As an actual thoughtful conservative (who knew any were left?) he’s over obstruction for it’s own sake at the cost of doing the right thing for the country:

The other brutal truth is that the opposition has nothing substantive to offer to remedy this. If all they’ve got is keeping the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 a year, they really have got nothing. What they do have is cultural symbolism and the exhausted right-left tropes that were trotted out at the mercifully vacuous parade of God and Country on the Mall with Beck and Palin. (A cynical atheist’s parody of such vacuousness can be read here.) Maybe in power, by some miracle, the Tea Party Republicans will actually propose the long-term massive cuts in entitlements they claim to believe in. But I don’t believe it for a second. I don’t believe they are in any way serious about spending restraint and are only serious about their bewilderment at the real America where racial, religious and cultural diversity is a fact, where illegal immigration has been plummeting, where gay marriage is winning, where legal abortion will never go away, and where the new empire the last administration embarked upon has bankrupted us for a generation at least.

And this, in the end, must be what our politics is about: substantive policy responses to profound crises inherited from the past. Obama’s call for transportation infrastructure investment is one tiny but real response and no panacea but it’s paid for and it’s something. His persistent attempt to get a real two-state solution in Israel-Palestine is unlikely to succeed given the forces arrayed against it in Washington and Tehran but it is necessary if we are to win this long war against Jihadism. His endurance in Afghanistan is, in my view, a tragic mistake, but anyone who claims that withdrawal would not have appalling moral consequences and great strategic risks is lying to you. His diplomatic and economic isolation of Iran’s coup regime may also fail to prevent the Revolutionary Guards getting a nuclear capacity, but the alternative – a military strike – would initiate a new round of global religious warfare of terrifying gravity, where the Islamists would have the moral high-ground of being attacked first. His success in bringing a modicum of healthcare security to the working poor is also a work in progress but again, the practical alternative on the table is … what exactly?

via Game On – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

I find myself again in agreement with David Frum. It was one thing to oppose greater government involvement in healthcare in 1993. It is another to do so in 2009. There are several reasons for this and it is hard to improve on David’s summary of them. The status quo means:

(1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments. We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.

I’d add the crippling health costs for the private sector – costs that are slowly killing their global competitiveness. But the deepest reason for reform is fiscal. No serious plan to reduce deficits without hugely increasing taxes excludes healthcare savings. There’s no way to get from spiraling debt to stable public finances without tackling the exponentially rising costs of healthcare. So this is a fiscally conservative issue.

Instead of pulling a Palin, conservatives should propose real reforms: ending the tax exemption for businesses; medical malpractice reform; an independent body to provide some kind of data on the relative effectiveness of treatments; incentives to reward doctors less for any and all services provided than for health outcomes within clear budgets. This, actually, is not far from the Romney model, as the NYT notes today. Real conservatives should point out that the current proposals are not tough enough on costs – and criticize Obama for that, not for fantasies like a communist takeover or euthanasia program for special needs kids.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

The question buzzing around Washington’s chattering classes is the following: is the actual historical moment that Obama inherited — unforeseen in its scope and danger this time last year — the right moment for these instincts? Are his caution and delegation a liability in a period of a dysfunctional Congress, a near-psychotic Republican party and a potentially lethal global depression?

After a period in which the American executive claimed vast powers and institutionalised torture and abuse of suspected terrorists, is it enough simply to forget and forgive the past and try to glue onto the existing system more checks and balances and decency? Is the conservatism we sought, in other words, adequate to the radicalism that may now be required?

And is the president being too deferential to Congress in seizing the reins?

This critique is echoed on both left and right. The right, in its dominant neoconservative vein, is frustrated with his disdain for classic American moralising and sabre-rattling at a moment such as Iran’s stymied green revolution. The left wishes he had been more radical in taking on Wall Street, insisting on a single-payer healthcare reform and a full-bore carbon tax. Harper’s Magazine has even labelled him Barack Hoover Obama: personally brilliant, humane and pragmatic but simply not daring enough for the moment he is facing.

via Barack Obama keeps his cool in hothead Washington – Times Online.

I’ve always seen Obama as a careful centrist and wonder why people are startled that he governs like one. The stimulus debate left little question he’d sacrifice effectiveness for political cover and “bipartisanship” whatever that is. Seems like the GOP defines bipartisan as capitulation to their goals.

Beck agrees that we need another 9/11 attack to “save” us from the evil socialist plot that is the Obama administration.

One of Sullivan’s readers captures the angst of many in the middle class:

…We’ve also been helping out my wife’s parents quite a bit. Her father’s contracting work completely dried up a year ago and they are facing destitution having used up most of their saving. She has three siblings that also want to help out, but one is out of work, and another is in financial shambles due to a disastrously bad home purchase a couple of years back. Between the other sibling and us we pay their rent so they can live on their social security money. ..

…I had hoped to provide more for my daughter — she should have a nursery, a yard to play in, a better neighborhood. Instead I come home to our little apartment and whisper my apology to her on the changing table we’ve crammed into our laundry room. She smiles back at me, all jolly, innocent, and happy just to be alive and well, oblivious to our stresses and insecurities.

The American Dream, lost to many. I know how they feel.

As a society what kind of world do we leave behind? Will it be a better place for our children and grandchildren? I fear not. It seems so unecessary in this land of plenty. It seems clear we’re leaving both a financial and environmental disater for then next generations to live with and attempt to clean-up. The sad part is that’s it’s all a result of crippling short-sightedness and didn’t have to happen. As I’ve said before, in American politics there’s no constituency for tough choices, everyone wants some other group to pay. Well, we’ve chosen our group, our children.

Andrea Mitchell notes that the CIA denies that they have received any such request for the former VP. And why would it matter if he did? He should have no more influence than any other private citizen over the CIA’s decisions on de-classification of documents.

In any case, it doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s wrong, it’s illegal and goes against everything we’ve ever stood for. Because an old man wet his diaper in fear after 9-11 doesn’t mean that torture is right. If it worked or not is irrelevant. The ends do not justify the means. Either we live by a moral code or we are as bad as any of our foes.

Most interrogation experts seem to think that it’s not a useful tactic, that it leads the torture victim to say whatever they believe the torturer wants to hear. I wonder how many false leads were followed and resources diverted because of false information? How many jihadis were recruited based on our torture program? How can we possibly claim any moral authority when we refuse to follow our own laws? Sully noted that there was a Kafkaesque and deliberate effort to create a public face of freedom on the march, while privately trying prevent the same for detainess:

Looked at from a distance, the Bush administration wanted to do two things at once: to declare to the world that freedom is on the march, and human rights are coming to the world with American help, while simultaneously declaring to captives that the US has no interest in the law, human rights, accountability, transparency or humanity. They wanted to give hope to all the oppressed of the planet, while surgically banishing all hope from the prisoners they captured and tortured. And the only way they could pull this off is by the total secrecy they constructed and defended. So we had a public government respectful of the rule of law, and a secret government whose main goal was persuading terror suspects that there was no rule of law at all. It is hard to convey just how dangerous this was and is.

If a hear an Obama spokesman say “we should be looking forward, not backwards” again, I’m going to scream. Does that imply that if a robbed a bank during Bush administration I shouldn’t be arrested, tried and jailed becuase that would be looking backwards? Hardly. Seems like the bankers already did that anyway.

Buried with more than a pound of pot 2700 years ago? What a send off, Sully asks “when did we become less civilized?”

Sullivan may not be a fan of true health care reform but this is a very good reason why it’s needed:

I’m an infectious disease specialist.  Today I saw a patient with a horrible foot ulcer from diabetes. She likely has infection in her bone, will need weeks of treatment, and may lose her foot.  She cried with guilt, regret, and disbelief at her condition.  She had been an excellent patient.  She saw her doctor, managed the complicated treatment of her diabetes, saw her foot specialist.

Until her husband lost his job and insurance. She couldn’t afford her insulin pump supplies, started stretching her doctor visits. Paid cash when she could. And ignored…pushed away her pain. Tried to hide the smell coming from her foot.  For 4 months.  Now it may be too late.

Indeed…

Glenn Greenwald weighs in on Ross Douthat’s post at the The Atlantic. Douthat believes that while Bush et al.  may have violated international laws, treaties and domestic laws against the torture of prisoners, but it was justified, and still is, by a real fear of Islamic terrorists. Glenn goes on to point out that just about every genocide, war crime and violation of human rights ever committed can be justified exactly the same way.

Sullivan weighed in here and here. He’s vicerially opposed to torture in any form for moral and practical reasons. It doesn’t work, it endangers us, it destroys any moral standing we may have had, it wastes resources on false intelligence.

I think Glenn makes a persuasive point. If fear, either real or imagined is a justification for torture, then it’s a free for all. There must be a line drawn about what is and is not permissable. Torture has no justification. Imagined “ticking time bomb” scenarios from 24 not withstanding. It does at least as much damage to us, to our institutions and our moral grounding as it does to it’s victims. Especially when sanctioned by our leader so openly.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: There is no justification for the torture of prisoners, ever.

Ezra defends Andrew Sullivan by way of an actual real world example of interrogation techniques that work, as opposed to the Reuel Marc Gerecht fantasy created whole cloth from episodes of 24. Important points to note:

1. Torture and abuse at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib was a prime motivating factor in recruiting terrroists.
2. American lives were lost because of the policy.
3. Torture does not work.

Any questions?

File this one under “no shit?”

The great unanswered question of the last six and a half years is: why haven’t we been attacked again? There are logically two – not necessarily exclusive – possibilities: our defense has been getting much better; their offense was over-rated. I suspect that technology, good police work, and plenty of heroic stories that neither you nor I know about have made a difference. But seven years is a long time. And Bush is not exactly Mr Competence, is he?Have we misread the world – and over-estimated the threat – even more profoundly than we realize? That is the question.

A small band of cave dwelling bomb throwers was never an existential threat to the US. On the other hand, the reaction to terrorism by the Bush administration most definitely is a threat to the principles this nation has always stood for.

Wow that must of hurt. I hope he didn’t get an aneurysm typing that post. Poor Sully…

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
It is eloquent in many parts, stirring in its defense of religious liberty, with only a couple of notes off-key:

Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.

Ahem. But it has two deep flaws. The first is the absence of any notion that religious freedom includes the freedom to have no religion whatever. A president of the United States does not just represent people of all faiths, he also represents those who have none. There is a lacuna in Romneys vision of religious tolerance, and it is a deliberate lacuna. In order to appeal to evangelicals, he places himself on their side against the other: the secularists. But that is simply another form of the religious test. By insisting on faith – any faith – as the proper criterion for public office, Romney draws the line, oh-so-conveniently, so as to include Mormonism but exclude atheism and agnosticism. And so he side-steps the critical issue in the debates over religion in public life: what if there is no unifying faith for a nation? What if faith itself cannot unify a nation – and, in fact, can divide it more deeply than any other subject? That is our reality. An intelligent and wise conservative would try to find a path to a common discourse that does not rest on religious foundations.

On the effort paper over serious divisions between politically powerful evangelicals and Mormonism:

if you are appealing to religious people, especially fundamentalists, on the basis of faith, you cannot logically then ask them to ignore the content of the faith. The religious right have tried to do this with the absurd neologism, the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” as if the truth-claims of Christianity and Judaism are not, at bottom, contradictory. But the “Mormon-Judeo-Christian tradition” is a step too far even for those who have almost no principles in using religion for political purposes.

I’d vote for Clinton against anyone in the GOP field, but she’d definitely not my first choice. I’d rather see Edwards win the primary and Obama is my second choice. Obama’s greatest weakness IMHO is his stance on health care reform. I don’t think he clearly gets what needs to be done or how best to get there.