TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word.
This Week in the October Surprise
Unfortunately for First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this week came in 2015 and not 2016. If the presidential election were held today, pitting Clinton against any (or all) of the Republican candidates, she would win in a landslide. Not only is she the best qualified in either party, but she's the only one in either party who has come through the campaign/debate season thus far looking remotely presidential. And she just had her best week yet, thanks in no small part to House Republicans who look increasingly like the Not Ready for Prime Time Players of D.C.
Clinton had the upper hand even before she walked into the room. For months, she has been saying that she wanted to testify before the committee, but only if the entire process were televised. Republicans on this committee, as on the previous one chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R/CA), have a nasty habit of leaking cherry-picked bits of testimony that, out of context, might reflect poorly on Clinton and her staff. The only way to avoid that was to do the whole thing on the record and in front of the cameras. Committee Chair Trey Gowdy (R/SC) finally relented, and the event was scheduled.
Then House Speaker John Boehner (R/OH) did Clinton a favor by announcing his resignation. His intended successor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R/CA), thrust into the national spotlight for the first time, immediately shot himself in both feet and probably ended his political career once and for all.
"Her [Clinton's] poll numbers are down," McCarthy crowed on national TV.
Not any more, Rep. McCarthy. We're sure Clinton will send you a nice thank-you note, once she's all settled in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Once he broke the truth dam, other Republicans came forward to confirm what he had said. The committee was formed to placate far-right House members after one of Boehner's necessary compromises to keep the government running, and the reason those members wanted it was to damage Clinton politically.
But Clinton went into it with the wind at her back from a successful debate performance, the knowledge that Joe Biden wouldn't challenge her for the nomination, and with the whole country knowing why the committee existed in the first place. And she went into it prepared, while the Republicans grilling her looked like school kids faking their way through a pop quiz, having failed to do their homework.
Political observers and pundits on every side of the aisle agree that she came out on top, and the committee's Republicans had made themselves look petty, hapless, and angry. Throughout the 11-hour ordeal, she came off as smart, seasoned, and articulate, and she knew her foreign policy inside and out. Her interrogators, not so much.
She'll face other challenges on her way to the nomination, and to the White House if she wins that. But she has shown that it's best not to underestimate her--a mistake Republicans have consistently made with President Obama.
This Week in Chaos
Also in the House, Rep. Paul Ryan (R/WI), having long made it public knowledge that he had no interest in the Speaker's chair--his dream job was Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, possibly a more powerful job than Speaker even though it's not third in line for the presidency, and he already had it--bowed to pressure from his colleagues and agreed to run for the job.
Before he agreed to it, he made some demands--concessions, mostly from the far right "Freedom Caucus," that would make it easier to do his job (and, legitimately, to spend time with his family). He may or may not get family time, but after consideration, the right-wing crowd decided that no, they wouldn't accept his demands. Most of them would vote for him, but with the understanding that the concessions he sought would be taken up after the fact. Maybe. If they feel like it somewhere down the road.
Ryan decided that was good enough.
In other words, having watched the example of a Speaker who couldn't handle his own caucus, who was constantly thwarted by members who were sent to Washington expressly to wreck government rather than to govern, Ryan has given in to them before even running for the job. If anybody thought Ryan would be a stronger Speaker, able to wrangle his caucus and restore some sort of functionality to government, they should disabuse themselves of that notion right now. Ryan was badgered into running and he's handed off power before being handed the gavel. Not an auspicious beginning.
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It's commendable that Ryan insists on having family time, and as Speaker he'll set the House schedule. House members already work far fewer days than most working-class Americans, so he'll have plenty of opportunity to get back to Janesville. He has, however, held up or refused to support legislation that would provide for paid family leave for those who don't get to decide what days they will or won't work (and be paid by the taxpayers, regardless). Of course, in his Ayn Randian worldview, anyone who has to ask for time off probably doesn't deserve it.
This Week in 2016
The Democratic presidential field saw a potential shakeup materialize into no shakeup at all. This week, VP Joe Biden announced that he won't run for president, giving up on a lifelong goal for him and causing sorrow for hordes of journalists who wanted the horse race to be even closer than it is now.
While Biden was busy not entering the race, former Senator and Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb exited the race, causing millions of Americans to say, "Who?" Webb entered the race via a Facebook video (and spent most of his time on the debate stage complaining about how little time he got) so the press conference announcing that he was quitting was literally the first press conference of his "campaign." He said he'll explore the idea of running as a third party candidate. It's entirely possible that he is already running, but that he hasn't told anybody and no one has noticed.
By week's end, recognizing the huge publicity boost Webb got from leaving the race, former mayor, senator, and governor Lincoln Chafee followed suit and announced that he's out, too. Pretty soon there will be enough Democrats not running to start a club.
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We've written at length about Joe Biden before. He is one of the most universally loved people in politics today, in any party. We've heard Sen. Lindsey Graham (R/SC) praise him as "the best man I've ever known," or words to that effect. Campaign rivals and partisan enemies extol his honesty, his work ethic, his devotion to family and friends, and his genuine love for government and the ways in which it can help make people's lives better. We don't imagine that Biden will be disappearing from the public square, and we'd miss him if he did. Here's a thoughtful piece about the possibilities in store for him after January 20, 2017.
(Thanks to TWIA special Naval Observatory reporter Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)
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Where has the Donald Trump we knew and loved gone? Once upon a time, Trump could tell any lie, and if called on it, he would simply repeat it louder. This week, he sorta-kinda walked back his lie that President Obama is considering an executive order that would take away people's guns. Now, he says he has heard that the president is considering such an order, not that the president is actually considering it. Small difference, but in Trump terms, that's a huge retraction. It's still a lie, though.
Trump also did a complete 180 on the war in Afghanistan within the last two weeks, going from calling it "a terrible mistake" to saying "Afghanistan is where we should have gone."
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In somewhat more substantive Trump news, he's keeping up his attack on Jeb Bush's line that brother George W. "kept us safe" during his administration. The difference here is that, for a change, Trump is right on the facts. Jeb's filial loyalty is touching, but it's also not true. Even if one discounts the fact that the 9/11 attacks happened on George W. Bush's watch (which is a huge discount), Jeb's argument has to ignore the anthrax attacks, the fatally mismanaged response to Hurricane Katrina, all the Americans killed in Bush's war of choice in Iraq, and the deepest, longest recession since the Great Depression (which not only put the economy in peril but had genuine health effects for many Americans). And if ISIS is indeed a threat to the country, that's on President Bush, too, since ISIS grew out of al Qaeda in Iraq, which didn't exist until Bush created a power vacuum there. That power vacuum also destabilized the rest of the Middle East and strengthened Iran, so to the extent that those forces are a threat, also on Bush.
Kept us safe? Not hardly, Jeb.
At The Atlantic, Peter Beinart looks closely at the question of whether the Bush administration deserves blame for 9/11, and concludes that it does. The Clinton administration was focused on al Qaeda and Bin Laden. People within the White House national security apparatus and the CIA grew so frustrated with their efforts to convince the Bush administration that al Qaeda, not Iraq, was the imminent threat that they threatened to leave their jobs.
"But the same Defense Department officials who discounted Clarke’s warnings pushed back against the CIA’s. According to Eichenwald’s sources, 'the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.'
"The CIA fought back. 'The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,' declared the Daily Brief on June 29, noting that the al-Qaeda leader had recently told a Middle Eastern journalist to expect an attack. The following day, the CIA included in its Daily Brief an article entitled 'Bin Laden Threats Are Real.' On July 1, the Brief predicted that an attack 'will occur soon.'"
Contrast this with the Clinton administration's efforts: "Clarke makes the same argument. When the Clinton administration received word of a potential attack in December 1999, he notes, President Clinton ordered his national-security adviser to 'hold daily meetings with the attorney-general, the CIA, FBI.' As a result, the leaders of those agencies instructed their 'field offices to find out everything they can find. It becomes the number one priority of those agencies.' This vigilance, Clarke suggests, contributed to the arrest on December 14 of an Algerian named Ahmed Ressam, who was arriving from Canada with the aim of detonating a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport."
The CIA kept trying to convince the Bush administration:
"The warnings continued. On July 11, the CIA sent word to the White House that a Chechen with links to al-Qaeda had warned that something big was coming. On July 24, the Daily Brief said the expected al-Qaeda attack had been postponed but was still being planned. Finally, on August 6, the CIA titled its Daily Brief: 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US.' The briefing didn’t mention a specific date or target, but it did mention the possibility of attack in New York and mentioned that the terrorists might hijack airplanes. In Angler, Barton Gellman notes that it was the 36th time the CIA had raised al-Qaeda with President Bush since he took office.
"On September 4, the Cabinet met and despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence that Iraq represented the greater terrorism threat, it approved Clarke’s plan to fight al-Qaeda. On September 9, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended taking $600 million from the proposed missile defense budget and devoting it to counter-terrorism. According to Gellman, Rumsfeld recommended that Bush veto such a move.
"On the morning of September 11, 2001, Clarke’s anti-al-Qaeda plan was sitting on Bush’s desk, awaiting his signature. It was the ninth National Security Presidential Directive of his presidency."
This is not to say that President Bush was responsible for the attacks. Bin Laden and his cronies were (with some help from Saudi Arabia--a country we still pretend is our friend--and the Taliban). But Bush surrounded himself with neocons who, like Bush himself, wanted to "finish" what they considered to be George H.W. Bush's unfinished war against Saddam Hussein. (There's a father-son dynamic at work here that has as much to do with the success of the 9/11 attacks and the disastrous invasion of Iraq as any other single factor on the US side, and it's never, to our knowledge, been thoroughly explored.) Because of the administration's singular focus on Iraq, the people who had Bush's ear on national security issues completely ignored the many, many warnings about al Qaeda. They ignored the antiterrorism recommendations Vice President Al Gore had put together during the previous administration (recommendations that included, among many others, hardened cockpit doors in commercial places to foil hijackers, and more extensive security measures to stop weapons and bombs from being carried onto planes).
Having decided from the start that Iraq was the enemy, the Bush administration was blind to the threat from al Qaeda. And once the war in Afghanistan seemed to be going okay, the administration again decided that Iraq was a more important conflict. We know how that turned out--we're still in Afghanistan, and we may well be going back to Iraq.
Jeb and his fellow Republicans can deny the facts all they want, but when it comes to accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration, keeping us safe cannot be legitimately added to the list.
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In the two most recent polls, at this writing, Ben Carson has pulled ahead of Trump in Iowa. Iowa isn't a particularly important primary state--it has the first contest, but that's in the form of caucuses, where having a ground game and plenty of snacks to feed caucus-goers matters a lot more than policy or personality--and lots of people win it without winning the nomination, or lose it and win the nomination anyway. But it's still significant that the more insane Carson sounds, the more popular he becomes on the right.
To a sane electorate, this exchange with TV host George Stephanopolous would be disqualifying all by itself, even without Carson's ridiculous claims that a couple hundred thousand armed Jews could have stopped Hitler when most of Europe's armies couldn't, and that the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing since slavery, and... well, don't get us started.
As recounted in The Guardian:
“I think [moderate Arab states] would have been concerned, and if we were serious about it ... I think that [the US threatening to become energy independent] would have trumped any loyalty they had to Osama bin Laden,” Carson said.
Stephanopoulos said: “But they didn’t have any loyalty to him. The Saudis kicked him out. He was their enemy.”
Carson responded: “Well, you may not think they had any loyalty to him. But I believe otherwise.”
Asked how the Saudis or allies would have located Bin Laden in his remote refuge in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Carson said: “I think they would have known where he was.
“There were indications, for example, during the Clinton administration that we knew where he was … If we could tell where he was, I’m certain they knew where he was.
“My point is, we have other ways that we could have done things. I personally don’t believe that invading Iraq was an existential threat to us. I don’t believe that Saddam Hussein was an existential threat to us. It’s a very different situation right now.”
Stephanopoulos said: “But sir, I wasn’t asking about invading Iraq. I was asking about invading Afghanistan, which had been harboring Osama bin Laden.”
“Well, I was primarily talking about Iraq,” said Carson. “I wasn’t particularly interested in going into Afghanistan, but I do think that we should have taken aggressive action.”
To which one can only say, WTF?
This Week in Bears
RIP Klondike. The nation's oldest polar bear, Klondike, died in her home at the Philadelphia Zoo on Friday. She had been born in 1980. The average lifespan for polar bears is 24 years.
In the happier category of bears having fun, here's one playing in the hay he found in somebody's backyard.
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