Monday NYT Mashup (2/1/10)

(And I also posted here.)

There was so much dookey in Matt Bai’s Sunday Times Magazine article yesterday (more political punditry) that I don’t think I could address all of it if I tried, though I wanted to highlight one item in particular…

Sure, all things being equal, a president would rather have his allies firmly in control than not. But recent presidents have had more success when forced to work with slim majorities in Congress, or even none at all. Ronald Reagan teamed with influential Democratic senators and a Democrat-controlled House to overhaul the tax code. Richard Nixon and a Democratic Congress enacted historic protections for the environment. Lyndon Johnson may have enjoyed sizable majorities in the sense of party affiliation but not in terms of ideology: a large contingent in his own party opposed civil rights and new social programs. He succeeded only by building a coalition that enlisted a lot of Northern moderate Republicans.

As noted here…

By the end of 1966 Johnson was forced to announce budget cutbacks in his War on Poverty and Great Society programs because of the competing need for funds to prosecute the Vietnam War, which had rapidly escalated in the last half of 1965 and through 1966. Funds for the OEO went from $4 billion in 1966 to $1.75 billion in 1967. From 1966 on, the Johnson administration became increasingly focused on the war effort. Moreover, the voter backlash resulting from the urban riots of 1964, 1965, and 1966 manifested itself in the 1966 House and Senate elections, which brought the conservative coalition back to a position of power. After 1966 Johnson introduced no major new social programs, and in 1969 his successor, Richard M. Nixon, was more interested in measures to fight crime than in finding ways to meet the demands of the poor.

And as noted here, in the 1966 Congressional midterm elections, the Democrats, because of the voter backlash noted above, lost 47 seats.

So the answer to the question is no, I confess that I don’t know exactly what the hell Bai is talking about above. I will grant Bai’s point that Republicans aided the social legislation of the Great Society. But that happened before the voters sent the message that they rejected that agenda.

To argue that a more divided government produced the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act than a more united one, with bigger Democratic majorities, is nonsense.

The Times also included some essays from individuals who served in prior presidential administrations, all of whom described what they believed their bosses managed to accomplish after their first year in office (with Obama having passed that milestone a week or so ago).

This was written by Richard Allen, national security adviser for Ronald Reagan, including the following…

Tax cuts were high on the president’s agenda, and work began, quietly and in the background for the most part, on a huge “get well” program for the nation’s defenses.

As Walter Rodgers noted in his fine essay from about a year ago (here)…

Reagan Republicans disingenuously claimed credit for much of America's long-range military buildup that helped win the cold war. But it was Carter who proposed deployment of 200 MIRVed MX missiles in hardened silos to counter an unbridled Soviet buildup. (Under Reagan, only 50 were actually deployed.) Cruise missiles and the B-2 Stealth bomber technology were also born under Carter.

To the Russians, the most terrifying weapon the Americans ever deployed was the intermediate-range Pershing missile, which had a flight time of 10 minutes to Moscow from NATO bases in Germany. Carter agreed to deploy that weapons system. The irony is that Carter's hawkish leanings later in his administration alienated many in the party of George McGovern and, ultimately, Carter was crippled at least as much by Democratic liberals as by Republicans.

And as Will Bunch noted in his fine book “Tear Down This Myth” (pg. 51)…

As for the tax cuts, it was clear in a matter of months that the initial Reagan plan (in 1981) went too far. How far? Less than one year later, Congress passed – and Reagan signed – what at the time was the largest peacetime tax increase in American history, a revenue booster with the Orwellian name of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. That wasn’t all: Reagan signed further tax increases in 1983 and 1984, and in 1986, enacting a broad tax reform plan that is also a major part of his legacy, he ceded a leading role to the Democrats who were reasserting their authority on Capitol Hill. Given the nation’s skyrocketing debt, it’s easy to understand why Reagan lost much of his influence in this area.

And Allen also tells us of “David Stockman’s effort, as budget director, to undercut the president’s budget.” This Wikipedia article tells us that Stockman gave a 1981 interview for the Atlantic Monthly in which he was more candid than he should have been as far as the Reaganites were concerned (and for which he was chastised by The Gipper), though in 1985, he wrote a book blaming congressional Republicans for not reducing the spending that should have followed after the lost revenue from the tax cuts.

Sounds to me like Stockman “got religion” a little late in the game (also, charges of securities fraud against Stockman were recently dropped, as Wikipedia also tells us). And that to me was the difference between Bushco and the Reagan people; a few of the latter actually had some understanding of what they were doing wrong, whereas that was nowhere to be found in Dubya’s administration.

And speaking of Number 43, loyalist Karen Hughes also chimed in yesterday (here)…

We had watched Mr. Bush make the most profound decision a commander in chief can make, committing American lives to battle in Afghanistan. We had witnessed the fall of the Taliban and worked to calm the panic of anthrax attacks.

Oh yes, Hughes, the Taliban sure “fell,” didn’t they (as noted here, Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai is reportedly trying to reconcile with this “fallen” regime). And as noted here, Dem U.S. House Rep Rush Holt has proposed a commission to examine the Anthrax attacks; how the “panic” was “calmed” by Bushco is highly debatable, but it was yet another mess left for Obama by his predecessor.

Hughes continues…

As President Bush took office, the economy was falling into recession; we passed tax cuts to try to stimulate jobs.

I swear, Dubya’s people are utterly shameless; this tells us that the National Bureau of Economic Research tells us that the U.S. economy went into recession in March 2001, and no earlier. I don’t know when the recession that began Dubya’s awful presidency officially ended, because it didn’t as far as we were concerned. And as far as the recession that concluded Dubya’s term, of course, no end is in sight (and it erased the pittance of job growth from 2001 to 2009).

Finally, New York Times book critic Devin Leonard, reviewing “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy” by Joseph Stiglitz, tells us the following here…

What’s more, (Stiglitz) says, Americans need to get over the idea that higher taxes and more government involvement in the economy are a recipe for disaster. He points to Sweden as an example of a country that has a thriving economy but still provides its citizens with extensive social services.

These may all be worthy ideas. But at times, Mr. Stiglitz’s call for a new economic order seems a bit fanciful. Can you imagine President Obama going before the American people and telling them they need to emulate Sweden? Imagine the fun Glenn Beck would have with that.

As noted here (a lesson for the supposed financial geniuses of this country)…

Just as Japan was heading toward a financial meltdown in the early 1990s, Sweden was about to confront its own crisis.

Banks lent freely during a 1980s boom, which caused real estate prices to rise, said Giovanni Zanalda, a Duke University professor currently teaching a course on financial crises through history.

Many Swedish banks, as a result of deregulation of the financial sector, engaged in heavy lending during the boom. When the bubble burst in 1991 they were saddled with vast amounts of bad debt. Three major banks eventually collapsed, Zanalda said.

However, the Swedish response was quick and aggressive.

"They just grabbed the whole thing immediately and began to work through the issues purposefully through the government," said Peter Rodriguez, an economist at the University of Virginia. "They did not even really presume to try free-market solutions."

In late 1992, the government guaranteed the debts and deposits of all Swedish banks, forced them to write off their losses and bailed them out when needed.

The government also nationalized the banks to relieve them of their bad debts. Effectively, Swedish banks were forced to separate their healthy assets from their bad ones, Zanalda said.

These bad debts were then placed in an entity -- what is typically called a "bad bank." Since these bad loans were no longer on the banks' asset sheets, they were free to resume lending. Once they were healthy again, banks were returned to the private sector.

Meanwhile, by 1997, as the economy recovered, all the assets that were in the "bad bank" were sold off.

Now it’s true that Sweden’s economy has suffered a recent downturn similar to ours due to problems in the financial sector. However, my guess is that they’ll emerge from them sooner than we will.

And by the way, Mr. (Ms.?) Leonard, I could care less about what Glenn Beck thinks (to the extent that he thinks at all). And you should feel the same way.