Morning Jolt - Warren! Brown! A Brawl in Boston!

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

September 21, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. ¿Por qué usted no tan a menudo, Presidente Grande Fracaso?

2. How to Change Washington: Get Rid of the Hollywood Glamour

3. Warren! Brown! The Brawl in Boston!

4. Addendum

Happy Friday!

Here's your Morning Jolt.

Jim

1. ¿Por qué usted no tan a menudo, Presidente Grande Fracaso?

One of my favorite assessments of the Obama era involves paraphrasing the former Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green, who had one of the all-time most memorable meltdowns when his team almost beat a much-favored Chicago Bears team in 2006: "The Bears are who they thought they were! They are who we thought they were! And we let them off the hook!"

With a few exceptions, Barack Obama has been as president who we -- his critics and skeptics -- thought he would be. (I'll let you decide who, exactly, let him off the hook.)

There was little evidence, if any, to argue that President Obama would be the man who would soothe the partisan divide, bring both parties together in common ground, pass legislation with bipartisan majorities . . . and yet many voters and many folks in the media seemed to believe he could do it.

So when President "I Won"/"Punish Our Enemies" was asked about his greatest failure yesterday in a forum with the Spanish-language channel Univision, he had to acknowledge a key premise of his 2008 campaign has been proven false.

A surprising comment from President Barack Obama, at the Univision forum in Florida earlier, on things he has learned after four years: "You can't change Washington from the inside."

It's a tricky thing to claim outsider status after serving in the White House for four years (and in the Senate before that), after running on a hope and change message, and it is not an especially helpful comment for a president running for reelection with a plea to voters to let him finish the work he began but hasn't closed out.

The rest of his statement was about doing more to involve the public to bring change from the "outside," which is more in line with what he said before. But if the small pool of persuadable voters see Obama as saying Washington is irretrievably broken, even for him, they could be open to a fresh case from his opponent. . . .

Here's the full Obama quote: "I think that I've learned some lessons over the last four years, and the most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That's how I got elected. And that's how the big accomplishments like health care got done."

Yeah, Romney pounced on that one:

"The President today threw in the white flag of surrender again. He said he can't change Washington from inside. He can only change it from outside. Well, we're going to give him that chance in November. He's going outside," Romney said to cheers. "I can change Washington. I will change Washington. We'll get the job done from the inside -- Republicans and Democrats will come together. He can't do it. His slogan was 'Yes, we can.' His slogan now is 'No, I can't.' This is time for a new president."

Jonah points out:

Wait a second. In the 2008 primaries, his whole argument with Hillary Clinton was over this exact question. She believed that you can change Washington from the inside and Barack Obama said you couldn't.

For example, in a Nevada debate, Obama said he wasn't a very organized person. But that didn't matter because it was the president's job to inspire people. The presidency "involves having a vision for where the country needs to go . . . and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change."

Hillary rejected this formulation. She said being president is about being the "chief executive officer" who must be "able to manage and run the bureaucracy."

Obama won that fight. But as president he conspicuously failed to inspire people, save for the tea parties who proceeded to drive a historic victory for the Republicans in 2010. For example, after over 50 speeches, statements and addresses on ObamaCare he never made it a popular piece of legislation.

And now he's saying he had to learn an idea he never subscribed to was wrong.

2. How to Change Washington: Get Rid of the Hollywood Glamor

By the way, Washington can change. For the culture of the nation's capital and our national politics to become less acrimonious, less perpetually furious, more constructive and solution-oriented, politics has to become boring again. It can't be dueling cults of personality, with the Black Eyed Peas and other celebrities writing songs about our political leaders in messianic tones. It needs to dispel the mythology of The West Wing that the process of writing legislation and crafting policy is dramatic, and always important, and a clash between good and evil, where stirring speeches bring the people to their feet. Honestly, balancing the budget isn't supposed to be sexy, or exciting, or cool. Most of the details of what comes out of Washington need to be left to the policy wonks, the folks who actually know what they're talking about.

This is not governing by an un-scrutinized elite, mind you; it's just that the day-to-day actions of the federal government ought to be largely irrelevant to most of the citizens. It is not healthy to have our politics so dominant in our culture, nor our cultural divisions so central to our politics.

Texas governor Rick Perry told voters he wanted to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential to their lives as possible. At the very least, voters need a "set it and forget it" option.

When I was growing up, if you expressed a passionate interest in politics, people looked at you as if there was something wrong with you. Most people had better things to do with their time. The comings and goings in Washington were worthy of casual, sporadic attention, a bit of bemusement or exasperated head-shaking, and then turning to the sports page, or the comics page, or other news. Don't interpret this as a celebration of apathy, precisely; it's just that the realm of politics was for those who cared enough to learn some things about it, and they generally learned those things from books instead of from [ahem] blogs or some forwarded e-mail.

My theory -- or hope -- is that the "narratives" you see decried in this newsletter are less persuasive to well-informed citizens, that the more you know, the more you'll sense that government programs usually create new problems in the process of attempting to solve old ones. When the government announces it's going to spend lots of money on some laudable-sounding goal, you'll wonder who's getting the federal contracts for that work. You'll know federal projects are usually behind schedule, over budget, and less effective than promised.

3. Warren! Brown! The Brawl in Boston!

Last night, Republican Sen. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren held their first debate.

Ira Stoll saw a preview of the themes we're likely to see in this fall's presidential debates:

Professor Warren sought to depict Senator Brown as a friend of billionaires and big oil companies, asking "whose side do you stand on?" She said she favored a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction -- one of President Obama's favorite euphemisms for tax increases.

Senator Brown sought to depict Professor Warren as a tax-increaser, and he genially deflected her attacks. "Her criticism of me is that I'm not gonna raise taxes, and that's an accurate criticism," he said. At another point, he said, "The criticism you're hearing. . . I don't want to raise taxes. Guilty as charged." He said of Professor Warren, "she's obsessed with raising taxes. . . . The first thing, every single time, is to raise taxes."

Responding to Professor Warren's criticism of him for a vote she described as cutting oil subsidies, Senator Brown noted that gas prices are $4 a gallon, and said, "I'm no friend of big oil. I'm a friend of the motorist." Professor Warren retorted that what she called the "big five" oil companies made $137 billion in profits last year.

Senator Brown also rejected Professor Warren's attempt to divide Americans into the top 3% versus everyone else, or billionaires and oil companies versus everyone else. "Fingerpointing, us versus them, the haves and have-nots," he said.

William Jacobson was watching, and while he thinks Brown did himself some good.

Very strong opening for Brown on fake Cherokee issue. He didn't handle it the way I would have, but he picked an issue -- the release of her employment records -- and stuck to it. (added) In hindsight, focusing on releasing records was brilliant, because Warren has a major problem, she likely made or participated in causing Harvard to make false federal filings as to her Native American status using standard Harvard and EEOC definitions.

Warren probably got the better, in liberal Massachusetts, on social issues using the War on Women theme. Brown deflected it, but it probably stirred up the base.

Warren didn't land many blows, but Brown hit her very hard at the end on two points. When Warren brought up the high cost of college, Brown hammered her on her lavish salary and perks.

When Warren tried to say that Brown sided with big companies, Brown lowered the boom on something most viewers probably didn't know, that Warren represented Travelers Insurance Co. and was paid $225,000 to defeat asbestos claims. Brown harped on it, and because most viewers probably didn't know, I think it hurt.

Brown also gave multiple shout outs to union members, including on the Keystone Pipeline. Remember, the unions supported Coakley in 2010, but the members voted with Brown.

I imagine supporters will still support each, but even putting aside my disdain for Warren and trying to be as neutral as I can, I think Brown helped himself tonight. It wasn't a knockout, but he won easily on points because Warren needed to demonize him, and he came across as he always comes across, as a regular guy the people can relate to.

I'm always a little wary of these flash polls, but for what it's worth: "Fifty percent (50%) of voters who watched tonight's U.S. Senate debate between Senator Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren said the Senator won, with 40% saying that Warren won the debate (6% thought it was a tie and 4% were undecided) according to a Kimball Political Consulting survey of "likely voters" in Massachusetts."

4. Addendum

A Leno joke, transmitted by Andrew Malcolm: "Leno: MSNBC reports the economy has bottomed out. There's an Obama slogan: 'It Can't Get Any Worse Than This.'"