I don’t know how to say goodbye to a magazine that’s been my home since I was a 23 year old intern one year out of college, where I’ve made some of the best friends in my life, and whose identity has become almost indistinct from my own. Since deciding to accept a job at New York magazine, I’ve tried to write that goodbye, but nothing seems adequate to the scale of the task before me. So, as I’ve learned to do in the face of deadlines, I’m just writing.
My love affair with the New Republic began in college. I was a liberal on a radical college campus, amused and appalled by the political culture that surrounded me. I became enchanted, even obsessed, with this funny, whip-smart magazine that identified as liberal, and understood this to mean opposition to the conservatism that was beginning to dominate our national life as well as the left-wing orthodoxies predominating in small pockets of it. I would check the mailbox every hour on the first day the magazine might arrive, though it might take several days of checking before there would be a fresh issue in it. I would head to the library to study, and allow myself to warm up to the task by reading old bound volumes of TNR, sometimes until the whole evening had passed.
I decided I had to work for TNR, and I was turned down for the internship before my senior year of college, and after my senior year of college, before finally landing it after a year at the American Prospect. In my mind I had built it up into the greatest thing that could possibly happen to me, the way a kid might imagine being a sports star. The reality has been... everything I hoped for, and more. Nobody has a right to as much fun as I’ve had here. Who gets to live a professional life that exceeds their fondest dreams?
Why would I leave, then? I have an opportunity at New York magazine that’s so unbelievable I can’t walk away from it. I shouldn’t plump for another magazine in TNR’s space, but the magazine -- which my journalist friends all consider absolutely first rate -- and the structure of the job simply couldn’t be better. Starting Monday, September 19, I'll be writing for New York's addictive, outrageously fun blog Daily Intel, and -- for those who don't want to have more fun than necessary -- I'll also have just my blog items appearing on my own page. I’ll also contribute longer pieces for the print magazine.
In the meantime, when I informed Richard Just I was going to accept the job at New York, I suggested Tim Noah as a replacement. He’s a rightly well-regarded reporter/pundit with a deep understanding of politics and policy and a great sense of humor. When I came into the office on Tuesday, Tim was there. It was about the most obvious move you can imagine, and the readers here are going to see why. I’ll still contribute occasional book reviews, and of course I’ll always remain part of the extended family, like the many writers and editors who have come through this magazine over the years. I may pop my head in on the blog once or twice over the next few days, but Tim will be ready to step in very soon.
Over the years, I’ve had a lot of conversations with colleagues who have moved on to other places. When I ask them how the new place compares with TNR, almost invariably they say the same thing: “It’s very corporate.” I can only conclude from this that TNR is the least corporate place in American journalism. I suppose this is the appropriate description for a magazine where college interns in shorts and sandals challenge philosophical first principles of twenty-year veterans, and where senior writers inaugurate a move into new offices by wrapping themselves head to toe in bubble wrap and holding a gladiatorial bout in front of the entire staff.
I love it, I’ll miss everyone, and I’ll remain a faithful reader -- like, I hope, all of you.
The normal way to measure changes in the scope of taxes or spending is to account for changes in the size of population and the value of the currency. If the government creates a program to, say, give free lunches to poor schoolchildren, then that program will expend more dollars over time as things get more expensive and the number of schoolchildren increases. When conservatives tabulate the size of government, they frequently use alternate methods, such as ignoring the changing size of the population, ignoring inflation, or both. This method, while statistically dubious and scorned by any serious economist, has the advantage of always making taxes and spending appear to be growing wildly out of control -- even the same program doing the same thing year after year will appear, by conservative budget-math, to be exploding in cost.
Republican politicians, and the most hackish Republican pundits, tend to reside almost exclusively in the funhouse world of conservative budget-math. Every so often, though, Republicans can be drawn out of that world and into the world of into real budget math. Usually this happens when a Republican governor runs for president. Governors have to, you know, govern. They can't draw up their policies as if phenomena like inflation and population growth were mere excuses dreamed up by pointy-headed liberals.
A week ago, Michelle Bachmann charged that Rick Perry doubled spending in Texas as governor. Perry replied, via the stenography of Jennifer Rubin:
FALSE CLAIM: “Rick Perry doubled spending in a decade.”
TRUTH: State spending – the non-federal dollars state lawmakers can control – is six percent lower under Gov. Perry than it was under the two-year budget in effect when he took office, adjusting for population growth and inflation.
This is correct. Perry is using real budget math. Here is Rick Perry, in his book, assailing Obama via conservative budget-math:
“…since 2008, the Democrat-controlled Congress has added an astonishing $4.6 trillion to the public debt, including $1.6 trillion in 2010 alone […] The Pelosi-Reid Congresses have increased spending as a share of the GDP from 20.7 percent in FY 2008 to 25.4 percent in FY 2010 […] Between FY 2007 (the last Republican budget) and FY 2011 Congress has increased spending by a total of $1.105 trillion”...
“This year alone, the federal government will spend a staggering $3.7 trillion, an increase in annual spending of more than $1.4 trillion since just one decade ago” ...
By far the most alarming problem we face with respect to the largesse of the federal government is the very real crisis of the looming implosion of New Deal and Great Society entitlement programs. Consider that federal expenditures for 2010 include more than $721 billion for Social Security, $457 billion for Medicare, and $284 billion for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program—up 38 percent, 81 percent, and 87 percent, respectively, since a decade ago.”
Of course, if you use real budget math -- the kind of accounting Perry uses to describe his own record in Texas -- then Obama's record looks quite different. There has been no increase in non-entitlement domestic spending at all:
Now, the cost of mandatory programs has risen, but that reflects both the rise of health care costs, which makes covering health care for seniors increasingly expensive -- and the Republican-passed prescription drug benefit. Meanwhile, adjusted for inflation and population growth, the White House plans a huge cut in domestic spending over the next decade (see page 29.) I don't think these low spending levels will or should hold, but keep in mind that "mandating unrealistically low levels of future non-entitlement spending" is a scam that Republicans like Paul Ryan engage in even more shamelessly than Obama.
The interesting thing here is that Perry, if nominated, will be reverting almost exclusively back to conservative budget-math. I'm hoping somebody remembers these early moments in the primary when he briefly acknowledged real budget math.
He proposes a jobs plan that wins the approval of Paul Krugman and David Brooks. Feel the love!
Surfing on over to Fire Dog Lake, I wondered if Obama managed to win the hearts of his most fervent enemies. So far I see one item on it:
I didn’t see it, did Obama open up with a line about how many people he’s killed?
That's about as positive as you're going to get.
It always seemed clear to me, though it has not seemed clear to many liberals, that the exquisite care President Obama takes to establish his reasonableness and moderation is the first step of a two-step process. Having disarmed the criticism, if opponents refuse to meet him halfway, he is well positioned to win the ensuing fight.
Obama's emphasis on deficit reduction, and the resulting agreement to cut spending and establish a committee to reduce the deficit further, strengthens his position to demand economic stimulus:
The agreement we passed in July will cut government spending by about $1 trillion over the next ten years. It also charges this Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Tonight, I’m asking you to increase that amount so that it covers the full cost of the American Jobs Act. And a week from Monday, I’ll be releasing a more ambitious deficit plan – a plan that will not only cover the cost of this jobs bill, but stabilize our debt in the long run.
I don't think Congress will pass all of Obama's proposal, and it may not pass any of it. The speech is politics. This is not to diminish it. Politics is how we ensure democratic accountability. Republicans are blocking fiscal stimulus while benefiting from the public tendency to hold the presidency solely responsible for all outcomes. This error is a problem not just for Democrats but for democrats as well. The ability of Republicans to enjoy power without responsibility gives them perverse incentives, and requires of them a selflessness that is the opposite of the incentive structure intended by ours or any democratic system.
Obama's speech will probably not force Republicans to act. But it may help clarify that they are the ones blocking action. Obama needs to position himself as an opponent of the status quo. That may be difficult for a president to do, but it matches reality, and given the reality of a wildly unpopular Republican House, it is not completely impossible.
Before I get to commenting on President Obama's speech tonight, I should note this ridiculous "fact check" piece by the Associated Press:
President Barack Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.
It will only be paid for if a committee he can't control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future — the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals — don't roll it back.
Is this serious? That criticism can be made of any proposal to offset the cost of tax cuts or spending. Indeed, it's a criticism that could be made of any plan of any kind. Obviously the plan won't be paid for if Congress refuses to pay for it. By the same token, the plan won't pass at all if Congress refuses to pass it. And any long-term savings plan, or any long-term plan of any kind, would be undermined if Congress decides to reverse it.
People like me have been saying for years that reporters should stop simply quoting claims by politicians and start evaluating the truth of those claims. It's good they're trying. But the next step is to start hiring reporters who know how to do that.
[Guest Post by Simon van Zuylen-Wood]
On November 8 Mississippians will vote by popular referendum to legally define the beginning of a person’s life “at conception.” Until now, there was a reasonable doubt that the pro-life-backed “personhood amendment” would never make it to the ballot, since
For more on the personhood movement, see my recent article in TNR.
My plan is to stay here blogging the next couple of days, and since it's my last couple of days at TNR, I may as well go out in a blaze of hippie-punching. Democratic message consultant Drew Westen, whose New York Times cri de coeur of liberal frustration gained wide acclaim despite, or perhaps because of, its massive factual and historical errors, has another piece responding to your truly. He begins by implying that my response to him was part of a coordinated administration campaign:
[I]n a cover story in The New York Times a month ago, I questioned whether he has it in his DNA to lead. The White House in turn sent out talking points to "friendly" journalists, who fanned out to "stand by their man."
Fareed Zakaria wrote four opinion pieces for CNN and an article in Time and delivered a commentary on his television show, "GPS." Jonathan Chait wrote two articles attacking it in New Republic and yet another in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
In fact, I did not communicate with any member or supporter of the administration in any capacity while writing or conceiving either piece.
Westen:
In an appearance with me on the PBS show "Charlie Rose," Zakaria and Chait suggested that the president has a "remarkable record" of success. As I replied, the 25 million people looking for a job would probably not see it that way. Nor would the millions who have lost their homes as their tax dollars have been used to bail out the banks foreclosing on them.
Westen is making two assumptions here: That the only relevant portion of Obama's record pertains to his response to the economic collapse, and that he had the legislative or executive room to materially do more than he did in response. He makes no effort to bolster either of these assumptions, the first of which is absurd, and the second of which is, at the very least, contestable.
The second is the "he had 60 votes in the Senate only for a few months" defense. As this story goes, the president had the entire House and a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate for only a few months. No matter that he started with approval ratings topping 80% or that he had between 58 and 60 Democrats until he lost Ted Kennedy's seat to Scott Brown in 2010 -- a referendum on his performance, like the "shellacking" Democrats took at the polls nine months later. No matter that, beginning with his first major bill, the stimulus, he began his trademark practice of negotiating away what he wanted before the Republicans even sat down at the table.
So I pointed out that Democrats had only a few months in which they could break a Republican filibuster. Westen, characteristically, calls this a "story" as opposed to, you know, a fact. He rebuts it by asserting that Obama, as opposed to Martha Coakley, lost the Senate seat in Massachusetts. He also asserts that Democrats had almost 60 seats for a while, which is true, but doesn't get around the problem that you still need to win over a Republican or two under such circumstances. I suppose Westen would reply with his assumption that Obama telling a good "story" would force Olympia Snowe to decide to sacrifice her seat to a Tea Party challenger and vote for a bill she doesn't like.
Westen continues:
Perhaps most problematic for the "Senate made me do it" defense is that George W. Bush pushed through virtually every piece of legislation he proposed without ever having more than 52 senators on his side of the aisle. Like most modern presidents, Bush simply appealed over the heads of members of Congress if they wouldn't move.
Obama's apologists never address why Democrats require 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation, but Republicans require only 51 -- 50 in the case of the disastrous tax cuts that bankrupted our Treasury in the first place, without which we would never have had a trumped-up budget crisis.
In fact, I did explain this rather clearly:
Yes, Bush passed his tax cuts — by using a method called reconciliation, which can avoid a filibuster but can be used only on budget issues. On No Child Left Behind and Medicare, he cut deals expanding government, which the right-wing equivalents of Greenwald denounced as a massive sellout. Bush did have one episode where he tried to force through a major domestic reform against a Senate filibuster: his crusade to privatize Social Security. Just as liberals urge Obama to do today, Bush barnstormed the country, pounding his message and pressuring Democrats, whom he cast as obstructionists. The result? Nada, beyond the collapse of Bush’s popularity.
I'm not sure what else to say. If Westen has a response, he hasn't made it.
In my first response to Westen, I pointed out that he makes no attempt to substantiate his claims that "stories" drove the success of past presidents. Westen cited Roosevelt's rhetoric about using government spending to end the deficit, but he ignores the fact that the public actually remained opposed to deficits even at the height of Roosevelt's popularity. Here's Westen's response to my rebuttal on that point:
The argument that great oratorical powers have little or no impact on the course of events would have come as a surprise to Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, who both changed American politics for decades with their capacity to reassure the American people and to offer a new vision of government -- in one case of an active government that could make people's lives better and in the other of a bloated government that was picking their pockets.
In other words, Westen simply ignores the rebuttal and restates his unsubstantiated premise again.
This point from Westen is especially hilarious:
The final way all the president's men have attempted to address his failures is to label his critics as "liberals." This is perhaps the most egregious defense, because the allegedly liberal apologists of the liberal president know that liberal is a discredited term used by the right to attack its opponents. Zakaria, Chait and others are using the term to evoke the same connotations of "outside the mainstream," "elite" and "out of touch," accusations that have often been leveled against people like them.
I'm a liberal. I describe myself and other liberals as liberals. Democratic message consultants, probably with good reason, consider the "liberal" label unhelpful and urge people to use other terms like "progressive." That's fine. But I'm not part of the progressive or Democratic message machine, and it's bizarre to interpret my lack of interest in adopting movement-approved terminology as opposition to liberalism itself.
The most intellectually interesting portion of tonight's Republican presidential debate occurred in its opening moments, when Rick Perry and Mitt Romney sparred over their states’ record of job creation. Perry cited his states record of creating jobs. Romney replied that his state inherited a worse situation, and wound up with a lower level of unemployment, while of course ignoring that Perry has governed during a recession. Perry responded that Romney created jobs at a lower rate than Michael Dukakis.
The whole exchange seemed to demonstrate conclusively that the method of evaluating a governor’s record by its job creation, by any measure, borders on useless. The effect of state policy, compared to the broader environment or other factors beyond a governor’s control, is simply too miniscule. Of course, this realization kicks the slats out from beneath Perry’s entire general election economic message.
Yet Perry, stylistically, ruled the roost. The media seems to consider Romney the winner. Pardon the condescension, but they’re not thinking like Republican base voters. Romney approaches every question as if he is in an actual debate, trying to provide the most intellectually compelling answer available, within the bounds of political expediency. Perry treats questions as interruptions. What scientists do you trust on climate change? I don’t want to risk the economy. Are you taking a radical position on social security? We can have reasons or we can have results. His total liberation from the constraints of reason give Perry a chance to represent the Republican id in a way Romney simply cannot match.
In this way Perry eerily apes the style of George W. Bush, who was also mocked for his intellectually vapid debating style, but who succeeded in rallying Republicans behind him. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I suspect the Bush-Perry debating style broadcasts a subliminal message of strong leadership. Romney feels compelled to bind himself to the parameters of the question before him. Perry ignores them. It is, in a sense, an alpha male move. I am not going to lower myself to your premise about scientists. I am going to declare my principles.
In my view, Perry established his alpha male style, and that impression will matter more than any position or statement he’s made.
Update: I removed the photo above, which I thought was a real photograph, but turns out to be photoshopped.
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