Wednesday’s column by Maureen Dowd, eviscerating President Obama for his shabby treatment of former White House Counsel Greg Craig and supporter Caroline Kennedy, is getting favorable responses from his supporters in the blogosphere.

Only a year after he had helped Barack Obama get elected by eviscerating his close friend, Clinton White House colleague and Yale Law School classmate, Hillary Clinton, Craig was himself eviscerated by the Obama inner circle.

[...]

I often wondered if Craig and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the other former Clinton official who helped undermine Hillary’s foreign policy record, would have done so if they had known that after turning on Hillary they would once more end up working beside her; if they had known that Obama can often be more interested in wooing opponents than tending to those who put themselves on the line for him.

There were complaints that Craig was out of the loop, but couldn’t Obama have walked the single West Wing staircase up to his counsel’s office and looped him in?

Craig was, after all, simply defending positions that Obama himself took during the campaign, from closing Gitmo to greater transparency.

The way the Craig matter was handled sent a chill through some Obama supporters, reminding them of the icy manner in which the Clintons cut loose Kimba Wood and Lani Guinier. But then, Obama is surrounded by many old Clinton hands (and a Clinton).

[...]

Although a handful of donors were invited to the premiere state dinner Tuesday night — as well as erstwhile allies Craig and Hillary — many donors and passionate supporters are let down by Obama’s detachment, puzzled at his failure to make them feel invested when he’s certain to come back to tap their well soon enough.

It is especially puzzling given that Obama faces tough midterms and a less-than-certain re-election — and given that we all now know someone on the unemployment line. (A new poll shows Obama and Sarah Palin neck and neck among independents, but then it is a Fox survey.)

Bill Clinton may not have cared any more about contributors than Obama does, but he was such a talented politician that he made them feel as though they were in “a warm bath,” as one put it.

Obama is more like a cold shower.

Steve Clemons, himself treated to Obama’s dismissiveness after serving as an advisor during the campaign, says the piece “shows why she is such a key part of high quality political journalism” by “pushing the Obama administration in the way stand up journalists should” even if it means being cut out of the loop.

M.J. Rosenberg remains “Obama supporter who has no regrets whatsoever about supporting him in the primaries and the general last year.”  But he’s nonetheless “disappointed in the people advising him and think a staff shakeup is overdo, starting with the Cabinet and working right down to the White House staff.”  Why, “If I wanted Team Clinton back, I’d have supported Hillary. Instead (as Hillary predicted) we have the same operator/operatives that Bill hired and Hillary would have hired had she been elected.”

The most interesting response is from Andrew Sullivan, both a fierce Obama supporter and yet one who both disagrees with him on several key issues and approaches politics with much more passion.

Dowd’s instincts about human character are foolish to bet against. She has essentially read every recent president correctly from the get-go as types. And she has always seen Obama as a bit of a cold fish, aloof, too unwilling to punch back, too arrogant to explain himself too much.

[...]

You see this in the almost clinical way Obama has assessed the politics of taking on the Bush administration’s interrogation, detention and rendition policies. The way in which both Greg Craig and Phil Carter have been dispatched for insisting that Obama live up to his campaign promises (no, I don’t believe the personal reasons line) is chilling in its raw political calculation. Ditto Obama’s disciplined refusal to fulfill his campaign pledges on civil rights any time soon. And his rhetorical restraint during the Green Revolution. The determination to figure out the very best and most detailed way forward in Afghanistan, even during a war in which allies are waiting and enemies are watching, and to take his time … well this is also a sign that we are dealing with one very, very cool character here.

Since I’ve always had a soft spot for cold fish in realpolitik – which high Tory (pun fully intended) doesn’t get a frisson from Bismarck or Kissinger? – this impresses me. Since I’m also a red-blooded Irishman, eager for a fight and a little romantic about my ideals, this also angers me at times.

[...]

In all this, Obama reminds me of George H W Bush in government, and of Ronald Reagan in campaigning. It’s a dream combo in many ways. In theory. It’s the practice thing that we’re beginning to test. My sense remains the same as in the campaign. He’s got this.

Interestingly, while I’m the reverse of Sullivan at the outset — I strongly opposed Obama’s election, can’t imagine voting for his re-election, and tend to be more detached in my political analysis — I think he’s on the right track here.

Some months back, I had and interesting conversation with Dave Schuler about this very thing on our OTB Radio podcast.   We both agreed that Obama showed an amazingly quick trigger in dumping allies who were politically inconvenient.  From Jeremiah Wright or Samantha Power or Bill Richardson or Tom Daschle, he didn’t hesitate to cut the cord rather than have them drag him down.   While I found this quality distasteful, Dave found it a necessary quality of effective leadership.

We were both right.

As much as I admired Obama’s predecessor for his loyalty to his people — indeed, he valued loyalty above almost all else in choosing them — it no doubt was a major factor in sinking his presidency.  He’d have undoubtedly been more successful had he more quickly dispatched Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Brown, and others.  Had he sacrificing them, he would have distanced himself from unpopular policies and been able to move on.

Sully’s right that there’s a danger that Obama’s aloofness will result in his base being less energized than it was in 2008.  But, frankly, unless he’s running against Sarah Palin, that’s going to be the case, anyway.  He’s not running against the backdrop of an incredibly unpopular incumbent nor is he vying to make history.  And he’ll have four years of decisions weighing him down, so there won’t be as much Hope or Change in the air.    But I agree with Andrew that Obama has to be considered the odds-on favorite unless we still have double digit unemployment in 2012.

Glenn Beck has a plan.  Actually, the Plan.  Which he reveals on his website.

Today, I have stopped looking for a leader to show us the way out because I have come to realize that the only one who can truly save our country…is us. To change America’s course we need to change ourselves, our expectations and our willingness to accept the unacceptable. When we refuse to allow our children to receive a trophy for participation, we are on the road to restoring the meaning of merit in our Republic. When we insist that no one is too big to fail, we will be able to learn from our mistakes, and when we demand that we are self-reliant, we will ensure that others can rely on us, not the government.

[...]

- Education is key, and not just for our children. To that end, we will be conducting a series of conventions. These will be full-day experiences where you will be immersed in learning about topics ranging from self-reliance, community organizing, the economy and how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country. The first one will be in Orlando at UCF Arena on March 27th. You will also be able to vote to have a convention in your region by clicking here.

- I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100 year plan. I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.

- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.

- On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.

The Soviets and Chinese Communists were famous for Five Year Plans that Americans used to make fun of.  Beck, apparently, figures that their flaw wasn’t the hubris of planning the next five years but stopping 95 years short.

Apparently, the plan has yet to be hatched.  It’s intriguing to announce a 100 year plan but tell people they’ll need to wait nine months and a week to get the details.

If nothing else, Beck has intrigued NYT correspondent Brian Seltzer and a few bloggers. Seltzer reports that Beck “emphasized that while candidates may align themselves with the values and principles that he espouses, he would not take the next step to endorse them.”

Mr. Beck is not the only media firebrand trying to mobilize Americans disaffected with a Democratic-controlled government. The radio host Laura Ingraham is inviting candidates to sign a 10-point pledge on her Web site. Sean Hannity, on his afternoon radio show and prime-time Fox News program, is promoting “Conservative Victory 2010,” his name for the map on his site that will spell out questions for candidates. And the former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who has a show on Fox News, has steered viewers to his Web site, where they can contribute money to his political action committee in support of conservative candidates.

Pundits have used their media stages to encourage political action before, but people like Mr. Beck and Mr. Hannity are taking on outsize roles now, political experts and conservative commentators say. One reason, they say, is the weakened state of the Republican Party.

Beck’s strangeness aside, the idea of reshaping the American political system from the bottom up is interesting.  But while I rather like the idea of pressuring the Republican Party to get back to its small government roots — even by challenging it with a libertarian oriented third party — there’s precious little evidence that there’s anything close to majority support for that as a style of governance.   Like it or not, the Republicans became a Big Government party in recent years because that’s what the people have demanded.

I still see enthusiastic small government types calling for dismantling the Department of Education and other bits of leftover rhetoric from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign.  But I doubt that even twenty percent of Americans are in favor of such a move.

The two parties and their constituent interest groups have done a superb job of poisoning the well.  Republicans have virtually ensured that we’ll never have anything short of a massive defense budget and we’ll never have the sort of confiscatory tax brackets for high earners that they have in Europe and we had here as recently as John Kennedy’s administration.  And Democrats have made it a virtual certainty that we’ll not only not cut back on the social safety net but that it will incrementally increase and periodically boom.   The “compromise” solution is massive deficit spending.

While we occasionally get Ross Perot types calling attention to the unsustainability of that approach, the excitement quickly fades.  While all of us can find big chunks of the budget we’d pare, there’s not enough overlap to get anywhere close to majority support — let alone the sixty votes necessary to get much of anything through the Senate.  And those who would face cuts to their subsidies care more and are better organized than those who want the cuts.

Dave Schuler likes to point out that things which are unsustainable will not be sustained.  But the nature of the American political system guarantees we won’t do anything until an absolute crisis forces us to.

The loss of a Republican seat in NY-23 under highly unusual circumstances notwithstanding, yesterday was a good day for Republicans. After crushing defeats in successive elections, they won back the Virginia governor’s office in a blowout and knocked off a billionaire incumbent governor in New Jersey despite having their vote split between two candidates.

I would, however, resist the temptation to see these contests as a referendum on Barack Obama’s presidency and the Democratic Party, much less a harbinger for 2010 and beyond.

Glenn Reynolds has an op-e in the NY Post titled “The Obama Magic has Faded.”

All politics is local, they say, and Tuesday’s off-off-year elections certainly had their local angles. Jon Corzine has been a terrible governor even by the undemanding standards of terribly governed New Jersey. Creigh Deeds, though he looked good to Democratic Party recruiters not long ago, turned out to be an undistinguished campaigner, more driven by the concerns of Washington Post editorialists than of Virginia voters. And NY-23 Republican nomineee Dede Scozzafava was a bizarre choice, bizarre enough to inspire a seemingly quixotic third-party run by Doug Hoffman.

But these local angles weren’t enough to keep the Obama administration out of the races. President Obama barnstormed Virginia and New Jersey — and pumped money and Joe Biden into NY-23 in support of Democratic candidate Bill Owens. (One suspects Owens would have preferred more money and less Biden.)

And — until it started looking as if they might lose — the Obama people were suggesting that these races would seal their mandate and encourage congressional wafflers to toe the line on health-care reform. Not so much, as it turns out.

Now, this is right, so far as it goes.  Exit poll analyses by both ABC and CBS show Obama remains personally popular but that people are extremely worried about the economy and the direction of the country.  The reality has set in that Obama’s a politician, not a messiah.  While many retain high hopes, most of the irrational exuberance has faded.  And, clearly, he doesn’t have coattails when he’s not on the ballot.  Then again, neither did Ronald Reagan.   Recall that Republicans lost 27 House seats in 1982.

A stronger case is made by Dan Balz in an “analysis” piece at WaPo titled “Contests serve as warning to Democrats: It’s not 2008 anymore.”

Neither gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president, but the changing shape of the electorates in both states and the shifts among key constituencies revealed cracks in the Obama 2008 coalition and demonstrated that, at this point, Republicans have the more energized constituency heading into next year’s midterm elections.

The most significant change came among independent voters, who solidly backed Democrats in 2006 and 2008 but moved decisively to the Republicans on Tuesday, according to exit polls. In Virginia, independents strongly supported Republican Robert F. McDonnell in his victory over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, while in New Jersey, they supported Republican Chris Christie in his win over Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

For months, polls have shown that independents were increasingly disaffected with some of Obama’s domestic policies. They have expressed reservations about the president’s health-care efforts and have shown concerns about the growth in government spending and the federal deficit under his leadership.

Tuesday’s elections provided the first tangible evidence that Republicans can win their support with the right kind of candidates and the right messages. That is an ominous development for Democrats if it continues unabated into next year. But Republicans could squander that opportunity if they demand candidates who are too conservative to appeal to the middle.

This is exactly right.  Independents, by their very nature, are fickle.  When thing are going well, they’ll stick with the party in power and when they’re not, they’ll vote for change.

So, if unemployment is still high and we’re still mired in a mess in Afghanistan a year from now, the Republicans will have an opening to make major gains in the House and Senate.  But they’ll need candidates who won’t alienate independents.

I followed the Virginia race with some interest given that I live in the Commonwealth.  It wasn’t a race about Obama or national issues at all.  Deeds was the surprise winner of the Democratic primary, with the well-financed and well-known Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran killing each other off and leaving Deeds standing.   He was a moderate Democrat with appeal to rural Virginians who had narrowly lost to McConnell four years earlier when the latter got 323 more votes for attorney general.  But when the Washington Post went on attack against McDonnell for an old master’s thesis and some rather unprogressive statements about women and homosexuals, Deeds decided to run a nasty campaign hammering at those points.  It backfired, as McConnell turned the other cheek and came across as a decent, reasonable man.  (As an aside, I should note that Republicans easily won the lieutenant governor and attorney general races in landslides, too. )

In New Jersey, Corzine is personally unpopular and his state is in bad shape.  I posited on last night’s OTB Radio that it was all downhill after the motorcade incident, which was the first time I realized what a jackass Corzine was, but I don’t follow Garden State politics closely enough to know for sure.   At any rate, Chris Christie was perceived as a reasonable alternative even in a Democrat-leaning state.  Corzine’s genius advisers decided their best course was to double down on the jerk factor, campaigning on the theme that Christie was too fat to be governor.  Oddly, it didn’t do the trick.

Regardless, these races demonstrate that Republicans can win — even with all the damage to the brand suffered in recent years — given both an opening and a solid candidate.

President Obama has gone on virtually every network but Fox in a weekend tour de force that continues tonight:

The president’s week-long media blitz has left no other network behind. The president has appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Bloomberg and CNBC and will appear on five public affairs talk shows on Sunday: ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and Univision’s “Al Punto, con Jorge Ramos.” And he’s doing CBS’ “Late Night with David Letterman” on Monday.

This has some wondering if he’s not overdoing it a mite:

With or without an appearance on Fox, the president’s media blitz is without precedent. Presidents rarely appear on Sunday talk shows; none has ever appeared on so many in one week. And no sitting president has ever been a guest on “Late Night with David Letterman.”

Dana Perino, who served as White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, says the president risks “diluting the bully pulpit” by doing so many interviews in such a short period of time. “The next time they really want to pack a punch, they might have to ask [former House majority leader] Tom DeLay if they can cut in on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’” Perino told ABC News.

It’s a concern echoed by Dee Dee Myers, former White House press secretary for President Bill Clinton. “More isn’t always more when it comes to a president’s words,” Myers told Politico. “This is something they need to start to be concerned about.”

The White House dismisses talk of overexposure. “The president is seeking opportunities to speak to a diverse audience about the importance of comprehensive health insurance reform,” Earnest said. “The more that people learn about what he actually supports, the more people support the plan.”

Howie Kurtz sums up the president’s ubiquity:

Sure, this is a president who has dissected basketball brackets on ESPN, gone for burgers with Brian Williams, showed Steve Kroft his swing set, dissed Kanye West (off the record) with CNBC and ordered a general to shave Stephen Colbert’s head. By that standard, Obama’s Sunday blitz was a mere throat-clearing that, as it turned out, produced little in the way of big news. And some journalists — even as they continue to clamor for access — say he is diluting the product.

“It’s simple,” explains White House communications director Anita Dunn. “In an increasingly fragmented audience that gets information from a number of different sources, putting a huge amount of his time behind one medium increases our ability to really break through and get a message out. The effect of one interview, given how rapidly the news environment moves, doesn’t last as long as it used to.”

But is there such a thing as too many?

While the White House plan was for Obama to focus primarily on health care and Afghanistan, he broke no new ground on either subject, repeating points he has made many times. Some topics varied — “State of the Union” host John King asked about North Korea; “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked about the ACORN scandal — but the game plans were strikingly similar.

The first clips released by the networks — and picked up in news stories — showed the hosts were especially interested in a subject the president has been trying to avoid. They all asked about the recent chatter that some of his critics are motivated by racism. And Obama’s answers took on a certain sameness.

Ronald Reagan famously managed the message by giving very controlled access and basically giving the press no choice but to run with the sound byte of the day since if the president says only two sentences that day, whatever he said is by definition news. But that was before multiple 24/7 cable networks, blogs, TMZ, and all the rest. Maybe the world has just changed.

Veteran Democratic communications strategist Chris Lehane agreed, arguing that for Barack Obama there is no such thing as overexposure. “It’s the Angelina Jolie phenomenon,” said Lehane, a former spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. “People don’t get tired of seeing Angelina Jolie.” Is Lehane comparing President Obama to Angelina Jolie? “Yes. He is a natural talent,” Lehane said. “People do connect with him.”

The president as sex symbol famous for being famous is perhaps just the natural evolution of things.

President Obama is set to address the nation’s schoolchildren next week, presumably to propagandize them into his evil agenda of turning the country into Communist Russia (pronounced “roo-shuh”) and offing granny to save money on health care just as they do in his native Kenya. There are even instruction manuals to enlist the support of the teachers unions in brainwashing our youth.

Michelle Malkin has a huge exposé on this scandal:

Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

What is it that something they’re supposed to do?  They’re not saying but apparently they want the kids to figure it out for themselves.

The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher’s unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.

And that’s without the cult-inducing powers of a presidential speech!

Stephen Green would keep his son out of public school that day if his son were old enough and he urges you to do the same.

Nope, Obama can’t just say hey to the kiddies and encourage them to do their homework. He has to make this a — what does the Left call it? — a teachable moment. A speech-in, if you will. Teachers have even been given handy instructions on how best to integrate The One into the classroom.

AllahPundit thinks this is overreacting a mite,

One pap-filled 20-minute speech about working hard and serving others is so lethal a threat to tender minds that they have to be yanked off the premises for the day to shield them from it?

[...]

If this turns out to be some hamfisted attempt by The One to pitch his agenda to kids — which would be politically insane given the outcry it would cause, a sneak preview of which may be found here — there’ll be ample time for outrageous outrage later. For all the media fainting spells over Obama’s oratory, you can count on one hand the number of truly memorable lines he’s uttered; I doubt he’s going to come up with such a corker next week that kids will be planning their lives around it. Remember, this is the same guy who can’t sell universal health care, the virtual raison d’etre of the Democratic Party these days, to the Blue Dogs.

Steve retorts:

Yes, the speech itself will almost certainly be harmless. I don’t expect anyone’s kids to be coming home and berating their parents for being against this program or that agenda. I do expect Allah has it quite right, that this speech will be just another Daddy Speech, meant to encourage my son to work hard in school.

But you know what? The President of the United States — whether an Obama a Bush or a Lincoln — is not my son’s daddy. That’s my job. We’ve had enough nannystatism, and enough daddystatism, too.

I actually agree with every word of that. Granted, “stay in school” is such an innocuous message that it’s hard to object to its being presented.  But do we really need to add to the already inflated sense of the president of the United States as our national daddy?  The man’s in charge of one branch of the federal government; he’s not king.

Still, as Doug Mataconis points out, this is hardly new.  Why, Ronald Reagan himself gave such as speech. So did both Presidents Bush.  Indeed, Reagan went to far as to answer questions from the kiddies on federal budget priorities and gun control!

MichaelW thinks the whole thing is “creepy” and says it’s different than what Republican presidents have done.  For example, Bush 41 was telling kids to stay off drugs.  He sees a more nefarious agenda from Obama:

President Obama has already shown that he’s not above using children to advance his political agenda, so it’s not surprising that those opposed to his aims would be a bit skeptical of his speech. Adding to the wariness is the fact that he only seems to make these speeches when he needs help with bolstering his political capital (e.g. the “race speech” after Jeremiah Wright blew up in his face). After the battering his health care insurance reform plans took in August, it almost seems too convenient that he would suddenly want to address all the school kids in the nation, right about when he’s planning to try and save the one program he truly wants to enact.

But Allah’s right on this.  Not only is it hard to believe Obama is going to say anything that rises above the level of pabulum but, if he does, the national outrage will make the health care town halls look like love-ins.

I tend to agree with Joanne Jacobs that the whole thing is innocuous, if unlikely to much matter: “I think the president is going to ask kids to work hard in school and teachers will try to get them to pledge to work hard in school and most of them will work just as hard this year as they did last year.”

AP Photo

“I know folks think I’m a city boy, but I do appreciate listening to country music. It’s about folks telling their life story the best way they know how.” – President Barack Obama

Via Norm Geras, I see that the president hosted Alison Krauss, Brad Paisley, and Charley Pride as part of the White House Summer Music series.

“They grabbed the contemporary popular chart,” [Paisley] said, referring to himself. “They grabbed the artistic bluegrass side,” he continued, referring to Ms. Krauss. “And then they grabbed the legend side”: Mr. Pride, country’s most successful African-American performer, has had more than three dozen No. 1 country singles since the mid-1960s.

Mr. Paisley performed the title song of “American Saturday Night,” about the United States as a melting pot, and “Welcome to the Future,” which has a verse about race relations that starts with the recollection of a burning cross and concludes, “From a woman on a bus to a man with a dream/Hey, wake up Martin Luther.” He wrote it, Mr. Paisley said before the concert, after the 2008 election, when he was in New York City on election night and saw jubilation in Times Square. “It just felt like the world had shifted on a dime,” he said. “I wanted to encompass this big theme of how far we’ve come in a song.”

[...]

Mr. Pride has taken pains throughout his career to set aside racial considerations, describing himself as “an American singing American music.” He had performed for Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

“It’s always an honor,” Mr. Pride said.

Before the concert, he called President Obama “a very blessed man and a brilliant mind,” and saw a parallel between their careers. “There’s a similarity in what he has done and what I went through,” he said. He added that in his long career on the country circuit, there had “never been a hoot” or a racial epithet from his audiences.

These stories are not only entertaining but useful in reminding us of the continuity in American life that transcends politics.  I don’t know or much care about the political views of Pride, Paisley, or Krauss or even about the musical tastes of Obama.  None of it mattered last night.

And while there are obvious parallels in Pride and Obama as “firsts,” I’m willing to bet Obama never got traded for a used bus.

Danny Glover reports on President Obama’s total restructuring of the White House message machine in a piece ominously titled “The Cost of Controlling The Press.”

Barack Obama’s White House is spending more than $80,000 a week to staff its old and new media offices. Add the price of speechwriters and the White House communications tab reaches nearly $100,000 a week, or nearly $5 million a year-and that is for salaries alone.

[...]

Although other staffers undoubtedly did work on the White House website and other Internet projects, Bush’s dedicated new media team appears to have consisted of two people-a specialty media director who earned $84,000 a year and a website assistant who earned $34,000. By contrast, Obama has the 11 employees in the Office of Public Engagement and another nine aides with titles such as new media director, new media creative director, deputy director of video and e-mail content/design lead. Those nine earn nearly $700,000 a year combined.

One has to read well into the piece, however, to understand that this is mostly a reshuffle of existing resources:

Overall, Obama is spending about 12 percent more for his communications operation than Bush-$4.97 million compared with $4.44 million.

So, while the White House spending nearly $5 million in taxpayer dollars for propaganda  seems outrageous on its face, it’s essentially par for the course. Presumably, the increase is a combination of cost-of-living adjustments and a reallocation of staff from other areas to communications. After all, Congress controls presidential spending on staff.

More troubling: Glover notes that the new communications team has managed to bypass the already Obama-friendly press on numerous occasions, including staged “town hall” meetings with preselected guests and even disinviting the press entirely from mundane events like photo-ops with championship sports teams, preferring to produce their own videos for release on the Web.

I don’t like it.  But, again, it’s a natural evolution of the system.  Ronald Reagan’s team was legendary for limiting access to the president and ensuring that their preferred sound byte was pretty much all the press had to report in a given day.  Bill Clinton famously bypassed the more difficult talk shows during the 1992 campaign, instead going on talk radio and late night comedy shows.  George W. Bush and his team gave more time to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other friendly outlets.   Obama is taking that to the next level using social media techniques that PR firms have been advocating for their clients for years.

Again, this is probably not healthy.  The press is an important check on our politicians and, to the extent the politicians can bypass the press to get their message out, we lose that check.  It’s especially problematic at times, like the present, when the White House and Capitol Hill are controlled by the same party.

It’s quite possible, however, that the press will grow tired of being manipulated in this way and go out and do some actual reporting.  Hanging around the press room for scraps isn’t really journalism, after all.

Mark Tapcott hath a point:

[I]n a Beltway Confidential post Tuesday, I asked what is the difference between folks on the Right calling the eight Republican House members who voted for Obama-Waxman-Markey the “cap-and-traitors,” and the infamous “General Betrayus” ad bought by the Left’s Moveon.org in The New York Times.

In no time at all, comments variously described your humble servant as a “moron,” a spreader of “piffle,” a “clueless knave or a fool,” and “a boil on journalists’ butts,” among much else. A few folks offered reasonable contrary arguments, but the clear verdict of most was that I am either incredibly stupid, or I’ve ingested an overdose of MSM fairy dust.

[...]

The fundamental problem here is that substituting personal invective for logic and fact points to the disappearance of a key aspect of republican virtue – putting the pursuit of truth in public debate before self-aggrandizement, also known as moderation or temperance.

It also signifies the continuing corruption of public language. Contrary to the deconstructionists among us, language is crucially important in a republic because it enables rational consideration of alternatives. Dismissing a proposal out of hand because it comes from a “moron” denies the possibility of logical argumentation and poisons the reasonable discourse required for a republic to function peacefully.

[...]

Usually with Reagan it was “our opponents,” or “the other side.” He was always a gracious speaker and a superb debater, quick to refute specious arguments or personal attacks with facts and logic. Reagan was tough, but he was a gentleman and an honorable adversary.

Reagan steadfastly avoided using personal opprobrium as a substitute for facts and reason because he refused to demean himself or his cause by diving into the gutter with others who were all too eager to hurl themselves and others there.

It’s not uncommon these days to hear suggestions that Reagan is no longer relevant. But his example of extending courtesy and respect to opponents – including those who don’t deserve it – is relevant for all time because it’s the right thing to do.

Mark’s piece may well overstate the degree to which the right has been more honorable in its debating tactics over the years than the left.  There’s certainly been a long history of coded language implying that the other side is less loyal to the country, less moral, less likely to have good personal hygiene, and so forth.  Then again, maybe having the decency to couch such charges in code words is a mark of civility.

Regardless, Mark’s quite right that respectful debate is both good for the republic and good manners.  I’d like to see more of it.

Photo:  US News

On his own blog and at Hot Air, Patrick “Patterico” Frey has the surreal juxtaposition of purported Iranians Twittering the horrors of protesting an evil regime intermixed with CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller’s account of President Obama taking his girls out for ice cream.

As Josh Trevino tweets, “Obama going for ice cream has all the symbolism of [Cowboys quarterback Tony] Romo going to Mexico” during the 2007 playoffs.

He’s right, of course.  But Laura Methvin (via Terasa Kopec) gets it right: “I’m not bothered that POTUS went for ice cream while Iran’s in turmoil; I’m bothered that everyone at MSNBC did.”

It’s Fathers’ Day weekend and Obama is urging men to be better fathers.  Making time to be with your kids is the essence of fatherhood.  As he puts it:

As fathers, we need to be involved in our children’s lives not just when it’s convenient or easy, and not just when they’re doing well—but when it’s difficult and thankless, and they’re struggling. That is when they need us most.

And it’s not enough to just be physically present. Too often, especially during tough economic times like these, we are emotionally absent: distracted, consumed by what’s happening in our own lives, worried about keeping our jobs and paying our bills, unsure if we’ll be able to give our kids the same opportunities we had.

Our children can tell. They know when we’re not fully there. And that disengagement sends a clear message—whether we mean it or not—about where among our priorities they fall.

So we need to step out of our own heads and tune in. We need to turn off the television and start talking with our kids, and listening to them, and understanding what’s going on in their lives.

The challenge for presidents’ time isn’t the TV and paying of bills but the sense that they’re indispensable. It’s not as if there’s not going to be something going on next weekend that doesn’t merit his attention more than vanilla custard in a waffle cone.

Obama issued a statement yesterday on Iran that was more direct than any he’s issued so far but still more tepid than many would like:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

Beyond that, I’m not sure what it is Obama should have been doing.  He’s got a team of thousands to “monitor the situation.”

He could, I suppose, reiterate that Iran’s regime is part of an “Axis of Evil.”  Or, borrowing from Ronald Reagan, he could say Iran has replaced the defunct Soviet Union as the new “Evil Empire.”  That might make us feel better but the benefit to the demonstrators risking their lives in the streets is unclear; it could even be harmful to their cause.

Meanwhile, the TV networks could certainly show better news judgment than giddy celebrity coverage of the president’s trip to the ice cream parlor when there’s real news to report.

Photo: Reuters Pictures. It should be noted this is from an August 2008 campaign stop, not yesterday’s visit to Dairy Godmother in Alexandria.

Update: The sentence on Romo’s trip to Mexico has been rewritten and hyperlinked for context and clarity.

Daniel Larison makes an excellent point against those critics on the right who feel that Obama’s rhetoric on the current Iranian revolt should be more reminiscient of Reagan’s comments to “tear down this wall” etc.

While we’re at it, let’s remember Reagan had leverage against the Soviets and the Polish government in 1981 because of all that dastardly detente, arms negotiations and the existence of trade relations with Poland. Thanks to thirty years of bankrupt Iran policy, we have very little leverage with the Iranian government, and this is a situation that the President’s critics would like to perpetuate indefinitely. If Obama’s choices are limited to remaining largely silent or saying something reckless, it is the result of thirty years of truly isolationist policy that the President’s critics have supported. Vilification, sanctions and hostility for decades have not made the regime more flexible, open or relaxed, but instead it has become even more inflexible, closed and repressive. Now we’re supposed to listen to the people who backed every failed policy towards Iran?

That’s exactly right. I’d also add that Reagan was more than willing to sit down and talk with the Soviets. Not to mention the fact that he actually signed arms reduction treaties. He also knew the wisdom of restraint when the times called for it. For example, when asked in 1988 if he still considered the Soviet Union to be an “evil empire”, Reagan said “No, I was talking about another time, another era.”

Of course, had he said something like that in today’s political climate, he’s be crucified by the right-wing blogosphere as feckless and a “surrender-monkey.”

A Gallup poll released yesterday finds that, “More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and a third are nonwhite.”

This is pretty stark but, as Nate Silver points out, “not exactly anything new.”

88 percent of George W. Bush’s voters in 2004, and 91 percent of them in 2000, were white. And nearly 98 percent of Ronald Reagan’s voters in 1980 were white as were 96 percent of Gerald Ford’s in 1976. The GOP is, in fact, slightly less white than it once was, as they do relatively better among Hispanics and Asians than among blacks (if still not particularly well), and Hispanics and Asians are starting to make up a larger fraction of the nonwhite (and overall) voting pool.

Silver continues,

The Democrats, however, are becoming less white at a much faster rate than the Republicans. Whereas 85 percent of their votes were from white voters in 1976, the number was just 60 percent last November. This is, of course, a helpful characteristic, since the nonwhite share of the electorate, just 11 percent in 1976 and 1980, represented more than a quarter of the turnout in November.

Consider this remarkable statistic. In 1980, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Democrats (or at least white Carter voters) — likewise, in 2008, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Obama voters. But whereas, in 1980, just 9 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Carter voters, 21 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Obama voters last year. Thus, Carter went down to a landslide defeat, whereas Obama defeated John McCain by a healthy margin.

He wonders if this isn’t the Southern Strategy coming home to roost.  One might counter that the Democrats have answered  with a racially and culturally divisive strategy of their own, which accounts for their declining percentage of the white vote concomitant with their gains among minorities.  But, from the standpoint of winning elections, that’s probably a smarter strategy.

It’s going to be increasingly difficult in the future for Republicans to win nationwide appealing only to whites.  The party has long written off black voters, who tend to vote as a bloc, but can’t afford to also write off Hispanics; together, they comprise more than a quarter of the population — and growing.

Eleven years ago this month, Atlantic Monthly published a brilliant essay by Christopher Caldwell entitled “The Southern Captivity of the GOP.” It detailed how the party went from the 1994 “Revolution” that swept up both Houses of Congress to getting crushed in the 1996 presidential election and was on its way to a midterm setback in 1998.  A big part of that was losing the Hispanics.

Democrats who had arrogantly assumed that standard-issue minority politics would easily pull Hispanics into the party fold were proved wrong throughout the 1980s. Hispanic voters turned out to be disproportionately entrepreneurial and disproportionately receptive to Republican family-values rhetoric, and gave the party roughly a third of their votes in the three presidential elections from 1980 to 1988. Leaving aside Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, who do fit the Democrats’ minority paradigm, the Republicans were doing better with the Hispanic vote than might be expected.

But the Republicans in the 104th Congress tried to shore up their Texas and California right wings with hostile rhetoric on immigration. They passed legislation that sought to deprive not just illegal but also legal immigrants of federal benefits. (Newt Gingrich and other Republicans backpedaled in 1997, reversing some of the measures, but the damage was done.) And California’s Proposition 187, supported by Republican Governor Pete Wilson and aimed at denying benefits to illegal immigrants, brought angry Hispanics to the polls in unprecedented numbers. Clinton took 72 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide, including 81 percent in Arizona and 75 percent in California; he took 78 percent of Hispanics under thirty. He nearly split the Hispanic vote even in Florida, where 97 percent of the Cuban population voted for Reagan in 1984.

Recall that, prior to Clinton’s win in 1992, California’s massive electoral vote block had been a “lock” for Republicans.  Since 1996, Republicans haven’t even bothered to contest it in presidential elections.  And Florida has gone from a pretty solid Republican state to an intense battleground.  Beyond that,

As southern control over the Republican agenda grows, the party alienates even conservative voters in other regions. The prevalence of right-to-work laws in southern states may be depriving Republicans of the socially conservative midwestern trade unionists whom they managed to split in the Reagan years, and sending Reagan Democrats back to their ancestral party in the process. Anti-government sentiment makes little sense in New England, where government, as even those who hate it will concede, is neither remote nor unresponsive.

Of course, while the GOP did lose seats in 1998, costing Gingrich his job, it rallied to win the presidency (although not the plurality of votes for president) in 2000 and again in 2008.   But it’s lost congressional seats in every single election since, losing its majority in both Houses in 2006 and becoming a decided minority in 2008.

Granting that there was a perfect storm working for the Democrats in 2008 — an unpopular Republican incumbent, an unexciting Republican ticket, two unpopular wars, a collapsing economy, and a charismatic Democratic candidate with a compelling backstory — the Republicans lost states that it had theretofore been thought theirs in perpetuity.

Demographics isn’t destiny and this trend therefore isn’t set in stone.  But the Republican Party will need to drastically change the inertia if it wishes to be other than a regional party in the coming years.

Taegan Goddard passes along a Tulchin Research poll showing that Jerry Brown is the overwhelming favorite to get the Democratic nomination for California governor.

Granted, the primary is more than a year away.  Still, this is rather amusing.  The first time Brown got elected governor, I was in grade school and he was a 37-year-old swinging bachelor who famously dated Linda Ronstadt.

Neither Margaret Thatcher nor Ronald Reagan had yet ascended to power.

Now, I’m older than he was then, Ronstadt’s 62 and Brown is 71.

No word if he’ll campaign in a DeLorean.

Sunday’s WaPo put together a collection of half-baked ideas by smart folks, designed to generate controversy and discussion more so than shed serious light on policy ideas.  Thomas Ricks’ suggestion to close the service academies and war colleges got the most attention, overshadowing the abject silliness of Jeremy Lott’s column advocating doing away with the vice presidency, an idea not worth a warm bucket of piss.

The framers of the Constitution got many things right. But when they got things wrong, they were seriously off. Compromising on slavery, for instance. That’s a bad one.

Except for the fact that the Southern states wouldn’t have signed on and we’d have been stuck with the Articles of Confederation, of course.

Fourteen of our 44 presidents started on the bottom of the ticket, a high proportion with ill effects on American politics. The vice presidency has provided a springboard to the nation’s highest office for individuals unlikely to have made it there on their own.

From 1952 to 1972, only one election went by without Richard Nixon on the national ballot. For all his legislative smarts, Lyndon Johnson was an awkward bully who turned off many voters. George H.W. Bush was an also-ran who never would have reached the Oval Office had Ronald Reagan not kept the seat warm for him. (And would George W. have made it if his father hadn’t?)

The vice presidency has also put troubling and divisive men only a heartbeat away. Aaron Burr, Henry Wallace, Al Gore and Dick Cheney came too close for comfort.

Um, Richard Nixon was a respected United States Senator who thrice got his party’s nomination for president, winning two landslides and losing the other in one of the closest contests in history.  Johnson and Bush were the second place finishers in their nominating contests.  Bush would have almost certainly beaten Carter on his own merits.  Further, we’ve had plenty of “troubling and divisive” people get elected to the presidency without a stint as second banana.

Sure, a few vice presidents who get the top job do it well. (Calvin Coolidge and Harry Truman come to mind.) But the downsides outweigh the standouts. That’s not surprising, since the office was poorly thought out and has been subject to three constitutional amendments (the 12th, 20th and 25th, for those keeping score).

Only the 12th — which (in effect) makes the VP part of the same ticket as the president rather than the second-place finisher in the presidential race — deals directly with the vice presidency; it was ratified 205 years ago.  The 20th and 25th deal with arcane matters of presidential succession.  The latter of which, incidentally, recognizes the dreadful possibility that the president is killed or incapacitated and there’s a vacancy in the vice presidency and remedies that.

It would be better if the president’s understudy were separately elected by voters,

This is insane. Seriously, we want a backup that’s independently elected and who could, theoretically, have an entirely different agenda than the guy who won?  And who would take office and put in his own people?  Really?

or better yet, if the office simply disappeared. For all the attention their campaign-time selections garner, few voters cast their ballots based on the vice-presidential candidate — even though that person has a nearly one in three chance of going all the way.

Recall, this “one in three” includes cases where the VP wins election in his own right.  But there have been an inordinate number of cases where the sitting president dies in office, mostly suddenly.  What alternative system does Lott propose for dealing with these emergencies?  Why, none at all!  He doesn’t even mention the possibility!

Presumably, then, we’d simply follow the Presidential Succession Act of 1947.  Hello, President Nancy Pelosi!  And, if something should happen to her, hello President Robert Byrd!

UPDATE:  See “Ending the Vice Presidency II” for Lott’s response.

I glossed over yesterday’s news that the Vatican blocked Caroline Kennedy’s appointment as U.S. ambassador for a variety of reasons.  Regular commenter Tlaloc emailed me, though, making a good point:

[T]he Vatican refuses to accept any ambassador who is not explicitly pro-life including anti-ESC research (such as Doug Kmiec).  Various voices on the right have praised them for this principled stand.  But if we accept this criteria doesn’t it set a bad precedent?  What happens when China demands our next ambassador be an avowed Maoist?  Or Saudi Arabia demand someone who openly accepts sharia law (up to an including the whole acid in the face for uppity girls)?

Us Ambassadors are supposed to represent us, not their host country. Obviously we should make sure that our ambassadors do not inflame their hosts by their mere presence but that’s a world away from them being required to openly affirm allegiance to the host’s ideals.  Or to put it another way, if the Vatican has the right to demand a vocal pro-lifer be our ambassador to them can’t we demand their ambassador to us be a vocal pro-choicer?  And where does such petty brinksmanship get us except a total break down of diplomacy?

The right-leaning blogs memeorandum links on this one are universally praiseworthy.

RedState’s Moe Lane is “curious about how many times this administration plans to insult the Roman Catholic Church.”  His colleague mbecker908 dubs this “an Easter gift from the Vatican” and adds, ” Good for the Vatican. This pentecostal Baptist boy (OK, old boy) is standing with the Pope on this one.”  He agrees with Lane that “being so tone deaf as to openly and forthrightly make an effort to offend the Vatican is off the charts.”

Dan Riehl observes, “Obama just got done going out of his way to inform Islam he had no intention of insulting or threatening it as a religion. So why the continued insults to Catholicism? It’s as if he doesn’t care about it as a religion at all.” Even Michael van der Galien, a staunch moderate, agrees that, “Instead of giving the Church the impression its opinions do not matter, the Obama administration is wise to treat it as it treats enemies of the United States: with respect and understanding.”

Dan and Michael have the right take on this.  If we’re going to have an ambassador to the Vatican (and I’m sympathetic to Michael Stickings‘ view that we probably shouldn’t) then it behooves us to respect their sensibilities when selecting our representatives to them. It’s just good diplomacy.

Now, Tlaloc is right that our ambassador is supposed to represent us, not the country to which he’s sent.  Ron Chusid makes that point as well.

The Vatican might not like it, but support for both abortion and embryonic stem cell research is the position of the Obama administration and both are legal in this country. What if the Vatican were to also demand an ambassador who believes in creationism instead of evolution?

What of other areas where countries disagree with the views of appointed ambassadors? Do Muslim nations object to non-Muslim ambassadors from the west?  Should we go along if one were to insist that we only appoint an ambassador who opposes the existence of Israel?

During the cold war it would have been ludicrous for Communist nations to reject western ambassadors who did not support Communism. Imagine if the Chinese had refused overtures from Richard Nixon to begin diplomatic relations because Nixon and his potential ambassadors were not Maoists.

The difference, of course, is that, despite the legal fiction to the contrary, the Vatican isn’t really a country; it’s a church with a big yard.  States, even those that are theocracies (Iran) or close to it (Saudi Arabia), have traditionally operated on the principle of sovereign equality.  They either have diplomatic relations with a given state or not, on a take it or leave it basis.  Not so much with churches.

Now, again, that may be a reason to not send an ambassador.  For most of our history, we didn’t.  Ronald Reagan was the first to have a formal ambassador.  But if we’re going to have diplomatic relations with a church, it only makes sense not to go out of our way to offend it.

The problem with Kmiec and Kennedy, as I understand it, is not so much that they’re pro-abortion but rather that they’re pro-abortion Roman Catholics.  Sending them as our ambassador to the Holy See is the equivalent of sending a Soviet defector as ambassador to Moscow during the Cold War or sending an Orthodox Jew as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Hilary Bok:

I am not, in general, a big fan of saying: Republicans: you lost. Get over it. But in this case, I’m going to make an exception. The Republicans do not seem to be willing to allow the President to do things that are plainly his prerogative: appointing the reasonable, qualified, law-abiding people of his choice, deciding which documents should be declassified, and so forth. Any moment now they’ll threaten not to pass the budget unless he sets his air conditioner at their preferred temperature.

Andrew Sullivan links approvingly and I agree so far as it goes.   But it’s not so cut and dried.

Presidential Appointments

Whether I voted for a given president or not, I’ve consistently believed that the Senate’s advise and consent powers on appointment should be a backstop against truly outrageous choices.   That goes doubly true for executive appointments.

At the same time, however, there seems to be quite a bit of wiggle room in “reasonable” and “qualified.”  (Indeed, even if “law-abiding,” given the criminalization of politics over the last twenty years.)

Was, for example, John Bolton qualified to serve as UN Ambassador?  Seemingly so:  He’d held a number of progressively responsible positions in government over a two decade span, including General Counsel at USAID, Assistant AG, and Assistant Secretary of State.  Was he “reasonable”?  His critics said No.  Mostly, the criticisms were over temperament and style, although these things always come down to policy differences.

The bottom line on these things, though, is that what comes around, goes around.  The spiking of Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court — back in 1987 — seems to be the start of the current all-holds-barred approach to these things.   The Republicans don’t really have much incentive to be the first one off the merry-go-round, since they’ve got no assurance of taking back the White House any time soon, let alone any reason to think the Democrats would reciprocate.

Classification

President Obama almost certainly has the right to decide to de-classify the so-called “torture memos” from the previous administration.  Indeed, he may be obligated to do so pursuant to a court order.

As a general rule, though, I’m not at all sure that the president should be the sole decider.   Indeed, many on the Left spent much of the previous eight years demanding that Congress intervene to stop what some regarded as the Bush administration’s abuse of this particular power.

If we’re going to cede Congress oversight responsibility in this area — and I don’t see how a Republic could operate otherwise — then they, too, will naturally abuse/use their power to advance their own political interests and pet agendas.   The beauty of checks and balances is to have faction counter faction and everyone jealously guarding their own prerogatives.