The problem with the Zero strategy

As John Kerry notes, now that the Republicans have shown that they have no intention of supporting the stimulus, there's really no need to cater to their wishes.

Reacting to Wednesday night’s vote in the House — where not a single GOP member supported the stimulus package — Kerry told Politico that “if Republicans aren’t prepared to vote for it, I don’t think we should be giving up things, where I think the money can be spent more effectively.”

“If they’re not going to vote for it, let’s go with a plan that we think is going to work.”

Yeah, there's still that little matter of getting 60 votes for cloture in the Senate, but there may be a solution in the works.

Zero

As has been widely reported, Obama's economic stimulus plan passed the House yesterday with zero Republicans voting aye, despite his frequent diplomatic and substantive overtures to them. One way of interpreting this is that Republicans are mean people who just want Obama to fail. Whether that's true or not is besides the point. As Nate Silver wrote, it is in Republicans' own career interests to oppose this plan.

The logic is simple. Obama's plan will pass with or without Republican support. If, a year or so from now, the plan is widely considered a success, Obama and the Democrats will get the credit for it. Having backed it won't do any given Republican much good. On the other hand, if it's widely considered a failure, a Republican who opposed it will at least get some bragging rights, and can say, "If the president had listened to me, we wouldn't be in this fix."

The question, of course, is why didn't Obama see this coming? Why did he and congressional Democratic leaders take some preferred Democratic programs (including family planning funding) out of the bill and add in some tax cuts to appeal to Republicans who weren't going to vote for it anyway? Maybe he was näive in his assumptions about the power of bipartisan pleas. Or maybe he was shooting for coverage like this:

The vote was 244-188, with Republicans unanimous in opposition despite Obama's frequent pleas for bipartisan support.

Rejecting bipartisanship plays pretty poorly among the Beltway media folks. Regardless, Obama might consider Matt Yglesias' advice:

He needs to spend less time seeking political cover to mitigate the downside to possible policy failure, and more time trying to implement the best policies he can.

Humor and the presidency

True story: In 1993, I got my job as a White House correspondence writer largely based on my successful drafting of a message from Bill Clinton roasting his new White House Counsel, Bernie Nussbaum. I don't know if Clinton ever actually saw what I wrote, but it played well around the office and was apparently well received by Nussbaum. The leaders of the correspondence office liked what they saw and offered me a staff position.

That successful moment aside, I really hadn't captured Clinton's sense of humor. I wrote what I thought would be funny, informed by my own white urban Jewish upbringing; I really hadn't seen enough of Clinton's jokes to have a sense of what he would have said. His sense of humor, as I would later learn, was similar to that of many of the other Arkansans I was working with. It was a bit more insult-based. (The Arkansas I've known really like insulting people's mothers. This put me off at first, but I've grown to love it.) Comedy writer Mark Katz, who got hired to write a speech for Clinton, wrote a lengthy article in the Washingtonian about the different joke styles, and how hard it was to get Clinton to try self-deprecation.

George W. Bush definitely has a sense of humor, but it has a more physical side to it. He likes to mug for the camera or make silly faces when he messes up. It's not really my style, but I get the appeal. Al Franken once referred to Bush as the "third funniest guy in a frat." That sounds about right.

I was never sure that Bush Sr. or Carter were particularly funny people, although their speeches at the dedication of Clinton's presidential library were hilarious. Reagan had a sense of humor that was based on telling jokes that he'd learned years earlier. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't.

I'm intrigued by Obama's sense of humor. His is the first in a while that actually appeals to me. If you caught his roast of Rahm Emanuel or his comments about DC weather yesterday or when he referred to himself as a "mutt," he's got this nice, dry, self-effacing wit, occassionally peppered with movie references. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I feel like I can relate to this guy. He's the first president we've had in a long time who's an educated northern urban liberal. The last one was JFK.

Who's the party? GOP edition

I'm never sure whether or where to place media figures in the party network, but here's a nice little story about a GOP officeholder who resisted some key conservative media figures, calling them brick-throwers, and then was forced to apologize.

Here's Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) yesterday:

I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party.You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.

And here he is today, after being flooded with constituent phone calls and e-mails:

I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives — that was not my intent … Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and other conservative giants are the voices of the conservative movement’s conscience.

Ritter and terror

Obama's decision to close the Guantánamo detention center and farm the prisoners out to places in the U.S. has led to a predictable free rider problem where no one actually wants nasty terrorists in their states. This makes perfect sense politically, the same way that it makes sense that Sen. Harry Reid won't support expanding nuclear power because it means more nuclear waste in Nevada. The Obama administration will send the prisoners where it needs to send them, maybe cutting deals with state politicians as necessary, even while those politicians rail against the move.

I was therefore surprised to see that Bill Ritter has invited Obama to send the terror suspects to the Supermax prison in Florence, CO:

I don't think it's appropriate for somebody like me . . . who has supported the president's decision to close Guantanamo Bay to say: "Not in my backyard."

This is the principled stance -- one might even call it a profile in courage, especially since Ritter may be facing a tough re-election fight next year and a state legislator has publicly predicted a "pipeline of terror from Kabul to Colorado" if Ritter gets his way.

Why would Ritter do this? Surely he must be aware of the big historical analogy, Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr's (at left) willingness to accept Japanese-Americans internees during WWII while other western governors resisted, a stance that likely cost Carr his job. (See Adam Schrager's wonderful biography of Carr for more details.) I certainly appreciate his principled position, but it seems like a situation where one could easily take a public position against the terror suspects coming to Colorado while ultimately relenting to it.

Robert Kennedamus

A student pointed this clip out to me. It's Robert Kennedy in 1968, predicting that we could have a black president in 40 years. Creepy.

The logic of strong parties

Atrios plays the tune quite nicely:

I actually hope every Republican votes against the stimulus package, and I hope that instead of trying to please them the Obama team comes up with what they think the right package will be. The Republicans should lay out a competing vision, which won't pass because they aren't in charge. Then, 2 and 4 years from now voters can judge the results and if they aren't pretty they'll know who to blame and decide that the competing vision would have been a better one.

With bipartisanship you'll not only get a compromise that sucks, when it's time to throw the bums out no one will be quite sure which party should be blamed. Then what new candidates do is just run against some generic "Washington."