Needlenose

It’s probably not earthshaking news to anyone out there that another former Bush administration employee has decided to write a gossipy backstage memoir of Dubya’s disastrous presidency.

Nor is it likely any surprise that in speechwriter Matt Latimer’s memoir, the Shrub-in-Chief himself is portrayed as both obnoxiously arrogant and childishly naive (not to mention in over his head):

After Chris, Jonathan Horn, and I learned about the president’s $700-billion-bailout proposal and drafted the remarks announcing it to a stunned nation, Ed said the president wanted to see us in the Oval Office. The president looked relaxed and was sitting behind the Resolute desk. He felt he’d made the major decision that everyone had been asking for. That always seemed to relax him. He liked being decisive. Excuse me, boldly decisive. The president seemed to be thinking of his memoirs. “This might go in as a big decision,” he mused.

“Definitely, Mr. President,” someone else observed. “This is a large decision.”

What is amusing, though, are the vignettes that show tiny flickers of self-knowledge from the famed “decider” and “war president”  Consider, for example, this comment on Barack Obama:

After one of Obama’s blistering speeches against the administration, the president had a very human reaction: He was ticked off. He came in one day to rehearse a speech, fuming. “This is a dangerous world,” he said for no apparent reason, “and this cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you.” He wound himself up even more. “You think I wasn’t qualified?” he said to no one in particular. “I was qualified.”

And on Sarah Palin:

“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family.”

The split-second between the last two sentences — as the child-president briefly realized his own lack of qualifications and searched for a point of differentiation — must have been priceless to witness in person.

Alas, such self-insight didn’t last long, for either Bush or his minions.  Latimer writes that last fall, Shrubya was miffed about John McCain blocking press access to a joint appearance the two had planned in Phoenix:

Eventually, someone informed the president that the reason the event was closed was that McCain was having trouble getting a crowd. Bush was incredulous. [...] “He can’t get 500 people to show up for an event in his hometown? [...] I could get that many people to turn out in Crawford.” He shook his head. “This is a five-spiral crash, boys.”

We tried to move on to something else. But the president wouldn’t let go. He was stuck on the Phoenix event. At one point, he looked off into space and said to no one in particular, “What is this—a cruel hoax?”

Chris [a fellow speechwriter] and I were tickled by that comment. For weeks, we would look for ways to use it. “They are out of Diet Pepsis at the mess. What is this, a cruel hoax?” I went to dinner with a friend. “They don’t have cheeseburgers?” I said, looking at the menu. “What is this, a cruel hoax?”

No, Mr. Latimer.  The cruel hoax was that the egotistical simpleton you worked for was President of the United States for eight years.

Checkout this disheartening news regarding the scale of the consumption of gorillas in the bushmeat trade. The article is based on a survey of a particular market and the local area from whence the gorillas are killed.  In that area things are pretty grim:

“According to interviews and field surveys, we think we may have about 200 gorillas left in the area,” says Mr Fidenci.

“But we estimate that 4% of the population is being killed each month, or 50% in a year. It is a lot.”

They figure beyond this one area, there are ~100K Western Lowland gorillas total in a wild, and they’ll be extinct within the decade given the bushmeat trade.

I don’t know if we’d have done a better job killing them off if we actually planned their extermination.

As you may know, there’s a psychiatric condition known as Münchausen syndrome by proxy, one of the manifestations of which can be loosely defined as putting someone or something else in jeopardy so that you can be a hero by “saving” it.

For obvious reasons, this came to mind as I watched a surprisingly reinvigorated Barack Obama give his speech to Congress on Wednesday night.  As columnist E.J. Dionne wrote for the Washington Post, “After a listless summer during which his opponents dominated the health-care debate… it seemed as if a politician who had been channeling the detached and cerebral Adlai Stevenson had discovered a new role model in the fighting Harry Truman.”

Then again (though I know I might be inviting sneering about “multi-dimensional chess” and the like), there may have been a method to the seeming madness of Obama’s lackadaisical summer attitude toward healthcare reform.  A New York Times story a few days ago navel-gazed about how Obama has attempted to learn lessons from the failure of Bill Clinton’s healthcare proposals in 1994:

That 15-year-old lesson underscores how much the Clinton debacle has defined Mr. Obama’s drive for his domestic priority from the beginning, providing a tip sheet for what not to do. Even Mr. Obama’s decision to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night to jumpstart his health initiative left some aides wary, given the inevitable parallels with Mr. Clinton’s September address 16 years ago to introduce his ill-fated plan.

I can point out a key difference just from the numbers in the quote above — Clinton’s speech was in September 1993; his reform bill died nearly a year later.

Obama quite likely concluded that the momentum from a single speech (particularly given the ever-shortening modern news cycle and attention spans) couldn’t possibly last an entire year.  It could, however, trigger a short legislative sprint of two months or so.

Thus the now-obsolete insistence earlier this year on a health bill by August wasn’t really intended to get a bill by August; rather, it was intended to provoke enough movement that a bill by Thanksgiving would be in striking distance.  (The declaration in the spring of an October 15 target date for invoking reconciliation is further evidence of this.)

All this, of course, leaves open the question — which, you might have noticed, is being pressed rather forcefully in many parts of the liberal blogiverse — of what kind of bill Obama hopes to pass with this last-minute rescue effort.  To go out really far on an optimistic limb, think about the president’s especially Munchausen-like treatment of the public option, which has been not merely thrown under the bus but tied to railroad tracks, hung over the edge of cliffs, and subjected to every other imaginable sort of peril in news reports.  And yet Obama continues to include it, at least nominally, in his proposed legislation.

Everyone who understands how important a public option is to successful healthcare reform feels terribly jerked around by now.  But then, the corporate-owned “centrist” types who have balked at a robust public option are probably feeling the same way about Obama’s refusal to officially kill it.  Like the old story of the carrot and the stick tied to the donkey’s back, the public option’s demise seems eternally just a few inches away, but never arrives.

Perhaps Obama is just waiting for the very last second to throw it away as a bargaining chip.  But if I were one of those hacks centrists, I’d be very nervous about the resilient popular support for a public option tempting Obama to champion it in fall rallies, daring them to vote against it.  As many other folks have observed, the momentum would be almost impossible for any politician, no matter how thoroughly bought off by the insurance companies, to resist.

Of course, that same possibility will make it all the more shameful if Obama really does surrender on the public option.  But I’ve waited 15 years just to have hope again, so I’ll cling to it for a few weeks longer.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Highlights from the partial text released by the White House:

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. . . .

Our collective failure to meet this challenge – year after year, decade after decade – has led us to a breaking point. . . . During that time, we have seen Washington at its best and its worst. . . .

Of the five committees asked to develop bills, four have completed their work, and the Senate Finance Committee announced today that it will move forward next week.  That has never happened before. . . . And there is agreement in this chamber on about eighty percent of what needs to be done, putting us closer to the goal of reform than we have ever been.

But what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government.  Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics. Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise.  Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge.  And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned.

Well, the time for bickering is over.  The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. . . .  Now is the time to deliver on health care.

The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals: It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance.  It will provide insurance to those who don’t.  And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. . . .

Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan: First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.  Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you.  Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most.  They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime.  We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.  And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care. . . .

Now, if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices.  If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage.  If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage.  We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices.  Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage.  This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance.  It’s how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. . . .

This is the plan I’m proposing.  It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight – Democrats and Republicans.  And I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead.  If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen.  My door is always open.

But know this:  I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.  If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.  And I will not accept the status quo as a solution.  Not this time.  Not now.

Obvious comment:  Who is this assertive, confident guy, and where has he been hiding the past several months?

Maybe it’s just, as someone once said, that you don’t roll out a new product before Labor Day….

Update: On the public option…

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.
They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and
neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable. The insurance reforms
that I’ve already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we
can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. Let me be clear – it would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.

Despite all this, the insurance companies and their allies don’t like this
idea. They argue that these private companies can’t fairly compete with the
government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public
insurance option. But they won’t be. I have insisted that like any private
insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be
self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers. It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.

It’s worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I’ve proposed tonight. But its impact shouldn’t be exaggerated – by the left, the right, or the media. It is only *one* part of my plan, and should not be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles. To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable for those without it. The public option is only a means to that end – and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. And to my Republican friends, I say that rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate concerns you may have.

For example, some have suggested that that the public option go into effect
only in those markets where insurance companies are not providing affordable
policies. Others propose a co-op or another non-profit entity to administer the plan. These are all constructive ideas worth exploring. But I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans can’t find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice. And I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need.

Flipping off the ‘Road Map’ and US policy on the Palestinian question appears to be a sacred Israeli institution.  Whatayahoo is going forward with the settlement expansion that Obama asked him not to do back in May.

While Obama is still enjoying high poll ratings on his foreign policy leadership, it would be  a good time to really test out the power of AIPAC and start cutting back on our billions in aid.

Seriously, there’s not much point in funding a client state that not only doesn’t follow orders, but publicly humiliates us in the process.  They are like the Billy Carter to our Jimmy Carter, but they don’t even give us Billy Beer – what a crock!

After all the brouhaha about the competing interests in the Democratic party, and how the Dems were going to self destruct because they couldn’t agree on such elemental concepts as the public option, it looks like the give-and-take of politics may actually have a positive outcome. In the House, where 60 Democratic members have written a letter to Obama telling him that they can’t vote for a bill without a public option, word is that they’ll get the chance to vote for the bill they want. In the Senate, where, especially with the demise of Ted Kennedy, the trend is towards a “trigger” bill, in which the public option is delayed while the insurance companies have a chance to comply with preset savings and inclusion goals, scuttlebutt is that they’ll get the bill that they want. These bills will then go to conference, where the outcome will be a fairly robust trigger-based bill.

Why is this a good outcome? Well, that depends on whether you believe that the insurance companies have the remotest motivation or desire to actually “use the free marketplace to solve America’s health care challenges”, as the Republicans love to claim. Rather than banging our heads against a “public option now, or nothing” platform with a slim-to-none chance of passage, if we’re smart we can have our cake and eat it too. We can put hoist Republicans on their own petard of free market reform, which we know won’t work, and which they don’t really believe anyway. We can get a public option, albeit a bit later than we’d like, by allowing the triggers to kick in and force the reforms we need. And we can get out from under the mantra that “it’s Dems who are stopping reform”, which has been very effective politically for the Repugs, by using the natural divisions in our party to create a compromise that’s really not a compromise (except in immediacy of implementing the public option).

One of my sincerest hopes is that the Democrats can avoid the self-immolation that the Republicans are living through now, in which the right and far-right factions are tearing the party to shreds.  If we can craft a scenario in which both of our factions, the “public option now” left and the “we can’t afford it with this $9 Trillion deficit” Blue Dog crowd can each vote their conscience, and we can end up, say, five years down the road, with a public option triggered by the insurers inability to control their own greed and ineptitude, and humiliate free-market Republicans in the bargain, someone help me understand why that’s a bad outcome.

Apparently bored already with the current occupant, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico cast a wistful eye this morning at “some surprising names” among Republicans who might try to take back the White House in 2012:

Some major donors and GOP strategists have approached Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” about a national run, according to party sources.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican nominee in 1996, told POLITICO that he would like to see Army four-star Gen. David Petraeus — the head of the U.S. Central Command, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan — run for president as a latter-day Ike

I can see the slogan now: “Petraeus 2012 — The General Who Won That War We Didn’t Really Win and Everyone’s Stopped Thinking About.”

The other names floated in this “expansive search for more options” are even less inspiring, and it’s no surprise. The Republican party has been so obviously uninterested in solving people’s problems for so long that it can’t create any compelling spokespeople. All the GOP knows is short-term distractions and hissy fits, and it’s hard to build a career on that substantial enough to launch a presidential bid.

As a result, Republicans have only succeeded by finding a telegenic, faux-folksy frontperson to distract the public from the party’s true agenda. Hence the Reaganite mantle was inherited not by an experienced conservative politician, but by George W. Bush, who was a clean slate in terms of substance but came with built-in name recognition and could fake an ordinary-guy persona. From there it’s just a short step to smiling nonentities like Sarah Palin being convinced that they’re the party’s future.

Which, ironically, makes this my favorite part of the Politico puff piece:

Liz Cheney, a State Department official in the Bush administration, said it is “absolutely” possible for a Republican to win the presidency in 2012.

“The independents who were so critical will come back to the Republican Party when they realize, as they’re coming to realize, that we’re the ones that can be trusted both on the economy and on national security,” she said. “So the substance is a lot more important than: Is it this person? Is it that person?”

One such person floated in a column in The Wall Street Journal is none other than her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. That’s not happening, though it’s sometimes hard to tell with his frequent appearances and sharp political rhetoric.

When asked if it’s even plausible, she replied: “I think no. I mean, I’d love for it to. But no.”

No, I’m not intrigued by the possibility of the Dark Lord summoning himself from his lair to campaign. What’s amusing and coy about this is that the Cheney who might run — in 2016 if not 2012 — is Liz herself.

Seriously. Think Sarah Palin, with a stronger foreign policy background. (Not a plausible foreign policy background, of course — but like I said, for the Republicans, there’s only so much to choose from.) Or a blonde, female Dubya.

Mark my words, it could happen.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Sad news about the Great Barrier Reef:

“…the Great Barrier Reef could be “functionally extinct” within decades, with deadly coral bleaching likely to be an annual occurrence by 2030.”

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times reports tonight:

President Obama is planning for “a new season” of more hands-on advocacy for his troubled domestic priority, an overhaul of the health care system, according to his advisers. Among the likely steps would be a nationally televised speech that close allies have urged, and a 10-year price tag for the overhaul below the $1 trillion mark.

Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with advisers including Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and David Axelrod, a senior strategist, to prepare for Congress’s return to work next week after a month in which many lawmakers have been spooked by contentious townhall meetings and polls registering slipping support for the president and his health care plans.

. . . The White House recalibration in part reflects how patience has run out with the efforts of the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, to reach a bipartisan deal after two of his three Republican negotiating partners—Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa—in recent days attacked the Democrats’ efforts publicly.

Of course, anyone with any sense knew from the start that the Baucus “bipartisan deal” effort was a waste of time (in fact, an intentional one).

In the Washington Post, Norman Ornstein offers a lame rationalization reasonable-sounding explanation of why Obama & Co. put up with it.  I’m not sure that it’s more convincing than the competing theories (e.g., sheer stupidity, or fealty to corporate interests), but I’m sufficiently traumatized — yes, still — by the 1994 debacle to sit back and let the results, or lack of them, speak for themselves.