Yesterday, the NYT and other outlets reported that former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani has decided against running for governor of New York.  But the Daily News is reporting that he is instead “very likely” to run in the special election to fill the remaining two years of Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate seat.

The Republican heavyweight was considered the GOP’s best shot at reclaiming the governor’s mansion. The only declared candidate on the Republican side is little-known former Long Island Rep. Rick Lazio.

One source said Giuliani is prepared to run for U.S. Senate against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand next year to fill out the remaining two years of Hillary Clinton’s term.

Still, a number of sources said no decision has been made and a Giuliani spokeswoman downplayed the reports. “Rudy has a history of making up his own mind and has no problem speaking it,” she said. “When Mayor Giuliani makes a decision about serving in public office, he will inform New Yorkers on his own.”

[...]

Former Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari, a close Giuliani pal, said the former mayor has shared doubts with him for weeks about running for governor. “What he said to me is that he doesn’t think he’s going to do it,” Molinari said about a conversation earlier this month with the former mayor. “It just didn’t make any sense to him.” Molinari said the ongoing circus in the state Senate, combined with Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s iron grip on Assembly matters, had convinced Giuliani that a Republican governor would have little ability to get things done quickly in Albany. “The big drawback for him was – could I really be effective?” Molinari said. “He saw too many hangups there. He’s not running for the title, that’s for sure.”

That, and the very real possibility he’d lose to popular Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

But it’s not entirely clear what a Senate seat would do for Giuliani, either.  He’s used to making decisions, so he’d be an ineffective legislator.  And if his goal is to run for president again in 2012, it’s not clear how five minutes in the Senate would bolster his resume — as he’d have to hit the campaign trail almost immediately.  He’d be better off going the Newt Gingrich route and simply establishing himself as a Republican Wise Man, doing as many public appearances as possible.

Frankly, 2008 was his best chance and he blew it.  He was at the height of his popularity and running against a lackluster field for the nomination. Yet he ran a joke of a campaign — literally — “A noun, a verb, and 9/11.” As he moves further and further away from the 9/11 attacks, his light dims.

He’ll be 68 during the 2012 race — facing,  should he make it to the nomination, an incumbent president with superb campaign skills — and 72 for 2016.  The latter will be 15 years after his finest hour.

Twenty years ago today, I was leading a rocket artillery platoon in live fire exercises at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Eastern Bavaria.  Some 400 kilometers to the north, the Berlin Wall was coming down.   Back in my teaching days, I jokingly used this coincidence to illustrate the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

I don’t have much in the way of unique insights to offer beyond pointing to Stephen Green’s observation that, “The Berlin Wall didn’t just fall down. It was torn down. It was torn down by the very people it was built to cage.”

Over at New Atlanticist, we’ve been running a series of essays from people who played a slightly larger role than I did in these events: President George H.W. Bush,  Margaret Thatcher,  Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Condoleeza Rice,  and Douglas Hurd. Hillary Clinton, Jim Jones, Josef Ackermann, and Frederick Forsyth offer some interesting observations as well.

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.”

Author David Rothkopf (who served as a deputy undersecretary of commerce under Bill Clinton) argues in the Sunday Washington Post that, while the commentariet is distracted by Hillary Clinton’s celebrity, the new secretary of state is “overseeing what may be the most profound changes in U.S. foreign policy in two decades — a transformation that may render the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush mere side notes in a long transition to a meaningful post-Cold War worldview.”

In a rebuttal essay at New Atlanticist, “Hillary Clinton’s Quiet Revolution,” I argue that this is “hyperbolic in the extreme” and that my “Bush’s Third Term” viewpoint is still more plausible.

Photo: Reuters Pictures.

Hillary Clinton’s Congo blow-up is a story that just won’t go away. Even those sympathetic to Obama and Clinton, like Jon Stewart, are having a field day with this.

Mrs. Clinton’s answer on Monday has quickly become the No. 1 sound bite from her trip. Her whole seven-nation Africa tour, which has had quite serious intentions, like combating Congo’s appalling rape epidemic and raising her personal profile within President Obama’s administration, may end up being reduced to this: “Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state, I am. So you ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

Almost immediately, her showdown with the student became a media phenomenon, with a level of attention on an American in Kinshasa perhaps not seen since the so-called Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides have been notably frustrated that this brief flash of anger, or undiplo-speak, has come to overshadow a trip that took weeks of planning and was intended to strengthen America’s ties to some of its most strategic allies on the continent.

[..]

No matter the issues she was talking about — encouraging good governing, ending Africa’s wars, lifting women up from their lowly position in a place like Congo. The interest in this trip, it seemed, was not about the problems facing Africa. It was about her.

As one journalist covering her trip put it: “She is a celebrity. We have a celebrity secretary of state. When you have a celebrity, you get celebrity coverage.”

That’s the reality of modern media. And, like it or not, this is a big story. It’s yet another reason secretaries of state and vice presidents have to be on guard at all times rather than letting fly whatever thought happens to be crossing their minds at the moment.

As to the emerging meme that the media is playing up this sensationalism while ignoring the real story — the horrific plight of women in Africa — it’s nonsense. Of course the latter is much more important. But it’s not news.

Hillary Clinton chewed out a Congolese student for asking what “Mr. Clinton” thought about a public policy issue:

ABC’s Kirit Radia:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost her cool Monday after a Congolese student, speaking through a translator, asked her what “Mr. Clinton” thought about a Chinese trade deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” Clinton replied, clearly irked by the thought of being her husband Bill’s spokeswoman. “My husband is not secretary of state, I am,” she replied. “If you want my opinion I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

The only problem? Apparently the translator made a mistake and the student had wanted to know what President Obama thought of the deal. A State Department official tells ABC News the student went up to Clinton after the event and told her he was misquoted. No immediate word yet how Clinton responded.

Regardless of the error, the notion of Secretary Clinton’s deference to her husband clearly touched a nerve with America’s top diplomat. Just a week ago the former President stole his wife’s thunder when he appeared in North Korea to rescue two American journalists detained there. His trip came just as Secretary Clinton embarked on a swing through Africa she hoped would shine light on the plight of the continent.

What’s odd, unless there are two translators involved somehow, the video clearly shows the questioner speaking in English and saying “Mr. Clinton” and then the lady at the podium repeating the question — again in English — to Mrs. Clinton.

Regardless, her indignant response seems rather over-the-top for America’s chief diplomat. She could have asked for clarification before going off. (My guess would have been that the student meant “Mrs. Clinton” and it got garbled in translation to English.) Or she could have joked, “Well, you’ll have to ask him next time he’s in Kinshasha” and added “but here’s what I think.”

“Diplomacy in action,” indeed.

Jules Crittenden, Doug Mataconis and John Hinderaker all share my take, more or less, of the reaction.

All of the women commenting on this one thus far, however, stick up for Hil.

Pamela Leavey:  “As a woman who blazes her own path, I think Hillary’s response was natural.”

myiq2xu (Not a common name, so hard to guess gender other than that it’s on a blog with riverdaughter as the username A man, but one writing on a group blog with “riverdaughter” as its domain name):

This appears to be the new CDS meme – “Hillary is a mad b**ch.” They used to say she was “cold and calculating” but now she’s out of control. Exactly how do they think she should have responded to the “What does your husband thnk?” question coming from the translator?

Taylor Marsh:

As you can see in the video, Clinton was ticked off at being asked what a male leader thought, especially when her purpose in this region is to draw a bull’s eye on the rape and torture of women in the Congo.

The United States Secretary of State obviously didn’t appreciate the misogyny, which is rampant in the Congo and other African nations, born out by the questioner expecting her to “channel” a male. Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley responded.

“The Secretary of State is going to Goma Tuesday, to draw attention to the plight of women who are victims of rape as a weapon of war” in Congo, he said. “She did react to what she heard,” Crowley explained. Even if the interpreter mixed up the translation, he said, “you can’t separate the question from the setting.”

As the Washington Post story quoted at the top reports, Congolese President Joseph Kabila has declared “zero tolerance” regarding sexual assaults and violence against women, but so far it’s just words.

There can be no doubt that Clinton came off harsh in this setting. A little righteous indignation from the most powerful female persona on the planet was in order, especially considering women in the Congo are in danger most of the hours of their waking and sleeping lives.

CNN reports that after the event Clinton and the questioner “seemed to have reached an understanding,” according to Crowley.

But seriously, you cannot bring basic human rights to women in places like the Congo if the men there don’t wake up to the respect women deserve, highlighting how far we have to go if not even the U.S. secretary of state is treated with respect.

But she was treated respectfully. A packed house had come to hear her and some nervous student whose native language isn’t English said “Clinton” when he meant “Obama.”

That said, Crowley’s point is a fair one:  “you can’t separate the question from the setting.”  It’s hardly inconceivable that she had gotten the impression during her visit thus far that she was not being treated seriously because of her sex and reacted to the question with that in mind.

Huffington Post is catching some grief over a post by Anya Strzemien titled “Sarah Palin’s Toenails: What’s Painted On Them? (PHOTOS, POLL).”  Apparently, the Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee had some manner of decorative adornment on her nails which were in display in some orange strappy sandals:

While some are taking HuffPo to task for journalistic silliness and questioning whether they have a foot fetish, the most prevalent theme of the critics is whether it’s sexist to comment on how a female public figure looks.

We’ve said many times that focus on a woman’s body parts instead of her ideas and actions is sexist, and that such belittling is aimed at women on both the left and right by both men and women.  In this case, some will argue that HuffPo is just having a little fun.  However the comments posted after the stroy are classist, sexist, and hateful, which can’t be a surprise to Huffpo.  So what about encouraging comments that you know are going to be a mysogyny fest?  Is that sexist, too?

Teresa Kopec, who tipped me to the story via Twitter, observes, “There is a lot of anti-woman BS that is going around lately against Palin, Sotomayor, the women targeted by Playboy, etc.”

While perhaps it’s splitting hairs, I would distinguish between sexism and double standards.  There’s not much doubt that the way women look is more commented upon than the way men look.  That doesn’t necessarily translate into thinking women’s intellects or skills are less important than those of men.

I don’t think, for example, that Hillary Clinton or Sonia Sotomayor have been viewed as silly sex objects.  It’s certainly true that Clinton’s appearance has been at issue as long as I can recall her being in public life (which is to say, since 1991 or so).   When she was First Lady, her hairdo was especially commented on, as was her choice of pantsuits vice dresses. And WaPo’s Robin Givhan devoted a whole story on C1 to Hillary Clinton’s cleavage.  And then there was the case of Condoleezza Rice’s commanding clothes which, according to a C1 story in WaPo, spoke of “sex and power,” also from Givhan.

Do we comment like that on how male public officials dress?   No, we don’t.

To be sure, there’s the occasional story on John Bolton’s hair or Dick Cheney’s Auschwitz outfit or John McCain’s $520 Ferragamo loafers.   But they’re decidedly less common.

Still, Clinton is almost universally perceived as an extraordinarily bright and competent woman.  She catapulted to the United States Senate despite no real record of her own and was considered the hands-down frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination six years later.  And Sotomayor’s words and judicial record, not her toenails or fashion sense, are what we’re focusing on.

Palin is almost a separate case.  She was a virtual unknown on the national scene when McCain tabbed her, so her national image was forged by instant impression.  By vice presidential standards, she’s extraordinarily attractive.  She’s young and a former beauty queen. Further, she dresses in a way that plays up her sexuality.  Why, a recent scientifical study found that Palin’s sexiness hurt the ticket.  Naturally, the news of said study sparked a round of blogospheric discussion about Palin’s hotness and a backlash against bloggers talking about Palin’s hotness.

Still, while the focus on her appearance goes well beyond what would be normal for a male candidate, it’s not like there wasn’t plenty of commentary on her preparation for the job.  Indeed, I’m sure she’d rather we spent more time talking about her legs.

As to this particular controversy, it’s a silly blog post and some of the commentary it drew was particularly unattractive.  Palin is a polarizing figure, which doesn’t help.  Then again, one can scarcely imagine, say, Tim Pawlenty appearing at a public event in jean shorts and sandals, the male analog to what Palin was photographed in.

Hillary Clinton tells George Stephanopoulous that President Obama has passed her test:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said President Barack Obama has “absolutely” answered questions she posed during the Democratic campaign about his lack of experience and ability to handle an international crisis.

In her first Sunday show interview since her presidential bid ended a year ago, I asked Clinton if Obama answered the questions she raised in her campaign’s “3a.m.” ad.

“Absolutely,” Clinton told me in an exclusive “This Week” Sunday show interview– her first as secretary of state.  “And, you know, the president in his public actions and demeanor, and certainly in private with me and with the national security team, has been strong, thoughtful, decisive, I think he is doing a terrific job,” she said, “And it’s an honor to serve with him.”

Granting that Obama’s only been in office a little over four months,  I can’t offhand think of any crises with which he’s dealt that would have required rousing him from bed in the wee hours.

President Obama took his first turn at the annual event where presidents become stand-up comics and the pretense that politicians and the press are adversaries are dropped for a night.   He was terrific, as presidents almost invariably are.

WaPo’s Richard Leiby rounds up some of the zingers:

[N]o one in his administration was safe from his one-liners.

Not Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton: “The minute she got back from Mexico, she pulled me into a hug and said I should go down there myself.”

Not Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel: “This is a tough holiday for Rahm. He’s not used to saying the word ‘day’ after ‘mother.’ ”

Not even, it turned out, himself: “During the second 100 days, we will design, build and open a library dedicated to my first 100 days.” And: “My next 100 days will be so successful, I will complete them in 72 days. And on the 73rd day, I will rest.”

The routine brought mostly guffaws from the 2,500 journalists, politicians and celebrities jammed into the Washington Hilton ballroom for the press corps’ annual celebration of itself. The president acknowledged perceptions that he’s a media darling: “Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table.”

First lady Michelle Obama also attended, wearing a sleeveless fuchsia gown and a bold necklace. Her husband gibed that she was helping to bridge divides in the nation, including “the right to bare arms.”

Self-deprecating humor always works at this things.  Obama’s jibe at Emanuel was a bit risque by presidential standards, as was the choice of Wanda Sykes as emcee.  (Fun fact: She “got her start doing stand-up while moonlighting from her day job as a procurement officer at the National Security Agency.”)  Great line here, though:

“It’s funny to me that [photographers] have never caught you smoking,” Sykes told the president, “but they always catch you with your shirt off. I know you’re into this transparency thing, but I don’t need to see your nipples.”

Indeed.

The best of these presidents-as-comics bits I recall was Bill Clinton’s routine where he was constantly interrupted with “news” about George H.W. Bush making parachute jumps and other feats of derring-do.  I can’t find a video.

UPDATE:  Steve Benen lists some of Sykes’ less quotable bits and observes, “Rich Little, she isn’t.”  Not by a long shot.  Little could do blue but he had the good sense to know when and where.

Taegan Goddard passes on word that Tom Ridge, once Pennsylvania’s governor and putatively contemplating running for Arlen Specter’s seat representing that state in the Senate, is a resident of Maryland for the purposes of federal tax and lobbying filings.

Do these sort of things matter in statewide elections?   Is anyone otherwise disposed to vote for Ridge going to be dissuaded by the notion that he’s a carpetbagger?

Rather obviously, Ridge has strong ties to Pennsylvania.  But he moved to Washington for the Homeland Security post a few years back and stayed in its suburbs to cash in as a lobbyist.  Obviously, he’s not going to commute from Pennsylvania to K Street every day.

Rick Santorum represented Pennsylvania in the Senate while living in Leesburg, Virginia; at least Maryland and Pennsylvania are contiguous. Indeed, most Senators and Representatives reside in DC or its suburbs, maintaining their legal residence in their home states only as legal fictions.

George H.W. Bush spent years in Texas before moving to DC but maintained his “Texas” residency by virtue of a Houston hotel room.  Dick Cheney ran for Vice President from Wyoming, where he grew up and which he represented in the House of Representatives, even though he was living in Texas running Haliburton.  Hillary Clinton was twice elected to the Senate from New York even though she came from DC via Arkansas via Chicago.

Hillary Clinton still owes a lot of money from her ill-fated run for president.  She owes $2.3 million just to consultant Mark Penn.  So, naturally, Clinton’s pals are holding various fundraisers to pay down said debt.

Ezra Klein asks an uncomfortable question:

Between 2004 and 2006, tax documents show that Bill Clinton earned $51 million. Put differently, erasing his wife’s campaign debt would consume 1/25th of his income over a two-year period. I blow a 25th of my income on the occasional dinner. But the former First Family’s unwillingness to shoulder the loss themselves means, inevitably, that it will be borne by committed campaign supporters who still love Hillary but are much poorer than the Clintons. It’s also requiring a frankly embarrassing level of shilling: They’re selling off days with Bill Clinton and tickets to American Idol and lunches with political consultants. Why bother?

Because, dear boy, that’s how it’s done! The Clintons have magninimously offered themselves for public service, getting nothing but a few hundred million dollars in return.  Surely, their legions of fans can do a little something.

The editorial board at The Economist (which apparently considers itself a “newspaper” despite coming out weekly in magazine format) praises President Obama for having “already done some commendable things” in the foreign policy arena but charges that, domestically, “His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped.”  They note that, after a euphoric election, “Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency.”

They excoriate him, in particular, for “failure to grapple as fast and as single-mindedly with the economy as he should have done. His stimulus package, though huge, was subcontracted to Congress, which did a mediocre job: too much of the money will arrive too late to be of help in the current crisis.” Additionally,

The failure to staff the Treasury is a shocking illustration of administrative drift. There are 23 slots at the department that need confirmation by the Senate, and only two have been filled. This is not the Senate’s fault. Mr Obama has made a series of bad picks of people who have chosen or been forced to withdraw; and it was only this week that he announced his candidates for two of the department’s four most senior posts. Filling such jobs is always a tortuous business in America, but Mr Obama has made it harder by insisting on a level of scrutiny far beyond anything previously attempted. Getting the Treasury team in place ought to have been his first priority.

They acknowledge that he is “learning” but “Mr Obama has a long way to travel if he is to serve his country—and the world—as he should.”

Take the G20 meeting in London, to which he will head at the end of next week. The most important task for this would-be institution is to set itself firmly against protectionism at a time when most of its members are engaged in a game of creeping beggar-thy-neighbour. Yet how can Mr Obama lead the fight when he has just pandered to America’s unions by sparking a minor trade war with Mexico? And how can he set a new course for NATO at its 60th-anniversary summit a few days later if he is appeasing his party with talk of leaving Afghanistan?

Jennifer Rubin and Mark Steyn argue that the reason Obama isn’t meeting The Economist’s expectation is not so much his managerial incompetence but rather that he’s much more liberal than he pretended to be on the campaign trail and therefore has a very different agenda.   As Steyn puts it,

The nuancey boys were wrong on Obama, and the knuckledragging morons were right. There is no post-partisan centrist “grappling” with the economy, only a transformative radical willing to make Americans poorer in the cause of massive government expansion.

I’m reminded once again of a line Jeff Medcalf posted on Dave Schuler’s Other Blog in mid-October:  “[M]any of the people voting for Obama seem to be doing so on the hope that he doesn’t mean what he says, and most of the people voting for McCain are doing so on the fear that Obama means exactly what he says.”

A lot of the Obamacons, fed up after eight years of Bush and not impressed by the McCain-Palin ticket were willing to overlook a lot to vote for a fellow who seemed a lot like themselves: intellectual, nuanced, able to speak in paragraphs, reasonable, and so forth.   But, alas, his domestic agenda was not one that would ultimately sit well with conservatives — just as his foreign policy was actually not going to set very well with progressives.

That, said, I think The Economist is right to reflect on managerial style.

One of the flaws of the American system is that we frequently elect amateurs to high office, thus imposing a steep learning curve.  In parliamentary systems, leaders work their way up through the ranks, filling key ministerial posts, and learning the ropes.  A new premier from the out party has typically been the leader of a Shadow Government and a new leader from the in party has typically been the number two man in the Government.   A new president, by contrast, has typically never been part of an administration and may never have lived in the capital before taking office.

In recent years, Americans have preferred governors for the presidency, which typically meant people came to the White House knowing how to create and manage a staff but with little grasp of How Washington Works or much knowledge of a whole range of issues that states don’t deal with.   Conversely, someone coming from Capitol Hill is much savvier on those scores but have no clue how to run an administration.

Obama, alas, is the worst of both worlds, having neither gubernatorial experience nor much Washington experience.   He’s been an incredibly talented dilettante, getting elected to one job and then the next without learning the ropes.  He’s a fast learner and will get the hang of it but, to come back to the Hillary Clinton quip that starts the Economist piece, “the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job-training.”   Except, as already noted, that it usually is.

Of course, Obama has taken over at a particularly unfortunate time, having inherited two wars and a global financial crisis, so his margin for error is even less than usual.

In fairness, although my preference was for the other guy, it’s not a slam dunk that John McCain would be doing any better.   He’s got more leadership training and experience but he’s never been a governor or vice president, either.  And he’s got some temperament issues that in some ways make him less suited for crisis management than Obama.

Regardless, anyone who has extremely high expectations that a new president is going to reshape the world has a strong likelihood of being disappointed.

Jonathan Last offers a long retort to the notion that Rush Limbaugh is a significant influencer of American politics, much less the de facto leader of the Republican Party.  He rejects, for example, the notion that having a large audience necessarily matters:

Consider television. From 1998 to 2005, Everybody Loves Raymond was among the top 15 rated shows on TV. For five of those years it was in the top 10. It averaged 17.4 million viewers. Was Everybody Loves Raymond influential? I would argue that the show left a very small–maybe non-existent–cultural footprint.

If you sift through the Nielsens from recent years, you’ll find a number of highly-rated shows pulling in tens of millions of viewers, which were basically invisible after the credits rolled. This is true even at the very top of the heap: CSI and Home Improvement each finished #1 overall and yet, had they been canceled in the middle of their ratings dominance, I doubt anyone would have noticed.

The obvious rejoinder is that Raymond existed solely to make us laugh (and thereby sell high priced ad space) while Rush, although no doubt an entertainer, is in fact trying to persuade his audience toward his political viewpoint.

Well, I’ll assume that Limbaugh can send a crowd of people toward a weblink if he mentions it on his program or his website. But crashing a server doesn’t take all that much. Slashdot and Boing Boing can do that, too. Can Limbaugh sell books? I’m not being pedantic–I honestly don’t know the answer to this question. But if Limbaugh really is influential, then the mere mention of books he likes ought to be enough to routinely put them high on the NYT’s best seller list for weeks, the way Oprah Winfrey’s approval does.

He’s managed to get a couple of (frankly, not very good) books of his own atop the bestseller list.  Otherwise, I don’t know.

Well, I’ll assume that Limbaugh can send a crowd of people toward a weblink if he mentions it on his program or his website. But crashing a server doesn’t take all that much. Slashdot and Boing Boing can do that, too. Can Limbaugh sell books? I’m not being pedantic–I honestly don’t know the answer to this question. But if Limbaugh really is influential, then the mere mention of books he likes ought to be enough to routinely put them high on the NYT’s best seller list for weeks, the way Oprah Winfrey’s approval does.

I understand that Limbaugh (and other conservative talk-radio hosts) weighed in heavily against the Bush immigration deal. That deal failed. But was this because of Limbaugh? Maybe. But presumably Limbaugh was against a great number of other Bush initiatives that passed–No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription drugs, the omnibus energy bill, the Detroit bailout.

Well, the Detroit bailout failed in Congress and Bush just did it anyway.  But otherwise, that’s right.

The 2008 primary season provided a particularly good indication of Limbaugh’s level of influence. He seems to have supported Mitt Romney. Despite Limbaugh’s support, Romney received only 4.7 million votes. The candidate Limbaugh favored least and argued against most–John McCain–won the nomination. Again, I’m not a devotee of Limbaugh’s show, but my sense is that Limbaugh made his distaste for McCain very apparent. Republican primary voters paid little heed.

Quite true.

After the Romney flame-out, Limbaugh began promoting what he called “Operation Chaos,” where he instructed listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton in Democratic primaries. Limbaugh claimed a good deal of credit for her subsequent victories, but I’ve never seen any data which suggests that his influence was significant, let alone decisive. To the contrary, almost all of the Democratic primary results–both before and after “Operation Chaos”–fit within a stable racial, socio-economic model.

Yup.

Limbaugh’s powers of influence seem more on the level of Howard Stern. At his peak, Stern drew about 13 million listeners, which is in the ballpark with the 14 million or so Limbaugh has drawn through most of this decade. Like Limbaugh, Stern was credited with having a great deal of influence on his listeners. But that influence never really materialized beyond his ability to get people to tune in to a show he was giving away for free. Stern’s one attempt at translating his influence to the movies failed–the 1997 Howard Stern’s Private Parts opened to $14 million and grossed only $40 million. And when Stern moved to subscription-based satellite radio, his audience let him go without a second thought.

Ouch.

Old Man Byrd is at it again:

West Virginia Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the longest-serving Democratic senator, on Wednesday criticized President Barack Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch.

Byrd complained in a letter to the president that his decision to create White House offices on health care reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change “can threaten the constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

You’ve got to hand it to the man:  He’s at least consistent.  While I’m often critical of him, not least for his own “power grab” in bringing home to West Virginia much more than its fair share of federal taxpayer money, he is in many ways exactly what the Framers envisioned when creating the Senate.  He is keenly interested in protecting his own power base, jealously guarding it from encroachment.  That’s exactly as James Madison intended (see Federalist 10).

In this particular case, Byrd’s probably wrong. I’m not a fan of “czars” to deal with public policy problems, either.  But, despite their unfortunately autocratic nickname, the problem is actually precisely the opposite:  They have too little power to get anything done.

When was the last time you heard from Doug Lute, the 3-star “war tsar” that Bush appointed and Obama has retained?  Compared to CENTCOM honcho David Petraeus, JCS chair Mike Mullen, SECDEF Bob Gates, SecState Hillary Clinton, NSA Jim Jones, and others, he’s got no budget, no staff, no authority, and no access to the president.

So it goes with “tsars.”  They need the cooperation of cabinet level officers who actually control the necessary resources.  Given that they’ve typically got huge egos and have given up much more lucrative gigs in order to make a difference in public policy, they tend not to be very cooperative with people who don’t answer to the name “Mr. President.”

Hilary Bok is rather bent out of shape at a Washington Whispers poll which asks “If you had a choice of four daycare centers run separately by Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi, which would you choose for your kids?”

She suggests some alternative poll questions:

If you needed some yard work done, would you hire Mel Martinez, Henry Cisneros, Xavier Becerra, or Bill Richardson?

If you needed a rap DJ for a party, would you hire Barack Obama, Charlie Rangel, John Lewis, or Michael Steele?

If you needed an interior decorator, would you choose Jim McGreevey, Barney Frank, Larry Craig, or the disinterred corpse of Harvey Milk?

She believes that “they would probably recognize any of these other appeals to stereotypes as offensive. And yet, oddly enough, asking which one of four prominent women we’d like to have running our children’s day care center is A-OK. ”

Are these really comparable?  None of the men listed have any association aside from ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation with said stereotypes.  Conversely, all four women are, in fact, mothers.

Is it any worse than asking whether you’d rather have a beer with George W. Bush or John Kerry?  Heck, Bush doesn’t even drink! Ditto, “Who would you rather be in a foxhole with” questions.

Further, as it turns out, we do in fact ask “Who would you rather have watch your kids for a couple of hours on a Saturday?” and “Who would you rather have as your dad?” about male presidential contenders.

Beyond that, leaving aside that this was just a fun poll rather than a deep psychological exercise, it is simply true that women are generally the primary caregivers to their children and that we judge women with children on that basis more than we do men.   And while some of that is a function of culturally imposed norms, it’s not entirely a social construct but rather hard-wired into human biology.

My wife’s an educated, successful career woman.  She’s the Chief Operating Officer of a major polling firm.  My jobs give me more flexibility than hers, in that I can often work from home and time shift and she can’t.

We do not have equal roles in raising our daughter.

I’m an active father and try to do my fair share of diaper changes, burping, bouncing, and so forth.  I was there for the ultrasounds, labor, C-section, and have made all the pediatrician visits so far.  But, for example, because of my biological limitations, my wife did one hundred percent of the gestating.  She also endured the lion’s share of the pain associated with labor and delivery.  She’s still recovering from the C-section.  She plays a role in every feeding, whether by actively nursing or having pumped milk that I later bottle feed.   She got two months’ paid maternity leave, whereas I went back to work immediately.  (It helped that Katie was born on New Year’s Eve and our office was closed until January 5th).

My wife will go back to work soon and the division of labor will shift somewhat to a more balanced role.  In a few months, once Katie starts eating solid foods, things will balance even further.  But the reality will almost certainly be that she’ll cry out for mommy more than for daddy for years to come.

Getting back to the poll, then, it strikes me as an interesting way to get at public attitudes about these women.

Two of the women, Clinton and Obama, played second fiddle to their husbands’ careers during their children’s formative years while the other two, Pelosi and Palin, are the public faces of their marriages (although Pelosi’s husband is a multi-millionaire investor, he’s a virtual unknown; nobody outside Alaska and perhaps the “snow machine” racing community had ever heard of Todd Palin until his wife got tapped to be John McCain’s running mate).

They’ve all been pretty good moms, it would seem.  The Pelosis raised five children to adulthood, largely keeping them out of the national spotlight.  So far as I’m aware, they’re all productive members of society. The Clintons raised one daughter to adulthood entirely in the spotlight.  They managed to mostly shield her from the worst of it and she’s doing well for herself.  The Obama girls are living their formative years in the White House.  By all accounts, they’re doing well. The Palins, too, have five kids including, famously, one with Down Syndrome.   Their oldest is serving as an infantryman in Iraq while their middle daughter has had some well publicized issues.

If I had to send Katie to day care with one of them, I’d pick Obama, who’s warmer than Clinton and Pelosi (at least in public persona) and brainier than Palin.