THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2010 DAVID S. BRODER


A vanished ethic Sen. Byrd knew when to put country first


significant a milestone — is the balance he struck between the parochial and the profound.


T


On one hand, he was known as the “king of pork” and was immensely proud of the way he used his long years on the Appropriations Committee to funnel bil- lions in federal funds into his home state of West Virginia. It never occurred to him to apologize for looking out for the home folks.


At the same time, this senator, a throw- back to Lincoln in being largely self- educated, developed the fullest historical and philosophical appreciation of the separation-of-powers doctrine in the Con- stitution of anyone who served in govern- ment in the past century. In the series of speeches that turned into his multivolume history of the Sen- ate, Byrd drew on not only the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and the Federalist Papers but also the chronicles of ancient Rome. Everything he read — and he read al-


most everything — convinced him that in any republic, the role of the Senate is an essential counterbalance to the more pop- ulist instincts of the House and the inher- ent imperiousness of presidents. But in an address he delivered in the Old Senate Chamber in September 1998 at the invitation of then-Majority Leader Trent Lott, Byrd warned that “partisan warfare” was eroding the Senate’s ability to fill its historic role. As he said in that ceremonial talk, the force that empowered the Senate to with- stand the profound pressures dividing the two parties is that “on the great issues, the Senate has always been blessed with sena- tors who were able to rise above party, and consider first and foremost the na- tional interest.” Today they are missing. In that speech 12 years ago, Byrd cited as an example the role of Sen. Howard Ba-


he paradox of Robert C. Byrd’s life— and the reason his death was recog- nized by his Senate colleagues as so


ker, a Republican who joined President Jimmy Carter in securing ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty. What Byrd and other senators of his


generation understood is that on a wide variety of routine issues, partisan calcula- tions are always at play, but there is a cat- egory of questions that truly is different. And on those issues, senators are bound to consider the broad national interest. That obligation falls especially on the


Senate, as Byrd always pointed out, be- cause it — unlike the other part of Con- gress — is not designed as a representa- tive body, close to the people. The sena- tors are few in number — only two per state, no matter its size. Their tenure is longer than that of the president and three times as long as a House member. Their constituencies are broad and di- verse. Everything contrives to give them a degree of independence, to exercise their best judgment on the national issues. Today, unfortunately, on the big issues


that ought to be beyond partisanship, ac- tion in the national interest has almost vanished because the party leaders, un- like Byrd and Baker when they led their parties in the Senate, do not display that consciousness or evoke it in others. Byrd concluded his remarks by remind- ing his colleagues that “in the real world, exemplary personal conduct can some- times achieve much more than any politi- cal agenda. Comity, courtesy, charitable treatment of even our political opposites, combined with a concerted effort to not just occupy our offices, but to bring honor to them, will do more to inspire our peo- ple and restore their faith in us, their leaders, than millions of dollars of 30- second spots or glitzy puff pieces concoct- ed by spinmeisters.” The sense of loss expressed by Byrd’s colleagues of both parties is real. The “king of pork” really did evoke what made the Senate great. There is a hunger there now for what is missing. davidbroder@washpost.com


POST PARTISAN


Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at washingtonpost.com/postpartisan


EVA RODRIGUEZ


Does it matter that Kagan is a woman?


I know I’m going to offend some people, but here goes: Did Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, really need to spend a significant chunk of her time Wednesday afternoon praising Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as a role mod- el for young women? There weren’t more important things to discuss? Yes, Kagan was the first woman to serve as dean of Harvard Law School. Yes, she broke the glass ceiling to become the first female solicitor general of the United States. So what? Would anyone on the pan- el have praised a white, male nominee for being a great role model for young men? I seriously doubt it. What matters to me is that Kagan was by all accounts an exceptional dean — smart, tough, inclusive — and that she per- formed remarkably well as solicitor gener- al, especially given her lack of court ex- perience. Shouldn’t this be what we’re fo- cused on these days — a person’s accomplishments and not his or her sex? I know, as Feinstein noted, that women still aren’t treated fairly (let alone equally) in many circumstances. But, as Feinstein also rightly acknowledged, we have made tremendous progress. Kagan’s life is proof of that. I was pleased that little attention was paid to her gender when she was nom- inated as solicitor general and then to the Supreme Court. I felt much the same way when not much was made of the fact that Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Er- ic Holder, would become the first African


HAROLD MEYERSON


the wreckage in the best shape. They are the ones the other major nations implore for help — to bail out weaker economies, to diminish their dominance of the world’s production and start consuming more themselves. There are just two such nations: China and Germany. Global unemployment might remain


Why Germany and China are winning T


he Great Recession rolls on, but it’s not too early to single out the ma- jor powers that have come through


trial economies meet their own needs and those of other nations, and have made them flourish while others floun- der. This used to be true of United States,


stratospheric, but in China, long-sup- pressed wages are finally increasing for millions of industrial workers. China’s stimulus — effectively the world’s largest — has funded bullet trains, airports and wind turbines. In Germany, unemploy- ment has been running a point or two be- low ours, and exports remain high. Thanks to its favorable trade balance, Germany’s finances are the strongest in Europe, which is why German monetary guarantees have been key to the future of both Greece and the euro. Germany and China don’t have a lot in common. Germany has a mature econo- my and is a stultifyingly stable democ- racy. China has a rising economy and re- mains disturbingly authoritarian. What sets them apart from the world’s other major powers, purely and simply, is man- ufacturing. Their predominantly indus-


too. In 1960, manufacturing accounted for a quarter of our gross domestic prod- uct and employed 26 percent of the labor force. Today, manufacturing has shriv- eled to 11 percent of GDP and employs a kindred percentage of the workforce. For the past three decades, with few


exceptions, America’s CEOs, financiers, establishment economists and editorial- ists assured us that the transition from a manufacturing to a post-industrial econ- omy was both inevitable and positive: American workers would move to more productive jobs, and the nation’s finan- cial security would only grow. But after rising steadily during the quarter- century following World War II, wages have stagnated since the manufacturing sector began to contract. Increasingly, it’s our most productive jobs that are being offshored. Until 2001, the United States exported more ad- vanced technology than it imported, but since then, as Clyde Prestowitz reports in “The Betrayal of American Prosperity,” his persuasive new book on the need for an American industrial policy, we’ve


JASON REED/REUTERS Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan


American to hold that position. I hoped that this lack of fanfare signaled our evo- lution as a society and an implicit accept- ance that there are a multitude of highly qualified men and women of all colors and backgrounds who belong in positions of power and influence. There was a moment during the Kagan


confirmation when gender was appropri- ately raised. That came during Kagan’s brief opening statements when she thanked former justice Sandra Day O’Con- nor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for personal kindnesses they’d shown her and for their path-breaking achievements. O’Connor and Ginsburg did experience unfathomable discrimination and were denied jobs, and opportunities for jobs, because of their gender. They persevered, they overachieved and they succeeded — and in the process paved the way for other women. It was entirely appropriate for the woman who would become the fourth to sit on the court — and who probably didn’t experience similar challenges of such scale — to thank the two who helped make her dream possible.


KLMNO


R


A15 ANNE APPLEBAUM


Up to their old spy


tricks again A


SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES


Sen. John F. Kerry, right, speaks Tuesday alongside Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman about energy and climate legislation.


E.J. DIONNE JR.


Democrats, don’t be afraid to care


O


ne of the strangest lead sen- tences I have ever encoun- tered appeared in Politico


last week. It read: “John Kerry has been the most aggressive advocate of climate change legislation in the Senate this year — so aggressive that it’s rubbed some of his col- leagues the wrong way.” The story went on to say that


Kerry’s “zeal” is “making some swing-vote Democrats cringe at the thought of negotiating with some- one they fear is tone-deaf to the po- litical realities of their respective states — particularly in a difficult midterm elections year.” So there you have it: Once crit- icized for being too aloof and patri- cian, Kerry is now being assailed for daring to have passion for the cause of reducing the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere. Note that none of this is about the legislative merits. Kerry is be- ing criticized for caring too much about an issue and not thinking enough about an election — for be- ing insufficiently opportunistic and unprincipled. And Democrats wonder why the


polls find an “enthusiasm gap” that suggests their supporters will sit around grumpily in November while Republicans flood the poll- ing places. It might help if voters saw Presi- dent Obama and his party in Con- gress fighting for something going into these elections (including their record on health care and fi- nancial reform) rather than re- acting, retrenching and retreating. Kerry’s attitude is not the problem. It’s part of the solution. Let’s be clear: Yes, it is hard for politicians from coal states, or from states whose utilities use a lot of coal, to get enthusiastic about car- bon caps. It’s also true that many of the Democrats fighting for their political lives represent rather con- servative states and districts. They hear most from voters who are talking — make that yelling — about big spending, big deficits, big government. Some of their con- stituents even think of Obama as the Manchurian candidate. There’s also this: If the unem- ployment rate were hovering around 5 percent instead of above 9 percent, and if Republicans were not intent on using the Senate to stop just about everything Demo- crats are trying to do, the public’s mood about Washington and how it works would be less lethal.


In the face of these core prob- lems, there is increasing grumbling among congressional Democrats about the Obama administration’s habits. Some wonder whether Oba- ma is indifferent to their fate. Oth- ers sense that the president is far more solicitous to those who op- pose him than to those who bleed for him. And many are questioning whether Obama’s lieutenants have figured out that they have not been the messaging geniuses in the White House that they seemed to be in the 2008 campaign. On the current course, even a Re- publican Party whose leaders say the most outlandish and extreme things — and whose own congres- sional rank and file worry about their lack of a coherent program — could take back the House and make deep inroads in the Senate. Which brings us back to Kerry, who in a talk with me made no apologies for his eagerness to get an energy bill. What’s striking is that he has negotiated with every industry and trade group imagin- able to find a deal. If he’s passion- ate about this, he’s also been relent- lessly practical. And he notes that many business groups would prefer that Congress deal with the carbon question. “They see it coming from the EPA and regulation, and they would rather have us legislate,” he said. Kerry’s persistence is one reason the Senate leadership and a White House with which he’s been work- ing closely are still trying to push an energy bill through. Someone needs to find the same pugnacious spirit on a jobs bill. Yes, crucial assistance to states that are slashing programs and raising tax- es has been blocked by Republican senators — including Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. Both prize their moderate images, but neither has been willing to break with the GOP leadership. But either Obama and the Demo-


crats really believe that giving the economy another shot in the arm now is essential or they don’t. If they put no punch behind their ar- gument, voters will have no idea that some state cutbacks or tax hikes they are worried about could be avoided if Congress were willing to act. The Obama of 2008 understood how to define the stakes and how to rouse the faithful with both rea- son and passion. What happened to that guy?


ejdionne@washpost.com


long with many other things, the spy novel did not survive the end of the Cold War. There are still thrillers, of course, but it isn’t the same: James Bond has become just another ac- tion hero, and John Le Carre had turned into yet another British writer who doesn’t like George Bush. When commu- nism collapsed, the dead-letter drops, the invisible ink and the microfilm con- cealed in hollowed-out pumpkins most- ly disappeared from fiction, too. Yet these things have not, it seems, disappeared from real life. This week the FBI arrested 10 people— an 11th was de- tained in Cyprus, given bail and van- ished — who stand accused of working as “illegals” on behalf of the Russian gov- ernment. Like the Kevin Costner charac- ter in the movie “No Way Out,” several of them are Russians (as the Russian gov- ernment has confirmed) who have lived in the United States for many years, slowly acquiring American identities. Although they kept in regular touch with their Russian bosses — “Moscow Center” — they have American univer- sity degrees, American professions and American children. They also have American friends. One of these friends may have been Alan Pa- tricof, a Democratic fundraiser and friend of the Clintons. Patricof had occa- sional conversations with a tax expert, Cynthia Murphy, with whom he dis- cussed . . . . taxes. After one of these chats, an excited Murphy — a Columbia Business School graduate with an un- identifiable accent — told Moscow Cen- ter she had made contact with a “promi- nent New York-based financier.” Mos- cow Center, equally excited, told her, according to a federal complaint, to lis- ten carefully for his “remarks re US for- eign policy,” as well as “roumors” [sic] from the White House “kitchen.” Which leads us to the central mystery:


Why on earth would the Russian gov- ernment spend years of its time and mil- lions of its dollars on the education, up- keep and housing of a spy who might someday be able to collect some rumors from a Democratic fundraiser and friend of the Clintons? There must be several thousand people who fit that de- scription in New York alone, and I bet not one of them knows a single piece of information that cannot also be found somewhere on the Internet. Rumors, White House gossip, foreign policy tid- bits — these are things you can find on the Web sites of The Post, the Brookings Institution and several dozen other in- stitutions, all of whose blogs and articles can be thoroughly examined from an armchair in Moscow. Explanations have been offered for the apparent cluelessness of these ille- gals. Maybe they were “sleepers,” agents living under deep cover because they might someday be useful. Perhaps they were “talent scouts” whose job was to identify others with greater potential. Or perhaps they were couriers who carried cash and information on behalf of more senior figures. My guess is different: I think the in-


structions they were given reflect the mentality of the current Russian elite, many of whose members were once members of the KGB. In its time, the KGB did not believe that elections could be truly free — so-called bourgeois de- mocracy was always held to be a fiction —and neither does a part of the current Russian ruling class. In its time, the KGB did not believe in the free circulation of information, either — the so-called free press was always held to be a tool of the capitalist exploiters — and neither does a part of the current Russian ruling class.


been running annual high-tech deficits that reached $61 billion in 2008. Worse yet, as we lose manufacturing, which em- ployed 63 percent of our scientists and engineers in 2007, we lose many of our most valuable professionals. Last year, reported Business Week, the number of employed scientists and engineers fell 6.3 percent while overall employment fell 4.1 percent. Most Americans, I suspect, believe


we’re losing manufacturing because we can’t compete against cheap Chinese la- bor. But Germany has remained a manu- facturing giant notwithstanding the rise of East Asia, making high-end products with a workforce that is more unionized and better paid than ours. German ex- ports came to $1.1 trillion in 2009 — roughly $125 billion more than we ex- ported, though there are just 82 million Germans to our 310 million Americans. Germany’s yearly trade balance went from a deficit of $6 billion in 1998 to a surplus of $267 billion in 2008 — the same year the United States ran a trade deficit of $569 billion. Over those same 10 years, Germany’s annual growth rate per capita exceeded ours. Germany has increased its edge in world-class manufacturing even as we have squandered ours because its model


of capitalism is superior to our own. For one thing, its financial sector serves the larger economy, not just itself. The typ- ical German company has a long-term relationshipwith a single bank — and for the smaller manufacturers that are the backbone of the German economy, those relationships are likely with one of Ger- many’s 431 savings banks, each of them a local institution with a municipally ap- pointed board, that shun capital markets and invest their depositors’ savings in upgrading local enterprises. By Amer- ican banking standards, the savings banks are incredibly dull. But they didn’t lose money in the financial panic of 2008 and have financed an industrial sector that makes ours look anemic by compari- son.


So even as Germany and China have been busily building, and selling us, high-speed trains, photovoltaic cells and lithium-ion batteries, we’ve spent the past decade, at the direction of our CEOs and bankers, shuttering 50,000 factories and springing credit-default swaps on an unsuspecting world. That’s not to say our CEOs and bankers are conscious agents of foreign powers. But given what they’ve done to America, they might as well have been.


meyersonh@washpost.com


By contrast, secret information, ac- cording to the old KGB way of thinking, is “better,” or at least more reliable, than anything the American government would make public. Hence Moscow Cen- ter’s pleasure when one of its U.S. spies sent an analysis of the gold market — even though such analyses are freely available in the Wall Street Journal. Hence Moscow Center’s enthusiasm for contacts with American think tanks — even though American think tanks actu- ally compete to publish their best infor- mation as quickly and as prominently as possible. Hence Moscow Center’s desire to befriend Harvard professors — as if a Harvard professor wouldn’t share his views with any old Russian diplomat who knocked on his door. The illegals themselves apparently


knew better. In a conversation recorded by an FBI wiretap, one of them com- plains that Moscow wants sources for the information he is providing. “Put down any politician from here,” his part- ner tells him (Moscow Center will be- lieve anything). Murphy, meanwhile, persuaded her handlers to buy a house in suburban New Jersey, arguing that in a society of homeowners, she and her partner had to keep up with the Joneses. (Why get a mortgage if Moscow Center will pay for your house?) A darker version of the story may yet


emerge, of course, this being the world of espionage. But in the meantime, I rec- ommend reading the court documents. If nothing else, the stories of money handoffs, secret radio transmitters, bank transfers and, yes, invisible ink make great beach reading, and help fill the hole in the culture where the Cold War spy novel used to be. applebaumletters@washpost.com


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