Give Chuck Schumer credit. He was trying really, really — yes, really — hard to pretend that the President hasn’t waffled on the public option, backing away from his commitment to liberal reform. Here’s Schumer and David Gregory on Meet the Press: MR. GREGORY: You’re not backing away from [the public option], but there is concern within the Democratic Party that President Obama is backing away. Here was the headline in the New York Post this week that spoke for a...

I’ve been looking for some clarity on our strategy in Afghanistan. The President seems to have one foot on each side of the fence. Now it seems the military brass is a bit confused. Here’s Adm. Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Meet the Press: MR. GREGORY: We’re rebuilding this nation? ADM. MULLEN: To a certain degree there is, there is some of that going on. MR. GREGORY: Is that what the American people signed up for? ADM. MULLEN: No, I’m–right...

Will Inboden ably explores the mystery of what British foreign policy will look like once the Tories take charge (since everyone in London knows the will). Will explains why, from a British perspective, it actually makes a certain amount of sense for the Tories to talk about having a “liberal Conservative” foreign policy.” Still, its contents are more than somewhat vague. Will writes, For all of David Cameron and the Conservatives’ political success in becoming poised to...

It’s been seven years now that Kevin Drum’s been blogging. His story says something great about the blogosphere. Some of the early bloggers were grad students in their pajamas. (Why is everyone looking at me?!?!?) In contrast, Kevin had a successful career in business, then decided to try his hand at blogging in his free time. His good nature, command of details and overall intelligence rapidly brought in a growing audience. Eventually, Kevin accepted an offer from the Washington...

Matt Yglesias asks: If you read accounts of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, people generally always seem to think that American and Saudi and Pakistani support for the Mujahedeen was an important factor. I don’t see anyone saying “it was all a big waste of time and the same stuff would have happened anyway.” Ask and ye shall receive! Two days after Matt put up his question, Fred Kagan posted a detailed look at the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. So how important was US support...

The new issue of Foreign Affairs is hot off the presses. Its cover package includes three articles about global warming that are well worth reading. The focus here is entirely on how to solve the problem. This is a discussion of the politics, not the scientific debate behind it. First up is Michael Levi, who provides a very sobering look at how hard it will be for this year’s Copenhagen conference (the successor to Kyoto) to produce meaningful results. Hopes are higher than ever for a breakthrough...

If it doesn’t include a public option. Kevin points out that Blue America has raised almost $200,000 to distribute to Dems who pledge to vote against any reform bill without a public option. Since Kevin’s post this morning, the total has risen to $277,000. Kevin observes, The Blue America money helps make the promise to vote against any bill without a public option more credible. Right now, no one believes it. Everybody thinks that, in the end, liberals will cave and vote for it...

Well, they’re not exactly new ideas. They’re new to me. More importantly, they’re ideas that didn’t seem to make the cut for either Democratic or Republican talking points. Which doesn’t mean they’re good ideas, but at least they’re thought provoking. (Hat tip: david1clark) In June, New Yorker correspondent and practicing physician Atul Gawande profiled the town of McAllen, Texas, which has the honor of having the highest Medicare cost per patient in...

This is a response to Jazz’s post from earlier today. Like Jazz, I am disheartened by the carnage in Afghanistan and the lack of progress we’ve made over the past eight years. But I think Jazz’s call to end the war now is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what US and NATO troops are actually doing in Afghanistan and why. Speaking on Tuesday to the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), the President explained clearly and concisely why we must defeat the Taliban: This is a war...

Jazz linked earlier to the new ABC-WaPo poll results on Afghanistan. I’d like to take a closer look at the data. The Post’s headline reports, Public Opinion in US Turns Against Afghan War. Among all adults, 51 percent now say the war is not worth fighting, up six percentage points since last month and 10 since March. Less than half, 47 percent, say the war is worth its costs. Those strongly opposed (41 percent) outweigh strong proponents (31 percent). Yet strangely, 60 percent approve...

Krugman-itis is terrible. I should know. I used to suffer from it myself. When I was younger, I used to believe that Democrats were always at a disadvantage because they were too honest for their own good. This state of affairs was depressing, but also intoxicating. I believed with all my heart that my party was more honest, more intelligent and more enlightened. So now I empathize with those, like Paul Krugman, who still suffer from the same afflication. In his latest column, Krugman writes, At...

Last week, Christopher Caldwell reviewed Bradley Graham’s new book about Donald Rumsfeld. As soon as I have time to digest 800 pages of Graham’s prose, I’ll let you know what I think of the book. For now, I’ll just say that Caldwell picks up on one of the central challenges of studying Rumsfeld. Washington now dismisses Rumsfeld as a tragically stubborn ideologue. Yet when Rumsfeld took charge of the Pentagon in 2001, at the age of 68, he had an extraordinary career of...

Jon Last sharply questions the Twitter-euphoria generated by recent events in Tehran. In spite of rose-tinted predictions that historians would celebrate Twitter’s liberation of Iran and the beginning of a new era of global politics, the streets are now quiet in Tehran, the result of traditional head-bashing. Jon argues that this overestimation of Twitter’s political influence is very much a product of the Web 2.0/social netorking mindset, which encourages users to see themselves as...

Howard Dean on ABC This Week: If you’re not going to have a public option, don’t pretend you’re doing health care reform. Should Obama take this seriously, or will the Democratic left accept whatever Obama prescribes? In the roundtable discussion after the interview, Peggy Noonan observed, Maybe it would be good for the president if the left got absolutely furious about something. It would be good from the perspective of building Obama’s image as a centrist, but will it cost...

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Jim Jones confirmed Bob Woodward’s account of the message that Gen. Jones brought to our commanders in Afghanistan: [CHRIS] WALLACE: The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, reportedly wants more U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan. But according to the Washington Post, you told our top brass in late June that the president was done sending additional troops. And I want to get to the quote. “If there were new requests for force...

The week before last, I pointed out the WaPo’s assessment that Barack Obama “hasn’t included any particularly controversial choices in his first picks” for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In light of medals being given to Ted Kennedy and Desmond Tutu, I wasn’t sure if that was the most accurate description. As it turns out, the Medal winner provoking the most controversy is Mary Robinson, former Irish president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In response...

I just got back from a very short trip to the UK to attend the wedding of an old classmate. One thing that struck me while I was there was the complete unpopularity of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The polls show Labour trailing the opposition Conservatives by as much as 15 points, with less than ten months to go until the next election. In the old British colony now known as the United States, we seem to take it for granted that it was the mistakes of our politicians and bankers that provoked the...

It was certainly quite a jolt to pick up my Wall Street Journal and see this big headline smack in the middle of Page One: Taliban Now Winning. The article is based on an interview with US commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The very first words in the story are, The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, But no matter how hard you look, you won’t find an actual quote from McChrystal in which he says the Taliban is winning or that they have...

A cost effective approach to health care: Dozens of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics armed with ceremonial trumpets took to the skies over Israel on Monday to battle the swine flu virus, according to local media reports. About 50 Jewish holy men chanted prayers and blew shofars (ritual rams’ horns) in an aircraft circling over the country in the hope of stopping the spread of the virus, some of those involved in Monday’s venture were quoted as saying. “The aim of the flight was to...

Recently, the Weekly Standard mocked the NY Times for confessing to no fewer than seven factual errors in its remembrance of Walter Cronkite. Then yesterday, the Times’ Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, devoted an entire column to exploring just how it’s possible for the Paper of Record to make seven mistakes in a single article. Hoyt reports, Five editors read the article at different times, but none subjected it to rigorous fact-checking, even after catching two other errors in it… Seemingly...

Via the always thoughtful Dan Twining: Last Friday, Indonesia’s electoral commission certified the winner of the country’s recent presidential election, a free and fair contest that demonstrated the strength of democratic norms in a country ruled for decades by strongmen supported by Washington. Meanwhile, next door in Burma, a political show trial is preparing to convict that country’s legitimately elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, of “crimes” she did not commit, most...

James Kirchick has a very interesting article in the Sunday Post. Since declaring himself as a candidate for President, Barack Obama has consistently stated that he opposes gay marriage. Yet it is practically an article of faith among liberals that Obama secretly supports gay marriage, but says the opposite for political reasons. James writes, I’ve lost track of the number of liberal friends and acquaintances, gay and straight alike, who assure me that Obama “really” supports...

As noted below, the WaPo described President Obama’s candidates for the Presidential Medal of Freedom as not “particularly controversial”. Aside from the points MK raised about Ted Kennedy, it’s worth noting that Desmond Tutu isn’t exactly a stranger to controversy either. Wikipedia reports that Tutu has persistently compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, called on Jews to forgive the Nazis, and suggested in 2002 that “the Jewish lobby” suppresses justified...

On Thursday, President Obama announced that he would award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to sixteen individuals, including Sen. Ted Kennedy. Mary Katherine is not amused. She asks how many individuals considered complicit in vehicular manslaughter could be given such an honor. Would a conservative (or any non-Kennedy) rise to the heights of the Senate with Chappaquiddick on their resumes? Yet that was forty years ago. Kennedy has won re-election...

Kevin Drum notes that the NYT had three correspondents all live-blog the President’s beer with Skip Gates and Jim Crowley. Cross-posted at Conventional Folly