One pundit I admire, Ross Douthat, and another I admire and count as a friend, Reihan Salam, have waded into the debate over whether reform conservatism amounts to a coherent ideological vanguard, or is only a loose blanket for a set of sensibilities about what the political right should start to sound like. I lean more toward the latter, which is Salam’s take, for a variety of reasons: the splintering of conservative reformers over immigration; their imprecision on the bullet points of the healthcare fight (are they bothered by the “cadillac tax” for high quality insurance plans, or is it the one thing they like about Obamacare); the lack of a defense in conservative intellectual circles for Senator Pat Toomey’s bravery on guns; the fact that the class of reformers is made of columnists and bloggers and not congressmen and presidential aspirants all undercut the idea of even a sort of unified front. But what Salam calls a “tendency” still reminds me of what Democratic reformers were doing 20 years ago. And if history repeated itself, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.
First, the history: for all of the varnished memories of exactly how Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council reframed their party, it was no masterpiece of cohesion around policies or specific goals. To be sure, Clintonian reformers were virtually all free traders and advocates of tougher teacher standards and charter schools. To a person, they thought that welfare was too easy to obtain and even easier to depend upon, which distinguished them from 20 years of liberal rhetoric.
But these were relatively small sized pieces of the conversation at the time. On a much larger array of issues, Democratic reformers were all over the map. Some were ardent social liberals, who even then touted gay rights, others were notably sympathetic to the pro life movement and uncomfortable that liberalism verged on being libertarian. Some were anti-affirmative action, just as many thought anti-quota talk made them sound like mini Pat Moynihans (a Democrat, but a liberal scourge for years for his advice that the subject of racial injustice could use a dose of “benign neglect”). Some thought it a priority to readjust Reagan era tax rates to take a bigger chunk from the wealthy, others were self-consciously pro-business (the DLC’s bills were always heavily footed by industry lobbyists) and promoters of corporate rate cuts. One camp embraced comprehensive healthcare reform, another feared it was too costly and smacked of sixtyish redistribution.
There was, in other words, a consensus on a few second tier agenda items, disarray on the hottest subjects in politics, mixed with a strategic instinct about making Democratic political language more middle class friendly, deemphasizing identity based appeals, and there was a fondness for the word “community” without a lot of common ground on what that meant.
Yet, for all of the ambiguity, Democratic reformers in the gap years between Reagan and Clinton mattered a great deal. They introduced thematic arguments that were foreign to the liberal activists who had controlled the Democratic nominating process since 1972: notions like personal obligation, mutual responsibility and the concept that a downsized government could more efficiently promote progressive values, and that all of these principles were not code words for survival of the fittest. And by driving these arguments, DLC style Democrats showed a side of their party that was more attractive to blue collars and suburbanites than the interest group beholden, socially permissive brand of their intra-party rivals.
It strikes me that today’s right of center reformers are doing something similarly abstract, but potentially just as vital. The reform crowd is injecting into the conservative value stream the ideas that (1) middle class insecurity and stagnant wages are a genuine threat to the national wellbeing, a concept that explicitly rejects the assessment that over-regulation is the only source of trouble; that (2) public policy can and should promote economic upward mobility, although through market oriented means, which diverges from the Tea Party wing’s constitutionalism, and its single-minded desire to whittle government down to no domestic agenda other than protecting economic liberty; and that (3) there is such a thing as entrenched inequality, especially in areas like education and access to healthcare, and that the interest in social cohesion gives conservatives stakes in carving out opportunity based solutions.
If I had my druthers, I would push that reform mindset further than some of my cohorts on the center right would. I line up with the majority of Republicans who believe expanded background checks for buying firearms don’t shatter the rights of any law abiding citizen. I think the “Cadillac plan” tax in Obamacare is as lousy a policy as the individual mandate and is far more likely to break the backs of middle income workers. I am much more dubious than many conservatives that a First Amendment that was designed in a century where campaign contributions barely existed is a spigot for unfettered campaign dollars by businesses or individuals. I would rather see an immigration approach that got tougher in tangible ways, like making illegal entry a felony and making an illegal immigrant’s failure to declare and register a deportable offense, but still provided some form of legal gateway for the undocumented, to either the overly complex bill working its way through the Senate or to an enforcement only approach. And I would trust states to resolve the debate over defining marriage, which separates me from some reform conservatives who would embrace a right of same sex marriage as another extension of limited government.
But even the more slimmed down principles I describe earlier are a way of taking on the political and rhetorical landscape that has dominated the Republican Party of late and articulating a different path. That’s not much of a policy synthesis, per se; as Reihan Salam puts it, it is well short of a movement. But it is, I suspect, as essential as what the center left’s reformers did a generation ago. If only this right-leaning reform impulse is set to have as good a run as its Democratic predecessor.
By Jennifer Mann, on Fri Jun 7, 2013 at 8:15 AM ET
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In the midst of my tenure in office as a Pennsylvania state representative, a statewide scandal uprooted the political landscape like a tornado of Wizard of Oz proportions. For those of us unscathed and continuing work in Pennsylvania’s Capitol, we were still left with a “we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore” reality that proved tense, to say the least.
“Bonusgate” was the pithy pet name for a massive investigation into political corruption in which millions of taxpayer dollars were misappropriated as bonuses to legislative staffers who were campaigning while on the clock.
The investigation wound together deceit, cover-ups and political finger pointing into a whirlwind that swept up some of the state’s longest serving lawmakers. Some of my colleagues caught up in the storm of rapid-fire reporter questions and constituent scorn landed not in Oz, but in jail. Many more were thrown out of office, as voters took their anger to the polls and elected one of the largest freshmen classes in the state’s history. It was a scary time to be a state representative.
Just as a point of reference, I should note that Pennsylvania is one of the few states to employ a full-time legislature and no term limits. For those who choose to run for office and succeed, there is a scary realization that your career and income is suddenly in the hands of voters. And while I will defend the importance of maintaining a full-time legislature, I’ll admit that the overlying threat of getting the potential “pink slip” at the polls leads to a protective instinct that’s palpable around the Capitol. The desire to survive creates a sub-culture of risk-taking, and even forces a select few to cross the line between right and wrong. This is my assessment of what creates corruption, at least in this case.
When the Attorney General released the first of many findings in the Bonusgate investigation, careers and reputations were ruined almost instantly, and the career carnage kept coming. Fortunately, I was a Bonusgate bystander, a safe distance from the action.
Until one morning, I wasn’t.
When the reporter contacted me to get my side of the story on the juicy tidbit of information he had, supposedly tying my top aide to Bonusgate, I responded openly and with the same nothing-to-hide style that was the core of my political reputation.
Still, by the time I hung up the phone, my stomach was in my throat. The mere thought of the article hitting newsstands consumed my thoughts and nerves. I tried to hope for the best, like a sidebar blurb buried somewhere in the back of the paper.
The resulting banner headline that greeted me soon after was the antithesis of any style or reputation I had cultivated, and it was far from hidden. Instead, it alluded to a direct link between my senior staffer and some of those who had fallen the farthest in our state’s scandal.
In reality, the full-color, front-page exposé was all style, no substance. The emails cited were taken out of context. The source faced criminal conviction and had already established a jailhouse-snitch notoriety for trying to invite company into his misery. And the fact was that my staffer had not pocketed any tax dollars for his time spent on the campaign trail.
Still, the timing of the story and the wording in the headline alone suggested a cover up that could only serve to outrage vexed voters even more.
I processed the article like a boxing match transpiring in slow motion. I saw the heavyweight square up, cock his arm and start to pivot slowly as his fist came straight for my face. The best I could hope for was a permanent black eye, but I’d seen this fight before, and it typically ended in a total knockout.
My phone rang before impact. It was my staffer and subject of aforementioned article. We had a conversation that I vaguely recall as, “Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap!”
===
Click here to read the rest of Jennifer Mann’s chapter by purchasing The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis for only 99 cents this week only.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jun 6, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Some people who claim to always go the “extra mile” –actually often only go a few extra yards. Or feet .
And just hope nobody notices and measures.
I have done that myself a few times. I find it helps to look like I am out of breath, so it will look like I really did go a full extra mile in working on a project
In the future, I think we ought to consider the practical advantages of changing the phrase “going the extra mile” to “going the extra kilometer”
Sure, chalk one up for the metic system but its also much more efficient and realistic . A kilometer is about 6/10th of a mile but is about as much extra a person can go on something without looking like a fool, or martyr.
Once you go a full mile over what is required, you are just trying to show off. But a kilometer is more believable and sends the message you really do try harder.
By Michael Steele, on Thu Jun 6, 2013 at 8:15 AM ET
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The one thing you don’t want in politics or business is to be unpleasantly surprised.
We pride ourselves on seeing every angle and knowing every pitfall; and when we don’t or we can’t, we hire consultants who supposedly do because there’s nothing that will throw you off your game faster than the unknown.
So it was with particular attention to detail that my staff at the Republican National Committee (RNC) planned for me and over thirty members of the RNC’s Site Selection Committee to visit the three cities in the final running to host the 2012 national convention.
It’s no secret that my tenure as RNC Chairman had more than its share of unpleasant surprises. So my instruction to the staff regarding the site visits was simple: “lean, clean and no surprises!”
As the visits got underway, by any measure, they were going exceedingly well. These trips used to be about goodie bags and cocktail parties, but we had resolved to take a decidedly more business-oriented approach – with an emphasis on contracts, bus schedules, fundraising and hotel rooms; and as it turned out, the members preferred that (although they still wanted their cocktail parties).
But as they say, “the best laid plans…”
* * *
The day had already been long with meetings and tours with the Mayor of Salt Lake City, our respective legal teams and members of the Site Selection Committee. As this was the second of our three cities to visit, we had begun to establish a rhythm for the day; and by this point, it was definitely time for one of those cocktails. For most of that afternoon, I observed the courtesy of keeping my cell phone turned off. After all, if my chief of staff – or anyone else for that matter – needed to reach me, there were enough other cell phones nearby.
So when the executive director of the site selection committee, Belinda Cook, handed me the phone with a look of anger: “The office has been trying to reach you for the past hour; your cell is off” – I thought to myself: “Don’t be mad at me; you told me to turn it off!”
But I would soon realize that she wasn’t angry about the phone. Rather, a major conservative web site, the Daily Caller, wanted a “comment” on a story it was about to run that a member of the RNC finance staff had spent $2000 at a Los Angeles strip club that featured a sexual-bondage theme. And to make matters worse, the reporter was inferring that I was there.
I’ll spare you the first words I uttered at that moment.
Read the rest of… Former RNC Chair Michael Steele: Sexual Bondage Strip Clubs? Oh, my! — AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT from The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis
By Loranne Ausley, on Wed Jun 5, 2013 at 3:51 PM ET
Click here to read a recent article from The American Prospect about the “Not So Solid” Republican South. This is the first in a 4 part series, which really lays out the case for our collective work in the south.
Stay tuned for some exciting news from The Southern Project in the next few weeks!
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jun 5, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Keep an open mind….don’t jump to conclusions.
If the first thing you think of when letting your mind wander on a Saturday morning while having your coffee is, “Jack Rabbit Slims,” it’s probably worth asking yourself “What did I have for dinner last night?” and making sure you don’t eat that again since it must have caused indigestion that led to disturbing images the next morning.
At least that’s what was my first thought in reaction to the first thing I thought of this morning, which was “Jack Rabbit Slims.”
But it turns out it isn’t such a bad thing after all. I wasn’t thinking of the famous Travolta-Thurman dance scene or the great dialogue scene. I thought of the tracking shot of Travolta-Thurman entering the restaurant and walking to there table.
And I found the video of clip and watched it twice. It turns out that watching (and thinking) about Jack Rabbit Slim the first thing on a Saturday morning while having coffee is a pretty cool way to start the day off after all.
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The first Correctional Officer (CO) I met was straight out of Deliverance. I came in with a young black guy who mumbled and a middle-aged Chinese man who spoke broken English, but at least I could decipher their words. The CO was harder to understand. Manchester, Kentucky is tucked in an Appalachian mountain hollow, and he had apparently never left. When he sauntered into the austere, concrete holding room and asked the Chinese man his name, the man replied, “Shoi-ming Chung.”
“Sesame Chicken?” replied the CO; laughing uproariously and then repeating it twice as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
He sent me to a heavyset nurse for a battery of questions.
“Height and weight?” she asked.
“5’6”, 120 pounds.”
She examined my slight frame and frowned. “Education level?”
“Ph.D.”
She shot me a skeptical look. “Last profession?”
“State Senator.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ll put it down if ya want. If ya wanna play games, play games. You’ll fit right in – we got ones who think they’re Jesus Christ, too.”
Another guard escorted me to a bathroom without a door. He was morbidly obese and spoke gruffly in a thick Kentucky drawl. “Stree-ip,” he commanded. I did. “Tern’round,” he barked. I did.
“Open up yer prison wallet,” he ordered.
I looked at him quizzically.
“Tern’round and open up yer butt cheeks.”
I did.
“Alright, you’se good to go.”
Read the rest of… Former State Sen. Jeff Smith: From Politics to Prison — AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT from The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis
It’s a good time to revisit a point that I made a year or so ago on George Stephanopolous’ “This Week” program. The new health-care law, for all of its moral claims about making medical coverage universal, will end up falling about six million people short of that goal, and the individuals left out of the equation will be the very low income uninsured who are touted as the primary beneficiaries of Obamacare. The New York Times has just summarized the reasons. While the law substantially expands Medicaid eligibility beyond its current focus on children and low wage families, the Supreme Court’s rewrite of the statute last summer has permitted states to opt out of the expansion with no penalty, and to date, 25 states have done just that. Under the new law, there are no provisions to capture the sizable pool of people whose states decline to raise their eligibility standards and who don’t qualify for traditional Medicaid: that is, low income but able bodied adults with no children, and adults with children but whose income is between 32% and 100% of the federal poverty level (which translates to between $6,250 and $19,530 for a family of three). And Obamacare’s insurance subsidies for lower middle income families were allotted exclusively for individuals or families earning above the poverty line.
The political blame has rested primarily with the Republican governors who have not been moved to accept the strings and, post 2018, new financial obligations that come with growing their Medicaid program, despite the large numbers of working, uninsured poor who live in many of their states. But there is nothing unpredictable about cash starved states with a low tax base, or states whose voters are overwhelmingly hostile to the new healthcare law, refusing to assume responsibilities that will be unpopular in the short term and costly in the long term. Nor is there any huge surprise that the component of Obamacare which was supposed to avoid this dilemma, a draconian demand that states accept the expansion or risk their whole federal Medicaid match, would face a severe legal fight. In fact, the same Supreme Court that sharply split over the constitutionality of the insurance mandates in the Affordable Care Act agreed 6-2 that the “take it or risk your whole program” threat was illegal.
Given those realities, one of the centrist criticisms of Obamacare—the argument that it is needlessly ambitious and overshoots the aim of extending insurance to Americans who couldn’t afford healthcare—seems to have been borne out. There were any number of viable ways the White House and congressional architects could have avoided this trap, ranging from taking then Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s advice to shelve broad-based reform for a more targeted version that would have shored up Medicaid and picked up 100% of the tab, to establishing a pool for catastrophic coverage for low wage earners facing medical emergencies. Or, in other words, abandoning the expensive and complex array of reforms in service delivery and doctor reimbursement that have muddled the law without building its popularity, in favor of a straightforward low-income assistance program.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Another Thing Obamacare Got Wrong
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 4, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
My first and last Beiber rant.
I just watched a video clip of two people reacting to the reaction of several commentators who offered their opinions on the reactions of two other people to an event that I personally didn’t find important enough for anyone to form an opinion on in the first place.
And now I feel the need to add my two cents to the two people reacting to the several commentators… reaction to the two people who originally reacted to an event that doesn’t seem very important in the first place.
My commentary is this:
If an event isn’t that important–or involves the name Justin Bieber– it’s probably not worth the time to form a full opinion about it. And certainly not worth the time to form an opinion and publicly express it.
And if someone does do those two things, it’s not really worth the time for a commentator (or group of commentators) to comment about further because that will only lead to more people, or at least two, who will feel compelled to comment publicly about their disagreement with the commentators commentary about the original two people’s reaction to the unimportant event.
And then, dammit, I’ll feel compelled to get involved and suggest that maybe, at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, whatever I think about Justin Bieber, I should just keep to myself. And maybe other people should do the same.
Let’s all just agree that Justin Beiber seems like a nice enough fella and sings well and has the same hair like of a lot of young people we know. And leave it at that.
It just saves everybody time and energy to talk about more important things.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Co-Founder and President of The Missouri Times, Rod Jetton, has co-authored a book on how to survive a crisis.
Jetton told The Missouri Times that his book, “The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis,” is about the steps necessary to handle, overcome and survive mistakes or crises in life.
The book download will be available for 99 cents for one week.
Rod Jetton, President of The Missouri Times
In the book, more than a dozen “recovering politicians” share lessons learned from some of their most difficult personal trials, from highly publicized and politicized scandals, to smaller, more intimate struggles.
In The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis, a bi-partisan collection of former politicians, readers can draw lessons from more than a dozen “recovering politicians” who use their scandals to share guidance on how everyday readers can transcend crisis, recover, and launch their own second acts.
The book outlines deliberate, focused and vigorous courses of action and reaction that are meant to be applicable to helping readers resolve and transcend their own crises in the worlds of business, finance, non-profit, religion and in their own personal lives.
“Each of the writers did an excellent job of addressing how they dealt with their individual scandals,” Jetton said. “Politics is a blood sport and the lessons learned from these political stories are more needed today than ever before. With the explosion of social media and new technology celebrities, athletes, corporate leaders and even average individuals have less privacy than ever before and even a small mistake can turn into a major crisis if not handled properly.”
Some of the stories in the book include:
Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele plunging into a nationally televised scandal when a subordinate uses the party’s credit card at a strip club with a sexual bondage theme
Former Missouri State Senator Jeff Smith facing a year in federal prison when he lies to federal investigators about a minor campaign finance violation.
Former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton enduring trial and tribulation when he is accused simultaneously of sexual and ethical improprieties.
Former Pennsylvania State Representative Jennifer Mann humbled by banner headlines alleging that her top aide is implicated in the state capital’s “Bonusgate” scandal.
“This book was a bi-partisan, collaborative labor of love,” Editor and co-author, Jonathan Miller added. “It has been an extraordinary honor to bring together former elected officials from both parties, each of whom has struggled through crisis or scandal, all of whom are eager to share their lessons with everyday readers. And best of all — it is a highly engaging, entertaining and informative book.”
“Mary Pickford once said that failure is not falling down but staying down,” former state Senator and co-author Jeff Smith said. “That’s the spirit in which we approached this book and we hope it helps others face adversity with courage, humility, grit, and even — when appropriate – humor.”
“I had made mistakes and let friends and family members down,” Jetton said of his own chapter of the book. “Too many times when we make mistakes we don’t sincerely apologize and take responsibility. I hope my story will help others learn you can move on and enjoy life even after making serious mistakes.”
The book can be downloaded in digital format for the Kindle, iPad, iPhone and more until June 11th for only 99 cents. The price will go to $4.99 for the digital version after the first week. A paperback version will be available soon for $8.99, and Miller, Jetton and the other authors will launch a national book-signing tour later this year.
“We are excited to offer over200 pages of wisdom and advice, gleaned not from the self-declared ‘experts,’ but from people who actually have weathered crisis and scandal as the principal, the man or woman at the center of the fire,” Miller said.
But these were relatively small sized pieces of the conversation at the time. On a much larger array of issues, Democratic reformers were all over the map. Some were ardent social liberals, who even then touted gay rights, others were notably sympathetic to the pro life movement and uncomfortable that liberalism verged on being libertarian. Some were anti-affirmative action, just as many thought anti-quota talk made them sound like mini Pat Moynihans (a Democrat, but a liberal scourge for years for his advice that the subject of racial injustice could use a dose of “benign neglect”). Some thought it a priority to readjust Reagan era tax rates to take a bigger chunk from the wealthy, others were self-consciously pro-business (the DLC’s bills were always heavily footed by industry lobbyists) and promoters of corporate rate cuts. One camp embraced comprehensive healthcare reform, another feared it was too costly and smacked of sixtyish redistribution.
