortgage-backed securities." Nevertheless, after some media outlets said McCain's plan would prove costly, Obama pulled back from the idea. RealClearPolitics has the scoop:

The plan would cause the government "to massively overpay for mortgages in a plan that would guarantee taxpayers lose money, and put them at risk of losing even more if home values don't recover," Obama economic adviser Jason Furman said in a statement. "The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud."

Interesting. First, the bailout legislation, which Obama endorsed, already allows the government to purchase individual mortgages, but it provides very little guidelines on this issue. Instead, the bailout is almost exclusively geared towards helping "the same financial institutions that got us into this mess. . . ." Providing direct relief to homeowners would at least allow them to avoid foreclosure and maintain an important asset. And a specific plan on this issue, however costly, would do more for consumers than the self-serving and empty appeals to homeowner relief contained in the bailout legislation.

Furthermore, it is unclear why the housing market would never turnaround, as Obama's criticism suggests. If and when it does, the risk to taxpayers would diminish. In fact, that's a major premise of the bailout legislation -- that the government can eventually profit from buying risky assets because they will likely appreciate once credit markets stabilize.

Let me be clear: I believe that McCain's "plan" is probably more politics than anything else (as I said yesterday). Polls show that voters do not believe he "feels their pain" or that he knows much about the economy. This has caused him to lose significant ground in the polls. McCain made this proposal in order to change negative voter opinions of him.

But it is contradictory for Obama to take the position that McCain's plan is (a) too costly -- when it would use already committed money from the bailout legislation (and other sources); (b) a gift for unsavory financial institutions -- when the bailout he supports is indisputably a handout to these same reckless companies; and (c) a bad idea because it will cause taxpayers to lose money -- when the bailout authorizes the government to purchase terribly risky debt that the market has essentially deemed "junk." In other words, it is difficult to oppose McCain's plan so vehemently and support the bailout legislation.

I cannot imagine a rational scenario where the government could actually provide direct relief to homeowners in order to stem foreclosures without committing a significant chunk of resources to the cause. McCain's plan could indeed be a political ploy, but it does not differ in spirit from the bailout -- except that it does more for homeowners and provides specifics, rather than grand statements about helping the people.

Obama's biggest concern is that McCain's plan would pay banks the face value of the mortgages but then reissue them to homeowners at lower values. But unless the banks are failing and in distress, it is unclear whether they would accept a much lower offer than the original value of the mortgage. Banks who participate in the bailout will accept less because having the bad debt on their balance sheets precludes them from obtaining credit. But not every bank that holds a mortgage by a distressed homeowner will itself need federal rescuing. Relatively healthy banks will have more leverage to negotiate with the government.

It is also worth noting that the bailout legislation does not even specify how the Secretary of Treasury should value the assets. Instead, it simply requires the Secretary of Treasury to articulate a method that minimizes costs to taxpayers, but that contains enough flexibility for the plan to work. Nicely ambiguous. Because both candidates claim a commitment to helping middle-class people, I wonder whether the Obama campaign will now produce a cheaper plan that helps homeowners. Stay tuned. . . .

Who Won the Debate? Depends Upon Which Candidate You Support

The debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was pretty tepid, but it was good (and important) enough to warrant analysis. Partisans will definitely think "their guy" won, and each candidate provided the other with sufficient ammunition to claim victory.

What McCain Didn't Do for Obama

The Democrats wanted McCain to foam at the mouth like a rabid dog. He didn't. Instead, he came across as a senior statesman, offering tons of personal stories about handling problems in the past and even regretting some decisions. Several media outlets are making hay about him not making eye contact with Obama. I guess I was too bored to notice that.

What Obama Didn't Do for McCain

McCain needed Obama to look unsophisticated and raw. He didn't. He looked convincing on the stage.

Surprising Moments

Obama had the audacity to renew his argument that going to war was a bad decision. I agree that it was a bad decision, but choosing Joe Biden, who voted for the war, as a running mate diminishes the force of Obama's antiwar critique.

I was surprised that McCain raised the "experience" argument, which had defined much of his campaign against Obama until Sarah Palin's selection. Palin has a very skimpy resume, and most people believed that McCain had discarded the experience argument. Well, it's back, and it is now coupled with "you just don't get it" or "you are naive." McCain has begun to usurp Obama's slogans and use them against him ("change" and "you just don't get it").

Missed Opportunities

McCain missed the opportunity to expose Obama's inconsistency with respect to the war (saying it was a huge error, but picking Biden as a running mate), and Obama missed the opportunity to neutralize McCain's experience argument by either mentioning Palin or somehow showing that McCain's experience is a bad thing. He did this with Clinton in the primaries, but he was unable to do that during last night's debate.

Slip-Up

Obama said that Henry Kissinger does not disagree with the President of the United States speaking with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "without conditions." This actually came up during Sarah Palin's recent interview with Katie Couric. Couric did a "gotcha" on Palin, asking whether she thought Kissinger was naive (a charge McCain/Palin made of Obama) for wanting talks with Iran without conditions. Palin said that Kissinger, who advises McCain and Palin on foreign policy, does not believe this. Couric said that CBS had confirmed that he does. Gotcha!

Obama used the same argument during the debate, and McCain rebuffed him, saying that his "friend" does not support that position. Following the debate, Kissinger released a statement agreeing with McCain. Ouch. Well, not a huge ouch, but ouch. Turns out, he would support other governmental officials meeting with lower level Iranian officials, but not with either country's president, absent conditions. So this is the "Bush Doctrine" redux. Political scientists do not even agree what such a doctrine looks like (or even if it exists). Another failed gotcha.

McCain still cannot pronounce Ahmadinejad on the first try. Bless his heart.

Overall: Slight Nod to McCain

During the primaries, I watched the Democrats debate incessantly; so there was probably nothing Obama could have done that I had not already seen. I did not watch the Republicans during the primaries; so I was eager to see how McCain would perform. Although Democrats have portrayed McCain as a curmudgeon, he did not come across that way. This scores him major points, I believe, and makes any more argumentation on that issue look petty. Obama, however, did not look inept and raw, but still remains vulnerable to that charge, due to his relative lack of experience compared to McCain. Of course, if McCain emphasizes experience, then Palin becomes even more vulnerable than she already is.

I do believe that the public will probably declare McCain the winner, if they follow standards from previous presidential debates. As a good progressive, I was thoroughly convinced that Al Gore and John Kerry won their debates against Bush. Apparently, they did not sell themselves well to the public. Obama is his own candidate, but in many ways, he excites the same demographic as Gore and Kerry, but even more intensely. Highly-educated, coastal, liberal, professional types (like myself) will think he slaughtered McCain. To the rest of the country, he might have appeared a bit like a "know-it-all" (distinct from "uppity") and pious. Here's a message for highly-educated, coastal, liberal, professional types: you have to exit your own skin to try to appreciate this analysis.

These same portrayals tanked Gore and Kerry. In losing, they both were described as too bookish and self-righteous. Yet elite Democrats still seem incorrectly to believe that intellectual depth and nuance and the morality of liberal social democracy are winning arguments in presidential elections. If this were the case, then Gore and Kerry would have won, and Obama would be leading McCain by double-digits, especially given the tragedy of the war and the horrific economic conditions. The fact that the race is close should cause Democrats to rethink their presidential election strategies. Race has something to do with the closeness of the election, but it does not explain it altogether. The last two contests were close, as was Clinton's victory in 1992.

Although last night's debate was lackluster, next week's vice presidential debate could offer a lot of pizazz. The combination of Joe "Loose Cannon" Biden and Sarah "the Moose" Palin is too rich to ignore. Tune in next week for more analysis.