GOP House Issues Conference: Obama's Back!

Three days after the State of the Union Address, President Obama accepted an invitation to have a Q&A session with the GOP. Like the beginning of America's love affair with Barack, it all started with a speech.

Many topics were discussed, but the theme of the night was bi-partisanship. The speech had a tone of firm necessity, but a sub-text of pleading desperation. To properly address health care, jobs, the economy/financial regulation and the $1.3 trillion deficit, voting that is stubbornly and forever split down the aisle has got to go. Period.

Two Republican Responses

Once the Q&A session began, I hoped that some of the Republicans might take Obama's pleads to heart and ask thoughtful, or at least legitimate questions. Congressman Peter Roskam (IL), did such a thing. He asked critical questions, but in a fair and amiable way. He recalled how State Senator Obama had worked effectively with Republicans to get things done in Illinois, but remarked that, "over the past year, in my view, that attribute hasn't been in full bloom." He went on to specifically ask about the Free Trade Agreements mentioned in the State of the Union Address and how to walk the line between protecting jobs and protectionism.

Unfortunately, he was the lone collection of rational thought and productive dialogue who spoke that night to represent the elephant in the room (pun intended).

On the opposite end of the spectrum was the distinguished (if only by her impressive collection of empty sound bites) Congresswoman from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn. If anyone has ever heard a congressional hearing or anything of the C-SPAN variety, they know that politicians can talk for hours without saying anything. True to form, Marsha Blackburn gave it 110% and, in my humble opinion, should get some sort of Congressional Special Olympics medal for the performance she put on during her speech. It was so devoid of any trace of cogent thinking beyond the obligatory "Thank you, Mr. President," that is was kind of cute (Think of a parent watching his/her child in the school play, 'aww, look at her, she's doing such a good job remembering all of her lines!'):

(skip to 0:48:20)



Thank you for acknowledging that we have ideas on health care because, indeed, we do have ideas. We have plans, we have over 50 bills, we have lots of amendments that would bring health care ideas to the forefront...

[This is where it gets good! ]

...We would -- we've got plans to lower cost, to change purchasing models, address medical liability, insurance accountability, chronic and preexisting conditions, and access to affordable care for those with those conditions, insurance portability, expanded access -- but not doing it with creating more government, more bureaucracy, and more cost for the American taxpayer.

Let's examine her second paragraph. She starts her sentence, "We would," but then quickly and correctly stops herself from making empty promises, because using the word "would" creates a loose form of accountability. "We've got plans," on the other hand, carries with it no claims of accountability.

Well-played, Congresswoman.

This slight stumble begins a barrage of health care buzz words that, when put together as Congresswoman Blackburn does, have as little value as a whole as their degree of specificity when separate. To wrap up her free-form stanza, she seamlessly slips in the conservative playbook's central tenant: the illogical, yet exceedingly popular claim that we can solve, and somehow pay for, all of our country's problems with small government and less taxes ("but not doing it with creating more government, more bureaucracy, and more cost for the American taxpayer").

Republicans like Congressman Peter Roskam show us how bi-partisanship can work, Marsha Blackburn shows us how to be a jackass, albeit a simple-mindedly cute one.

The Last Question of the Night

I recently wrote about how, after a year in office, Obama has let me down. He has not been able to move forward with many policy decisions, due partly to his own fault, but due primarily to the sorry state of Washington. The power of money to win elections and influence the legislative process when we need it most has turned both parties into money grubbing tools. I hate to seem biased toward the Republicans, but it is quite clear that the Republican party has, in the last year, morphed into an obstructionist entity hell bent on Democratic failure to help the GOP come election time in November 2010 and 2012.

Obama's speech seemed almost like a direct response to my concerns. I do not think Obama reads my blog, but I think that my ideas are shared by many concerned citizens, by anyone who has looked into our pseudo-Democracy close enough to realize how broken the system really is. It was ethereally calming to hear Obama specifically addressing everything I wanted to hear and, while I couldn't help but think that I'd been wooed by him before, I still could not help but feel the sincerity in his voice, the common sense of his arguments, and the validity of his laundry list of ailments in Washington.

This all crystallized in the final question of the night from Congressman Jeb Hensarling from Texas. If you have the desire, I recommend watching the entire speech, but if you choose just one part to look at, this question and Obama's response is the part to check out.

Jeb starts out with a congenial mention of the fact that both Obama and himself are parents (yes, Jeb is human, contradictory to his robotic demeanor and talking points) and then jumps right into his own mini-speech/question. As he begins, he, unlike his peer from Tennessee, puts together words that form coherent sentences. Step 1, check. Like Blackburn though, he goes straight to party line arguments, claiming that if Obama would have looked at the Republican budget proposal at the beginning of 2009, that we could have avoided all the economic pitfalls of the year. He goes on, "since the [Republican] budget was ignored, what were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats." It's the oldest form of propping up shaky arguments: baseless statistics.

(Note: Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit, Bush inherited a $200 billion budget surplus)

After a couple minutes of talking, Jeb finally gets to his question, which is a subtly fear-inducing play to the teabaggers all across the country, "Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy?"

No, this isn't the typical death camp, Hitler comparison teabagger vernacular, but it sure is teabagger rhetoric. They want to focus on scary spending, on 'the path' we are marching down (toward socialism of course), but they do not want to address why there is a necessity to spend at this unprecedented moment in American economic history. These people have their priorities twisted; they feel that regaining power comes before solving problems, they put their efforts into House and Senate majorities, not jobs, health care, or the economy. They are bullshit wonks.

Obama's Response

(skip to 1:14:00 for Jeb's question and Obama's response)




Jeb, with all due respect, I've just got to take this last question as an example of how it's very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we're going to do, because [your] whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign...So when you say that suddenly I've got...a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true.

After dealing with Mr. Hensarling, Obama details the political process Jeb's comments represent:

(01:24:01)

That's why I say if we're going to frame these debates in ways that allow us to solve them, then we can't start off by figuring out, A, who's to blame; B, how can we make the American people afraid of the other side. And unfortunately, that's how our politics works right now. And that's how a lot of our discussion works. That's how we start off -- every time somebody speaks in Congress, the first thing they do, they stand up and all the talking points -- I see Frank Luntz up here sitting in the front. He's already polled it, and he said, you know, the way you're really going to -- I've done a focus group and the way we're going to really box in Obama on this one or make Pelosi look bad on that one -- I know, I like Frank, we've had conversations between Frank and I. But that's how we operate. It's all tactics, and it's not solving problems. And so the question is, at what point can we have a serious conversation about Medicare and its long-term liability, or a serious question about -- a serious conversation about Social Security, or a serious conversation about budget and debt in which we're not simply trying to position ourselves politically.

I know talk is cheap, but goddamn that's good stuff! It's rare these days to hear a politician, let alone the President, simply tell it like it is. The first step to solving a problem is identifying it and, after this speech, there is no denying that Obama knows what's wrong and it seems like he wants to fix it.

One Year In

Obama has simply not lived up to the hopes of a nation. To me, this signals two things, one about Obama the individual and one about our corrupt at worse, stagnant at best, political system. Let's start with the latter. The two big domestic issues of Obama's administration are health care and the economy/financial regulation.

Health Care:
A single payer option was labeled socialism before people even knew what it was and the public option only lasted for a few months. The 'blue dogs' knew the public option would be thrown to the curb eventually and, in hindsight, it seems as though the public option was mere window decoration to garner liberal support.

Now the bill we are left with forces millions of Americans to buy into a broken health care system. In negotiating the health care bill as it stands now, the federal government is essentially deciding how much money we are going to guarantee for private insurance companies. The American tax payer will largely foot the bill a la federal subsidies for low-income families who cannot afford the coverage they are being forced to buy. So who's really benefiting here? Does the bill as it stands now seriously tackle out of control drug prices, one of the malignant cancers of the health care problem? No. Will it help the average American on Main Street? Maybe. Will it help the trillion-dollar deficit? Maybe. Will it boost insurance companies' quarterly profits by forcing millions of Americans to buy private health insurance plans? Yes.

Wall Street:
Obama made a great move in appointing Elizabeth Warren to head Congress' panel on financial regulation. Now if only he would listen to her. She has proposed the idea of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Wall street and it's powerful lobby don't like it, so guess what? The right side of the aisle and the 'centerist' (read: big business friendly) Blue Dog Dems are trying to shoot it down.

The more I learn about modern American politics, the more I think the CFPA will be either scratched or watered down so much Elizabeth Warren will be trying to disassociate herself with it. So when the dust clears from the financial regulation fight, who will come out the winner? I'm guessing that Wall St. will not be disappointed.

People like to throw a fuss about bonuses and profits. Let's be real. Big banks/investment firms, and all corporations for that matter, exist to make money. A corporation is actually legally obliged to pursue profits above all else. Profits are to corporations what winning is to any sports franchise. In this sense, steroids and mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, and other complex derivatives are very similar. They give the 'athlete' an edge over the competition. The main difference is that steroids are illegal. If banks are acting within the law, then who are we to blame them? Enter CFPA.

Obama:
I still like to believe that Obama has a spot in his heart for all the people he worked with in his fabled days as a community organizer in the south side of Chicago. Unfortunately, one cannot readily see it in the policy decisions, or lack thereof, of his first year.

In the wake of his election and the sorry state of America that went with it, FDR comparisons were abound. The collective American consciousness correctly thinks of FDR as the people's president, but we take for granted the struggle involved in getting the New Deal passed. Big business existed in the 1930's too. Lest we forget the Gilded Age of Standard Oil and US Steel that preceded the Great Depression by a few short decades. FDR had to roll up his sleeves and play hard ball to get things done. Obama MUST play hard ball as well if he truly wants any serious change to occur.

State of the Union:
The American political system (I consider it a rarely functioning pseudo-Democracy) does not work. It is that simple. When it costs millions of dollars to run a successful re-election campaign, money is king. When money is king, lobbyists can control the kingdom, as we see now in health care and financial reform.

I know this sounds like a lot of gloom and doom, but I'm just calling it like I see it. This is not a red or blue thing, this is an American thing. If someone can please explain to me why I am wrong I would love to hear it.

A Rock and a Hard Place

In the world of journalism, Bill Moyers Journal is one of the best shows on TV right now. This week's show centered around secret tape recordings president Lydon Baines Johnson made during his presidency. In the recordings, LBJ discusses escalation of troops in Vietnam with aides such as Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara, among others.

The tapes are glaringly poignant, given the current situation in Afghanistan. As LBJ debated the roads to take, there were three choices. Pull out the majority of our forces, try the middle road of supporting the South Vietnamese via military/financial means, or send in substantially more troops.

Getting Out
Pulling out troops was a politically dangerous move to make. The American people would see it as defeat and political enemies would be sure to declare a cataclysmic fall of the dominoes.

The Middle Ground
The middle road faced the same problems in South Vietnam as Afghanistan faces today: A hopelessly corrupt local government, lack of support from the local population, and an unprepared and incompetent local army/militia.

Getting Deeper In
Gen. Westmoreland was requesting 41,000 additional troops. The president and his advisors knew that giving him the additional troops would lead to a snowball effect of troops in the future. McNamara called the situation, "a hell of a mess."

We all know the decision LBJ ended up making and the consequences it had. While Vietnam fell, the dominoes didn't. The threat of a red globe was real, but years after Vietnam, the Cold War came to an end as the Soviet Empire crumbled away from within. A significant contributing factor to that crumbling was the U.S.S.R.'s own Vietnam: Afghanistan. (Watch the Tom Hanks movie, Charlie Wilson's War for more on that.)

While today's situation in Afghanistan is similar to LBJ's Vietnam, differences are abound as well. The fight is against a different -ism this time. It is one without a superpower nation to support it, but instead consists of disparate, loosely connected gangs of religious zealots who all share a common hatred of America. If some form of 'victory' is ever achieved, it will not be in the form of a Berlin Wall, but rather some other, less tangible, symbol.

Let's look at a miracle situation. Five to ten years down the road, we destroy the inner workings of the Taliban and their poppy fields, wipe out major political corruption in Afghanistan and revive the country into a safe, democratic, functioning nation. Even if this happens, there will still be scores of other Bin Ladens out there chanting "Down with America," plotting and hoping for another 9/11.

If Obama decides not to listen to Gen. McChrystal's recommendation of 45,000 additional troops, Fox News and the Rush Limbaughs of the world will surely tear him a new one. The American public might do the same. This is the kind of decision that people from the left and right will be talking about in 2012. Pulling out of Afghanistan will be seen as weak. Obama's patriotism will be called into question. Victory will be declared by the Taliban. These will be the immediate consequences.

As for long-lasting consequences, no one can call it for sure. One thing is certain though, in the midst of economic peril, a dizzying deficit, and a health care system that is out of control, the fiscal consequences of a continuing commitment to Afghanistan is something worth considering. And then there's the human cost.

How many more American deaths will be worth the cost of success? What does success even look like? Can the United States and its people be safe without a large ground presence in Afghanistan? Will the next 9/11 be plotted from those mountains yet again? Will we ever catch Bin Laden?

These are all important questions that hover over our presence in Afghanistan. Anyone who claims to unequivocally know the answer should not be trusted. There is no black and white in this case, only gray. Unfortunately, the 24-hour news cycle and partisan politics don't see foreign policy in the foggy shade of gray it certainly is. Fortunately, I think we have a president who does. Let's hope he makes the right decision, whatever that may be.