Toward the Grand Bargain
by George Will

Days before becoming responsible, in the eyes of a public fixated on the presidency, for almost everything, Barack Obama vowed to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit.” It will consider the economy’s long-term problems, one of which is the growing cost of entitlements in an aging nation that is caught in the tightening grip of an iron law of welfare states: Graying means paying.

Presumably the president’s summit will help chart a path toward what has been called a “grand bargain.” This Big Bang will aim to create a new universe of domestic policy by, among other things, making the entitlement menu — particularly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are more than 40 percent of federal spending — manageable. Obama spoke of his summit a day after the House of Representatives, evidently believing that the nation is so flush that there is no need for restraint, voted to make matters worse by enriching that menu.

By a vote of 289-139, with 40 Republicans joining the majority, the House, in the process of reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, doubled the funding, thereby transforming it through “mission creep.” SCHIP’s purpose, when it was enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1997, was to subsidize state governments as they subsidize health care for families too affluent to be eligible for Medicaid but not affluent enough to afford health insurance. Because any measure acquires momentum when it is identified as for “the children,” SCHIP was said to be for “poor children” or children of “the working poor.”

In 2007, President Bush proposed a $5 billion increase in SCHIP, the House voted a $50 billion increase but receded to the Senate’s proposed $35 billion, which became the definition of moderation. That compromise, which Bush successfully vetoed, at first would have extended SCHIP eligibility to some households with incomes 400 percent of the poverty line ($83,000 for a family of four), and more than $30,000 above the median household income ($50,233). So people with incomes higher than most people’s became eligible for a program supposedly for low-income people. Call that compassionate arithmetic.

The new expansion, which is vengeance for Bush’s veto, is mission gallop: It will make it much easier for some states to extend SCHIP eligibility to children from families earning up to $84,800. Furthermore, to make “poor” an extremely elastic concept, generous “income disregards” are allowed. Families can, depending on their state’s policies, subtract from their income calculation what they spend on rent or mortgage or heating or food or transportation or some combination of these. So children in some families with incomes well over $100,000 will be eligible.

Grace-Marie Turner, a student of health care policies, says this SCHIP expansion is sensible — if your goal is quickly to get as many people on public coverage as possible, and to have children grow up thinking that it is normal for them to get their health insurance from the government. That is the goal.

And this is the Congress with which the president will try to strike a grand bargain. Because of the 22nd Amendment, he may not be president long enough to get a Democratic Congress to agree to the shape of the table at which to bargain.

If he does tackle the problem of the teetering entitlement system, he will do so at an unpropitious moment: Events are making reform more necessary while making it seem less urgent. A nation in which $350 billion was but the first half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and in which TARP is distinct from the perhaps $850 billion “stimulus” program, is a nation being taught not to take seriously sums with merely nine digits and two commas. Remember, just 15 months ago Bush vetoed SCHIP because of $30 billion, a sum that, from the TARP bucket, nowadays disappears into the thin air from which much of the almost $1 trillion of stimulus will be conjured.

The theory of a grand bargain is that if every American faction is being nicked simultaneously — if tax increases and benefit cuts (“cuts” understood, perhaps, as disappointing increases) make everyone surly at the same time — there will be unity born of universal grievance, which will morph into a public-spirited consensus. Perhaps. On the other hand, George Kennan, diplomat and historian, said that the unlikelihood of any negotiation reaching an agreement grows by the square of the number of parties involved.

The Bush Legacy
by Dr. Thomas Sowell

Whatever history’s verdict on the Bush administration might be, it is likely to be very different from what we hear from the talking heads on television or read from the know-it-alls on editorial pages.

President Bush’s number one achievement was also the number one function of government– to protect its citizens. Nobody on September 11, 2001 believed that there would never be another such attack for more than seven years.

Unfortunately, people who are protected from dangers often conclude that there are no dangers. This is most painfully visible among those Americans who are hysterical over the government’s intercepting international phone calls, in order to disrupt international terrorist networks.

Many, especially among the intelligentsia, are also obsessed with whether we are being nice enough to the cut-throats locked up at Guantanamo, some of whom have already been turned loose to resume a life of terrorism. The rights of the Geneva Convention do not apply to people who neither obey the Geneva Convention nor are covered by the Geneva Convention.

That a President of the United States protected us from deadly enemies may not seem like much of an accomplishment to some. But it may be more fully appreciated when we get a President who eases up on that protection, in order to curry favor at home and abroad.

We can only hope that it will not take the sight of an American city lying in radioactive ruins to wake people up to the dangers that George W. Bush protected us against, despite an unending chorus of carping.

No one in his right mind would say that the Bush administration was flawless. But many of their worst political mistakes were the kinds of mistakes that decent people often make when dealing with indecent people, both domestically and internationally.

The idea with which President Bush arrived in Washington, that he could gain bipartisan support by going along with the Democrats, and not vetoing any bills that Congress passed, ignored the fact that it takes two to tango.

Having proclaimed his goal as bipartisanship, it was he who was blamed when the bipartisanship failed to materialize. Wooing Ted Kennedy and going along with massive government spending did not stop Kennedy from getting up in the Senate and loudly proclaiming that Bush “lied, and lied and lied!” about Iraq.

Whatever the merits or demerits of going to war against Saddam Hussein, the question whether he had weapons of mass destruction immediately at hand makes a better talking point than a serious argument.

President Bush was not the only national leader who thought Saddam Hussein had such weapons, nor were such weapons the only reason why the Iraqi dictator posed a continuing danger that all diplomatic efforts, over more than a decade, had failed to extinguish.

This issue can be debated, and no doubt will be debated for years, if not generations, to come. But the irresponsible charge that “Bush lied” for some nefarious purpose– to trade “blood for oil” or to generate business for Halliburton, for example– is more than a slander against him. It undermines our whole nation and gives comfort to our enemies around the world.

Domestically, the Bush legacy leaves a lot to be desired. Going along with the McCain-Feingold bill restricting free speech was perhaps the Bush administration’s biggest dereliction of duty. Maybe they figured that they could pass the problem along to the Supreme Court to stop it, since this bill so clearly violated the First Amendment to the Constitution.

But the Supreme Court was also guilty of a dereliction of its duty and let the McCain-Feingold bill stand.

Advocating amnesty for illegal aliens was another political disaster, especially when accompanied by denials of the obvious.

Although the Bush administration went along with the chorus of calls for promoting home ownership among people who could not afford home ownership, President Bush at least sounded a warning while others were still pushing lenders to lend to people who proved unable to repay their loans.

A mixed bag? Aren’t we all? But an honorable man.

The Right Standard for Judging George W. Bush
by Michael Medved

As he prepares to leave the White House after eight monumentally eventful years, what’s the right standard for judging the performance of George W. Bush?

The basis for answering that question has changed radically over the course of the last seven years, very much to the president’s detriment.

After the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, and Bush’s almost instantaneous rebirth as a determined “War President,” most Americans expressed clear ideas of what they expected of the commander in chief. The conventional wisdom of the time declared that his presidency would rise or fall based on his ability to keep the nation safe. If the United States sustained a series of crippling new attacks the world understood that history would judge Bush as a failure. If, against all odds, he succeeded in turning the tide against our terrorist adversaries and managed to keep the nation secure from homeland assaults, then the president would emerge from his terms of office as a successful, and probably heroic, chief executive.

The concentration on the Iraq War after March of 2003 altered the criteria for evaluating the Bush Presidency. The conflict in Iraq, like all wars, proved messy, unpredictable, frustrating and often mishandled. For better or for worse, the American people identified the struggle as the defining gamble of the Bush administration and leading commentators declared that the president would provoke either contempt or gratitude based on the outcome of that war. If the United States failed in its mission of establishing a durable, pro-western government in Iraq, Mr. Bush stood no more chance of a favorable judgment by history than did Johnson or Nixon after the collapse of the U.S. investment in Vietnam. If, on the other hand, Mr. Bush defied the fanatical anti-war (and often anti-American) protesters and all the media nay-sayers, and somehow managed to produce a positive outcome in Iraq, then that alone seemed to guarantee a positive verdict by posterity on his presidency.

Despite all the passion and confusion surrounding this issue, numerical measures at the end of 2008 provide an undeniable indicator of the spectacular turnaround in Iraqi affairs and the level of the president’s historic success. Since the beginning of the war, the New York Times called on Jason Campbell and Michael O’Hanlon of the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution to gather statistics for a series of presentations under the heading, “The State of Iraq: An Update.” In December, they presented numbers comparing the situation in November, 2008 with November, 2006. US troop deaths, for instance, went down to 12, from 69 two years before (and from 137 in November, 2004). Iraqi Security Forces deaths went down from 123 to 27. Iraqi civilian deaths from the war plummeted at a similar rate—from 3,475 to 500.

The Blago Episode: Obama’s “Bimbo Eruption”?
by Ross Mackenzie

David Mendell, Barack Obama’s biographer, notes that regarding Chicago’s corrupt political machine, “Obama, to his credit, got through this system with very little mud on his suit.”

Still — and still. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich now finds himself mired in an unpretty place. From wiretapped telephone conversations it seems Blago tried to auction to the highest bidder the Senate seat Obama relinquished Nov. 16 following his election to the presidency. And so — in re Obama — we come to variations on the question Howard Baker made famous about Richard Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate:

What did he know and when did he know it?

The other day an Associated Press report quoted Obama as “absolutely certain” no one around him had any dealings with Blago about the sale of the Senate seat. And various press accounts have noted the apparent distance between Blago and Obama over the years — as well as Obama’s recent efforts to move still farther from the Illinois governor.

Yet the unfolding Blago episode has to be distracting Obama during his transition cruise to the White House. It also recalls past Obama responses to questions about his connections to other unsavory Chicagoans.

For instance: Bill Ayers? Hardly knew him. Jeremiah Wright? Not the man who married Obama, baptized his children, and rendered him spiritual guidance for 20 years. Developer Antoin “Tony” Rezko — now reportedly talking to investigators about Blago from the jail cell he occupies for corrupting political officials? Despite Rezko’s 17-year relationship as a curbstone adviser and campaign contributor to Obama, it definitely would be a reach to construe him as — you know — a close friend.

What’s more (1), Blago’s successor as a Chicago congressman, Rahm Emanuel, has been chosen to become Obama’s White House chief of staff. Did Emanuel, a famously four-lettering knuckle-cruncher, have any communications with Blago on behalf of Obama about who should fill the Senate seat? It seems there was at least one contact. And Emanuel would have been the logical person. According to Abner Mikva, another former congressman and federal appellate judge, and a longtime Obama mentor: Rahm Emanuel “probably had a better relationship with Blagojevich than most other politicians.”

(2) David Axelrod, an Obama senior advisor, said Nov. 23 on Chicago’s WFLD-TV: “I know (Obama) has talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names (for the Senate seat), many of which have not surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them.” On Dec. 9, about the time Blagojevich was becoming a page-one story, Axelrod recanted: “I was mistaken when I told an interviewer that the president-elect has spoken directly to Gov. Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject.”

Further, there may — or may not — be a disconnect between how Axelrod and Obama define reform. NBC’s Steve Rhodes has dug up a 2005 Chicago Tribune op-ed by Axelrod about the indictment by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald — the same guy on Blagojevich’s case — of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s patronage chief for circumventing a federal ban on political hiring. (The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto passes the op-ed quote along.) Noting “the federal bureaucracy, sheltered from politics by law, has not always been known for its responsiveness and efficiency,” Axelrod wrote:

“(At a news conference) Fitzgerald proclaimed his vision of a day when the recommendations of elected officials, business, labor, and community leaders will no longer count — a day when we entirely remove politics from government. And he seemed to be declaring his intention to use the criminal code to enforce that vision. It is this system, free of political influence, I had envisioned as a young man. But after a lifetime of observing government and participating in politics, I wonder if such radical ‘reform’ is really desirable.”

There’s that word again — reform.

In Chicago and Illinois politics the Machine rules. It’s The Chicago Way. The Machine has produced Rod Blagojevich, an f-wording twerp now likely giving the jeebies to Barack Obama as he transitions to the presidency. Yet Obama is a self-ballyhooed reformer — a practitioner in hope and dreams and “change we can believe in.” How comforting for him to have demonstrated his commitment to change by reforming the Machine.

At bottom, the Blagojevich episode — whether it involves Obama himself or people close to him such as Emanuel or Axelrod — demonstrates the disconnect between Obama’s deeds and his high-sounding words. He talks tirelessly about reform but was an unobjecting beneficiary of the Machine who did not reform it. Instead, “with very little mud on his suit,” he treated it with deference. Likewise on issues from earmarks to education to ethanol, Obama has failed to prove through his actions he is the reformer his rhetoric proclaims.

Like Rod Blagojevich, Barack Obama is a product — eager or acquiescent — of the Chicago Machine. Clearly, he would prefer that any ties he might have to it recede quickly in the rear-view mirror. The Blagojevich episode gives those ties a prominence that could fracture the determined incuriosity of an Obamatized national media. And as with Bill Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions,” so with Barack Obama: Blago and the machine may dog him through much of his presidency.

La. Gov. Jindal: 2012 presidential bid unlikely
By BOB LEWIS

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he’s not interested in a 2012 Republican presidential bid and will seek a second term as governor in 2011.

Jindal, who appeared at a news conference to back Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, was asked if he was interested in being president.

“No,” he replied.

Jindal’s trip to Iowa last month fueled speculation that he was laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign, and he did not rule out changing his mind over the next few years.

Instead, he said Americans are weary after the longest, most expensive election cycle in U.S. history.

“I think anybody who is even thinking of running would be well served to roll up their sleeves and support our new president,” Jindal said. “I told our people, ‘It doesn’t matter whether you’re Republican, Democrat or independent, it doesn’t matter whether you voted for him or not, President-elect Barack Obama is our president.’”

In the wake of Republican losses in Congress and a blowout defeat in the presidential race, Jindal is an early favorite among many Republicans for 2012.

He’s young, 37, and has strong support from conservatives for his income tax-cutting initiatives. Many of them advocated for John McCain to pick Jindal as his vice presidential running mate.

Jindal also enjoyed broad-based approval for his handling of back-to-back hurricanes, Gustav and Ike, that menaced his state and New Orleans in particular in August and September, just three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area.

Obama Hires More Clinton White House Veterans

President-elect Barack Obama continued to fill out staff positions for his incoming administration during the weekend, with many of the new appointees having Clinton White House pedigrees.

Gregory B. Craig, a former State Department official who also served as former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, will be named White House counsel, serving as Mr. Obama’s chief lawyer, Democratic officials said.

Mr. Craig advised Mr. Obama on foreign policy during the presidential campaign and was one of the first prominent aides to Sen. Hillary Clinton to defect from her campaign during the primaries.

The Obama transition team also said Mr. Obama’s former Senate chief of staff, Pete Rouse, will serve as a senior White House adviser. Mr. Rouse had previously been Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s chief of staff before the South Dakotan’s election defeat in 2002, and with Mr. Daschle’s aid, he helped build Mr. Obama’s Senate office.

Mona Sutphen, a former special assistant to Mr. Clinton’s national-security adviser, Sandy Berger, was named deputy chief of staff. Ms. Sutphen had been a managing director of Stonebridge International LLC, an international consulting firm that advises multinational corporations. Another Stonebridge managing director, Michael Warren, is leading the transition’s auditing team at the Treasury Department.

Jim Messina, a veteran Senate aide and Mr. Obama’s campaign chief of staff, will also serve as White House deputy chief of staff. Phil Schiliro, a veteran House aide, will be the president’s liaison to Congress.

The new names join a list that includes senior Clinton White House veterans, such as Rahm Emanuel, now Mr. Obama’s White House chief of staff, and Ron Klain, a top aide to Vice President Al Gore who will be Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s chief of staff.