Obama’s press conference on June 23rd was extremely impressive; this is a man who is in command, and can make people who challenge him look very foolish. Case in point was Chuck Todd, who tried to pin Obama down to specific actions the Administration would take against Iran. Obama scolded Todd, saying that while the media is on a 24-hour news cycle the president is not. Asked whether John McCain and Lindsey Graham had “scared” him into getting tougher on Iran, Obama responded, with his trademark grin, “What do you think?”

The president is that rare politician who can demonstrate that words do matter, a lot. He and his team are meticulous not only about what they say, but how and when they say it. Every word in an Obama speech or press conference is aimed at the larger picture; like a chess master, he’s always thinking five moves ahead.

What surprises me is that people continue to underestimate him, and think they can bring him down with cheap shots. He was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, cut his teeth in the rough and tumble of Chicago politics, defeated a Clinton in the Democratic primary, and went on to win the White House, over a war hero, in the biggest landslide for Democrats in a generation. It’s almost as if the smile, the slim frame, and the talk of bipartisanship and cooperation casts a spell that makes people forget what a ruthless—and effective—politician Obama truly is.

But even many on the left are complaining that Obama has retreated on many campaign promises, and that he is just another “centrist” trying to triangulate and take the path of least resistance.

It’s way too early to reach this judgment. In only five months in office, Obama has already racked up impressive achievements: a major expansion of children’s healthcare, the equal pay for women legislation, and the biggest stimulus package in history, including hundreds of billions for renewable energy and education. He’s also proclaimed his commitment to closing Guantanamo and ending torture.

The biggest challenges await: healthcare reform, climate change legislation, an overhaul of the financial industry, and comprehensive immigration reform. If Obama makes meaningful progress on even one of these, he will have had an incredible first year; if he manages to succeed on multiple fronts, it will be stunning. Those who would judge Obama need to wait at least another six months to see how these issues play out. If Tuesday’s press conference is any indication, Obama will spend his political capital judiciously to further his agenda.

His best rhetorical skill may be his ability to make his opponents seem ridiculous, as if they must be joking. For example, asked about his insistence on a public option for healthcare, Obama mocked those who claim that the government can’t do anything right and at the same time say that private insurers won’t be able to compete with a public plan. In seconds, he shot down an argument that had begun to worry many Congressional Democrats.

I don’t worship Obama. Still it’s a thing of beauty to watch someone so skilled at dismantling opponents with so little effort. As they say in boxing, you can’t win on points against the champ—you have to score a knockout. No one so far seems even remotely capable; if Congressional Democrats show enough spine (a big if), the next legislation session could be very fruitful for Obama’s agenda.

Jason Scorse

The scope of the irresponsibility and lack of accountability during the Bush years is legendary, and will only grow over time. It is both sad and maddening to see the airwaves full of the enablers of this legacy (e.g., Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, joined these days by the uber-hypocrite Newt Gingrich). The same for the intellectual architects of these failures, most notably neoconWilliam Kristol, who bounces from one major outlet to the other, from the pages of the New York Times to the Washington Post.

Ours is a culture that preaches accountability and responsibility, yet no longer practices it. This is probably our greatest national weakness; I have always contended that we get the government (and the media) that we deserve.

This culture of disregard for the consequence of one’s actions is nowhere more evident than in the public response to the housing and credit bust, and most recently in legislation aimed at improving the fuel efficiency of the cars Americans drive.

Millions of people who bought homes during the bubble now owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth (referred to as being “underwater”). To hear them, you might think there is a god-given right that their homes would appreciate at double digits forever. If they were speculating, the downturn was simply the price of making a bad bet; if they bought their home to live in and could afford the mortgage, there should be no change in their behavior; if they bought a home they couldn’t afford, that was their mistake (and whoever gave them their mortgage).

But now tens of thousands are simply walking away from their homes and refusing to pay. This weakens the communities that have to deal with the abandoned houses, further weakens the banks, and helped lead to government bailouts that cost taxpayers tens of billions. The bailouts largely reward the most irresponsible; those who were prudent and resisted the housing hysteria are now subsidizing the foolish.

The same goes for credit cards. After running up huge debts, mainly on goods that are by no means a necessity, millions are now defaulting—and getting great deals in the process. They’re wiping out their debts by paying as little as 50 cents on the dollar. Wonderful for them, but it raises interests rates for everyone else (and depresses share prices for people like myself, who have banks in their retirement portfolios).

Perhaps most egregious, since it comes from a Democratic Congress under President Obama, is the new $1 billion “cash for clunkers” program. Owners of SUVs or trucks that get less than 18 mpg will be able to get up to $4,500 from the government to trade their old vehicle in as long as they buy one that gets at least 2 mpg more. People who own cars with less than 18 mpg get the money if they buy new cars that get at least 4 mpg more. This is another giveaway to the auto industry, it does almost nothing to improve fuel efficiency, and it actually penalizes the people who had the sense to buy fuel-efficient cars in the first place: if you have a car that gets 25 or 30 mpg, you’re not eligible for a single penny from the program.

There are serious problems when society views the government as little more than a trough at which to engorge themselves. This parasitic relationship reached its apex during the Bush Administration: lobbyists wrote legislation, jobs went to political cronies instead of the competent, the public was told they could have lower taxes and still fight two wars.

With Obama we were supposed to get “tough love” and a return to the true conservative principle of personal responsibility. Given the severity of the economic crisis, and the need to bail out the banks and the car companies, the president obviously feels he has to hold up on this message; one can only hope that it ultimately becomes central to his governing philosophy.

When those who play by the rules see irresponsibility being rewarded, they ultimately become dispirited and no longer believe in the system. They can easily become disengaged, leaving the system even more vulnerable to manipulation by those who are unaccountable and irresponsible. This is a cycle that America must avoid if it is to remain a great power.

Jason Scorse

Just as nations and empires in their waning days are prone to violence, just as wounded animals are the most dangerous, so can a political party in its death throes pose a threat to society.

Such is the case with the Republican Party in America today.

Thoroughly discredited, representing an ever smaller and less diverse portion of the American electorate, the modern GOP is not only bankrupt of ideas but increasingly given to outbursts of ignorance, stupidity, and dangerous rhetoric. It happens regularly, on a scale that is hard to square with a mature political party.

Many of the worst offenders are not elected Republicans but ex-office-holders (such as Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, Dick Cheney, and Mitt Romney), shock jocks such as Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, and almost the entire crew of Fox News. But even from Republicans currently serving in government, there is no shortage of foolishness and even vitriol; consider, just for instance, recent statements from Senator Jim Inhofe and Governors Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and Mark Sanford, along with the head of the RNC, Michael Steele.

Even so-called Republican “moderates” such as Congressman Eric Cantor and Governor Tim Pawlenty have joined the chorus of irresponsibility that now is the norm, not the exception, from Republicans.

These last gasps of the party that rose to ascendancy under George W. Bush are causing serious damage to society, both to the political process and concretely; the murders of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas and the guard at the Holocaust Museum in the Capitol are only the most recent examples. As much as the right and the GOP want to distance themselves from violent extremists, there is no denying the link. The killers share the rhetoric and conspiracy theories that are all-too-common in rightwing commentary, and often endorsed explicitly or implicitly by high-ranking Republicans (Dick Cheney recently said that he favors Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed actor Jon Voight’s comment that Obama is a “false prophet” who will bring down America).

On the policy side the damage is even greater. The Republicans watered down the stimulus bill to reduce benefits to the unemployed and deny lower taxes to low-income Americans. On energy policy, they offer no solutions for global warming; in fact, their latest attempt at energy legislation expressly ignores the topic and calls instead for two new nuclear reactors in each of the 50 states. And on healthcare, while the outcome is far from certain, Republicans are working hard to block a public option and to maintain the private insurance industry’s grip on the market.

One can only hope, as in 2006 and 2008, that the American public recognizes the danger and continues to hand the Republicans decisive defeats. The more it’s marginalized into irrelevancy, the greater the chance that the GOP will have to significantly rethink its positions.

On a positive note, the 20% or so of America that leans far-right (most of whom call themselves Republicans) holds views that are well out of the mainstream; many are illiberal and bigoted older Americans, who will die off over the next 20-30 years (e.g. almost 60% of Bill O’Reilly’s audience is over 50 years old). The younger generation, both Democrats and Republicans, is more tolerant and open-minded. Here’s hoping we can minimize the damage that the fringe is still able to inflict before they all pass away.

Jason Scorse

The New York Times says that Obama plans to take a more active role in the upcoming healthcare debate because he’s worried that if he leaves the legislation solely to Congress, it will become too watered down. Supposedly, in a conversation with Senate Republicans, he stated that he’d rather compromise and get 85% of what he wants with some Republican votes than get 100% of what he wants with only Democratic support.

This is troubling and yet understandable, and underlines the great test that Obama will face in this debate.

Congressional Democrats have already agreed to use the reconciliation process for the healthcare vote, which means that it will only require a simple majority and cannot be filibustered. This almost guarantees that Obama could get everything he wants; even if he loses a few “moderate” Democrats, there’s little chance he would get fewer than the necessary 51. He could even go as low as 50 and count on Vice-President Biden for the tie-breaker.

But Obama is making a calculated judgment that in order for healthcare reform to truly be sustainable, both economically and politically, he needs Republican support; otherwise, any reform might be reversed by a future Congress or presidential administration.

The question is what Obama will have to give up to attract Republican support, and whether it will be worth the trade-off. The main element that Republicans oppose is the “public option,” which would allow a government-run plan similar to Medicare to compete with private plans. Republicans fear that this would open the door to single-payer insurance, and that the government plan would have an unfair advantage over private-sector plans.

While in theory there is some merit to this argument, in reality it is largely fallacious. Many nations have both private and public health insurance, and the systems can be structured to compete fairly. Without a public option, which typically has low overhead costs, private insurance companies have little incentive to cut costs—and cost-cutting is ultimately the key to successful healthcare reform. By resisting a public option, Republican lawmakers seem more intent on protecting the profits of big insurance companies than on improving healthcare access and affordability for all Americans.

If Obama were to compromise on the public option, it would represent a tremendous failure of leadership; he would be capitulating to the GOP, and severely damaging the prospects for real reform. As Obama has already stated, if genuine healthcare reform can’t be passed now it will likely never pass.

I would like to assume that Obama’s reputed statement to Republicans (that he’d rather get most of what he wants with some Republican support than all of what he wants with Democrats alone) is simply, at this point, good politics; I would like to assume that he plans to stand firmly behind a public option, even if this leads in the end to little or no Republican support.

If substantive healthcare reform passes and proves successful, its popularity would likely generate the political will necessary to sustain it; at the same time, it would represent an additional political advantage for the Democrats.

To my mind, that’s a risk worth taking.

Jason Scorse

Last week I described my sympathy for Obama in the face of the tremendous mess he inherited from the Bush Administration. But now that the president has chosen Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, I have to admit to a keen sense of disappointment.

Two weeks ago I argued that Obama should nominate Pam Karlan for the Court. By almost all accounts, she has a sharper legal mind and would have been a more outspoken advocate for interpreting the Constitution in favor of citizen’s rights and the public good. But what bothers me most about Obama’s choice is that he apparently never seriously considered Ms. Karlan for the job.

No doubt his pick is great politics: choosing both a woman and a Hispanic will help strengthen his standing with these two large and important constituencies. I also admit that it will make great theater watching the right wing attack Sotomayor, only to lose even more standing with groups the GOP can ill afford to alienate. By nominating the first Hispanic to the Court, Obama may very well give the Democrats wider margins in the Hispanic community in 2010 and 2012 than he achieved last year.

Even so, and while I understand that no elected official is immune from political calculations, there comes a time when one must stand on principle. There seems little question that a nominee other than Sotomayor would have been more capable of countering the right-leaning Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito wing of the Court. Yet Obama apparently settled on Sotomayor very early on, and scarcely considered outstanding candidates like Ms. Karlan and Diane Wood.

This is not to take anything away from Judge Sotomayor. She’s bright and capable, and may go on to become an excellent Justice. Assuming that Obama gets at least one more Court pick in the coming years, I hope he will nominate someone better suited to becoming a counterweight to the far right’s current ideological dominance.

The trouble is that I don’t want to keep waiting for next time. I want a president who stands up for what’s right now, both when it’s convenient and when it’s not, both when the economy is prospering and when it’s not.

I know it’s important to remind myself that Obama has been in office for only a few short months. Still I’m getting tired of hearing about consensus and bipartisanship, especially when it’s simply for the sake of consensus and bipartisanship. The Republican Party is no longer a serious political party; its elected leaders and self-appointed spokesmen (among them: Limbaugh, Gingrich and Cheney) spout hysterical nonsense daily, and show no real capability or interest in actually governing. Their views, such as they are, should have no sway in any major decisions made by either the President or the Congress.

I’m willing to give Obama considerable leeway, and I trust that most Americans will do likewise. But I hope that sooner, rather than later, he shows more backbone when it counts.

Jason Scorse

President Obama faces a growing chorus of criticism from some of his most ardent supporters, mainly over national security issues. Among their complaints: Obama’s decision not to prosecute the Bush-era lawyers whose memorandums provided legal cover for torture, or the CIA interrogators who actually carried it out; his use of the “state secrets” rationale, the same rationale used by Bush, to block the release of additional detainee documents; and his flip-flop on the release of more Abu Ghraib photos.

While I share his supporters’ dismay at these decisions, I sympathize with Obama’s position.

The President inherited a mess of epic proportions on almost every front; dealing successfully with even half of these challenges would earn Obama a place among the nation’s greatest presidents. I am confident that if his plate weren’t so full, he would be willing to take a much harder line against the excesses of the Bush Administration.

Obama is a Constitutional scholar, and is fully aware of the extent to which the Constitution was trampled during Bush’s reign. The argument that Obama makes, that we should move forward and leave the past behind us, is simply not persuasive; even more, it’s insulting to the American people. Serious wrongs were committed in our name, and it weakens the fabric of our country and our moral legitimacy when Obama chooses not to openly and forcefully address them.

But still I have sympathy for the president, and can’t say for sure that if I were in his shoes I too wouldn’t take the course he appears to have chosen.

Obama is bent on passing universal healthcare and serious climate change legislation, both of which, even with large Democratic majorities, are going to require grueling political battles in the Congress. The President has obviously calculated that he’d rather invest his political capital in these endeavors than focus on issues (like torture) that have the potential to turn into media circuses and suck the life out of his larger domestic agenda.

He’s probably right that the media, especially the right wing media, would disproportionately cover any sort of “truth commission” or public hearings on Bush-era officials. It is easy to envision the media full of complaints about Obama’s “witch hunts,” and the President obviously wants none of this.

Obama believes that the best interests of the country are better served by advancing his domestic priorities than by prosecuting the Bush-era officials responsible for war crimes and for tarnishing America’s standing in the world. While many can reasonably disagree with his choice, I don’t think it represents a cynical “move to the center” or political triangulation. Obama is simply making what he thinks is the best of an awful situation.

It is ironic that the architects of the worst foreign policy and domestic disasters of the past 60 years may escape accountability exactly because they created such a huge mess. But that is the reality as Obama sees it, and we need to accept it, at least for now.

Jason Scorse

With the retirement of David Souter from the Court, Obama has the chance to nominate his first Justice. While his choice won’t dramatically alter the ideology of the Court, since Souter is strongly liberal, it does give him the opportunity to appoint a fresh face and begin to counter the right wing tilt that was bolstered by Bush’s additions of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Odds are that Obama is going to pick a woman, and fortunately there are many capable women both in the court system and outside it. Speculation is also mounting as to whether Obama will try to pick a Hispanic or a woman from another minority group, thus further diversifying the Court, strengthening his ties with the chosen community, and scoring political points in the bargain.

The best choice Obama could make would be Constitutional scholar Pam Karlan of Stanford University, who is openly gay.

Professor Karlan is extremely bright; she was one of the main commentators on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer back in 2000 during the Florida recount battles, and consistently proved to have the most coherent arguments. She is extremely confident and does not shy away from controversy. At 50 she is relatively young, and she has the intellectual heft to help build a serious alternative to the rightwing narrative that has recently dominated the Court and the public’s perception of it. She is just the type of Justice who could persuade other Justices and move the Court, even if only incrementally, in a direction in which every citizen’s rights are better protected.

In an ideal world, the fact that Karlan is gay wouldn’t be an issue. But of course it is. Nominating the first openly gay Justice to the Court would be certain to galvanize the right wing and guarantee a bruising confirmation battle. But it could also do more to advance civil rights and educate the public than almost any other decision Obama could make.

Professor Karlan has one of the best minds in the country; during the confirmation hearings, she would make quick work of anyone who tried to challenge her integrity or her commitment to the rule of law. When pressed whether she would have a “pro-gay” bias, she could easily counter that no one ever asked Catholic males (e.g., Scalia and Alito) whether they had a “pro-male, pro-religious” bias; so much for the notion that being gay has anything to do with following the letter of the law or being impartial.

An openly gay person on the Court would be a huge victory for civil rights, and establish Obama as a President who doesn’t shy away from pushing the envelope. Given his opposition to gay marriage and his hesitancy to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” it would also go a long way towards answering his critics in the LGBT community and on the Left.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Obama is going to make this pick even though I think he would like to; he doesn’t want to distract from his larger domestic agenda, especially health care, and already the torture issue is threatening to do just that.

Here's hoping that Obama does the courageous thing and nominates Karlan to the Court.

Jason Scorse

Friday’s economic data point to a continuing recession, but one in which the worst may be over: job losses are beginning to decelerate, there are moderately encouraging signs in retail spending and consumer confidence, and some of the hardest-hit home markets are showing sales upticks. The stock market, a leading indicator typically six months ahead of employment and GDP swings, has shown the largest percentage gains in years over the last two months.

Whether the worst is really over is hard to tell. Still, since much of the nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending will only begin to impact the economy in the coming months, it’s reasonable to expect that things should get better; in that case, the country may be officially out of recession by the end of the year. Much rests on the health of the financial system, which is still shaky, but there have been encouraging signs in the banking sector as well; banks currently don’t need as much new capital as once feared, and a serious financial collapse now seems a remote possibility.

If there is reason for cautious optimism for the country’s economic health, there is no such (even qualified) good news for the GOP. In the opening weeks of the Obama Administration, the Republican Party appeared to stake its political future on the hope that Obama (and the country) would fail, and that they would be able to put the blame squarely on the President and the Democrats. This was always a risky proposition, made even riskier by the timing; the likelihood that the recession would continue through the 2010 mid-term elections was always dubious.

By voting nearly unanimously against virtually all of Obama’s major spending initiatives, the GOP has put itself in a lose-lose position. If the economy turns around, Obama and the Democrats will be able to take all the credit; if things get worse, Democrats can make the case that things would have been far worse had we followed the GOP’s advice. While the government is running record deficits, federal red ink has never been a hugely motivating political force. In the midst of the worse recession since the 1930s, it won’t matter this time, either.

People vote their pocketbooks more than anything. By painting themselves into a corner on all matters economic, the GOP will have nothing left to fall back on but the culture war issues that have less and less resonance. The country is becoming increasingly tolerant of gays, and the stridently anti-abortion forces represent no more than 20% of the country.

To compound its problems even more, the face of today’s GOP consists of a discredited old guard (e.g., Cheney, Gingrich, and McCain) and a new guard (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, and Sean Hannity) which speaks only to a sliver of angry, bitter voters: those not guided by reason, and who totally turn off independents and moderates. As many on the blogosphere have noted, the current spokespeople for the GOP are almost a dream come true for Democratic activists.

In the end, America needs a robust multi-party democracy. With the GOP seemingly bent on political irrelevance, perhaps it’s the time for the emergence of a new national party. Either way, as long as Obama and the Democrats don’t make any major missteps, the country appears to be theirs to govern for a long time to come.

Jason Scorse

I (and many others) have argued for years that it’s time to move away from race-based criteria for affirmative action and socio-economic policy, and move instead to class-based criteria. Such a shift would not only focus attention on the most significant drivers of inequality; it would spare us the divisive arguments over preferential treatment that have kept us from coming to grips with class inequities. As the United States becomes more diverse, race-based treatment breeds justifiable resentment and makes less and less sense: with dozens of ethnicities and tens of millions of people of mixed descent, categorizing Americans according to vague notions of race is becoming increasingly useless from a policy perspective.

Fortunately, President Obama seems intent on moving us in a more rational direction. In his press conference this past week, when asked about efforts to assist black Americans in these trying economic times, Obama quickly shifted the focus to programs targeted at economic distress. He rightly pointed out that such programs, by definition, disproportionately help black communities that have above-average numbers of people hit hard by the recession. By creating programs that help society’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged, and by keeping race out of the equation, we target the right people and avoid the slippery slope of race-based politics.

Throughout the campaign, Obama did a masterful job of making it a contest about issues and minimizing the role of race; in the first 100 days of his presidency, he has continued to do the same. His historic victory, coupled with his approach to racial issues, seems to be having a profound effect on American opinions about race and racial equality. The New York Times reported last week that the percentage of people who now think racial relations are good has more than doubled in the past three months, including large numbers of blacks.

Having a black family in the White House, including a high-powered and accomplished First Lady and two well-adjusted and adorable children, is a symbol the power of which cannot be overestimated. Coupled with President Obama’s approach to racial issues, the country is poised to make tremendous strides by focusing more attention on the class divisions that plague American society, and less on the racial ones (which, while still potent, are losing their resonance).

Jason Scorse

By any reasonable standards, President Obama is confronting an excess of serious issues: the global financial meltdown, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, growing threats in Iran and Pakistan, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, health care reform, the climate crisis, immigration reform, and on and on.

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to embark on many new initiatives at once. This is especially true in our media-driven culture, which tends to focus on the trivial, blow things out of proportion, and make it difficult to carry out sustained rational discourse. Obama’s political capital has so far allowed him to take on much more than earlier presidents, but he too has limits.

There is no doubt a heated and ongoing discussion in the White House over what issues to prioritize and which to put on the back burner or shelve, perhaps permanently, in the effort to succeed on a few key fronts.

There is likewise no doubt that healthcare reform is at the top of Obama’s agenda, and that he is preparing to expend significant political capital to make it happen. Democrats have already signaled that they are willing to use the reconciliation process to get this passed, which will require only a simple majority vote instead of the 60 needed to prevent a Senate filibuster.

But there are some issues that the Administration has signaled it does not intend to pursue, and in an ideal world these issues would not be brushed aside: notably gay rights, the prosecution of former Bush officials for their role in the torture of detainees, and gun control. Federal legislation mandating civil unions would be a huge step forward. Those who ordered the torture of detainees committed war crimes and should be brought to justice, reaffirming U.S. moral legitimacy and the rule of law in America. Closing the loophole that allows gun purchases without background checks and reaffirming the assault weapons ban are common-sense steps; taking them would prevent tremendous violence both in the U.S. and Mexico.

And there’s the question of how far the Obama Administration is prepared to go to enact serious climate change legislation. The House of Representatives will likely approve the Waxman-Markey Bill, but Democrats lack the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid a filibuster. It remains to be seen whether they’re willing to use the reconciliation process here, as in healthcare reform, to get a deal done. If the U.S. doesn’t pass serious environmental legislation before the Copenhagen meetings in December, it could signal the beginning of the end of any meaningful international effort to address global warming--with potentially devastating consequences.

Obama is under tremendous pressure, and will only go to the mat for issues which he is convinced the public cares most about (which may make him change his mind about the torture prosecutions). We need to make sure our voices are heard on a wide range of issues; unless we speak up, they will not get the attention they deserve. Our politicians will only make things a priority if we do.

Jason Scorse