Parts to Wholes: the Socionomic Systems Nexus

Let's Let the Real SOTU Stand Up

Now we've been facing an immense barrage of very difficult problems, the biggest agenda (all of it negative instead of positive opportunities) that we've faced in a long time. Below in the readings (intended to be a short collection but instead the opposite) we provide the SOTU and Friday's discussion with the Republicans, background context on the last two decade's political devolution that's our biggest obstacle, a short survey of the real policy results of the last year, a survey of the pundits reactions, another follow-on of post-game and not much more thoughtful survey and some going forward context setting on the real issue. That being can we govern ourselves - can we reinvent the machinery of government and governance and will our leadership AND citizens rise to these challenges? Or will we, like those long ago privileged undergraduates have to pay a terrible price to the Piper?

On the whole, given the problems and the environment there are two sets of criteria we'd love to have seen used to do the post-game analysis. The first was on the Speech itself, on style and substance, both of which are important. Schematically what that might look like is (Tone, Content, Structure, Theme) <==> (Policy, Persuasion, Enactment, Implementation). On the whole we found the speech to be eloquent and elegant. Eloquent in tone and attitude and Elegant in how carefully linked together the arguments were in both emotional and substantive terms. Where it failed was in setting out any over-arching organizing principles for the public to hang onto and in taking a few key policy areas and presenting their core arguments. Grading on a curve it might be a B+/A-, measured absolutely against game-changing standards and the difficulties of the time we'd grade it a C. On the whole and allowing for the scope and circumstances we'll go with a B/B+.

What we would like to have heard, somewhere in the media or punditocracy, is a summary of key points, the arguments behind them, the context of those arguments, the subtext linkages to issues and players and what it might setup as next steps on the path forward. What we got was a lot of tone, attitude, talking points, biased interpretations (depending on your source) from people who largely have no experience in doing things, or analyzing them, don't know the issues and aren't recognizing the depth and barriers of the problems. In our small way we've spent some small amount of time parsing and summarzing the speech and trying to wrap a bit more subtance around it to give you a foundation for evaluation (please applaud all you want). It's not a be-all, end-all but a start so if you consider this important take it as the Cliff Notes for when you listen to the actual speech or read the text.

The Economy as Example, Exemplar and Central Issue

There's an enormous amount of accepted wisdom and narrative that's built up over the last year including the consensus that nothing's been done, that what's been done is liberal-leftist and too much was tackled. Well if you've been here/hear before we've been running the same architecture on recommended policy actions since we started blogging to evaluate things based on work dating back 6-9 years and reflecting the best synthesis of the best thinkers over the last thirty. By and large the policies implemented are smack in the middle of what we'd recommend and have received widespread recognition from competent analysts (depending on how you feel about Kissinger, Zandi, et.al. and etc.). Norman Orenstein of the American Enterprise Institute is one such expert from a very conservative think tank and his inventory of the last year's amazing legislative successes is excerpted below in the readings. We suggest you at least skim it. This year started with worse problems than we've faced in decades and saw more and more constructive legislation under worse pressures than we've seen since FDR's first term. Moreover much of that legislation actually worked as promised and intended. Let's consider the example of the multi-dimentional economic and financial policies.

Another factor, and this is a twofold failure, but the President has been so busy saving the country that he's let the opposition define him in pejorative terms and not explained himself on each major issues well enough. But that looks to be changing, in both the SOTU and, even more interestingly, in the follow-on meetings with the Republican leadership on Friday. If you listen to anything listen to that session and the follow-on Q&A. All of the questions were of the "have you quit beating your wife" sort and the President called them on. Heralding an entirely new tone where adamant opposition disguised as fact-based disagreement will no longer pass; and long over-due IOHO!

Consider the accompanying graphic. He inherited the worst economy we've seen in eight decades and a financial system still on the verge of collapse that if allowed to fail would have driven Unemployment to at least 20% if not the 30% of the GD. To save the Republic from the fecklessness of the financial community it was necessary to save the system AND pass a stimulus package. A package that the Rips tell us didn't work, despite Friday's 5.7% GDP number, and is creating untold future risks with rising deficits. As the President pointed out in the SOTU budgeting sets next year's spending; in other words the budget of record for 2009 was the last Bush budget. When Obama took office we'd already lost almost 2 million jobs in Dec08 thru Feb09 of the eventual total of 7 million. Which is estimated to be two million better than it would have been without the stimulus - a package btw composed 1/3 of tax cuts, 1/3 of direct transfers to state and local governments and 1/3 of direct spending, mostly on infrastructure. Almost all of which the Republicans say the support but in fact adamantly opposed and have since lizard-labeled as a failure. Worse their posture on deficits and debt is both disingenuous and irresponsible. Of the $9T debt we're now facing $8T was inherited from two tax cuts, a Medicare drug subsidy that was unfunded and two large-scale multi-$T wars plus automatic stabilization programs. When you "adjust" the deficits by origin (Bush vs. Obama) according to Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute (a rabidly conservative free-market think tank). The adjusted deficit charts are his as well. If you go thru some of the other major legislation like Healthcare or Foreign Policy you'll find that, again, they are largely centrist, pragmatic, workable and honest attempt to wrestle with difficult and complex problems. Instead of simple soundbyte talking points, unlike every solution that the Rips claim to have put forward. In fact on every major line of initiative where the Republicans put forward workable ideas you'll find them incorporated into the legislation! Despite all that they've voted down very one on straight party-line votes. That's a willingness to work together, compromise and act in the best interests of the country?

Changing Messages and Tone: Re-positioning and Re-selling

If there's two major things we've faulted the President on repeatedly it's on being to elegant and eloquent and not down to earth enough. Now in a political climate where the loyal opposition wasn't so intent on winning every fight by demonizing these efforts for their own partisan advantage that wouldn't matter as much. Not only haven't we gotten bipartisanship we've gotten the exact opposite - taking a trend that was created by Next Gingrich deliberately in '93, has been escalating exponentially since then and has now metastasized into a threat to the well-being of the Republic. The President has several alternatives - the one we naturally gravitate toward is to meet them head on and start the battle of the pejorations (pejorative, perjurous and distortionate) sound-bytes. The President is a wiser, more controlled and disciplined person than we are. What he appears to be starting to do, having laid almost all of the foundations for major legislation as well as saving the economy, is no longer get away with it. Nor is he apparently going to focus on managing the sausage-making machinery as much. Instead when the Opposition presents distortions he's going to call them on, make them take their stand AND he, we very much hope, is going to go the public on key initiatives and boil it down to simpler terms.

In our conceptual diagram as the Rips have retreated away from governance, admittedly their best short-term political strategy but not necessarily the best long-term strategy for many reasons, the President had moved down to more of a pure governance position, focused on substance. We're arguing here that he's moving back into selling mode and re-positioning himself and his policies. Now he could do the Clinton thing and back off on the big items but that would leave them festering and metastasizing. Or could swing back to pure politics and mirror-image the Rips. Instead he's found a third way forward. Time will tell whether a) that's what he's doing, b) whether it was a conscious decision that will result in sustained and focused efforts and c) whether or not it works. But you will find this sort of structural analysis in NO other place we've been able to find, reflecting as it does a synthesis of policy, implementation, politics and social psychology.

Wrapping It Up Simply: Crisis, Policy and Political Dysfunctions

Let's try and boil all this down to one simple conceptual chart to try and render our analysis down to the core arguments. It's been one of our toughest years in many decades with the natural result that people were scared and, when magic answers didn't appears while the "powers and thrones" appeared to be getting the best of it they became justifiably angry. That anger was stoked by partisan political posturing and now threatens the viability of constructive policy making. The two bad alternatives were make the fight worse or give up on the necessary agenda - which is what all the pundits expected. Instead we appear to be staying the course (subliminal and painful puns intended), continue to try and mend a still fragile economy and then lay the groundwork for renewing the structural foundations of our economy and society while coping with equally deep structural changes in the world around us (in which we are still the indispensable leader no matter what they're saying in other capitals). The hinge point of success will be whether or not the President is able to establish a workable climate of opinion and whether or not the American people wake up in time before they cut off their own noses to make their lizardbrains happier.

Promises of the Future

The sad fact is that in fact it doesn't have to be this way. At the end of the readings section you'll find two video clips from this last weeks Davos sessions. Ironically despite the rise of everybody else these two sessions were focused on US policy and the legislative agenda. Think about that for a minute. Yes, Asia is rising but it'll be the middle of the century at best before they reach semi-equal weight and at the end of the century the US will still be a major world power, its principal supporter and architect and one of the leaders. Instead of the only one. And if we can keep the wheels on the wagon it'll be a better world for all of us.

But the really important thing is the session of US legislators which includes both Republicans and Democrats, albeit ones with positions and track records as moderates. Those are the kind of folks you should be sending to Congress. At the end of the day whether we end up with a brave new world or its opposite is utterly dependent on the outcomes of that decision.

The SOTU and the Follow-On

Pres. Obama State of the Union Address Pres. Obama delivered his first State of the Union address to a join session of Congress. The President outlined his priorities for the economy with a focus on jobs.

• SOTU Transcript, State of the Union: Breaking It Down
• Brooks and Shields post SOTU assessments, As Obama Resets Message, Success May Hinge on Economy

Obama rumbles with House GOP President Barack Obama on Friday accused Republicans of portraying health care reform as a "Bolshevik plot" and telling their constituents that he’s "doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America." Speaking to House Republicans at their annual policy retreat here, Obama said that over-the-top GOP attacks on him and his agenda have made it virtually impossible for Republicans to address the nation’s problems in a bipartisan way. “What happens is that you guys don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me,” Obama said. "The fact of the matter is, many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable with your own base, with your own party because what you've been telling your constituents is, ‘This guy's doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America.' '' Obama’s comments came in the midst of an extraordinary back-and-forth with Republican House members — a scene straight out of the House of Commons that played out live on cable TV. Republicans invited Obama to appear at their annual conference; the president accepted — and then surprised them by asking that cameras and reporters be allowed into the room. Republicans immediately agreed to the request, but they may be regretting it now. Again and again, Obama turned the Republicans questions against them — accusing them of obstructing legislation for political purposes and offering solutions that won’t work. "I've read your legislation. I take a look at this stuff. And the good ideas we take," Obama said. "It can't be all or nothing, one way or the other … If we put together a stimulus package in which a third of it is tax cuts that normally you guys would support, and support for states and the unemployed and helping people stay on COBRA, that certainly your governors would support … and maybe there are some things in there, with respect to infrastructure, that you don't like … If there's uniform opposition because the Republican caucus doesn't get 100 percent or 80 percent of what you want, then it's going to be difficult to get a deal done, because that's not how democracy works."

Better Solutions (PDF) - A compilation of GOP policy alternatives presented to President Barack Obama by Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) on January 29, 2010.

President Speaks at GOP Retreat Pres. Obama today spoke to House Republicans at their two-day retreat in Baltimore, MD. He repeated his State of the Union address plea for bipartisanship on health care and other economic issues. GOP leaders will comment later, following shortly after a question-and-answer session with the President.

• Q&A With President at GOP Retreat, GOP Leadership Reactions, Transcript: Obama's Q&A with House Republicans
• President engages in spirited debate with GOP, Obama, GOP exchange barbs, ideas in rare encounter
• Off Script, Obama and the G.O.P. Vent Politely, Obama urges GOP to work with Dems
• Obama, House GOP hold a wide-open exchange, Obama's new strategy: direct engagement
• Shields and Brooks on the Search for Bipartisanship

Background Context: Political Devolution

'Language: A Key Mechanism of Control' Since winning control of Congress, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) has constantly complained about "destructive" and "negative" coverage from the "liberal elite media." For example, when asked on Nightline (11/29/94) about his reference to the Clintons as "counter-culture McGoverniks," he first insisted that he had been misquoted--"I used the term McGovernite, not McGovernik--it was one of those things that the Times picked up and therefore it's now history" (actually, at least four different newspapers--including the New York Times--quoted Gingrich in their November 10 editions as calling the Clintons "counter-culture McGoverniks")--and then blamed the media for selective reporting: I didn't say that to attack the president, I was asked an analytic question. But because I am now the next speaker, I am learning that everything I say has to be worded carefully and thought through at a level that I've never experienced before in my life. In fact, the new speaker of the House--who once described his goal as "reshaping the entire nation through the news media" (New York Times, 12/14/94)--has given a great deal of thought to the media and how to manipulate them. One Newtonian axiom is "fights make news" (Boston Globe, 11/20/94). Another skill he has taught to Republican candidates through his political organization, GOPAC, is how to create a "shield issue" to deflect criticism:

• Newt Gingrich's 1996 GOPAC memo 

Opposition Strategy 101 In any case, I think it is actually wise--as a general rule, and specifically to healthcare--for the GOP to vote against reform. Mind you, this has nothing to do with my opinions about the bill or its significance; I'm speaking here solely about political calculus. To demonstrate my point, consider the opposition party's situation as a simple game with two possibilities for the quality of legislation the majority passes--a generally "popular" bill or a generally "unpopular" one--and two options for how minority party members can vote on those bills, either voting with the majority or against. Presumably, legislators have some notion of how popular the legislation will be, but their information is incomplete. I don't suggest that this game and my hypothetical payouts apply at all times and everywhere. But I do think as a general rule, or at least the default strategy, minority parties should vote unanimously in opposition to majorities. Why? Because if you vote along with them, you get little credit and are used for political cover when things go wrong, making it a break-even/lose situation. And if you vote against you usually pay little to no price if things go well, but stand to reap huge windfalls if things go awry, making that a break-even/win situation. Applying all of this specifically to the healthcare legislation, there really is no reason for any Republican to vote for it. There are a lot of specific reasons why this is so: the GOP coalition is older and whiter and thus will benefit less; conservative voters reflexively oppose expansions of government of any type; etc. But even if the ideological and demographic reasons are held aside, it makes sense to vote "nay."

The party of No  Republicans are riding a wave of resentment. Only 37% of Americans think the country is on the right track, against 58% who think it is on the wrong one. In November 2008 all the buzz in American politics was concentrated in the campaign to elect Mr Obama. Now it has passed to the tea-party movement, a sprawling grassroots campaign against big government and fiscal irresponsibility. Democrats at first dismissed the tea-partiers either as cranks (because a few placard-waving lunatics attend each big protest) or as “Astroturf” (because they assumed the protests were fake, and being organised by the Republican Party). They were wrong on both counts. The temptation for Republicans is to keep saying “no” to everything the Democrats propose. That would please the tea-partiers and leave Democrats with no successes to boast of before the mid-term elections in November. Of course, Republican leaders deny that they intend to do anything of the sort. “If [President Obama] wants to meet us in the middle of the political spectrum, we’ll be there to help him,” said Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, on January 24th. But when it comes to specifics, he hardly sounds bipartisan. He would love to work with Democrats on health reform, he says, so long as they tear up the current bills and knife their trial-lawyer friends. He favours a bipartisan commission to balance the budget, so long as it looks only at ways to cut spending, not to raise taxes. Democrats will not agree to either proposal, and he knows it. The only important and controversial policy of Mr Obama’s for which Republican support is assured is his troop surge in Afghanistan. The Republican Party’s strategists reckon that relentless opposition will pay electoral dividends. It is easy to caricature Democratic ideas and then take credit for stopping them. Also, when Republicans vote “no” in unison, every Democratic vote becomes crucial, and every Democratic senator can demand to be bribed. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, for example, voted for Obamacare only after being promised that other states would pay Nebraska’s extra Medicaid costs for ever. Such skulduggery repels voters. Forcing Mr Obama to bow to his party’s grubbiest elements makes him look sordid, and therefore helps Republicans. But this strategy is as risky as it is irresponsible. A Republican Party purged of moderates will struggle to attract moderate voters. And an opposition that never compromises dooms the nation to gridlock. Right now, nearly half of Americans are angry at both parties, according to a CNN poll. Only one in ten is angry only at Democrats. Republicans should bear that in mind.

Obama's Biggest Mistake? I think Obama's real problem is that he is fundamentally a moderate--what we in Washington call a "goo-goo," a good government person, a pragmatist who deals with problems as they arise without seeing them as part of pattern of failure and without any preconceived idea of what should be done about them based on ideology or political philosophy. There's nothing wrong with that, but it places a special burden on those who see the world this way to explain themselves and what they are doing clearly and unambiguously to both their supporters and their enemies, and to be willing to do so over and over again. Obama obviously has the rhetorical skill to do what has to be done. But he seems oddly reluctant to use it. He seems to feel that once he has explained himself there is no need to keep doing so. In this respect, he should take a lesson from Reagan, a former actor who had the ability to deliver a line the hundredth time with the same empathy and enthusiasm as he did the first time. He also understood that ideas had to be repeated many times before they penetrated peoples' consciousness, which is the cornerstone of advertising and modern public relations. It's not too late for Obama. His polls will turn up when the economy does, just as Reagan's did. But he has already lost a lot of time to define himself and his philosophy, which has emboldened his enemies. If he hopes to avoid being a one-termer he needs to sharpen his focus, be more willing to fight for what he believes and find a narrative that ties it all together.

What Killed Obama's Approval Numbers? Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to give you any one incredibly satisfying answer here. The most basic reason for the decline in Obama's numbers, almost certainly, is that people's expectations for what he ought to have been able to accomplish on the economy have accelerated faster than his ability to do so. But beyond that, things are a little murky. The periods that represent the steepest declines in Obama's approval ratings are only loosely related to the periods that provided the most disappointing economic news. Meanwhile, while I'm sure that the health care bill hasn't helped Obama any, the trajectory of that debate isn't a great fit for the trajectory of his approval numbers. Finally, factors like the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor and the seating of Al Franken may not have been terribly impactful unto themselves, but may have given rise to unhelpful narratives for Obama and the Democrats that contributed to their problems. One takeaway here, I suppose, is that the deterioration of Barack Obama's political fortunes is not quite so easy to diagnose, even in retrospect. It sort of crept up on us -- until suddenly it became obvious with Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts last week. There's a role for Monday morning quarterbacking, and it's certainly fun to think about how the Democrats have become so unraveled and whether there's anything they might have done to prevent it. But many things that seem obvious now certainly weren't that way at the time.

Real Policy Results

The best Congress you'll ever hate There seems to be little to endear citizens to their legislature or to the president trying to influence it. It's too bad, because even with the wrench thrown in by Republican Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts, this Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president -- and that includes Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. The deep dysfunction of our politics may have produced public disdain, but it has also delivered record accomplishment. The productivity began with the stimulus package, which was far more than an injection of $787 billion in government spending to jump-start the ailing economy. More than one-third of it -- $288 billion -- came in the form of tax cuts, making it one of the largest tax cuts in history, with sizable credits for energy conservation and renewable-energy production as well as home-buying and college tuition. The stimulus also promised $19 billion for the critical policy arena of health-information technology, and more than $1 billion to advance research on the effectiveness of health-care treatments. Any Congress that passed all these items separately would be considered enormously productive. Instead, this Congress did it in one bill. Lawmakers then added to their record by expanding children's health insurance and providing stiff oversight of the TARP funds allocated by the previous Congress. Other accomplishments included a law to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco, the largest land conservation law in nearly two decades, a credit card holders' bill of rights, defense procurement reform among other initiatives. The House, of course, did much more, including approving a historic cap-and-trade bill and sweeping financial regulatory changes. And both chambers passed their versions of a health-care overhaul. Financial regulation is working its way through the Senate, and even in this political environment it is on track for enactment in the first half of this year. It is likely that the package of job-creation programs the president showcased on Wednesday, most of which got through the House last year, will be signed into law early on as well. Most of this has been accomplished without any support from Republicans in either the House or the Senate -- an especially striking fact, since many of the initiatives of the New Deal and the Great Society, including Social Security and Medicare, attracted significant backing from the minority Republicans.

• Does The Economy Need -- And Can We Afford -- Another Jolt of Stimulus?

Party of Irresponsibility Last week the opposition party wrote a startling new entry in the Annals of Obstruction: Republicans were so determined to deny President Obama an achievement that a group of them voted against their own proposal. A month ago, a bipartisan group of senators asked Obama for his "strong support" for a commission to solve the national debt crisis. "We don't recommend this special process lightly," they wrote, calling it "the best way to reach a lasting bipartisan solution that will put our nation back on a sound long-term fiscal path." One of the signatories, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), issued a news release trumpeting his sponsorship of the legislation. "Now is the time," he proclaimed. On second thought, maybe not. Obama heeded the letter writers' advice and backed the commission. But when the proposal came to a vote on the Senate floor Tuesday, four of the Republican signers -- Crapo, Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and Robert Bennett (Utah) -- voted no. So did three other Republican senators who had also been co-sponsors of the legislation -- 2008 presidential nominee John McCain (Ariz.), Sam Brownback (Kan.) and John Ensign (Nev.). An eighth co-sponsor, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), didn't vote. Thanks to these defections, the commission legislation fell seven votes short -- and with it went any hope of tackling the debt crisis anytime soon. Even by recent standards, this may be a new level of legislative fecklessness.

• The Rise of Republican Nihilism
• Republican Rigidity
• Republican Deficit Hypocrisy
• GOP Doesn't Do Fiscal Responsibility

Surviving to Fight Another Day In colonial America, suspected witches were dumped in vats of water until they drowned or confessed, in which case they were hanged. Today, we have congressional hearings. On Wednesday, the accused witch was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, formerly president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He survived, but may yet face the political equivalent of a hanging. The scene was a House oversight committee hearing called to inquire into the terms of federal aid to insurer-cum-casino American International Group in 2008. The basic narrative was conveyed by Edolphus Towns, the New York Democrat who heads the panel: "The taxpayers were propping up the hollow shell of AIG by stuffing it with money and the rest of Wall Street came by and looted the corpse."  More precisely, committee Republicans and Democrats, and a lot of other Americans, are somewhere between baffled and outraged that two months after their initial $85-billion transfusion of AIG, the Fed and Treasury used taxpayer money to pay off big banks that had placed bets with AIG (at one hundred cents on the dollar, instead of forcing them to settle for less.) Mr. Geithner's defense boiled down to this: "There were no better alternatives."

• Geithner Defends AIG Bailout at Fiery Hearing Under fire from lawmakers Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended the bailout of insurance giant AIG as "in the best interests of the American people."

That’s How Budgeting Works One of the most memorable parts of the State of the Union was when the President had to remind certain jeering members of congress that taking budgetary steps this fiscal year that don’t take effect until next fiscal year is “how budgeting works.” It looks to me like Ed Lazaer could use a tutorial in this point:

Since 2008, the ratio of federal spending-to-GDP has risen by about 14%. From 2008 to 2009 we saw the greatest annual increase in spending in the last 30 years. In the name of stimulating job growth, the share of federal spending is now 24% of the economy, up from 21% in the last year of the Bush administration.

As Peter Orszag observes, the Obama administration wasn’t in power when most of the relevant decisions were made:

On January 7, 2009, the Congressional Budget Office issued its Economic and Budget Outlook for Fiscal Years 2009-2019. In that document, CBO projected that government spending would rise from 20.9 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2008 to 24.9 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2009. (Just for the record, that CBO projection was issued 2 weeks before the current Administration took office.)

This week, CBO issued its updated Economic and Budget Outlook for Fiscal Years 2010-2020. That document shows that government spending in fiscal year 2009 turned out to be 24.7 percent—roughly the same as what CBO had initially projected.

That’s how budgeting works! But what’s particularly weird is that Ed Lazaer was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2006 up until Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. He knows perfectly well that the Fiscal Year 2009 Budget Proposal was written by the Bush administration. You can even download the 2009 Economic Report of the President (PDF) and see that it has Lazaer’s signature on it and everything. It’s right there on page 11. The Cato Institute’s Daniel Mitchell did a good piece on this flim-flam back in December. You have to ask yourself what it says about the tea party crowd that they didn’t seem even slightly bothered by federal spending or large deficits until Obama took office.

• May a Thousand Job Tax Credit Proposals Bloom
• Obama Budget Freezes Much Domestic Spending

No Such Thing as ‘Simple’ Health Reform Although the current reform bills undoubtedly are burdened with many tangential items, one can easily underestimate how quickly any kind of health reform will become complex. To illustrate, in her “The Risk of Catastrophic Victory,” Peggy Noonan, the doyenne of American punditry who presumes to know what the American people need and want and what presidents should do about it, opines as follows:

In a way Mr. Obama made the same mistake President Bush did on immigration, producing a big, mammoth, comprehensive bill when the public mood was for small, discrete steps in what might reasonably seem the right direction.

The public in 2009 would have been happy to see a simple bill that mandated insurance companies offer coverage without respect to previous medical conditions. The administration could have had that — and the victory of it — last winter.

In the eyes of people unfamiliar with economics, the step she (like others before her) proposes may seem small.She seems completely unaware that, to be implemented, that step has to be accompanied by (1) a mandate to be insured or, at the least, very powerful financial incentives to be insured. And if government imposes such a mandate on citizens, it must be ready (2) to subsidize low-income families in the acquisition of the mandated insurance. Already we have a bill requiring many pages. In this connection, it is illuminating to note what one of the sharpest critics of the current health reform bills proposes for the health insurance market, Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma. In his comprehensive summary of an alternative health bill he proposed we find the following stipulation on page 5: The European systems Mr. Coburn has in mind are the Swiss and Dutch health systems, because we are referred to a paper on these systems. It should be noted that the Dutch and especially the Swiss systems are subject to heavy government regulation — far heavier than is foreseen in the Senate health reform bill passed in late December. For example, health insurance is mandatory in both countries. Both countries prescribe purely community-rated insurance premiums which, unlike the Senate bill, cannot take the age of the insured into account. And both countries extend sizable public subsidies toward the purchase of private health insurance. In short, as Senator Coburn’s bill illustrates, “simply” to pass a bill that imposes community rating on health insurers, as Ms. Noonan suggests, is anything but simple.

China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China. “Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy. President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

• Leaders in Davos Admit Drop in Trust

New Security Vision in State of the Union  One key thing President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address will be remembered for is the much sharper focus it placed on dealing with domestic challenges. In order to remain a leader in the world, America needs to be stronger at home. Keeping the important national security issues high on the list of America’s public policy debates may be challenging in the coming year—but national security is not likely to fade away. Progressives should remain vigilant to debate the full range of national security questions, even as they engage more deeply in domestic policy debates. As I mentioned in my initial reaction to the speech at Democracy Arsenal, President Obama spent only about 15 percent of his 2010 State of the Union address discussing traditional national security issues. This is down significantly from the nearly 50 percent that his predecessor President George W. Bush spent on these subjects in his 2008 State of the Union. But Obama’s speech was no retreat to isolationism. In fact, much of the rationale President Obama presented for his domestic program—economy, education, and energy investments—was presented in the context of making sure America remains strong abroad. Still, national security remains an important issue despite the tall agenda at home. President Obama, multi-tasker-in-chief, proved to be an effective and engaged commander-in-chief in year one. While dealing with all of the troubles left behind by the Bush administration, President Obama outlined an ambitious national security agenda in more than eight major speeches. He also spent more time overseas and visited more countries in his first year than any other president in the country's history.

Leadins to the State of the Union

Obama will reset his agenda in State of the Union speech When President Obama appears before Congress and the nation on Wednesday night to deliver his State of the Union speech, his goals will be to reset his agenda, assure his demoralized party that he has not given up on key priorities and try to convince a skeptical public that he can still change Washington. The White House provided new details late Tuesday about a proposed three-year spending freeze aimed at controlling the deficit while protecting key programs that Democrats in Congress view as sacrosanct, including education. Obama will announce what administration officials described as the largest single-year request for federal funding for elementary and secondary schools, making education one of the few areas to grow in an otherwise austere budget. The president will call for a 6.2 percent increase in education spending over last year, including up to $4 billion as part of an effort to revamp the George W. Bush-era programs that expanded testing to measure student progress, aides to the president said Tuesday. Senior aides said Obama will link the increase in education funding to his calls for school reform. They said his proposals fit into a broader effort by the White House to focus scarce resources on the nation's long-term economic health. After the speech, Obama plans to take his newly energized populist message on the road in the coming days, pledging to voters in Florida and New Hampshire -- both 2010 battleground states -- that he will fight for them. Democrats and Obama have yet to agree on how to tackle the year ahead, and a big part of the president's challenge Wednesday will be to begin to clear away the doubt, despair and division that have settled over his party after losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts last week.

What Obama Shouldn't Learn from Steve Jobs  What Obama needs tonight, therefore, is a re-branding. He needs to create a new set of expectations, one which he can more easily fulfill. This is different from lowering expectations, or meeting them in a half-assed way. He can't promise an iPad, for instance, and roll out a Kindle. And it's also different from completely giving up on his original message. Successful re-brandings achieve the right alchemy of the virtues of the original brand and the changes that are needed to adapt to the new marketplace. It is not easy; for every Dunkin' Donuts (a company which successfully leveraged its reputation for convenient and unpretentious service and managed to make itself hip again), there are five Blockbuster Videos, companies which flail hopelessly and give up on any hope of differentiation as the world evolves around them. The extent to which I'll look favorably on Obama's State of the Union address tonight is the extent to which it surprises me. When you have great brand, like Apple does now or as Obama once did, some well-choreographed boilerplate usually does the trick. But Obama needs to think differently about the country -- and motivate the country to think differently about him.

• Shields and Brooks: Obama Must Aim for 'Consistency' Columnists Mark Shields and David Brooks speak with Jim Lehrer about the mood of the nation ahead of President Obama's first State of the Union

The State of the Union speech Obama would give in a more honest world My fellow Americans, the state of our union is . . . well, quite wretched at the moment. As president, I owe you that honesty and candor. It would be bad enough that we're stuck in an endless war against vicious terrorists or that we've just been through a financial crisis that wiped out a quarter of our wealth and left one in six adults without a job or underemployed, to say nothing of the fact that our planet is on the brink of an environmental calamity. What's truly depressing, however, is that as a country we seem to have completely lost the will and the capacity to collectively confront these challenges. Our union has been torn asunder by a clash of ideologies and special interests and brigades of power-hungry partisans that has resulted in a paralyzing political stalemate. In response, our citizens have become angry, cynical, distrustful and dispirited. Economists have long recognized that what distinguishes successful and wealthy countries from those that are poor and failing is not their natural endowments or even their level of human capital, but rather the quality of their institutions. By institutions, economists refer not only to governmental, business, educational and civic entities, but also the formal rules and informal protocols by which decisions are made, disputes are resolved, commerce is conducted and people interact. It was the quality of its institutions that led our country to become the richest, most powerful and most admired on the planet. Now the deterioration of those institutions threatens our standing in the world. Hardly a day passes now that doesn't bring further evidence of this institutional deterioration.

State of the Union Reactions

'We were sent here to serve our citizens' President Obama delivered an urgent plea for unity on Wednesday night during his first State of the Union address, seeking to recapture the energy that propelled him into office and to reverse his party's trajectory after a series of recent setbacks. A year after entering the White House with a broad mandate, Obama reframed his agenda around a single, central mission: continuing the nation's delicate economic recovery. He focused on jobs, casting himself as the advocate of average citizens, and acknowledged that his administration had "some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved." Obama did not use the occasion to build momentum for far-reaching new policies, instead calling for Congress to complete the tasks already at hand, including "another look" at health-care reform, funding more education programs, imposing stiffer regulations on Wall Street and pursuing a more ambitious energy policy. He reiterated his demand for a three-year freeze on discretionary government spending, threatening to use his veto to achieve it, and walked through a series of steps his administration hopes to take to aid middle-class families. Proposing initiatives that contrasted the needs of Wall Street and average citizens -- such as taking $30 billion repaid by big financial firms and turning it over to community banks -- Obama compared, in a populist flourish, the earlier bank bailout to a root canal. But much of the speech was familiar, and more modest in scope than his addresses over the past year. His most powerful words came at the end as he demanded that Democrats stand firm in defense of their policies despite a recent defeat in a Senate election in Massachusetts.

• State of the Union Address Transcript, Wordle: SofU Word Frequencies
• Viewer Reaction, Congressional Reaction
• Liveblogging Obama's State of Union, Did the Speech Work?
• Embattled Obama declares in speech, 'I don't quit', Obama Seeks to Restart 'Change' Agenda
• Analysis: Humbled Obama checks boxes, Topic A: Experts respond
• Obama's 2010 State of the Union address fact-checked, FACT CHECK: Obama and a toothless commission

Taking on Washington President Obama used his first State of the Union address to reset his relationship with the American middle class. But it was the politics of Washington, rather than any specific policy, that the president spoke about with the most passion after a year when the change he pledged proved elusive. His goal was to connect the disparate elements of his legislative agenda, which have come across to much of America as overly ambitious and chaotic in the hands of a recalcitrant Congress, into a coherent agenda focused on the economic plight of the middle class. He has attempted to clarify his ambitions before, but never at such a politically treacherous moment for his administration and party. Obama resurrected the language of his campaign to criticize Washington's partisan dysfunction. His emphasis on the partisanship that he said defines Washington rather than his setbacks struck a populist tone for what could be a volatile midterm election year for his party. Standing before the packed House chamber, Obama warned lawmakers, many of whom will face election in the fall, that "we face more than a deficit of dollars right now. We face a deficit of trust." He said the public's anger was rooted in "deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works," and he called for less partisanship and more action to "give people the government they deserve."

• Republicans say nation can't afford Dem policies
• Stromberg: GOP pulls all the stops
• GOP Faces a Tough Balancing Act
• Gerson: Obama's reality problem
• Obama urges nervous Dems to fight for his agenda

Hard year, harder tone One year had taken him from a self-professed unifier to a historically divisive president; from the man selected to solve the country's problems to the person often disparaged as their cause. He squinted against the lights and stared hard at the audience for his first State of the Union address, looking a little grayer, a little older than when he assessed the country in the same venue last February. A circus of cameras and power brokers stirred around him, yet he stood alone at a single microphone, quieting the crowd with a series of somber nods. It had been, Obama told the audience, "one of the most difficult years in our history" -- and it had been one of his most difficult years, too. The president had plenty of reasons to be frustrated Wednesday night, and he channeled all of them during his 71 minutes at the podium. The poker player so often lauded for his evenness was instead pleading and persistent, frank and angry. His words as much as his body language suggested a shift, that this was the time not only to address the populist aggravation but to make it his own. He pressed his forefinger against his thumb and made jabs at the air to accentuate his points. He told the crowd that he "hated" the bank bailout, that he wanted the government to match the public's "decency," that he was tired of "the numbing weight of our politics." "How long should we wait?" he asked. "How long should America put its future on hold?" It was the 487th time Obama delivered public remarks as president, but this one felt unique. When Obama took office, his advisers vowed to take advantage of his gifts as an orator, so in his first year he spoke in 30 states and 21 countries, at factories, fundraisers and funerals. But none of his speeches, aides said, had been so meticulously prepared as the one he delivered Wednesday night.

• A polite State of the Union

Rough, tough and undaunted Americans watch the State of the Union speech largely to check out the state of the president. And the state of Barack Obama appears to be rough, tough and undaunted, though it would be going too far to say it's now "No more Mr. Nice Guy." The president came on strong, breathing fire before the assembled members of the House and Senate. "We don't quit, I don't quit," Obama said of Americans and himself during the stirring final moments of the speech, which took 71 minutes to deliver from the House chamber -- and which was carried live on broadcast and news networks. "I never suggested that change would be easy or that I could do it alone," said Obama, which was as close as he came to apologizing. Indeed, it seemed unusual for him to bring up his own campaign slogan -- "Change we can believe in" -- after a year in office when many people had disregarded it. "He was very assertive tonight," said Bob Schieffer of CBS News. On ABC, George Stephanopoulos found both speech and president to be "unapologetic." Obama did concede that the year ended with goals unmet and some mistakes made by his administration, but he refused to whimper or express regret. There was humility but no remorse in Obama's words or the way in which he delivered them. He hailed and commended American values and seemed also to personify some of them -- directness, candor, neighborliness. At moments he was less the man in the White House than the guy next door. Once or twice during the speech, the pool director cut to a visually thrilling overhead shot of the entire chamber -- but the shot wasn't on the screen for very long. Maybe it was thought that the stunning visual threatened to distract the audience from the speech and the man giving it -- but really, they could have had a live shot of purple people-eaters watching from Mars and not upstaged Obama. As a persuasive political speaker, he's got no serious competition.

A conciliator -- willing to fight It was also obvious that he realizes his administration lost two critical battles last year: to define his stimulus plan and his health-care proposal. Polls show that Republicans' negative claims have stuck with voters, while the administration's arguments for the merits of both plans have not. Obama made the case for his ideas again, but he also challenged Republicans to do more than criticize. "We cannot wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about their opponent -- a belief that if you lose, I win," Obama said. "Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can." And Obama underscored the Democrats' determination to highlight the GOP's role in creating Washington's sour atmosphere. "Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics," he said, "but it's not leadership." Barack Obama had once hoped to be a conciliatory president who understood his philosophical adversaries. He is still that man, and much of his speech described ideas, especially in education and energy, that could well win support across ideological lines.But it was clear that the Obama who addressed the nation on Wednesday also understood that he confronts a Republican Party that sees unflinching opposition as blazing a path to victory. And he offered himself as a president ready to do battle. "We don't quit," he said. "I don't quit."

• Obama Invites Republicans to Share Burden of Fixing U.S.
• Obama's State of the Union Address: How's It Playing?

Meyerson: Jumbled message, perfect pitch Thematically, President Obama’s State of the Union address Wednesday night was a bit of a jumbled pudding, with left, right and centrist ideas all packed together. Tonally, however, it was a masterpiece. Obama made clear he understood the gravity of the nation’s problems, took a fair share of the responsibility for the failures of the past year, and, having established himself as the most sober man in the room, proceeded to chastise much of the rest of our political and governmental elite for backing off the efforts to solve our problems and, by so doing, eroding Americans’ faith in their government.He confronted the conservative members of the Supreme Court, seated directly in front of him, for granting corporations more control over our political process than they’ve ever enjoyed. Associate Justice Samuel Alito could be seen shaking his head in disagreement, but when a justice signs on to a decision so corrosive of democracy itself, he should be prepared for some push back.Obama cautioned a Republican Party united in opposition to his every move that if it persisted in subjecting every issue to a 60-vote senatorial threshold, then it, too, had to assume the responsibility for governing. And without specifying what, exactly, he wants in and what he wants out of health-care reform legislation, Obama made clear to the most craven members of his own party -- Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.), the whole spineless bunch -- that they still have large majorities in both houses of Congress, and that, “people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills.” He became the tribune of our collective exasperation.

• Cohen: Obama plays grownup It was all so commonsensical. It was all so mature. For those moments, Obama seemed the only adult in the room, the one talking for all the American people, pleading not for this bill or that program but for decorum and civility. This is what a president should do.

Robinson: Pundits were wrong The conventional wisdom was wrong, as usual. Some in the punditocracy expected President Obama to tack toward the center, others expected him to run to the bosom of the Democratic Party’s liberal base. He did neither. By the end of his State of the Union address, when he summed up the whole speech in three words -- “I don’t quit” -- you had to take him at his word.The president’s message was simple: He’s not going to zig or zag to boost his poll numbers. He knows the financial bailout was unpopular, but it was necessary. He knows many people didn’t like the stimulus bill, but it was necessary. He knows his own party won’t cheer a three-year spending freeze, but he sees it as the right thing to do. He knows health-care reform ran into a political “buzzsaw,” but he demands that Congress push ahead. There were no fall-off-your-chair surprises in Obama’s speech, but many people might have been surprised by the style in which he delivered it. Obama didn’t sound like a president buffeted and beleaguered by the political fates. He sounded determined, patient, forceful, good-humored, at times even mischievous. He looked relaxed and in control. For the first few minutes, the applause was strictly partisan -- Democrats rising to clap, Republicans sitting on their hands. Toward the end, Republicans were often springing to their feet, too. Maybe they lost themselves in the moment.Or maybe the Republicans -- and the Democrats, too -- realized that Obama was speaking over their heads to a nation that is fed up with “Washington” and “government” and “partisanship.” For the first time in months, it seemed to me, Obama reconnected with the language and themes that got him elected. I’m for change, he was telling the assembled members of Congress. What about you?

• A Jolt of Common Sense The ending was chilling – and largely applause-free, because it went beyond the easy political pandering. Obama’s call against cynicism was risky, because it shamed many of the people in the room, Republican and Democrat. Every now and then the fog of nonsense-politics in Washington lifts. In the first State of the Union speech of the new decade, such a thing happened more than once. A minor triumph, perhaps, but a triumph nonetheless after a troubled first year.

State of the Union: Post-Analysis

A New Grasp of Complexities in Washington, and of Blame Mr. Obama did not appear to change many minds with his address. In about two dozen interviews after the speech, people who last month told a New York Times/CBS News pollster that they supported the president’s handling of the economy and health care continued to do so, while those who said they disapproved were still doubtful that he would make much progress. But, according to those interviewed, Mr. Obama succeeded in making Congress and the vague bureaucratic entity known as Washington at least an equal partner in the blame for failing to reform the health care system or stanch a bleeding economy. And he found sympathy for the magnitude of his challenges. “He has expectations that maybe no other president has had before,” Ms. Haas said. “He’s bound to be disappointed, as is the American public. But it’s not all his fault, either.” The president’s proposals for directing $30 billion in credit toward small businesses won him some praise, as did his proposals to build a generation of nuclear power plants. But what seemed to resonate most were his stern words to Congress. “He was right to scold,” said Kathy Steiner, a lawyer in White Plains who voted for Mr. Obama. “He has not done one thing in which he has not been open to compromise.” “He was echoing a lot of peoples’ frustration,” she said. “He certainly echoes my frustration. I’m really sick of the whole thing. They all need to step up to the plate and do what’s right, and worry about the next election at the next election.” But Ms. Steiner, 52, added that she blamed the American people as well as Congress. “If we believe that Congress is the obstacle at this point, we have to send that message, that we’re not interested in hearing them bicker,” she said. “We’re interested in finding a solution. Despite our dire straits, we need to say, we know this is hard, but take a step in the right direction. We can’t let our frustration and anger prevent us from moving forward.”

Obama's SOTU: Clintonian, In a Good Way  Perhaps it is the low expectations established by what has been an exceedingly rough couple of weeks for Democrats, but I was pleasantly surprised by Barack Obama's State of the Union Address last night, which managed at once to recall why the majority of the electorate voted for him while at the same time demonstrating an awareness of the difficult situation in which the President now finds himself. Nevertheless, subjective evaluations of Presidential speeches are notoriously useless. So let's instead attempt something a bit more rigorous, which is a word frequency analysis of the terms that President Obama used last night. What did President Obama focus his attention upon and how does this compare to his predecessors? To investigate, we'll compare the President's speech to the State of the Union addresses delivered by each president since John F. Kennedy in 1962 in advance of their respective midterm elections. We'll also look at the address that Obama delivered -- not technically a State of the Union -- to the Congress in February, 2009. Indeed, I think Obama at least potentially succeeded in achieving the goal that I set out for him, which was to re-brand himself in a way that reminded voters of the better moments of his campaign while at the same time displaying a sensitivity to the challenges that both he and the country now face. It was just a speech, however, and most State of the Unions have had a fleeting impact, at best. And were I evaluating the speech on policy grounds, I would evaluate it more skeptically. Nevertheless, it was a strong speech that ought to lift Democratic morale in the near-term. And in the medium-term, it reminds us that the Republicans' recent momentum may not be the irresistible force that it seems. Their steadfast opposition to any and all policies -- whether popular or not -- carries its share of downside risk with such a rhetorically skilled President at the helm.

Fact Check: Searching for Some Light Amid the Heat When President Obama squared off with House Republicans in a question-and-answer session on Friday, perhaps no issue was more contentious than health care. Among Mr. Obama’s boldest assertions was that Democrats had put forward a mostly centrist plan and that Republicans attacked it as “some Bolshevik plot.” Generally speaking, the president’s assessment was accurate. The Democrats’ health care bill would preserve, and broadly expand, the existing system of private, employer-sponsored health insurance, while also offering subsidies to help moderate-income Americans buy private coverage through new government-regulated markets. Republicans, however, have incessantly criticized the plan as a “government takeover.” Last summer, some rank-and-file Republicans falsely asserted that the Democrats’ bill would create “death panels” to limit medical care for the elderly. And Mr. Obama accurately noted that many experts say the legislation stakes out middle ground. Some health policy issues raised during Friday’s session could be fairly debated. But independent experts have analyzed the major health care proposals in Congress, and their findings indicate Mr. Obama had the facts on his side in an exchange with Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, who said Republicans had put forward proposals that could provide universal coverage “without raising taxes by a penny.” “If you say we can offer coverage for all Americans and it won’t cost a penny, that’s just not true,” Mr. Obama said. “You can’t structure a bill where suddenly 30 million people have coverage, and it costs nothing.” The main House Republican health care proposal, which the Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, offered as a substitute for the Democrats’ bill, would have extended coverage to about 3 million people by 2019, while leaving about 52 million uninsured, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The House Democrats’ bill, by contrast, would extend health benefits to roughly 36 million people over the same time period, leaving about 21 million uninsured, the budget office said. The cost of coverage provisions in the House Democrats’ bill was about $1.05 trillion over 10 years, according to the budget office, while the cost of those provisions in the Republicans’ bill was $61 billion.

D.C. Bickering Leaves Little Hope for Change  It's becoming increasingly clear that one of the results of the economic meltdown has been a parallel meltdown in the public's confidence that their bickering, partisan leaders in Washington can come together to deal with it, or with much of anything. When Americans were asked in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll this week to describe their view of the federal government, a whopping 70% agreed the government is either unhealthy or in need of large reform. That's up from 43% who felt that way just after the election of President George W. Bush. Worse yet, there is a real possibility—despite Mr. Obama's pleas Wednesday night for bipartisanship, his subtle suggestions that Republicans will share the blame if things turn out badly, or his offer to meet Republican leaders regularly—that this year won't bring a big change in the situation. Indeed, it's at least possible that the dysfunction will grow. Certainly Republicans' initial reaction to Mr. Obama's speech didn't suggest they see change coming: "It was a little like a lecture last night," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House, who added that he interpreted the president's words as a "doubling down" on his agenda rather than a move toward the GOP. In any case, the message Americans are sending "is a big one, and the message is we hate what's going on in Washington," says Peter Hart, the veteran Democratic pollster who conducts the Journal/NBC News survey with Republican Bill McInturff. In fact, Mr. Hart thinks that's how most American interpreted the outcome of the recent Massachusetts special Senate election, in which voters took the late Ted Kennedy's seat away from Democrats and handed it to Scott Brown, a fresh Republican face. In the new poll, Americans around the country were asked what message that vote sent, and half said they saw it as a message to the capital city. "To the degree they could send a message out of Massachusetts," Mr. Hart notes, "it wasn't a message to Obama. It was a message about what's going on in Washington."

Hard slog for SOTU proposals White House aides had promised that President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address wouldn’t be the typical laundry list of policy proposals. But in the end, it was replete with briefly argued policy points designed to please various constituencies. Some of what Obama proposed is likely to encounter little resistance. Other ideas, such as energy legislation, were in trouble before his speech and not in much better shape after it. And most of his proposals fall into the middle, facing a long, hard slog. As Obama helpfully noted Wednesday night, demanding a new fee on banks, a spending freeze or earmark reform is easier said than done. “I never suggested ... that I could do it alone. Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated,” he noted. It’s not surprising Obama is being skittish about setting firm timelines, since that didn’t work so well for health care, which is languishing after having blown unceremoniously through several deadlines the president imposed. Obama did urge the Senate to make the jobs bill its “first order of business this year.” Here’s a look at some of what Obama proposed, what’s likely to fly and which measures seem DOA, based on interviews with advocates and congressional aides tracking the issues.

Time to play defense Message to the president: Watch both flanks. Obama should certainly cover his right flank given the flak thrown his way since he settled into the Oval Office. The Republicans' campaign has been perpetual, their search for chances to trip him up, endless. Sowing division is the least of their worries. Where they are concerned, if saying no to everything makes Obama look bad, then it's a job well done. The reason is simple: Republicans don't want comity; they want the White House. And the way to reach it is by going around, over or through Obama. The president's State of the Union speech showed recognition of that reality. Still, his visit to the House Republicans' annual retreat in Baltimore Friday was a step toward meeting them halfway, and it was good politics. His mistake, however, will come if he believes his right flank is the only side in need of protection. There's grumbling in Obama's base. The anger and disappointment are surfacing on liberal blogs, in progressive journals and on some op-ed pages.

America the Ungovernable? The voter anger that's led Obama to retool his rhetoric even as he shrinks his policy aims won't dissipate in the foreseeable future. Instead, the likeliest scenario is that anti-incumbent fervor becomes the default attitude of an electorate whose economic prospects have dimmed. This is not only because of the Great Recession, though families are obviously suffering with unemployment high and credit tight. The scarier truth of American politics is that even after steady economic growth resumes, more and more Americans will find themselves struggling, especially when compared with the ever-rising tide in which they've been taught to believe. What these trends portend is lasting voter frustration, as it dawns on a widening swath of Americans that the perquisites of middle class life, and the prospects of upward mobility for their children, may increasingly elude them. Importantly, these strains won't change in the two years before the next election, or in the two years after that, or the in two after that, unless policies are introduced that go radically (and controversially) beyond the boundaries of current debate in the United States. What will be missing is a common sense yet ambitious synthesis of the best of liberal and conservative thinking, policies that promote economic growth as well as social justice, funded on a scale equal to the magnitude of the challenge. Because such policies require the kind of ambition that voters now paradoxically seem to be punishing, they'll be seen as riskier than timid bromides. If this scenario holds, the dilemma for America is that neither major party will have a political strategy -- that is, a strategy for acquiring power - that includes solving America's biggest problems. It's hard to imagine America enduring such drift for long without losing its economic standing and self-confidence. Yet given the partisan stasis that is now poised to intensify in Washington, it may be that only a new third force can prod the American system toward real, as opposed to rhetorical, answers.

The Perot Option There is a specter haunting America: the specter of a saner, updated version of Ross Perot. He is lurking out there, ready to ride the free-floating anger and distrust of Washington. He is out there now in one of his homes or private jets, getting madder by the day. He is large of ego, full of money and cranky in mien. When he enters the arena, he’ll say that Washingtonians, all of them, are a bunch of failures. Over the past five years, Washington has tried to reform Social Security, immigration, health care and energy policy. All of these efforts have either failed or are close to failure — thousands of people working millions of hours and in all likelihood producing nothing. He’ll point out that Washingtonians, all of them, breed selfishness. Republicans refuse to accept tax increases. Democrats reject spending cuts. They’ve put the country on a highway to a fiscal crisis, and there are no exit ramps. If I were one of those fellows advising Barack Obama, I would tell him that you can either get run over by that saner Ross Perot or you can be the saner Ross Perot. You made a good start in the State of the Union address, I would tell him. In that speech, you began to reclaim the mantle of the permanent outsider. First, you distanced yourself from the Democratic orthodoxy. You embraced some traditional Democratic policies, but also an eclectic grab bag of other policies that play well with independents: a spending freeze that excluded defense, nuclear power, offshore drilling, the elimination of a capital gains tax on small business, a fiscal commission, free trade deals and earmark reform. Second, you distanced yourself from the old debates. You sidestepped the whole big-government-versus-small-government question. Instead of doing the liberal-people-versus-the-powerful shtick, you emphasized targeted tax cuts, deficit reduction and community bank subsidies. Third, you distanced yourself from Washington morality. At times the speech was like a vice principal’s lecture to an unruly middle school classroom. You scolded Democrats and Republicans about excessive partisanship, pettiness and insider-dealing. You cast yourself as the sole coolheaded man in Gomorrah. In short, you made it clear that you will not be going down with the Congressional Titanic. You took a few steps toward recapturing your image as the last thoughtful reformer. Now you have to embrace that role with a vengeance. There aren’t going to be any big new policy initiatives this year anyway. You might as well cross the country on a Perot-like tour of consciousness-raising, complete with charts and everything.

• The Muddled Selling of the President

Re-visiting the Great Debate: Government vs. Market

Selling Short a Humanistic Economist The implication that his economics was uncaring might have disturbed Adam Smith, for he was hardly the man that many now think him to be. While he believed that markets could channel self-interest into efficient aggregate outcomes, he argued that this was no excuse for selfishness: “When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self-love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of many.” That quotation is not from “The Wealth of Nations,” Smith’s best-known work, but from “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” his lesser-known opus. A healthy society, Smith believed, requires trust, so that bankers lend. It requires care for the poor. It requires sympathy: the book’s first words extol the feelings in every person that “interest him in the fortune of others.” It requires prudence: simplicity, honesty, thrift, the deferral of gratification, industry, a refusal to risk fortune and tranquillity “in quest of new enterprises and adventures.” And it requires regulation, transparency and other mechanisms of fair play. “In Smith’s vision, greed is socially beneficial only when properly harnessed and channeled,” Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton economist and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal. “When these conditions fail to hold,” he added, “greed is not good.” But “Moral Sentiments” does more than just balance our understanding of Smith. It is also a thorough analysis of money and the human character. If “The Wealth of Nations” was Smith the economist describing the workings of the market, “Moral Sentiments” is Smith the social psychologist describing how humans actually employ that market. In it Smith serves as a kind of economic Tocqueville, offering sharp insights into the behavior behind the present economic crisis.

Things Fall Apart?I was reading Marlowe’s Soldiers the other day, by Alan Shepard, evading the mysteries of the business cycle in favor of Elizabethan war stories, when this passage, from Geoffrey Cates’ The Defense of Militarie Profession, of 1579, caught my eye. (Elizabethan spelling retained):

There must bee therefore an other state and profession of men, whose power and prudence must comprehend, the maintainence and defence, not only of the Seate of Justice, but also of the Cowe and Plowe, of the Bed and Cradle, yea of the Alter and the sovereigne state: which resteth in the profession neither of the Priest nor Lawyer, nor the occupation of the Housbandmen, Artisans nor Merchants: but lieth in the prowesse and value of them that professe Armes.

Not bad, I thought. Four centuries later, we assign ultimate responsibility for the web of trust that underpins the social order to democratically-elected leaders of constitutional governments, not to soldiers. Otherwise, the sentiment today probably is pretty much the same as it was in the time of Kit Marlowe, William Shakespeare and the Spanish Armada. We want capable leaders who are in touch with interests larger than our own selfish ends, leaders who are far-sighted and steady, cunning and ruthless in pursuit of their goals. A guardian sensibility is the province of political parties and organized religions; kings and war-lords; legislatures and courts; armed forces and police; government ministries and their bureaucracies; union councils and deans; regulators, watchdogs and critics of all sorts, including the press. (A fascination with the contradictions of the guardian life is, I think, what the story of government agent Jack Bauer, of the Fox television series 24, is all about.) A commercial sensibility, according to Jacobs, governs most everyone else, those engaged in trade and the production of goods, services and knowledge. Two very different casts of mind are required to make a smoothly functioning society, one of them disciplined, generous and aloof; the other collaborative, open and honest. Back in October 2008, when the current crisis broke, EP provided a lengthier gloss on Jacobs’ ideas.

"Yes We Can?" US President and Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama awoke high expectations with his slogan "Yes, we can!" After one year of presidency, it can be seen where President Obama has introduced political innovation and where he has not. To what extent has the impact of the financial and economic crisis been curbed in the US? Speakers: Susan M. Collins, Riz Khan, Sir Martin Sorrell, Christine Maier, Kenneth Roth, Ulrike Lunacek

The US Legislative Agenda: A Global Perspective The Obama Administration is relying on the US Congress to deliver an ambitious agenda focusing on financial regulation, healthcare, energy and employment.What are the global implications of implementing the 2010 legislative agenda? Speakers: Brian Baird, Susan M. Collins, Barney Frank, Lindsey O. Graham, Edward J. Markey, Michael Oreskes