Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Bob Herbert: The Impossible Dream

One of the most frustrating tendencies of mainstream leaders in the United States is their willingness, year after debilitating year, to embrace policies that have no hope of succeeding.

From Lyndon Johnson’s mad pursuit of victory in Vietnam to George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq to today’s delusionary deficit zealots, the tragic lure of the impossible dream seems never to subside.

Ronald Reagan told us he could cut taxes, jack up defense spending and balance the budget – all at the same time. How’d he do? As his biographer Garry Wills tells us, the Gipper “nearly tripled the deficit in his eight years, and never made a realistic proposal for cutting it.”

President Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan while promising to start bringing our troops home next summer, which is like a heavyweight boxer throwing roundhouse rights while assuring his opponent that he won’t fight quite as hard after the eighth or ninth round.

I don’t know if it’s the drinking water or the rarefied air at the highest reaches of government that makes so many of our leaders go loopy. Whatever it is, we need to put a stop to these self-defeating tendencies. The U.S. is in sad shape, and most of the policy prescriptions being tossed around by the movers and shakers are bad ones.

Peter Daou: On 60 Minutes, President Obama apologizes to America for being a Democrat

The title of this post is intentionally hyperbolic and provocative – I couldn’t think of any other way to express my shock at the things President Obama said to Steve Kroft.

First, some context: I’ve been insistent that the fundamental problem for President Obama and Democratic leaders is a lack of moral authority, a pervasive sense among the electorate that they don’t have the courage of their convictions . . .

The aftermath of the GOP’s midterm triumph perfectly illustrates this problem: Obama is falling over himself seeking compromise with Republicans, ceding to their frames, while Republican leaders say they will stick to their principles and try to destroy his presidency and legacy. Here’s how I put it a couple of days ago: If one side offers “compromise” and the other claims to stand firmly on principle, which one appears more principled to voters?

Astonishingly, in a 60 Minutes piece that just aired, Obama goes one step further. During the course of the entire interview he only once mentions having the courage of one’s convictions. And he attributes it not to himself or Democrats, but to Tom Coburn, a staunch conservative!

Eugene Robinson: Mr. President, some leadership, please

Last week, voters made a powerful statement about leadership: They’d like some, please. So far, there’s no evidence that either President Obama or the top Republicans in Congress were paying the slightest attention.

In his only interview since the GOP rampage, with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes,” Obama was reasonable, analytical, professorial – but also uninspired and uninspiring. I’m just being honest, if not generous; when Kroft asked whatever happened to Obama’s “mojo,” the president gave the impression that he’s been wondering the same thing.

By uninspired, I mean there was no sense that Obama relishes the high-stakes political battles that are sure to come over the next two years. There was no hint, for example, that he looks forward to the opportunity to put Republicans on the spot about all the unrealistic budget-cutting they say they want to carry out. And by uninspiring, I mean that the president offered no vision of a brighter tomorrow. Instead, he sketched a future not quite as dim as the present.

Adam Serwer: Even with tax cuts, GOP appears willing to shoot the hostage

The debate on ABC’s This Week between former Reagan Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence (R) was instructive in how Republicans view their immediate policy priorities. While Stockman was urging expiration of the Bush tax cuts to reduce the deficit, Pence insisted that they should be extended, because Republicans aren’t so much interested in reducing the deficit as they are cutting taxes for the wealthy, and they’ve done an excellent job of convincing the media to avoid noting the contradiction.

On 60 Minutes, President Obama indicated he’d be willing to compromise with Republicans by extending the tax cuts for the middle class permanently while possibly agreeing to a temporary extension of the cuts for the wealthy. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, meanwhile, said Republicans would refuse the White House proposal to “decouple” the rates in such a manner.

Richard Cohen: Boehner’s health delusion

With a John Boehner speakership fast approaching, I dutifully read up on the man. I learned he is a Midwestern fellow, born (like us all) into the virtuous lower middle class, one of 12 siblings and a man whose early career, in an unironic homage to “The Graduate,” was in plastics. What I did not know – what was missing entirely from my reading – is that he might be French.

Or Japanese. Or Finnish or British or even German. Whatever the case, this much is clear: No American, certainly not one about to occupy a leadership position in our government, could possibly call the American health-care system “the best health care system in the world.” Boehner did just that last week. He was having an out-of-country experience.

Dana Milbank: Rick Perry takes on the salt police

The feds are trying to take away your salt – and Texas Gov. Rick Perry finds this unsavory.

“We are fed up with being overtaxed and overregulated,” he writes in “Fed Up,” his aptly named new book.”We are tired of being told how much salt we can put on our food, what windows we can buy for our house, what kind of cars we can drive… and countless other restrictions on our right to live as we see fit.” . . .

So, Perry opposes income taxes, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare? This is radical stuff, and he calls his book evidence that “I’m not running for the presidency.” Maybe so. Whatever the wisdom of his ideas, he gets points for bravery. He wants others to “push back on those who would be nothing more than fearmongers.”

Good plan. Let’s push back against Social Security fearmongers. And, while we’re at it, let’s also push back against fearmongers who say big government is coming for your salt shaker.

Robert Kutter: Time for Team B — And a Movement

In the 1970s, the CIA appointed a “Team B” to challenge prevailing assumptions about national security. Since then, there have been other Team B exercises to question prevailing views.

This is a smart move. An in-group of experts often becomes an echo-chamber, reinforcing their own prejudices and excluding people with different views. If you are inside, you demonstrate your own loyalty by not frontally challenging the top people, no matter how disastrous. This, of course, is the road to foreign policy debacles like Iraq and Vietnam.

But the same thing happens in politics and domestic policy. As we’ve just seen, Obama’s A-Team of political advisers did not exactly shine.

Dean Baker: The Deficit Commission Tsunami

There are three separate deficit commissions prepared to share their wisdom with the American people before the end of the year. These three commissions all have two important features in common: not one member of these commissions warned of the catastrophe that would be created by the collapse of the housing bubble, and they all think it is a good idea to cut Social Security.

The country is currently experiencing its worst economic downturn in 70 years with more than 25 million people unemployed, underemployed or having given up looking for work altogether. It might have been appropriate for a commission that purports to be giving advice on the future of the country’s most important social programs, as well as the overall budget, to include at least one person who was awake enough to notice the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the economy.

Richard (RJ) Eskow : Does Obama Really Want to Make Social Security Cuts Even the Tea Party Wouldn’t Touch?

The president could be on the brink of making a serious mistake, one with grave implications for his political future and even graver implications for aging Americans. If he responds to this election by adopting the Deficit Commission’s recommendation to cut Social Security, President Obama will be snatching catastrophe from the jaws of defeat. He’ll be responding to the “voice of the people” by giving people something they really, really don’t want.

The Campaign for America’s Future and Democracy Corps commissioned a poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research which showed that an overwhelming 69 percent of voters agreed that “politicians should keep their hands off Social Security and Medicare” when they address the deficit.

Yet on 60 Minutes last night, the president said that we’re “still confronted with the fact that the vast majority of the federal budget are things that people really think are important, like Social Security and Medicare and defense. And so, you then have to start making some tough decisions about how do we pay for those things that we think are important? … I mean, we’re gonna have to, you know, tackle some big issues like entitlements that, you know, when you listen to the Tea Party or you listen to Republican candidates they promise we’re not gonna touch.”