February 2004 Archives

The CalPundit recently explained why he does not support Proposition 57, the $15 billion bond on Tuesday's California election ballot.

As someone who reluctantly supports Proposition 57, I frequently hear similar arguments from my friends: Why should we give Governor Schwarzenegger a win? Wouldn't a tax increase be better? Where are the cuts anyway?

Well, while I understand why giving Governor Schwarzenegger a win makes Democrats feel uncomfortable, we need to look at the bigger picture here. If we deny Schwarzenegger a win on Prop 57, the Governor will recover. Easily.

The people we actually hurt with a no vote include the poor, the disabled and their families, and college students (these are, last I checked, groups Democrats were supposed to try to protect). We also sentence our failing transportation system to a rapid collapse and will set the stage for more cuts to local government services.

Why? As the California Budget Project (which takes no position on the proposition) explains in its analysis of Proposition 57:

The state faces a budget gap of approximately $15 billion in 2004-05. If the Governor’s bond proposal is not approved, the gap would widen by approximately $11 billion.

That's the price of opposing Proposition 57. Do we really dislike Schwarzenegger enough to sell out the people we claim a mandate to protect?

Worse, there's potentially a bigger reason to worry. Not only will a "no" vote hurt the people we claim to support this year, it will likely set a series of events into motion that will handcuff California's efforts to help them for a generation -- or generations -- to come.

How?

If Proposition 57 fails, I believe there will be some tax increases. In reaction, angry conservatives in this state will use this tax increase as the spark to put a spending cap on the November ballot.

In the wake of a tax increase used only to lessen slightly the pain of the financial disaster a no vote would create, the people of California will likely pass a spending cap just to stick it to Sacramento.

If Proposition 57 (and its companion balanced budget measure, Proposition 58) pass, I do not believe Schwarzenegger will support a draconian spending cap measure. It goes against his interests. His nonsupport (or even opposition) will help fight back this effort.

Are you angry with Schwarzenegger? Do you want to fight back? Fine, I understand. But I do urge you to remember the high price -- and the betrayal of our interests -- that comes with a "no" vote on Proposition 57.

Former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) has written an intriguing commentary that argues that we may be overemphasizing the choices President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) made about their military service following their graduation from Yale.

He explains that the Kerry in 1966 and Bush in 1968 faced two very different historical moments:

In 1966, the Vietnam War had not yet become unpopular and the probability of a US defeat was never considered. By 1968, the country was coming apart. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and riots broke out in most of our major cities. Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated, and hope seemed to drain even from those who disagreed with him. President Johnson announced in March that he would not run for reelection and that he would spend the rest of his term trying to negotiate a peace agreement with North Vietnam. Both the Democratic and Republican Party platforms called for expeditious withdrawal from Vietnam. To choose to go to Vietnam in 1968 was to go to a war that was increasingly unpopular and futile.

Kerrey continues to say that we would be wiser to consider other aspects of Bush and Kerry's careers. As Kerrey explains, Bush does not endear himself with one of his choices.

As to the question of whom we should trust to be our commander in chief, I would pay much more attention to what these men did after Vietnam. It was President Bush, not his younger self, who took the advice of political advisers and decided not to attend the funeral of a single man or woman killed in Iraq. I, for one, thank God that Karl Rove wasn't advising Abraham Lincoln, or else President Lincoln might never have gone to Gettysburg.

I would also pay more attention to Senator Kerry's work with the first President Bush, when in 1991 and 1992 they supported the use of diplomacy to end the war in Cambodia and to construct a roadmap towards normalization with Vietnam. Both of these men, along with Senator John McCain, were bitterly condemned for making peace. It was one of those rare and wonderful bipartisan acts that transcended politics. It is a story that could inspire us to believe that public service is worth it after all.

Pramit Mitra and Chris M. Herbst explain why younger people should take an active interest in the Medicare prescription drug benefit debate.

After all, it is the younger generations that face paying for this severely flawed program because President George W. Bush and his Republican Congressional allies prefer to run up mountains of debt on the national credit card.

David Broder predicts that Gov. Howard Dean's (D-Vt.) unsuccessful campaign for the presidency will ultimately have a long-term and beneficial impact on the Democratic Party.

Even acknowledging all of that, it will not surprise me a bit if the Dean campaign turns out to be a significant milestone in Democratic history. Losing efforts often produce long-term gains for the party of the failed candidate, if the campaign becomes a cause for those who supported it. And so it is likely to be with Dean. His run for the White House, which ended last week, may mean little in the politics of 2004 but a great deal more in years to come.

That prediction is not as much of a gamble as it may seem, because we have seen this pattern before. Candidates who attract a passionate following -- because of the issues they raise, rather than their own White House credentials -- frequently launch their acolytes into political careers that become the next generation's richest source of leadership.

Dean will continue to have an impact. (In fact, I think he would make a great chair of the Democratic National Committee.) As Broder suggests, we will also see that his legacy will grow even greater in the future years.

Matthew Yglesias has an excellent post over on TAPPED that notes how Ahmed Chalabi is unrepetant about the false intelligence reports on Iraq for which he is responsible.

As Chalabi explains, he cannot apologize for getting what he wanted. Saddam is gone and the U.S. is in Baghdad. Even better, Chalabi has power in the post-war situation.

This is one of the reasons, as Yglesias reminds us, that Machiavelli suggested that trusting the word of exiles may not prove the wisest course.

This is, naturally, political philosophy 101. How could we expect the "grown-ups" in the Bush Administration to remember the warning.

So, it appears that since Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) got elected claiming a war hero was unpatriotic and anti-American, he now thinks he's ready for the big leagues and has decided to start questioning Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) patriotism.

I'll let former Senator, and war hero, Max Cleland respond to Chambliss' slander:

"For Saxby Chambliss, who got out of going to Vietnam because of a trick knee, to attack John Kerry as weak on the defense of our nation is like a mackerel in the moonlight that both shines and stinks."

It's about time.

(Thanks to Talking Points Memo for the link.)

I just went to Matt Drudge's web site and saw the following headline:

U.S. National Debt Tops $7 Trillion for First Time

Seeing as a quick peek at the United States Treasury's "The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It" web page clearly shows that the national debt has topped $7 trillion several times this year -- in fact, it has been over the $7 trillion mark for the past eight business days.

But hey, perhaps I should not nitpick. I suppose I should be happy that someone to the right of center has finally noticed this little red ink problem.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an excellent editorial about the possibility that Ralph Nader will run again for the presidency:

The problem is not that Nader forcefully advocates his beliefs; they are a useful addition to any democratic dialogue. It's that in 2000 his campaign pushed, and probably will again, a false political premise.

In 2000, Nader famously and sneeringly dismissed the idea that any real difference existed between Bush and Gore. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, he termed them. Because of his deserved fame as a straight-shooter, Nader persuaded a lot of people to buy this absurd notion.

Whether you admire President Bush's record in office or regret it, you know for sure that Al Gore would have governed quite differently.

Ralph Nader has an unquestioned right to add his voice to the debate in 2004. But anyone tempted to vote for him has an unquestioned duty to weigh what the real-world impact of that vote might be.

This web site is an excellent response to rumors that Ralph Nader is thinking about running for president again. If Nader gets in the race, it helps no one but George W. Bush.

I hope Nader listens to this plea.

The Rant's Rick DeMent has written an interesting post about our nation's energy future. In the course of his post, Rick makes some observations and asks some questions that should give us all pause.

Rick's final question is particularly interesting. Perhaps as you consider the ramifications of it, you will wonder why our nation spends so little time talking about our energy future.

This is, after all, a presidential election year. A good time, one might think, for us to ask big questions about the direction in which we are headed as a nation.

William Safire devotes his column to warning about media consolidation's dangers and why we should be concerned about Comcast's bid to purchase Disney.

If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it rule the world?

Can't happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment.

And it would be a wonderful thing if FCC Chairman Michael Powell and our Congressional leaders would show about media consolidation just a fraction of the concern they expressed about the Janet Jackson breast-exposing debacle.

Priorities, you know.

That photo of John Kerry and Jane Fonda supposedly taken at a 1971 rally? According to Newsday, it is a fake. The photographer notes that Fonda was not at the rally in question.

I'm sure all those conservatives e-mailing it to each other (and for some reason to me, I've gotten it several times) will e-mail each other with the correction.

Not...

(Thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for the link.)

The Rittenhouse Review's James M. Capozzola posts a wonderful response from one of his readers about how we should start recognizing that flight attendants are not on planes to serve as waitstaff. The reader wrote:

So that’s why I just read your flight-attendants-shouldn’t-pass-out-pretzels piece. Can I just say, “O-M-G!”

This is the touchstone, the connection, that says, “You are not alone.” There are people out there that think as you think.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve voiced the exact same opinion. Flight attendants are not waitresses. [Ed.: Nor are they waiters.] They’re not there to sell drinks or massage the egos of the guys [Ed.: Slobs?] in first class. They’re there for safety.

I don’t think there should be any food or drink service on planes at all. I’d even go so far as to give flight attendants a whole new name and image. [Ed.: Emphasis added.]

Anything to get people to listen to them when they tell you to stop walking around the plane when you’re supposed to be seated, to stow your luggage above your seat -- not the seat 20 rows in front of you that hasn’t boarded yet -- or better yet, check it! [Ed.: Oh, please, L.M., don’t get me started on this one.] Not to mention, “We haven’t boarded your row yet, you self-centered moron. Get back in line.” [Ed.: Though, credit the professionals for being kinder with their words than we would be.]

When a flight attendant tells you to do something, they’re supposed to be treated with respect and have their instructions obeyed.

As a general rule, people treat flight attendants horribly. We ignore their instructions. (What? The seat-belt-sign is on? Good time for a walk. No one better say anything about it either.) We ignore their safety warnings. They are not there to serve us snacks. They are there for safety reasons.

Capozzola and his reader are correct: we should focus on that primary responsibility and bring our own drinks and food on the plane with us. We should also find a new job title for these men and women so the flying public can get the message that we need to take them more seriously.

Bruce J. Schulman, author of "The Seventies," compares President George W. Bush's fiscal policies with those insisted upon by former President Richard M. Nixon prior to his 1972 reelection bid.

As Schulman notes, Nixon insisted that the government pull out all the stops to create a boom no later than July 1972. Irresponsible tax cuts were passed. Large spending increases favoring important political groups were enacted.

(Sound familiar?)

The price, however, for this political game was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It also set the stage for the entitlement cost crisis that will come fully into bloom with the retirement of the baby boomers. Schulman explains:

The president also delivered the goods to key constituencies, foremost among them elderly voters he had described as "a generation no longer forgotten." The key battleground involved Social Security benefits.

Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. He rested his White House hopes on an audacious proposal to attract seniors. Mills proposed an immediate 20% increase in Social Security payments, reductions in taxes seniors owed on their benefits, and automatic cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, for future payouts. Unlike with most pie-in-the-sky campaign plans, however, Mills had the clout on Capitol Hill to push through his plan even as his presidential bid fizzled.

Mills' proposal posed a dilemma for Nixon. The White House understood that the plan meant economic disaster. "There is no magic actuary-alchemist," Budget Director George P. Shultz told the president, "who can provide benefits without incurring costs." The huge increases, coupled with the COLAs, would stoke inflation; they would also saddle the federal budget with ever-increasing entitlement obligations that would necessitate tax increases and cuts in other programs.

But in an election year, Nixon decided he couldn't afford to oppose the Social Security proposal. After signing into law a plan he knew to be irresponsible, the president deftly took credit for the increases. Fatter Social Security checks went out a few weeks before election day, along with a letter informing senior citizens of the president's role in their good fortune. No one mentioned the new taxes to pay for them, which went into effect the following January.

Bush's fiscal policy is dangerous. It is beyond irresponsible, for example, to insist upon adding massive new debt to finance tax cuts for the rich just four years before the first baby boomers head to the Social Security office to sign up for early eligibility benefits.

Bush appears only to care about winning. Policy and the future be damned.

David Broder is not very impressed with the work done by Congress so far this year.

No, Ann Coulter has no shame.

As Nathan Newman reports, she is still smearing former Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran who left three limbs in that country.

It was bad enough when her ilk questioned Cleland's patriotism in order to defeat him in a Senate race in 2002. It is unconscionable for Coulter and her friends to continue their slurs today.

As I have noted before, serving in today's National Guard is an experience pretty darn different than what one would expect in the past. How different? ABC News' Keith Garvin reports:

Pene Palifka, a proud and protective mother, worries about her son, Billy, a specialist with the National Guard deployed in Iraq. She reads his letters home almost daily.

"I just can't wait for him to come home," she said. "We'll celebrate that day."

Concerned about her son's safety, Palifka recently spent $1,100 of her own money on armored chest plates to protect him and others from enemy fire.

If you wonder why the Administration's misstatements (to be kind) about Iraq matter, this is one of the reasons. We went to war without enough equipment to protect our soldiers.

I suppose many people will still argue that the people who put our troops in Iraq under such conditions care about our troops.

I, however, will not be one of them who do.

There are many reasons why I finally decided, after several years of doubt, to leave the Republican Party in 2000.

Eric Alterman highlights one of those reasons. No matter your record, if you dare question George W. Bush or the party's leadership, you are not a "real" Republican.

Alterman writes:

From Media Whores, Republican strategist, Sherri Annis (Mrs. Howard Kurtz) says John McCain is “not a real Republican.”

CHRIS MATTHEWS: It‘s not credible he picks the commission, is it?

SHERI ANNIS, REPUBLICAN MEDIA STRATEGIST: Well, it‘s credible because he basically wants to say. "I‘m going to be able to talk about this no matter what. I'm going to—I'm taking charge here." He doesn't want to say, "I‘m leaving this to someone else." He wants to show he‘s leading this.

MATTHEWS: Leading what? The cover up?

ANNIS: He will describe it obviously as not a cover up. If McCain gives him a lot of cover. That‘s his—I think McCain is actually most of his cover. Even though he‘s Republican.

MATTHEWS: But isn‘t the usual way to pick a bipartisan commission is to let the other party pick their share of the commission? That‘s how it becomes bipartisan.

ANNIS: That‘s how—But with McCain there, it‘s seemingly bipartisan.

MATTHEWS: But he's a Republican.

ANNIS: But he's not a real Republican.

I've been trying to convince my friend Brett Z. to start blogging. Here is what could be his first post...

President Bush has unwittingly proven two opposing axioms that one hears in the political ecosphere. He has proven both that the man who serves as the president does not need a particularly accomplished individual. At the same time, his administration’s accomplishments have proven that the person who is elected to the office matters very much.

As his appearance with Tim Russert on Sunday finally showed, Bush is not exactly a reflective or articulate man. He has a canny political intelligence, but he’s clearly disconnected from the policy-making process in his administration. Interestingly, however, he struggled even with the verbal mechanics of staying on message. Unlike Reagan, he’s not even gifted with the script. Fundamentally, his “success” as president has demonstrated that the political superstructure surrounding the office can sustain even the most feeble individual. Can anyone say “Chauncey Gardiner?” I listened with glee as even Laura Ingraham conceded Bush’s terrible performance. However, instead of criticizing Bush himself, she demanded that the folks who prepped him for the appearance be fired; as in baseball, you can’t fire the team, so you fire the manager. For any of his faults, Bill Clinton never let the lack of prep prevent him from thoughtful reflection on any policy matter.

Simultaneously, and in refutation to Nader’s insistence that Gore and Bush were indistinguishable, Bush has brought into the administration a corps of the most purposefully destructive ideologues we’ve seen in the Executive Branch. Michael Kinsley, I believe, wrote an essay about the invisibility of the Bush cabinet except for Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and Rice. He showed that with the exception of that quartet, each Secretary was installed to destroy the agency rather than make policy. I thought of this when Ann Venneman finally appeared in the wake of the mad cow disease outbreak in Washington State. I felt bad for her actually—she needed to ascend a national podium that’s been substantially discredited with each new failure to discover WMDs in Iraq.

Every democratic candidate has flaws and imperfections; however, they each seem to have managed their own careers and achieved results without relying on connections and coattails. I trust they’ll have command of the policy programs they each promote, and that the people they install to implement them will have interest in more than deregulation and privatization. Forget rebuilding Iraq; the next president will need to rebuild an awful lot at home.

One of President George W. Bush's defenses against questions about his National Guard service is to attack the questioner. As Bush told NBC's Tim Russert on Sunday:

I would be careful to not denigrate the Guard. It's fine to go after me, which I expect the other side will do. I wouldn't denigrate service to the Guard, though, and the reason I wouldn't, is because there are a lot of really fine people who have served in the National Guard and who are serving in the National Guard today in Iraq.

But, I do take more than a little offense at Bush's attempts to wrap his service in with what Guard members are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

Bush did not face death in a foreign country. Bush did not face more than one year in deployment. Bush did not face the repeated cancellation of orders to go home because his country's leaders failed to prepare for the aftermath of their war of choice.

If President Bush wants to argue that serving in the National Guard was a legitimate choice during the Vietnam era, he most certainly can. That argument has much merit.

But to compare his service -- even if Bush did in fact complete it -- with what he is asking Guard members to face today should lie beyond the boundaries of acceptable spin even for the most brazen among us.

Paul Krugman outlines the continued gloomy job-creation figures and contrasts them with the rosy scenario President George W. Bush presented during his Meet the Press interview.

We expect politicians to place a positive spin on economic news, but to insist that things are going great when many people have personal experience to the contrary seems foolish. Mr. Bush's father lost the 1992 election in large part because he was perceived as being out of touch with the difficulties faced by ordinary Americans. Why is Mr. Bush — whose poll numbers are a bit worse than his father's were at this point in 1992 — running the risk of repeating his experience?

The answer, I think, is that the younger Mr. Bush has no choice. He has literally gone for broke, with repeated tax cuts that have fed a $500 billion deficit. To justify policies that more and more people call irresponsible, he must claim that wonderful things are happening as a result.

If our president is "proud" of this job-creation record (as he claimed to be when asked about it by Tim Russert)...well, that is just another reason to see to it that he does not win a second term this November.

Richard Cohen explains today from experience why paystubs from Vietnam-era National Guard duty do not conclusively prove that someone actually served the time.

After all, he get paid and he didn't go.

I did my basic and advanced training (combat engineer) and returned to my unit. I was supposed to attend weekly drills and summer camp, but I found them inconvenient. I "moved" to California and then "moved" back to New York, establishing a confusing paper trail that led, really, nowhere. For two years or so, I played a perfectly legal form of hooky. To show you what a mess the Guard was at the time, I even got paid for all the meetings I missed.

Today's National Guard is a far different institution from the one in which Cohen and Bush served. And, as I pointed out yesterday, no one is attacking the National Guard. We are questioning just what George W. Bush did while he was a member of it.

This should not be a hard distinction for someone to understand.

E.J. Dionne explains how President George W. Bush's claim on Sunday's Meet the Press that he is a "war president" raises the stakes in this election year. He writes:

And the context he had in mind was the moment Bush hopes to bring voters back to, again and again and again: "I'm dealing with a world in which we have gotten struck by terrorists with airplanes."

So, because of Sept. 11, it really doesn't matter what Bush said before the war, or what the intelligence actually showed, or whether Saddam Hussein had those weapons. If you understand the "context" of a world in which the United States has been struck by "terrorists with airplanes," anything that Bush decides should be done is, by definition, something that must be done. He's a war president. Don't forget it.

This exchange, moreover, highlights just how much Congress has failed us. It is really not up to any president to declare himself a war president. The framers of our Constitution clearly specified that this is Congress' job.

These "use of force" resolutions are nothing more than a manifestation of our Congressional members refusing to live up to the obligations of their office.

Regardless of who wins this year's presidential election, Congress needs to reestablish itself as a co-equal branch of our government. One of the things this means that when we must go to war, our Congress actually should vote to declare that war.

Calpundit Kevin Drum has posted an interesting and important analysis of documents relating to the controversy over President George W. Bush's national guard service.

You should go read the post and look at the evidence. The Calpundit has done work you would expect our national media to do.

Perhaps they will get to it in a couple of weeks.

A point of emphasis for those who are blinded by their very conservativeness: this is not an attack on national guard service. This is a question about George W. Bush's national guard service, or lack of it.

This should not be a hard distinction to understand, unless one was in the business of labeling as unpatriotic or disloyal anyone who dared question the president.

Michael Isikoff reports that the members of the September 11 investigation commission are threatening to subpoena the White House unless President George W. Bush and his staff start cooperating with document requests.

The Commission rightly wants to review what Presidents Bush and Bill Clintion were told about Al Qaeda's threats in the presidential daily briefs. As Isikoff reports:

The restrictions are especially infuriating, one source notes, because at least some of the PDBs appear to have been selectively shared by the White House two years ago with author Bob Woodward for his book "Bush at War."

Stonewalling this commission is simply indefensible. Bush has an obligation to cooperate fully with this important investigation. If he will not, he should prepare himself to rejoin the private sector.

(Thanks to Behind the Homefront for the link.)

Dan Wasserman's latest editorial cartoon examines what is behind President George W. Bush's platform of personal responsibility.

Matt Drudge is screaming now that FCC Chairman Michael Powell considered holding license revocation hearings against CBS/Viacom in the aftermath of the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake breast fiasco.

Um...okay.

Perhaps, however, Powell and his fellow commissioners might want to reconsider how their failure to act on media consolidation contributed to what happened during the Super Bowl halftime show.

After all, if they are angry with Mel Karmazin for everything from the Opie&Anthony radio show sex-in-church episode, to what MTV does, to this most recent incident, they have no one to blame but themselves for allowing such massive media consolidation to occur.

If Powell has hearings, I hope someone has the guts to remind the nation how his -- and the FCC's -- failures contributed to this mess.

Of course, the breast incident is not nearly as bad as the other results of media consolidation in television and radio.

Too bad the silencing of local voices, the inflated ad rates, and the general refusal of media outlets to remember they have an obligation to act in the public interest was not enough to wake Powell and the FCC from its slumber.

David Stipp reports in the Feb. 9 issue of Fortune magazine:

Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.

The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.

Global climate change is a national security issue. It is an economic security issue. It is even (gasp) an environmental issue.

There are market-based solutions that should be implemented. We should be insisting on more efficient consumption of fossil fuels and researching in a major way possible alternative fuels.

The fossil fuel era is going to end. Whether it is caused by climate change or the end of cheap oil, the fact remains that the end is coming.

We should insist that our political leaders, and especially the current president and his administration, stop ignoring the problem and start preparing for it.

Only the truest of the true believers can think that President George W. Bush acquitted himself well during his interview on Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

Not that Russert was much of a bulldog. He did ask some good questions, but the follow-ups were sparse. It is hard for any reporter to ask many follow-up questions because of the respect people feel for the office of the president and the desire not to come across as rude.

Of course, a good argument can be made that Russert and his fellow pundits are paid a good amount of money to overcome such qualms. But that is for another day.

How bad was it? As Calpundit Kevin Drum notes, even those who post at National Journal Online's The Corner expressed disappointment and concern about the president's performance.

The Center for American Progress has already issued a handy fact check of President Bush's claims and attempts to rewrite history when it comes to the Iraq debate.

As the Center's John Podesta explains:

"President Bush wouldn't have agreed to an hour long network interview without a good reason and today he had one: in the span of a week he's faced the dual challenges of a loss of credibility on the war in Iraq and his management of the economy.

"His statement this morning that he would cut the deficit in half is simply laughable. Analyses by independent organizations like Goldman Sachs, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development, and Decision Economics all project deficits of about $5 trillion over the next decade, even assuming a return to strong growth."

"The President's statement that there is ‘good momentum' on the job creation front is dishonest: while we are averaging 72,000 new private sector jobs created per month, at that pace, it would not be until May 2007 that this President would have created his first net job. President Bush is well on his way to having the worst job creation record since the Great Depression. His bragging today only served to reinforce his lack of credibility on managing the nation's economy.

"And what the President referred to as a "word contest" regarding the threat from Iraq is, in fact, his attempt to change the rationale for going to war and rewrite the history of what has occurred. His argument today that Iraq had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and pass them into the hands of shadowy terrorist networks is inconsistent with the intelligence provided to him.

President Bush sought to restore his credibility today and he clearly failed to do so."

The portions about the deficit and the supposed Iraq "word contest" were particularly unacceptable. It is as if the president has constructed an alternate reality from which he is reporting.

The budget is dishonest. The claims about reducing the deficit are fanciful. The debate over the justification for going to war with Iraq is more than a word game -- it is a debate over the most sacred decision a country can make.

If President Bush cannot understand this...well, that is all the more reason to make sure he does not win a second term this November.

Christopher Lydon, one of my favorite radio hosts, is returning to the air as an interim host of the Midmorning Show on Minnesota Public Radio.

Lydon hopes that people around the country will listen in to the listen to the live stream, call-in, and blog about what is being discussed.

Lydon has been doing some of the best work on how the internet, and blogging, has had an impact on the 2004 presidential election. I welcome him back to a regular, and hopefully permanent, home on our national public airwaves.

Mark Schmitt uncovers a budget policy included in President George W. Bush's latest budget, an idea that can only be described as outrageous even when placed in the context of this Administration's irresponsible fiscal record. Schmitt explains:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also points out another amazing thing that has not received much attention. The budget proposes to restore the "pay-as-you-go" rules that governed Congress when I worked on the Hill. They were frustrating, but essential to getting the deficit under control: Any money you propose to spend, through spending or tax cuts, has to be offset with a spending cut or tax increase. Except in the Bush version, tax cuts would not have to be offset. But refundable tax credits -- the kind of tax cut that helps poor working families -- would have to be offset. And increases in entitlement spending could only be offset with other spending cuts, not by closing tax loopholes. In other words, the rule says, you can't do anything, really, except cut taxes. Amazing.

I fail to see how anyone can read about this proposal and still think there is no difference between the two major political parties.

From the invaluable Behind the Homefront blog:

A German court cleared a former roommate of Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder yesterday, saying the case was undermined by U.S. refusal to allow access to al Qaida witnesses held in secret custody.

President George W. Bush is scheduled to appear on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert for the whole hour tomorrow.

Russert has a reputation for being Sunday morning's toughest questioner. His toughness, however, appears only occasionally.

Will Russert ask tough questions tomorrow morning, or give the president a pass that the rest of the so-called liberal media will emulate? That is an important question.

Thankfully some of the blogosphere's best have suggested questions--and follow-ups--for Russert to consider, including:

• Brad DeLong
  
• Joe Conason
  
• David Corn
  
• Katrina vanden Heuvel

The Associated Press' Katherine Pfleger reports:

WASHINGTON - In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday U.S. analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq posed an imminent threat.

How do we then explain the Bush Administration's repeated assertions that Iraq did pose an imminent threat?

Yes, I know Bush officials are trying to revise the record on what they argued. But we must not allow this to fall into the memory hole.

An impartial investigation is required. This is, after all, only about going to war. Maybe to some it is not as important as Super Bowl halftime show incidents.

I continue to argue, however, that there is nothing more important in a Democratic Republic than debates over sending young Americans into combat.

So, now we learn that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did not just go duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney last month. We now learn that Scalia flew on Cheney's plane, Air Force Two, at no cost to himself.

This is important because Scalia is scheduled to soon hear the case involving Cheney's insistence that he be allowed to keep the details of his Energy Task Force secret.

Now, my Republican friends, I suggest that you take a second to participate in a thought experiment here.

If you learned that, say, Justice Steven Breyer had spent vacation time and flown on the official government plane of, say, Al Gore, right before Breyer had to hear a case involving the Clinton Administration, would you now be on talk radio screaming about conflicts of interest and unethical behavior?

(Without any doubt.)

While the recently passed Medicare bill is fiscally irresponsible because it does not include any mechanism to raise the revenues need to pay for it, the actions of the Republican leadership in gaining its passage were just as distasteful.

You may remember how this was vote was held open longer than any other recorded House history. There was arm twisting that went beyond the normal standards seen in Washington.

There was even an allegation that Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) was threatened and offered monetary support for his son (who is seeking to succeed Smith in Congress).

After weeks of denials that there was any need to investigate this, we now learn that the House Ethics Committee may indeed be doing its job. CNN's Ted Barrett reports:

The House Ethics Committee announced Wednesday it started an investigation almost two months ago into allegations Rep. Nick Smith was offered a bribe to vote for the Medicare prescription drug bill.

It was the first public acknowledgment the committee was looking into the matter, following public statements suggesting it was not.

Comptroller General of the United States David M. Walker has written an important commentary for today's New York Times that explores the long-term debt we are leaving for future generations. He writes:

The federal government's gross debt — the accumulation of its annual deficits — was about $7 trillion last September, which works out to about $24,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. But that number excludes items like the gap between the government's Social Security and Medicare commitments and the money put aside to pay for them. If these items are factored in, the burden for every American rises to well over $100,000.

The new Medicare prescription drug benefit will add thousands more to that tab. This benefit is unquestionably popular and will make it easier for some older Americans to afford expensive prescription drugs. But it also comes with a steep price tag that few want to talk about. The truth is that the drug benefit as signed into law is one of the largest commitments ever undertaken by the federal government. Preliminary estimates of its long-term cost in current dollars range up to $8 trillion.

To put that number into perspective: it is about four times the entire federal budget. Long-term simulations from the legislative agency I head, the General Accounting Office, paint a chilling picture. Even before the new drug benefit was enacted, these simulations showed that by 2040 current policy could require a 50 percent reduction in federal spending or a doubling of taxes to balance the budget.

Either would be devastating. And keep in mind, it is likely that efforts will be made to expand the drug benefit in the future.

Walker wants to see a more accurate budget picture presented to the American people. This is a worthy effort.

But until we are ready to end our denial and start dealing with our national budget crisis (both short-term and long-term), the problem will continue to grow.

Now is not the time for more irresponsible tax cuts. A tax cut today is, in effect, a tax increase for our children and grandchildren.

It is time to show some generational responsibility. Alas, I doubt either party will engage in much of that in the coming months.

Anne Applebaum asks why we are allowing horrible crimes to happen in North Korea's concentration camps with little to no comment.

Later -- in 10 years, or in 60 -- it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known in 2004 about the camps of North Korea. It will turn out that information collected by various human rights groups, South Korean churches, oddball journalists and spies added up to a damning and largely accurate picture of an evil regime. It will also turn out that there were things that could have been done, approaches the South Korean government might have made, diplomatic channels the U.S. government might have opened, pressure the Chinese might have applied.

Matt Drudge points to a prediction made by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Monday about the hunt for Osama bin Laden:

“Obviously, he’ll be caught between now and the election,” Grassley said Monday when asked if he’s disappointed that Osama bin Laden hasn’t been killed or captured.

But, alas, the real point for me was in the next Grassley quote, one Drudge apparently does not find as important:

“I think they’re on his trail now in a way they haven’t been all year,” Grassley said. “It will happen because we will be able to divert more resources [to hunting down bin Laden].”

Now just what was it that kept us from keeping resources on the hunt for the man who financed the terrorist attack that killed 3,000 people on our soil nearly two-and-a-half years ago?

Is Grassley really implying that the Iraq invasion shifted resources from the war on terrorism to something else?

Well, okay. Grassley would likely want to revise and extend his remarks. But he did stumble into a truth there for a second.

One some Democrats may want to pursue.

David Ignatius wishes we could get the presidential candidates to talk about how they would manage risks and prepare for the unexpected in today's global arena.

E.J. Dionne wonders if the Republican talking point attacks are really going to rely upon the tired and painfully lame "Massachusetts Liberal" line should Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) capture his party's nomination.

This is about more than John Kerry, who can defend himself. It's about how certain forms of cheap bigotry don't even get challenged. The right wing's attack on Massachusetts is a sign of intellectual laziness. It's easier to parody a people and a place than to defend a set of ideas.

Why not trash Ted Kennedy and Michael Dukakis when the alternative is to explain why, un-conservatively, a Republican administration has run up such a huge deficit? It's sure easier to natter on about the "Harvard boutique" than to defend that budget President Bush released yesterday. And why would they want to deal with the fact that Dukakis was a fiscal conservative who, back in the 1970s, bailed the state out of a budget mess left by a Republican governor? Dukakis took a lot of grief from liberals when he did that -- a bit of history that gets in the way of the election-year propaganda now being peddled.

After all, we cannot expect much from a party that lists all sorts of reasons for the federal budget deficit but excludes for foolish ideological reasons those irresponsible tax cuts President George W. Bush now seeks to make permanent.

Human Rights Watch's Tom Malinowski explains how the Bush Administration's excesses on civil liberty issues are harming U.S. interests and human rights around the globe.

Recently I attended a meeting between Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and a renowned Arab advocate of democracy who was taking a risk at home merely by meeting a Bush administration official. This brave man expressed gratitude for President Bush's commitment to democracy in the Muslim world. But he also pointedly told Wolfowitz that the administration's own willingness to compromise human rights in fighting terror is undermining its campaign for liberty in the Middle East. "Every dictator in the region is pointing to America's example as an excuse to crack down on dissent," he said.

Is that the example we wish to set for the world? Do we really want to see the light our nation used to shine extinguished in this way?

How bad is it? Malinowski explains:

The reasons are complex. But it doesn't help when, as in a November speech, President Bush eloquently denounces the Syrian government for leaving its people "a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin," even as we learn that in 2002 the United States sent a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, to Syria for interrogation, naively trusting Syrian "assurances" that he would not be tortured. Nor does it help when the State Department criticizes Muslim countries for detaining people outside normal judicial processes, even as President Bush asserts the right to detain forever -- without judicial review -- anyone he deems a terrorist.

A State Department spokesman urged the government of Azerbaijan last month to release or charge opposition activists arrested in protests there. A reporter asked if that principle applied to the detainees in Guantanamo Bay or just to Azerbaijan. The spokesman had no answer, and when Azerbaijan came up at the department briefing the next day, the "charge or release" formulation was dropped. Similarly, a U.S. diplomat in Malaysia recently told Human Rights Watch that "we can't really say much" about the indefinite detention of government opponents in that country because of Guantanamo Bay.

But these decisions do not occur in a vacuum. Other leaders around the world cite our example.

At times it was for good, when we were a beacon of light. Now, it is for bad -- even evil.

This ultimately harms our national security by creating new generations of people willing to die as they seek revenge. That's why human rights matters. That is why we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than the rest of the world.

President George W. Bush and his advisors seem not to understand this fact. Which is, of course, just one more reason why the president should not be reelected this November.

Boston Globe editorial cartoonist Dan Wasserman's February 1 effort quickly reveals the absurdity behind President George W. Bush's fiscal policies.

Robert Novak writes about a problem President George W. Bush is having during the early stages of his reelection campaign.

What is wrong? Well, as Novak explains, Bush has a credibility problem.

(As if people like we were not arguing it for years.)

Novak writes:

...Bush may be facing the bane of incumbents: lack of credibility. That caused Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson not to seek another term and helped defeat Jimmy Carter and the senior George Bush for re-election.

All four of those one-term presidents were plagued by primary election opposition in their own party, a burden George W. Bush does not bear. Nevertheless, Bush is reeling from a double blow to his credibility.

Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a political accident waiting to happen, became the first punch last week when resigned weapons inspector David Kay testified to Congress. The follow-up blow was the White House revelation that the new Medicare plan will cost one-third more than the president predicted (just as conservatives warned).

But it is, I think, one of the reasons why Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) is now leading President Bush in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll.

I do not care what President George W. Bush may say about reducing the deficit in the coming days. We have learned the hard way with this Administration that actions are far more important than words.

Until Bush decides to stop advocating for making permanent his irresponsible tax cuts and follows that with an admission that they need to be rolled back, he is not serious about the issue.

No matter what nice words he may say.

Thomas Friedman takes a peek at Peter Peterson's upcoming book Running on Empty and hints that it reveals a major potential political liability for President George W. Bush.

It should be clear to all by now that what we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues. This group believes that what matters in politics and economics are conviction and will — not facts, social science or history...

The Bush team's real vulnerability is its B.M.D. — Budgets of Mass Destruction, which have recklessly imperiled the nation's future, with crazy tax-cutting and out-of-control spending. The latest report from the Congressional Budget Office says the deficit is expected to total some $2.4 trillion over the next decade — almost $1 trillion more than the prediction of just five months ago. That is a failure of intelligence and common sense that threatens to make us all insecure — and people also feel that in their guts.

Now that the Bush Administration has given us the most irresponsible and cynical fiscal policies this nation has ever seen, Democrats should make it an issue. Democrats should make the $2 billion a day in debt we are leaving for future generations an issue.

As Friedman quotes Peterson, perhaps it is time to update the famous question from oast presidential campaigns and ask:

Is your future better off now than it was four years ago — now that you are saddled with these large new liabilities and the higher taxes that must eventually accompany them?

We will see if they have the will or foresight to do so.