Disposal Day #174: Escandalosa!

STORY #1: Fire!

Don’t ask me how I know this, but there is a scene in the Fifty Shades of Grey series in which the lead asshole fires five people in response to an arson in his company’s server room. Apparently that really is how business works, if recent personnel changes at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are any indication. Acting commissioner Steven Miller was asked to resign on Wednesday; Joseph Grant, acting commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities division, did the same yesterday. I think President Obama would have earned more points if he straight-up fired their asses.

This may not make a lot of sense at first, since Miller didn’t become acting commissioner until late last year, and Grant was only appointed to the job he just resigned last week. But Miller was previously deputy commissioner of services and enforcement, which directly supervises the above-named division. Meanwhile, Grant was the division’s deputy since 2007. So, yes, they were there. This likely means Lois Lerner’s job is safe, although someone who can’t figure out that 75 is one-quarter of 300 shouldn’t work for the IRS.

STORY #2: Agents of (media) shield

Can anyone point to a time before this week when President Obama expressed support for media shield legislation? The White House has just asked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to reintroduce it; his version would “allow media organizations to challenge subpoenas of phone records and offer legal protections for protecting confidential sources.” Of course, The New Yorker has its own way of avoiding having to deal with that. Don’t be surprised if other media outlets catch on.

The trouble, as numerous outlets have pointed out, is that the exact legislation Obama supports may not have prevented the subpoenas of Associated Press (AP) phone records. The AP believes they were targeted over a story concerning a bomb plot in Yemen; the legislation would see to it that a judge could not invalidate a subpoena if the information could help “prevent a future terrorist attack or other acts likely to harm national security.” I would advise you to give The White Paper another read for this administration’s national security standards.

STORY #3: Whipping boys

Meanwhile, the White House decided to do its own leak this week, releasing 100 pages of e-mails designed to show that it really didn’t have anything to do with revising the administration’s talking points on the U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi. Of course, they ended up making the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) look worse in the process – except, hilariously, for then-director, now-disgrace David Petraeus – but as long as their ass is covered, right? If they think anyone will be waved off by this, they’re insane as well as incompetent.

The “who cares?” rule of political compliments

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by President Obama, and I’m sure you can guess why. No, it’s not his budget proposal, although I’d hardly call that a triumph of good economics. It was what he said about California Attorney General Kamala Harris during a Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser in Silicon Valley:

She’s brilliant, she’s dedicated, she’s tough . . . She also happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general. It’s true, c’mon.

Following the inevitable groan/eye-roll chorus, Obama apologized to Harris personally for the “distraction,” which is exactly what this is. Is it sexist? Well, he prefaced the mention of her looks with a mention of three various attributes that good attorney generals ought to have, so I would hardly accuse him of not taking her seriously as a woman. But it’s the sort of thing that leads to accusations of sexism, however spurious, and puts one in a position where they have to eke out an embarrassing apology. You’d think a president with a reputation as a smooth talker would be mindful of such considerations.

For her part, Harris isn’t offended, or at least has enough class not to say so. (If this happened to me, my official response would be something like “Pssh. Whatever.” And that’s why I’m never going into politics.) Female officials do not react to such comments the way the average tweep does, for that only creates more distractions. She and Obama pitched their statements on the aftermath of his comment in a way that it will be forgotten quickly. Nonetheless, it didn’t need to happen.

Something akin to this happened in Canada last week, when Fisheries Minister (yes, we have one) Keith Ashfield told the teenage daughter of a government prop family that her baking would make her a “wonderful wife for somebody.” She wasn’t offended, either. This situation differs somewhat in that she’s in high school, dude, sick. But whenever a politician is tempted to compliment anyone, they should ask whether the compliment is designed to build up both the recipient and the giver professionally. Unless you’re talking about a loved one or someone who just died, stick to the résumé.

I hope none of you are deluded enough to buy the myth that any publicity is good publicity. It’s never been true for presidents of the United States. Future coked-out actresses, maybe, but even they have their limits before bad publicity starts to get old. More than anyone else, Obama needs to keep his reputation confined to the professional as well as his compliments.

The No More Benghazis Act

If it seems to you that the Benghazi consulate attack has become a partisan wedge issue – as evidenced partly by the fact that people with black-and-yellow Benghazi ribbons in their Twitter avatars tend to be fire-breathing right-wingers – fear not, for freshman Reps. Scott Perry (R-PA) and Grace Meng (D-NY) are here. They’ve teamed up on legislation designed to correct the bureaucratic problems that allowed requests for more consulate security to go unmet. It comes down to this: Nobody has actually been fired yet.

The bill does not appear to have a shmancy name yet, so feel free to call it the No More Benghazis Act, as someone else inevitably will. It amends the Diplomatic Security Act of 1986 to make it easier to fire State Department officials. Under current law, they can only be fired in case of a “breach of duty,” in which they intentionally violate a State Department rule or policy. Under this law, an employee could be fired if he or she

has engaged in misconduct or unsatisfactorily performed the duties of employment . . . and such misconduct or unsatisfactory performance has significantly contributed to the serious injury, loss of life, or significant destruction of property, or . . . serious breach of security . . .

In short, if you mess up and people die, you’re fired. A simple mistake might not seem like an acceptable standard for dismissal in your workplace – I’ve kept my job despite bungling a few segments – but chances are your co-workers aren’t under threat of attack by Libyan militants.

Even if this bill passes, don’t expect the questions to let up. An Accountability Review Board (ARB) found in December 2012 that the security lapses took place on the assistant secretary level, “where the rubber hits the road.” Eric Boswell, then-Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, resigned his current duties, while three others were placed on paid administrative leave. The ARB members were appointed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Uh-huh.

But back to the business at hand. Why wasn’t the type of misconduct or unsatisfactory job performance outlined in Perry and Meng’s bill already the threshold? Not only is it unfair to the people who suffered death or injury from their mistakes and their families, it’s unfair to taxpayers to keep them on leave. They’ve already irredeemably violated the public trust through their actions, or lack of actions. The best and the brightest aren’t the kind of people who can only say “Oh, I should have thought of that” to an attack on the level of Benghazi.

Now if only we could apply a similar standard to lawmakers and other government officials whose screw-ups lead to bailouts, sequestrations and excessive collateral damage in war zones. Oh, what a happy day that would be.

Another open letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President:

I won’t take up too much of your time because I know you have your hands full, what with that “flexibility” you’ve been granted over the $85 billion in spending cuts you’ll have to implement. It’s a big job. But we’ve gotta talk about that speech you gave on Friday. You know, the one about how disappointed you were that Congress, primarily its Republican members, failed to cut a deal. Polls say the majority of Americans agree with your perspective. So you probably think the speech was perfect.

Well, I hate to school a second-term president on the importance of presidentiality, but I found that lacking. I refer to the following passages:

. . . let’s be clear: None of this is necessary. It’s happening because a choice that Republicans in Congress have made. They’ve allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit.

We just need Republicans in Congress to catch up with their own party and their country . . . I do know that there are Republicans in Congress who privately at least say that they would rather close tax loopholes than let these cuts go through.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice that you only referred to your own party once:

I know that there are Democrats who’d rather do smart entitlement reform than let these cuts go through.

Meaning, there are Democrats who wouldn’t rather do smart entitlement reform than let these cuts go through. As we both know, smart entitlement reform is essential to comprehensive debt reduction. I know you grappled with that at first, but you’ve grudgingly accepted it now. So where is your demand for the, shall we say, less compliant Democrats to shape up?

Those additional references to the opposing party gave the entire speech a much more partisan tone than was necessary or befitting. You know as well as anyone, sir, that the debt is everyone’s problem, and everyone can and should have a hand in its resolution. But ever since your administration dreamed up the sequester, you’ve been focusing inordinately on the failings of the Republican Party. I don’t excuse those failings. But they are not exclusive to either party.

The Constitution limits your ability to legislate, as it should. But you’ve been limiting your own bipartisan tone when calling for a bipartisan deal from legislators. We find that confusing, sir. I hope we can expect more consistency in the future.

Sincerely yours,

Jess Chapman
The Future American

The curse of the high-info voting bloc

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Brad Plumer of the Washington Post. Let me begin by saying it’s true that anyone who works in highly specialized academic fields may develop an unfortunate tendency to make things more complicated than they really are. There may be no better example of this than a recent paper, The Technical Competence of Economic Policy-Makers in Developed Countries, by Mark Hallerberg of the Hertie School of Governance, in Berlin, and Joachim Wehner of the London School of Economics (LSE). You can download a free PDF copy of the paper here, but you need only read the six key findings in the abstract.

Plumer reported on this paper, with the headline “Why aren’t more countries run by economists?” Note that the pattern is that prime ministers and finance ministers, who are generally elected, have less technical competence in economics than central bankers, who are not elected. You should be able to figure out why just by reading that sentence. But here it is for the cheap seats in the back: People who are very technically competent in complex areas of governance don’t like politics, and politics doesn’t like them. You don’t need a study to tell you this.

I’ll give you the example of one friend, a Peanut Gallery regular, who works for a local think tank. His area of expertise is urban development; since nobody on Winnipeg’s city council knows anything about that, I believe he would be a very good mayor. But he swears up and down that he will never, ever run for anything. He recognizes that voters as high-info as himself are a minority, and the thought of trying to appeal to the majority disgusts him.

Now take the Liberal Party of Canada leadership race: Former MP Martha Hall Findlay (Willowdale) regularly talks up the need for an experienced, policy-driven candidate, and she has more of a platform than her competitors. Who is in the lead? This guy. Imagine an economist up against a front-runner whose only talents are fundraising, sound bites and Twitter. Why would they want to run? How many voters would choose someone who, as far as most would bother to know, only look at numbers and not people?

Hallerberg and Wehner’s study about the timing of “high-competence” government appointments is fairly interesting. But if Plumer didn’t completely miss the point while covering it, he certainly didn’t bother spelling it out. A reasonably economically stable democracy is more likely to be full of voters who just don’t worry about policy than a democracy that’s freaking out and looking for a non-panderer to save it.

Another day, another vacated Cabinet position

With seemingly the entire Obama administration finding alternate employment, President Obama is wasting no time leaning toward new people to fill the most high-profile positions. Word has it that he’s already found someone to fill the shoes of outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood: Deborah Hersman, who currently heads the National Transportation Safety Board (NTDB). She’s good in her own right. But this position needs better.

Originally, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was Obama’s top choice, transportation being a key priority during his mayoralty. But Villaraigosa released a statement saying he would stay mayor. Hersman has also previously indicated disinterest in the position, reaffirming her commitment to the case of the Boeing Dreamliner. This must be disappointing for Obama, given that she’s also a woman and people have been getting testy about his relatively low number of female appointments. Same with the Latino Villaraigosa. But, of course, those priorities are entirely political.

I was briefly intrigued with the idea of nominating former Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN). He has experience in transportation safety and development, while Hersman’s experience is too weighted toward safety; an incoming Transportation Secretary will need to know enough about the latter to make informed funding decisions. But here are the red flags with Oberstar:

• he’s 78 years old;
• he and Obama haven’t gotten along well since that spat about surface transportation in 2009;
• his ideas for how to use gas tax revenue are a bit off-the-wall;
• and he’s crusaded against the private spaceflight industry for somewhat nanny-statish reasons.

So, that’s probably out of the question.

Former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) was also mentioned as a contender, having co-founded an infrastructure advocacy group since leaving office and being a Pennsylvanian, which would be helpful to Democrats come 2016. He’s also been chairman of the National Governors Association, which gives him bipartisan cred. But he says he’s too “independent” to hold a Cabinet post, although that could be taken as a dare to Obama to ask him and see what happens. (He could. You never know.)

My favorite of the rumored candidates is Gene Conti, who headed the North Carolina Department of Transportation under former Gov. Bev Perdue (D-NC), has substantial federal experience, is unafraid to trim the fat and strongly emphasizes “data-driven analytics.” Transportation being as complex as it is, I would prefer to see an ultra-wonk in charge than an ex-politician. And since he’s already led a DOT, we know he can handle safety and development at the same time.

What the Hagel was that?

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). By now it’s next to impossible for him to recapture his own narrative; a solid performance at his confirmation hearing may have made up for all the negative press he’s racked up ever since President Obama nominated him for Secretary of Defense. But it wasn’t solid. In fact, it may have been the single worst alcohol-free attempt to make a case for one’s own qualifications. Who knows, maybe he was drunk. He was that bad.

Of course, he’ll likely still be confirmed, as he only needs a simple majority vote in the Senate and most of it is Democratic. (This is one time I’d actually encourage a Republican filibuster.) But nothing happened during the hearing that made me believe he had the gravitas to run the Pentagon. It was an unholy hellstew of backtracking, misspeaking, regretting, dodging and just not having answers. It makes one wonder what would happen if, from his seat in the Situation Room, he was ever involved in the task of telling a warehouse full of weapons from an elementary school.

Here’s a brief litany of my grievances:

• failing to offer an example of people being “intimidated” by the Israel lobby or doing “dumb things” because of it (I can forgive that he mistakenly said “Jewish lobby,” but there was absolutely no follow-through on his real point.)
• completely screwing up on containing Iran’s nuclear program versus preventing it (How easy was that?)
• not demonstrating that his reasons for voting against the 2007 Iraq troop surge or classifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terror group panned out the way he expected
• they didn’t ask about women in combat and the defense budget enough (not his fault, still a grievance)

I have defended him against a few lesser charges, like saying “Jewish lobby,” being a homophobe – his record on gay issues isn’t unlike that of most conservative Republicans – and suggesting that Hamas may need to be involved in Mideast peace talks. But knowing now how loose his lips really are, how can one trust him to be an effective Defense Secretary? You may point out that it takes more than a good confirmation hearing to do that. Yes, it does: a stronger case for you than against you. And I’ve forgotten the non-political reasons to confirm him, if there ever were any.

Sometimes the best way to explain something is with a reference from The West Wing, so here it is: Even Peyton Cabot Harrison III handled tough questions better than Hagel. Put him on a bus.

Disposal Day #157: In the O-suite

STORY #1: Everybody’s awesome

Do you think President Obama was a little too effusive in his praise of outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner?

When the history books are written, Tim Geithner is going to go down as one of our finest secretaries of the Treasury. That is why, when he was considering leaving a few years ago, I had to personally get on my knees with [Geithner's wife] Carol to convince him to stay on a little bit longer.

Literally? I hope not. But, don’t worry, he saved some of that gushing for his nominee to replace Geithner, current White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew:

Obama described the Washington veteran as a master of policy and said he knew “very few people with greater integrity” . . .

Master of policy, I like. And based on his Wikipedia entry, he seems to have the right idea when it comes to budget issues, and his history as former President Bill Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget director (as well as Obama’s) shows he can put those ideas into practice. His biggest challenge will be the fact that he’s been one of “Obama’s people” for the past few years. Expect some tough hearings. But not that tough.

STORY #2: The tokens

Along with former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) for Defense and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) for State, Lew makes the third white male Obama is nominating to his Cabinet next year. With Labor Secretary Hilda Solis resigning (a Hispanic woman, if you couldn’t tell, in which case you’re a moron), White House officials felt the need to assure us that Attorney General Eric Holder (black), Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki (Asian) and Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (female) are staying. Presumably, the same goes for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, but nobody seems to care.

I’d like to remind you all that qualifications are a more important metric for Senate-confirmable posts than race, gender, etc., but it seems that’s no longer the most essential part of the conversation. (Unless you’re Hagel.) Someone fetch Obama a binder.

STORY #3: Hilda, we hardly knew you

The Washington Post has a summary of Solis’s tenure as Labor Secretary that you will probably find very useful – I sure did. Labor is one of the lesser Cabinet departments, it’s true, but most people who are knowledgeable about Washington could tell you something about Robert Reich’s tenure, or Elizabeth Dole’s. Solis hasn’t spearheaded major reforms or new legislation; she mostly oversaw existing regulations and funding. That’s not the kind of effort I would expect from a member of an administration in which jobs are (supposed to be) everything.

Chuck Hagel vs. the Three Amigos

I realize people other than Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have expressed doubts, if not outright opposition, to former Sen. Chuck Hagel’s (R-NE) possible nomination for Secretary of Defense. But it’s usually fun to watch the three of them do something together. (See HBO’s Game Change for a brief, dramatized example.) I say “usually” because some of their doubts aren’t as serious as they’re making them out.

For example, one of McCain’s jabs from a recent question about Hagel went as follows:

Well, of course I strongly disagree with such comments and I know of no such “Jewish lobby.” I know that there’s strong support for Israel here, but I know of no Jewish lobby. I hope he would identify who that is.

He’s referring to Hagel once saying “[t]he Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people” in Washington. No, there is no “Jewish lobby”; there is only the Israel lobby, which itself has enough ideological diversity, between the right-wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the left-wing J Street, not to be considered a unified mass.

Scratch the surface of this quote and I doubt you’d find much more there than a rhetorical blunder, which doesn’t merit elaboration for anyone who knows Jewish stereotypes. That would be more serious if he were considered for Secretary of State, a position in which loose lips can sink more ships. In any event, there’s nothing wrong with criticizing the influence of lobbyists, however much you agree with them.

Meanwhile, Graham and Lieberman focused on Hagel’s vote against extending sanctions on Iran, and his support of letting Hamas into talks between the U.S., Israel and Palestine. If you look into the Iran vote a little more, you’ll note that he has serious doubts about the benefit of sanctions, while still being solidly opposed to Iran’s current regime, as evidenced by some of his other votes. As for the Hamas thing, one writer has endorsed this view on the ground that Hamas has a role in the future of Palestine whether we like it or not.

Both positions do fly in the face of conventional wisdom on the Middle East, and would make Hagel’s confirmation hearings a bit thorny. But they’re not so out of the mainstream as to render those hearings useless. A little diversity of opinion could be beneficial, especially when some people conflate support for the Israel lobby with support for Israel.

An even more senseless conflation, however, is the idea that Hagel’s opinion that the defense budget needs to be “pared down” equates support for cuts on the scale of the post-fiscal cliff sequester. There’s a reason he said “pared down” and not “bludgeoned.” “Paring” implies forethought and precision.

Disposal Day #153: The replacements

STORY #1: Told ya

Realizing, as some of us (ahem) already did last month, that there was absolutely no political or practical upside to the idea, Ambassador Susan Rice withdrew her name from consideration for the post of Secretary of State. The move likely means her career beyond her current position as ambassador to the United Nations (UN) will be nonexistent; once you say no to being nominated, you likely never will be. That should make a few grudge-prone Republicans happy.

I must admit, though, that my approval of her has gone up in light of her explanation:

. . . if nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly to [President Obama] and to our most pressing national and international priorities. The trade-off is simply not worth it to our country.

Now that’s what I call class.

STORY #2: You just got Chucked!

That’s the most pressing reason for former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to become the next Secretary of Defense: Whenever he makes a good call, we can say “BAM! You just got Chucked!” But this article indicates that he doesn’t have a very good history of making good calls. It notes that Hagel broke with Republicans to vote against both the troop surge in the Iraq War and extending sanctions on Iran. On the one hand, that’s a nod to his bipartisan cred; on the other, both of those turned out to have worked for the objectives at the time.

That’s not to say he’s completely inept, not even half-inept; he has openly acknowledged the failure of the Iraq War itself, despite voting for it. (That may seem hypocritical, but a lot of members of Congress felt – and were – duped.) But it does call his strategic mindset into question, to an extent. If he becomes the nominee, that will be the major sticking point during the confirmation hearings. On paper, as a Vietnam War veteran, a successful entrepreneur and a very popular senator, he won’t have anyone asking how the hell his name ended up on the short list.

STORY #3: No bank CEOs, please

If someone who used to run one of the big banks replaces Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, I fully intend to write off the entire department and trust the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) with everything related to the economy. However, if it’s former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles (obviously) and Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Mary J. Miller, I’ll go easier on it. Miller especially intrigues me, as she has a degree in city planning and currently oversees federal debt, and is always mentioned as being widely respected in Washington. But I would take either.