John McGowan,  May 17 2007

Why can’t the United States fix a manifestly broken health care system?  I was in Washington DC this week and went to a fascinating event sponsored by the German Marshall Fund. Thirty diplomats, policy wonks, think tankers, and academics gathered to talk about the realities of negotiating economic regulations in an increasingly intertwined global economy. Presiding was Dan Drezner of Tufts University Law School and author of  "All Politics Is Global."  One thing he said helps explain the lack of any serious progress in fixing an American health care system that every user recognizes is completely dysfunctional.  (Visited an emergency room lately?)  The costs of change are always high—and are especially going to be resisted when some players in a system are profiting from the status quo.  In many democracies—and especially in an American democracy that does not regulate campaign costs—interested parties can have a disproportionate influence over governmental policy. As a general rule, Drezner said, expect no change in any sector of the economy in which organized and deep-pocketed interest groups will resist change. No wonder politicians from both parties will say the thing that is not true: that America has the best health care system in the world. The insurance and drug companies have made the politicians very aware that they will suffer for telling the truth. So we not only fail to address the issue, we fail to even admit that there is an issue. Practice after me: “My name is America, and I have a health care problem.”

Tom Murphy,  May 16, 2007

Much of the time, this blog focuses on nagging national and international issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the ongoing crisis in the US attorney's office under Alberto Gonzales.  We do that because it has become obvious to anyone outside the White House that these issues must be resolved before the US can take meaningful steps forward. Today, we'd like to point to a domestic issue that starts with individuals and extends far beyond the country's borders, and that is the apathy that has left the US as both the largest consumer of fossil fuels and the largest cause of global warming. This is something we can't blame entirely on Republicans or Democrats, but also upon the millions upon millions of Americans who drive cars when the don't have to or drive large cars when small ones will do. Simply put: please stop. Ride a bike. Carpool. Take a walk. Merge your trips. Take transit. But, please, find some way to reduce your use of a car by at least 10-20 percent. That will help save the environment. It will save you money. It will make you healthier. You will live longer. The planet will live longer. If you're concerned about global warming, do something about it. Today.

Cathy Bowman,  May 12, 2007

Now that Tony Blair is stepping down, what's next for the charismatic British prime minister? Will he earn loads of cash on the lecture circuit? Join Jamie Oliver on television? Pop over to the World Bank and lend a hand? Or head off on a long vacation? Blair helped bring peace to Northern Ireland and must feel enormously proud of that. But I suspect he figured out long ago that the war in Iraq was a disaster but for many reasons (or maybe just fear) he stayed the course. He looks so troubled these days. The stress of his job has aged him. When he defends his decision to follow the U.S. into Iraq, he doesn't look like he believes what he's saying. It's uncomfortable to have to dwell in the Land of Self Reflection, especially in public. Now he carries the burden in private – and what a burden to bear.

John McGowan,  May 5, 2007

Now what? The political maneuvering over the next iteration of the Iraq funding bill has officially begun. The most likely scenario is a Democratic attempt to really place their Republican colleagues on the coals. Put benchmarks for progress without timetables for actual withdrawal into the bill. If Republicans vote against it, they go on record as saying the war should continue endlessly even if no progress is made. If they vote for it, they join the general chorus of “no confidence” in the Bush administration. I saw another brilliant, although highly unlikely, suggestion the other day: the Democrats should approve the $124 billion with the proviso that tax rates on the wealthy be raised high enough to cover the war’s costs. Or here’s another version of the same ploy: pass the funding bill, but include a statement that the war will only be funded next year if its cost is included in the budget, not separated out as a separate appropriation, as if not part of this administration’s general savaging of governmental finances.

John McGowan,  May 2, 2007

Is the war in Iraq lost? Maybe it’s better to turn the question around. With lowered expectations, what does “winning” the war even mean at this point. The only answer I can see: creating a stable enough environment that the Iraqi people have some kind of ability to live daily life without constant fear—and American troops can be pulled out without their absence sparking a complete blood-bath. How to get there from here? There seem to be only two answers on the table. Make the Iraqis responsible for saving their own country from total civil war—and thus saving their own hides. Or kill all the “bad guys” so that peace breaks out someday. The second strategy is absurd. Our killing creates more “bad guys” than we kill. So the second strategy really just means the endless presence of American troops—out of an understandable sense of responsibility, of not being able to walk away and let a blood-bath ensue. But the second strategy is also totally stagnant. More of the same as far as the eye can see. It’s not a strategy, but paralysis. And what we need, Mr. President, is a way forward, not the same old same old.

Tom Murphy,  May 1, 2007

The president's continued resistance to the will of Congress and the American people surfaced again as Bush vetoed a timeline for  the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. His move was unfortunately predictable. As Sen. Harry Reid said later, the president "is mistaken" if he believes he will ultimately prevail in a battle of wills. He may hold out long enough to provoke an even uglier confrontation with Congress, but it has become increasingly clear that the Iraq war wannot be "won" in a conventional sense. It will require a political solution in Iraq, not a political fight in Washington. The war would not end if the US withdrew. It will not end if the US stays. It's time for the president to show leadership by breaking the logjam that is holding up this and other issues that are standing in the way of bipartisanship in his final term.

Tom Murphy,  April 22, 2007

Sen. Harry Reid took a good deal of heat for saying the Iraq war is unwinnable. In essence, he was saying the war is already lost and the sooner the US leaves, the lower the cost will be in American lives and American dollars. Politically, it was crazy thing to do. Pragmatically, it was an important step forward the in the stalemated debate between the president and Congress over whether or not there should be a deadline on American involvement. By saying the war is lost, Reid baited the president to respond otherwise. The president did not. Instead, he continued to say it's important for the US to help Iraq. Apparently, even Mr. Bush knows a lost cause when he sees one. Now he must ask himself how long he really wants to continue fighting for it. It's not the president's only battle. He's also fighting to keep Alberto Gonzales in the AG's office, despite growing opposition within his own party. And he's trying to shield Andy Card and Karl Rove from being forced to tell the truth before Congress. It seems increasingly apparent the president would get more accomplished by folding his hand when he isn't holding any strong cards, and asking for a new deal.

John McGowan,  April 19, 2007

The Academy Award-winning “Lives of Others” (best foreign film) only made it to my provincial hometown this week. A great flick, but it provides a fully misleading portrait of how the security forces operate in a paranoid regime. The movie’s plot hinges on a failed attempt to come up with the incriminating evidence that will allow the East German Stasi arrest the a writer who has smuggled an incendiary article to the west. When the search for the evidence fails, the case is closed. But police states decide who is guilty first, then manufacture the case second. And evidence? They don’t need no stinking evidence. That’s why interrogation, not investigation, takes center stage in such regimes. You break the prisoner and get him or her to confess. Lack of evidence would not have slowed down the Stasi in East Germany for one minute. Because the one persistent need of such a state is always to find those responsible for the fact that things have gone wrong. The rulers of such a state will blame everyone and everyone before taking one ounce of responsibility themselves.

Tom Murphy,  April 16, 2007

The shootings at Virginia Tech once again underscore the failure of our society to put limits on weapons. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly there is no constitutional right to keep weapons in your home. We have a "militia" raised by the government. We have police who are authorized to carry weapons. But leaving guns in the hands of civilians means thousands of innocent people will lose their lives each year because criminals and mentally disturbed people will use those weapons to kill people. We can stop this. We should stop this. We should do it now. Before one more person dies.

Tom Murphy,  April 15, 2007

An Iraq deadline.  Fired prosecutors.  Global warming.  Stem cells. The issues filling the headlines recently have three things in common. The president is on one side, a majority of Congress and the public is on the other, and they're not going away anytime soon. Alberto Gonzales' statement to Congress this week won't satisfy demands for the truth about why eight US prosecutors were fired, and Democrats will keep digging until they find Karl Rove's emails (on a GOP email server) that explain the motives. As senators  Schumer and Reid have said, there will be a deadline on the Iraq war eventually. Global warming is real and getting worse, which is why John Edwards and others have proposed plans to reverse it - unlike the president, who supports the oil industry. And the potential of stem cell research to protect life far outweighs its potential to cheapen it. Mr. Bush cannot win these arguments and he would show more leadership by helping to resolve these debates than by extending them. This is his chance to be a uniter, not a divider.

Tom Murphy,  April 14, 2007

It was just a few weeks ago that the nation was aghast to hear Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer had returned. Many were equally startled to hear she planned to keep on campaigning for her husband. But almost everyone I’ve spoken with has since come to admire this brilliant woman, who most of us didn’t even notice beforehand. A week later, it was Bush flack Tony Snow who shared the news his cancer was back. Fred Thompson has known for two years he has cancer, but he just shared that with the nation and is expected to enter the race for the presidency. He wouldn’t be the only GOP candidate to experience cancer, either. Rudy Giuliani has “beaten” his prostate cancer and gone on with his political life. Cancer isn’t the only reminder of our fragility, but it’s a nasty one. NJ Governor Jon Corzine is battling a different kind following his nearly fatal car accident. It’s unlikely there is a single American who can agree with all these people on politics, but it’s hard to ignore the bravery that these exceptional people show in their daily lives. How many of us would soldier on like them, I wonder. Whether you like ‘em or hate ‘em for their roles in government, you have to admire their commitment to serving our society under such extreme circumstances.

John McGowan,  April 10, 2007

Can we find a cure for consumerism, a way to reconfigure our economies so that they are not utterly dependent on growth? “Sustainable development” is the current buzzword, the comforting lie of the day. Really giving something up, really scaling down is neither thinkable nor mentionable. As John Lanchester says in the current London Review of Books: “When a government minister goes on television to announce that fewer cars are being sold, that fewer people are flying, that fewer people are buying new stuff, and that this is really good news—that’ll be the sign things are changing.” Until that time, although we may (in the past few weeks) now have finally placed global warming denial behind us, we will still be in the stage of refusing to even imagine, no less enact, true solutions to the challenges it poses and the disasters it promises.

John McGowan,  April 4, 2007

Iran is going to release the 15 British sailors as an Easter present to the West. The British seemed to have relied on a trick the Bushies have never stooped to use: diplomacy. One prediction is that the Brits are going to release the six Iranians they are holding in Iraq sometime fairly soon, swearing loudly the whole time how there was no quid pro quo. That’s part of diplomacy; you get to do things and describe them in ways you know that no one will believe, but you haven’t lost face. The key to diplomacy: never, ever, humiliate your partner and never, ever, back him into a corner. You have to provide a way for him to give in gracefully, which means a way for him to give in without acknowledging that he is giving in. I guess you could call that being gracious. Iran went one step further this time; it publicly displayed its graciousness, by making the gesture of a gift, of a freely granted return of the sailors. But give it a week or two. There will have been a backdoor deal made. By the time its details become known, however, the news will have moved on, and only a small portion of the audience will note what really went down.

John McGowan,  April 3, 2007

Imagine that! The Supreme Court rules that the EPA has to do its job of protecting the environment. Not that the conservative judges see it that way. In his dissent, John Roberts focused on the issue of standing – whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit. The chief justice said Congress and the president should deal with complaints by the states, not the federal courts. And Justice Antonin Scalia argued the court shouldn’t substitute its judgment for the EPA's, “no matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake.” In other words, Roberts apparently believes that a state couldn’t challenge the Department of Homeland Security over security threats. Instead, that state must ask Congress and the president to please, pretty please, solve the problem. And Scalia just throws aside the notion of checks and balances altogether. He thinks a federal agency is supreme and there is no legal way to challenge it. Remember their views in this case and check back in 2009, when we might have a Democratic administration. Let’s see how much immunity they insist it should have from the courts.

Tom Murphy,  March 29, 2007

The president faces two tough choices. For years, he’s told the country we must stay the course in Iraq. In the November elections, the country told him it strongly disagrees. Yet in January, the president said he’d increase the number of soldiers in Iraq with no plan for withdrawal. In approving funds to carry on the war, Congress has now set a deadline. The president has previously vowed to veto any spending bill that set a deadline, but that move would likely lead to a louder, uglier confrontation with Congress. So now he must decide what to do: Listen to the American public and the majorities of the House and Senate? Or again turn a deaf ear and stay on his course. As if that weren’t enough, he has to decide whether to fire Alberto Gonzales, who ironically is under increasing pressure as a result of his handling of the firing of eight federal prosecutors last year. Although the AG repeatedly said he didn’t know much about the matter, former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson has now testified that Gonzales was regularly updated on the matter. Deciding these two issues will determine his legacy, and we don’t yet know if he’ll be a uniter or a divider. But we can all agree on one thing with the president. He’s the decider. And now, Mr. President, is the time to decide.

John McGowan,  March 27, 2007

The Bush Administration employs two types: the Machiavellian neo-cons who will stop at nothing to accumulate and hold on to power and loyal toadies. The most prominent of the latter was Colin Powell, who did his masters’ bidding for four years—for which he got no thanks and the prize of utterly destroying his reputation as a man of integrity. When the going gets tough for the folks in the White House, it’s time to throw another toady to the sharks. Harriet Meyers, Scooter Libby, Mike Brown. They all had to walk the plank when the time came. Contrary to every noble image of leadership, the underlings have to dive on the grenade to save the officers in the Bush army. The Bush motto: the buck never got here. The exception, you might say, came when Rumsfeld had to go. But do consider how long he stayed. And how his going provided the cover for Bush to ignore ever single recommendation of the Iraq Study Group. Now it may be Gonzales’ turn. Surely he would be a major take-down, one of the alpha male neo-cons rather than one of the toadies. But he may avoid being forced out. He has already tossed Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling to the sharks. But that strategy may fail this time. Scooter Libby’s fate seems to have given the toadies some sense of self-preservation. Goodling (on “leave of absence”) has decided to take the Fifth, and Sampson (who resigned) is less likely after the Libby case to lie under oath to protect his boss. So Gonzales may be forced to resign. If he does, consider who has pushed him off the boat in order to maintain his seat at the helm: Karl Rove.

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