SPIN

As a compulsive news junkie, I have spent countless hours listening to the political flacks and pundits spin events within seconds of their occurrence. No happening is too important, too serious, too elevated to be trivialized by their inane speculations and self-serving interpretations. On this Christmas Eve [big play for "eve" in the NY TIMES crossword puzzle today], I find myself wondering what the spin doctors would have made of the birth of Jesus.

"This could turn out to be a real boon for the Pharisees if they play their cards right."

"I have just received a tweet from an anonymous source who says Joseph and Mary are not married. Maybe that is why they were denied a place at the inn."

"Later today we will be airing a twelve hour marathon program devoted entirely to exploring in depth the role that the media played in the impregnation of Mary."

"Peter Hart is with us by satellite phone. Peter, you have just done a focus group with some shepherds watching their flocks. What do they have to say about the birth?" "Well, Chris, as your old mentor Tip O'Neil used to say, all politics are local. The shepherds want to know, Is it good for the Jews?"



These and other irreverent thoughts went through my head as I sat in my living room at seven a.m. this morning, delaying my morning walk long enough to see the health care reform bill pass the Senate by an historic 60-39 vote [I have not been able to find out which Republican missed the vote.] Sure enough, no sooner had Vice President Joe Biden, in his role as presiding officer, announced the vote than the MSNBC and CNN talking heads started "interpreting" it for those of us presumably unable to recognize an historic moment when we see one. Right away, the mainstream media types started predicting that the victory would cost the Democrats seats next November, that the bill would be hard to "sell" to the American people, that the defection of a deeply conservative Southern Democrat betokened hard times ahead for Obama.



A little reality check, please. Obama ran on health care reform, he made health care reform his number one priority in his first year as President, he stuck to health care reform even while attempting to pull America back from the brink of a second Great Depression, and he is now one conference report away from delivering health care reform. As he himself said, "I may not be the first President to attempt health care reform, but I will be the last."



If Bush Two or Bush One or Reagan or Ford or Nixon had delivered a legislation triumph of this magnitude, the commentators would be falling over themselves announcing The Second Coming. [They still talk about Reagan that way, despite the fact that his presidency was an unrelieved disaster for the America people.]



So let us all take a deep breath and spend tomorrow reflecting on what has just been achieved. I shall go into hibernation until the conference reconciliation is completed and Pelosi and Reid have mustered, for the last time, the votes needed to pass this huge bill. Then, barely pausing for celebration, Obama and Congress will pivot to the creation of jobs, and devoted their energies to jump-starting an economic recovery.

IRONIES

It is now virtually certain that the Senate will pass the health care reform bill currently before it. We must still suffer through the agonies of the Senate-House conference, but the odds are very great that sometime before his State of the Union address to the assembled members of Congress, the President wll sign a final bill, with as much in the way of bells and whistles, flourishes and furblows, as the White House staff can manage.

When this happens, it will be an enormous political victory for Obama, regardless of the details of the bill, and a terrible defeat for the Republicans. It did not have to be this way, of course. Had the Republicans accepted Obama's offer of bipartisanship, they could have won a bill much closer to what they say they are in favor of, and they would have shared the credit, going into the off-year elections.

But that is not what they wanted. No sooner had Obama taken the oath of office than Republicans began to say, openly and unashamedly, that their primary goal was to make Obama's presidency a failure. Gambling that at least one Democratic senator would break ranks, despite Harry Reid's best efforts, and, in all likelihood, privately hoping that Robert Byrd would expire before the final vote [a hope that devoutly Christian, born-again, but terminally stupid Tom Coburn actually gave voice to on the floor of the Senate], they dug in their heels, doubled down, bullied Olympia Snowe into behaving herself, and went for broke.

The victory, should it occur, will give Obama tremendous momentum going into 2010, just in time to throw his entire administration behind an effort to create jobs.

There is no evidence of which I am aware that the majority of Republicans care two cents about health care. Some of them are in the bag to the health industry lobbies, no doubt, but that is as true of the Democrats as of the Republicans. No one is more beholden to the health care insurance industry than Joe Lieberman, the "Senator from Hartord," as he is referred to, but even he, in the end, has gotten on board, after extracting some concessions for the industry that owns him.

If it comes to pass [he says, crossing the eight fingers with which he is not typing], it will be an extraordinary vindication for Obama's style of governing. And the Republiocans will have given it to him.

Historically, it has been conservatives, not radicals, who cherished ironies, but these days, one must get one's pleasures where one can.

THE HEALTH CARE REFORM PROCESS, YET AGAIN

While Harry Reid and his Gang of Ten await the CBO scoring on the latest complex compromise proposal, it might be well to pause for a moment and reflect on how this enormously important debate has developed in the past eight months or more.

It was obvious to virtually everyone, when it began, that the process would be lengthy, contentious, tedious, complex, and fraught with political manoeuvres and dangers. Five House committees, two or three Senate committees, all debating a fundamental reorientation of one seventh of the entire American economy. Nothing this complex has been attempted in generations.

At the very beginning of the process, the Republicans made a decision. Since they are not stupid -- vicious, perhaps, despicable, undoubtedly, deeply in debt to special corporate interests, inevitably, but not stupid -- I assume the decision was conscious, calculated, deliberate, and much debated in Republican circles. The decision was to try to destroy the Obama presidency by doing everything in their power to defeat any attempt at health care reform, virtually regardless of its content. They knew that they could muster forty votes in the Senate, and it was quite unclear whether Harry Reid could hold a fractious coalition of fifty-eight Democrats and two Independents. [Remember that at this point, it was not yet clear whether Al Franken would prevail in his Senate contest].

So, despite the exhausting efforts of MaxBaucus to secure a bi-partisan coalition in his committee, the Republicans steadfastly voted against everything.

And the result? They have rendered themselves completely irrelevant to the process of negotiating a final bill. Despite their endless posturing on the floor of the Senate, despite the Tea Baggers and the disruptions in summer town hall meetings, they have completely closed themselves out of the crafting of the final bill. There is no doubt that, had they chosen to engage in genuine bi-partisan negotiations, they could have played an important role in writing the bill. But they chose instead to gamble on bringing Obama down.

Now, all of this is rather new even to folks like myself who are obsessed with politics. But it cannot have been at all new to the senior members of the Republican Senate caucus. They must have been quite well aware that their chosen strategy guaranteed them no input into the bill finally brought to a vote before the two houses of Congress. They were even willing to desert their corporate patrons, who may have been counting on them to make the final bill friendlier to corporate interests. Their lust for the kill, for destroying the Obama presidency in its first year, took precedence over everything else.

And so we have the spectacle, now, of intense negotiations being conducted entirely among -- Democrats. To be sure, corporate interests are hardly unrepresented in those closed meetings. But the absence of any Republicans at the table tilts the balance of forces markedly leftward of where it would have been otherwise.

Will the Republican gamble pay off? Will they, at the last moment, peel away Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman or Evan Bayh or Mary Landrieu? I think it is clear that the answer is no. The momentum is so great now to pass something that the most those people can do is to push the bill marginally to the right.

Think what this will mean. First, it will be, and will be seen as, an enormous victory for Obama. Hence, the Republicans will have lost. Second, a wide variety of extremely important reforms and changes will have been enacted, whatever the final shape of the bill. Everyone has agreed to stop insurance companies from denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. Everyone has agreed that thirty million or more Americans now uninsured will become insured. There are countless other good things in the proposed legislation that are not even in dispute.

Fascinating.

AFGHANISTAN

The word in the media is that Obama has decided to send about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He will make a speech to the nation on December 1 [next Tuesday] announcing the decision. It is not difficult to figure out what he will say. He will lay down, firm, inflexible markers of success. He will say that if the Kharzai regime has not made major advances in combating corruption and establishing a legitimate government in six months, he will begin the withdrawal of American troops. He will say that in any case, he is prepaqred to commit troops for only five years, after which they must be totally withdrawn. And he will say that the focus of the mission of the troops will be on counteracting Al Qaida, not on fighting the Taliban.

And he will mean every word of it.

So Kharzai will make some head fakes in the direction of dealing with corruption. [Will he really put his brother in prison? I doubt it.] The Taliban will continue to expand their sphere of influence. [Just today there are reports that they have opened operations in an area of Afghanistan that the Americans had thought was secure.] And inevitably, American casualties will rise.

But the blood of these men and women will be on Obama's hands, not on Bush's hands, for with the escalation, the war will become Obama's war. Six months from now, no real progress will have been made, but there will be some Potemkin Village successes to which the generals will point. What is more, when they ask for more troops, to protect those already there, how will Obama say no? After all, it will be he who chose to send them there.

This is wrong, wrong wrong. It is a mistake of monumental proportions. And all the deliberateness of decision making, all the lines drawn in the sand, all the time lines and deadlines and inflexible conditions will not make it anything but a mistake.

I have seen this movie before, and the sequel was Richard Nixon.

MIXED SIGNALS

On Wednesday, I watched the Fort Hood ceremonies, including Obama's speech. It was moving, beautifully crafted, a splendid performance. But as I listened, a thought I saw something that sent a cold chill up my spine -- a gifted, dedicated man who had run as a candidate committed to domestic change and progress, but who was becoming transformed into a war-time president by the pressure of events. I was very fearful that the terrible burden of being responsible for sending men and women into combat had changed him. I do not for a moment think he wants to be a wartime president, as George W. Bush clearly did, but he may think that he has no alternative.

Then, today, I read reports that Obama has rejected all four alternatives for Afghanistan as presented by his advisers, and demands to know what the "off ramps' are for our involvement there -- this coming on the day that Ambassador Eikenberry's extremely negative report was leaked to the press.

There is really nothing at this point for us to do but wait and see how it comes out. I continue to believe that his presidency hangs in the balance.

MORE BAD METAPHORS

Now that the elections are behind us, my grandchildren's pictures have been posted, and other such matters have been blogged about, it is necessary to return to the really important issue that pends: the situation in Afghanistan. There are reports from unnamed sources [as always] that Obama is considering changing the mission to the training of Afghan security forces and sending ten to fifteen thousand additional troops in pursuit of that mission.

This is madness, folly, a terrible waste of lives and resources. If he chooses this course of action, I would be willing to bet my entire modest savings that the following sequence of events will unfold: First, the troops will be sent and the mission will be changed. Then the Taliban [or other parties] will mount attacks on the training bases, and U.S. service men and women will lose their lives. In response, the generals in the field will state [publicly, since the tradition of civilian control of the military seems to have died away] that they need more troops to protect those engaged in the training. Obama, having chosen to send those trainers, will believe that he has no choice but to comply. How can he not give the troops he has sent in harm's way whatever they need to be protected while they do the job he sent them to do? A year from now, very little will have changed in Afghanistan, despite much brave talk about "benchmarks" and "metrics" of "success." But there will be 100,000 American troops there, not 68,000. And from then on, no matter what he says or hopes or dreams, Obama's presidency will be about Afghanistan.

This training mission is repeatedly described as "giving the Afghan forces the tools they need to maintain security." Think for a moment about that metaphor -- "the tools they need." We are to suppose that the Afghans are trying to clear a forest with axes, which is very difficult, so we will send them chain saws, which will make things go better. Or, they are communicating with one another by dixie cups attached to strings, and we will give them field radios, which will improve their ability to talk to oneanother.

Now the people the Afghan government forces are supposed to fight have a good deal less in the way of sophisticated equipment, and they have had the benefit of little or no formal training. Yet they regularly defeat the government forces, even when those forces are supported by U.S. air power and artillary ["tools" that the Taliban totally lack.] How can that be? Put this way, the question virtually answers itself. The Taliban [or the Iraqi militants, or the American Colonials, for that matter] have chosen to fight, and they have got their hands on enough weapons to do great harm. The Afghan forces are hired guns, not terribly enthusiastic about getting killed in the service of a corrupt government and an occupying great power. All the traning manuals written by American generals with Ph. D.'s cannot change these facts.

Now, it is no doubt true that with sufficient force, America can rule Afghanistan, either directly, or through a puppet government in Kabul. But experience teaches that to accomplish this dubious end, we would have to: (a) commit vastly more troops, (b) stay for as long as we want Afghanistan to be ruled, and (c) be willing to kill as many Afghan men, women, and children as it takes to oppress them successfully.

I know that Obama did not have a typical African-American upbringing, but surely he is familiar with the story about Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.