Peace Is At Hand?

Barack Obama is trying to act as peace maker–with the Clinton campaign. He made this statement yesterday:

You have seen a tone on the Democratic side of the campaign that has been unfortunate. I want to stipulate a couple of things. I may disagree with Senator Clinton and Senator Edwards on how to get there, but we share the same goals. We all believe in civil rights. We all believe in equal rights. They are good people. They are patriots….

I don’t want the campaign at this stage to degenerate to so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, that we lose sight of why we are doing this.

Obama said he wants to send “a strong signal to my own supporters that let’s try to focus on the work that needs to get done. If I hear my own supporters engaging in talk that I think is ungenerous or misleading or unfair, I will speak out forcefully against it….

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically been on the right side of civil rights issues. They care about the African American community.… That is something I am convinced of. I want Americans to know that is my assessment.

Clinton responded:

“Over this past week, there has been a lot of discussion and back and forth – much of which I know does not reflect what is in our hearts.

“And at this moment, I believe we must seek common ground.

“Our party and our nation is bigger than this. Our party has been on the front line of every civil rights movement, women’s rights movement, workers’ rights movement, and other movements for justice in America.

“We differ on a lot of things. And it is critical to have the right kind of discussion on where we stand. But when it comes to civil rights and our commitment to diversity, when it comes to our heroes – President John F. Kennedy and Dr. King – Senator Obama and I are on the same side.

“And in that spirit, let’s come together, because I want more than anything else to ensure that our family stays together on the front lines of the struggle to expand rights for all Americans.”

Maybe this will be the last we will hear about the Martin Luther King, Jr. controversy, but I doubt this will be the end of the attacks. In any campaign we expect to see attacks from each campaign. The battle between Clinton and Obama has the danger of being worse. Hillary Clinton has based her campaign on being the inevitable winner, trying to almost play the role of the incumbent. In doing so she never gave a good reason to support her candidacy as Obama has.

Once Obama turned into a serious challenger, the Clinton campaign has responded with a series of nonsense attacks. Besides the subtle attempts to bring race into the campaign, Clinton has used a variety of weak arguments ranging from claims about their health care policies which even old Clintonite Robert Reich has debunked to attacks on a paper Obama wrote in kindergarten. Clinton has even attempted to use the Rove strategy of attacking the opposition on their strong point as she has tried to distort their differences on Iraq, where Obama was right and Clinton was wrong from the start.

I doubt this will be the end of these attacks, but hopefully this will end Clinton’s attempts to inject race into the campaign. My suspicion is that Clinton’s goal was to use a series subtle racial attacks, often from surrogates, in the hopes that Obama’s response would be seen as an over reaction. Clinton could then deny any intentions to use race, blaming the attacks on surrogates if necessary, and portray Obama as an angry black man to scare people into voting for her. Regardless of whether this theory is correct, Obama responded perfectly, both taking the high road and giving Clinton no choice but to back down.

Paul Krugman’s False Analogy to Medicare In Support of Mandates

Paul Krugman makes some serious errors as he continues his attacks on Barack Obama for proposing a health care reform plan without a mandate for all individuals to purchase insurance. There are pros and cons to both positions but Krugman writes as if only plans with mandates are possible. This ignores the fact that most of the Democratic candidates for the 2008 nomination, including John Edwards, proposed plans which lacked mandates but most Democrats considered them worthwhile. The ultimate goal was to help those who desire to obtain health care coverage but are not able to do so, not necessarily to achieve universal coverage. As Obama’s Fact Check web site points out, even Paul Krugman had a favorable review of Obama’s plan until this turned into a political battle with Obama on one side and Edwards and Clinton on the other.

One objection is that a plan without a mandate is not universal, although many concede that even plans with a mandate will also not be universal. While some such as Robert Reich argue that Obama’s plan will lead to more people being covered than Clinton’s plan. Krugman might be right in disputing such arguments. It is quite plausible that any plan which makes something required will be more universal than a voluntary plan, but that is hardly the only criteria by which to judge plans. How about a plan in which everyone who fails to purchase to buy insurance is shot on the spot? One way or another that will guarantee universal coverage, but few would find this desirable. (Some might argue it is preferable to John Edwards’ plan to sick the IRS on those who do not comply.)

Krugman raises additional objections, including a fallacious analogy to Medicare:

Look, the point of a mandate isn’t to dictate how people should live their lives — it’s to prevent some people from gaming the system. Under the Obama plan, healthy people could choose not to buy insurance, then sign up for it if they developed health problems later. This would lead to higher premiums for everyone else. It would reward the irresponsible, while punishing those who did the right thing and bought insurance while they were healthy.

Here’s an analogy. Suppose someone proposed making the Medicare payroll tax optional: you could choose not to pay the tax during your working years if you didn’t think you’d actually need Medicare when you got older — except that you could change your mind and opt back in if you started to develop health problems.

Can we all agree that this would fatally undermine Medicare’s finances? Yet Mr. Obama is proposing basically the same rules for his allegedly universal health care plan.

There is a major problem with this analogy to Medicare. Medicare is primarily paid from payroll taxes collected throughout a person’s working life as opposed to premiums paid for the year the insurance is actually in effect. Someone who skipped paying their payroll taxes their entire life and then joined Medicare would certainly have a fantastic deal, but Obama is not advocating anything similar to this. Those who opt in later would have avoided paying premiums for periods in which they didn’t have coverage, which hardly sounds unreasonable, but would still have to pay premiums once they decide to opt into the system.

It wouldn’t be difficult to structure the system to prevent people from getting a free ride by waiting until they have medical problems. This might be one situation in which preexisting condition clauses could be maintained. There is also a far better analogy from Medicare than the one Krugman provides in the Medicare Part D Program. The new program which covers pharmaceuticals, despite having many other flaws, has found a way around this type of problem. The plan is voluntary to join the plan but there are two forms of restrictions on those who haven’t joined but decide to join in the future. There is open enrollment for only part of the year, making it a gamble for people who might develop an expensive medical condition in March and have to pay for their prescriptions out of pocket until the following January. There is also a penalty as those who join later must pay higher premiums once they opt in to offset the fact that they didn’t pay into the system when they were younger and presumably less expensive to cover.

Besides his erroneous analogy to Medicare, Krugman fails to realize that, regardless of his arguments for it, a mandate is a case of government telling people how to run their lives. While a health plan with a mandate might be easier to set up, and perhaps even be less expensive, this does not change the fact that it is an unnecessary case of government telling people what to do. Krugman is concerned about the political liabilities Obama might face by repeating what Krugman considers to be right wing talking points. If Krugman as well as Democrats want to argue that free choice is a right wing talking point, and not a principle they support, they face far greater political problems than those Krugman warns Obama about.

Hillary Clinton Jumps the Shark

The Clinton campaign has placed far too much importance on recent polls out of Iowa showing Barack Obama with a lead and might turn these polls into reality by their desperate appearing actions. Clinton has now attempted two attacks on Obama with each backfiring against her.

The first mistake was over claiming that a mandate to require everyone participate in her health care plan made it a more universal plan than Obama’s. Showing that she has learned absolutely nothing since HillaryCare I, HillaryCare II assumes that simply making her plan mandatory would be seen as a virtue. Clinton, as well as Edwards, fail to comprehend that Americans want a health care plan which will allow them the opportunity to obtain more affordable health care, not a new set of orders from Washington to rule their lives. The logic that a mandatory plan is more likely to be universal is both repulsive to the pro-freedom sensibilities of many Americans, and isn’t even true considering the likelihood of less than universal compliance. Even Robert Reich has debunked Clinton’s charges against Obama on both Social Security and health care:

She says his would insure fewer people than hers. I’ve compared the two plans in detail. Both of them are big advances over what we have now. But in my view Obama’s would insure more people, not fewer, than HRC’s. That’s because Obama’s puts more money up front and contains sufficient subsidies to insure everyone who’s likely to need help – including all children and young adults up to 25 years old. Hers requires that everyone insure themselves. Yet we know from experience with mandated auto insurance – and we’re learning from what’s happening in Massachusetts where health insurance is now being mandated – that mandates still leave out a lot of people at the lower end who can’t afford to insure themselves even when they’re required to do so. HRC doesn’t indicate how she’d enforce her mandate, and I can’t find enough money in HRC’s plan to help all those who won’t be able to afford to buy it. I’m also impressed by the up-front investments in information technology in O’s plan, and the reinsurance mechanism for coping with the costs of catastrophic illness. HRC is far less specific on both counts. In short: They’re both advances, but O’s is the better of the two. HRC has no grounds for alleging that O’s would leave out 15 million people.

Clinton’s other attack on Obama is even more absurd. A few weeks ago I noted a report that Obama had written a paper while in kindergarten saying he wanted to be president when he grew up. I never would have guessed that this, along with a similar paper in third grade, would be considered meaningful by the Clinton campaign’s opposition research. Nobody is surprised that presidential candidates have had such ambitions for years and that they sometimes try to play down their ambition.

Obama responded by comparing himself to an internet startup and Clinton to Microsoft which captures the feel of the campaigns to date. If he really wanted to go for the jugular he might have suggested that if his kindergarten and third grade papers are being reviewed then Hillary Clinton’s papers as First Lady should also be made available for similar consideration. If not for the strike, we could also imagine the late night comedians having a field day speculating as to the content of Bill Clinton’s elementary school papers. John Edwards admits that when he was in third grade he wanted to either be a cowboy or Superman. It seems nobody ever grows up dreaming to be an ambulance chaser.

The real question is why Clinton is acting out of such desperation when she still has many of the advantages of front runner and remains within the margin of error of Obama. Clinton is ignoring two historical facts about the Iowa caucus. Voters don’t make up their minds until the last minute and they don’t react well to negative campaigning. While perhaps an effective negative ad might have a chance of working, weak attacks such as these will only backfire against her.

Clinton does have two problems in Iowa besides falling in the latest poll. As Clinton is the second place choice of far fewer voters than Obama and Edwards, the fifteen percent threshold rule in Iowa could deliver many more votes to her opponents as supporters of weaker opponents are forced to go to their second choice. An even more serious problem for Clinton is that her strong points have been the illusion that victory for her was inevitable and that she best knew how to run the perfect campaign. The first illusion is destroyed when she falls behind in the polls, and the second becomes questionable when she responds this poorly to adversity. Voters who supported her because of either of these two reasons are left without a good reason to vote for her. Having lost those illusions, Clinton must actually fight for votes, and Obama just might have the edge in such a battle.

Robert Reich Contradicts Bill Clinton on Experience and Running for President

Robert Reich sets the record straight on Bill Clinton’s recent claims that Barack Obama isn’t qualified to run against his wife. Reich discusses Obama’s experience as compared to Hillary Clinton’s experience. He also contradicts Bill Clinton’s claim that he didn’t run in 1988 because he didn’t feel he was qualified enough.

Bill Clinton was 46 when he was elected president in 1992 – the same age as Barack Obama is now. But Clinton has questioned Barack Obama’s readiness to become president – arguing that by the time he himself ran in 1992 he had far more experience than Obama. He also states that when he decided not to run in 1988 (when he was “closer to Senator Obama” in experience) he didn’t think he “knew enough and had served enough and done enough to run” at that point in his own career. While I can understand Bill Clinton’s eagerness to undermine his wife’s most significant primary opponent, he is not, I believe, completely ingenuous. I happened to talk with him in 1988 before he decided not to run, and also in 1991 before he decided to run the following year. His calculation at both times was decidedly rational and entirely political, based on whether he could win.

But more to the point, it strikes me as unfair to claim that Obama lacks relevant experience for the presidency. When he ran in 1992, Bill Clinton had been the governor of a small, rural southern state; as such, he had only limited experience with national issues and no foreign policy experience to speak of. Incidentally, at this point in the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton has served as an elected official in the U.S. Senate for not quite eight years, and before that a First Lady in the White House. Obama has so far held elective office for almost twelve years, at both levels of government – first as an Illinois state senator and then as a U.S. Senator. Before that he was a community organizer among Chicago’s poor, and then a civil rights lawyer – two experiences that in my view are critically relevant to anyone seeking to become president of all Americans.

Robert Reich: Gore May Enter Race At Oscars

It would certainly be exciting for Al Gore to go up on stage to win the Oscar and announce he is running for President. Robert Reich writes that this is a possibility on his blog:

The odds are better than 50-50 that Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” will win an Oscar for best documentary at next Sunday’s Academy Awards. The odds are better than one in three that, when accepting the Oscar, and while being watched by 29 million people, Gore will announce he is running for president in 2008.

I agree with his odds regarding the Oscar, but I’m betting that if Gore decides to enter the race he will wait longer. The speculation about him possibly running keeps him in the headlines, bringing attention to his planned concerts to promote climate change research. It will also help increase sales of his upcoming book, The Assault on Reason, which in tern might increase interest in him as a candidate even further.
Gore has enough name recognition and support that there is no need to set himself up as a target this early. Let Clinton, Obama, and Edwards establish a circular firing squad to knock each down a bit, while suffering additional pot shots from the second tier candidates. Let the others suffer the type of media scrutiny received by candidates. Gore has plenty of time to watch how the race develops and see what his chances are before deciding to enter. Why enter the race if it doesn’t look like he can win risk being seen as a loser, in contrast to his current reputation as the man who actually won in 2000 but was denied the Presidency? Besides, on top of the Oscar he just might have a Nobel Peace Prize this fall, although he might not be able to wait that long to decide upon running.

Gore has plenty of time to decide upon running. While an announcement at the Oscars would make a tremendous impact, a Gore announcement at any point would also be big news.