This is all by way of saying that I have struggled to give Obama’s more vocal critics something of the benefit of the doubt.  Even the most outlandish attacks are grounded in something approaching a legitimate fear, and dismissing those folks is as simply prejudiced is as unfair as it is incomplete (as far as explanatory value goes).  But, at the risk of sounding a little predictable, I can’t help but reconsider my reticence at using the “prejudiced” card, especially in light of this completely ridiculous “controversy” over President Obama’s address to the nation’s students.  It’s something of an understatement to say that this outrage, over a routine presidential address to children, is absolutely absurd, even granting the fact that the right-wing completely freaks out over the reality of a Democratic president.  And while there are certainly a few possibilities as to why conservatives have latched on to this particular address as a rallying point, I think the simplest explanation – and the one which goes further to explain a good deal of this irrational opposition – is that these folks are (still) terrified and bewildered at the fact that our president doesn’t look like them.  Their sincere ideological opposition is mixed up with a unconscious – or conscious, for that matter – fear of blackness and what they perceive as its “contaminating” effects.

That is, the narrative of white supremacy in this country is a narrative of “purity.”  In this story, America was built white hands, and it’s the job of those hands to keep the country – and her virtues – free of contamination from “mongrel” races.  Hence Jim Crow, and anti-miscegenation laws, and the “one-drop” rule*, as well as the fierce obsession with racial purity in Southern religious traditions.   Of course, this is something of an oversimplification (I’m setting aside a whole lot about economics and power relations), but it gets the basic outline right: an initial prejudice transformed, over the course of American history, into a distinctive narrative of white supremacy and racial purity.  And one that still holds quite a bit of currency; a recent study (and unfortunately, I can’t find the link) suggests that most Americans continue to associate “black” with dirtiness and “white” with cleanliness.  The study doesn’t draw any conclusions about the impact this might have on race relations, but you’d be delusional to think that it doesn’t influence the ways in which Americans – of all races – see each other.

This all said, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that its children and health care which are sending the right-wing into a rabid froth.  After all, both are associated with purity; parents – terrified of a fifteen minute presidential address – are yanking their children out of school in an effort to protect their “innocent” children from contamination by the words of a “socialist” (which, historically, is a charge often thrown at prominent black leaders).  And retirees are denouncing health care reform as an attempt by socialists/communists to, essentially, taint their benefits by “giving them away” to illegal immigrants and other non-white “others.”

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this, so I want to end it with this link to a LA Times article on President Obama’s rapidly declining support among white voters.  Read it, and the explanations by various analysts and strategists, and I think you’ll come away with a solid impression that underneath all of the controversy, there is a real and palatable racial anxiety on part of white voters, and that’s driving a good chunk of the opposition to Obama’s presidency.

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The New York Times – as is its wont – has a pretty good editorial on the need for higher taxes in the age of Obama:

But, sooner than he may prefer, Mr. Obama will have to face up to what he has so far avoided: the need to raise taxes broadly to rein in deficits.

The deficits are not of his making. Some two-thirds of the $9 trillion shortfall resulted from policies that predate his administration; most of the rest is the cost of policies that both parties consider necessary, like continued relief from the alternative minimum tax.

But when he inherited the burden of the budget mess, Mr. Obama also inherited the responsibility to clean it up. Neither economic growth nor spending cuts will be enough to fix the projected shortfalls. Nor is there enough to be gained by confining tax increases only to families making more than $250,000 a year, a campaign promise that Mr. Obama still says he will keep. [...]

The question then is not whether taxes must go up, but when, how and how much.

I’ve made this point several times here and on my own blog, but it’s worth reiterating: fiscally, our current path is completely unsustainable without either significant cuts in spending or significant increases in revenue.  Seeing as how the former isn’t particularly likely (and seeing as how I’m pretty much on board with an expanded welfare state and more comprehensive benefits), the only real option we have – at least in the short term – is to raise taxes.  And while I understand that a significant revision of the tax code is a near political impossibility (though there might be some hope for a progressive consumption tax), there is quite a bit of low-hanging fruit with regards to ways we can raise revenue.  Here are a few of the more obvious ones:

• “Infinite tax brackets”.  I kind of elaborated on this on my own blog a little while ago, but basically, the idea is that you can use computers to adjust the tax rate for every marginal dollar past a certain point.  So, for instance, if incomes of $500,000 are taxed at 45%, each additional dollar after $500,000 is taxed at 45.00001%, 45.00002%, etc. etc.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that you could raise enormous amounts of revenue this way, and rhetorically, it sounds much more palatable than a single 70% marginal tax rate for the super-wealthy. You’d have to change the name though.
• Standardizing alcohol taxes.  Here’s the National Journal: “In the same report, the CBO suggested that standardizing federal taxes on alcoholic beverages to 25 cents per ounce of alcohol would increase revenue by $60 billion over 10 years. Currently, different types of alcoholic beverages are taxed at different rates: 21 cents per ounce of alcohol in distilled spirits, 10 cents per ounce of alcohol in beer and 8 cents per ounce of alcohol in wine.”  What’s more, as Matt Zeitlin points out, a sin tax targeted at alcohol would significantly reduce consumption among heavy drinkers, which in turn, could reduce the assault rate by as much as 20%.
• “Soda taxes.” Broadly, these would simply be taxes on any beverage containing a certain amount of sugar per ounce, and could be expanded to include food as well.  Here’s the National Journal again: “According to a Congressional Budget Office report released in December, a national excise tax of 3 cents per 12 ounces of sugary beverage — that’s 3 cents for a can of Coke or 5 cents for a 20-ounce bottle — would yield $50 billion over 10 years, while potentially reducing overall health care costs because of the link between sugar intake and health conditions like diabetes and obesity.”

Even ignoring the first point, these minor changes in taxation would yield well over $100 billion over ten years, which would put a healthy dent into the cost of health care reform.  I know that most of you aren’t particularly amenable to tax increases, and would prefer to see smaller government.  But, to put it bluntly, that simply isn’t going to happen.  Conservatives as well as liberals have been fairly enthusiastic about expanding the scope of government, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.  The real question, in my view, is how do we make government work as effectively as possible?  Especially, as seems to be the case, if we’re going to have an expanded welfare state as well as a substantive presence on the international stage.  And the obvious first answer – I think – is that we need government to be fiscally responsible, and to have that, we simply need more revenue.

Also, I love Soul Train.

The strategic importance of Afghanistan is difficult for critics of the war to deny. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, which began in state-sponsored terror academies there, are not yet generally regarded as a myth. The spread of Taliban havens in Afghanistan would permit al-Qaeda to return to its historical operating areas. This would allow, according to one administration official to whom I spoke, “perhaps a hundredfold expansion of their geographic and demographic area of operation.” And Taliban advances in Afghanistan could push a fragile, nuclear Pakistan toward chaos.

Except, it’s actually pretty easy for critics to deny the strategic importance of Afghanistan.  One of the most common claims from the administration and its supporters is that creating a stable government in Afghanistan is and has been an integral part of preventing terrorist attacks against Western targets.  The argument, as I understand it, is that instability is a breeding ground for lawlessness, which in turn creates the space for terrorists groups to operate and plan attacks against Americans and our allies.  The problem though, is that this doesn’t really hold up.  There’s not much evidence to suggest that a stable government in Afghanistan will lead to a lower overall incidence of terrorism.  Of the major terrorist attacks (against Western targets) since 9/11, the two largest – the March 2004 attack in Spain and the July 2005 attack in Britain – were planned and executed within the respective countries.  Indeed, the same is true of 9/11.

What’s more, and as Matt Yglesias has repeatedly noted, the terrorist attacks that we’re really worried about – nuclear, chemical or biological attacks – are unlikely to be carried out by terrorist groups located in Afghanistan, or even Pakistan for that matter.  In all likelihood, those plots will be developed and carried out by terrorists within the targeted country.  As for Pakistan’s stability, it’s worth pointing out that Pakistan has only become more unstable since we invaded Afghanistan and began attacking targets within Pakistan.  I don’t know enough about Pakistani politics to convincingly argue this, but I could easily imagine someone making the case that our involvement in the region has – on the whole – had a net negative effect on Pakistan’s stability.

The simple fact is that neither Gerson or the Obama administration has offered enough evidence to support the claim that our security – and that of our allies – is inexorably tied up in Afghanistan’s stability.  Indeed, from the standpoint of this semi-informed observer, it seems pretty likely that our movement in Afghanistan has far more to do with the sheer force of institutional inertia, rather than an honest account of our interests in the region.

The practical objections are pretty straightforward and are worth repeating.  For starters, the definition of “sex offender” is impossibly broad and varies from state to state.  In Virginia, for instance, a sixteen year old who has a sexual relationship with his fourteen year old girlfriend would would “qualify” as a sex offender, due to Virginia law giving sex offender status to anyone having sexual relations with someone under the age of 15.  And if, for whatever reason, he was arrested, prosecuted and convicted for having sex with his girlfriend, he would have earned himself a permanent spot on Virginia’s sex offender registry.  Indeed, that’s a relatively benign example; in several states, crimes like public nudity or public urination warrant inclusion on a sex offender registry.  Unsurprisingly, this loose definition of sex offender has left us with a ridiculously high number of registered sex offenders.  By the Economist’s count (and I recommend that you read the whole article), there are 674,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., and considering the huge range of crimes which warrant registration, there’s no question that a plurality – or even a majority – of those are unfairly listed as sex offenders. Which is made all the more problematic when you consider that sex offender registries often don’t provide enough information for the reader to make a judgment on whether or not the person in question is actually dangerous.

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As I explained a while back, the reconciliation process can only be used to pass bills that have a direct impact on reducing the budget deficit, which is why passing a health care bill through reconciliation could prove to be difficult: some aspects, like the public option, might not have enough of an impact on the deficit to survive the process intact.  This leaves Democratic legislators with two options: they could scrap the public option and include it in a later round of reform, or they could include a public option that’s far more liberal and far more reaching in its scope.  TPM’s Brian Beutler gives the details:

According to Martin Paone, a legislative expert who’s helping Democrats map out legislative strategy, a more robust public option–one that sets low prices, and provides cheap, subsidized insurance to low- and middle-class consumers–would have an easier time surviving the procedural demands of the so-called reconciliation process. However, he cautions that the cost of subsidies “will have to be offset and if [the health care plan] loses money beyond 2014…it will have to be sunsetted.”

And there the irony continues: Some experts, including on Capitol Hill, believe that a more robust public option will generate crucial savings needed to keep health care reform in the black–and thus prevent it from expiring.

Naturally, there’s concern that conservative Democrats will balk at the possibility of stronger cost controls and greater long-term savings:

But though that may solve the procedural problems, conservative Democrats have balked at the idea creating such a momentous government program, and if they defected in great numbers, they could imperil the entire reform package

With rifle-toting protesters showing up at various rallies and town halls around the country, there’s been a lot of worry – mostly on part of liberals – that these demonstrations could erupt into serious violence.  I happen to think that there is real cause for worry, especially considering the borderline eliminationist rhetoric coming out of the far-right, as well as the fact that members of the far-right have by and large been responsible for a considerable amount of political violence over the past twenty years.  Megan McArdle, however, is unconvinced that we’ll see any violence from these gun-toting protesters:

Numerous people claim to believe that this makes it likely, even certain, that someone will shoot at the president.  This is very silly, because the president is not anywhere most of the gun-toting protesters, who have showed up at all sorts of events.  It is, I suppose, more plausible to believe that they might take a shot at someone else.  But not very plausible:  the rate of crime associated with legal gun possession or carrying seems to be very low.  Guns, it turn out, do not turn ordinary people into murderers.  They make murderers more effective. [...]

I suspect that, like the notion that Obama is not a US citizen, or that George Bush either planned the 9/11 attacks or allowed them to happen, this is for most people what Julian Sanchez calls a symbolic belief.  They don’t really believe that these people are thugs intent on murder–not in the sense that they have, with careful thought, arrived at a conclusion that they are willing to defend vigorously.  But it is pleasurable to tell yourself you believe terrible things about your enemies, and so you don’t examine the thought until someone says, “Well, how about $500 on it, then?” and you think about how much it would hurt to lose $500 on, and realize that you don’t actually have any reason to believe it’s all that likely.

Insofar that liberals are spooked by the presence of firearms at town halls or events attended by the president, it’s not because we believe that firearms possess some magical ability to turn Mild-Mannered Citizen into Bloodthirsty Domestic Terrorist.  Indeed, the suggestion (or implication, really) is more than a little dishonest; very few – if any – liberals have argued that the mere presence of a firearm is enough to spark political violence.

No, liberals are worried about the potential for violence because the ingredients seem to be there.  Last year’s election revealed the extent to which the conservative base is filled with angry, anxious and scared people desperate for some explanation as to why their lives are falling apart.  And since Obama’s inauguration, men like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have successfully convinced a large swath of those folks that the Democrats deserve the lions share of the blame, not only for making their lives miserable, but for electing a socialist, communist, Nazi, America-hating liberal who wants nothing more than to take what’s rightfully theirs (read: America) and redistribute it to minorities, gays and illegal immigrants.

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Also, if you have the time, you should check out the Miller Center of Public Affairs (full disclosure: I work for the Center) for its resources on Ted Kennedy’s time in the Senate. The Center is currently working on completing the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project, which will feature interviews with the late senator, as well as interviews with staff, aides and family. That won’t be finished until next year though, so in the meantime, we have a page up with the various resources the Center has on Kennedy. It’s worth taking a look.

Will adds: I suspect my view of Kennedy’s legacy is somewhat less charitable than Jamelle et. al.’s, but death has a way of making political differences seem very trivial. His speech to the 1980 Democratic Convention remains the most forceful and stirring defense of modern liberalism I can recall, and no matter what you may think of the man’s politics, it’s a worthy encapsulation of the very best of American liberalism.

What’s more, this is all exacerbated by the tremendous income inequality of the last twenty years; the consumption of the richest Americans sets the standard for the next level of income earners, and so on and so forth.  But, because incomes have stagnated for the middle-class, this pattern leaves many middle-income families struggling to acquire positional goods (larger homes, for instance) at the cost of more valuable non-positional goods (in terms of psychological well-being), like leisure time or time spent with family.

Anyway, in the course of making this point, Frank makes a really insightful point about the bizarre way in which we talk about taxation:

Why doesn’t the average voter realize that if we elect a Congress that raises taxes to fund basic public services, the extra tax burden won’t be very painful?  After all, a direct consequence of the tax increase will be an across-the-board reduction in consumption, one result of which should be, according to my argument, that the consumption context will shift, so families won’t feel that they need to spend as much as before.

This makes intuitive sense to me.  If your taxes are raised to pay for better schools across-the-board, then there’s a good chance that you’ll feel less inclined to purchase an expensive house in a good neighborhood with good schools.  After all, you’ll have access to a comparable school in a cheaper neighborhood.  You can even extend this observation to things that don’t directly relate to positional goods: on average, poorly maintained roads add an additional $335 to the annual cost of owning a car.  In all likelihood, that is far more expensive than a small tax increase to pay for regular road maintenance.

Sure, Americans enjoy relatively lower “official” taxes, but those is more than offset by the exorbitant “hidden taxes” that are the result of underinvestment in public goods.  The income that doesn’t go to Uncle Sam goes toward repairing a blown tire or, since we’re on the topic, paying absurdly high health insurance premiums.  Yes, you could say that paying an auto mechanic or a health insurance company benefits the economy, and you’d be right.  But my hunch is that the positive economic impact of lower health care costs facilitated by health care reform, or fewer lost wages resulting from regular road maintenance (among other things) is far greater than the alternative.

This is all to say that Democrats would have a hell of a lot more success in selling policies that require tax increases if they took the time to emphasize that most Americans are already paying more than they would pay under a new system.  If voters understood that basic fact, then we might be able to lower – if even slightly – the huge barriers to raising adequate revenue.

As Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out long ago, Americans find it hard to acknowledge this moral ambiguity of power. They are reluctant to face the fact that it is only through the morally ambiguous exercise of their power that any good can be accomplished. Obama is right to be prosecuting the war in Afghanistan, and he should do so even more vigorously. But he will not avoid the moral and practical burdens of fighting this war by claiming he has no choice. An action can be right or just without being necessary. Like great presidents in the past, Barack Obama will have to explain why his choice, while difficult and fraught with complexity, is right and better than the alternatives.

It’s pretty clear to me that Kagan is relying on the Niebuhr of The Irony of American History here, and for what it’s worth, I think his reading of Niebuhr’s point is more or less correct.  Americans are uncomfortable with the moral ambiguities associated with the exercise of power, so much so that we are often unwilling to even give weight to those ambiguities, which in turn contributes to our perennial inability to understand the broader impact of our actions.  That said, and at the risk of sounding a little uncharitable, Kagan is basically ignoring Niebuhr’s main point; he wasn’t trying to make Americans comfortable with the exercise of power so much as he wanted Americans to understand the limits of said power.

By Niebuhr’s lights, we should be incredibly skeptical – and even doubtful – of our ability to rebuild a society or a culture in any meaningful way.  Which, broadly, is exactly what we’re trying to accomplish in Afghanistan.  As far as I understand it, the whole point of committing tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan is to provide security in the hopes of strengthening the national government to the point where it both A) has the trust of the bulk of the population and B) can effectively monopolize the use of force within the country.  The problem, of course, is that there really isn’t anything in Afghanistan’s history to suggest that this could be even remotely successful.  And it requires a good deal of arrogance to believe that we – with our relatively limited understanding of the region – could succeed where many folks have failed.

With that in mind, it’s more than a little ridiculous to see Kagan reference Niebuhr.  Not only is Kagan one of the standard-bearers of an intellectual movement which proudly disregards limits in a misguided effort to reshape the world, but he is citing Niebuhr in support of a war which the man would have almost certainly opposed.

Democrats are choosing to “go it alone” without the country if they opt to pass healthcare reform on a party-lines basis, one Republican congressman accused Thursday.

“If they go it alone without the Republicans, it also sounds like they want to go it alone without the American people,” Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told a conservative news radio program in an interview.

Rep. Cassidy may not have noticed this, but Barack Obama was elected president, which means – as far as modern presidents are concerned – that he was elected with either a majority or a plurality of the popular vote.  In last year’s case, Barack Obama beat his Republican opponent with a solid 52.9 percent of the vote.  What’s more, if Rep. Cassidy were to look at the results of last year’s congressional elections, he would notice that Democrats represent an even more solid 53.04 percent of the population.  Far from going “alone,” Democrats are accurately representing the stated preferences of a majority of the population, many of whom voted for Democrats so that there would be health care reform.

On a related note, I would pay a lot of money to see a media outlet call bullshit on claims like the one above.  I’ve read a ton of process stories this summer, and few – if any – have taken the time to remind readers that Republicans are both A) a distinct minority and B) deeply unpopular with the majority of voters.  Even after eight years of miserable failure, they are consistently treated as if their ideas (or lack thereof) matter.  With that kind of media attention, it’s no surprise that they are using the opportunity to saturate the dialogue with misinformation and dishonest nonsense.