By Artur Davis, on Fri Jul 15, 2011 at 2:15 PM ET  House Democrats are demoralized by the end game on the debt ceiling, and they have reason to complain that their votes are being taken for granted. But on the substance, their hard line on health benefits is riddled with contradictions: maintaining the status quo on Medicare preserves a benefit/contribution structure that is hardly progressive and that privileges upper income individuals arguably as much as the Bush tax cuts that the same Democrats want to repeal. At the same time, the Democratic Caucus has largely been silent on the expiration of federal Medicaid stimulus spending, and the state downsizing of Medicaid programs, two events that are compromising the availability of health care for low income patients.
Political games aside, means-testing elements of Medicare makes it a fairer, more progressive program. It also does not neutralize the issue for 2012: to the contrary, Democrats can argue that their adjustments to the program are a more responsible approach than the Ryan plan, which hands over Medicare to the private insurance market and risks substantial premium hikes for middle and low income seniors. Finally, controlling Medicare costs frees up resources to shore up Medicaid, which is in dire straits and ought to be a more compelling liberal priority.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By Artur Davis, on Wed Jul 13, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET  President Obama has resorted to extreme measures to forge a compromise with congressional Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a national default. He has signaled a willingness to slash federal expenditures by an unfathomable 4 trillion dollars over a decade, and he is hinting that the pillars of Social Security , Medicare, and Medicaid will not be exempt.
A Democratic Governor in Minnesota has taken a sharply different route, opting to shut his state’s government down unless Republicans consent to a temporary surcharge on millionaires. Meanwhile, In New York, the iconic liberal empire, a Democratic Governor has jettisoned ten thousand teachers and state employees to save money and has slashed spending for child welfare and education; at the same time, he declared tax increases off limits and fought his party’s efforts to impose New York’s own millionaire’s tax.
Welcome to the muddled place that is Democratic ideology in 2011. Under the pressures of an economy that just barely dodged a depression, and swollen entitlement obligations at both the federal and state level, chief executives who are certified progressives are living in desperate times. They are responding in dramatically contrasting ways that are partly tactical, but ultimately reveal much about the coming fissures in the Democratic Party circa 2013-2016.
 The President at Smith Electric Vehicles At that point, Barack Obama will be one or the other: the second Democrat in a generation who saved his presidency partly by discarding liberal priorities and emphasizing a hawkish profile on deficit reduction, or a discredited figure who squandered an electric personal mandate and failed to fight hard enough for his principles. Under either scenario, a trainload of agenda items, from immigration reform to stronger collective bargaining rights and stricter regulation of carbon emissions, will have been buried.
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Artur Davis: What is Next for the Democrats?
By Artur Davis, on Fri Jul 8, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET Alabama’s new immigration law is about to become a flashpoint in the culture wars.
It is the first hard push to the right by a moderate Republican Governor who is an ally of the state’s powerful, and liberal, teachers’ union and who has soft-pedaled his opposition to what his party calls “Obamacare.” I think, taken in its totality, it is a push too far, and the Obama Justice Department should challenge its worst features as fiercely as it has attacked Arizona’s controversial 2010 restrictions.
I don’t criticize the provisions that make businesses confirm the legal status of their employees through E-Verify, or the stiff sanctions the law imposes on companies who knowingly hire illegal immigrants: those policies add teeth to current laws that are reasonable but often under-enforced.
There is also a sound underlying rationale: employers who hire undocumented workers are not motivated by a rush of generosity, but usually by a desire to undercut wages and to pad their payrolls with vulnerable, cheap laborers who can’t sue and who fear deportation too much to complain about lax safety standards.
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Artur Davis: Alabama’s Ugly New Immigration Law
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET Words are a very powerful thing, especially in politics. The choice of sympathetic versus tough language alone can make the difference in how a political situation is perceived, especially in a situation as contentious as that in Palestine. Our very own contributing RP, Artur Davis, wrote an op-ed on the power of words for the Montgomery Advertiser:
Words matter in politics to the point that they often have equal weight with ideas.
That is why Republicans religiously describe the 2010 health care reform as “Obamacare.” It is why much of the Latino community cringes at the term “illegal aliens” and why Newt Gingrich almost self-immolated his campaign when he described a Republican Medicare proposal as “right-wing social engineering.”
It should be no surprise then, that President Obama’s recent endorsement of an Israeli-Palestinian border drawn along the “1967 lines” has proved so contentious. It is possible to blunt the literal value of the words with diplomatic minutiae: the White House was swift to italicize the portion of Obama’s speech that referred to additional “swaps” of land on both sides of the 1967 lines as necessary additional elements of a permanent accord.
Read the rest of Artur’s op-ed here.
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Jun 9, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET This week, The Recovering Politician published three pieces in which contributing RPs Jeff Smith, Artur Davis, and I weighed in on the John Edwards investigation and trial. If you missed them, here they are:
Jonathan Miller: I Was Never a John Edwards Fan, But I’m Rooting for Him Now
Artur Davis: Former Federal Prosecutor Terms Edwards Investigation “Misguided”
Jeff Smith: Your Tax Dollars at Work, Prosecuting (and Potentially Incarcerating) John Edwards
These articles certainly touched a nerve. I received several dozen emails from our readers, each giving their own take on the controversy.
Below I run a sample of the readers’ letters. Since I did not ask explicitly for permission, I am not using the authors’ names. However, if I used your email, and you would like to be identified, please let me know.
And of course, as always, we encourage you to comment below.
Is what John Edwards's campaign did against the law? That's the
question, right? It's not about the character of John Edwards, or at
least shound't be. And as for the poor first-time candidate worried
about taking it on the chin because he copped a few free haircuts or
some used clothes, wouldn't he want to know one way or the other
whether it's okay before he takes a gift? The commentary I have seen,
like that cited on your blog, doesn't say one way or the other whether
what happened here is or isn't (or should or shouldn't be) against the
law, but rather (i) leave the poor guy alone and (ii) what's the big
deal? History is full of powerful people who left the stage in shame
and then still had to suffer being investigated, sued, and/or
prosecuted. It's a risk that goes with being a public person with
something to hide. In Edwards' case, these were large donations (not
free haircuts), and if whether they should have been disclosed because
they served a political purpose is an open question, then let's get
the answer. Doing so would hopefully shed some light on what is
obviously a murky area, and may help deter some future shenanigans.
Someone will always be ready to push the envelope. If the edge is not
well defined, or worse, the signal is sent that we won't pursue cases
of apparent wrongdoing that are near the edge, we open the door to
even worse behaviour in the future.
John Edwards’ approval ratings are between 2 % and 3%. I hope he will never be considered for public office again. I think he is lower than dirt for his arrogant, narcissistic, dishonest acts against his dead wife and his children. His character is too low for him to be considered for any responsible government job. If he has broken laws in his covering up his out-of-wedlock child and lover, I would not shed a tear if he went to jail or was forced to do public service for indigent wives whose husbands have left them for the healthy, years younger model. I sent money to this man’s campaign, and it was NOT sent to support a mistress and baby outside of marriage! Poverty for John Edwards seems to me the best punishment.
Numerically, the Republicans seem to be cranking out more reprobates, liars, adulterers, thieves, and liars, but Democrats had better police their own if they want to count themselves as those taking the “high ground.”
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The Edwards Affair — Our Readers Weigh In
By Artur Davis, on Tue Jun 7, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET Let’s stipulate that John Edwards’ misdeeds are already legendary. Whatever your view of the linkage between sexual misconduct and public life, Edwards picked an usually sordid path to travel–the betrayal of a dying spouse, the failure to own up to a pregnancy, and a political cover-up that traded on the loyalty of people who believed in him deeply.
But sin is still not criminal, and I am in the camp that thinks the prosecution of Edwards last week is misguided.
These are the basic facts around the case: in 2007 and 2008, several major Edwards donors funneled just under a million dollars to Edwards for the purpose of paying off Realle Hunter, Edwards’ mistress, in the hope that she would remain silent about the affair. The Edwards campaign did not disclose the money in its quarterly FEC filings, and there has been much subsequent wrangling over whether they should have.
Whether the money should have been revealed turns largely on how it is classified: gifts need not be reported to the FEC, campaign contributions must be. If the funds had a political purpose like preserving Edwards’ candidacy from scandal, they are arguably campaign contributions. If they were political, they also might be what campaign law calls independent expenditures, and in that case, it would be a campaign finance law violation if Edwards “coordinated” the expenditures in any way.
 The Edwards camp responds that the money, which came from two longtime friends of the former Senator, was a personal gift meant to help Edwards by shielding his wife and family from finding out about the affair. In its charging, the Department of Justice contends that the Edwards team is wrong and that its receipt of the money, which is way outside the legal limits for individual contributions, and its subsequent failure to disclose it, are criminal violations. Edwards alone has been charged.
Again, a concession is in order: a candidate’s receipt of sizable amounts of money from a few sources is not a good thing for those of us who worry about the sway big money donors have on politics. Moreover, the idea that money has either a “political” or a “personal” purpose is a rather obvious fiction: keeping an extramarital affair out of view helps save both a marriage and a political career.
But imagine a scenario that is slightly less salacious. Let’s say a major cable television network pays a potential presidential candidate a significant salary to host a program on public affairs, and regularly features that candidate as a commentator on its other programming. The candidate has no previous experience as a journalist and the show performs poorly enough in the ratings that the network derives little benefit. Is this generosity a campaign contribution, on the grounds that the free time and the salary boost the candidate’s presidential interests in obvious ways, and spares him the inconvenience of a day job? Or is it just an act of kindness meant to sustain a figure whose views are shared by the network’s management?
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Artur Davis: Former Fed. Prosecutor Calls Edwards Prosecution “Misguided”
By RP Staff, on Wed Jun 1, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET Our very own contributing RP Artur Davis offered his insights on the ongoing John Edwards scandal to Politico’s Ben Smith. In addition to being a member of the House Judiciary Committee while in Congress, Davis previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Alabama, with a nearly 100% conviction record.
Here’s what Davis had to say about the Edwards affair:
It’s a new low for Edwards stemming from his affair with a former campaign aid, and at least one knowledgeable observer thinks any charges brought may be off the mark. Artur Davis, a former federal prosecutor and four-term Alabama congressman, says that an Edwards indictment would be highly unusual by normal Justice Department standards.
“Campaign finance law gives candidates significant leeway on how to spend campaign dollars, as long as the money does not end up in their own pocket,” says Davis, a former member of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and now a partner in the white collar and government investigations practice at law firm SNR Denton in Washington.
“It is exceedingly rare for the government to bring criminal charges in connection with the misuse of campaign dollars; when it happens it usually involves some other crime like obstruction or making false statements to investigators. Those elements seem to be missing here,” Davis adds.
Click here to read the full article in Politico.
By RP Staff, on Fri May 20, 2011 at 12:30 PM ET Contributing RP Artur Davis has been an outspoken national leader on the subject of the proper role of faith in public policy. Four years ago, he sat down for an interview to summarize his views on this subject. His words rings true today, especially in light of the partisanship and polarization plaguing American politics.
Watch here:
By Artur Davis, on Thu May 19, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET By my count, six Republicans of differing degrees of stature have passed on running for President. Some of the hesitation is rooted in jitters about entering the national stage prematurely (Pence, Thune, maybe Christie, if he is chemically capable of jitters); some of it is based on a cold assessment that Barack Obama plus a billion dollar war-chest is too high a barrier in the fall, and that playing kingpin in the primaries is an appealing enough way to spend the winter and spring of 2012.
As for the remainders–Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman seem the most serious and the most plausible, with Mitch Daniels and Sarah Palin still keeping their own counsel. I offer four questions to keep in mind for the growing peanut gallery observing this race:
(1) Can Romney win a nomination when his signature accomplishment is anathema to his party? In the early part of the last decade, when a centrist record seemed essential to winning general elections, Romney’s stewardship of healthcare reform in Massachusetts seemed ideal pre-positioning for an eventual presidential run. Today, “Romneycare” is why a candidate who just raised 10 million dollars in a day, and who leads in the polls, is still so vulnerable. Roughly 80% of Republicans not only oppose the national legislation that copies major portions of Romney’s work, they loathe it and desperately desire its repeal. Romney’s efforts to explain away the comparison are so far a babble and greater scrutiny of his plan will only make matters worse.
Romney’s hope is that electability, the fact that he alone polls within hailing distance of Obama, will outweigh his albatross. His problem is that in primaries, electability is a vessel for blank slates, not candidates with a freight train of positions. Nor is Bill Clinton ‘s “centrist campaign” in 92 much of a model. Clinton’s defense of the death penalty and his then vague promises to revamp welfare were hardly signature issues that year; in contrast, the fate of Obama’s healthcare law will be front and center, especially in the GOP electorate. The hard reality for Romney: Gerald Ford is the last candidate who won a nomination with his party opposed to major chunks of his record and that did not end well.
(2)  Is there a “silent majority” in the Republican Party? Jon Huntsman and to a degree, Mitch Daniels, think there is and that it is very different from the cultural conservative base that the term was coined to describe. The reason that Huntsman conceives that a social moderate who served in the Obama Administration can win, and the reason that Daniels call for a “truce” on abortion and gay rights, is that in their estimation there is a sleeping center in the Republican Party that distrusts the “culture wars”. There is limited circumstantial evidence for the premise: national polls for the better part of a decade have shown unexpected Republican sympathies for abortion rights and gay rights. But primaries and early caucuses contain more than their share of evangelical leaning conservatives who remain embracing of a traditional moral agenda.
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Artur Davis: Handicapping the Republican Primary
By Artur Davis, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 3:30 PM ET The world is safer and more free with the news that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is demoralized, and its marginalization is on display in a vivid manner for young men and women in the Arab world trying to decide if modernity or jihad is the best principle to organize their ambitions.
I am not as quick to compare the moment with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, as some commentators have rushed to do. It elevates Bin Laden to compare his virtual, quasi-state of malcontents and jihadists to Soviet totalitarianism at its peak. At the same time, it underestimates the reach and the viral quality of radical fundamentalism to assume that Bin Laden’s demise is the equivalent of military divisions dissolving or nuclear codes being disarmed.
The best way to quantify the event, I believe, is not analogy but a nod to American power wisely and assertively deployed over two administrations and ten years. Both the Bush and Obama Administration deserve tribute for a patient dismantling of Al Qaeda over that period of time: it has been appropriately lethal and effective and has required the stretching of pre 9/11 sensibilities. At times, it has veered off course–the embrace of torture as a tactic comes to mind–but not many Americans believed on the night of 9/11 that another decade would pass without a terror attack on American soil.
I have no illusion that the exhilaration in America today has permanent political significance. Our attention span is so fleeting. It also seems to me mildly profane to turn the moment into partisan chortling over how Obama accomplished what Bush did not. But I liked seeing the exultation on television in the last 12 hours–and I loved the fact that is multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and that reaction is not splintered along the dividing lines that are all over the political landscape.
I admire both Obama’s unadorned reference to “justice” last night–that is exactly how my faith describes the rooting out of evil– and George W. Bush’s September 2001 shouts above the rubble at Ground Zero that “the people who destroyed these buildings are about to hear all of us.” After a decade of evasion, Osama Bin Laden finally heard us in the frenzy of BlackHawks descending and our bullets finding their mark. The echoes of that sound are just what a dispirited nation needed to hear.
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