Government Executive - Authors - Matthew Cooper

Shutdown Pain is Isolated, But Not For Long

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 13:06:12 -0400

Barry Anderson remembers. He was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1995 and 1996, the last time the U.S. government closed its doors. He worked closely with a small cadre of OMB leaders, digging through little-known statutes and Justice Department interpretations to determine who is an essential employee and who should be furloughed.

"I'm not sure if it's apocryphal or not but there were questions about the National Zoo," he remembered. "The guards were essential. The people feeding the animals were essential. But what about the people who delivered the food and prepared it? If you run out of meat you don't want them lions getting hungry."

The bizarro world of the shutdown has left green-eyeshade guys with Solomonic decisions about feeding Simba. It has also riven the American people. Some are acutely feeling the shutdown pain—the furloughed workers themselves and any businesses that are immediately affected, say the oft-cited concessionaires near National Parks. Sen. Angus King, the Maine independent, notes the collapse of cruise ship tourism in Bar Harbor with the closing of Acadia National park. "If you own a motel and don't fill the bed that night you can't get that night back," King says. He says the pain is isolated but spreading.

That's partly because of the size of the affected workforce: About 450,000 federal employees have been furloughed out of a federal workforce of 2.7 million.(Almost all of the 350,000 Pentagon employees who had been furloughed were called back to service by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.) The American workforce is about 155 million, meaning this furlough affects less than one-third of 1 percent of U.S. workers.

And of course decisions that deem many "essential" allow Americans to can go about life without being hit by airplanes falling from the sky (because air traffic controllers are on the job), or fretting about al-Qaida surging (because the military is still shooting ), or hiding from Hannibal Lecters (because the federal Bureau of Prisons hasn't unlocked the cells). The Postal Service is the federal entity that Americans deal with the most and it has not seen furloughs. The biggest entitlement checks, Social Security and Medicare, will keep rolling.

But while the pain is clearly tolerable now, it will begin to feel unacceptably acute soon, should the shutdown continue.

Consider transportation. Roads and bridges are paid for by a highway trust fund that shouldn't be much affected by the pathological stalemate over a continuing resolution. But, one transportation industry representative says, there's a huge regulatory dimension to roads—permits needed from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and others. Those agencies are barely functioning, let alone processing permits. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration? Some of its funding comes from that trust fund and is secure—for things like crash test safety, for example. But any of the safety studies or promotions to get people to use their baby car seats properly or have recalls? Not happening. Government reports on oil that are followed closely in the transportation world might stop next week. What's tolerable now won't be in a month if roads can't get built.

It's been less than two weeks since the government was partially shuttered. Another week or so of the government not putting out economic statistics, leaving the financial-services industry flying blind, and Americans may feel it. When applications for veterans' benefits or Federal Housing Administration loans start to stall, things may not look peachy. Not surprisingly the poor take it the hardest. Social Security for grandma in Boca seems safe, but all the administrative money for running the SNAP program, formerly known as food stamps? That's gone even if the money for beneficiaries can last longer. School lunch programs may have another month left before states have to kick in. It's not impossible that federal courts may start to slow down, with some trials going into cryogenic recess. That's why economists overwhelmingly believe a shutdown of a few weeks will cause real problems.

And that's just this round. Can you build a government workforce of any talent if you keep doing this? Sen. King, who was a congressional staffer 40 years ago, is visibly angry about "the way we're treating federal employees."

"We're jerking them around," he says. "It just frosts me and it's wrong."

In a few weeks, a lot more people may be echoing the sentiment.

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Analysis: Why Obama's March on Washington Failed

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 12:15:33 -0400

Martin Luther King Jr. never had any corporate sponsors. But the program for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington was replete with "appreciation" for AT&T, Exxon Mobil, and Target. The half-century old march was a demand for government action, so politicians were missing from the podium. This time, three presidents bestrode the dais. And while 1963 had the music of resistance—courtesy of Bob Dylan and Mahalia Jackson—the reunion tour featured LeAnn Rimes, glorious gospel, and even a performance by Maori tribesmen whose Haka, or war dance, seemed anything but nonviolent.

Despite the odd staging, it's hard not to be touched by Wednesday's gathering on the National Mall—not only because of the divine moment it commemorates but also because it is solemn and stirring when tens of thousands of Americans abandon their malls and office parks to ask for an extension of political rights. (In that way, at least, the March for Life is just as poignant.) So, celebrate the celebration.

Still, the day also seemed marked by lost opportunities. It was never going to live up to the 1963 march; even President Obama acknowledged that, saying "we may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling processions of that day so long ago." But the grievances this time were ill defined and most speeches were a procession of predictable we've-come-so-far-but-have-so-far-to-go remarks that could have been said in 1973 (and, alas, will probably be repeated in 2053). As admirable and inspiring as it was at times, the day's shortcomings show what challenges modern protest movements face—and the opportunities they can still seize.

First, this week's event fell into the rare unenviable niche of speeches commemorating speeches. It's little remembered now but there was also a 20th Anniversary March on Washington that aimed to crush Reaganism. (It didn't work out so well.) Lincoln's Gettysburg address begat woefully inadequate anniversary speeches. The one Woodrow Wilson gave for the 50th anniversary, for instance, was a rhetorical dud and a fantastically obtuse celebration of post-Civil-War progress. He was only applauded twice. The New York Times called it "a trifle academic." Even FDR, who gave two big speeches at Gettysburg, didn't deliver anything very memorable. Who could?

This week's march had the potential to improve on those middling remembrances. Forest Whitaker's touching talk about love and John Lewis' Biblical retelling of life under Jim Crow were high points. But for the most part, the convoy of short speeches had a certain rote quality. Many took obligatory shots at stop and frisk—an anti-crime tactic that's odious but not Jim Crow—but police, backed by courts, are not about abandon a liberal interpretation of probable cause. There were lots of justifiable complaints about the proliferation of voter ID laws and the Supreme Court decision curtailing a key section of the Voting Rights Act—but no talk of how to pressure Congress to respond. Bill Clinton took a well-aimed swipe at congressional gridlock, but he oddly ignored filibuster abuse, a phenomenon that links King's time and ours. Once deployed (unsuccessfully) against the great civil rights legislation, it is now used for just about everything but a foot powder. And one of the fastest waterslides to poverty, teenage pregnancy for Americans of all races, didn't merit attention.

Maybe the biggest lesson of the day is that some of the greatest social transformations of recent times haven't been fueled by marches. In some ways, the same-sex marriage movement echoed the civil rights movement in the 40s and 50s (legal challenges and political action were twin tools) but deployed digital-era speed. But the same-sex cause has had less to do with mass marches—though rainbow rallies are familiar enough—and more with unflinching persuasion with which gays argued, like King, that all they wanted was to be part of the American family. Just as King brushed back calls from white moderates who asked "when will you be satisfied," gays declined to accept the half-measures, like civil unions, offered by their ostensible allies.

Another social overhaul owes nothing at all to protesters. The Surgeon General's famed anti-smoking report came a year after the March on Washington. Within a generation, smoking among adults had fallen by half, from over 40 percent of adults to under 20 percent of adults. Winning hearts and minds came from a combination of policies, litigation, and the exercise of the rights of nonsmokers against entrenched power.

Obama seems to be at a crossroads. He set out to change Washington and, famously, ran into a phalanx of obstructionism and his own mistakes. He used his speech essentially to call for reinforcements, noting that the march wasn't just about King and the leaders but about the everyday Americans—"seamstresses and steelworks," he said—who set out toward Washington that day. Time's running out for him to harness today's crowd, a throng with fewer suits and ties than 50 years ago, with more turbans and hijabs. He needs them even if the marching orders are less clear.

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What Happened to Eric Holder?

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:35:37 -0400

Nineteen years ago this month, Eric Holder was having a very different spring in Washington. It wasn't cruel or grueling. Conservatives didn't want his scalp and liberals didn't think he was trampling on civil liberties. In 1994, Holder was just into his tenure as the federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C. The 43-year-old had come to the U.S. Attorney's job with the credentials of a quiet careerist, joining the Department of Justice in 1976 and serving 12 years as a prosecutor before Ronald Reagan appointed Holder to be an associate judge in D.C. Superior Court in 1988.

As U.S. Attorney, Holder took over the prosecution of Dan Rostenkowski--"Rosty," the Boss, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. And Washington asked: Would this tall, thin, mild-mannered guy who everyone knew at the courthouse be able to put Rosty away--especially now that Holder had been appointed by a Democratic president who needed the lawmaker behind the passage of so many bills? Rosty's lawyer, the famed Bob Bennett, knew Holder, understood how tough he was and begged his client, the Chicago pol, to take a deal. Rosty refused and fired Bennett. That was a bad idea. Holder issued a searing 17-count indictment for everything from putting ghost jobs on his payroll to embezzling from the House Post Office. "Today's indictment of Congressman Rostenkowski should stand as a firm and solemn reminder that the Department of Justice has an unwavering commitment to hold accountable all those who engage in corruption," a much less gray Holder said in front of the microphones. Rosty eventually pled out and went to jail. Holder had distinguished himself that day as the Democratic prosecutor who took out a leading Democrat.

Of course, Holder now seems distinguished primarily by the mob out to get him. Arianna Huffington wants his head. So does Rep. Pete King, the New York Republican. And plenty of Democrats wouldn't mind seeing him go. He's been slammed for everything from the botched "Fast & Furious" case that left a Border Patrol agent dead to a warrant that named a Fox News reporter as a potential co-conspirator in a leak case. Thursday was a typical day for Holder. Holder's testimony before a routine Senate Appropriations Committee hearing for the Justice Department's budget was overshadowed by his announcement he would not seek Rosen's prosecution and defending but not explaining the revelation of a massive subpoena of phone records from Verizon.

The celebrated young man has become a bruised 62-year-old. Yes, his stewardship of the department includes many accomplishments from defending the health care law to putting terrorists behind bars. Yes, he still has the lean looks of the Columbia University basketball player he was. But now Holder's got that Washington-is-slowly-killing-me look, too. Still, the president still stands behind his close friend so no one close to Holder expects him to leave anytime soon--maybe the end of this year or the beginning of 2014 and only after the national security team is settled in and there's a new FBI director. But whenever he goes, Holder will leave with many friends scratching their heads over how a talent who came of age at the Justice Department and spent more time working in its halls than any attorney general in modern memory could have had such a rocky tenure.

The answer is that no one thing led to this moment. It's a combination of many factors including the impossible life of an Attorney General. Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales--all had targets on their back and only Michael Mukasey, who came in at the end of the Bush years to clean up, was exempt and that's because he was there so briefly. The bigger problem, though, may not be the job but Holder's own inability to navigate the political shoals within his building as well as the world outside--Congress, the media and, ironically with a White House where he enjoys the closest personal relationship with the president of any Cabinet member.

"He's not very political, contrary to popular belief," observes Joseph DiGenova who was also the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. A prominent Republican, a Washington fixture, and a fellow Reagan appointee, DiGenova has known and liked Holder for decades. He endorsed Holder for A.G. and said he'd do it again. But DiGenova also sees a number of missteps -- most notably Holder's failure to navigate the politics within "Main Justice," the term of art for the department's headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue where zealous careerists can put an attorney general in jeopardy. DiGenova believes Holder should have stood up to the department's Criminal Division's unprecedented naming of Fox News's James Rosen as a co-conspirator instead of signing off on it. DiGenova chides Holder for refusing to turn over more documents to House investigators in the Fast & Furious case, which led to a contempt citation against Holder. He notes that department lawyers always advocate turning over as little as possible but an attorney general needs to know better. By contrast, DiGenova hails Holder's dropping the federal corruption case against the late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska as the attorney general's "finest hour"--a time when the AG knew how to rebuff the overzealous careerists in the Public Integrity Section where Holder had begun his career.

Other friends and colleagues of Holder, most of whom declined to speak on the record for fear of angering Holder or hurting him, echo the notion of Holder as politically tone deaf and not having the right kinds of people around him to help deal with explosions that are inevitable. After all, the attorney general stands at the crossroads of terrorism, war, race, civil rights, banking, and any number of messes.

"There are two things that have undermined him: He doesn't have great political judgment and he manages those issues himself. He doesn't compliment his own skills with people who do [have them]," says one longtime Washington attorney who has worked with Holder.

Filling out an Attorney General's staff with political players is tricky since the Justice Department is supposed to be apolitical. Surrounding the Labor Secretary with political operatives wouldn't raise complaints. That's not true at DOJ. When the Attorney General is a political player (Bobby Kennedy, John Ashcroft), it's less necessary. Where they're not--as with Janet Reno--it helps to have senior staff who have the legal chops to reassure DOJ staff and the political sensibilities to deal with the outside world. (Ron Klain worked for Reno and went on to be chief of staff for both Al Gore and Joe Biden played this role.) Holder had few people like that around him in the first term although he's about to get an infusion when Brian Fallon, a veteran of Sen. Chuck Schumer's office, comes aboard in the next few weeks. But some friends worry that Holder's problem won't be alleviated by picking up staff from the New York Democrat. He isn't in need of a verbal martial arts master, they argue, but a more acute radar for sensing incoming crises and managing them the DOJ way. They note that Holder was caught off guard by the blow up over the Rosen subpoena and they think his handling of it since--defending it, saying he had regrets about it, and then saying today Rosen wouldn't be prosecuted although Rosen's not been given any official all-clear notice has made a bad decision worse. "Say it is wrong or own it," says the Washington attorney.

What's most alarming among those who know Holder and like him is their despair over how the straight arrow they adore is now seen as hyperpartisan, dissembling, even perjuring. Holder, they note, was the studious son a father who immigrated from Barbados and whose mother was a church secretary and whose brother is a cop. The wiry athlete leapt from his middle-class home in Elmhurst, Queens to the city's elite Stuyvesant High and then Columbia College and Columbia Law School and eschewed big bucks on Wall Street to go straight to the Justice Department. (He once had to listen to a wiretap of a mobster referring to him by a racial epithet.) He only started to make money in 2001 when he joined the ranks of government lawyers at Covington & Burling, where he represented the odd assemblage of clients that goes with being a big-name, white-shoe attorney--the NFL in the Michael Vick case and a group of irate trustees at American University fighting over Ben Ladner, who left the school's presidency after details of his lavish lifestyle emerged. They note that he'd been confirmed overwhelmingly by the Senate before his nomination to become attorney general and even then he received the support from the likes of Republican Sens. Jon Kyl, Orrin Hatch and John McCain and endorsements from Republicans like Fran Townsend, George W. Bush's Homeland Security Advisor and Louis Freeh, the Clinton nemesis and former FBI Director.

But they also note that since he became the Deputy Attorney General in the second Clinton administration in 1997 Holder became more controversial. As with many mountains, the closer you get to the summit, the more treacherous it becomes. Some things Holder handled adroitly. He won plaudits from Republicans, and eyerolls from Democrats, for giving Clinton Prosecutor Kenneth Starr permission to expand his investigation. But he also made critics out of supporters for his role in the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich in the last days of the Clinton administration. At the request of Israel's prime minister and others, Clinton granted Rich a pardon and the case was not given the thorough vetting that most pardons get at the Justice Department. Holder later said that he regretted not having done more to speak out about the Rich pardon although the president had complete discretion to dole out clemency as he sees fit. Still, it became an issue at Holder's confirmation hearings and it was, perhaps, a sign of things to come. He had been confirmed 100-0 for the Clinton Deputy AG job in 1997. But in 2009, he lost 21 votes when he was up for AG. Going from the work of being a prosecutor--taking a case and managing it--to managing staffs, bureaucracies, the press, a meddlesome White House and an irritable Congress didn't seem to be what Holder liked or where he was at his best. And he faced a Republican Congress willing to pounce.

Still there were plenty of unforced errors. Remarkably, Holder began his tenure with two gaffes in a week. First, he inserted the phrase "nation of cowards" in a Martin Luther King Day address. While Holder's point about America not wanting to discuss its racial history was familiar, if not anodyne, even the president distanced himself from the clumsy comment. Later in the week Holder said that he'd push ahead with the ban on assault weapons earning the wrath of red state Democrats on the Hill and Rahm Emanuel, then-White House Chief of Staff.

Holder often found himself on Emanuel's bad side, which hardly made him unique. But he seemed to have a poor sense of when to push and when not to. After the decision to try terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court was made, the White House wouldn't let Holder sell the idea and had him keep mum, a point noted by Dan Klaidman in his book Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency. New York politicians, mostly Democrats but including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, denounced hosting the trial. The administration backed down and Holder took much of the blame. "They wanted him to run the Gitmo group and quietly get rid of Gitmo," recalls one Holder colleague. "They completely underestimated what it would take."

In the "Fast & Furious" case, a botched gun-and-drugs operation that left a Border Patrol agent dead, Holder received a contempt of Congress citation, the first for a Cabinet member, for not turning over more documents related to the case--documents which Republicans suggested could show Holder misstated when he knew about the case. DOJ colleagues of Holder insist that they had complied with the requests from House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and they defend the decision to withhold documents. An Inspectors General report concluded that there was no evidence that he knew about it early. Still before it was over 17 House Democrats had voted with Republicans for the contempt citation. Some friends say it was a case where Holder should have just given over more documents. "I don't understand the stonewalling," says DiGenova.

Holder is surely a victim of the times. The great work of the Justice Department from the Bureau of Prisons to the Civil Rights Division to the FBI gets little day-to-day attention, especially as the media cuts its coverage, and each dust up is magnified a hundred fold. "I've come to the conclusion that unfair attacks are inevitable," says David Schertler, who served with Holder as a prosecutor and is a prominent criminal defense lawyer in Washington. "He's a political lightning rod because the department has been at the forefront of so much since 9/11."

"The Justice Department is often at the point end of the spear and it deals with national security issues and criminal justice issues and that are particularly salient in the policy environment. I do think Eric has been has caught a lot of the flak from that," says Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Justice Department and on the 9/11 Commission. Matthew Miller, who worked alongside Holder as his spokesman, notes that "people who once saw him as a career prosecutor now see him as the face of the Justice Department." That's certainly true and with the investigative machinery of the House in the hands of a Republican like Issa who is eager to use it makes life more difficult. But Holder's wounds can often be self-inflicted.

Holder was never going to stay through both terms. (Reno is the only attorney general in the country's history to stay that long.) And they say he'll be gone when Susan Rice and Samantha Power get settled in with John Kerry and Chuck Hagel and after James Comey is confirmed as the new FBI Director. There are not a lot of signs, though, that Holder will be able to finish on a high note. There's unlikely to be another high-five moment, a Supreme Court nomination or victory akin to health care. (The end of the Defense of Marriage Act which would be a victory but bring its own deluge of litigation.) What he needs most now are character witnesses who will talk up the work of the 110,000-plus employees of DOJ and Holder's own public service. One of them could be the outgoing FBI director.

In 1995, Holder, with the Rostenkowski case not too far in the rear-view mirror, got a call from Robert Mueller who had finished heading the Criminal Division of the Justice Department under the first President Bush and was in private practice in Boston and bored. The vaunted Republican called Holder just wanting a job working for him as a prosecutor. Holder was stunned. Mueller's job at the Department of Justice had been several levels higher than his. It's about equivalent to a recently retired executive vice president of say, Bank of America, calling the head of a local branch and asking for a job as a loan officer. "He and Eric developed a very close relationship," recalls Schertler who ran homicide cases under Holder at the U.S. Attorney's office and was Mueller's supervisor. It showed Mueller's love of prosecuting--but also his respect for Holder. That's the Eric Holder his friends tout but that was a long time ago.

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Analysis: After the Oklahoma Tornado, Obama Needs to Make FEMA Work

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:45:33 -0400

In the wake of the tornado which cut through Moore, Okla., on Monday, it's worth remembering, for a moment, how wrong things went after Hurricane Andrew. Over 20 years ago, the Category 5 hurricane struck Florida. It was then the costliest hurricane in U.S. history, and the federal government's botched response earned scorn for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, charged with coordinating disaster relief. Victims stood in endless lines at relief centers. Supplies that could have been ready were not. Then-Sen. Fritz Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, once called FEMA "the sorriest bunch of bureaucratic jackasses I've ever known," and that week in Florida, it was hard to find many who would disagree.

After the Moore tornado, we're reminded that FEMA's work is vital and its politics treacherous.

Americans have come to see the federal government as essential to disaster relief, and those such as Rep. Ron Paul who have suggested ending that role, albeit some time ago, are outliers even for Republicans. After all, it was Herbert Hoover who got the federal government into the disaster-relief business. The 1927 Mississippi River flood was a national calamity, and state governors called on Hoover, then Commerce secretary, to coordinate relief. He touted his efforts during his GOP presidential campaign the following year.

But disaster relief has been a difficult selling point since Michael Brown, the agency's head during Hurricane Katrina, became synonymous with failure. There were plenty of others to share the blame with Brown and George W. Bush, including two Democratic officials at the time, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. But the criticism of FEMA, including from a bipartisan committee from the then-GOP controlled House of Representatives, skewered the agency.

Every presidency, Democratic and Republican, needs to get FEMA right. For this, Obama could take a lesson from the Clinton administration.

Although FEMA had been primarily a reactive agency—waiting for requests to come in from disaster-stricken areas and then slowly responding—Clinton's director, James Lee Witt, used the agency's dormant powers to mobilize even if states or local jurisdictions didn't seek aid.

Back in 1992, after Andrew hit, Transportation Secretary Andrew Card, appointed by President Bush to head an impromptu hurricane task force, persuaded Florida's Democratic governor, the late Lawton Chiles, to accept federal relief after he initially declined. As Daniel Franklin notes in a history of the incident, FEMA could have made the same determination Card did, had it bothered to.

Witt made FEMA proactive, and he also downgraded the agency's remote if not implausible charge of helping Americans survive a nuclear war.

The challenge for Obama in the coming days is not only to resume his tragically frequent and grim duty to preside at memorial services but also to be like Witt and manage the federal response to the crisis. So far, so good in the first hours. And thus far more attention has been placed on congressional offsets than executive branch actions. But the spotlight will be on Obama and it's a chance for the president to show he can make government work.

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Analysis: Obama Finds His Voice and the Nation's in Boston, 'We Will Run Again'

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:14:47 -0400

It was a stunning moment as President Obama brought parishioners to their feet at a memorial service for those killed and wounded in the Boston Marathon bombing and vowed “we will run again.”

The interfaith service held at Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross became an emotional rallying point for the city, but it was also a moment for Obama to speak to the nation and strike a tone between remembrance and optimism, a call for justice and a call for compassion. Almost instantly, the talk seemed to rank among Obama’s best, and one written without his longtime chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, who has left the White House, although it wouldn’t be surprising if Favreau, who attended college at Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., lent a hand.

During a week where the capture of the perpetrators was trumpeted by some media outlets, only to be rescinded, and where the president saw a modest gun-control measure blocked from passage by the now endemic use of the filibuster, the talk in Boston allowed Obama to use the power of his office and oration to unite the country.

The talk was rich in adulation for Boston. Quoting the author and poet E.B. White, Obama noted that line that “Boston’s not a place ... but a state of grace.” The president studded his talk with local references--the “Sox,” the “T”--and made Boston America’s city.

“Boston invented America,” he said.

The tone stood in contrast to the once-common Republican dismissal of Democratic presidential aspirants--Ted Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry--as “Massachusetts liberals” and residents of “Taxachusetts.” In the 1988 presidential race, George H.W. Bush of Andover and Yale slammed Dukakis’s "Harvard Yard” politics. Just as 9/11 melted away any unfair derision of the American experience, the same was true today.

Obama made it personal, too. He noted that the city had welcomed him “as a young law student” as well as Michelle. He also made an oblique reference to his 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Obama noted that people couldn’t pronounce his name, but his oration was a springboard to his unlikely presidency. Chances are good that Thursday’s address will be on a par with that “One America” speech.

Quoting the Bible, Obama hewed to the metaphor of running, which wasn’t surprising given the target of Monday’s attacks. Despite the somewhat predictable choice of imagery, Obama nevertheless roused passions in the 157-year-old cathedral, proclaiming that “Scripture tell us to run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Vowing that next year’s marathon would be better than ever, Obama declared: “You will run again because that’s what the people of Boston do.”

He didn’t linger on the perpetrators of the “heinous act” that left three dead and scores injured. “Small, stunted individuals” is how he labeled them.

If the president’s words were powerful and even historic, the striking tableau of an African-American president and an African-American governor sharing a pew seemed remarkable given this liberal city’s recent history of racial strife, most notably the school-busing plan that roiled the city in the 1970s and accelerated white flight from public schools. Both Patrick and Obama, political allies, came to Boston from elsewhere--Hawaii in Obama’s case and Chicago in Patrick’s. Each was a scholarship kid at a private school, and each went to Harvard Law. Each won reelection. Former Gov. Mitt Romney, who Patrick succeeded and who Obama defeated, was there with other former governors and dignitaries.

Standing ovations are all but unheard of in religious interfaith services after a tragedy, but Obama peppered his talk with rousing applause lines, noting that the bombers “sought to intimidate us ... shake us from our values.... It should be pretty clear by now they picked the wrong city to do it.”

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Don't Jump to Conclusions About Boston Marathon Explosions

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:56:53 -0400

We don't know what happened. We don't know if they were bombs or boilers. We don't know if someone was angry at Boston in particular or at tax day or at anything else.

The explosions at the Boston Marathon appear deliberate but we can't be sure yet and it's a worthwhile reminder of how little we know. Just this week it looked like an Aryan prison gang was responsible for gunning down two public prosecutors in Texas. Now the leading suspect is a cranky county employee they prosecuted.

After the 2011 mass shooting in Norway, some rushed to blame Islamic extremists when it turned out to be a Norwegian extremist. When a plane crashed in Queens days after 9/11 it looked like another terrorist attack on New York City but it wasn't.

In an age of instant communications and instant terror, falsity travels with greater speed than fact. The only thing that is certain is that one of the landmark events of American sport has been marred forever, that the 26th mile of this legendary race was dedicated to the victims of Newtown, Conn. and that we should pray for our fellow Americans in Boston.

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Analysis: Margaret Thatcher Was Tougher Than Reagan

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:19:48 -0400

Margaret Thatcher’s long twilight has come to an end and most Americans will view her through the lens of her ties to Ronald Reagan. After all, the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher is probably the best known and most revered tie between an American president and a foreign leader. That’s if you don’t count Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

Anglo-American ties have been called “the special relationship” and the personal bond between the Gipper and the Iron Lady were particularly strong although not entirely in the way that they’re remembered and perhaps in ways that offer some insight for our times.

There were obvious parallels and affinities between the two. Both were champions of the free market and small government, both favored a more aggressive posture towards the Soviet Union and both pushed their center-right parties to the right.

But there were differences. Reagan faced a sick America, Thatcher a dying Britain. It’s hard to imagine now the way coal strikes by the nation’s powerful miners unions plunged Britain into darkness. It’s hard to believe that nationalized industries included gas, electricity, television and airlines. Newsrooms famously banned computers. Really The printer’s union, the National Typograhical Association, had a monopoly on keyboards. Journalists c could use typewritiers but computers were the province of printers. The top tax rate was 83 percent, the Telegraph notes today, and the tax on unearned income was 98 percent.

Thatcher slashed but there was no Reaganesque free candy. Thatcher lowered the rates but she also raised other taxes such as the Value Added Tax. She was about sacrifice, slashing government subsidies and programs in a way that Reagan’s rhetoric never matched his relatively modest cuts. Millions went on the dole because of her cuts whereas the recession in the U.S. was not from Reagan cutting the budget but from the recession brought on by Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker who slammed on the brakes to wring inflation from the economy. (Reagan did reappoint Volcker once.)

She called Reagan “the second most important man in my life.” And both drew strength from the other. It helped at home. It was hard for Americans or Britons to dismiss their leader as a crazy outlier if your most important ally had a elected a leader with a similar world view. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair would mutually reinforce each other in the same way as they took on their own party’s established interests. When they differed, as on the Falklands War, where the Reagan administration had coddled the “authoritarian” regime in Buenos Aires, it strained the relationship but never broke it. There were other differences, too. Reagan never seemed to have his heart in conservative social issues and neither did Thatcher who supported a bill as early as 1966 to permit some abortions. As Governor, Reagan has eased abortion restrictions in California before Roe before becoming a pro-life icon.

In all, though, Thatcher was more about sacrifice than easy victories. Reagan invaded Grenada--a move that Thatcher’s government denounced, by the way. Taking on the Falklands was a much bigger challenge. Thatcher was about cuts and upheaval. When she said during one of her most despised periods--”the lady does not turn”-- she embodied her principled determination. There was no “Aw, shucks” charm like Reagan, just strong medicine.

In only one sense did she have it easier than Reagan. The Democratic party may have been a mess but it was nothing like Britain’s Labor Party which became more socialist after her victory. Labor’s 1983 platform under its leader Malcolm Foot was described by one was as “the world’s longest suicide note.”

Thatcher famously warned George H.W. Bush before the first Gulf War, “Don’t go wobbly on us, George.” But Bush and Thatcher’s successor, John Major, were seen by conservatives as wobbly short timers facing revived opponents from the left in the form of Clinton and Blair. Blair finally crushed any hopes of renationalization of industries or a return to pre Thatcher Britain not that the embers burned particularly bright. Thatcher was eventually pushed out of office as was Churchill, the price of victory one supposes. But her legacy is Churchillian and bigger than Reagan’s.

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Why Washington Is a City of Snow Wusses

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:28:03 -0500

On Tuesday night at 9:30 PM, after listening to news reports that Washington, D.C., where I live, was due to get its first snowstorm of the season, I went to the Safeway. Despite the hour, the parking lot was full. Like the rest of the scared citizenry, I stocked up on milk and bread. I don’t drink milk. I can’t remember the last time I bought bread. My refrigerator was already stocked to feed a small Albanian village.

In addition to all of its other problems, the capital has become a city of snow wusses. I’ve become one, despite having grown up heartier in New Jersey where it snows more, and in the 1970s when it came more frequently. Panicked over reports of snowfalls, Washingtonians prepare like they’re readying to climb Everest, but without the quiet determination of a mountaineer. There’s more anxiety, drama, and acting out than a teenage girl exhibits in a tiff with one of her friends. There’s food panic and commuter anxiety even though SUVs are ubiquitous. The Range Rover set comforts themselves with the illusion that they needed a car designed for the Serengheti to handle a pothole on S Street.

A city of transplants, D.C. brims with native Midwesterners and New Englanders who roll their eyes at the snow panic that sets in each time the forecast predicts a bit of the white. I sniffed too when I first arrived here years ago. Now I have a loaf of white bread I’ll never eat.

Why? I’m not entirely sure how it got this way. John F. Kennedy famously said that Washington was a city of “Northern charm and Southern efficiency.” And, in a way, that betwixt-and-between quality of the Mid-Atlantic states applies--although the good citizens of nearby Baltimore, with their "we’ve-been-through-hard-times-David Simon" bravado seem to cope better with nearly identical weather. Southern cities like Atlanta don’t have the plows and salt and budgets to handle their twice-a-decade snow. They have cause for anxiety. Yes, some Bostonians stand in breadlines like Soviet babushkas, but they seem to do less of it when the snow hits. They’re stoic, and they see plowing and shoveling as their grim duty. I asked my brother in Maine how he dealt with a 3-foot dump recently. My tone conveyed concern. He responded like I was worried about his dry-cleaning. “We’re fine,” he assured me.

We, on the other hand, are drama queens. We get enough snow to be anxious but not enough to face it with equanimity.

One theory might come from social scientists. (Allow me a David Brooks moment.) Martin Seligman, the great professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered in experiments with dogs that when they were subjected to pain, they became defeated. They stopped resisting the pain and declined opportunity to escape entirely. The theory has been applied to human depression, too. It’s called “learned helplessness.”

In the 1980s, the criminal and inefficient--as opposed to Chicago-style criminal and very efficient--the District of Columbia had massive snow storms where the plows simply didn’t roll. The city’s legendary crack-smoking mayor, Marion Barry, was out of town when it happened, adding to the sense of woe. I suspect that in some sense traumatized the region, making us resigned to pain and prone to anticipate more than actually comes.

Of course, other cities have their snow woes. Even hearty Chicagoans tossed out a mayor, Michael Bilandic, in the late '70s for responding poorly to a blizzard. But they get enough chances to reset their internal panic meter. Every city has a news-panic infrastructure of local TV stations that see a ratings bonanza with inclement weather, although D.C.’s somehow seems worse. Last night the weatherman on the CBS affiliate here showed a chart with loaves of bread--a measure of how much you needed to stock up. This wouldn’t be as bad as Snowmageddon in 2010, he said, but pretty bad.

Ironically, when the snow does fall, the panic subsides. As with much of life, reality never matches the fear. The blizzards and Snowmageddon were magical here. Twitter led to flash mobs gathering in Dupont Circle for massive snowball fights. A rogue cop got disciplined for waving his guns at mirth-makers who hit his Hummer with a snowball, but that was the only real drama. Work stopped. Smiles appeared. With roads impassable, my son and I hurled snowballs at each other and walked with the Monty Python style that comes when your foot sinks two feet into the crunch and you try to regain your balance. As best as I remember, no one ran out of bread.

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The 6 Species of Secretaries That Will Define Obama's Term

Matthew Cooper — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:56:00 -0500

The word “Cabinet” isn’t in the Constitution, but it has been a part of every presidency since George Washington. Cabinet officers are usually forgettable and occasionally defining—whether it was Alexander Hamilton at Treasury, Lincoln’s constantly-alluded-to “Team of Rivals,” or postwar icons like Bobby Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, and Hillary Clinton. So what does Barack Obama’s Cabinet say about him now that he’s made his major picks for a second term?

It’s a Cabinet that’s simultaneously edgy and safe, like the president himself. The Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department picks announced this week signal a bold president who wants to do something about climate change. By picking EPA’s Gina McCarthy, who has her imprimatur on so many of the regulations that have peeved Republicans—and coal-state Democrats—Obama was saying: “Mas.”

On the other hand, Interior Secretary nominee Sally Jewell, an outdoor goods executive with an oil background, is the kind of smart consensus choice you’d come up with in the Cabinet Secretary Laboratory. This is a president who wants to pick battles (yes to Chuck Hagel) and avoid them (no to insisting Susan Rice stay in the mix).

It’s also a less combustible Cabinet for the president. Unlike in the first term, now there’s no one with rival power centers, no one as globally known as Hillary Clinton or with as much bipartisan juice as former Defense secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta. Each of them had bases and reputations that would have left Obama badly wounded if they’d taken disagreements public, let alone resigned. John Kerry is about the only one in the Cabinet this time who has that kind of clout—and mouthing off with disagreements is so not his senatorial style.

Since World War II there have been three secretaries of State who were senators. Obama has named two of them (Ed Muskie was the third). With Kerry he has an independent voice—but also a loyal one. Kerry came out for Obama over Hillary in the 2008 election, even before Ted Kennedy did.

So if Obama got talked into an Afghan surge in his first term by the likes of his top generals, that kind of push-back seems much less likely this time around on any issue. There’s no one like David Petraeus in the Joint Chiefs or running the CIA, and no one with the same, um, relationship with the Washington press corps. It’s easy to forget how much riskier it all was in 2009, when Obama signed on Hillary Clinton and kept Gates. Clinton proved a great choice but that’s easy to know in retrospect, not because of her intelligence and tenacity but because of their rivalry. She could have proven fiercely independent. Bill Clinton could have been trouble in a 100 ways and there was no guarantee that Gates would fit so smoothly into a Democratic Cabinet.

This time, the risk of a rival emerging is much lower. It's hard to imagine Obama ending up in Woodrow Wilson's situation, when he appointed three-time Democratic presidential nominee and populist icon William Jennings Bryan to be secretary of State, and then watched Bryan quit after urging mediation in the looming world war. Obama picked the first party presidential nominee to be secretary of State since Charles Evans Hughes, but in Kerry he picked someone who it’s impossible to see quitting.

The best way of thinking about Obama's new posse is through taxonomy or zoology. They fit into groups that illustrate the president's highest priorities—like climate change—and ones who like keeping it all running, like implementing the Affordable Care Act. Here they are:

Tightwads. (Secretary of State Chuck Hagel, Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew, Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell): The posts are different, but each is central toward managing the new age of austerity. Hagel was the second term pick not only because he shares the president’s skepticism of new military adventures, but because he’s ready and willing to preside over a retrenchment of American forces after a decade in which the department’s budget has doubled.

Lew is there to give confidence to the markets, but he’s also in a key position to preside over tax reform, if Congress allows. Burwell is there to make sure that the whole government does what it can with less.

Agenda Setters. (Environmental Protection Agency administrator nominee Gina McCarthy, Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz, Secretary of State John Kerry). Kerry was a safe and popular choice unlike, say, McCarthy. But like the other two he has to reshape the position. Much of Hillary Clinton’s job was about managing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the war on terror. Kerry’s more about strengthening alliances, climate change, and keeping the Mideast from boiling over. Each has a huge portfolio, and while Kerry has to work with a foreign policy-minded vice president and a strong national security adviser, Tom Donilon, he has a wide berth befitting the office.

Moniz and McCarthy are there to push climate change—and avoid any Solyndras. They have no big White House overseer, unlike the way that Al Gore kept an eagle eye on environmental issues in the Clinton years.

Team Chicago. (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, (possible) Secretary of Commerce nominee Penny Pritzker) Every president brings in old friends to be in his cabinet, people who knew him before he was famous. “He thinks very differently about people who knew him before 2006,” says one Democratic insider of the president.

Regardless of their competence, just having old friends has a certain Linus blanket appeal for a president. John Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert. George W. Bush reached out to his old friend, Don Evans, and Bill Clinton tapped his fellow Rhodes Scholar, Robert Reich.

Penny Pritzker might have gotten the Commerce job on the first go around, but the Hyatt Hotels heiress and realty magnate was tied up. Now that she’s said to be ready and has good ties to business—Business Roundtable head and former Gov. John Engler raved about her when I asked him—she’s likely to get in. Never mind that most of the department’s budget is about overseeing the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the Census Bureau. She’ll still be central to trade development, reassuring the business community (something missing from the first term), and she’ll be there for the president as a friend. Besides, Commerce has been a Bermuda triangle for Obama. His first pick, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, was aborted. His second pick, former New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, withdrew. His third, utility executive John Bryson, left the post for medical reasons. It may not be the sexiest Cabinet slot, but Herbert Hoover, Henry Wallace, and Averell Harriman had it. Pritzker likely will too.

Make it Work. (Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Homeland Security Security Janet Napolitano, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack) First-term Cabinet secretaries who stick around have a key job, one that’s deceptively simple: keeping their agencies running well. Each of the above, three of them former governors, need to keep their departments functioning at a time of austerity. Napolitano may have the greatest second term demands if immigration reform gets off the ground. But for now they’re like second-term governors expected to keep things going.

Have we met? (Interior Secretary nominee Sally Jewell, Labor Secretary nominee to be named) Jewell isn’t well known inside the Beltway, but the executive of outdoors outfittter REI is an avid hiker and climber with green bona fides that cheer environmentalists and a background in oil and finance that has led Republicans to back her nomination, too. In other words, she’s the kind of nominee who can pick up 90 votes in the Senate. Her job isn’t to push a radical new agenda, but to be caretaker of the department and find a middle ground on fracking and energy issues that come under her purview. The job traditionally goes to a Westerner—Stuart Udall of Arizona was JFK’s pick, Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado was Obama’s—and Jewell is no exception.

The next secretary of labor won’t oversee an ambitious agenda. Republicans aren’t going to allow a passage of labor-rights expansion. The so-called card-check plan for unions didn’t even get passed in Obama’s first term. But keeping the department’s jobs programs and being there to sell any major trade agreements to organized labor, like Obama was able to do with the South Korean agreement in his first term, will be a big part of the job.

He’s Still Here? From his first days in office when he described the U.S. as a “nation of cowards” on race, Attorney General Eric Holder has emboldened Republican opponents and surprised allies who had watched his ascent as a talented U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general. For all his accomplishments—rolling up terror suspects, shepherding judicial nominations, and seeing the Supreme Court preserve the central tenets of the Affordable Care Act—he may be as well known for the botched "Fast and Furious" operation.

A second term would have given Obama a fresh start at DOJ. But the president is very close to him, has confidence in his judgment, and sees the attacks as partisan even if many of the shots come from those on the left who see him as harsh on civil liberties and shy on prosecuting financial crimes. As the first African-American to be the nation’s top law-enforcement officer, Holder has a special status that helps him hang on to his post. That’s just part of why he’s still here.

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Analysis: The Good Side of Sequestration

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:51:23 -0500

Everyone agrees that sequestration is asinine, but Washington is increasingly resigned to it. Other deadlines have been met by fevered last-minute negotiations and, mercifully, avoidance of calamity. This time there’s less urgency and more sighs. There is an upside to it, though: an abject lesson on what government does.

At a time when Americans are convinced that foreign aid is a significant part or the budget—the median answer in one survey in 2010 was 25 percent of the budget—it’ll be a good object lesson for people to see that government means planes landing safely, meat being inspected, Yellowstone being kept open. Yes, most of what the government does is write checks and defend us, “an insurance company with an Army,” so the saying goes. But it does a lot more.

Sure, the agencies and departments could juggle accounts for a while to prevent the most egregious cuts to discretionary spending. I outline that here. We should be wary of the "firemen first" principle, where agencies cut or threaten to cut their most popular programs first.

But if agencies and departments can’t or won’t juggle their books, hey, let people see what government really means. As with sanitation or teacher strikes in big cities, it won’t necessarily endear taxpayers to feds, although being furloughed is more likely to prompt sympathy than going on strike. But it would at least be a teachable moment. There’s something sobering about aircraft carriers that won’t sail and forest rangers who won’t be paid to protect.

The last time I can think of such an educational moment was not the short-lived government shutdown on the '90s, but the Oklahoma City bombing. Who died in the blast? IRS officials, Secret Service agents, General Services Administration workers. President Clinton offered a reflection on the victims, "many there who served the rest of us, who worked to help the elderly and the disabled, who worked to support our farmers and our veterans, who worked to enforce our laws and to protect us. Let us say clearly, they served us well, and we are grateful," he said.

In 2001, looking back on the bombing, Clinton said: “And I had, like every politician, on occasion, gotten upset by some example of government waste or something the way we all do, and referred derisively to government bureaucrats. And I promised myself that I would never use those two words together for the rest of my life. I would treat those people who serve our country with respect, whether they're in uniform, in law enforcement, firefighter, nurses, any other things.” I'm not comparing the tragedy of Oklahoma City to sequestration. One is evil; the other buffoonery. But they each have the effect of making you realize what government employees do.

It’s easy to forget that government workers include Seal Team Six or the nurse at Veterans Affairs or the border agent.

That’s not to say that government doesn’t piss away lots of money. But it’s worth being clear-eyed, going into the age of austerity, about what it is we’re paying or not paying for.

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The 9 Biggest Cliches in State of the Union Addresses

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:21:00 -0500

Despite its prominence, this most watched of speeches is usually littered with hack lines and bromides. “Let us,” “We must”, “The time is now,” and “The war on ... ” (drugs, cancer, terrorism, crime — take your pick). Herewith, the nine hackiest lines with an assist from former presidential speechwriters.

1. “Let us ... ” When I asked former Ronald Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan for hack phrases, she wrote me: “I vote for ‘Let us’ go forth, ‘Let us’ advance, ‘Let us’ move forward together. Hold the 'let us.' No one in normal language uses those words the way they are used now in formal speeches. Why not the less fancy, formal, and faux ‘My plan is’ or ‘The path we should take’ or 'I believe we should.' "

2. “Work hard and play by the rules.” This line had a certain resonance when Bill Clinton used it in his 1992 campaign, with its subtext of not coddling criminals in the underclass or corporate felons above. But by now it’s become a cliche in all of its usages whether it's used by George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Does the country really need more pandering to the middle class?

3. “God Bless America.” This last line of just about every speech only seems like it’s been part of our rhetoric forever, but Richard Nixon introduced it just 40 years ago and Ronald Reagan made it an automatic ending to pieces. It’s now stretched out to “God bless you and God bless the United States of America,” and over the last few years former Jimmy Carter speechwriter and Atlantic National Correspondent James Fallows has waged his own private war against the phrase — not because of the sentiment but because it’s a rote, cheap device that’s come to mean little more than “the speech is over." Count on hearing it tonight and as a reliable segue to pundit blather about whether the president did what he needed to do.

4. “Reach across the aisle ... ” No one outside of Washington ever uses this phrase, says former Carter speechwriter and Yahoo! columnist Walter Shapiro. He’s right. There are plenty of ways to tip one’s hat to the idea of parties working together without resorting to this cliche, especially since it’s wrong. At the speech, members can be found on both sides of aisles because there’s more than one.

5. “My fellow Americans ... ” A formal and sleep inducing opening, it got dings from two speechwriters I reached out to, Eli Attie, who wrote for Al Gore and is an acclaimed Hollywood producer with shows like The West Wing to his credit. Matt Latimer, who wrote for George W. Bush and is now at the Washington firm Javelin, cited it, too. And why not? It’s pure cliche and slightly pompous and redundant. I think Americans know you’re talking to them.

6. “Once again I call upon .. .” Shapiro notes that this trope is half plaintive. It means the president has asked for this before from Congress and he hasn’t gotten it. Seeming whiny isn’t going to change that. Just think of kids: “Once again I call upon you to release my Xbox.”

7. “Our children and our children’s children .. .” This is a particularly gassy way of saying “the future” and of invoking the next generation. But if you actually have children, the thought of them having children is not one you’re always eager to embrace.

8. “Courage and determination .. .” Rick Hertzberg, Carter speechwriter and New Yorker editor, cited this one to me. It’s an almost mindless invocation of qualities that people admire, but like “work hard and play by the rules” it’s been drained of any power by its constant invocation.

9. “These are not Democratic or Republican values. They’re American values ... ” Any time the not-parties-but-American construct is used it’s usually either completely banal, such as a salute to upward mobility, or its meant to cloak what is a partisan proposition, e.g., fighting any changes in Social Security.

So keep this in mind as you watch Obama’s speech. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. ]]>

Ex-Benedict: Why Popes Matter to Presidents

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:13:00 -0500

The history of American presidents and popes is a curious one. No American president met with a pope until Woodrow Wilson did so in 1919, and after that there was no meeting for another 40 years until Dwight Eisenhower met with John XXIII toward the end of his presidency and at the beginning of the pontiff’s short reign.

It’s hard to imagine now that John F. Kennedy, when he ran for president, had to fend off charges that he’d take orders from the Vatican and owed his allegiance to the pope. The charges came not from known racists but from the likes of Norman Vincent Peale, one of America’s popular pastors. It’s not that the America of 1960, the America of DiMaggio and Sinatra, was brimming with the same anti-Catholic sentiment that fueled the anti-immigration movements of the late 19th and early 20th century. The previous century saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan (which was anti-Catholic as well as anti-black) and the birth of nativist parties such as the Know Nothings. But in the America of 1960, anti-Catholic prejudice still led to doubts that a Catholic could be elected president.

Pope John XXIII’s reign helped the young Massachusetts senator overcome anti-Catholicism. The pope's push toward reform of the church, his outreach to Jews, and his general openness helped promote the image of a more modern and open church that was in keeping with Kennedy’s tenure. It’s hard to remember how physically isolated popes used to be. John XXIII ended papal isolation within post-unification Italy, becoming the first pontiff to visit churches around Rome since 1870. It’s impossible to know if Kennedy would or would not have been elected without John XXIII, but his papacy was certainly helpful. During his presidency, Kennedy met with the pope but generally kept his distance. Jackie Kennedy had to push to get her husband to send a letter to the pope applauding his calls for global peace. Some historical accounts of the Cuban missile crisis point to the Vatican’s call for peace during the week that tensions almost flared into nuclear war. It was a call that was surprisingly reprinted in the Soviet organ Pravda, not known for its religious coverage, and it helped give Khrushchev a hook for backing down.

Likewise, for Ronald Reagan, the ascension of Pope John Paul II in 1978 added a boost to his anticommunist rhetoric. The first Polish Pope, John Paul II’s stand against communism and his celebration of Masses in Poland helped spur the strikes at the Gdansk shipyard and the Solidarity movement that led to the overthrow of the Polish government. Reagan’s notions of rolling back Communism, which seemed an affront to all foreign policy thinking since World War II, had a new legitimacy. The pontiff also challenged Communism in a fundamental way, not only through sermons but through travels to the Warsaw Pact.

It’s hard to imagine the next pope having a big influence on President Obama. Communism is gone, and Catholics are woven into American life. But history has a way of being unpredictable. A pope who launches an aggressive push to convert Islam, reunites the Russian Orthodox Church, or promotes civil disobedience among illegal immigrants would see the impact of his decrees felt not only in Vatican City but in Washington, too, and upend life for a president trying to deal with the Muslim world, contain Vladimir Putin, and pass an immigration bill. In American politics, the Vatican looms smaller now, but it still looms.

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Analysis: Spending Cuts Stink, but They're Overhyped

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:00:00 -0500

If the country goes through with the insane, masochistic sequestration cuts, it’ll be ugly. The economy will shed jobs; GDP will slow. But it’s worth being skeptical about the sky-is-falling predictions you’ll hear about: an end to meat inspections, air-traffic control, federal prison guards, and so on. It'll be bad, but not that bad.

Here's why.

The pending cuts — what Democratic leaders have wisely started to call “a meat axe” instead of the ethereal-sounding "sequestration" — are big. But as big as $1.2 trillion sounds and is, it is over 10 years out of a federal budget that’s estimated to be $44 trillion over that time. That’s not exactly the kind of draconian cuts that, say, we (through the International Monetary Fund) regularly force on countries seeking aid.

Keep in mind the “firemen first principle.” The phrase comes from my old boss, former Washington Monthly editor and founder Charles Peters, who noted that agencies on the chopping block have an incentive to tout their most popular programs as the ones likely to get axed. Thus if you’re a mayor, you sow fear of cutting firemen first before you cite, say, delaying office renovations at City Hall.

When the cuts are this big there’s bound to be real — and not just phantom — pain. But when you read stories about FBI agents pulled off their pursuit of a serial killer or astronauts left in space, ask what else could get cut first.

The answer is complicated. Unfortunately, the cuts demanded by sequestration famously fall about half on the defense side and half on domestic discretionary spending, with a number of things — such as a slew of veterans' benefits — exempted. Within departments, myriad accounts have to take hits, which spreads the pain. The Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has to take about the same percentage hit as the Rural Electrification and Telecommunications Loan Program, which seems bonkers since rural electrification is complete and e coli is very much with us.

Still even within each account, say the operations budget of the ederal Aviation Administration, you need to know if you can furlough more in terms of back-office personnel and less on the front lines of guiding in planes at LaGuardia. A recent White House Office of Management and Budget paper said that the cuts would “degrade” air-traffic control, which is surely true in the broadest sense. But would it actually mean fewer air-traffic controllers? The Aerospace Industries Association recently told its members:

It is unlikely that senior officials will allow a nationwide layoff of air-traffic controllers that will have a large negative impact on our economy. An option the agency could exercise to prevent this from happening is the "transfer authority" provided in its annual appropriations bills that could be used to modify sequestration’s across-the-board cuts.

It’s hardly comforting to know that money borrowed from the FAA’s “NextGen” program for improving the country’s aviation infrastructure could take a 50 percent hit in order to keep planes from whacking into each other, this at a time when China is building 100 new airports. The Aerospace Industries Association is rightly worried about cutting NextGen that much but it does show that there’s some fungibility of funds.

In an ideal world, Congress would dispense with sequestration and come up with a budget that made sense and reflected the world as it really is: one in which we face serious long-term debt but also a still sluggish economy and — mercifully — still cheap borrowing costs. But of course if they were able to do that, we wouldn’t have had sequestration in the first place and all the mishigoss that went before it, like the super committee.

And so agency heads are diligently preparing for the worst and they want to make sure the world knows the worst. The director of the National Park Service recently sent out a notice asking top management to carefully catalog the cuts they would need to make and to show the impact on local businesses. This exercise is being repeated throughout the government. Those looming cuts are real and such memos are necessary. But it’s telling that each agency is eager to get out the word on what these cuts would mean. It’s up to the rest of us to be appropriately skeptical.

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The Right and Wrong Ways to Change Your Politics

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:00:00 -0500

Francois Guizot said of the anti-monarchists of his day "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head". It’s a quote that’s been reworked a gazillion times since. It’s one dear to the heart of neoconservatives many of whom began as devotees of Trotsky and ended up embracing Reagan.

There are conversions that we may not like--Arianna Huffington from right to left or Norman Podhoretz from left to right--but which are considered and understandable. And then there are conversions that seem harder to fathom. See the cover of Newsweek where the much lauded playwright, author and producer David Mamet challenges gun control.

There are any number of coherent, intellectual and constitutional arguments to be made against the president’s proposals to limit magazine size and ban certain types of weapons as well as to expand the background check program. Mamet foregoes any reasonable argument for a piece that likens Obama to Marx and his proposals to totalitarianism. “For it is, again, only the Marxists who assert that the government, which is to say the busy, corrupted, and hypocritical fools most elected officials are (have you ever had lunch with one?) should regulate gun ownership based on its assessment of needs.” Apparently the Marxists now include Joe Scarborough and Joe Manchin, if not Reagan and the Bushes.

Anyone who’s listened to Michael Savage, the talk radio host, is familiar with the zealotry of the convert. His Savage Nation program is among the most popular in the conservative talk show firmament and his conversion from San Francisco liberal to conservative provocateur is well known to his listeners. His incendiary rhetoric, though, has led even conservative broadcasters to distance themselves from him. Fox News contributor Bernard Goldman cited him as one of the “people who are screwing up America.” He’s been lambasted for remarks about gays, muslims and even autism: “Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, “ ‘Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ “ Savage has a Ph.D. in nutritional ethnomedicine so he should know.

I couldn’t help think of Savage and Mamet when I read that Max Kampelman died this week at 92. If you were involved in politics and policy in Washington in the last quarter of the 20th century you’ve probably heard of Kampelman. Otherwise, it’s less likely. Born to Jewish immigrant parents, he was a longtime aide to Hubert Humphrey during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. An accomplished attorney whose name was on the smoked glass at the great firm Fried, Frank, he was asked by Jimmy Carter to be lead the talks to bring the Soviet Union and some of its satellites into compliance with the Helsinki human rights accords. This seems almost quaint now but the talks in Madrid, where he led the American delegation, were an important diplomatic forum for confronting the Soviets, one of the major avenues for cataloguing and confronting their abuse of liberty. Like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Kampelman was an eloquent and fearless voice for human rights.

President Reagan asked Kampelman to lead arms control talks with the Soviets that led to the START agreements cutting nuclear weapons. In his later years, he was a staple of international affairs and human rights organizations like Freedom House and the U.S. Institute of Peace, a lawyer diplomat of the likes of John J. McCloy or James Baker. He was a hawk with ties to neoconservative groups like the Committee on the Present Danger but he was a flexible one, willing to adapt to changing times. In 2007, he joined Sam Nunn and George Shultz in their efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. His tone was civil and courtly. Richard Sauber, once a partner at Fried Frank and and who Kampelman tapped to offer legal advice to Freedom House remembers one particularly heated board meeting where Kampelman had the patience of Job. “The board was filled with a who's who of foreign policy, and Max was like an adult among children: the most reasonable person with exquisite judgment.” (For the record, Sauber is my attorney, too.)

The interesting thing about Kampelman that relates to Mamet and Savage is that he had a political conversion. He began as a conscientious objector, so much so that he had a deferment not during Vietnam or Korea but during World War II-- the Good War, the one that helped save the Jewish people from extermination. As part of his “CO” status, he went to the University of Minnesota where he participated in tests where he was voluntarily subjected to near starvation. And it’s in Minnesota where he found a job with Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey that Kampelman’s pacifism faded and he came to see the merits of a strong defense--a position that echoed that of Humphrey himself and the Democrats of a bygone era like the late Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Senator from Washington and leading voice for what was called guns and butter.

Presidents of both parties understood Kampelman’s greatness. Carter brought him in and Reagan kept him even though Kampelman had helped the 1984 Mondale campaign. Bill Clinton gave Kampelman the presidential medal of freedom even though he was Reagan’s negotiator. They saw in him a steady hand and a reasonable mind. For the rest, of us he’s a role model on how to manage our own political evolutions. Evolving from pacifist to hawk is about as big a pendulum swing as can be imagined but Kampelman did it in a way that made him beloved. See a bipartisan tribute to him here when he was awarded the 2008 Democracy Service Medal by the National Endowment for Democracy.]]>

Analysis: Why Benghazi hasn't brought down Hillary Clinton – and won't

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:16:53 -0500

As Hillary Rodham Clinton marches up to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to testify about the Benghazi attack, it’ll be the last “scandal” of her 20-year run in Washington. The quotation marks are there for a reason. Most of what has exorcised the Hill and press corps about Hillary Clinton over the last two decades has rarely turned out to be scandalous.

“Hillary” — what other politician gets called by their first name, “Rahm?” — has survived every "scandal" to come her way. The mysterious death of White House counsel Vince Foster in 1993? Ken Starr concluded it was a suicide. The Whitewater “scandal”? Whatever there was to it, it’s a memory now. Hard to imagine now that Washington was once consumed with how Mrs. Clinton made $100,000 on commodity futures.

She’s endured it all — an exhausting journey from the election of her husband in 1992, the crash of her health care plan in 1993, the impeachment in 1998, the Senate election in 2000, a presidential bid in 2008 that came so close, and her becoming secretary of State in 2009. Four years and more than a million air miles after joining the team of rivals, she’s atop her game. The scandal mongers, like the coterie that suggested she might have faked her concussion to get out of the Benghazi hearings, grew quiet when she was hospitalized for a blood clot.

It’s not that Clinton is blameless for the Benghazi disaster. The attack in Libya cost the lives of four Americans, including a beloved ambassador. It wrecked the aspirations of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who withdrew from consideration as secretary of State. It probably wrecked the aspirations of the president, who seemed like he wanted to nominate Rice. But even if it was Clinton’s State Department that was unprepared, the word "Benghazi" is unlikely to chase the 65-year-old into her next life of books, high-end speeches, public service, needed rest, grandmotherhood (should she be so lucky), and perhaps another run for president.

Why is Hillary so invincible now? She prevailed on Benghazi by having taken so many bullets that she became bulletproof, like her husband. At a certain point you’re like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, just letting them bounce off you. Perhaps if Clinton wasn’t on her way out of office, the debacle might have damaged her more. She’s also mastered the art of damage control.

When she was first lady, Clinton resisted the appointment of a special prosecutor in the Whitewater case because she thought the investigation would never end. Given that it led to the appointment of Starr — whose study of the Arkansas land deal devolved into an legal investigation of what and what doesn’t constitute “sexual relations” — she turned out to be prescient.

In the case of Benghazi, Clinton was in no danger of being hitched to a shooting Starr. She did the smart thing and appointed an Accountability Review Board headed by the likes of Mike Mullen, the retired admiral and former Joint Chiefs chairman, and the legendary diplomat Thomas Pickering. There’s no better “scandal” management then leading the charge to get to the bottom of things.

What emerged from the board's account is a botched security process at State that needs to be fixed and likely will be addressed under Clinton’s successor, John Kerry. Clinton will talk about this Wednesday on the Hill ad nauseam while offering the kind of “the buck stops here” claims that leaders routinely give when their agencies fall apart. Top deputies like Thomas Nides, the deputy secretary for management and resources, have already been to the Hill to take a whipping so Hillary will get less of a lashing. A few mid-level folks have resigned.

It’s no wonder then that the announced focus of the hearing in the Senate is lessons learned and in the House it's “the secretary’s view.” No one is telegraphing that they’re eager to replay the question of why Susan Rice seemed to dismiss the possibility of a terrorist involvement in the hours after the attack.

Lindsey Graham, who co-led the Benghazi charge with John McCain, will not be on the panel that quizzes Clinton. McCain will likely be there, but chances are that he won't go too hard on his former fellow senator. Their target was Rice, not Clinton. The three senators traveled together extensively and became close on trips to investigate global warming in the Arctic Circle (Different times!). They may have wanted to stick pins in Rice, but Clinton would have gotten off with a gentle rebuke.

Hillary never aroused Graham and McCain's ire the way that Chuck Hagel did. Clinton was a model for a celebrity in the Senate and she still has reservoirs of good will on the Hill. She did her work. She stayed relatively quiet. She didn’t showboat. She reached out to Republicans like Tom DeLay on adoption. No one is eager to take on Hillary.

Maybe Sens. Marco Rubio or Mike Lee (each 41) or one of the other young turks with a bright future will use the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to hurl fireballs at the former first lady. But they’re unlikely to do more than singe.

Amazingly, the same is true on the House side, even though it’s the pyre of Republican passions. Earlier this week, the Voice of America interviewed Dana Rohrabacher, one of the most combustible members of the House, about the upcoming hearing. Just a few weeks ago Rohrabacher and CNN’s Anderson Cooper got in a tussle over Benghazi and Rohrabacher lashed out at officials for lying about the attack. By contrast, he said this about Clinton to VOA earlier this week: "She has given this country 20 years of decent, good service. And I am not about to sling mud at her. She maybe made a bad call [leading to the lethal terrorist attack on U.S. government agents in Benghazi]. She has made 20 years of good calls."

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Analysis: How Chuck Schumer saved Chuck Hagel

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:50:39 -0500

It shouldn’t have been a shock that Sen. Chuck Schumer announced he’s backing Chuck Hagel. In the tale of two Chucks, a Schumer “nay” would have been devastating—a signal to Democrats and Republicans alike that the Nebraskan was no friend of Israel. That would have made it very uncomfortable for any senator—not just Jewish members, not just Northeasterners—to support the president’s Defense secretary nomination. It would have been the biggest Democratic challenge posed to Obama by a mainstream member of his party. (I’m not counting centrist-conservative Democrats he’s had to lure from time to time.)

The whole episode had a take-him-to-the-woodshed-so-you-don’t-have-to-take-him-to-the-gallows quality. It’s one of Washington’s best-known rituals. During the Clinton-Lewinsky episode, much was made of Joe Lieberman’s harsh condemnation of Clinton on the Senate floor in which he denounced the president’s moral failings. At the time, some thought that the Connecticut senator would break from his old pal and call for his resignation, but the White House knew he wouldn’t. He’d pounded Clinton in a way that cleared the path for a resolution of condemnation but not impeachment. The House had other plans, but the point remains the same: You whack someone around and then you let them up off the mat.

So when Schumer backed Hagel it pretty much ended the possibility of mass Democratic defections and ensured Hagel’s confirmation. Schumer gave Hagel his blessing on Israel and Iran. “On Iran, Senator Hagel rejected a strategy of containment and expressed the need to keep all options on the table in confronting that country,” Schumer said in a statement. “But he didn’t stop there. In our conversation, Senator Hagel made a crystal-clear promise that he would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including the use of military force.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer gave Hagel her approval this week, too, which checked off another box Hagel needed: gender and sexual-orientation issues. “The treatment of women and gay and lesbian members of our military — and his answers were reassuring and show a sensitivity and understanding of these issues," Boxer said. "In addition, Senator Hagel has pledged to meet with me once he has been confirmed for a more detailed discussion about the Defense Department’s efforts to combat sexual assault in the military.” Check.

Republicans have hinted that they’ll turn to staffers who have worked with Hagel to derail his candidacy. Presumably they have a few who will question his temperament. But in a chamber notorious for crazy bosses and screamers, it’ll be tough to take out Hagel on that.

So barring anything bizarre, like a photo of Hagel in Tehran laughing at Gentleman’s Agreement, the Secretary Hagel years will begin this month. The ritual purifications and clarifications will continue at the hearings, but the heavy lifting is over. This should be interesting.

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Zero Dark Thirty is about more than torture

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:30:42 -0500

Zero Dark Thirty came to Washington on Tuesday night with the kind of premiere Washington loves—canapes at the Newseum and a soupcan of controversy. Outside the screening, protesters donned hoods and orange jump suits. Inside you could see Andrea Mitchell and Mark Warner.

Folks buzzed about the torture sequences. After all, Sens. John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, and Carl Levin wrote to the head of Sony Pictures to decry the film for suggesting that enhanced interrogation techniques, as they're known, led to the location of Osama bin Laden. But for her part, director Kathryn Bigelow told the Newseum audience, “we had no agenda in making this film and were not trying to generate controversy,” which seems at best naive. Can you make a movie with this much waterboarding and not think it’ll be controversial?

The way to think about the torture in Zero Dark Thirty isn’t to dismiss it out of hand as simply a dramatization, as Motion Picture Association of America head Chris Dodd said, so don’t take it too literally. And it's also not to take Naomi Wolf’s typically overblown comparison of Bigelow to Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi propagandist. “Handmaiden to torture,” she calls Bigelow.

So let’s sort through it. The movie clearly hypes the role of torture in hunting down bin Laden, but that needs to be qualified. It’s not presented with a Jack Bauer 24 frisson of excitement. This isn’t waterboarding porn. There’s no swelling music. It’s a grim business filmed in dank cells at dark sites from Pakistan to Poland without music or affect. Besides, all that pain isn’t always effective. As one bin Laden nephew is beaten, waterboarded, and shoved into a box the size of a small suitcase, he delivers nothing. Later, treated to hummus and sympathy, he talks.

It makes more sense to see Zero Dark Thirty’s torture as a metaphor and as the limits of film craft.

If you’re a filmmaker, it makes sense to use torture as a proxy for other aspects of the global War on Terror. You’re not going to spend zillions to realistically re-create the war in Afghanistan. It’s hard to visually depict the essential but tedious work of rolling up financial networks. Improved airline security is not going to fill seats. You want to pay $11 to see the Transportaion Security Administration?

But for those of us who think a lot about government and making it work, there’s another way to look at the film.

If you think of the War on Terror as government’s biggest project since, say, the Great Society or World War II, then it’s an even more interesting film.

Government progress is slow and messy, at once collaborative and bureaucratic. Maya (Jessica Chastain), the CIA analyst who drives the agency’s search for couriers, is the central figure in the film. But it’s worth thinking about her relationship with another CIA analyst, Jessica (Jennifer Ehle). The two seem rivals at first, each nursing her own theory of the case. They collaborate uneasily, moreso later, which is not altogether different than huge organizations like the FBI and the CIA.

A lot’s been written about Maya. The Washington Post recently ran a piece about the woman who inspired her. Also considered difficult and prickly—the kind of sexist assessment that’s more easily affixed to a woman than a man—she hasn’t even gotten a promotion to a GS-14 since bin Laden was offed.

But what hasn’t been said is that she’s the archetype of a government figure we know; the kind of driven, difficult person who drives an organization. Bigelow’s films have often had the hunters and the hunted—from Keanu Reeves's undercover police surfer chasing Patrick Swayze in Point Break to Jamie Lee Curtis after Ron Silver in Blue Steel. With skin that looks porcelain enough to shatter, Maya isn’t physically imposing. But she’s all intensity—screaming at her boss and essentially blackmailing him into giving her what she wants, living in the office, being a total pill.

There’s scant backstory about her life because her life is getting bin Laden. She’s prescient and a pain in the ass, which makes her a perfect Washington character.

We know this person. It’s Dick Cheney pushing for war in Iraq, or Dick Holbrooke pushing for peace in Bosnia, Rahm Emanuel or LBJ cursing their heads off to expand health care. Difficult people drive organizations; they can derail them, too. But the ones like Maya, whose madness is wed to a cause, are the ones who make all the difference, which is why, even if most of the action takes place in a war zone, this is a great Washington movie. If you focus just on torture, you’ll miss that.

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The 6 Habits of Highly Effective Chiefs of Staff

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 07:00:00 -0500

There’s a scene in The West Wing where the president is off to give the State of the Union and the designated survivor — the cabinet member who would be president should the Capitol be destroyed — comes to visit. President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) asks him:

"You got a best friend?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is he smarter than you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would you trust him with your life?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's your chief of staff."

In the next room, the president’s chief, Leo McGarry overhears and smiles. (The scene is found here.)

Now that White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew is likely to be nominated to be Treasury secretary, it’s a good time to ask: What makes a good chief of staff anyway?

After all, it’s been called the second-most-important job in Washington, and also the worst. James Baker joked that he was “stupid enough” to take it twice, under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The post is a function of the modern White House, only coming into bloom after World War II as an extension of the president’s personal secretary post. It’s evolved to become part CEO, part fixer, part personnel manager, part gatekeeper, and part therapist.

They need to strike a balance between giving presidents what they want and what they need. (One of the inside jokes during the ’90s was that Clinton’s exasperation with his staff over not having enough free time to think led to more open blocs during his day — that were in part filled by the Monica Lewinsky dalliance.) In other words, saying no to a president is part of the job, too.

So here are six qualities worth keeping in mind for the next chief of staff:

Know Washington. Americans may like presidents who come from outside Washington (Governors Carter, Clinton, Reagan and the second Bush) but a chief of staff really needs to have a big address book of Washington politics and know which buttons to press, because this is their habitat. Mack McLarty was a widely liked oil-and-gas executive who was Bill Clinton’s best friend growing up in Arkansas, but those qualities didn’t help him as chief of staff. The organizational mess that was the Clinton White House in 1993 fell on his watch. Donald Regan had many admirable qualities as a former Marine and head of Merrill Lynch, but his tenure as Treasury secretary didn’t prepare him for the chief’s job.
Be a Jerk, but Not Too Much of a Jerk. A White House chief of staff spends a lot of time saying no: denying aides a chance to walk into the Oval Office, handling calls from congressional leadership that aren’t deemed worthy of going straight to the president. But there’s a way to do it without being a complete jerk. John Sununu, George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff and a former New Hampshire governor, was famous for belittling staff, being manifestly arrogant, and widely disliked. When it emerged that he had commandeered planes for his own travel and had even gone to stamp-collecting meetings in a White House car, everyone was eager to dime him out. Obama’s first chief, Rahm Emanuel, may be famous for his profanity, but he wasn’t considered cruel.
Understand the President’s Weaknesses. A chief of staff needs to game out what the president needs. Jimmy Carter had a tendency for micromanagement that led to him personally attending to the White House tennis court schedule — possibly the iconic moment of his crippled presidency. His chiefs, Jack Watson and Hamilton Jordan, didn’t tame this tendency in their boss. As a former legislator, Gerald Ford was used to meeting one-on-one with legislators and staff but Chiefs of Staff Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, for whatever their later faults, understood that Ford had to be managed, lest he overcommit.
Be a White House Veteran. It’s not enough just to be a Washington veteran. The best chiefs of staff have been White House — or at least Executive Office — veterans, too: James Baker, Leon Panetta, Erskine Bowles, Andy Card, Jack Lew. The White House is its own unique beast and time in the executive branch is different than time spent in, say, the House. This is important to understand, because the peculiar rituals of each office — the staff secretary and the National Security Council, the public liaison and the Domestic Policy Council — all have their own niches. Knowing them helps.
Meet the Press, but Don’t Be Too Out Front. The best chiefs of staff have been good press manipulators, willing to talk to reporters but without taking the high-profile, Sunday morning role. Baker was probably the master of this, as were Lew, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Being too out there can only diminish the president you’re serving. Sununu was too far out there as well. Sherman Adams, the first chief of staff under Dwight Eisenhower, was all-controlling until he was undone by accepting a vicuna coat as a gift. The joke circulating in D.C. at the time went like this: One Democrat says, "Wouldn't it be terrible if Eisenhower died and Nixon became president?" The other replied "Wouldn't it be terrible if Sherman Adams died and Eisenhower became president!"
Fit the Moment. The White House is always busy, even when the president is in the last year of his second term. But it’s important to have a chief of staff who fits the moment. Rahm Emanuel made sense for the first kinetic years of the Obama administration where a member of the Democratic House Leadership was a wise choice to work with the Hill. But burning like a Roman candle made less sense after the Republicans took over the House. During Ronald Reagan’s second term, Howard Baker was the perfect choice after the Iran-Contra affair and the mess of Donald Regan. He was known as impeccably honest from the Watergate hearings and as the calm and trusted Republican leader in the Senate, which helped quiet Washington. Insiders like Ken Duberstein (Reagan) and John Podesta (Clinton) made sense as calm end-of-term managers, as did George W. Bush’s Josh Bolten.

Which brings you back to Leo McGarry. The backstory had him as a successful businessman and former Labor secretary and, yes, the president’s best friend. But he wasn’t a White House vet. And while John Podesta praised his lavish performance, Podesta said McGarry's not mean enough. That’s probably right.

You can find interesting academic literature about the White House chief of staff here and here.

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What history says about Chuck Hagel's Senate chances

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:51:27 -0500

It’s almost irresistible to compare Chuck Hagel’s controversial nomination and the failed bid of John Tower in 1989. The differences and similarities between the two defense secretary wannabes offer some insight into how much Hagel might be bloodied and how Washington has changed in the intervening years.

Like Hagel, Tower was a former senator when he was nominated by George H.W. Bush to run the Pentagon in 1989. Tower was the godfather of Texas Republicans. He won the Senate seat that was vacated by Lyndon Johnson following the 1960 election. He was the first Republican senator sent to D.C. from Texas since Reconstruction and one of just a handful from any southern state. He rose to become chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee and made a run at being Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary in 1981.

Like Hagel, Tower wasn’t especially well liked in the Senate, where he was seen as prickly. And just as Hagel stood apart from his party, so did Tower, particularly by being pro-choice and a critic of Reagan’s strategic defense initiative. But overall, he had much less ideological distance from his tribe than does Hagel.

When he was nominated by Bush, Tower had little support when stories of excessive drinking, womanizing, and sexual harassment started to emerge. It’s possible that Tower might have survived if he was better liked in the normally protective Senate, but they seemed all too eager to insert the stiletto.

When Sen. Sam Nunn, then the chairman of Armed Services, came out against Tower, his fate was probably sealed. The likes of Sens. Joe Lieberman, David Boren, Ernest Hollings and Pat Moynihan voted against him, too. He lost 53-47 which is stunning for a former Senator being judged by his peers.

So what does this mean for Hagel? The good news for Hagel is the Senate is Democratic. The president’s allies have a majority. This was not so for Tower.

Then there’s the issue of hedging as a confirmation hearing. Hagel’s (some would say prescient) wariness of the Iraq war and his comments on Iran’s nuclear menace can probably be hedged, unlike the drinking and harassment charges which went right to the heart of whether Tower was fit to serve. With Hagel, he just has to say that the president’s policy is not to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons capability and back off his own statements.

Also, there’s no figure quite like Sam Nunn, who was widely regarded as the Senate Brain on defense matters. For Tower, Nunn's disapproval was fatal. In today’s atomized world, no one senator commands that kind of influence on a policy matter.

But, two things could derail Hagel. First, his Israel comments have left so many Democrats unwilling to commit to supporting Hagel that you have to wonder if he could become undone. Second, Washington is now Filibuster Town. Anything that goes to the Senate is in danger of getting buried by the promiscuous, unprecedented use of the filibuster. It would have been inconceivable that Tower wouldn’t come up for a vote. It’s entirely possible Hagel’s nomination would be blocked from a vote.

Life is unpredictable and these things matter not just for Hagel but for us all. Robert Bork’s defeat led, eventually, to the nomination of the titular swing vote, Anthony Kennedy. After Tower, Bush chose a conservative and well respected congressman to be secretary of defense, a job where he’d run the first Gulf War and then go on to bigger things. His name was Dick Cheney.

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Analysis: What Mark Kirk Can Teach a Hypocrite Congress

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:09:00 -0500

Everyone on Capitol Hill is delighted to see Sen. Mark Kirk return to work today, almost a year after his stroke. Kirk was vigorous and only in his early 50s when he was felled last year, and the illness hit everyone hard. For Kirk, it sparked some new thinking about the Medicaid program for the poor. The Republican told the Chicago Sun Times:

"Had I been limited to that I would have had no chance to recover like I did. So unlike before suffering the stroke, I’m much more focused on Medicaid and what my fellow citizens face," he said. "I will look much more carefully at the Illinois Medicaid program to see how my fellow citizens are being cared for who have no income and if they suffer from a stroke."

That kind of empathy is welcome, but it’s also worth noting that with many Republicans it takes a personal experience to make them enthusiastically embrace government action.

Consider Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor is savaging House Speaker John Boehner and congressional Republicans for not quickly delivering on a $60.4 billion aid package to those affected by Superstorm Sandy. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with post disaster aid, which has been an American tradition at least since the Mississippi Flood of 1927. But for someone who has made his name as a fiscal hawk to demand that Congress pass a huge, unfunded aid package -- one that includes some dubious items like $150 million for Alaska fisheries -- has a certain degree of chutzpah.

To Christie’s credit, I don’t think his demand for storm aid is just political. It’s personal, too. You only have to have seen his interviews discussing how the boardwalks and amusement parks of his youth along the Jersey shore had been devastated to know that this was something deep and meaningful to him. The conservative who famously chewed out a school teacher now wants government aid this minute. As a native New Jerseyite, I say there’s nothing wrong with aid, but there is with hypocrisy.

In a different context, Wall Street had no trouble turning to government for aid when the financial crisis hit. Even before the Troubled Assets Relief Fund was established in the fall of 2008, Washington had aided the Bear Stearns takeover and the AIG bailout. And TARP itself, while initially shunned by some banks, became manna for the financial industry.

We’ve seen the liberal-for-a-day phenomenon before. (I wrote about it in the 90s for The New Republic.) Conservatives suddenly look at Washington anew. Sen. Pete Domenici, a Republican from New Mexico, was to his eternal credit the chamber’s fiercest advocate, along with Sen. Paul Wellstone, for parity for mental health treatment in insurance programs. His daughter had mental illness. Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio had been a strong advocate against government regulation but he made a very big, and one could say, deeply admirable, exception for the 55 mph speed limit. His daughter was 22 when she died in an auto accident.

There’s nothing wrong with letting personal experience shape one’s political views. We wouldn’t want pols who drew nothing—no rethinking, no change of heart—from their personal pain. It’s become an axiom among historians that polio helped make Franklin Roosevelt the empathetic leader he was. That’s good.

The issue is whether one can learn from one’s own suffering and draw wider conclusions instead of a more pinched definition. If Mark Kirk’s stroke made him think about the poor, then bravo. If emergency aid is surely needed to rebuild the Jersey Shore, shouldn’t Chris Christie show some urgency towards fixing Newark and Camden?

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Defense secretary possibility made name opposing global warming accord

Matthew Cooper — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:12:02 -0500

When Chuck Hagel's name first came up to be Defense secretary the reaction was positive -- a Douglas Dillon/Robert Gates-style GOP appointment for a Democratic president that was bipartisan and helped Democrats buttress an area where they'd been perceived as being week. In the last few days, attention on Hagel's comments about Israel have set Twitter aflame. See here and here.

But it's Hagel's work on the environment that may prove to be a more nagging question -- one hardly likely to derail a potential nomination but interesting nonetheless.

One of the first high profile things that Hagel worked on after coming to the U.S. Senate in 1997 was going after the Kyoto climate accord. He was a congressional observer at the meeting and, along with the late coal champion Sen. Robert Byrd, authored the resolution against it.

To be fair, that measure passed 95-0. But it portended future opposition to environmental measures. Daily Kos reminds us that former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recounts how, with Dick Cheney's prodding, Hagel wrote a letter questioning new emissions standards put out by Christie Whitman's EPA. Their full account is here.

All of this is relevant to the defense secretary's job because of the huge energy impact the Pentagon has with all those ships, planes, trucks, troops, missiles, and helicopters. It matters because of all of the green initiatives launched under Bob Gates. My National Journal colleagues, Coral Davenport and Yochi Dreazen, have done great reporting on this. Read their work to see how vital a green Pentagon has become to a national green strategy.

Maybe Hagel has had a change of heart on climate change. And even if he hasn't it's unlikely in the extreme that he'd spend political capital trying to undue the Pentagon's green initiatives especially when John Kerry would, as secretary of state, bring even more personal attention to green issues than Hillary Clinton. (Like Al Gore, he's written a book on the topic and made it a centerpiece of his global thinking.)

But if Hagel is nominated, here's to hoping his environmental views get just some of the attention his views on Israel do.

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Poll shows ambivalence on fiscal cliff, support for Rice

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:23:21 -0500

The results are found in the latest edition of the United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, which tracks public opinion about important issues facing Congress.

On the contentious question of whether the Senate should approve the nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice if President Obama picks her to be secretary of State, a slim majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- favored her approval, while 35 percent said that her nomination should be rejected if it’s put before the Senate.

The question noted that “some Republicans oppose her nomination because they say she provided misleading information about the role of terrorists in the recent attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya,” while also noting that Democrats insist that “Rice was only relying on information about the attack provided to her at the time and that the president is entitled to place his own choice in the position.”

Concerning the fiscal cliff, the poll, which dives deeply into policy issues, asked voters what they thought the best way was to raise revenue from higher-income earners. A plurality, 39 percent, said that both their tax rates should be raised and their tax deductions should be scaled back. In addition to raising tax rates on income above $250,000 -- something the president advocates and something that will happen if Congress doesn’t act to prevent it -- Congress is considering an overall cap on deductions.

On the larger issue of how best to lower the federal deficit, 38 percent of respondents said that half the money should come from tax increases and half should come from spending cuts. An equal number said that two-thirds of the money should come from spending cuts and one-third from taxes. Only 16 percent said that two-thirds of the money should come from tax increases and one-third from spending cuts.

As previous editions of the United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll have shown, the public is of two minds about spending: on one hand favoring cutting it in the abstract, but steadfastly rejecting cuts to beloved programs such as Social Security -- all of which creates difficult terrain for members of Congress trying to negotiate a deal to prevent automatic, across-the-board sequestration cuts of a combined $1.2 trillion in domestic discretionary and defense spending over 10 years that are set to go into effect in January.

The survey found that 77 percent of respondents believe Social Security should not be cut at all. The results were remarkably consistent along lines of race, income, gender, age, and political affiliation: Even 74 percent of Republicans polled felt that way. The results were similar when the question was asked in February -- perhaps suggesting that the efforts of groups dedicated to reducing the debt had failed to convince the public that cuts in Social Security were in the national interest. An even higher percentage -- 79 percent -- did not want cuts in Medicare, the medical coverage program for the elderly. When it comes to “means-tested” programs, 51 percent didn’t want “food stamps or housing vouchers that go to low-income families” to be touched. A full 63 percent wanted hands kept off Medicaid, which aids the poor and the disabled.

There was much more openness to cutting defense spending. Only 33 percent of respondents didn’t want defense spending cut at all, while 47 percent were willing to cut it some, and 17 percent said it should be cut a lot. By contrast, only 3 percent of respondents wanted Social Security cut by a lot.

The poll was conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 2 and included 1,003 participants. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.]]>

The new Congress: Nine things to know

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 23:51:09 -0500

For all that talk of voter anger, things look pretty much the same as they did 24 hours ago.

Congress is still the same bundle of dysfunction and dyspepsia that it was on Tuesday.

The turnover of what looks to be a miniscule number of Senate and House seats—mere puddles compared with the tea party tsunami of 2010—hasn’t been enough to change Capitol Hill.

Congress remains a bicameral body of stall and crawl: a House dominated by conservatives and a Senate held hostage by the filibuster.

In the weeks to come, National Journal Daily will track the most important bills and leadership moves—who snags committee chairs, which bills move forward and which stall, and, of course, that mess called the fiscal cliff. For now, here are nine things to know:

1. Senate committee changes will be modest. With the Democrats poised to keep Senate control, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia still has the tiller at Energy and Commerce and Max Baucus of Montana at Finance. The one ranking member to watch is at Senate Environment and Public Works, where James Inhofe of Oklahoma is term limited. His likely replacement, David Vitter of Louisiana, hasn’t been the same outspoken skeptic of man-made climate change, but he is likely to back the same pro-industry policies. Big turnover isn’t afoot, which means the same staffers, members, and issues as in the last Congress.

2. House committee changes will appear bigger than they are. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama giving up the chair of the House Financial Services Committee to his likely replacement, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, isn’t going to lead to much of a change as Republicans try to chip away at Dodd-Frank—something that’ll be pretty tough to get past the Senate. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the likely ranking member, isn’t going to deviate from Barney Frank’s adamant defense of his law.

3. The filibuster will still be here. The use of the filibuster—the parliamentary procedure that forces votes to pass a 60-vote threshold in the Senate—didn’t go away with Tuesday’s election. In the minority, Republicans have used it promiscuously—accelerating a growing trend in both parties, which have transformed this break-glass-in-case-of-emergency tool into one for everyday use. That means whoever is in the minority has ample firepower to shoot down the other side’s most-favored legislation. And there’s no sign that Republicans will be chastened.

4. That doesn’t mean nothing will get done. After all, Congress is neurotic, but it’s not suicidal. The fiscal cliff will be bridged with Kleenex and duct tape and chicken wire, at least past the inaugural. There may be 48 hours where tax rates go up and are quickly rescinded. But the basic ebb and flow of Congress is where we left it when the members took their last vacation.

5. Watch tax reform. Tax reform is still on the table in a big way. It’s the only way all sides can punt on the fiscal cliff with a straight face and, at the same time, try to do something everyone can agree on. Of course, 2013 isn’t 1986. The problems are harder; the parties are more divided. (In 1986, you had Democrats in the Senate like Russell Long and Republicans like Bob Packwood. We’re in a different world now.)

6. Get to know Joe Donnelly. When a candidate wins in hostile terrain or exceeds expectations, it’s a big deal. Donnelly slew his GOP opponent Richard Mourdock in Indiana’s Senate race. And watch Sens.-elect Ted Cruz of Texas and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who will be stars from Day One.

7. Presidents make their mandates. In 2001, George W. Bush was sworn in without winning the popular vote, but it didn’t make him shy about pushing through an ambitious agenda of tax cuts, education reforms, and (later) fighting two wars. After Inauguration Day, the president could tread lightly given a relatively small victory, but he’s just as likely to throw long, which is why no one should be surprised by wild new initiatives—say a reorganization of federal agencies or tax reform.

8. Rethinking who’s vulnerable. This was supposed to be the GOP’s year to take back the Senate, to knock off that upstart Democratic class of ’06. But Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar was never in danger, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill was likely saved by the “legitimate rape” comments of her opponent, and other Democrats from the class proved more tenacious than expected, though some seats that seemed easy to hold—such as Connecticut’s—proved wobbly. In this kind of atmosphere, there’s going to be a lot of soul-searching at the National Republican Senatorial Committee and worry among incumbents up in 2014.

9. The freshmen are still feisty. The freshman class of House Republicans has never been a monolith. It has first-time pols and pros, accommodationists and firebrands. But the class still has a size and coherence that will drive Washington and the coming fights over the fiscal cliff and the post-inaugural agenda. These Republicans may have swallowed a budget extension through an anticlimactic election. Don’t think they’ll be as quiet in 2013.

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Postal Service defaults on payment to Treasury

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 09:36:00 -0400

no one's surprise the U.S. Postal Service failed to make a $5.6 billion payment to the Treasury on Sunday.

Congress has punted on the question of a solution until after the election. Expect Congress to fight Postal Service efforts to put ending Saturday delivery on the table as well as closing many rural post offices.

This was the second time the postal service defaulted on its prepayment obligation. It missed a $5.5 billion payment last month on fiscal 2011 obligations.]]>

Meteorologists ask lawmakers for a weather commission

Matthew Cooper, National Journal — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:49:57 -0400

The University Center for Atmospheric Research "would advise federal policymakers on setting priorities for improving forecasts and creating a more weather-proof nation."

The plea came while Congress was out of town and the capital continued to enjoy great fall weather.]]>