The View from Right Field

President Obama at the United Nations

Michael Barone had this to say about President Obama’s speech to the United Nations last week:

"Much of the speech seemed to be an exercise in what Sigmund Freud called ‘projection,’ assuming that others think the way you do. Obama spoke as if the mullahs of Iran, the Kim Jong Il clan of North Korea, Vladimir Putin and his gang of oligarchs, and the rulers of China had the same gripes against the Bush administration as Obama and the liberal Democrats in Congress. Hey, if we just close Gitmo, they'll realize that we're all in sympathy now."

Which is exactly how Democrats handled those portions of the Vietnam War they were in control of (i.e., from January 20, 1961 or whenever you want to say it started {whichever is later} through January 20, 1969 and from Richard Nixon’s resignation {or slightly before that} through the end).

They always thought that the North Vietnamese thought like we did; that the North Vietnamese would understand the signals we were giving them in only gradually escalating the bombing and then, at appropriate times, stopping the bombing to encourage negotiations. Except that the North Vietnamese didn’t think like we did. We wanted to negotiate a compromise solution; they wanted to win. They did, however, understand what our signals really meant; i.e., that we were more interested in negotiating than in succeeding

I hope we do not have a similar disconnect today with countries like Iran, etc., but I fear it is possible.

Afghanistan: We Need to Decide – Further Thoughts

Last Monday I wrote a post saying that we needed to make a decision on what we are going to do in Afghanistan. We needed to decide now. Because I am not a devotee of the Sunday news shows, I did not realize President Obama was, at virtually the same time I was writing that post, backing off of his previous position on Afghanistan and saying he is evaluating what we should be doing there.

And at the same time the President was saying that, The Washington Post was reporting on a leaked copy of the recommendations being made by General Stanley McChrystal, the general who Obama, through Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, put in charge in Afghanistan just three months ago. General McChrystal’s report read like a text book report on modern counterinsurgency doctrine. It was what worked in Iraq and the only thing that might work in Afghanistan. If our goal is help an Afghan government and the Afghan people keep the Taliban out of power and, thus, prevent Afghanistan from once again being a home base for Islamic terrorist groups, then a counterinsurgency strategy is the only thing we can do that might work. There is no guarantee it will work, but it is pretty sure that nothing else will. And it is what President Obama said we should do back in March, when he approved a strategy document calling for "an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy" in Afghanistan.

But the Obama administration, or at least the unnamed sources quoted in the Washington Post article, says things have changed in Afghanistan since March or even since June, when General McChrystal was appointed.

But what has changed? The unnamed sources mentioned three things: increased casualties; declining support among the American people (and from Democrats in Congress?): and the Afghan presidential election. But two of those reasons are almost phony. President Obama had to know, when he approved sending more troops to Afghanistan back in March and when he approved a counterinsurgency strategy, that there would be more casualties initially. When you have more troops, when those troops become more active and begin to try to protect the safety of the local population, instead of mostly staying on their bases, you are going to have more casualties at the start. That is what happened in Iraq. It was obvious it was going to happen in Afghanistan. To say the increase in casualties is a reason to change policy now is to say you did not understand the policy you adopted back in March.

The decline in public support is not surprising, either, given how long we’ve been in Afghanistan, the increase in casualties, and the fact that President Obama has done so little to rally public support. This can’t be a surprise, either, and it can’t be a reason to leave if we really need to be there – especially given how little the President has done to get the public to support his policy in Afghanistan. Consider what he has done in just the last few weeks to sell health care reform. Where is his effort on Afghanistan? While I don’t feel this way, I would not be surprised if some people feel that, if the President doesn’t show much interest in Afghanistan, why should we be there? If he doesn’t care enough to push for his policy, then he must not think it’s important.

Finally, the Afghan presidential election is a change since March. But where was the diplomatic side of our operations in Afghanistan during the last six months? We knew the election was coming. Why didn’t our diplomats do a better job of making sure something like this did not happen? This happened on President Obama’s watch. You can’t blame President Bush for this one. (Actually, Obama administration people will probably try to blame President Bush for it.)

There was some hint in an Associated Press article on Tuesday that President Obama might change course in Afghanistan, dropping back to "a narrower focus on counterterror operations aimed at al-Qaeda." According to the AP, two senior officials said "[t]he White House is looking at expanding counterterror operations in Pakistan as an alternative to major military escalation in Afghanistan." Which may be a theory, but as I said in this post, which I wrote when George Will suggested something similar, it won’t work. (An even better explanation of why such a policy won’t work was written by Bruce Riedel and Michael O’Hanlon here.)

So what is President Obama going to do? I don’t know. The cynic in me wonders whether President Obama will follow the recommendations in General McChrystal’s report if he also thinks, in order to get a health reform bill passed, he has to give up on the public option for health care insurance. Is President Obama really willing to infuriate the left wing of his party on both Afghanistan and health care? I doubt it – especially when I wonder how committed President Obama is to his Afghanistan policy. Complaining about the United States not committing enough resources to Afghanistan was one thing when Barack Obama could use it as a club to beat George Bush with. But now, I don’t know. Especially when the President clearly cares more about health care than Afghanistan. Health care is what he wants to do; Afghanistan is something he has to do.* If he gets told that there is some lesser cost policy that will allegedly work (even though it won’t), he might go with it, so he can get on to what he really wants to do.

It also seems very possible that President Obama is not going to be making a decision quickly. I understand that he wants to make sure he gets it right.** But the decision needs to be made soon. People on the ground in Afghanistan have been very clear on this point. "[S]enior military officials have expressed growing frustration, while warning that delay could be costly. ‘Time does matter,’ said one military official. ‘The longer the situation deteriorates, the tougher to reclaim’ the initiative against Taliban forces."

Which raises one final point. What if President Obama decides on a policy that our military people in Afghanistan truly believe won’t work? Or if he tells them to do something and then does not give them the resources to do it? What if he just takes too long to decide, and there is a feeling that the delay jeopardizes our men and women in Afghanistan?

Then Colonel, now General, H.R. McMaster wrote a book about the Vietnam War, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, that, among other things, raised the question of what senior military officers should do when the President ordered a military approach (in Vietnam) that they felt could only have disastrous results. Do they stay and try to make things less bad or do they resign?

I am certainly not saying that President Obama is going to do something like this in Afghanistan. I hope he won’t. But given how clear the generals in charge have made their advice, what do they do if President Obama orders a course of action that they believe cannot work. Obviously, our military will do what the President orders. That is not the question. But what do individual members of the military do if ordered to do something they know will not work?*** Let us hope that we do not have to find out.

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* Does this sound a lot like President Johnson, Vietnam and the Great Society?

** One assumes he did the same back in March when he committed to a full counterinsurgency strategy.

*** The other question is what would the left wing of the Democratic Party do if one or more generals resigned. Obviously, they would have been ecstatic if it had happened to President Bush in Iraq. They were happy when military people criticized President Bush. They would have been overjoyed if somebody had resigned. But if a general resigned now, with President Obama in office, the left would be livid. There would be talk of Seven Days in May, the military trying to run the government, and all kinds of other silly things.

The Health Care Debate, Government Intimidation and the First Amendment

Two amazing stories. The first is from last Monday:

"The government is investigating a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under health care legislation in Congress.

The Health and Human Services Department launched its investigation of Humana after getting a complaint from Sen. Max Baucus ….

The Senate committee that Baucus chairs — Finance — will vote this week on a sweeping health care plan that he's proposed to expand coverage and try to control costs. It would cut Medicare and Medicaid spending by about $500 billion over 10 years, but Baucus says that would lead to greater efficiency, not reduced benefits.

‘The health care reform bill we released ... strengthens Medicare and does not cut benefits,’ said Baucus. ‘From lower prescription drug costs, to free preventive care, to better treatment for chronic conditions, seniors have so much to gain from health reform — and I'm not going to let insurance company profits stand in the way of improving Medicare for seniors.’

Humana is one of the largest private carriers serving seniors under a program called Medicare Advantage. About one-fourth of the elderly and disabled people covered under Medicare participate in the Advantage program, which offers a choice of private plans that usually deliver added benefits. …

Government experts say the private plans are being paid too much — about 14 percent more than it costs to care for seniors in traditional Medicare. The Baucus plan — and other proposals — would reduce payments to the plans, and the health insurance industry is fighting back.

The Humana mailer focused squarely on the Medicare Advantage program.

‘While these programs need to be made more efficient, if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,’ it said."

This attempt, which has apparently been successful, by Senator Baucus (and the Department of Health and Human Services) to prevent Humana from talking with its policy-holders about the health care plans being considered in Congress is mind-boggling. I understand that the Supreme Court provides less protection under the First Amendment for what it calls "commercial speech," but I find it hard to see how any exception should apply here. Humana was trying to tell people who had bought health care insurance from it what it thought the effect of the various plans being considered in Congress might be on the policies they had bought from Humana. This is the essence of what the First Amendment is all about. This is not about pornography or other side issues like that This is about public policy and matters being considered right now by Congress And yet, Senator Baucus has used his power as a committee chair in Congress and the power of the executive branch to stop a private person (or entity) from talking.

Senator Baucus justifies his action on the grounds that it is "unacceptable for insurance companies to mislead seniors" about health care reform. But this is not an acceptable defense or justification. And it doesn’t matter whether what Humana was saying was right or wrong. (See below.) The point is that the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the right of people to talk and argue about public policy. The First Amendment is designed to prevent those in power, such as Senator Baucus and the Obama administration, from trying to silence critics who disagree with what they are doing or proposing.

Actually, this seems to be a bit of a tendency in the Obama administration and for Democrats in Congress in general. They really do not seem to like people disagreeing with them. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has attacked those who disagree with the President’s health care proposals. In the words of Debra Saunders, "a teary-eyed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she is worried that the language being used by the critics of Obama’s health care plan will lead to ‘violence’", a concern that I do not remember Ms. Pelosi having about protests against the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.

The President does it, too. Back in August, he said this about some of his critics:

"I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to just get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them but don’t do a lot of talking."

A week ago, in his Sunday news show marathon, the President, during an extended exchange with George Stephanopoulos about whether the amount that people would have to pay if they did not buy health insurance should be considered a tax, said that "[n]obdy considers that a tax increase." Except that is just not true. There are people who consider it that. (See here.)

The President did the same thing back in January, when he was promoting his stimulus program. On January 9, he said, "[t]here is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy." Except it wasn’t true, either. The Cato Institute ran full page ads listing over two hundred economic professors who disagreed. (Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2009).

The President is great at giving speeches, and he talks about wanting to engage in discussions with people who disagree with him. But I am not sure he really means it, especially when people start to effectively disagree with his proposals. If people argue too persistently, the President seems to get upset.

I do not know how concerned we should be about this. Maybe the President and his party in Congress will, in due course, take a moment to reflect on their tactics. Maybe they will begin to understand that they need to pass their programs with the power of their arguments, as opposed to intimidating people into silence. But it is something that needs to be carefully watched because it has the potential to be dangerous.

One final point, a point that I did not want to raise earlier because it is not really relevant to my main concern. My main concern is the effort to silence debate, to stop certain people from talking and/or certain arguments from being made. It doesn’t matter whether arguments are right or wrong. People have the right to make them.

But in the case of Senator Baucus silencing Humana, the fact is that Humana was right. See this article, which appeared on Wednesday:

"Congress' chief budget officer is contradicting President Barack Obama's oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn't see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators Tuesday that seniors in Medicare's managed care plans would see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.

The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.

Elmendorf said the changes would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries."

In other words, Humana was right. It may be that Senator Baucus does not like the Medicare Advantage program. He might think that it is waste of government money, that it unfairly helps some seniors over others, and that we should get rid of it. But the fact is, Senator Baucus’s plan would reduce the amount of money of that the government pays to insurance companies on Medicare Advantage plans, which would probably result in a reduction in benefits under the plans. Maybe it is appropriate to reduce these payments; maybe it is fair; maybe the overall program Senator Baucus is proposing will help people. But what Humana was saying was right; passing his plan could reduce benefits for some seniors. And Senator Baucus used his power as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and he got the Obama administration to use its power, too, to silence Humana because he did not like this argument being made.

During the Clinton administration, it was jokingly said that, when the President visited town, you should protect your daughters. If this continues, it may be that, during the Obama administration, we need to worry about protecting the First Amendment.

Why I Hope Chicago Does Not Get the Olympics

In just a few days we will find out if Chicago gets the 2016 Olympics. An Olympics can be exciting. When the Olympics were in Atlanta in 1996, we planned our vacation almost a year in advance to be able to go. It was a lot of fun, and I am glad we went. But when it comes to the question of Chicago getting the 2016 Olympics, I am not so excited. In fact, I have come to hope that Chicago does not get the Olympics. And I have come to hope that way for one simple reason: Corruption.

Illinois has never been a particularly honest state, at least within my memory. Orville Hodge. Paul Powell. Otto Kerner. George Ryan. More councilmen, judges, and government employees than you can remember. And it seems to be getting worse. So many newscasts tell us of city employees or others who have been convicted of corruption that it does not seem like news anymore.

Given all of the corruption we have in regular times, can you imagine how much more corruption we would have if Chicago got the Olympics? There would billions and billions of dollars available to be stolen and ripped off, to disappear into the pockets of contractors and politicians and friends of politicians. It would, in its own way, be the Olympics of corruption.

We need to clean Chicago up. We need to clean Cook County up. We need to clean the State of Illinois up. The Olympics, with all of the money to be spent and bribes to be paid and graft to be taken, would make the job of cleaning up our governments even more difficult. The job will be hard enough as it is; we don’t need to make it harder.

Ultimately, it is more important to finally beat corruption and take back our governments for honest Illinoisans than it is to have an Olympics in Chicago. What does it profiteth a city or a county or a state if it wins the Olympics and loses its soul? And that is why I hope Chicago does not get the Olympics.

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Update (9/24/09 11:30 p.m.):  Fixed a typo in the fourth paragraph.

Further Update (9/25/09 12:40 a.m.):  To improve the readibility of the post, I deleted the following, which had been the first sentence of the fourth paragraph: "And that is why I do not want Chicago to get the Olympics."

President Obama Proposes Tort Reform Test Projects in his Health Care Program

In his speech to Congress on health care earlier this month, President Obama said that he was going to, by executive order, initiate a series of test projects to see if, as many Republicans have claimed, tort reform would really help cut health care costs. Republicans and conservatives are supposed to be happy with this proposal by President Obama. It is said to show his willingness to compromise, his search for bipartisanship.

Well, no, it doesn’t. I am not impressed by this idea – for a couple of reasons. First, we don’t need test projects. Or let me rephrase that: we don’t need more test projects. We have already had test projects. States have passed tort reform laws. We can look at the results of those laws and see whether they have achieved things we would like to achieve. And the fact is they have worked; the results have been good.

Second, President Obama is proposing to set up some temporary, test programs to see if tort reform will "work". In exchange for his agreeing to set up these temporary programs, he wants Republicans, et al., to agree to vote for permanent, full-blown programs. In other words, in exchange for a small, temporary program that can be ended at any time, and will definitely end at some point in the future, President Obama wants Republicans to vote for a big program that will last forever.

President Obama’s response to such a comment might be along these lines: If you are so sure tort reform will work, this shouldn’t be a problem. If the tests work, then full tort reform will be passed. If you really believe tort reform will work, this is the way to prove it – and get it enacted.

Which might be an argument, if it weren’t for what has happened to the voucher program in the District of Columbia public schools.

During the Bush Administration, a program was set up to provide vouchers for certain children attending public schools in the District of Columbia. (I think most people will at least admit that the D.C. public schools are not among the best in the nation.) Once the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, however, they tried to stop the program. But with President Bush in office, they couldn’t do it; they didn’t have the votes to overcome a veto. With the election of President Obama, the Democrats tried again, and this time they succeeded. Supporters of the program complained that the program was being ended before the results were in. Democrats disagreed, saying there was no "proof" that students in the program did better.* And so the program is ending.

And so I don’t trust President Obama’s offer of test programs to see if tort reform will work. I don’t trust it because I know, regardless of what the results are of any such tests, President Obama’s party in Congress will never let tort reform pass while they are in the majority. And if it does pass while they are in a minority, they will kill it as soon as they get back in power.

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* One comment on whether there was "proof" that the children who got the vouchers did better; i.e., whether the program was working. There was a lot of back-and-forth between the two sides; numbers were flying around like crazy. But there was one number that answered the question for me. It wasn’t reading scores or math scores or anything like that; they are subject to all kinds of interpretations. Instead, it was the fact that the parents liked the program. A huge majority of the parents whose children were in the program liked it and wanted it to continue. I don’t need anything more than that to show me the program was working – because when it comes to what is best for kids, I rely on the people who know best: their parents.

Scrapping Bush's Missile Defense Program

I was all set to write a post criticizing the Obama administration’s decision last week to cancel the missile defense program that President Bush announced in December 2006. The purpose of the program was to defend against a possible missile attack by Iran. The program involved ten ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and an advance radar station in the Czech Republic.

My concerns about the cancellation were several. First, Democrats have never liked missile defense programs. They objected to them in the 1980s when President Reagan first proposed his program. When Bill Clinton was president, he slowed the work on missile defense programs. When President Bush unveiled his program, Democrats were again opposed. So when President Obama canceled the Bush program I was understandably suspect.

Second, the cancellation seemed like a concession to Russia, instead of something good for the U.S. The Russians have been vehemently opposed to the program since it was first announced, claiming it was aimed at them. That was, of course, poppycock. Ten interceptor missiles were not going to affect the Russian strategic arms capability. What the Russians didn’t like was that they think they ought to be able control Poland and the Czech Republic, and they saw our program as an intrusion in an area they wanted to run.

Third, the cancellation of the Bush program was justified on the basis that our intelligence agencies now feel Iran’s long-range missile program is advancing less rapidly than they previously thought and that the more immediate risk from Iran is from short and medium-range missiles. I certainly agree we need to do something about Iran’s short and medium-range missiles, and I agree we should do something about them right away. But to cancel a program designed to protect us against long-range missiles because our intelligence agencies now think the risk is a little farther off, seemed silly. Our intelligence agencies do not have a good track record on getting things like this right (to say the least). Also, it is going to take a while to get the missile defense program operational, so why not keep working on it. You can’t wait until the last minute to put something like this in place.

But then I read this article in Sunday’s New York Times by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Secretary Gates addressed my concerns. According to him, the new program will protect us, even from long-range Iranian missiles, better than President Bush’s program. I will admit that if I read this kind of article by, for example, most of the Democrats in the Senate, I would not have believed it. As I said above, Democrats have a long history of opposing missile defense, so I would have discounted anything they said. That is not true about Secretary Gates. He can be believed, and based on what he says in this article, it looks like the decision is a good one.

Which leaves just one comment about the decision and the way it was announced: During the campaign last year, Democrats, including then-Senator Obama, criticized President Bush for his alleged ineptitude in foreign affairs and his disregard of the opinions of other countries. With that in mind, let me quote from The Economist’s leader on the Obama administration’s decision:

"The timing of the announcement is poor, coming on September 17th, the anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland in 1939. In a country [i.e., Poland] highly tuned to symbolic snubs, it matters that nobody in Washington seemed to know or care about that."

"[N]obody in Washington seemed to know or care". Not very impressive.

Afghanistan: We Need to Decide

There is no question things are not going well in Afghanistan. Michael Yon, who I have mentioned before, has been saying since 2006 that we are losing in Afghanistan. Others have noticed it more recently. So, what do we do now?

During the campaign last year, and even this year, Barack Obama called Afghanistan "the good war" (as opposed to Iraq, which was "the bad war"). Continuing that theme, since being elected president he has said Afghanistan is a war of necessity, unlike Iraq, which he called a war of choice.

But now the President is having troubles – with his own party. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, said President Obama would face opposition if he tried to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. "I don’t think there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in Congress."

Carl Levin, Senator from Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, wants to "hold off on a commitment to send more combat troops until these additional steps to strengthen the Afghan security forces are put in motion."

Perhaps as a result, The New York Times reported: "The White House has begun to indicate it could be weeks or perhaps much longer before Mr. Obama decides whether to send more troops to Afghanistan."

This is not good. Regardless of what you think we should do in Afghanistan, either stay in or get out, the one thing we should not do is to temporize, go halfway, do a little and then hope.

As I said, all indications are that we are losing in Afghanistan. Continuing on our present course will result in a long, slow defeat. Perhaps we need a re-evaluation of whether we should be in Afghanistan. I think we need to be there, but others may (and do) disagree. But regardless of what our decision is, we need to make it and then follow through on it. If, as I hope, we decide we need to be in Afghanistan, then we need to commit to do what we have to do to succeed* and we need to do it now. We should not wait to send more troops until after we take additional steps to strengthen and train more Afghan forces. It is not a matter of trying to train Afghan forces first and then, if that doesn’t work, sending more US troops. If we need to be there, then we need to do both of them, and we need to do both of them now.

Similarly, we shouldn’t wait to decide whether to send more troops. We don’t have time for half-way measures. We have done that for most of the last eight years. If we want to succeed in Afghanistan, then the President needs to devote the time and attention to making sure the job gets done. And if we are staying, we need to go in with enough, maybe even more than enough, to give ourselves the best possible chance to succeed.

Finally, we need a policy that is designed for Afghanistan, not for Washington. Too many times during the war in Iraq, Washington politicians would suggest policies for Iraq based on what they thought would be acceptable in Washington. That was wrong for Iraq, and it would be wrong for Afghanistan. Things do not work that way. You have to match what you need to do in Afghanistan with what will work in Afghanistan.

Basically, we need to decide what we are going to do in Afghanistan. We need to decide quickly, and then we need to do what our decision requires. Anything else is unfair both to the Afghan people and to the servicemen and women who are in Afghanistan on our behalf.

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* Note that I said "succeed," not "win". We do not need to crush the enemy, a la World War II. We just need to accomplish our goals, i.e., to succeed.

Chicago Comes to Washington – And I'm Not Talking About the Cubs Playing the Nationals

I had previously thought that the comments about President Obama, or maybe Rahm Emanuel, bringing Chicago-style politics to Washington were a little overdone. I know that Mr. Emanuel was, to some extent, a "player" in Chicago politics, but President Obama always seemed to float a bit above it. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t do it; it was just that his interests seemed elsewhere.

But a combination of an article by Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, in last Sunday’s New York Times and a recent story in the Chicago Sun-Times made me wonder if maybe there wasn’t something to the claim.

According to Professor Cowen:

"For years now, many businesses and individuals in the United States have been relying on the power of government, rather than competition in the marketplace, to increase their wealth. This is politicization of the economy. It made the financial crisis worse, and the trend is accelerating. …

We should stop using political favors as a means of managing an economic sector. Unfortunately, though, recent experience with health care reform shows we are moving in the opposite direction ….

One disturbing portent came over the summer when it was reported that the Obama administration had promised deals to doctors and to pharmaceutical companies under the condition that they publicly support health care reform.

Professor Cowen is worried about what he calls the "politicization of the economy". But there is another way looking at what the Obama administration is doing here, which brings me to the Sun-Times article.

The Sun-Times reported that, after Robert Steele, a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, had voted twice to override a veto of a sales tax repeal by Todd Stroger, President of the Cook County Board, Mr. Stroger fired Mr. Steele’s brother from the job he had with Cook County. Robert Steele wouldn’t vote the way Mr. Stroger wanted, so Mr. Stroger fired Mr. Steele’s brother. Economic intimidation. Using tax monies to get people to support your policies, and taking it away from those who oppose you. That is not a particularly big deal in Chicago because we’re used to it. It’s the Chicago way.

But reading Professor Cowen’s article again, I see the Obama administration is doing the same thing. They promised the drug companies that, if they agreed to support the administration’s health care plans, the administration would make sure that the drug companies only had $80 billion cut from their government payments. The Obama administration was, in effect, agreeing to make sure that, if the drug companies supported the administration’s political position on health care reform, government payments to the drug companies would be more than they would otherwise be.

Let me rephrase this. This is not the normal situation of a private company lobbying to support a government programs that would give it money. This is the government going out and offering money to (or, in the case, offering to take less money from) a company or industry if it would support the government’s position. In other words, the Obama administration is using our tax monies to buy political support. That does sound like the Chicago way. I guess President Obama wasn’t "floating above it" as much as I thought.

President Obama's Bipartisanship Doesn't Extend All the Way to Fox News

One of President Obama’s frequent themes as he pushes for his health care plan is that he wants to be bipartisan; that he wants to work with Republicans – or he at least wants Republican support.

And so, as he goes on a marathon of Sunday new shows tomorrow, being interviewed about his health plan on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Univision, President Obama has decided to skip Fox News. According to Al Tapper of ABC News, "Democrats said the Fox News Sunday audience is largely entrenched in its opposition to the president, essentially beyond persuasion, and so submitting to an interview might not be the best use of Obama’s time."

Not even a half an hour, huh? That’s nice. Well, maybe the President figures that those bitter people in small towns in Pennsylvania and the Midwest cling to Fox News Sunday, too – as long as they can watch it after church and it’s not during deer season.

Seriously, though, President Obama’s decision to not go on Fox News is a fascinating look into the liberal mindset. It is clearly as closed as it accuses conservatives of being.

The Health Care Triangle

About five years ago I read about a poster an employee had come up with in response to what he saw as his employer’s attempts to cut corners. The poster showed a triangle and read: "The Quality Triangle: Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick Any Two You Like!"*

The Quality Triangle came to mind when I was reading an article by Robert Samuelson on President Obama’s speech last week to Congress on health care. Mr. Samuelson said:

"Americans generally want three things from their health care system. First, they think that everyone has a moral right to needed care; that suggests universal insurance. Second, they want choice; they want to select their doctors -- and want doctors to determine treatment. Finally, people want costs controlled; health care shouldn't consume all private compensation or taxes."

As I read the article, I realized there is a "Health Care Triangle", too: Guaranteed Care. Right to Choose. Controlled Costs. And as with the Quality Triangle, you can pick any two.

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* The employee’s name was John Kafalas. Jared Sandberg, "Inspirational Posters Don’t Always Produce Anticipated Response," The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2004.