Tampa Red

The Economist ruthlessly hammers Mitt Romney because of his flip-flops (that's far too small a word. He's undergone a complete conscience transplant since serving as Massachusetts governor) and the vagueness of his economic plan, concluding:

Mr Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: the faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?

It is not too late for Mr Romney to show America’s voters that he is a man who can lead his party rather than be led by it. But he has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.

What Passes For Courage

The Economist calls Rep. Paul Ryan "a brave man" for his deficit reduction plan. I'm astonished by what passes for courage among pundits. The accolades he received when he died notwithstanding, Sen. Ted Kennedy wasn't brave for voting for massive government spending as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. What would've been risky for Ryan, as a tea party-supported congressman from a conservative district, would've been backing entitlement reform with means testing, prudent post-Cold War defense procurement cuts, and some new revenues, if only by closing appalling loopholes -- in other words, by supporting Simpson-Bowles. But no. As the Economist itself writes:

Mr Ryan was...wrong to vote against the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission, which he did on the grounds that it wanted to close the deficit partly through an increase in tax revenues. He believes that the gap should be closed wholly through spending cuts. Because Mr Ryan, in true Republican fashion, wants to increase spending on defence, everything else—poverty relief, transport infrastructure, environmental protection and education, for instance—will have to be squeezed intolerably.

Playing to the GOP's stingy base, which demands cuts for the poor and uninterrupted federal goodies for itself, is about as edgy as wearing a Yankees jersey in the Bronx. Of course Barack Obama didn't have the guts to accept the commission's recommendations, either, and it was his commission. At the moment there appears to be more courage at the weekly meeting of the St. John's Boy Scout troop than on the major parties' tickets.

What's A Little "Enemy" Between Friends?

I love the can-do optimism that usually pervades the Economist. In this case, I hope its correspondent is right in blaming a crude boilerplate denunciation of Israel on Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood men instead of him:

[T]he apparent immovability of seasoned officials still running the lumbering bureaucracy can prove embarrassing. When Egypt’s embassy in Israel responded to a Happy Ramadan note from Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, with a faxed thank you letter in the name of his Egyptian counterpart wishing peace upon the people of Israel, Mr Morsi’s office swiftly denied he had communicated in any way with what the Brothers regard as “the Zionist enemy”.

More Rungs On Jacob's Ladder

Even in the digital age, a group of pilgrims in Israel and the West Bank is likely to end up feeling set apart from the world – hermeneutically sealed, you might say. Are those Crusader or Byzantine ruins atop Mt. Tabor in Galilee, or a combination of both (which is usually the right answer)? The cassocked monk who just brushed by us in Jerusalem's old city -- Armenian or Greek Orthodox? Does any of Queen Helena's 4th century building remain in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (yes, or so we were told; the center arch in the photo above)?

It's not that we didn't go on-line. But when we visited Wikipedia, it was to learn more about the history of the Freres Blanc, custodians of St. Anne’s Church and the pools of Bethesda, and to try to figure out which of the eight purported sites of the biblical Emmaus we had actually visited on Saturday morning.

We weren’t totally hermetic in our coenobiticality. News of pastoral crises quickly reached us – two friends’ unplanned hospital visits, another’s home being threatened by fire in Colorado Springs. We also heard in real time about the political firestorm sparked by the Supreme Court's health care opinion. But what I didn't learn until we were en route to LAX (and I opened the new issue of the Economist that had materialized on my Kindle) was that the walls bordering one of the sites we visited last week in Nablus on the West Bank, Jacob’s Well, had recently been shot up, the result of internecine Palestinian tensions.

The incident notwithstanding, I'm glad we didn't skip our Jacob's Well stop, which proved to be a favorite for several of our St. John's pilgrims. Because of Palestinian Authority reforms and improving economic conditions, the West Bank has been peaceful for the last few years. When there is talk these days of a third intifada, or popular uprising, it's about the chances of an armed struggle within the Palestinian movement between Fatah, which is working constructively with Israel, and Hamas, still officially dedicated to Israel's demise:

“There is no political horizon,” say disgruntled Palestinians. They increasingly question the point of the PA. It has failed to usher in a Palestinian state, and appears powerless to prevent Israeli military incursions or the relentless expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. “All the windows are closed, and the political elite has no keys to open them,” says Raid Nairat, an academic. The West Bank’s 30,000 security forces seem unkeen on a recent quest for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas that would force them to share power. Their recent round-up of 150 Hamas men helped dampen hopes of a deal.

So there are some more roadblocks on the peace highway, more rungs on Jacob's ladder. It's hard to imagine Fatah and Hamas sharing power (until their goals converge), Israel making a deal with just Fatah (since it would reasonably assume that Hamas would undermine it), and Israel making a deal with a united Fatah and Hamas (unless Hamas permanently renounces jihad against Israel). A Palestinian civil war might actually be welcomed by those who think it would take the pressure off Israel to make peace. Better to hope that Hamas will be pulled to the center by its ongoing nation-building work in Gaza and the election of a Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt who is fully committed to the peace process.

Who Will Be The GDP President?

Republicans are hammering President Obama over the economy's anemic 2.2% annual growth rate, not that they necessarily have any better ideas. Donald Trump advocates more domestic energy production (although drilling is through the roof under Obama) and punishing China with a 25% trade tariff, even though protectionism causes depressions. The Economist says steady in the buggy:

During the first three years after the 1981-82 recession, the economy grew above 3% in 11 of 12 quarters and at greater than 5% in 7 of 12. Eleven quarters into this recovery, the economy has managed 3% or better only four times and has yet to reach 4%. But America's underlying fundamentals look increasingly strong. A gridlocked Congress and an inflation-averse Federal Reserve may try to gum up the works. But this morning's disappointing number is by no means a reason for despair.

Trump's right that stronger economic growth cures countless ills -- unemployment, deficits, debt, even Social Security and Medicare's woes. There would be less social and cultural anxiety as well. I plan to vote for the GDP president. Who will he be?

Ted Kennedy's Legacy

The Economist sums up the arguments being presented before the Supreme Court this week for and against the individual mandate, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's health care reform:

The challengers have simplicity on their side. They argue that Congress cannot compel individuals to buy something. Its powers are only those enumerated in the constitution. Let Congress regulate inactivity, challengers say, and there will be no limit to its meddling.

Mr Obama’s lawyers must rely on a more complex chain of reasoning. America’s huge health sector, they point out, is dysfunctional. People with pre-existing health conditions pay extortionate rates for their insurance, if they can get it at all. In part because of this, some 50m people have no insurance cover; yet many of them receive emergency care they cannot pay for. This raises the cost to everyone else; by an average of about $1,000 each year per family, the government argues.

The health law attempts to remedy these failings by requiring insurers to cover the sick without raising their fees. The mandate, by insuring more healthy people, would help offset these costs and fix the problem of uncompensated care. The mandate is constitutional for two reasons, says the government. The penalty falls within Congress’s power to tax (though Mr Obama has denied the mandate is any such thing). And the constitution’s “commerce clause” authorizes Congress to regulate interstate activity. Not buying insurance is a decision to pay for your own care, the reasoning goes. This has a big effect on interstate commerce, though arguably by similar logic one might oblige people to buy gym memberships or broccoli....

The Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision by the end of June. By then the Republicans will probably have chosen a presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, who signed a mandate of his own in Massachusetts (he says it is fine for states to do this but not Washington). However the court rules, the political consequences will be huge. Even more important, for the long term, will be the court’s articulation of congressional power. Washington subsists on hyperbole. But this time it is all true.

If the mandate is overturned, and especially if the court junks the rest of the bill, too, health care reform could end up being radioactive for a generation. The tragedy would be that near-universal health insurance coverage, and the resulting more rational distribution of costs, could have been achieved without a federal individual mandate. Richard Nixon proposed requiring employers to share or pay employees' premiums for private insurance. Credits and subsidies would have enabled coverage for the self-employed and unemployed. The relative few who would have opted out and used the ER when they got sick wouldn't have caused anything like that $1,000-per-family distortion and the resulting spike in premiums and pricing anomalies such as $1,500 blood panels.

Ted Kennedy, who crusaded for health reform throughout his Senate career, blocked the Nixon plan because it relied on private insurance instead of a single-payer system. Nixon wanted the same outcome for people as Kennedy did but without creating vast new federal powers. If Barack Obama's bill dies because he overreached as well (in his case by failing to anticipate the intervention of the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s), he could end up sharing Kennedy's legacy of 50 million semi-permanent uninsured. In politics, having your heart in the right place doesn't excuse poor tactics.

No Domestic Political Benefit From Avoiding War

The Economist reviews Trita Parsi's new book on Barack Obama's failure to find common ground with Iran:

Even during the deepest chill of the cold war, America and Russia found ways of talking. Today a frozen silence stretches from Tehran to Washington. “When you don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t feel like you have somebody you can communicate with on the other side of the table, you are going to revert back to what’s safe…and what’s safe in the Iran context is demonization and just general negativity,” explains an American official....

[The] political will, says Mr Parsi, has been absent. The mutual mistrust has left no margin for error. Neither has seen any domestic political benefit in pushing for a serious settlement. And now, with the tick-tocking of the nuclear clock growing ever more insistent, reconciliation looks less and less likely. The enmity between America and Iran, stoked by three decades of demonizing each other, is no longer a phenomenon, concludes Mr Parsi. “It is an institution.”

If Iran Wants A Bomb, It Will Get One

The Economist opposes an Israeli attack on Iran because it is apt to fail and provoke counterattacks as well as renewed zealotry among its leaders and people. And yet:

That does not mean the world should just let Iran get the bomb. The government will soon be starved of revenues, because of an oil embargo. Sanctions are biting, the financial system is increasingly isolated and the currency has plunged in value. Proponents of an attack argue that military humiliation would finish the regime off. But it is as likely to rally Iranians around their leaders. Meanwhile, political change is sweeping across the Middle East. The regime in Tehran is divided and it has lost the faith of its people. Eventually, popular resistance will spring up as it did in 2009. A new regime brought about by the Iranians themselves is more likely to renounce the bomb than one that has just witnessed an American assault.

Is there a danger that Iran will get a nuclear weapon before that happens? Yes, but bombing might only increase the risk. Can you stop Iran from getting a bomb if it is determined to have one? Not indefinitely, and bombing it might make it all the more desperate. Short of occupation, the world cannot eliminate Iran’s capacity to gain the bomb. It can only change its will to possess one. Just now that is more likely to come about through sanctions and diplomacy than war.

St. Santorum Finds A Mainstream Champion

The Economist takes an objective view of Rick Santorum, describing him as the kind of Roman Catholic with working class, Midwestern appeal whom Pat Buchanan used to pine for when writing memos in the Nixon White House about how to build a new Republican majority:

This column has argued before that when the media look only at Mr Santorum’s thoughts on family morality they end up with a caricature. He is in fact a more rounded candidate, with some impressive skills. These include not only the perseverance that kept him tramping through the slough of despond when others might have given up, but also a nimble and well-stocked mind, an approachable manner on the stump and—the big prize that eludes Mr Romney—a palpable sincerity. In Michigan and Ohio, he may also prove that he has another advantage over Mr Romney: an appeal to blue-collar workers that is hard for a member of the 1% to match. Mr Santorum takes care to give the coalmining travails of his immigrant grandfather a big place in his narrative.

Go Figure: Ones We Read In School Sold Worst

Dickens' greatest hits

Chart by The Economist

Back To 1996

The Economist on the Obama administration's newly announced plan to be home from Afghanistan in 2013:

Accelerating the pace of the transition and cutting the numbers of the Afghan forces inevitably risks eroding the real security gains that have been made in the south (particularly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces) since America’s “surge” in 2010. It also places in jeopardy the aim of a concentrated effort to peg back the insurgency in the still-violent east during the next two fighting seasons. Before [Defense secretary Leon] Panetta’s announcement, General [John] Allen’s job looked difficult but doable. Now it just looks difficult.

What makes all this so unfortunate is that there has recently been some progress in coaxing the leadership of the Taliban towards the negotiating table—a tribute of sorts to the potential success of the previous (as it must now be regarded) transition plan. However, a secret NATO report, leaked this week, called “The State of the Taliban”, based on interrogations with more than 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees, painted a picture of an insurgency that is resilient and likely to remain so for as long as Pakistan believes it is in its strategic interests to give it material and moral support. The confidence undoubtedly owed something to the bravado of some of the interviewees. The Taliban’s senior leadership, better informed, may well be less optimistic about their prospects—although most Afghans yearn for peace, few want to see the return of the Taliban to Kabul. But Mr Panetta’s words, intended primarily to pander to opinion at home, can only have given them encouragement and stiffened their resolve.

So 2,000 U.S. deaths (so far), and the Taliban, who live to assassinate the spirits of girls and women, will be back in power? The mind boggles.

The Hardly Believing Two Billion

The Economist blithely equates the claims of Mormonism (14 million adherents) with those of orthodox Christianity (two billion):

Like most religions, Mormonism has other issues that invite derision, such as its history of polygamy and institutional racism. But its greatest vulnerability may simply be that it is relatively young, so has not yet become established in America's religious pantheon, and that it came of being at a time when good records were kept, which means we are better able to scrutinize its origins. Nevertheless, the divinely-inspired events of two centuries ago are hardly less believable (or unbelievable) than those that preceded them by some two millennia.

Or Working-Class Hero?

"The Economist" questions whether Rick Santorum's just another not-Mitt:

David Brooks had a widely read op-ed yesterday praising the former senator's concern for the working class: "I do believe that he represents sensibility and a viewpoint that is being suppressed by the political system." Ross Douthat concurs that Mr Santorum has his strengths: "He has deep blue-collar roots, a more substantial legislative record than many of his rivals, and his campaign has been the only one to even try to hit the right-wing communitarian notes that Mike Huckabee struck so effectively four years ago." And as Dave Weigel notes, Rick Santorum spent $1.65 for every vote he received in the caucus; Rick Perry spent $817. That would seem to suggest that Iowa voters were drawn to Mr Santorum's particular message, despite the shoestring budget.

Iraq And A Hard Place

As U.S. troops come home from Iraq (thanks be to God), some domestic political realpolitik from Christopher Preble at "The National Interest," who says it's all the same for Barack Obama if the Iraqi government succeeds or fails:

The American people want this war to end, and he wins credit, fairly or not, for following through on his promise to end it. And if Iraq descends into chaos and civil war, or if Iran somehow manages to consolidate power over its restive neighbor, Obama can claim, justifiably, that these things wouldn’t have happened had people listened to him in 2002. But he doesn’t have to say it. Others will say it for him. Nearly every news story reporting on this week’s events have reminded viewers, listeners and readers that the president opposed this war. That one fact translates to a relatively favorable perception of the president’s handling of foreign policy, generally.

It's easy to worry about Iraq if you saw Ted Koppel's inaugural report for NBC's "Rock Center" last week. Some 16,000 Americans are staying behind in our fortress embassy and consulates, keeping an eye on both Iraq and Iran. The terrorist threat remains acute. Cleric Moktada al-Sadr, allied with his fellow Shi'ites in Iran, promises that his militiamen will be gunning for Americans. Koppel's report makes clear that you need an advance team and two motorcades to go out for a pack of cigarettes.

Will the Iraqis protect our personnel against the dozen or more insurgent groups that are intent on tearing down the country's fragile government? Can Iraq's Shi'ites, Sunni, and Kurds figure out how to coexist and collaborate? Most analysts sound pessimistic.

Analysts are, of course, changeable. Most sounded giddily optimistic during the Arab spring. We were assured that the region's secular-minded young people were using Facebook and Twitter to grasp for democracy, inspired neither by the U.S. project in Iraq nor the lure of Islamism. As the year ends, the picture isn't so clear. "The Economist" and New York Times counsel readers not to panic as the Muslim Brotherhood and more extremist Islamists win a majority of seats in Egypt's unfolding parliamentary elections.

Pro-democracy advocate Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, counsels patience:

Nothing is instantaneous in politics. To think of elections as a panacea, let alone a sure road to real democracy, is to evince a failure of historical imagination. The proper role of the free world is not to encourage or to stop elections. Its role should be to formulate, and to stick by, a policy of incremental change based on creating the institutions that will lead ineluctably to pressure for more and more representative forms of government. The free world should place its bet on freedom — the hope and demand of Tahrir Square — and work toward a civil society defined by that value.

That sounds more or less like what George W. Bush tried to achieve in Iraq. History's judgement about whether he was right to do so by force of arms, in a war that left 4,500 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis dead, still depends to a considerable extent on the condition in which history finds Iraq in a quarter-century. For now, maybe advocates of a form of Arab democracy in which sectarianism takes a back seat should take another look at what the U.S. and Iraqis have tried to accomplish. Obama didn't support the war, and Preble is probably right that his political fortunes wouldn't be harmed if Iraq foundered after a decent interval. How much better for everyone -- both U.S. presidents and especially Iraq -- if it didn't.

Why Libya But Not Syria?

In Syria, we'd probably lose.

De-Engerized

President Obama's new energy policy is out of gas on arrival.

It's Sleazy Being Green

Did Hamas bomb Jerusalem to distract attention from its own thuggery against fellow Palestinians?

Watching The Necons

The Democracy in America blog at the "Economist" gives Libya warmongers the Boot:

Now that I've taken a second to think about it, to calculate even, it seems plausible that weakness and vacillation [in Libya] will do us no harm whatsoever. Indeed, prudent inaction may not be weakness and vacillation at all!

Union Dos -- And Don'ts

When can and should Democratic politicians take the political risk of taking on unions? When their members are paid by taxpayers through local and state governments that are broke or nearly bankrupt. The "Economist":

[P]rivate- and public-sector unions really are different creatures. And it is becoming increasingly clear that their interests aren't necessarily aligned. A cash-strapped state that can't afford to, say, maintain or improve its physical infrastructure obviously can't afford to contract with private-sector union crews to do the work.

Thoroughly Depressing

Tell us about it. The "Economist" on the Obama budget:

The situation is thoroughly depressing. Washington seems to have finally gotten itself in the mood to cut deficits. Unfortunately, the cuts that result are likely to be unhelpful, or possibly counterproductive, as leaders slash useful programmes to the bone because they're too scared to talk about reining in health care spending, or cutting wasteful defence programmes, or raising taxes.