Voting rights

Jeffrey Toobin praises Eric Holder's defense of the right to vote for all Americans, including non-Republicans.

This is a chance for Holder to define his legacy as Attorney General—as something more than the guy who tried, and failed, to have Guantánamo Bay detainees tried in federal court in New York. There is a purity, a simplicity, about the voting-rights fight that is sadly absent from many modern civil-rights battles. This is not about special privileges, or quotas, or even complex mathematical formulae. It’s about a basic right of American citizenship, which is being taken from large numbers of people for the most cynical of reasons. The laws are, quite literally, indefensible—so Holder ought to make the states that have them try to defend them. That would be a legacy that would make any Attorney General, and any American, proud.

Read, as they say on the Intubes, the whole thing.

Horse trading and pragmatic solutions

The GOP thinks they got a pony. Instead, Obama and Biden read their opponents well, recognizing that visions of estate tax sugarplums and an extended tax cut for the GOP's biggest donors would make McConnell and his leadership misty-eyed and allow Obama to get the biggest part of the stimulus he wanted. This is fascinating.

The administration’s original wish list included the 13 months of extended federal unemployment compensation for people out of jobs for a long time and the extended tax credits for the working poor, college students and lower-income families with children. But the White House was pessimistic that Republicans would go along with the tax credits for lower-income people.

Indeed, the Republicans’ resistance to Mr. Obama’s signature tax cut — the “Making Work Pay” payroll tax reduction that was part of his original 2009 economic stimulus package — forced the administration team to look for an alternative.

The late-hour substitute on Sunday was the proposal for a reduction of two percentage points in employees’ 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax for 2011. A payroll-tax holiday has been an idea on Mr. Obama’s table for months, but he and Congressional Democrats always pushed it aside, given concerns that voters, especially older people, would see it as taking revenues that are supposed to pay for Social Security benefits.

But pushing the idea all along was Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and his counselor Gene Sperling, a former top economic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. Last Friday, the report that the unemployment rate had inched up to 9.8 percent gave new impetus to the administration’s push — and to Mr. Biden’s talks with Mr. McConnell.

By Sunday night, the two sides had agreed to a two-year extension of all the Bush tax rates in return for the unemployment aid and a payroll-tax holiday. The final negotiations came down to Republicans’ demand for a generous new estate-tax formulation — and the White House’s insistence on extending the package of tax breaks for low- and middle-income students, workers and families with children.

Those tax breaks came to be called “the refundables” because eligible taxpayers would get a tax refund check for any amount that exceeded their actual income-tax liability. Republicans generally oppose refundable tax credits, considering it, in effect, welfare spending. But they saw the talks as a golden opportunity to win an estate-tax agreement that had eluded them even when they controlled Congress and the White House.

On Monday morning, Mr. Biden met with Mr. Obama in the Oval Office before the president left for a day trip to Winston-Salem, N.C., to speak about education. Mr. Obama told him to give Mr. McConnell an ultimatum.

“My strong instinct is that we make the deal if we can,” the president said. But, he added, to accept Republicans’ estate tax break “would be too heavy a lift.”

Mr. Biden returned to his West Wing office and called Mr. McConnell.

“We will not do the estate tax without the other stuff,” he told him, according to officials. “There’s just no deal without the refundables. Won’t do it.”

Mr. McConnell did not call Mr. Biden back with an answer until 5 p.m., after consulting with other Republicans. “We have the deal,” Mr. McConnell said.

And, fortunately for Obama, preening Republicans are a little slow on the uptake.

And, loathe as I am to admit it, I think Sullivan is right on this one. Obama was elected as a pragmatist who was willing to take on hard issues. He's done it with health care. He's thinking about Iraq and Afghanistan in strategic terms (as opposed to a "legacy" of freedom reigning). He's doing it with the recession.

What he's made of

Paul Krugman is shrill.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right.

The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction.

No one has shown more faith in Obama's mastery of three-dimensional chess than I, but I have never been so dispirited than I was upon hearing of his decision to implement a federal pay freeze (nothing like freezing the pay of SEC "watchdogs" already looking to get their ticket stamped for a lucrative career on Wall Street). Never mind the futility of the gesture, giving concessions to Republicans after two years of evidence that they will not respond in kind -- on the contrary, that they'll take such a concession as a sign of proof of weakness -- is like watching the victim of domestic abuse inviting the tormentor back home.

Conciliatory gestures are not going to help him with Republicans in Congress and they won't help him with so-called Independents. If he isn't willing to stake out what he believes in, than the next two years are going to be long, slow, and depressing. He may not win many battles with a Republican House and a dysfunctional Senate -- victories that may not be remotely possible against a unified opposition intent on destroying him -- but he could at least try to look like he'd prefer not to give an excellent impression of a doormat.

"Bad as Bush"

Kevin Drum articulates something I was trying to put into words during an argument I was having a couple of weeks ago.

This is, needless to say, one of the things I was thinking of yesterday when I mentioned Obama's "weak record on civil liberties." In a way, of course, it's unsurprising. Not, I think, because newly elected presidents "invariably become quite enamored of executive power once they settle into the Oval Office chair," as James Joyner says. But because newly elected presidents routinely find it almost impossible to buck a national security establishment when that establishment unanimously opposes something. And I have little doubt that the entire national security establishment of the United States (and probably a few other countries as well) is dead set against ever allowing the public to know exactly what happened at those black sites. I don't think there's a president ever elected who's been able or willing to stand up against this kind of united front.

That's not to defend Obama. It was still his decision, and it's an odious one. But until, as a country, we come to our senses on national security, it's not going to matter very much who's in the Oval Office. The system is stronger than the man.

The war is over, long live the war

It is somewhat remarkable that Barack Obama is going to fulfill a campaign promise in pulling our forces out of Iraq. Brian Katulis and Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress argue that it wasn't the surge that ended the civil war and made this pull out possible, but rather Obama's decision to set a timeline for pulling out.

A few hours before President Obama's Oval Office speech on Iraq, Brian Katulis and Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress are out with an interesting take on what's happened in that country since George W. Bush's much-debated 2007 troop surge. They argue, as others often do, that it wasn't a relatively minor boost in American troops that calmed Iraq's vicious sectarianism. But unlike most other commentators, who argue variously that the civil war had burned itself out and that the Sunni Awakening was a phenomenon unrelated to the surge, they argue that it was growing talk within American policy circles about setting a deadline for troop withdrawals that, in effect, scared the Iraqis straight:

Deadlines for a strategic redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq -- initially proposed in 2005 by leaders like former Representative Jack Murtha, championed by Democrats in Congress and candidates in the 2006 midterm elections, and outlined by the 2006 bipartisan Iraq Study Group -- all sent the important signal that Iraqis needed to take greater responsibility and ownership of their own affairs. The message that America's commitment to Iraq was not open-ended motivated forces such as the Sunni Awakenings in Anbar province to partner with the U.S. to combat Al Qaeda in 2006, a movement that began long before the 2007 surge of U.S. forces.

The message that Americans were leaving also motivated Iraqis to sign up for the country's security forces in record numbers. The "surge" of U.S. troops to Iraq was only a modest increase of about 15 percent -- and smaller if one takes into account the reduced number of other foreign troops, which fell from 15,000 in 2006 to 5,000 by 2008. In Anbar province, the most violent area, only 2,000 troops were added.

I know, I know, there will still be many opportunities for Americans (not to mention Iraqis) to die and for violence to return, but this, as VP Biden would put it, "a big fucking deal" and we should, solemnly of course, celebrate this fact.



Obama is betting that by putting a timetable for withdrawal in Afghanistan, Afghans will be similarly motivated to sort out their political quagmire.

Transformation

More and more frequently we hear pundits question the efficacy of the stimulus programs initiated by the Obama administration. Even though, according to the CBO, a million jobs were saved as a result, because we're not seeing a huge decrease in jobless claims, or because no one is building the next Grand Coulee dam, then the stimulus just doesn't feel quite real. Don't believe it.

Ultimately, even Obama's speed focused economists agreed that stimulus spending shouldn't dry up in 2010. And some Democrats were serious about investing wisely, not just spending more. So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted on $17 billion for research. House Education and Labor Committee chairman George Miller fought to save Race to the Top. And while the grid didn't get a $100 billion reinvention, it did get $11 billion after decades of neglect, which could shape trillions of dollars in future utility investments. (See 10 big recession surprises.)

It takes time to set up new programs, but now money is flowing to deliver high-speed Internet to rural areas, spread successful quit-smoking programs and design the first high-speed rail link from Tampa to Orlando. And deep in the Energy Department's basement — in a room dubbed the dungeon — a former McKinsey & Co. partner named Matt Rogers has created a government version of Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road, blasting billions of dollars into clean-energy projects through a slew of oversubscribed grant programs. "The idea is to transform the entire energy sector," Rogers says. "What's exciting is the way it fits all together."

"They Won't All Succeed"
The green industrial revolution begins with gee-whiz companies like A123 Systems of Watertown, Mass. Founded in 2001 by MIT nanotechnology geeks who landed a $100,000 federal grant, A123 grew into a global player in the lithium-ion battery market, with 1,800 employees and five factories in China. It has won $249 million to build two plants in Michigan, where it will help supply the first generation of mass-market electric cars. At least four of A123's suppliers received stimulus money too. The Administration is also financing three of the world's first electric-car plants, including a $529 million loan to help Fisker Automotive reopen a shuttered General Motors factory in Delaware (Biden's home state) to build sedans powered by A123 batteries. Another A123 customer, Navistar, got cash to build electric trucks in Indiana. And since electric vehicles need juice, the stimulus will also boost the number of U.S. battery-charging stations by 3,200%. (See how Americans are spending now.)

"Without government, there's no way we would've done this in the U.S.," A123 chief technology officer Bart Riley told TIME. "But now you're going to see the industry reach critical mass here."

So far, the jobs are slow to materialize, mostly because companies are slow to hire because of fears of a slide back in to recession. It will take time, but we will see real transformation of our economy because of the stimulus package. Trouble is, will Democrats be punished for "stimulus," even if the actual contents of the stimulus package are popular?

Dis-illusionment

Today's Krugmaniad...

The point is that Mr. Obama’s attempts to avoid confrontation have been counterproductive. His opponents remain filled with a passionate intensity, while his supporters, having received no respect, lack all conviction. And in a midterm election, where turnout is crucial, the “enthusiasm gap” between Republicans and Democrats could spell catastrophe for the Obama agenda.

Which brings me back to Ms. Warren.

The debate over financial reform, in which the G.O.P. has taken the side of the bad guys, should be a political winner for Democrats. Much of the reform, however, is deeply technical: “Maintain the requirement that derivatives be traded on public exchanges!” doesn’t fit on a placard.

But protecting consumers, ensuring that they aren’t the victims of predatory financial practices, is something voters can relate to. And choosing a high-profile consumer advocate to lead the agency providing that protection — someone whose scholarship and advocacy were largely responsible for the agency’s creation — is the natural move, both substantively and politically. Meanwhile, the alternative — disappointing supporters yet again by choosing some little-known technocrat — seems like an obvious error.

So why is this issue still up in the air? Yes, Republicans might well try to filibuster a Warren appointment, but that’s a fight the administration should welcome.

O.K., I don’t really know what’s going on. But I worry that Mr. Obama is still wrapped up in his dream of transcending partisanship, while his aides dislike the idea of having to deal with strong, independent voices. And the end result of this game-playing is an administration that seems determined to alienate its friends.

Just to be clear, progressives would be foolish to sit out this election: Mr. Obama may not be the politician of their dreams, but his enemies are definitely the stuff of their nightmares. But Mr. Obama has a responsibility, too. He can’t expect strong support from people his administration keeps ignoring and insulting.

He should have just focused on "Midnight Basketball" programs, I suppose

Jonathan Chait pushes back on the latest piece of Conventional Wisdom Inside the Beltway (CWIB), that if only Obama hadn't tried so hard to (successfully) pass so many big policy initiatives he'd be as popular as he was on election day.

Politico's big news analysis yesterday made a similar point. As this appears to be a new conventional wisdom -- Obama's big policy agenda has driven down his popularity -- it's worth considering a counterfactual: what if Obama didn't have an ambitious domestic agenda? Some downsides spring to mind immediately: he'd be abandoning his campaign platform, he'd be seen as weak and ineffectual, his base would be in full revolt. Would Republicans be less wild-eyed with rage? They were no less apoplectic at Bill Clinton even after Clinton abandoned his ambitious agenda. The conservative mood is like the sound system in Spinal Tap, always set at 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, but occasionally cranked up to 11.

He then goes on to revisit the one term of George H.W. Bush who, in the midst of a much milder recession than we have today, was attacked for lacking a domestic agenda.

Even if Obama had the political space with Democrats to abandon his campaign platform, and even if he could have enacted some non-controversial stimulus without any economic ill effects, voters would still be upset over the economy. The accusation would simply be that he's an impotent bystander to the crisis. It's certainly true that voters disapprove of the stimulus. But that's no reason to assume that Obama had any more politically expedient course of action at hand. Different world leaders have tried all sorts of domestic approaches during the economic crisis, and pretty much all of them have seen their popularity fall.

That's pretty much spot on, but I take exception with his implication that somehow a smaller stimulus package would have avoided "any economic ill effects." Truth is, the stimulus that was enacted was too weak, but it did keep the unemployment rate from rising any higher. A larger one -- a more controversial one -- likely would have helped much, much more, particularly in aid to state governments.

Anyway, I'd go further than Mr. Chait. Ever since Obama first announced his candidacy, the media has underestimated he and his team's relentless focus on the long view, and I think they're underestimating that now. The Washington press also has consistently misunderstood Obama's approach. I'm sure they think he's bullshitting them when he says he'd rather be a successful one-term president then a two-term president who fails to get anything meaningful accomplished. I don't think he is bullshitting when he says that. He and his team were also keenly aware, from the morning following that wonderful night in Grant Park, that they had an extremely limited window in which to work. Only a fool would have expected that in this economy and with a history of the president's party losing seats in midterms, that they could take their time in rolling out their agenda. They understood that momentum is all and that the largest majorities in 40 years was not going to be permanent (though I doubt they understood just how lock-step Republican opposition to...anything...would be).

The fact that within 18 months or so the administration has helped (with all props to Pelosi and Reid) push through Congress major stimulus, Lily Ledbetter, the hugely successful "cash for clunkers" program, the 60 year old dream of health care reform, the most comprehensive reform of the financial system since FDR's administration all point to indications of a very impressive first term.

But yes, that is all BIG political accomplishments. BIG, at at time when the CWIB keeps reminding us that we don't do BIG anymore. At a time when the opposition party can take advantage of the size and scope of the accomplishments and cynically manipulate ignorant voters, and that getting 61 votes for a bill is "bludgeoning." At a time when the press does little to push back on rhetoric about "socialism," "job-killing," "bank bailouts," and "death panels." At a time -- let's face it -- when the racism and unhinged hatred that had been bubbling just at the surface during the campaign, has bloomed like red algae in August.

At a time when unemployment stubbornly remains at over 9% even as the business climate steadily improves.

At a time for chrissakes, when Republicans stroke claims that Obama's very presidency is unconstitutional.

And come the August congressional recess, when the campaign season finally begins in earnest, I think much of that misrepresentation is going to start getting pushed back on in a big way. Maybe that push back doesn't prove successful, but to say that Obama's policy achievements are political failures because of poll numbers in July or because Dems may lose a seat or two in the Senate and a few more in the House is short sighted indeed.

But. Oh. Shit. I'm on the same page as Krauthammer?

Young Napolean

I shouldn't opine on military matters because even if in terms of actual experience of warfare, I'm just as experienced as this guy, I'm too ignurint about these things. And I'm usually wrong, anyhow.

Nevertheless, I will say that Doris Kearns Goodwin is certainly correct -- Lincoln did not want to fire McClellan because of the harm it might do to the Army of the Potomac.

For example, one night in 1861, Lincoln went with his secretary of state, William Seward, and his young aide John Hay to McClellan’s house. Told that the general was out, the three waited in the parlor for an hour. When McClellan arrived home, the porter told him the president was there, but McClellan passed by the parlor and climbed the stairs to his private quarters. After a half hour more, Lincoln again sent word, only to be informed that the general had gone to sleep.

Hay was enraged, writing in his diary of the “insolence of epaulettes” and “the threatened supremacy of the military authorities.” To Hay’s astonishment, Lincoln “seemed not to have noticed it specially, saying it was better at this time not to be making points of etiquette and personal dignity.” He would hold McClellan’s horse, he’d once said, if a victory could be achieved.

But, ultimately, McClellan's self-importance could not overcome his fear of his opponent (and sympathy to his opponent's cause). By process of painful elimination, Lincoln finally found the one general who had good judgment and shared Lincoln's determination to defeat the Rebels and end the shameful institution of slavery.

Crisis as opportunity

Real climate change legislation has no chance of passing the Senate before November (remember, a House version of the legislation passed, I believe, some time around the Mood Ring era). The Obama administration is under intense pressure to do something to help his beleaguered partisan colleagues facing brutal odds for re-election and this is not an issue guaranteed to do that...quite the opposite. Climate change denial is rising. Obama's poll numbers, while not sinking, are not. Congress talks jobs, jobs, jobs, while afraid to do anything for fear of Tea Party Deficit Backlash.

Meanwhile, images of underwater gushing oil sear, our "addiction" to oil, as a former president put it, continues unabated, and it's important to remember the response to Santa Barbara.

So what will he say tomorrow evening after making his fourth visit to post-Beyond Petroleum Gulf Coast? Will he use his first address from the Oval Office to lament the spills and the death of a way of life in the Gulf, then talk about new regs he will propose and demand Congress do something? Or will he really demand Congress do something and take real action on Climate Change and our dependence on oil? Marc Ambinder speculates.

If Obama went big, the political ramifications would be serious and unpredictable. The Senate and House campaign committees would plotz. He would face vociferous opposition from members of his own party; David Axelrod would have a call sheet 50 pages long from consultants who want to know whether he is out of his mind. These people want Obama to talk about jobs, and jobs only. Getting a climate bill would require both the power of presidential persuasion and a hefty amount of behind-the-scenes maneuvering. (Sherrod Brown would receive weekly phone calls from Rahm Emanuel asking him what it would take to get his vote.) There is no good political reason to go Big. (I tend to believe that the political repercussions of pressing for a climate bill would not be nearly as disadvantageous as one presumes; on the one hand, presidential approval ratings tend to influence the performance of a president's party; on the other, candidates now have a handy way to distance themselves from the president.)

But, at times, the President has different equities than members of his party. This is one of them. Figuring out how to solve this existential problem is on Obama's shoulders, not Congress's, really. Climate change denialism is rising, and no one on the President's level is fighting back. The chances of building a consensus for climate change legislation will not be helped by the addition of a few Republican senators. More vulnerable Democrats are up for re-election in 2012 than in 2010. If now isn't the right moment, there may never be a better one.

This is what Obama was elected for. No, I'm not one who assumed he would lead us to a new era of progressivity as he walked on water distributing loaves and, ironically, fishes. He's a pragmatic progressive who has effectively maneuvered through crisis after crisis, fixing and retooling a fucked up system broken by three decades of nearly uninterrupted neglect and incompetence. As with the financial meltdown he inherited, this is another crisis he has to take advantage of to remake how we think about oil dependence, the federal government's role in regulating dangerous industries, and how his administration is taking action and leading a nervous Congress to do what needs to be done now.

Who will lead the Grand Army of the Potomac?

I've been reading his memoirs as well and often pause to wonder, is there anyone out there who can serve as Obama's U.S. Grant? Would Obama recognize the one man who would fight?

Drones, murder and accountability

Little noticed, the Obama administration has greatly increased the use of drones to target al Qaeda suspects in Pakistan, so this is of more than intellectual interest.

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Thursday that he would deliver a report on June 3 to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the “life and death power” of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies. He contrasted how the military and the C.I.A. responded to allegations that strikes had killed civilians by mistake.

“With the Defense Department you’ve got maybe not perfect but quite abundant accountability as demonstrated by what happens when a bombing goes wrong in Afghanistan,” he said in an interview. “The whole process that follows is very open. Whereas if the C.I.A. is doing it, by definition they are not going to answer questions, not provide any information, and not do any follow-up that we know about.”

Mr. Alston’s views are not legally binding, and his report will not assert that the operation of combat drones by nonmilitary personnel is a war crime, he said. But the mounting international concern over drones comes as the Obama administration legal team has been quietly struggling over how to justify such counterterrorism efforts while obeying the laws of war.

In recent months, top lawyers for the State Department and the Defense Department have tried to square the idea that the C.I.A.’s drone program is lawful with the United States’ efforts to prosecute Guantánamo Bay detainees accused of killing American soldiers in combat, according to interviews and a review of military documents.

Under the laws of war, soldiers in traditional armies cannot be prosecuted and punished for killing enemy forces in battle. The United States has argued that because Qaeda fighters do not obey the requirements laid out in the Geneva Conventions — like wearing uniforms — they are not “privileged combatants” entitled to such battlefield immunity. But C.I.A. drone operators also wear no uniforms.

Progressive remake

David Leonhardt looks at the economic accomplishments of the administration and is impressed.

First came a stimulus bill that, while aimed mainly at ending a deep recession, also set out to remake the nation’s educational system and vastly expand scientific research. Then President Obama signed a health care bill that was the biggest expansion of the safety net in 40 years. And now Congress is in the final stages of a bill that would tighten Wall Street’s rules and probably shrink its profit margins.

If there is a theme to all this, it has been to try to lift economic growth while also reducing income inequality. Growth in the decade that just ended was the slowest in the post-World War II era, while inequality has been rising for most of the last 35 years.

It is far too early to know if these efforts will work. Their success depends enormously on execution and, in the case of financial regulation, specifically on the Federal Reserve, which did not distinguish itself during the housing bubble.

Already, though, one downside to the legislative spurt does seem clear. By focusing on long-term problems, Mr. Obama and the Democrats have given less than their full attention to the economy’s current weakness and turned off a good number of voters.

After months of discussion, and with the unemployment rate hovering near a 27-year high, Democratic leaders said Thursday they had finally reached agreement on a bill that would send aid to states and take other steps to increase job growth. Congress plans to vote on the bill next week. But some of the money will not be spent for months and may not be enough to affect voters’ attitudes before November’s midterm elections.

Still, the turnabout since Jan. 20 — the first anniversary of Mr. Obama’s inauguration and the day after Scott Brown, a Republican, won a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts — has been remarkable. Then, commentators pronounced the Obama presidency nearly dead. Today, he looks more like a liberal answer to Ronald Reagan.

“If you’d asked me about this administration after Scott Brown was elected, I’d have told you it was going to fizzle into virtually nothing,” said Theda Skocpol, the Harvard political scientist. “Now it could easily be one of the pivotal periods in domestic policy.” But, Ms. Skocpol added, “It will depend on what happens in the next two elections.”

Much of the changes pushed through under this administration are going to be very hard for Republicans to roll back any time soon. It's also hard to be sure how much the unemployment rate affects voters; from what I understand consumer confidence is a better gauge on voters' views on their elected officials. More likely, the very act of "reshaping the economy" is driving a lot of the inchoate dissent we're seeing. They don't understand what's happening and assume that reducing "income inequality" is akin to affirmative action.

Feeling lucky

Elections, consequences.

...Obama had come to view this debate as a proxy for the deepest, most systemic crises facing the country. It was a test, really: Could the country still solve its most vexing problems? If he abandoned comprehensive reform, he would be conceding that the United States was, on some level, ungovernable. Besides, several aides recall him saying, “I feel lucky.”

Government working

These morons aside, the Obama administration is making the case for why government matters and the press, for the most part, is disinterested. Joshua Green speaks with Stephen Chu.

An eternal fact of Washington is that government gets much more attention when it performs badly than when it performs well. As an illustration of the former, recall the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To illustrate the latter, consider how the media is covering government right now. By my count at least three major natural disasters have occurred in recent weeks: the Nashville flooding, the deadly Oklahoma tornadoes, and the BP oil spill (admittedly not "natural" but threatening to be a major environmental disaster). Let's throw in an attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, too. On every front, government has performed ably--and often better than ably. And yet it's understating things considerably to say this success has not been widely recognized.

It should be recognized, though, because when it comes to government disaster response, the Bush years marked a low point and right now we're experiencing a high point. For a vivid illustration of this disparity, look no further than the Gulf. During Katrina, FEMA director Michael Brown secured his place history as the poster boy for government incompetence. Now consider Chu, the Nobel Prize Winner who has been at BP headquarters in Houston with a team of government scientists trying to figure out how to stop the leak. According to a government official, BP initially "dismissed" Chu's gamma ray suggestion, but came back a week later and admitted "Chu's right."

The whole thing is fascinating.

Beyond Permits

It certainly comes as no surprise to find that, during the Bush administration, oil companies were given carte blanche to drill in the Gulf while scientific, environmental, and safety concerns were routinely ignored. What is distressing is that this appears to have gone largely unchanged during the current administration.

Another biologist who left the agency in 2005 after more than five years said that agency officials went out of their way to accommodate the oil and gas industry.

He said, for example, that seismic activity from drilling can have a devastating effect on mammals and fish, but that agency officials rarely enforced the regulations meant to limit those effects.

He also said the agency routinely ceded to the drilling companies the responsibility for monitoring species that live or spawn near the drilling projects.

“What I observed was M.M.S. was trying to undermine the monitoring and mitigation requirements that would be imposed on the industry,” he said.

Aside from allowing BP and other companies to drill in the gulf without getting the required permits from NOAA, the minerals agency has also given BP and other drilling companies in the gulf blanket exemptions from having to provide environmental impact statements.

Much as BP’s drilling plan asserted that there was no chance of an oil spill, the company also claimed in federal documents that its drilling would not have any adverse effect on endangered species.

The gulf is known for its biodiversity. Various endangered species are found in the area where the Deepwater Horizon was drilling, including sperm whales, blue whales and fin whales.

In some instances, the minerals agency has indeed sought and received permits in the gulf to harm certain endangered species like green and loggerhead sea turtles. But the agency has not received these permits for endangered species like the sperm and humpback whales, which are more common in the areas where drilling occurs and thus are more likely to be affected.

Tensions between scientists and managers at the agency erupted in one case last year involving a rig in the gulf called the BP Atlantis. An agency scientist complained to his bosses of catastrophic safety and environmental violations. The scientist said these complaints were ignored, so he took his concerns to higher officials at the Interior Department.

“The purpose of this letter is to restate in writing our concern that the BP Atlantis project presently poses a threat of serious, immediate, potentially irreparable and catastrophic harm to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and its marine environment, and to summarize how BP’s conduct has violated federal law and regulations,” Kenneth Abbott, the agency scientist, wrote in a letter to officials at the Interior Department that was dated May 27.

The letter added: “From our conversation on the phone, we understand that M.M.S. is already aware that undersea manifolds have been leaking and that major flow lines must already be replaced. Failure of this critical undersea equipment has potentially catastrophic environmental consequences.”

Almost two months before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, sent a letter to the agency raising concerns about the BP Atlantis and questioning its oversight of the rig.

After the disaster, Mr. Salazar said he would delay granting any new oil drilling permits.

But the minerals agency has issued at least five final approval permits to new drilling projects in the gulf since last week, records show.

Despite being shown records indicating otherwise, Ms. Barkoff said her agency had granted no new permits since Mr. Salazar made his announcement.

Heckuva job, Kenny.

Meanwhile, the full scope of this disaster is beginning to be understood even as British Petroleum continues to deny the impact, or the company's responsibility.

Constitutional scholar

Linda Greenhouse's column today, on her interpretation of Pres. Obama's "activist judges" remarks on Air Force One recently, is way too nuanced and interesting to be excerpted, but...whatever.

In that 2001 Chicago radio discussion, State Senator Obama observed that although people often described the Warren court as radical, “it wasn’t that radical.”

He continued: “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way — that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you; it says what the federal government can’t do to you; but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. One of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that.”

When the audio of those remarks suddenly and mysteriously appeared on YouTube during the 2008 presidential campaign, the right-wing blogosphere echoed with faux shockwaves along the lines of: “Obama says Warren court not radical enough.”

It is certainly possible to take issue with the president’s view of civil rights history. In fact, the civil rights movement was not fixated solely on the courts; a great deal of legislative work went into achieving such landmark statutes as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court had the wisdom to uphold against non-trivial challenges. The progress of those years might be seen in retrospect as a rare and indispensable partnership among the three branches of government.

In any event, those days are gone, and the next chapter of Supreme Court history is about to unfold. The president doesn’t think the Warren court was insufficiently radical, and he doesn’t think that all judicial activism is the same. That’s his version of the framers’ original intent, and at this moment, his view is the one that counts.

Though, really, read the whole thing. I have no clue as to who Obama will choose to replace Justice Stevens. I am confident, though, he'll choose someone who shares his overall constitution (pun intended) -- a non-ideological progressive (yes, there are such things), pragmatic, with an un-romantic view of the role of the Court. Not everyone on the left will like him or her (and, predictably, no on the right will), but I trust he'll make a solid choice.

Successful two years may not help

I rarely read Mark Halperin, but I have to admit that I was intrigued when I noticed he was actually being un-Broderishly positive about the administration's first two years.

Over the past 16 months, both Biden and Emanuel have expressed concern internally that Obama has been too bold, risking his presidency on big bets. But those disagreements with the President have been fleeting and mostly futile - and, as it happens, unwarranted. So far, most of Obama's big bets have paid off.

The health care bill's passage is, of course, the White House's signal achievement, and was accomplished without revealing the Administration's cognizance (thanks to internal polling and focus groups) of the legislation's stark unpopularity among the public. But beyond health care, Obama acted decisively to stop the world from going into economic depression, after inheriting a mess from his predecessor. Quibble all you wish about the dimensions of the stimulus law or the administration of TARP or the Detroit bailout, but the actions taken were professionally handled, apparently necessary and, so far, constructive. Strikingly underrated by the Washington press corps are Obama's gains on education policy, including a willingness to confront the education establishment on standards for both teachers and students. Overseas, Obama has snagged an arms-reduction deal with Russia, managed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq exactly as promised, eliminated numerous terrorist leaders through an aggressive targeting operation and laid the groundwork for dealing with Iran and, perhaps, North Korea. (See the five immediate benefits of health reform.)

How all that translates to the mid-terms is anyone's guess, though it is likely now a matter of how much the Dem losses can be mitigated, but everything Obama has done has been in stark contrast with how he is portrayed by his political opponents.

Defining enemy combatants

Charlie Savage has a fascinating (and, I think, generally sympathetic) look at the divides in the White House over how to define whom we are at war with. Who gets a trial? Can we take the fight beyond Afghanistan without Congressional authority? The complexity of this issue had not been a problem for the previous administration who decided that it was entirely in the president's discretion "to imprison an enemy combatant even 'a little old lady in Switzerland' who had unwittingly donated to Al Qaeda." On the contrary, in the Obama administration the debate is pitting career Justice Dept., Pentagon, and political appointee lawyers against one another.

With the president’s directions in hand, Mr. Obama’s Justice Department came back on March 13, 2009, with a more modest position than Mr. Bush had advanced. It told Judge Bates that the president could detain without trial only people who were part of Al Qaeda or its affiliates, or their “substantial” supporters. The department rooted that power in the authorization granted by Congress to use military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. And it acknowledged that the scope and limits of that power were defined by the laws of war, as translated to a conflict against terrorists.

But behind closed doors, the debate flared again that summer, when the Obama administration confronted the case of Belkacem Bensayah, an Algerian man who had been arrested in Bosnia — far from the active combat zone — and was being held without trial by the United States at Guantánamo. Mr. Bensayah was accused of facilitating the travel of people who wanted to go to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda. A judge found that such “direct support” was enough to hold him as a wartime prisoner, and the Justice Department asked an appeals court to uphold that ruling.

The arguments over the case forced onto the table discussion of lingering discontent at the State Department over one aspect of the Obama position on detention. There was broad agreement that the law of armed conflict allowed the United States to detain as wartime prisoners anyone who was actually a part of Al Qaeda, as well as nonmembers who took positions alongside the enemy force and helped it. But some criticized the notion that the United States could also consider mere supporters, arrested far away, to be just as detainable without trial as enemy fighters.

That view was amplified after Harold Koh, a former human-rights official and Yale Law School dean who had been a leading critic of the Bush administration’s detainee policies, became the State Department’s top lawyer in late June. Mr. Koh produced a lengthy, secret memo contending that there was no support in the laws of war for the United States’ position in the Bensayah case.

Mr. Koh found himself in immediate conflict with the Pentagon’s top lawyer, Jeh C. Johnson, a former Air Force general counsel and trial lawyer who had been an adviser to Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign. Mr. Johnson produced his own secret memorandum arguing for a more flexible interpretation of who could be detained under the laws of war — now or in the future.

In September 2009, national-security officials from across the government packed into the Office of Legal Counsel’s conference room on the fifth floor of the Justice Department, lining the walls, to watch Mr. Koh and Mr. Johnson debate around a long table. It was up to Mr. Barron, who sat at the head of the table, to decide who was right.

But he did not. Instead, days later, he circulated a preliminary draft memorandum stating that while the Office of Legal Counsel had found no precedents justifying the detention of mere supporters of Al Qaeda who were picked up far away from enemy forces, it was not prepared to state any definitive conclusion.

Former Bush administration officials point to this on-going debate as vindication for their decisions, but Obama officials argue, persuasively, that strict adherence to the laws of war put them light years ahead of Bush's expansive view of executive power.

It's an important debate, obviously, and one that I hope is settled long before another "strongly Unitary Executive" adherent inhabits the White House.

A muscular recess

In the furor over Obama's "muscular" use of recess appointments to overcome Senate Republicans' (and Lincoln and Nelson, such a surprise) refusal to permit the administration to fulfill its hiring needs, most of the attention has been on his choice of a member of the Labor Relations Board. I mean, Republicans have a point when they object that the president might appoint someone with whose views he agrees. But often lost is the fact that most of the recess appointments were to vitally important economic posts and were blocked because of one senator's impatience with the policing of internet gambling.