SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2010
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Sunday OPINION TOPIC A What’s next for Obama?
MARK PENN
Adviser and pollster to President Bill Clinton and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton; CEO of Burson Marsteller
Between now and the midterms, the administration has to focus on what it can do to provide a sense of economic recovery. Perhaps the best arena for that is in an energy bill that creates a wide array of incentives to produce new forms of energy. The administration should not make the energy bill principally about climate change. The truth is the economic slowdown has done more to help with climate change than any bill is likely to accomplish in the near term. America wants clean, non-imported, sustainable energy — and at the same time wants to continue to use all available natural resources here and abroad to keep energy prices down. Even after the BP spill, Americans still support offshore drilling. There is no way an immigration bill would get done before the midterms, and though the issue tends to fracture the Republican Party, turnout in the midterms suggests that this would not be the ideal time to try to tackle that tumultuous subject. At this point the deficit is so high that a new round of stimulus would just be putting a target on the back of the administration. Unemployment benefits need extension. Right now there is no estate tax and won’t be unless Congress acts to do something about it. Those are both issues the administration should continue to press. But the economy and energy are where the administration has to put its legislative bets while it seeks to minimize midterm losses so it can come back from them and keep the country moving forward.
ED ROGERS White House staffer to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; chairman of BGR Group
It’s the political season, so the Obama administration will keep its focus on politics.
Governing has not been the president’s friend in dealing with voters, so rhetoric will rule his days. Serious policy will have to wait for a lame-duck session. Then, after the November election, Democrats can force through the unpopular measures that no sane politician would consider if he had to face the voters again anytime soon. Surely President Obama will talk about jobs; take credit for what jobs there are and — to the gullible — pledge that more are on the way because of his actions. In the few states where he is still welcome, he will appear at stimulus-project construction sites and away-from-the-public fundraisers. On the days when he isn’t on the road, he will be photographed with military leaders or have meetings that show how heartless Republicans oppose unemployment benefits and other sympathetic-sounding government programs. To keep his base from becoming any more
demoralized, he will occasionally talk about climate change, immigration and pro-union/anti-business programs. In the final days of the midterm campaign, the Democrats will, true to form, accuse Republicans of trying to destroy Social Security, promote racism, ruin the environment and anything else that will stir up Democratic votes, no matter the facts. They will abandon governing and truth in the interest of reelection. Call me a cynic, but it is all rather sadly
predictable.
CATHERINE A. “KIKI” MCLEAN Democratic strategist; partner at the public relations firm Porter Novelli
This fall the Obama team should focus on what voters consider to be unfinished business: jobs, jobs, jobs. President Obama has led his administration to impressive levels of success. He’s worked through his to-do list with focus and discipline, delivering on many campaign promises. Big items on that list:
health care, financial regulatory reform, an appointment to the Supreme Court with another success probably looming. The intense scrutiny on the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is likely to lessen since the cap has stopped the flow. The issue voters are soon to focus on is jobs. And the administration has already begun to answer by putting job creation back in the news with events such as the president’s trip last week to Michigan, where the unemployment rate tops 13 percent. Americans won’t accept excuses. They will ask where the jobs are. How will we create new jobs? Who has a better plan to put America back to work? Now is the time to show the same level of discipline toward employment that other issues have enjoyed over the past 18 months.
MATTHEW DOWD Political analyst for ABC News; chief strategist for George W. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign
In the next 100 days, President Obama and his
staff should reread the speeches Obama gave throughout the 2008 campaign. They would realize that the biggest value he ran on and has not accomplished is bringing the country together and getting past the bitter partisanship and rancor in Washington. In fact, this toxic rancor has grown worse in the past 18 months. The administration should take stock of the fact that of all the things it has done, none has brought Obama the favor of the country as a whole. Americans long for the leader that Obama presented himself as in the campaign. So in the run-up to Election Day, the administration should get off the partisan campaign trail (when your job-approval rating is in the 40s, being there isn’t helping anyone anyway), focus on what the president can do to change the tone in Washington and begin to speak to his own mistakes in adding to the political fighting. Put together a real plan on how to be more bipartisan and restore faith and trust in the federal government as a vehicle of good. Until the
president addresses this campaign promise, voters will not reward him on issue victories or bills signed.
Drop the overheated rhetoric and be the head of the country first, not the head of your party.
GEOFF GARIN
Democratic pollster and strategist; president of Hart Research Associates
President Obama can’t afford to stop and admire his accomplishments, though they are worth admiring: Wall Street reform, health insurance reform, the rescue of America’s auto industry and pulling the country’s economy back from the brink of depression. There is, of course, still much work to be done. Jobs and economic renewal are at the top of the list, along with moving the country on a path to a clean-energy future and getting the government back on a sustainable fiscal footing. But little of what still needs to be accomplished
will get done if the Republicans win big in November. So, with just about 100 days to go until the midterm elections, the president should focus next on making the case to the American people about what is at stake and why it matters if they turn Congress back over to the Republicans. This is not just about politics for its own sake. Given the rightward movement of the GOP over the past year, the difference between the two parties in their definition of what a better America looks like and how we should get there is even starker than it was two years ago. At a moment of uncertainty in the country, the president must make the argument for going forward rather than back, and call the question on the Republicans’ pro-corporate, anti-government view of the world.
R
A17
TOPIC A ONLINE: Contributions from Dan Schnur and Carter Eskew.
DANA MILBANK Wrong and reich in Mason City T
he peaceful hamlet of Mason City, Iowa, hasn’t been in the headlines much since it served as the model for River City in Mer-
edith Willson’s “The Music Man.” But this week, Mason City raised a real Fuhrer. The geniuses of the North Iowa Tea Party
erected a billboard in town depicting three leaders: Adolf Hitler (with swastika), Vladimir Lenin (with hammer and sickle) and Barack Obama (with 2008 campaign logo). Over Hitler were the words “National Socialism,” over Len- in was “Marxist Socialism” and over Obama was “Democrat Socialism.” “Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naïve,” the billboard informed passing motorists. Folks, we’ve got trouble in River City. The Tea Partyers eventually took the bill- board down — to hush the national uproar they provoked, not because they thought they had done something wrong. “There’s going to be a lot of billboards just like this across the United States,” the group’s leader told the Des Moines Register. He’s probably right about that. The vile sign in
Mason City was not a one-off by a fringe group. It was a logical expression of a message support- ed by conservative thought leaders and propa- gated by high-level Republican politicians. Late last month, Thomas Sowell of the con-
servative Hoover Institution penned an irre- sponsible column likening Obama’s presidency (particularly his pushing BP to set aside funds for oil-spill victims) to the rise of Hitler in Ger- many and Lenin in the Soviet Union. After the column came out, Sarah Palin
tweeted her followers with instructions to “Read Thomas Sowell’s article.” Sowell’s theme — that Obama, like Hitler and Lenin, exploits “useful idiots” who don’t know much about politics — was strikingly similar to what wound up on the Iowa billboard. Sowell to Palin to Mason City: They spread
Nazi labels as smoothly as Tinker-to-Evers-to- Chance turned double plays. And let’s not deny an assist to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), who went to the House floor to read aloud the Oba- ma-Nazi comparison by the “brilliant” Sowell. Twenty years ago, the dawn of the Internet
Age gave us Godwin’s Law: If an online argu- ment goes on long enough, somebody will even- tually invoke Hitler. When that happens, it’s basically the end of the conversation, because all rational discussion ceases when one side calls the other Nazis.
DEB NICKLAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS These sentiments have long existed on the
fringe and always will. The problem is that con- servative leaders and Republican politicians, in their blind rage against Obama these last 18 months, invited the epithets of the fringe into the mainstream. Godwin’s Law has spread from the chat rooms and now applies to cable news and even to the floor of the House of Represen- tatives.
Consider these tallies from Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News since Obama’s inauguration: 202 mentions of Nazis or Nazism, according to
transcripts, 147 mentions of Hitler, 193 men- tions of fascism or fascist, and another 24 bo- nus mentions of Joseph Goebbels. Most of these were directed in some form at Obama — as were the majority of the 802 mentions of social- ist or socialism on Beck’s nightly “report.” It’s not strictly a phenomenon of the right. California’s Democratic gubernatorial candi- date, Jerry Brown, likened his opponent’s tac- tics to those of the Nazis, while Rep. Alan Gray- son (D-Fla.) talks blithely of a health care “holo- caust” and an aide to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) dubs the opposition “Brownshirts.” But at the moment, the anger pendulum has swung far in the conservative direction, and ac- cusations that once were beyond the pale — not just talk of Nazis and Marxists but intimations of tyranny, revolution and bloodshed — are now routine. Afew from recent weeks: Sen. David Vitter (R-
La.) comes out in favor of lawsuits alleging that Obama was not an American citizen at birth. Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate chal- lenging Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, speaks about the possible need for violence to overcome the “tyrannical” government. Gohmert, the So- well admirer, says the children of illegal im- migrants are going to return and “blow us up.” Isn’t there a grown-up to rein in these back- benchers when they go over the top? Don’t ask House Minority Leader John Boehner, the man who would replace Nancy Pelosi as speaker. He accuses the Democrats of “snuffing out the America that I grew up in” and predicts a rebel- lion unlike anything “since 1776.” Boehner also said one Democratic lawmaker “may be a dead man” for his vote on health care and predicted that the bill would bring “Armageddon.” Recall, Mr. Leader, the wisdom of the Mason
City billboard: “Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naïve.”
danamilbank@washpost.com
OMBUDSMAN ANDREW ALEXANDER Why the silence on the Black Panther Party story?
hursday’s Post reported about a growing con- troversy over the Justice Department’s deci- sion to scale down a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. The story succinctly summarized the issues but left many readers with a question: What took you so long? For months, readers have contacted the ombuds- man wondering why The Post hasn’t been covering the case. The calls increased recently after competi- tors such as the New York Times and the Associated Press wrote stories. Fox News and right-wing blog- gers have been pumping the story. Liberal bloggers have countered, accusing them of trying to manu- facture a scandal. But The Post has been virtually silent. The story has its origins on Election Day in 2008,
T
when two members of the New Black Panther Party stood in front of a Philadelphia polling place. You- Tube video of the men, now viewed nearly 1.5 mil- lion times, shows both wearing paramilitary cloth- ing. One carried a nightstick. Early last year, just before the Bush administra-
tion left office, the Justice Department filed a voter- intimidation lawsuit against the men, the New Black Panther Party and its chairman. But several months later, with the government poised to win by default
because the defendants didn’t contest the suit, the Obama Justice Department decided the case was over-charged and narrowed it to the man with the nightstick. It secured only a narrow injunction for- bidding him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of Philadelphia polling places through 2012. Congressional Republicans pounced. For months
they stalled the confirmation of Thomas E. Perez, President Obama’s pick to head the Justice Depart- ment’s Civil Rights Division, while seeking answers to why the case had been downgraded over the ob- jections of some of the department’s career lawyers. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Re- sponsibility launched an investigation, which is pending. The independent, eight-member Commis- sion on Civil Rights also began what has become a yearlong probe with multiple public hearings; its re- port is due soon. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), a promi- nent lawmaker in The Post’s circulation area, has been a loud and leading critic of how the case was handled. His office has “aggressively” sought to in- terest The Post in coverage, a spokesman said. The controversy was elevated last month when J.
Christian Adams, a former Justice Department law- yer who had helped develop the case, wrote in the Washington Times that his superiors’ decision to re-
duce its scope was “motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law.” Some in the department believe “the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long his- tory of slavery and segregation,” he wrote. Adams re- cently repeated these charges in public testimony before the commission. The Post didn’t cover it. Indeed, until Thursday’s
story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. In 2009, there were pass- ing references to it in only three stories. That’s prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney said that if the controversy had involved Bush ad- ministration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, “Lord, there’d have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months.” To be sure, ideology and party politics are at play.
Liberal bloggers have accused Adams of being a right-wing activist (he insisted to me Friday that his sole motivation is applying civil rights laws in a race-neutral way). Conservatives appointed during the Bush administration control a majority of the civil rights commission’s board. And Fox News has used interviews with Adams to push the story. Sarah Palin has weighed in via Twitter, urging followers to
watch Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly’s coverage be- cause “her revelations leave Left steaming.” The Post should never base coverage decisions on
ideology, nor should it feel obligated to order stories simply because of blogosphere chatter from the right or the left.
But in this case, coverage is justified because it’s a controversy that screams for clarity that The Post should provide. If Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his department are not colorblind in enforc- ing civil rights laws, they should be nailed. If the Commission on Civil Rights’ investigation is purely partisan, that should be revealed. If Adams is pursu- ing a right-wing agenda, he should be exposed. National Editor Kevin Merida, who termed the controversy “significant,” said he wished The Post had written about it sooner. The delay was a result of limited staffing and a heavy volume of other news on the Justice Department beat, he said. Better late than never. There’s plenty left to
explore.
Andrew Alexander can be reached at 202-334-7582 or at
ombudsman@washpost.com. For daily updates, read the Omblog at
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ ombudsman-blog/.
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