TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2010 MICHAELGERSON


The two-year ‘era’ I


n the history of badly timed book titles, Los Angeles Times reporters Tom Hamburger and


PeterWallstenholdadistinguished place. The publication of “One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century” in 2006 was followed quickly by twonational elections in which Democrats gained 15 Senate seats, 54House seats and theWhite House. In 2008 Barack Obama became the first Democratic presi- dent since Lyndon Johnson to win an outrightmajority of the popular vote. He took seven states that had twice voted for George W. Bush, including two (Indiana and Virgin- ia) that had not gone Democratic since 1964. Which led to James Carville’s


2009 book, “40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.” Carville argued: “American presidential politics is generally not a back-and-forth en- terprise. There are eras in which one party dominates. Today, a Democratic majority is emerging, and it’s my hypothesis, one I share with a greatmany others, that this majority will guarantee the Demo- crats remain in power for the next forty years.” Apparently the era of Democrat-


ic dominance will last two years. According to the polls, key groups ofObama voters—includingwom- en, Catholics, less affluent voters and independents — are abandon- ing Democrats in large numbers. Republican strategist Vin Weber calls it the “largest ideological shift in the shortest period of time inmy lifetime.” American politics has become a


back-and-forth enterprise. Some explanations for these


electoral swings are historically unique, making them difficult to generalize into principles. The po- litical damage of the Iraq war and the response to Hurricane Katrina was specific to the Bush adminis- tration. Itwaspoliticallydisastrous for Obama to oversell the stimulus package and to focus on health- care reforminstead of job creation. Democrats miscalculated that the economic crisis presented a New Dealmoment—a chance to expand the social safety net and increase the progressivity of the tax system. Actually, most people just wanted the economy improved. And Obama himself turned out


to be a surprisingly poor politician. He has shown little ability either to explain his economic theory—can anyone describe Obamaism? — or


RICHARDCOHEN


The Palin genie T


he mind of the demagogue is a foreign country. It has a strange culture, enemies that


only the natives can see, a passion about the ridiculous and a blow- torch kind of sincerity that inciner- ates logical thinking. On Sunday, the custodian of one such blow- torch was on FoxNews. Iamspeak- ing, of course, of Sarah Palin. She was charming, amusing and


believable. When Chris Wallace asked her about any presidential ambitions, she did not coyly say that she had not given the matter any thought. Instead, she said that if her party needed her, if her coun- try needed her, if the need for her was truly great, then she would sacrifice her freedom of movement, the privacy she enjoys with her family — never mind their tabloid lifestyle and addiction to publicity — and give it all up and run for president. All over the nation, a fair number of Republicans reached for the antacid. Oy! A Palin presidential candidacy,


Politico tells us,wouldgive theGOP establishment a near-fatal case of hives. The leadership generally considers her to be both un- electable and uneducable. (She seems hardly better informed than whenshe was a lone sentry, binocu- lars trained on nearby — and fore- warned — Russia.) A recent Post- ABCNews poll showed that only 39 percent of voters viewed her favor- ably and a still lower figure, 27 percent, considered her qualified to be president. (Who are these peo- ple?) But as Republican leaders know, Palin’s numbers are much higher among their own rank and file. With conservative Republi- cans, 55 percent think she’s quali- fied to be president — and among Tea Party types, she wins by accla- mation. The nomination, please. JohnMcCain’s little joke is turn-


ing out not to be so funny. In choos- ingPalin as hisrunningmate,heset a standard for political reckless- ness that I hope will never be bet- tered. Still, it would be reckless in itself to transferMcCain’s cynicism to Palin. This is the constant mis- takemadewith alldemagogues.We think that they cannot be serious or sincere—that ifwecould be a flyon the wallwewould hear them mock- ing their own followers as imbecil- ic.History teaches otherwise. Palin’s Sunday performance was


KLMNO


EZ RE


A19 EUGENEROBINSON


to show empathy for the suffering. Hehasmanagedthedifficult feat of deflating his supporters while en- ergizing his critics, seeming too compromised and too extreme at the same time. But there are broader lessons to


be drawn. These rapid shifts are a warning to political commenta- tors: Don’t overinterpret a given political moment. While the ideo- logical predispositions of most Americans are pretty well set, two factors still vary greatly from elec- tionto election—ideological inten- sity and the support of indepen- dents. Both political parties have proved capable of exciting their bases, appealing to independents and securing decisivemajorities— and of squandering all these ad- vantages quickly.At least innation- al politics, no future political out- come is predestined by current trends, demographics or other tools of tarot punditry. The Car- ville-like book of political predic- tions is a roulette guess, black or red. Either party can dominate — or fail. These swings also hint at a


deeper dynamic. The velocity of political change seems to be in- creasing, propelled by information technology and a breathless, polar- ized media. Political time has be- come compressed. The interval be- tween hero worship and humilia- tion has narrowed. The pace of disillusionment has quickened. Americans, alongwith Thomas Jef- ferson, may like a little rebellion now and then. But indulged too frequently, the habit seems more like instability.And theworld is left to wonder about the consistency, even the coherence, of American economic and foreign policy. Above all, this recent history


should provide lessons for thewin- ners. Even decisive victories are fragile. Majorities are built with the support of both partisans and independents. Results are ulti- mately more important than puri- ty. Ideological overreach provokes a backlash. In the current case, there is a genuine uprising in favor of fiscal responsibility and job-cre- ating growth — but there is no mandate for the deconstruction of the modern state. The first revolu- tion will be hard enough. Following a large political victo-


ry, however, it is easier to drink deeply and dream.Whichmakes it likely that someone will write: “The Permanent Tea Party Majori- ty.”


michaelgerson@washpost.com


Decoding the Tea Party’s ire


T ASSOCIATED PRESS


AUPS plane is isolated atNewark airport on Friday after reports of suspicious packages on cargo planes.


ANNEAPPLEBAUM Al-Qaeda: Fading threat?


sives as printer cartridges, inserted them into packages, and smuggled them onto cargo planes bound for the United States. The packages are clearly the work of some- one with expertise: The president’s coun- terterrorism adviser, John Brennan, has declared that “The individualwho has been making these bombs . . . is a very dangerous individual, clearly somebodywho has a fair amount of training and experience.” Nowhere is the goodnews:The explosive


H


chemical inserted into the package was PETN, pentaerythritol tetranitrate. PETN was first synthesized in 1891, was patented in Germany in 1912 and has been in use sinceWorldWar I. PETNhas been around a long time, in otherwords—and it still isn’t that easy forwould-be terrorists tomanipu- late. PETN was the explosive that the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, failed to set off in 2001. PETN was also the explosive which the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Ab- dulmutallab, failedto set off lastChristmas. These latest bombs may also have failed: They seem to have been configured as “cellphone”bombs,notasordinarypackage bombs, yet no phone signal would have been able to reach them over the Atlantic. Investigators are still trying to understand howthebombsweremeant tobedetonated. But it is possible that they simply didn’t work as planned. PETN, in other words, isn’t a weapon of


mass destruction. It can take down a plane, but not a city. It requires “a fair amount of training and experience” to deploy, but not advanced degrees in chemistry or physics. It is far from fail-safe.Which is exactly my point: If al-Qaeda terrorists are stuffing PETN into underwear or packages, that must mean that they do not have access to cutting-edge biological research or nuclear bomb components. On the contrary, they remain strangely fixated on airplanes and far behind the technological times. Clearly, this latest incarnation of al-


instructive. This was the show in whichshe said that theCBSaffiliate in Anchorage, KTVA, is staffed by “corrupt bastards.” This demure protest from the Evita of the North was a response to a tape in which the station’s staffers were over- heard saying they would look for a child molester at a campaign stop for senatorial candidate JoeMiller, whom Palin endorsed. “You know that of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender,” one of the staffers said. Case closed. But hold on. How do you find a


sex offender in a crowd? Do you go from person to person asking, “S’cuse me, but are you a sex offend- er?” Because if that is not done, then I can’t see how you can ever find one. Do sex offenders wear special uniforms? No. It’s obvious then that these staffers were joking —playing into the Palin stereotype of them as liberal hacks who would do anything to destroy her. This is what she believes and she recited the story with such obvious convic- tion that when she ended with the “corrupt bastards” tag, it seemed downright appropriate. The fierce stupidity of this wom-


an is hard to comprehend. It is the well from which she draws her political sustenance. It explains why she did not pause to wonder about the tape and the sheer im- practicality of finding a sex offend- er in a crowd. This sincerity, un- complicated by any sophistication whatsoever, is what fuels her con- siderable charisma. The fact that KTVAis only a CBS affiliate and the staffers not CBS employees did not give Palin pause. To her, this was Katie Couric’s CBS, the network she thinks so unfairly skewered her by asking, for instance, what newspa- pers she reads. It’s all a seamless conspiracy of them — they and them and those and them and all those eliteswho. . . she’ll show ’em. The Republican establishment,


so supine when McCain made his choice and so gleeful when Palin attacked Democrats, cannot get this particular genie back in the bottle. Palin has become a force, and anyone who watched her Sun- day had to conclude that she might well run for president.The polls say she can’t win. I betcha Palin thinks she can’t lose.


cohenr@washpost.com


Qaeda is not benign: Islamic fundamental- ist terrorism remains a threat, and the


DAVIDIGNATIUS


A foe learns and adapts B


ehind the latest terrorism plots is an al-Qaeda leadership that is getting bat- tered in Pakistan but that is determined


to strike back wherever it can — using a dispersed network and new tactics that are harder to detect. The package bombs sent last week from


Yemen are one face of al-Qaeda’s continuing campaign. The Yemeni operatives are nimble, adaptive and “frustratingly clever,” says a U.S. counterterrorism official. “They have one main goal, which is tomess with us.” The Yemen-based operations came as intel-


ligence officials were struggling to disrupt another al-Qaeda plot to launch Mumbai- style attacks in European cities. Officials say that plan involved roughly 25 al-Qaeda terror- ists, organized into cells of perhaps three to five members who would stage roving as- saults in one or more European cities. Of the 25, about 10 have been captured or killed, according to a second U.S. official. While these operations are tactically sepa-


rate, officials say they both reflect a secret mid-2009 directive froman embattled Osama bin Laden to his followers to demonstrate that al-Qaeda could still do damage. For U.S. officials, these latest terror plots


have been a grimreminder that there’s a long fight ahead against al-Qaeda, with no “quick fixes” available. Defense isn’t enough: The explosives sent from Yemen can’t be detected by conventional X-ray screening or sniffer dogs, so stopping these plots requires good intelligence, as was the case last week when Saudi Arabia tipped the United States about the package bombs. Nobody wants to say so publicly, but the


lesson of the past fewweeks, forme at least, is that one of these days the terrorists will succeed—and people should be prepared for that likelihood. The greatest damagewon’t be the attack itself but the public response. The Yemeni plotters saw the frenzy produced by their failed Christmas Day bombing attempt on a flight to Detroit. They must be hoping now, with the package bombs, to disrupt cargo-handling around theworld and damage a fragile global economy. As the CIA has stalked al-Qaeda over the


past two years, this has been a story of punch and counterpunch, of escalating U.S. drone attacks over Pakistan’s tribal areas and defi- ant al-Qaeda responses. As the senior U.S. official says, this is a “learning enemy” that


ere is the bad news: Last week, terrorists linked to an al-Qaeda cell in Yemen disguised powerful explo-


terrorists responsible for this latest attempt appear to be looking for weaknesses in the international aviationsystem.One day they may succeed. Yet although they are danger- ous, although they are ruthless, these pack- age bombs prove that al-Qaeda, at least in its desert hideouts on the Arabian Peninsu- la, does not pose a serious, existential security challenge to theUnited States. There are plenty of such challenges


around. Nuclear technology has spread to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, among others. Radioactive chemicals are widely available — and have indeed been used, probably by Russian agents, in the poison- ing of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 — as are other forms of poisongas.The recent discovery of Stuxnet, a computerwormdesignedtotarget critical infrastructure, might also herald the com- ing of the age of cyberwarfare. Already, hundreds ofwhat appear to be coordinated attacks on sensitive cybertargets in the United States and Europe are repulsed every week, and many seem to come from Russia or China. Richard Clarke, one of Brennan’s predecessors, has written that China has “systematically done all the things a nationwould do if it contemplated having an offensive cyber war capability,” even if doesn’t intend to launch such a war right now. It’s a list that needn’t frighten anybody,


but it should lend some perspective to the debate about al-Qaeda, Yemen, airport and cargo security that will surely follow this week’smidtermelections. If thebestal-Qae- da’s remaining cells can do is hide PETN, a 19th-century explosive, inside a printer car- tridge, then perhaps we have already suc- ceeded—farmorethanweusuallyrealize— in destabilizing at least this particular ter- rorist threat.Weshouldcontinuetosupport the security services and counterterrorism experts who prevented this tragedy and who will prevent others. But we shouldn’t letal-Qaedatake toomuchpublicattention, diplomaticenergyandgovernment funding fromthemore complicated, andmore dan- gerous, challenges of the future. applebaumletters@washpost.com


he first African American presi- dent takes office, and almost im- mediatelywe see the birth of a big,


passionate national movement — over- whelmingly white and lavishly funded — that tries its best to delegitimize that president, seeks to thwart his every initiative, and manages to bring the discredited and moribund opposition party roaring back to life. Coincidence? Not a chance. But also not that


simple. First, I’ll state the obvious: It’s not


racist to criticize President Obama, it’s not racist to have conservative views, and it’s not racist to join the Tea Party. But there’s something about the nature and tone of themost vitriolic attacks on the president that I believe is distinctive — and difficult to explain without ask- ing whether race is playing a role. One thing that struck me from the


beginning about theTeaParty rhetoric is the idea of reclaiming something that has been taken away. At a recent campaign rally in Pad-


ucah,Ky., Senate candidate Rand Paul, a darling of theTea Partymovement, drew thunderous applause when he said that if Republicans win, “we get to go to Washington and take back our govern- ment.” Take it back from whom? Maybe he


thinks it goeswithout saying, becausehe didn’t say. On Sunday, in a last-minute fundrais-


ing appeal, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee implored his supporters to help “return American government to the American people.” Again, who’s in possession of the


government, if not the American peo- ple? The non-American people? The un-American people? There’s anobvious answer, but it’s one


that generally comes from the progres- sive end of the political spectrum:Amer- icans must fight to take back their government from the lobbyists and big-money special interests that shape our laws to suit their own interests, not for the good of the nation. That may be what some Tea Partyers


have in mind, but the movement hasn’t seen fit to make campaign finance reform one of its major issues. And the establishment Republicans who are surfing theTeaPartywave—while at the same time scheming to co-opt themove- ment — would view the idea of taking money out of politicswith horror, if they thought itmight actually happen. So who stole the government? What


makes some people feelmore disenfran- chised now than they were, say, during the presidency of GeorgeW. Bush? After all, it was Bush who inherited a


budget surplus and left behind a suffo- cating deficit — I’m not being tenden- tious, just stating the facts. It was Bush who launched twowarswithoutmaking any provision in the budget to pay for them, who proposed and won an expen- sive new prescription-drug entitlement without paying for it, who bailed out irresponsibleWall Street firms with the $700 billion TARP program. Bush was vilified by critics while he


adapts its tools and tactics as the West alters its defenses. To understand the latest news, it helps to


scroll back to early 2008. The CIA gathered intelligence that al-Qaeda leaders were re- grouping, forming new alliances and plan- ning newoperations in theWest. At that time, the CIA’s attacks from Predator drones were sporadic, and Pakistan was consulted before each attack. So the Bush administration escalated the


drone attacks inmid-2008.Now, Pakistanwas given only “concurrent” notification,which in practice meant it was informed after the drone had launched itsmissile.Moreover, the CIA was authorized to strike targets that had a “signature” of terrorist activity, rather than a precise identification. President Obama has increased the tempo of Predator attacks even more. The drone attacks have pounded al-Qaeda


and killed key members of its leadership. Bin Laden reacted with his mid-2009 directive, which the U.S. official summarizes this way: “Undertake operations however and wherev- er you can.We need to prove ourselves again.” Specifically, bin Laden directed operatives to plan assaults in Europe similar to theNovem- ber 2008 attacks that killed about 175 people and terrifiedMumbai. The United States and its European allies


have been working hard to disrupt the Mumbai copycat operations. Since the third week of August, the CIA has conducted more than 40 drone attacks on the tribal areas, more than in all of 2008. A British national was killed in Pakistan in September, and two Germans inOctober.Other plotters have been arrested in Europe and Pakistan. Officials say they can’t be sure yetwhether the terror plans have been shelved. A similar escalation is likely in Yemen,with


soldiers from the U.S. Joint Special Opera- tionsCommandworkingwith Yemeni govern- ment forces. The JSOC sums up its lethal approach with the phrase “find, fix, finish,” but aU.S. official says it has been hard to keep track of al-Qaeda targets in Yemen’s tribal villages and cities. The reality is that the adversary that


declared war on the United States in 1996 is still active — morphing and mobilizing even as it is hunted by America and its allies. It’s a nasty fight, and it’s far fromover. davidignatius@washpost.com


was in office but notwith the suggestion that somehowthe government had been seized or usurped — that it had fallen into hands that were not those of “the American people.” Yet this is the Tea Party suggestion about Obama. Underlying all the Tea Party’s issues


and complaints, it appears to me, is the entirely legitimate issue of the relation- ship between the individual and the federal government. Butwhywould this concern about oppressive, intrusive gov- ernment become so acute now? Why didn’t, say, government surveillance of domestic phone calls and e-mails get the constitutional fundamentalists all worked up? I have to wonder what it is about


Obama that provokes and sustains all this Tea Party ire. I wonder how he can be seen as “elitist,” when he grew up in modest circumstances—hismotherwas on food stamps for a time—and paid for his fancy-pants education with student loans. I wonder how people who genu- inely cherish the American dream can look at aman who lived that dreamand feel no connection, no empathy. I askmyself what’s so different about


Obama, and the answer is pretty obvi- ous: He’s black. For whatever reason, I think thismakes some people unsettled, anxious, even suspicious — witness the willingness of somany to believe absurd conspiracy theories about Obama’s birthplace, his religion and even his absent father’s supposed Svengali-like influence fromthe grave. Obama hasmademistakes that right-


ly cost himpolitical support. But I can’t help believing that the Tea Party’s rise was partly due to circumstances beyond his control — that he’s different from other presidents, and that the difference is his race.


The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today at www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.


on washingtonpost.com 6


For commentary on Tuesday’s elections, visit our PostPartisan


blog throughout the day at www.washingtonpost.com/post-partisan.


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