Contra-contraception

So you're President Bush. You've just been shellacked by the voters, and there's a chorus of calls for compromise and bipartisanship. So what do you do?

Besides his previously reported efforts to get controversial nominations and bills through the lame-duck Congress, how about continuing the culture war -- this time by putting an opponent of contraception in charge of the federal program charged with providing affordable contraceptives to the poor.

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman's Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons."

On its website, A Woman's Concern says "commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness."

Sure sounds like the people who should be put in charge of distributing them.

The position does not require confirmation, and is subordinate to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. But Leavitt himself has not been notably friendly to contraception, famously delaying a decision on the Plan B "emergency" birth-control pill for a year, in violation of his agency's own rules and with total disregard for the recommendations of his advisory panels.

I yearn for a future where the people put in charge of programs actually support the goals of those programs, where science is judged on its merits rather than its political implications, where policy is driven more by evidence than ideology, where serving the nation is more important than servicing a tiny partisan constituency.

Two more years.

Keroack, contraception, Leavitt, politics, midtopia

GOP chooses more of the same

As predicted by Robert Novak earlier this week, House Republicans chose John Boehner as their minority leader and re-elected Roy Blunt as whip, returning the same leadership that led them into this year's disastrous elections.

In doing so they follow the lead of Senate Republicans, who did the same thing on Tuesday.

The Republicans seem awfully complacent for a party that just lost Congress.

Blunt, Boehner, politics, midtopia

Another Minnesota first

Something you wouldn't (really, couldn't) have seen 40 years ago.

The Minneapolis Aquatennial Queen of the Lakes is trading her tiara for a kevlar helmet and the sands of Iraq.

Jessica Gaulke, chosen in July as Queen of the Lakes for a year, is giving up her title because her National Guard unit has been activated for duty in Iraq. Gaulke, 22, a sociology student at Augsburg College who visited Japan as part of her Aquatennial ambassador duties, will be going to the Mideast as a diesel generator mechanic.

As far as anyone knows, it's the first time an Aquatennial queen has been in the military, much less called to active duty during her reign.

Good for her. And us. Not because we're in Iraq, but because of what it says about the military, increasing opportunities for women and changing societal attitudes toward them.

Gaulke, Minnesota, Aquatennial, politics, midtopia

Constitutions are for Communists

In the spirit of "patriots" who want to criminalize flag-burning (thus missing the whole point of what the flag represents), I give you the small town of Pahrump, Nev.

The elected town board in the remote Mojave Desert community voted 3-2 on Tuesday to enact an ordinance making it illegal to fly a foreign nation's flag by itself.

Flying another country's flag, whether it is a British Union Jack or the flag of Mexico, is punishable by a $50 fine and 30 hours' community service, unless it is flown below an American flag.

Let me tell you, all the folks up here in Minnesota that fly Swedish and Norwegian flags are going to be a tad upset.

The flag measure wasn't the only piece of silly legislation to pass. Pahrump also made English the city's official language, and outlawed town benefits to illegal immigrants -- which cuts such immigrants off from.... nothing.

"We don't have any" benefits, town manager David Richards says. "If we ever have any, they'll be denied to illegal immigrants."

So what sparked this muscular show of contempt for constitutional rights?

The ordinance's sponsor, Michael Miraglia, a retired Illinois state worker, said the flag restriction was a reaction to nationwide demonstrations in May against a crackdown on illegal immigration. He said he didn't like seeing protesters waving Mexican flags and demanding immigrants not go to work that day.

"In Pahrump, we had Mexican restaurants closed that day," he complained. "Only one restaurant stayed open."

I see his point. Perhaps the board's next move should be to establish city-mandated hours of operation for all Mexican restaurants, to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.

free speech, Pahrump, First Amendment, politics, midtopia

Hoyer beats out Murtha

Dealing a blow to Pelosi and the netroots, but showing the Democrats as a group have some common sense.

The vote wasn't even close: 149-86.

Snarky aside: What does that say about Murtha's nose-counting ability (a key job of the whip)? Seeing as how he said yesterday that he had the votes to win (besides saying that the furor over ethics was "total crap"). So maybe Hoyer won simply because of his superior math skills.

The netroots aren't batting so well in this election, with the repudiation of Ned Lamont and now Murtha. Although it's not clear to me why Murtha was ever a darling of theirs in the first place. Sure, he's antiwar. But on many other issues he's rather conservative. And on the key issue -- corruption -- his record is just too tarnished.

Sure, so is nearly every senior member of Congress. And maybe a guy like Murtha is the best one to clean up the place, like Nixon going to China, because he knows how to game the system (and thus how to fix it), and it would demonstrate that things really are changing.

But all in all, the Democrats voted for sanity today, as well as retaining a moderate voice in their senior leadership. The personal animus between Polosi and Hoyer could lead to trouble, but they've worked around it for years now and probably will be able to continue doing so. The lopsided vote total also strengthens Hoyer's (and thus moderates') hand; Pelosi would be foolish to seek an unnecessary confrontation with the man who is emerging as the voice of the new moderate majority in the Democratic caucus.

Common sense has (for the most part) prevailed for more than a week now. That's got to be some kind of record as far as Congress goes. Let's hope it lasts.

Hoyer, Murtha, Pelosi, politics, midtopia

Back to Iran

All the election excitement has taken some of the spotlight off of Iran in recent weeks. But things are heating up over there. A recap:

Both Iran and Syria have said they're willing to enter into talks with the United States over Iraq, though their sincerity is open to question.

Democrats support direct talks with the two. But the administration's response was curt: Talk is cheap. It insists Syria must first stop harboring militant Palestinians and meddling in Iraq and Lebanon, while Iran must freeze its nuclear activities.

Speaking of which, UN inspectors found traces of plutonium and enriched uranium in an Iranian waste facility, yet more evidence of Iranian ambitions in that area.

So where does it all leave us? The preconditions on Syria are a bit silly, seeing as how achieving those actions would be the whole point of talks. Just talk already. If they go nowhere, we're no worse off than we were before. Removing Syrian support for Hezbollah would be worth the sort of concessions they're likely to demand, notably security guarantees, warmer diplomatic ties and the launch of a peace process with Israel that could lead to the return of captured Syrian territory.

An excellent article on the subject is in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, though you need a subscription to read the whole thing.

Iran's a bit of a different case, because they've stalled long enough over demands they either abandon their nuclear program or make it far less proliferation-friendly. A harder line, with screws applied, is appropriate there. But a lot depends on how badly we want Iranian help in Iraq. Iran wields its regional influence as a bargaining chip, and if we bleed enough in Iraq, it may be a chip we need to buy.

Our best bet there is to maintain a hard line on the nuclear issue: Iran must not get the impression they can wear us down on that, or stall for an appreciable length of time. Meanwhile, dangle a few carrots -- not just direct tit-for-tat arrangements in return for nuclear pliancy, but signaling our willingness to deal favorably on a range of issues if Iran abandons its nuclear ambitions and helps out in Iraq.

What sort of issues? Improved diplomatic and political ties, technological exchanges, an affirmation of Iran's role in the region, economic agreements -- the list of possible inducements is a long one.

By combining an unwavering opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran with a reasonable deadline for compliance, we ensure the nuclear question will be resolved, one way or the other, before Iran gets the bomb. By offering fair and generous carrots as well as the unsmiling stick, we give Iran all sorts of positive inducements to cooperate. The key is to make continuing to pursue a bomb an unattractive option, while providing them a face-saving way to abandon that pursuit.

Iraq, nuclear, Syria, Iran, politics, midtopia

Carville goes for Dean's throat

Rhetorically, anyway.

Carville ... said Democrats could have picked up as many as 50 House seats, instead of the nearly 30 they have so far.

The reason they didn’t, he said, is the Democratic National Committee did not spend some $6 million it could have put into so-called “third tier” House races against vulnerable Republicans....

Asked by a reporter whether Dean should be dumped, Carville replied, “In a word, do I think? Yes.”...

He added, “I would describe his leadership as Rumsfeldian in its competence.”

I refer you to my earlier post on the subject, which is that Carville frankly needs to get some perspective. Dean argued all along that it was foolish to compromise the party's 2008 chances in order to pick up a few extra seats in 2006. And he's right. The money he might have spent in this election cycle he is now free to put toward building out the party's infrastructure for 2008. That will do more to solidify the Democratic majority than would picking up a few extra seats while riding a tide of anti-incumbency.

Carville keeps trying to float this argument, and he keeps getting smacked down. Maybe someone should ask him politely to shut up.

Oh, wait. They are. Meanwhile, in the blogosphere, the request is not phrased quite so daintily.

Howard Dean, Carville, politics, midtopia

Senate Republicans opt for more of the same

Yesterday the Senate Democrats made some odd leadership choices. Today it's the Senate Republicans' turn. They elected Mitch McConnell as their leader, and brought back Trent Lott to be his deputy.

McConnell was the deputy to retiring GOP Senate leader Bill Frist. So the Republicans essentially decided to retain their existing leadership -- the same leadership that cost them their majority status.

Further, McConnell is one of the most earmark-happy members of Congress, providing millions (and in some cases, billions) of dollars worth of federal help to specific projects.

In this he doesn't differ much from Harry Reid or John Murtha, two Democrats who know their way around the earmark process. But just as the ascension of those two don't exactly build confidence in Democratic committment to reform, McConnell's rise suggests Republicans don't really take it seriously, either.

As with Reid and Murtha, though, let's suspend judgement for now. The past is past; what's important is what steps they take now to curb the abuses that swept the GOP out and the Democrats in.

Lott, meanwhile, brings his own baggage. He was forced to give up the post of majority leader in 2002 after he inexplicably praised Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential run.

You can argue that Lott has paid his penance, and that he's too skilled of a backroom politician to sit in the cheap seats forever. But his reappearance certainly won't do much to help the GOP's relationship with black voters, already turned off by dirty campaigns in Tennessee and Maryland and the ongoing failure of Republican legislators to address relevant issues. For example, the NAACP gave 98 percent of Republicans an "F" in their most recent scorecard.

I'm not arguing the merit of the NAACP's policy positions. But I think it does demonstrate that Republicans are a long way from winning over black voters, and rehabilitating Lott -- who, besides praising Thurmond, got a 5% grade from the NAACP -- doesn't help matters.

Tomorrow, we find out who will lead the House Democrats. On Friday, it's House Republicans.

Update: Once again, conservatives are not happy. Michelle Malkin has a more thorough roundup of conservative opinion. My favorite comes from the Free Republic: "We suck."

racism, Lott, McConnell, corruption, politics, midtopia

Health care tsunami

Amazing what a Democratic sweep of Congress will do. Suddenly, everyone is talking about health care.

On Monday, the insurance industry outlined a plan to provide insurance coverage to the 47 million uninsured Americans. They propose using tax credits and government programs to buy the insurance, at an estimated cost of $300 billion over 10 years.

And yesterday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- facing a Democrat-controlled state legislature -- said he wants to extend health insurance to all children, a startling about-face for a man who threw people off of MinnesotaCare in his first term as he struggled to close the state's budget deficit without raising taxes.

Call me cynical, but do you suppose either of those two things would have occurred had the Republicans kept control?

No matter. Pawlenty's willingness to reconsider long-held positions is one reason I said it wouldn't be a disaster if he were re-elected. And with businesses, the insurance industry and prominent Republicans all suddenly producing plans to improve health coverage, it's going to be very hard for opponents to claim a solution -- however partial -- is impossible or socialist or the like.

There are a lot of questions to be answered, notably cost controls and the increasing shifting of costs from employer to employee. But that's what debate is for. The discussion looks to be healthy, and likely to lead to something productive. Finally.

Score one for divided government.

Pawlenty, health care, politics, midtopia

As seen by the FAA

I don't normally post simple eye candy, but this is way cool. And it's not just eye candy.

Have a look.

FAA, cool, politics, midtopia

Democrats and corruption

The Democrats made some leadership choices today, and it sends a few confusing messages about their committment to fighting corruption.

I'm actually less worried about the House, where Nancy Pelosi has been criticized for publicly favoring John Murtha over her current deputy, Steny Hoyer.

The criticism is twofold: that Pelosi is waging an unnecessary battle that she can only lose -- either dividing her caucus or suffering an intramural defeat -- and that Murtha has long been linked to questionable ethical moves, ranging from enthusiastic use of earmarks to the Abscam bribery scandal a quarter century ago.

But frankly, Pelosi and Murtha's leadership will be judged on their deeds, not their past. The political wisdom of picking an early and public fight aside, Pelosi backing Murtha doesn't signal anything about her anti-corruption drive.

Over in the Senate, though, the Democrats have made another odd choice. The main Senate leadership team is unsurprising -- Harry Reid will be majority leader, with Dick Durbin as his assistant. But they also named Terrance Gainer as sergeant at arms for the Senate.

Why is that odd? Because Gainer resigned as chief of the Capitol Police in April after hiring his son-in-law as a police officer in violation of nepotism laws. What's even weirder was that it was repeated confrontations with congressional Democrats that eventually led to revelations of the hiring and thus his ouster.

I suppose one can view this as a form of reaching across the aisle, or simply take the view that the nepotism case really wasn't that big a deal. But it's still sends a mixed message on the corruption front.

The true test of Democrats' devotion to clean government still lies in what Congress does about lobbyists, earmarks and openness. But these moves don't exactly fill me with hope.

corruption, Murtha, Pelosi, Senate, Reid, Gainer, politics, midtopia

Maryland dirty tricks, continued

In an update to the Maryland item in my pre-election dirty tricks post, the deception goes further than originally thought.

The glossy fliers bore photos of black Democratic leaders on the front. Under the headline “Democratic Sample Ballot” were boxes checked in red for Ehrlich and Senate candidate Michael S. Steele, who were not identified as Republicans. Their names were followed by a long list of local Democratic candidates.

I understand playing hardball. I even understand -- though despise -- attack ads that stretch the truth or sling mud to make their point.

But outright lying to voters in an attempt to trick them into voting for you? And on behalf of a black Senatorial candidate no less? Give me a break.

I've lost a lot of respect for Michael Steele. As for Ehrlich -- whose campaign appears to be the driving force behind these tricks -- he deserves more. Like a lawsuit and serious fines, for instance. This stuff is beyond the pale.

Maryland, Ehrlich, Steele, politics, midtopia

GOP adrift?

Taken in conjunction with the post just below this one on Mel Martinez, it's starting to seem like Republicans aren't sure what to do.

The depleted House Republican caucus, a minority in the next Congress, convenes in the Capitol at 8 a.m. Friday on the brink of committing an act of supreme irrationality. The House members blame their leadership for their tasting the bitter dregs of defeat. Yet the consensus so far is that, in secret ballot, they will reelect some or all of those leaders.

In private conversation, Republican members of Congress blame Majority Leader John Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt in no small part for their midterm election debacle. Yet either Boehner, Blunt or both are expected to be returned to their leadership posts Friday.

You know it's especially bad when conservatives start accusing each other of drinking Kool-Aid:

That reluctance is typified by Rep. Eric Cantor, a 43-year-old third-term congressman from Richmond who has been his party's chief deputy whip for four years since being appointed by Blunt after only two years in the House. His voting record is solidly conservative, and he belongs to the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC). At the same time, Cantor is well regarded in all sectors of the party, and members see him as the principled kind of rising politician that Republicans desperately need.

But Cantor is not seizing this post-election moment to seek an elected leadership position. On the contrary, he has been supporting Blunt for reelection as whip out of loyalty to his mentor and patron. Bright and able though he is, Cantor has drunk the Kool-Aid in viewing the Republican Party as a private club where personal loyalties must transcend all else.

What's going on? Are Republicans simply out of ideas? Or do they reject the notion that the election changed anything?

Weird.

politics, midtopia

Martinez to take over RNC

Not Michael Steele, as previously rumored. But Florida Sen. Mel Martinez.

This seems like an odd pick. Martinez will remain in the Senate, limiting how active he can be with the RNC. And he's not exactly someone who captures the imagination and energizes the party. In fact, he barely squeaked into office on Bush's coattails in 2004, and is better known for public gaffes than for sound policy.

Conservative bloggers are a bit less than overjoyed, and I can hardly blame them. The GOP is hamstringing its national operation in the runup to 2008 -- and for what? To reach out to Hispanic voters? To reward a Bush loyalist?

Is there some way this actually makes sense?

politics, midtopia

It's the media's fault!

Some conservatives are sinking back into the dark pits of paranoid fantasy.

Make no mistake. Along with the multitude of Republican gaffes, and the hard work of the Democrats, there can be no doubt that the left-of-center mainstream media helped to manufacture this election victory for the Democratic Party. For parts of the last two years, many in the media have worked in concert with the Democratic spin doctors to indoctrinate the American voter into believing this election had to be a referendum on President Bush and the "failed" war in Iraq.

Horrified by Mr. Bush's re-election in 2004, as well as the historic Republican gains in the House and the Senate that year, some liberals in the media were determined to do everything in their power to ensure that there was no GOP celebration in 2006, even if that meant confirming to the world that they proudly abandon professionalism and ethics in the name of partisanship and ideology.

To make the election of 2006 a referendum on Mr. Bush and "his" war, the media knew full well they had to present that conflict in the worst possible light for as long as possible on their nightly newscasts, cable programs and front pages. Then, after force-feeding the American people a steady diet of this carnage for weeks at a time, the same media outlets would then "poll" the voters to get their impressions of Iraq and Mr. Bush.

This trope is getting old.

Is the bias of Western journalists the reason Iraqi men are tattooing their names on their bodies so that loved ones can identify them when they die?

Is the bias of Western journalists the reason that 1.8 million Iraqis have fled the country and another 1.6 million are internal refugees -- more than 12 percent of the entire Iraqi population?

Is the bias of Western journalists the reason sectarian violence is killing dozens and sometimes hundreds of Iraqis a day?

Is the bias of Western journalists the reason more of them have died in the three years of fighting in Iraq than died in the entire 20 years of the Vietnam war?

I could go on. The situation in Iraq is bad enough that the media didn't have to lie about it, even if they were inclined to.

politics, midtopia

What sort of army are we standing up?

It's stuff like this that makes me question whether Iraq is "winnable" in any sense we'd recognize.

Brig. Gen. Shakir Hulail Hussein al-Kaabi was chosen this summer by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to lead the Iraqi Army’s Fifth Division in Diyala Province. Within weeks, General Shakir went to Colonel Jones with a roster of people he wanted to arrest.

On the list were the names of nearly every Sunni Arab sheik and political leader whom American officers had identified as crucial allies in their quest to persuade Sunnis to embrace the political process and turn against the powerful Sunni insurgent groups here.

“Where’s the evidence?” Colonel Jones demanded of General Shakir. “Where’s the proof? What makes us suspect these guys? None of that stuff exists.”

To that, Colonel Jones recalled, the Iraqi commander replied simply, “I got this from Baghdad.”

The incident was one of many that alarmed Colonel Jones, who just completed a yearlong tour as commander of American forces in Diyala. In the end, he said, he concluded that the Iraqi general’s real ambition was to destroy the Sunni political movement here — possibly on orders from Baghdad.

The article goes on to detail how the Iraqi military is increasingly being wielded as a weapon by Shiites against Sunnis -- and that the orders seem to come from Iraq's central government, thus making it part of the problem rather than a bulwark against sectarian anarchy.

Proponents of "staying until we win" in Iraq need to detail exactly what "winning" entails -- and how it will be achieved in the face of such realities.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Democratic plans

Thus far the Democrats are being very careful with their newfound majority, avoiding extreme partisan talk or scary agendas and focusing on a few laudable goals.

Among them:

Clean up government. There's always a disconnect between action and rhetoric on this issue, but Nancy Pelosi has vowed to run the cleanest Congress in history, and she already has one of the means to do it: The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which she tried and failed to get through the GOP congress. It prohibits congressmembers from accepting most gifts from lobbyists, including travel on corporate jets, meals, tickets and entertainment. And it would create an independent office to catalog lobbyist contacts. That's a big start. But the elephant in the room is earmarks. Normally I'd apologize to Republicans for the elephant metaphor, but the fact is that earmarks have exploded under Republican rule, in part because Republicans made a concerted effort to ensure that lobbyists paid through the nose for such favors. If Pelosi can't or won't rein those in, corruption will continue apace -- and will lose its Republican tinge.

Fiscal responsibility. Some people find it weird or false to hear Democrats talk about this, but the last six years of Republican rule should have shredded any belief voters had that Republicans were capable of fiscal discipline. Even if you think Democrats will raise your taxes, tax-and-spend is more defensible, both ethically and economically, than borrow-and-spend. The centerpiece of this effort is PayGo, which means reinstituting Clinton-era rules that required any new spending or tax cuts to be offset by spending cuts or tax hikes. It's a common-sense rule that prevents Congress from adding to the deficit and encourages them to start reducing it.

What's odd is how senior Republicans like John Boehner (likely to be the new minority leader in the House) oppose it. Their logic: it encourages tax hikes, because it's easier to raise taxes than cut spending. Only in partisanland would the argument "don't impose fiscal discipline because I can't keep myself from raising taxes" be taken seriously.

In the end, though, the argument should be less about economics and more about ethics. It is unethical to force our kids and grandkids to pay for programs we're spending on ourselves. Borrowing money to win World War II is one thing; borrowing money so that we can have lots of government services and low taxes is simply reprehensible.

They'll also preserve the estate tax, which I fully support. If you're going to restructure a tax, it should be the Alternative Minimum Tax. It makes no sense to give multibillionaires a huge tax break while the AMT expands to ensnare more and more middle-class taxpayers.

Oversight. This is where the new Congress can really shine if it can avoid a few tantalizing pitfalls. Congress needs to reassert its oversight role, and there is every indication that it will do so. For starters, Democrats say they will revoke the last-minute provision that stripped funding from the Iraq auditor's office. Such moves are laudable. The risk, however, is that Democrats will gleefully launch dozens if not hundreds of investigations into administration activities, using them to harass Bush rather than focus U.S. policy. A number of investigations are called for, including the long-delayed report on U.S. use of intelligence in the runup to Iraq, examinations of the incompetent occupation planning and probes of some of Bush's more controversial initiatives, like warrantless eavesdropping. But endless fishing expeditions are not what Democrats were elected to pursue.

After that the Dems have a few populist measures planned: raising the minimum wage, reforming the Medicare Part D debacle, stuff like that.

All in all, a good, substantive agenda that seems destined to enjoy a lot of popular support. I'm sure the more partisan issues will crop up down the line. But this is a very promising start.

politics, midtopia

Lame ducks all around

The lame-duck Congress has convened for the post-election session, where it will try to get some business done before the Democrats take over the new Congress in January. But the more interesting action turns on who will lead both parties in the new Congress.

The lame-duck President, meanwhile, has sent that Congress a wish list that would seem to contradict his calls for bipartisan consensus, inasmuch as they represent an effort to force through controversial measures before the Democrats take over.

The president's top priorities are a measure to legalize his once-secret warrantless eavesdropping program, the extension of his tax cuts and Senate confirmation of John Bolton to be United Nations ambassador and, the least controversial item, Senate backing of Robert Gates to succeed embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

His chances of success are slim to none, unless outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist changes some ground rules to allow simple majority votes in situations that currently require more than that. Even that would be chancy, and it would probably be foolish for Republicans to try it in the face of voter anger. Whether you think Democrats earned a mandate or not on Nov. 7, trying to push something through now because you don't think it would pass in the newly elected Congress would go very badly for the GOP if they have misread the public mood.

But it's rather telling that Bush says one thing when he's vulnerable, and another when he holds the power. One would have thought that Bush would have refrained from the attempt simply to avoid poisoning relations with the Congress he'll have to deal with for the last two years of his term. Apparently not.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. As outgoing GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee recounts, the last time the electorate was closely divided, the Bush administration didn't exactly reach across the divide.

Back in December 2000, after one of the closest elections in our nation’s history, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney was the guest at a weekly lunch meeting of a small group of centrist Republicans. Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and I were honored to have the opportunity to visit with him on the eve of a session of Congress in which, because of Republican defeats, the Senate would be evenly divided at 50-50.

As we sat in Senator Specter’s cozy hideaway office and discussed the coming session, I was startled to hear the vice president dismiss suggestions of compromise and instead emphasize an aggressively partisan agenda that included significant tax cuts, the abandonment of international agreements and a muscular, unilateral foreign policy.

I was incredulous. Instead of a new atmosphere of cooperation and civility which, after all, had been the promise of the Bush-Cheney campaign, we seemed ready to return to the poisonous partisanship that marked the Republican-Congress — Clinton White House years.

Of course, bipartisanship is a two-way street, and it remains to be seen how Democrats will handle their end of the bargain. For now, they're saying all the right things. And other prominent Democrats, like Leon Panetta, are going beyond pleasantries.

The legislative work can begin on areas where there is likely consensus: immigration reform, lobbying and ethics reform, and education with the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.

If that works, Congress and the administration can move on to negotiate tougher issues like establishing long-term budget discipline, expanding energy alternatives, fixing the prescription drug benefit and increasing the minimum wage.

And, finally, on the war in Iraq, despite the bitter differences, both the Democrats and the president face the same brutal reality. We need a new strategy to stabilize Iraq so that our troops can begin to come home without leaving a disaster behind. The president took an important step by replacing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates. The Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, of which I am a member, will soon make its recommendations, which we hope will provide the beginning of a unified strategy.

Panetta makes an important argument: that the Baker Report will be a starting point, not an ending point. And it remains to be seen whether Bush can participate constructively in the winding down of his Iraq adventure, and whether Democrats can rein in their more leftist members to arrive at a resolution that addresses U.S. national interests. That means getting out of Iraq sooner rather than later so we can refocus attention on actual terrorists -- but not so fast that we jeopardize our interests, or fail to fulfill our ethical obligation to the Iraqi people.

The fate of both parties in 2008 rest on how they rise to this challenge.

politics, midtopia

Meanwhile, over at the RNC....

Republicans are asking defeated Maryland senatorial candidate Michael Steele to replace outgoing RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman.

He'd be a good choice: a popular, smart moderate from a blue state who, by virtue of his skin color, would lend built-in credibility to Republican efforts to continue Mehlman's strategy of reaching out to blacks. And it would give him a high-profile role in the party, exactly what I said was needed a few days ago.

Apparently Karl Rove would prefer he accept an Cabinet post instead. So Steele lands on his feet no matter what. And good for him.

RNC, Mehlman, Steele, politics, midtopia

Howard Dean: Fool or genius?

It depends who you ask.

Some disgruntled Democrats want to replace him with Harold Ford, arguing that Dean did poorly at fundraising, and that his "50 state" strategy cost them several additional seats.

Elsewhere, though, he's being hailed as a genius. Not only did the Democrats not need his help to win, but his efforts to build a truly national grassroots operation paid dividends in several close races, as well as forcing Republicans to defend seats they might not have otherwise.

Me, I think the detractors need to get some perspective. The lackadaisical fundraising is a legitimate gripe. But Dean is right that the party needs to rebuild nationally, and not simply write off large swathes of the country as GOP strongholds. And in hindsight he was right to remain focused on that, instead of throwing all his resources into a mid-term election push that turned out not to need his help.

Dean now has a running start and two years to build a fully functional network for the 2008 presidential elections, with the fundraising and policy help of a Democratic Congress. That's a huge thing. Dean was right; now Democrats would be smart to leave the man alone to do his job.

DNC, Howard Dean, politics, midtopia