Sam Stein reports that “Democrats are bracing themselves for a new line of conservative attack against a provision in the health care legislation once considered so non-controversial that it was endorsed by several major Republican officials.”  What is it, you might ask, that these dastardly Republicans are opposing out of their racist hatred of Barack Obama?

On Tuesday, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) described the health care legislation being considered by the Senate Finance Committee as a “stunning assault on liberty” due to a provision that would require individuals to buy insurance.  Earlier in the week, the individual mandate also came under attack when Tim Phillips, who heads Americans for Prosperity, described it as an assault on individual liberty. “When you have health care, that’s a choice that impacts yourself,” Phillips told MSNBC’s Hardball. “Drivers’ insurance impacts other drivers you may have accidents with.”

The attacks have confounded Democrats in and out of government, who noted quickly that mandating coverage was, until recently, a relative given when it came to health care reform.  “It’s f–ing ludicrous,” said one health care reform activist, who noted that when Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) asked committee members to air their disagreements with an individual mandate during a meeting on May 5, no one chimed in.

Indeed, for months it was presumed that a relatively ironclad deal was in place: in exchange for the government mandating coverage, private insurance companies would agree to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions. The arrangement was all but blessed by prominent figures from within the GOP ranks. In mid-August, the ranking member of the finance committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), announced that the way to get universal coverage is “through an individual mandate.” “That’s individual responsibility,” the senator told Nightly Business Report. “And even Republicans believe in individual responsibility.”

So, Chuck Grassley and at least six other Republicans currently in the Senate support — or at least are willing to sign off on –  a law forcing Americans to buy health insurance.  But that hardly renders it “non-controversial.”

Indeed, this provision was incredibly controversial during last year’s Democratic presidential primaries.   Indeed, only John Edwards and Hillary Clinton supported mandates.  Among those opposing?  Barack Obama and Joe Biden who, as some will recall, went on to win the presidential and vice-presidential nominations, respectively, of the Democratic Party and go on to win election to those offices.

John Judis for The New Republic in June 2007:

Obama’s health care plan, which he announced last week, has been widely criticized by liberals for not making health insurance mandatory. Challenged by Edwards, Obama explained why a mandate is not a cure-all. “If you look at auto insurance, in California there’s mandatory auto insurance,” Obama explained. “Twenty-five percent of the folks don’t have it. The reason is because they can’t afford it. So John and I, we’re not that different in this sense; that I’m committed to starting the process. Everybody who wants it can buy it and it’s affordable. If we have some gaps remaining, we will work on that. You take it from the opposite direction, but you’re still going to have some folks who aren’t insured under your plan, John, because some of them will simply not be able to afford to buy the coverage they’re offered.”

Ron Chusid summarizes the intra-liberal debate on the subject in Liberal Values, February 2008

Paul Krugman continues his vendetta against Barack Obama’s health care plan due to its lack of mandates. The consequence of lacking mandates is unclear as nobody knows for sure how many people would still go without insurance if it was affordable but voluntary, and nobody really knows for sure how many people would remain uninsured despite mandates. It does seem reasonable to assume that achieving near one hundred percent compliance with a mandate would require yet another new bureaucracy and the expenditure of funds which might better be used for actual health care.

There are a variety of views as to whose plan would really insure more people. Robert Reich has argued that more people would wind up being covered under Obama’s plan than Clinton’s.

[...]

Using mandates to achieve universal coverage seems like quite a cop out to me. Regardless of whether the plan is good or the plan stinks, universal coverage is achieved because the government forces you to join up. In contrast Obama takes on the challenge of offering a plan so good that virtually everyone will want to participate to receive health coverage. There is also a clear philosophical difference here in that Obama isn’t obsessed with having every single person sign up. In contrast, a self-proclaimed government junkie like Hillary Clinton just can not live with the fact that somewhere, someone decides they do not want her help. Clinton will help them whether they want her to or not.

I know Clinton supporters will scream that I’m using right wing frames here, but again I must point out that freedom and choice should be considered virtues, not right wing frames. Liberty is what liberalism is ultimately all about, which explains whey Clinton prefers to label herself a progressive and not a liberal.

Some on the far left claim that Democrats lose when these alleged right wing frames about freedom are employed. They got it all wrong. Democrats lose when they concede traditional liberal values such as liberty to the right. If an election is framed so that one side is allowed to be defined as the party of freedom, that party will win virtually every time. Democrats have lost so many elections not because of using right wing frames, but because of conceding values such as freedom to conservatives, even though conservatives talk about freedom without really supporting it.

Ryan Lizza explains why Biden agreed to be Obama’s running mate for The New Yorker in October 2008:

Biden was impressed that Obama’s proposals seemed to be written with an eye toward passage in Congress. (For instance, the lack of a mandate in Obama’s health-care proposal could make the idea more palatable to Republicans.) During the primaries, Biden often played the role of policy grownup, the candidate who liked to chide the unrealistic plans of his rivals.

On July 17th, PoliFact’s Truth-o-Meter awards Obama a full-on flip flop on the issue:

Walk back with us through the mists of time to early 2008, and you might remember then-candidate Barack Obama defending the rights of hard-working people so they would not be forced to buy health insurance.

Obama’s position was different from his two nearest rivals, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who included mandates for individuals to buy health insurance in their plans for reform. It was an issue that got downright contentious on the campaign trail.

At a debate in South Carolina, Edwards said Obama’s plan really wasn’t universal health care, since it didn’t have a mandate to ensure everyone was covered.

Obama replied that his plan was universal (a claim we rated Barely True ) and explained why he was against a mandate: “A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. … But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can’t afford it. And that’s why my plan emphasizes lowering costs.”

Obama said at the time it was possible some people would refuse to buy health care under his plan.

“It’s true that some people could game the system by just waiting till they get sick and then they show up,” Obama said. “But keep in mind that my plan also says children will be able to stay on their parents’ plan up until the age of 25. And so I don’t believe that there are a whole bunch of folks out there that will not get coverage. And John, both you and Hillary have a hardship exemption where, if people can’t afford to buy health care, you exempt them so that you sort of don’t count them.”

Now, I don’t much care about the flip-flop.  The debate has moved over the past two years, as has the political make-up of the Congress.  Obama may well have been legitimately persuaded that his best chance of getting what he wants it to accede to a mandate.

But let’s not rewrite history, either.  Forcing Americans to buy health insurance regardless of whether they want it or can afford it is extremely controversial, with not only Republicans but most of the Democratic contenders for the presidency in 2008 opposing it.

UPDATE: Headline of the Day honors go to Bill Quick for “Mandating Change Without Hope.”

The latest campaign kerfuffle is the shocking fact that John McCain is receiving significant donations from the oil industry.  A new Obama ad says the amount is $2.1 million; FactCheck.org says it’s a mere $1.33 million.  Either way, it’s about triple what the industry is giving to Obama.

More damning, critics say, is that there has been an uptick in oil money flowing to McCain’s coffers since he started pushing for offshore drilling, a position he previously opposed.  Aha!  Many on the Left seem to think this is a big winner.

The problem with this analysis, however, is that it occurs in a vaccum.  Republicans always get more money from Big Oil than Democrats, just as Democrats always get more from unions and trial lawyers than Republicans.  Is it really all that shocking that industry groups donate to the candidates and parties that are most likely to advance their interests while in office?

As to McCain’s supposed flip-flop on this issue, it’s rather easy to explain by reasons other than the lure of Big Oil dollars. First, the situation “on the ground” has changed radically.  Gas prices have skyrocketed, changing dramatically the cost-benefit analysis of drilling.  Second, the politics have changed for the same reasons.  Hell, even Obama is now coming out for (limited) off-shore drilling.

Sure enough, if you look at the Top Industries lists compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets websites for Obama and McCain, you’ll see the old familiar pattern:

I don’t worry about industries and interest groups donating to advance their candidates.  I do, however, have some concerns when I see industries giving almost equally to both sides.  One suspects, though, that much of that is a function of the limitation of large category lists like these.  Perhaps, for example, doctors donate to Republicans and nurses and orderlies donate to Democrats.

Newsweek has released a new poll and is excited by the huge change: “Glow Fading? The latest NEWSWEEK Poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by only 3 points. What a difference a few weeks can make.” This is quite amusing in that pretty much everyone agreed that the June 20th Newsweek poll was an outlier.

No matter. In a Newsweek Web Exclusive, Jonathan Darman explains,

Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience–an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.

More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama’s outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June’s NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent.

He makes a nod toward reality with this:

Obama’s overall decline from the last NEWSWEEK Poll, published June 20, is hard to explain. Many critics questioned whether the Democrat’s advantage over McCain was actually as great as the poll suggested, even though a survey taken during a similar time frame by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg showed a similarly large margin. Princeton Survey Research Associates, which conducted the poll for NEWSWEEK, says some of the discrepancy between the two most recent polls may be explained by sampling error.

This is followed by a blithe return to pretending that both Newsweek (or is that NEWSWEEK?) polls are accurate and must reflect real movement. As OTB readers know, the previous poll showed an Obama advantage that was 14.5 percent higher than a RealClearPolitics average that included the outlier poll. How about now?

Well, surprise, surprise! It’s now perfectly in line with what the other polls — only 1.8 percent off the average but right in the flow of the other July polls.

Is the “glow” off of Obama? I’d love to see it. The data, unfortunately, don’t seem to support that conclusion. Here’s a graph of RCP’s McCain-Obama numbers since January:

McCain’s numbers are down slightly since Hillary Clinton’s concession while Obama’s are up a smidgen. (Note: The scale makes the variation look more substantial than it is.) McCain’s numbers have been as high as 47 and as low as 40 whereas Obama’s have fluctuated between 43 and 49. The gap between the two has never exceeded 4 points. So, we’ve got a very close race with very little movement that Obama has been leading, with brief exceptions, for months.

Beyond that, the usual caveats apply: We don’t elect presidents by national vote but state-by-state. We vote in November, not July. Registered voter polls such as Newsweek’s and CNN’s are less reliable than likely voter polls like Rasmussen’s. There’s a possibility that Obama’s numbers are somewhat inflated because people don’t like to admit that they don’t support the black candidate (although recent evidence for that phenomenon is scant).

Elsewhere:

• Ed Morrissey notes that the difference is likely that the previous poll grossly oversampled Democrats.

• Stacy McCain’s reaction mirrors mine: “The ‘rapid drop’ never happened, because Obama’s purported 15-point June lead never existed.”

• Digby believes Obama’s drop is real and offers this analysis:

Many people assumed those values were their own, and without a detailed analysis of his policies and his books, they were unlikely to think they were anything but orthodox liberal. This was, after all, a Democratic primary. So, when Obama did the predictable (although surprisingly clumsy) turn to the right and began to speak in somewhat unprogressive terms on things like the death penalty and faith based programs and FISA and abortion, they felt betrayed. The campaign had actually encouraged them not to know but rather to place their faith in Obama on a personal level.

I’ve been predicting that would happen for, oh, eighteen months now.  But I just don’t see any evidence for it.

Memeorandum has many more reactions: Chicago Tribune, Real Clear Politics,  NO QUARTER, American Power, Bucks Right, TalkLeft, Open Left, PoliGazette, Flopping Aces, THE GUN TOTING LIBERAL™, Wake up America, The Jed Report, Power Line, Hullabaloo, Eunomia, Lawyers, Guns and Money, TPM Election Central, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Gateway Pundit, Hotline On Call, Comedy Central, MyDD, Newshoggers.com, Blue Girl, Red State, Taylor Marsh, Macsmind, TIME.com, and Donklephant

Publius thinks it’s time to ban the phrase “Sister Souljah” moment, not just because it’s hackneyed but because it has been misused.

The more benign interpretation is that a Sister Souljah moment occurs when a candidate criticizes some group or idea nominally aligned with that candidate. In short, it’s criticizing your own coalition – or some idea valued by your coalition – to show independence and courage, etc.

The less benign interpretation is that “Sister Souljah” means distancing oneself from black people. When used in this sense, the Sister Souljah label masks an uglier, racial dimension lurking below the conceptual surface.

Let’s have a little straight talk – Clinton’s original Sister Souljah moment falls squarely within the latter sense. His statement got publicity not because he was speaking out against some interest group or idea, but because he spoke out against a black rapper.

John Cole, independently, agrees.  He goes much further, though, listing 21 shopworn phrases he’d like to see banned from punditry and “challenge[s] anyone out there to find ten minutes of any of the various shows with the idiot talking heads without multiple infractions from the list.”  Among his pet peeves are “flip-flop,” “Middle America,” “rock star,” and the “-gate” suffix.

Many of these are indeed verbal ticks.   Still, they’re intellectual shorthand, which serve a useful function of condensing complex ideas into instantly understood phrases.   Conversely, they can also hide a lack of insight or candor, as empty rhetoric that sounds, at first blush, like substantive analysis. Recall this classic scene from Bull Durham:

Crash Davis: You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.”

Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Got to play… it’s pretty boring.

Crash Davis: ‘Course it’s boring, that’s the point. Write it down.

Distinguishing legitimate shorthand from obfuscation can be tricky.

Al Qaeda in Iraq [AQI] is all but defeated, Marie Colvin reports for The Sunday Times.

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.  Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects. The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

[...]

American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south.  Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism.

In a sidebar companion piece, Colvin explains how we got here:

The reversal of fortunes is attributed to the “surge” strategy of General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces, who targeted Al-Qaeda in Iraq above all else after securing an extra 30,000 troops last year. His officers exploited local resentment of the terrorists and promised to protect those who resisted them. Under Petraeus’s plan, they established awakening councils, or groups calling themselves concerned local citizens. These Sunni groups helped to drive Al-Qaeda from many of its bastions.

US and Iraqi forces were then able to retake large swathes of the country and complete the “clearing” of cities such as Ramadi and Falluja and large areas of Baghdad. The overall number of attacks in Iraq has fallen by 80% in the past year alone.

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has gone on in recent months to reassert control over Basra in the south and Baghdad’s Sadr City, the two main strongholds of the Shi’ite Mahdi Army.

TigerHawk observes, “Notwithstanding the operation against the jihadis in Mosul, we have now gone nine consecutive days without an American KIA (which, if memory serves, is the longest stretch without a single KIA since [May 2003]). The implication is obvious: Iraqis, not Americans, are now at the tip of the spear. That is evidence of a successful counterinsurgency.”

Indeed it is.  It is not, however, sufficient evidence that the counterinsurgency is a success.

Most obviously, AQI and other foreign fighters have always constituted a tiny fraction of the anti-government forces.  Indeed, AQI barely existed when the insurgency started.  They were, however, the most violent and ruthless element.  Further, well-timed terrorist attacks such as the bombings of the Askariya shrine in Samarra escalated a relatively minor insurgency into a major sectarian conflict.

Even if AQI stays on the mat and the tide of replacements coming in from Syria and elsewhere remains stemmed, there’s still the domestic elements with which to contend.  Most significantly, does the Mahdi Army continue its cease fire?  If Muqtada al-Sadr and company decide to make another stand, violence could escalate dramatically.

Turning to US domestic politics, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays.  One could argue that this is good news for John McCain, one of the earliest and staunchest advocates of the Surge.  His argument that the war would have been far more successful if his calls for a larger force had been heeded years ago are buttressed. At the same time, however, Barack Obama can reasonably argue that, if AQI is defeated, the already tenuous relationship between the Iraq War and the global war on terrorism is ended.  These positive developments actually undermine the argument that his calls for rapid withdrawal amount to surrender to the terrorists and acceptance of American defeat.  If AQI is no more, then we’re left with a simple “nation building” operation.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan summarizes the “We’re winning, Vote Obama” position nicely:

[I]f someone had told me a year ago that fifteen of eighteen benchmarks had been reached, that all the parties were in negotiation over future politics, that al Qaeda was close to dead at the hands of the US and the Iraqis, and that oil contracts were being handed out amid four-year lows in violence, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Of course, this all makes Obama’s 16 month withdrawal timetable more and more feasible.

TigerHawk retorts, “If we are, as Andrew says, to judge the judgment of the two candidates, then the answer is clear. Eighteen months ago John McCain argued that the safest way out of Iraq was to win, then withdraw. Barack Obama, parroting the received wisdom of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, said that victory in any meaningful sense was not only unlikely, but that the presence of large numbers of American soldiers actually fed the insurgency and decreased the prospects for stability.”

Jim Hoft believes that this is “a huge blow to Democrats,” especially Obama, “Who was wrong about the surge, wrong about the US military, and wrong about turning Iraq over to its dangerous neighbors, and still flip-flopping like a wet noodle on where he stands.”

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds: “If you have to go to The Belmont Club to find out how it’s going, then it’s a success. Failure, the NYT has no trouble covering.”

Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday in which he said there was some flexibility in his plan, touted throughout the Democratic primary season, to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months followed by another speech in which he explained that he meant no such thing.

Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny have a solid summary and analysis piece for the NYT, headlined “Obama Strives to Retain Some Flexibility on His Iraq Policy”

Mr. Obama said at his first news conference that he planned a “thorough assessment” of his Iraq policy when he visits the country later this summer. “I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability,” he said. “That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

This drew some criticism . . .

So the Obama campaign hastily scheduled a second news conference to try to clarify his remarks. “We’re going to try this again,” Mr. Obama said. “Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq.”

“Let me be as clear as I can be,” he said. “I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war — responsibly, deliberately, but decisively. And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades a month, and again, that pace translates into having our combat troops out in 16 months’ time.”

He added that when he had spoken about possibly refining his policies, he was referring to questions about how big of a residual force should be left behind to train Iraqi forces and conduct counterterrorism operations — not the overall timeline for withdrawal.

Jonathan Weisman gets page 1 of WaPo with a report titled “Obama May Consider Slowing Iraq Withdrawal.”  He’s even more pointed:

Sen. Barack Obama raised the possibility of slowing a promised gradual, 16-month withdrawal from Iraq if he is elected president, saying that Thursday he will consult with military commanders on an upcoming trip to the region and “continue to refine” his proposals.
[...]
In a second, hastily convened news conference, Obama insisted that his policies have not changed, and that he has “not equivocated” or is not “searching for maneuvering room” on Iraq.

Weisman wrote almost the exact same piece for WaPo’s Trail blog under the presumably selected-by-him post title “Obama Softens on Iraq Withdrawal Timeline.”

Politico’s Mike Allen (”Obama to ‘refine’ Iraq plan“) had the same take:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Thursday backed off his firm promise to withdraw combat forces from Iraq immediately and instead said he could “refine” his plan after his trip to Baghdad later this month.

Zeleny, writing for the NYT Caucus blog (”Obama Might ‘Refine’ Iraq Timeline“), had this helpful info late last evening:

As a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama has not been known for holding an abundance of news conferences. That was not the case here on Thursday, when he called two in a span of four hours.

So what prompted him to call a second afternoon session to talk specifically about Iraq?

Mr. Obama was scrolling through news reports on his Blackberry – taking particular note of stories about his Iraq policy – when he told his advisers he wanted to better explain a statement he made earlier about continuing to “refine my policies” regarding a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Modern campaigning at its finest!

This back-and-forth prompted dozens of blogopsheric responses, holiday weekend or not. memeorandum has logged responses from TIME.com, TPM Election Central, Hot Air, Redstate, Macsmind, Taylor Marsh, Major Garrett’s Bourbon Room, Liberal Values, Sister Toldjah, THE LIBERAL JOURNAL, Talking Points Memo, The Moderate Voice, The Carpetbagger Report, Power Line, Eunomia, The New Republic, The Corner, The News Buckit, Hullabaloo, Gateway Pundit, protein wisdom, The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, The Impolitic, Truthdig, Real Clear Politics, Swampland, Weekly Standard Blog, Angry Bear, GOP.com, NO QUARTER, Pajamas Media, The Sundries Shack, TownHall Blog, TPM Election Central, Wake up America, Redstate, The New Republic, American Spectator, Washington Monthly, democracyarsenal.org, Soccer Dad, Pajamas Media, iowahawk, Hot Air, NewsBusters.org, Flopping Aces, Stop The ACLU, Open Left, The Jed Report,  The American Mind, Patterico’s Pontifications, Obsidian Wings and The Swamp as I write at 6:30 on a holiday morning.

I’ve only clicked through and scanned a dozen or so of those but it seems that Republican-leaning bloggers think that this is “The Mother of All Flip Flops” whereas Democrat-leaning bloggers think this is just a sign that Obama’s a thoughtful guy who will listen to the experts on nuanced issues, unlike the evil BushCo who will never ever change their mind when presented with evidence.

For my part, nothing about Obama’s statements yesterday surprise me. I’ve long believed that the differences between Obama and Hillary Clinton and between the Democrats and John McCain on Iraq have been wildly overplayed to draw contrasts in the election. Obama would work harder for withdrawal than McCain, who would be more committed to finishing what we’ve started. Either, though, would face the same reality on the ground, the same domestic political pressure, and essentially the same advice from the Service chiefs and combatant commanders. Come 20 May 2010, the sixteenth month of the 44th presidency, we’ll most assuredly still have a significant combat contingency in Iraq, yet a smaller one than we now have.

Taylor Marsh, no Obama lover, reminds us that Obama has always hedged his bets on Iraq including telling the late Tim Russert, “I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don’t want to make promises, not knowing what the situation’s going to be three or four years out.”

Michael Cohen’s response is more amusing:

I smell a rat here. Not that long ago the McCain folks were attacking Obama for sticking to a phased withdrawal and refusing to shift course based on the improved security situation in Iraq. So now he talks of refining his policy and they go nuts because he has “reversed” himself. Isn’t that what they wanted him to do? So which one is it – do the McCain folks want Obama to switch course or don’t they?

They do! They think Obama’s “new” position is much sounder public policy than the bumper sticker “out in 16 months” nonsense that he’s hammered to his core audience, despite repeatedly sending signals that his actual policy was more nuanced and reality-dependent. At the same time, changing positions, even slightly, on a core policy issue is something opposing campaigns always seize upon with glee.

Good public policy often isn’t good politics, for those reasons. Nuance is both more confusing and more subject to attack than bold pronouncements. Fundamentally, though, Hilzoy’s right:

Obama is saying what he will do if he is elected. He won’t be able to do any of it until he takes office, nearly seven months from now (if he wins.) The situation in Iraq can change quickly and unpredictably. Moreover, in the nature of things, there is information about the situation there that he will only have access to once he takes office. For Obama to say that he knows for sure, right now, exactly what he will do, in every detail, and that neither the advice he receives from the commanders on the ground nor anything that happens in the intervening months could possibly change his mind, would be idiotic. Politically expedient, perhaps, but idiotic nonetheless.

Campaigns, however, aren’t philosophy seminars. You’re better off doing bumper stickers and bold pronouncements in your speeches and leaving the nuance and caveats for you white papers or, better yet, your advisers and surrogates.

Is that the way it ought to be? Perhaps not. But many of the people chiding the press and Republicans for making such a big deal of this are still flogging the McCain “100 years” horse, months after the meaning was clear.

Kevin Drum awards the world record for fastest flip-flop to Sean Hannity in a show yesterday commenting about the North Korea deal:

HANNITY: The news today brings a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. But will the press report it that way? Joining us now for analysis, former ambassador to the U.N. and a Fox News contributor, John Bolton. What do you think this means?

BOLTON: I think it’s actually a clear victory for North Korea. They gain enormous political legitimacy….In return, we get precious little. I think this is North Korea demonstrating again that they can out-negotiate the U.S. without raising a sweat.

HANNITY: Boy I tell you they’ve done it time and time again, and I’m sorta perplexed, Mr. Ambassador, to understand why we keep going back to the well knowing that they haven’t kept the agreements in the past. Whatever happened to Reagan’s “trust but verify”?

That’s just funny right there. You’d think someone who makes a living spouting their opinions to the world could stand up for them for at least 30 seconds. Or, at the very least, acknowledge that he’s changed his mind.

Just one more reason why I don’t bother watching news or political opinion on TV. Except for Stewart and Colbert, of course.

Quite a few commenters are accusing John McCain of flip-flopping because he favored privatization of Social security in 2004 and now adamantly rejects the insinuation that he supports it now:

This is a clumsy rhetorical game rather than a policy shift. Then and now, McCain’s position is that Social Security would remain as a government program but that younger workers should be allowed the option of placing part of the money they would have been required to remit to FICA into a private retirement account in return for reduced future government benefits. Sometime during the 2004 campaign, though, Republican learned in focus groups that “privatization” was an unpopular label for this policy and started talking instead about “reforming” or “strengthening” Social Security instead.

Hilzoy makes a more interesting, related argument, which she illustrates with a clever cartoon:

McCain talks as though letting younger workers put some of their FICA taxes into private accounts would help fix the Social Security shortfall. This is not true. Private accounts would make the Social Security shortfall much worse.

Recall the way Social Security works. I pay Social Security taxes. My taxes are used to pay the benefits of today’s retirees. When I retire, my benefits will be paid by the taxes of the generation behind me, and so on. Suppose that we start allowing people to put some of their FICA tax dollars into personal accounts. That means that I will be paying not for the generation of workers who are now retired, but for me.

As it turns out, she and McCain are both right; they’re just talking about different things. McCain’s point is that we’re trapped in an unsustainable cycle. As the number of retirees increases while the number of workers decreases, this generational transfer won’t work. Getting young people off the merry-go-round, at least partly, helps solve the problem long term.

But, yes, the short-term impact is that there are fewer dollars going into the kitty to pay for the retirees who were fed the lie all along that they were actually paying into a “trust fund” for their “own retirement.” Considering that we all agree — and McCain emphasizes — that we’re morally obligated to pay current and future retires whose potential savings we siphoned off into a Ponzi scheme, Hilzoy concludes:

That means one of three things. Either it will come from the Social Security Trust Fund, in which case it will make the Trust Fund’s solvency problems worse; or else it will come from Our Tax Dollars, which doesn’t sound very pleasant, or else it will come from the Fiscal Fairy, who makes our numbers add up by magic.

That last option is the most favored by Democrats and Republicans alike, especially during campaign season. In reality, of course, Option 1 and Option 3 are identical given that neither fairies nor the Social Security Trust Fund actually exist. Social Security payments will therefore continue to come from our tax dollars, unpleasant though it may be.

Regardless, substantial privatization of Social Security in the near future is a dead letter. The Baby Boomers are incredibly powerful politically, the Democrats will control the Congress regardless of who wins the presidency, and confidence in the stock market is lower now than it was four years ago. The debate is, therefore, almost entirely academic.

As I wrote nearly four years ago, our alternatives are rather bleak:

• The status quo. This is unsustainable without a massive influx of young people into the system willing to shell out an increasing share of their income to comparatively wealthy elderly folks retiring at what is now a relatively young age.

• A sustantial increase in the retirement age. When FDR established this program in 1932, 65 was very old. Indeed, it was past the expected lifespan. Now, people who reach 65 can expect to live another 15-20 years. We’ve already gradually increased this for the out years. But raising it to, say, 75 will be incredibly difficulty politically and doesn’t take into account the fact that even 65 is relatively old for those in more labor intensive occupations.

The “massive influx of young people” caveat is actually more plausible than I thought at the time, if we’re willing to have this happen through immigration. We’d need to do it on the books, though, so that we’re actually collecting FICA taxes. The “guest worker” option, wherein we collect FICA taxes but then send them from whence they came before they can collect benefits would be even better from a fiscal standpoint but has the drawback of being horribly immoral.

The HuffPo PR department sent me an email entitled “McCain flip-flops on Jimmy Carter” touting a Seth Colter Walls post noting that John McCain has said nice things about Jimmy Carter in the past but is now saying mean things.

He points to a recent quip by McCain that, “Sen. Obama says that I’m running for Bush’s third term. It seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.” But back in 1999, McCain said that Carter had “the greatest, the noblest and loftiest intentions of any president, but he never really understood how to use the institution to obtain his goals.”

Not only are these thoughts not contradictory, they’re complementary. McCain isn’t running on a platform that Obama is a bad mean who wishes harm to his country but rather that he’s an inexperienced man who doesn’t understand practical realities.

Stretching things even further, Walls notes that some people who are McCain supporters are writing unkind things about former Carter Natoinal Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to “stoke fears among voters for whom Israel’s security is a top concern” and yet McCain was “honored” to have Brzezinski on his team in 2000. That Beltway insiders respect Brzezinski and yet some operatives are trying to leverage some aspects of his legacy to their advantage is decidedly less than surprising.

The idea that candidates are supposed to see the world in black and white, with no nuance whatsoever, is a puzzling one, indeed.

Let me go on a limb now and predict the following:

• McCain will simultaneously seek to distance himself from President Bush’s failures while embracing his successes

• Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will say much nicer things about each other henceforth than they have during the foregoing year and a half

For the most part, they won’t be lying or “flip-flopping” when so doing.

Photo: Matt Murphy Radio Program via Google

Josh Marshall is angry at the press for buying into what he believes is a lie: That John McCain doesn’t want 100 years of war in Iraq but rather is willing to see a Germany-style long term, peaceful presence.

McCain does not want to leave Iraq. Period. He wants tens of thousands of troops to stay in Iraq permanently. He made a big point of this during the primaries when it was politically advantageous to do so. And he followed up with a qualifier explaining that it’s okay because our occupation of Iraq will soon be like our presence in Germany and Japan where nobody gets killed. But there’s little reason to believe our occupation of Iraq will ever be like that. We tried this in Lebanon; the French tried this in Algeria; the British even tried it in Iraq. Western countries have a very poor history garrisoning Muslim countries in the Middle East. Iraq isn’t like Germany or Japan, not simply because of the history of the country but because both countries accepted decades-long US deployments as a counterweight to threatening neighbors. The relevant point is that McCain believes American troops should stay in Iraq permanently. His pipe dream about Iraq turning into Germany doesn’t change that. It just shows his substitution of wishful thinking for sound strategic judgment.

Now, I happen to agree that it’s unlikely that Iraq is going to become much like Germany in the near future. I do, however, think that Iraq is more likely to achieve something that passes for a workable democracy with our continued presence than without it.

Steve Benen observes that McCain has changed his mind on this score, anyway, at least four times in the last three years.

* In 2005, McCain decided Iraqis resent our military presence, so we should reject a Korea-like model for long-term troop deployment. He insisted that “U.S. ‘visibility’ was detrimental to the Iraq mission and that Iraqis were responding negatively to America’s presence — positions held by both Obama and Clinton.”

* In 2006, McCain reversed course, and embraced the Korea model for a long-term military presence.

* In 2007, McCain reversed course again, saying the Korean analogy doesn’t work and shouldn’t be followed. “[E]ventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws,” McCain told Charlie Rose last fall.

* And in 2008, McCain reversed course yet again, deciding that we should be prepared to leave troops in Iraq, even if it means 100 years or more.

Without links to provide exact quotations and context, it’s rather difficult to assess the degree to which this constitutes “flip-flopping” vice nuance. Offhand, though, they don’t seem necessarily contradictory. One can simultaneously think that having American troops as the face of the operation is damaging the mission but that American troops are needed to bolster the efforts of the Iraqi forces and that it’s unlikely that Iraq will ever be Korea but that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if it did.

Ed Morrissey located the transcript of the 2005 comments, on Hardball. He thinks there is indeed a contradiction in McCain’s position. His argument is long and I’ll let you read it for yourself to decide. I disagree, however.

The heart of what McCain said in 2005 is almost exactly what he says in 2008:

It is the casualties that creates the discontent amongst Americans. We’ve been in Bosnia for, what, 10, 12, years, Kosovo for 10 years, South Korea for 50 years. Americans aren’t upset about that.

This is precisely the sentiment that spawned the too-glib-by-half “100 years” comment. It’s not the presence of troops in another country that’s the problem but rather those troops getting killed and wounded.

What is different is the statement, made in 2005, that, “I not only think we could get along without [a long-term United States military presence], but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence,” essentially reiterated in the 2007 Charlie Rose appearance, and his recent comments that a long-term presence like Korea would be fine with him. It’s not impossible to simultaneously believe that a Korea-style presence is unlikely given the cultural and other differences but that it would be fine if it developed that way, I suppose. Then again, it doesn’t make much sense to base one’s answer on a hypothetical future one thinks unlikely.

I sent an inquiry about this to McCain’s campaign yesterday afternoon and have not heard back. It’s something I’ll try to ask him about in the next blogger conference call.

Mitt Romney says that he’d be honored to serve if John McCain asked him to run as his vice president.

Mitt Romney said in his first interview since departing the GOP race that he would accept the number two position on the ticket and that there is no lingering bitterness between him and John McCain.

“I think any Republican leader in this country would be honored to be asked to serve as the vice presidential nominee, myself included,” Romney told FOX’s Sean Hannity in a broadcast set to air tonight. “Of course this is a nation which needs strong leadership. And if the nominee of our party asked you to serve with him, anybody would be honored to receive that call … and to accept it, of course.”

According to two separate reports, Romney is being talked up as a running mate by members of the Bush inner circle. But McCain and his closest advisers have little regard for their former rival thanks to the bitter, year-long race waged between the two Republicans.

Romney says, however, that he thinks the wounds have healed. “There are really no hard feelings, I don’t think, on either side of this,” he said in the interview. “There were no pacts and so forth that make people feel like that we will never come together. Instead these campaigns are all coming together. We are supporting our nominee enthusiastically, aggressively.”

My sense is that there is indeed animosity toward Romney from the McCain camp, although it could be overcome in the interests of winning the election. It’s far from clear, however, what Romney brings to the table. While he generated support within part of the conservative movement, many social conservatives are leery of him because of his reputation as a flip-flopper and, frankly, his Mormonism.

Photo credit: Bloggernacle Times via Google

The collapse of Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency brings the inevitable question: What went wrong? Michael Luo gives a pretty good explanation.

If Mr. Romney’s campaign were condensed to one of his trademark PowerPoint presentations, it would have had all the bullet points foretelling success: a multimillionaire candidate willing to relinquish his fortune to run, an unsettled Republican field and a candidate whose championing of conservative positions could motivate the party’s base.

Yet Mr. Romney’s advisers acknowledged Thursday an array of tactical missteps and miscalculations. Perhaps most significantly, they conceded that they had failed to overcome doubts about Mr. Romney’s authenticity as they sought to position him as the most electable conservative in the race, a jarring contrast to his more moderate record as governor of Massachusetts. And during the January nominating contests, as his opponents attacked his shifting on issues, polls showed his favorability ratings plummeting.

Mr. Romney spent more than $35 million of his own money trying to get himself elected, but his campaign faced challenges from the start, some from obstacles beyond his control.

Suspicions about Mr. Romney’s Mormon faith consumed his campaign early on, only to seem to fade from view. But his advisers and outside experts agree that the unease ultimately helped pave the way for Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, to emerge from the backbench of the Republican field to win the Iowa caucuses, a central, costly goal of Mr. Romney’s strategy. Then Mr. Romney’s aides failed to anticipate the collapse of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s candidacy, leaving no one to halt Senator John McCain’s resurgence among moderate Republicans and independents.

[...]

But in an election cycle in which authenticity is an overriding concern among voters, the perception of Mr. Romney remaking himself into a Reagan-like figure through his positioning on issues like abortion rights and gun control exposed him to biting, often mocking attacks from his rivals, who were almost universal in their scorn of him. His fellow Republicans used the flip-flopping accusations to reframe everything he did. Even in the final hours of Mr. Romney’s candidacy, Mr. McCain was running advertising suggesting Mr. Romney had shifted radically in his view of Ronald Reagan.

[...]

But Mr. Gage acknowledged that in Mr. Romney’s rush to beat back the attacks questioning his conservative credentials, he may have swung too far in the other direction, ultimately taking some of the most-pronounced stands against illegal immigration and social issues. “Maybe we overcompensated,” Mr. Gage said.

The old joke that “The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made” seems invented for Romney. By most accounts, he’s a decent fellow. But, like the Al Gore of 2000, Romney never got past the sense that he was reinventing himself on the fly, making him seem both insincere and insecure.

It’s true that, absent some bad luck, he might have nonetheless won. None of us were predicting Huckabee’s emergence from nowhere to be the standard bearer of social conservatives. Giuliani and McCain started the race as the front-runners and may very well have divided the moderate security voter wing had Giuliani’s campaign not imploded.

I disagree with McCain on several issues and with Huckabee on a whole lot more. Yet I have little doubt that they actually believe what they’re telling me. That was never the case with Romney.

UPDATE: Howard Fineman adds,

I have covered a lot of presidential campaigns, and I can’t think of one that so lost its way-so expensively-as that of the former governor of Massachusetts. A board room and business favorite, a man with a Midas managerial touch, he was widely admired and even beloved. But he was a Republican of an ol

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mitt_romney_campaign_postmortem/feed/ 5 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/the_ever_changing_mitt_romney/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/the_ever_changing_mitt_romney/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:02:55 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/02/the_ever_changing_mitt_romney/

Mitt Romney has reinvented himself yet again, Michael Luo reports, this time as an anti-insider populist.

Mitt Romney is leading a citizen revolution, or at least that is what he has been telling people these last few days as he has tries to right his bid for the Republican nomination.

It may seem an unlikely role for a PowerPoint-loving, buttoned-down multimillionaire, but there Mr. Romney was, on stage Monday here in his starched white shirt and tie, raising his voice to be heard above the crowd and portraying himself as the anti-establishment insurgent.

[...]

That Mr. Romney, the one-time leveraged-buyout artist who has spent more than $35 million of his personal fortune on his campaign, is now running as a populist insurgent may come as a surprise to some. But he has been through a variety of iterations of his message over the last year, donning at various points the image of a pragmatic problem-solving businessman, conservative ideologue and change agent.

It was in New Hampshire that he settled on a theme about Washington’s being broken and his ability to bring change.

But with Mr. McCain now threatening to run away with the nomination, Mr. Romney has melded the old with the new, lobbing conservative grenades once again while talking about change. His latest script is calculated to sound the alarm over the prospect of Mr. McCain as the Republican nominee.

Not all that long ago, the Rush Limbaughs of the world thought it was funny when Al Gore kept changing personalities during a presidential run. Now, apparently, it’s the only way to save the Party of Reagan. At least Romney’s not wearing earth tones, I guess.

UPDATE: Whilst looking for images for this post, I stumbled across Daniel Larison’s “Romney Is Al Gore” post (via Andrew Sullivan) from a couple weeks back. Apparently, the similarities have been noticed by others.

I also came across this classic cartoon at Steve Rabin’s blog:

And this one at Sameritech:

Romney Photo: Third Avenue via Google.

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/the_ever_changing_mitt_romney/feed/ 3 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mccains_gay_bashing_robo_call/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mccains_gay_bashing_robo_call/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:22:31 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/01/mccains_gay_bashing_robo_call/

Floridians are being treated to some robo-calls attacking Mitt Romney that HuffPo’s Sam Stein and some homosexual activist leaders call “gay bashing.” Here’s the ad in question:

Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-funding for abortion. He says he changed his mind, but he still hasn’t changed the law. He told gay organizers in Massachusetts he would be a stronger advocate for special rights than even Ted Kennedy. Now, it’s something different.

Some of the reactions:

“It’s ironic that Sen. John McCain is using the same tactics that George Bush used against him in 2000; surreptitiously trying to exploit anti-gay prejudice for votes,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “So much for John McCain being above that.”

“I think this is definitely an attempt at gay baiting,” added Jon Hoadley, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats.

According to many in the community, the robo call hit is not simply a timely attempt to scare voters away from Romney, but a reflection of McCain’s true colors on social issues.

This gives “straight talk” a whole new meaning.

Does this amount to “gay baiting”? That seems a bit much, since the target of the attack is Romney, an open heterosexual. The main thrust of the message is that Romney is a dishonest flip-flopper who’ll tell you what you want to hear. But, certainly, the choice of abortion and gay rights among the dozens of issues on which Romney has changed positions to highlight would appear to be aimed at social conservatives.

Photo source: Practical Reasoning

]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mccains_gay_bashing_robo_call/feed/ 7 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/florida_primary_predictions/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/florida_primary_predictions/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:09:19 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/01/florida_primary_predictions/

Yes, it’s that time again: trying to make predictions in a political season that’s largely defying predictability. Polls are open today in Florida, the last primary state before next week’s Super Tuesday extravaganza, and it’s an important contest, at least on the GOP side.

As for the Democrats, it’ll be a complete shock if Hillary Clinton doesn’t win the meaningless beauty contest. She’s ahead by an average of 19 percent in recent polls and by no less than 13 in any of them.

My guess on the final numbers:

Clinton 51
Obama 35
Edwards 14

No delegates are at stake, at least theoretically, and the media attention will be mostly on the Republican side unless a monumental upset occurs. Still, Clinton will be able to claim victory and gain a tiny bit of momentum heading into next week’s 22-state megaprimary.

The Republican contest is a coin toss between the national frontrunners, Mitt Romney and John McCain.

The most recent polls give McCain a slight advantage and the trend lines seem to be moving his way. Those results, though, are well within the margin of sampling error making the race too close to call.

The other wrinkle a key to remember here is that absentee voting has been going on for weeks, so recent events are not going to have the same impact that they might in a caucus or polling place-only contest. While Rudy Giuliani’s numbers have plummeted since New Hampshire, as many as a million people had already mailed in their ballots by then.

McCain got the 11th hour endorsements of Florida governor Charlie Crist and Senator Mel Martinez, which should help a bit, and rumors that Giuliani is calling it quits may help McCain a bit. One wonders, too, whether Huckabee fans will decide not to “waste their vote” on a guy the polls show has no chance at winning this winner-take-all primary. If so, most will likely decide that the war hero is preferable to the flip-flopping Mormon.

The fact that Romney has outspent McCain 10-to-1 in television advertising and isn’t leading makes me think his support is a bit soft, too.

With very little confidence, then, I predict the following finish:

McCain 35%
Romney 32%
Giuliani 17%
Huckabee 11%
Paul 5%

Actual results may vary, of course. The polls have been uncannily accurate throughout this season with the notable exception that they have occasionally vastly under-counted the winner’s support.

The winner here will get a large boost going into Super Tuesday, since both McCain and Romney are vying to establish themselves as the clear favorite. If it goes anything like this, though, both Giuliani and Huckabee are toast.

Ron Paul, of course, will be sitting exactly where he intended all along, poised to win the whole thing once the field clears. (Well, not really.)

UPDATE: Scott Elliot sees both races tighter than my predictions, albeit with the same outcomes. He’s also rounded up other blogger predictions.

Feel free to add your predictions in the comments below. The closest for each contest will get a mention in tomorrow’s postmortem.

Update (Alex Knapp): Because James asked, and because I love making completely false predictions, here are my scores below. Frankly, I think that the sheer amount of early voting is really going to skew the results:

Democrats
Clinton 48
Obama 32
Edwards 20

This, by the way, is a Clinton victory that should be spun by the media as completely meaningless, due to early voting, the lack of campaigning by Obama and Edwards, and the actual “under-the radar” campaigning by Clinton. It will, however, be spun as a “change in momentum” for the campaigns heading into Super Tuesday.

Republicans

McCain 30
Romney 25
Giuliani 25
Huckabee 12
Paul 5
Thompson 3

(I’m assuming that the early voting returns will include some Thompson ballots, and will also produce a surprisingly strong showing for Giuliani.)

Update (Chris Lawrence): Here are some completely off-the-cuff predictions:

Democrats
Clinton 50
Obama 38
Edwards 10
Kucinich 2

Republicans
McCain 29
Romney 29
Giuliani 18
Huckabee 15
Paul 6
Thompson 2

Florida Recount II, here we come!

Update (Dave Schuler): Goodbye Rudy Tuesday

My guess is that in today’s Florida primary, at least partly because of the number of older voters, the regular party candidates win on both sides of the aisle. That means that Romney will narrowly beat McCain leaving Rudy Giuliani a distant third on the Republican side (Ron Paul should poll has customary 6%). Giuliani well may withdraw after such a finish although it hardly seems worth it with Super Tuesday mere days away.

On the Democratic side it means that Clinton will beat Obama narrowly with Edwards a distant third.

Update (Steven Taylor): I predict McCain wins by 2 points and that Giuliani eeks out a third place finish based on early voting. Meanwhile, Hillary wins 50% of the vote and cashes in on 0 delegates.

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