WWJD for Congress?

Wheaton College professor Lindy Scott is exploring a run for retiring Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde's seat in Congress. Prof. Scott is the Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics, and he apparently is taking his own teaching to heart.

"I would want to serve as if Jesus were serving," Scott says. A pastor in the Evangelical Free Church, Scott was a missionary and an author before joining Wheaton's faculty.

But before all of you blue-staters get your britches in a bunch, you need to know that Scott is a Democrat. He calls himself a compassionate Christian who is conservative on some issues and progressive on others. He opposes the death penalty and privatization of Social Security, and supports gun control, increased education funding, and steps towards universal health care. Foreign policy experience? Scott is the author of a book called Terrorism and the War on Iraq, he lived in Mexico for 16 years.

As the Duke has said for a long time, the evangelical community is not the monolithic conservative institution that Republican political strategists would have you believe. Wheaton College is a strong academic institution that is the alma mater of both Billy Graham and Denny Hastert. Some even call it the "Harvard of Christendom," a reference to its prominent standing among Christian colleges, so do not underestimate the impact this announcement could have across the evangelical community.

The Washington media have accepted the Republican spin that people of faith are all conservative Republicans. In part this may be that there are too few Democratic elected officials who are comfortable speaking from an evangelical perspective. Lindy Scott in Congress might begin to change that.

Pork vs. Iraq

The House and Senate Friday completed action on a new five-year, $286 billion transportation bill that editorial boards and good government groups will decry as pork-laden. As you would expect, just 12 of 535 members of Congress voted against the bill.

"We talk about jobs, jobs, jobs," House Speaker Dennis Hastert said. "For every billion dollars that is spent in this highway bill over the next not even five years now, it will create 48,000 jobs in this country." Also on message was Majority Whip Roy Blunt: "This is about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs," Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri said Thursday.

Critics were equally adamant. John McCain called the bill "terrifying in its fiscal consequences and disappointing for the lack of fiscal discipline." Citizens Against Government Waste said, "The sweet smell of pork has blinded members of Congress to the waste and inefficiency of federal transportation policy."

But let's put this bill in perspective. It spends $286 billion over 5 years, and most of the money comes from from dedicated fuel taxes , not general income taxes. Yet over that same period, we will spend roughly twice that in Iraq-- $600 billion, or roughly 30 times the size of Iraq's economy in 2003.

So I don't begrudge members of Congress one dollar of transportation funding. It's only about $4 per American per week, or $220 each year. Sure, some of the projects may seem wacky, but the real question we should be asking is why we can't spend as much on projects at home as we do on projects abroad. The original House transportation bill was $350 billion, and there are clearly significant homeland security infrastructure projects that Congress has failed to fund. After all, a transportation bill 30 times the U.S. economy would be $350 TRILLION, not billion.

If transportation really creates so many jobs, particularly working class construction jobs, then the most important question to ask about this bill is why President Bush held up the bill for almost 3 years by insisting that it remain smaller than his budget for Iraq.

Improving with age

It was one year ago that Senator Obama gave the speech that inspired this blog. Listen, watch, or read it here.

Let's deal on trade

With deep roots in the plains states, the Duke loves the premise of the book What's the Matter with Kansas? One of the most interesting debates it has prompted is the role of populism today as it relates to international trade.

The Duke has spent a fair bit of time working on trade negotiations. If Kerry had won, I would have suggested Dick Gephardt as U.S. Trade Representative, not only because I respect him and it would be a bold political move, but because he would have a heckuva lot more credibility when he returned to Congress from the bargaining table and said "this is the best we can do".

Very few of the most ardent advocates of imposing additional labor or environmental standards on trade agreements have actually participated in an honest-to-goodness trade negotiation (parliamentary exchanges don't count). It's much easier to armchair quarterback the talks and let someone else take the political heat. With a strong labor ally like Gephardt at the table, trade critics would know he fought the good fight. But even then the agreements wouldn't look much different because the economics of stringent labor and environmental standards simply don't work out for our trade partners. Ambassador Gephardt might still fail to gain broad Democratic support because trade deals are inherently win-win in the aggregate and lose-lose at the micro level. Without a political mandate broader than the generic "trade expansion", it is incredibly difficult to put together a sustainable political coalition in support of trade. ... Even with a labor champion like Gephardt leading the charge.

In retrospect, Democrats on both sides of the trade issue made a significant strategic error in the 1990s. What they should have done is propose a grand bargain with the strong pro-trade interests: "In exchange for plenty of Democratic votes on fast track, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and additional WTO rounds, pro-trade businesses will deliver Republican votes for a much stronger employment and job skills safety net. Portable pensions, portable health care, and dramatic (and I mean dramatic) increases in education and job training for working class families.

The reality is that trade is more important to multinational conglomerates than opposing a stronger worker safety net. In fact, safety net is the wrong word, because better skills mean greater productivity, and lower health care and pension costs would significantly reduce costs for companies such as General Motors and United. The right kind of investment in the "safety net" would boost economic competitiveness for businesses and workers alike.

Unfortunately, such a grand bargain on trade was never seriously considered, in part because the Clinton White House believed for the most part that it could win on the merits alone. "With just a few more pithy statistics (Americans pay twice the world average for butter), we can convince Congressman X -- who wants to be with us intellectually -- to take a politically suicidal vote." Sure, some transportation projects were traded for NAFTA, and that won a few votes, but how many of those districts remain "pro-trade"? Pro-trade Democrats offered very little to capture people's imagination and win the long-term political debate.

I know that the most ardent "fair traders" would oppose such a deal in an effort to insist on greater labor and environmental protections abroad. But globalization is happening and will continue to happen with or without trade deals. The most important question for Americans is whether or not our workforce will be equipped to compete. Let's deal on trade.

Stunning Hubris by Rove

According to the Washington Post, "when first questioned in the days after Plame's name appeared in the press, Rove left the impression with top White House aides that he had talked about her only with Novak."

This is why Rove is really in trouble. If his colleagues have testified that he told them Novak was the only person he talked to, then that's intent to deceive right from the start. He knew had done something wrong, misled his own colleagues, and thought he could get away with it. He is therefore directly responsible for putting the President and spokesman in this position:

McClellan at a September 29, 2003, press briefing:

McCLELLAN: The president has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the leaking of Plame's identity], they would no longer be in this administration.
[...]
Q: You continue to talk about the severity of this and if anyone has any information they should go forward to the Justice Department. But can you tell us, since it's so severe, would someone or a group of persons, lose their job in the White House?

McCLELLAN: At a minimum.

Bush, June 10, 2004: QUESTION: Given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, suggesting that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leak the agent's name? And do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

BUSH: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts.

Personally, I'm still stunned that there are any of Ms. Wilson's colleagues who are willing to show up for the President's daily brief.

The Party of National Security

Political blogs have a tendency to turn up the reverb on the Inside-the-Beltway echo chamber, and the Wilson/Rove case is just the latest example. The tactics are correct -- keep the pressure focused on the White House's malignant acts. But the strategists must be working behind the scenes to craft the positive message that will fill the policy vacuum of a wounded Administration.

Ed Kilgore suggests a good theme for critics to use -- irresponsibility -- but the challenge will be to articulate pro-active proposals that provide a clear counterpoint to Bush's record of fiscal, military, social, and ethical irresponsibility. Congressman Rahm Emanuel seems to be laying the groundwork to run on ethics (against Indian gaming, travel, and other congressional abuses). The Social Security debate leaves those opposed to Bush with any number of reasonable, "responsible" alternatives, and a right-wing Supreme Court nominee will cede the vast middle for Democrats to pine for a "responsible moderate" like Justice O'Connor.

But Democrats need a much more coherent "responsibile" approach to security in Iraq and the war on terrorism. Even if Messrs. Rove and Libby go down in flames and shame, the American people are not going to suddenly express great comfort in leading Democrats' ability to secure Iraq and win the war on terror. They will demand a specific, coherent alternative strategy. Senator Joe Biden has come the closest to date (PDF), as he is informed by a fairly sophisticated understanding that victory abroad can be achieved only with broader political support at home. Unfortunately, most other Democrats seem to be falling into the GOP's trap by oversimplifying the the options into "withdraw now" vs. "institute a draft". Neither option is responsible, and neither will do anything to fill the vacuum created by a weakened administration.

Bush and Rove have created a tremendous opening for Democrats to become the party of national security. Their mismanagement of our troops, reserves, veterans, and intelligence operatives rises beyond incompetence to disrespect and disregard. The rank-and-file are open to a new approach. Will someone offer it?

This is his test

Larry Johnson and three other former colleagues of Joe Wilson's wife say it all in their Congressional testimony.

There's a reason it's against the law to disclose covert identities, and his name is Richard Welch. And Welch's murder is the reason President George H.W. Bush was one of the architects of the law protecting his former CIA colleagues. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes

In the early 1970s, ex-CIA officer Philip Agee wrote a book and worked with newsletters to expose the identities of CIA officers overseas. Bush hated Agee because, he said, one of the hardest things he had to do as CIA director was meet with Tim Welch and tell him that his father had been murdered.

Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, was slain on Dec. 23, 1975, by a leader of the Greek terrorist group November 17. Welch was driving down a street in Athens near his home, on the way back from a Christmas party, when he was blown away by a man with a .45.

"What was I to say to this young man?" the former president said. "Why had his father died? So that a reckless ideologue could sell more books?" While the 1st Amendment, political hypocrisy and irony grab our attention, let's not forget where this started. In 1982, in response to Agee and others, Vice President George H.W. Bush helped push through a law making it illegal to knowingly divulge the identity of covert CIA personnel. President George W. Bush can still talk to his father about the deadly politics of leaks.

The leak of an intelligence agent's identity is the equivalent of deliberate "friendly" fire, and the consequences must be similar.

I wanted to believe George W. Bush when he said he wanted to restore honor and integrity to the White House.

This is his test.

Wilson CIA leak

Josh Marshall asks,

Shall we up the ante?
The entire Wilson/Plame story and the Rove/White House criminal probe sub-story are just so many threads thrown off a much larger and more consquential ball of yarn: the administration's use of fraudulent evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program to seal the deal for war on Iraq with the American people. That's where the real cover up is. These are just side stories. So why not cut to the chase and have a real investigation to get to the bottom of that?

No. I'd rather make sure I win this hand. Upping the ante to discuss these other issues dilutes our focus. Josh, when many wanted to up the ante on Social Security to talk about taxes or health care or economic security, you rightly kept us focused. This is a deadly serious issue, it appears we have the President and his closest advisors trapped, and it's time to stay the course.

We don't need to up the ante to make this an important issue. As Ed Kilgore says, this case involves

(a) a deputy White House chief of staff, and the president's acknowledged political guru, with enormous access to classified information; (b) a possible felony violation of federal law; (c) an act compromising our national security, and motivated by personal spite, as part of a larger coverup of information related to the invasion of Iraq; (d) a deliberate leak in an administration where leaking is a far worse sin than, say, gross incompetence in office

I would add one more: (e) an act that endangered not just one CIA operative but the lives of many other agents and informants who worked with her abroad. For the intelligence community, this is like an act of deliberate "friendly" fire.

Supreme disconnect

The "in" thing would be to post the standard talking points about hoping Bush will try to unite not divide, to reach bipartisan consensus, to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat with a similar moderate, or at least a pathbreaking woman or minority. Blah, blah, blah, blog.

There is no question this will be the defining political battle for the next few months, and that the Supreme Court touches people's lives in a myriad of ways. The importance of the debate is driven by the long-lasting impact of a Supreme Court appointment. However, as evidenced by O'Connor, Souter, Kennedy -- heck, even Blackmun -- it will take years for the true impact of Bush's appointment to be fully realized or understood. The nature of case law jurisprudence and shifting 5-vote coalitions make rapid changes from the Court unlikely. By the same token, however, the forthcoming political strum und drang will have very little near-term impact on most people's daily lives.

In reading the interest group rhetoric (which has been polished for years in anticipation of this moment), the Duke already feels a disconnect. My hope and aspiration is that at least a few of our leaders will rise to the challenge and make a direct connection between the legal issues that will be debated and the stories of everyday folks. Otherwise, the polarization of Washington will look just like politics as usual to those of us in the heartland, and it will be even more difficult to build the public confindence and consensus necessary to tackle real-world problems like war and peace; jobs, health care, and education; and the challenges of raising a family.