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Saturday, November 30, 2013

Bring Back the Draft?

At The Washington Post, Dana Milbank writes:
Compulsory military service, as old as Athenian democracy and common in countries such as Israel that live under threat, has been in decline in Western Europe since the end of the Cold War. But an exception, Switzerland, is instructive: On Sept. 22, the Swiss voted 73 percent to 27 percent to keep their conscription army. It has less to do with security than with national identity in a land of 26 cantons and four official languages. The government argued that military service teaches people “how to live and work with compatriots from all regions, all linguistic groups and all social strata,” which “contributes enormously to the national cohesion.”
In Switzerland, the sons of bankers and farmers alike do basic training for several months and then are recalled to service for brief periods. But the structure is less important than the service itself. My former colleague Tom Ricks proposes bringing back the draft in the United States but allowing for a civilian national service option — teaching, providing day care and the like — for those who don’t want to join the military.
There’s no mass movement for mandatory service, but the idea has gained a diverse group of supporters, including retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y). Gun-rights groups would cheer an armed citizenry, and an article published by the libertarian Cato Institute argued that compulsory service “can be a pillar of freedom.”
The costs would be huge. But so would the benefits: overcoming growing social inequality without redistributing wealth; making future leaders, unlike today’s “chicken hawks,” disinclined to send troops into combat without good reason; putting young Americans to work and giving them job and technology skills; and, above all, giving these young Americans a shared sense of patriotism and service to the country.
But Milbank fails to note what the author of the "libertarian" piece later wrote: 
Let me drop the mask. I am not, in fact, a libertarian. You may have guessed that.
I’m not a libertarian, and yet I may be as libertarian as possible without actually being libertarian. I walk right up to that Rubicon, without crossing it. And the reason why I refuse to cross it is ultimately the reason why I am writing here about military service.
The question that is posed to us via the example of military service is: what is citizenship?
What does it mean to be a citizen? Jason Kuznicki hit the nail on the head when he decided to title this issue “What do we owe?” for that is precisely the question that concerns us here. It is one of the key questions of political philosophy, and the answer has a momentous impact on all human life.
If there can be no libertarian case for military service, then it is because libertarianism considers citizenship as, at best, a necessary evil. That no one has duties to one’s countrymen that one does not have to anybody else. That political communities have no value in themselves, and are even inherently evil (even though that evil may, in some very limited cases, be necessary).

Friday, November 29, 2013

Inequality, Family, and Education

Previous posts noted a relationship between income and family structure.  In turn, there is a relationship between family structure and education, as the Pew Research Center explains:
New data released this week from the U.S. Census Bureau reaffirm the strong linkage between educational attainment and the marital status and living arrangements of parents of minor children.
Among parents who live with a child under the age of 18, 89% of college graduates are married, compared with 64% of parents with less than a high school degree and 70% of those with just a high school degree.
Marriage has been on the decline for decades, particularly for those with less education. At the same time, the share of non-marital births for the less educated has risen dramatically, and the likelihood of divorce remains significantly higher among those lacking a college degree than among those who have one.
 FT_Educ_Differences

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Thanksgiving History

At The American Enterprise Institute, Amy Kass and Leon Kass write:
The first Thanksgiving Day celebrated under the new Constitution took place on November 26, 1789, the first year of George Washington’s presidency. At the encouragement of the House of Representatives, President Washington proclaimed a day to be devoted to “public thanksgiving and prayer” and sent money to supply debtors in prison with provisions, thus beginning the Thanksgiving Day tradition of charity. Washington’s proclamation, however, did not result in a new holiday: John Adams, Washington’s successor, recommended a “National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,” rather than a thanksgiving day, while Thomas Jefferson opposed the proclamation of both thanksgiving and fast days as counter to the separation of church and state.
Although many states, particularly in New England, continued to have annual observances of thanksgiving, there wasn’t another national Thanksgiving Day until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed one in 1863 to celebrate the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg — an act we owe, in part, to the efforts of Sarah Josepha Buell Hale. The editor of the popular magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book and famous author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Hale had devoted an entire chapter to the importance of Thanksgiving traditions in her 1827 novel, Northwood. She campaigned to make the day a national holiday, year after year sending letters to governors, congressmen, senators, and to the White House, addressing notes to at least six different presidents.
By 1855, 14 states recognized the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day, with two others celebrating the holiday on the third Thursday. Territories such as California and Oregon even proclaimed the holiday before being recognized as states. In September 1863, Hale published an editorial once again urging President Lincoln to proclaim a national Thanksgiving Day. On October 3 — the same date on which Washington had offered his Thanksgiving Proclamation — Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving Day would be observed on the last Thursday in November. Writing in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln urged Americans to remember the “gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy” and to “fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it.”

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Inequality and Education

At Politico, former Clinton political strategist Doug Sosnik writes:
One factor that has perpetuated the income gap is educational achievement – the single best predictor for future financial success. Since educational opportunities are disproportionately afforded to families at the top of the income ladder, the children of the less fortunate are finding social advancement through educational achievement even more difficult.

A June 2013 Brookings Institution Hamilton Project report found that “children of well-off families are disproportionately likely to stay well off and children of poor families are very likely to remain poor.” High-income parents are investing more in their children, widening the gap between the children of the rich and poor in test scores, college attendance and graduation. These gaps – combined with expanding income inequality – further threaten the ability of the next generation to improve their lot in life. The report also cites an earlier 2010 Carnevale and Strohl study that found that in most selective higher education institutions “… the wealthiest students out-populate the poorest students by a margin of 14 to one.”
Research conducted by MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and David Autor in 2010 shows that for males, the wage gap by education began to widen in our country at the beginning of the 1980s. While male workers who went to graduate school before that time consistently outperformed everyone else in income levels, there was not a significant variation in wage levels among male workers who either graduated or attended college, graduated high school or dropped out before completing their studies. However, during the 1980s, a widening income gap emerged between college graduates and those with little or no college participation, making education the defining predictor of a person’s chances for financial success in the future.

 

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Whatever Happened to the Gang of 14?

As a previous post noted, Majority Leader Reid recently exercised the "nuclear option" to end filibusters of most executive and judicial nominees.  In 2005, the prospect of such a move prompted a bipartisan group of senator -- The Gang of 14 -- to reach an agreement: the seven Democrats agreed not to block certain judicial nominees and the seven Republicans promised not to vote for the nuclear option.

Without the former, the Democratic minority could not sustain a filibuster.  Without the latter, the Republican majority could not pass the nuclear option.

So why did the Gang of 14 not re-emerge in 2013?  For one thing, nine of its members have left the Senate, either through death (Byrd, Inouye), retirement (Lieberman, Nelson, Warner, Snowe), appointment to other office (Salazar), or defeat (Chafee, DeWine).  Only the bolded names are left.

Democrats

  1. Robert Byrd (West Virginia) -- died June 28, 2010
  2. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) -- died December 17, 2012
  3. Mary Landrieu (Louisiana)
  4. Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut) -- did not seek reelection in 2012
  5. Ben Nelson (Nebraska) -- did not seek reelection in 2012
  6. Mark Pryor (Arkansas)
  7. Ken Salazar (Colorado) -- resigned in 2009 to become Secretary of Interior

Republicans

  1. Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island) -- defeated for reelection in 2006
  2. Susan Collins (Maine)
  3. Mike DeWine (Ohio) -- defeated for reelection in 2006
  4. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina)
  5. John McCain (Arizona)
  6. John Warner (Virginia) -- did not seek reelection in 2008
  7. Olympia Snowe (Maine) -- did not seek reelection in 2012

Monday, November 25, 2013

"Citizenship Is Not a Priority"

Previous posts have noted that not all eligible immigrants choose citizenshipThe New York Times reports:
“For many undocumented people, citizenship is not a priority,” said Oscar A. Chacon, executive director of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, a network of immigrant organizations that includes many foreigners here without papers. “What they really care about is a solution that allows them to overcome their greatest vulnerabilities.”
...
Most groups working for immigrant rights vehemently oppose any legislation that would deny millions of people the opportunity for full equality.
“We either have a path to citizenship or a path to hell,” said María Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. “To codify a person who lives in this country but will never have an opportunity for citizenship creates a second class. It seems completely un-American.”
Advocates say the Senate’s path — which requires illegal immigrants to pay fines and back taxes, study English, pass criminal checks and wait in line behind foreigners who applied legally — is sufficiently long and arduous. This month there have been rallies and protests nationwide and a fast on the National Mall to pressure the House to vote on a bill with citizenship.
But among immigrants there is no consensus. In South Florida, there were anguished discussions over café con leche and empanadas among members of Dreamers’ Moms, a group of mothers of young immigrants who have joined the movement.
At National Affairs, Peter Skerry proposes permanent noncitizen status, noting:
The available research certainly confirms that illegals do not necessarily seek citizenship. Ethnographic studies of undocumented Guatemalans in Houston and of illegal Irish in New York City reveal lingering indifference to any such permanent commitment to this nation. Most tellingly, by the end of 2009 — nearly a quarter-century after the IRCA amnesty program began — of the nearly 2.7 million individuals who became legal permanent residents under the program, barely 41% had gone on to exercise the option to naturalize. In other words, when offered the chance to become citizens, the overwhelming majority of the undocumented have settled for less.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Redistribution

Redistribution is a loaded word that conjures up all sorts of unfairness in people’s minds,” said William M. Daley, who was Mr. Obama’s chief of staff at the time. Republicans wield it “as a hammer” against Democrats, he said, adding, “It’s a word that, in the political world, you just don’t use.”

These days the word is particularly toxic at the White House, where it has been hidden away to make the Affordable Care Act more palatable to the public and less a target for Republicans, who have long accused Democrats of seeking “socialized medicine.” But the redistribution of wealth has always been a central feature of the law and lies at the heart of the insurance market disruptions driving political attacks this fall.
...
Now some of that redistribution has come clearly into view.

The law, for example, banned rate discrimination against women, which insurance companies called “gender rating” to account for their higher health costs. But that raised the relative burden borne by men. The law also limited how much more insurers can charge older Americans, who use more health care over all. But that raised the relative burden on younger people.

And the law required insurers to offer coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions, which eased costs for less healthy people but raised prices for others who had been charged lower rates because of their good health.

“The A.C.A. is very much about redistribution, whether or not its advocates acknowledge that this is the case,” wrote Reihan Salam on the website of the conservative National Review.

Having obscured much of that vulnerability before, Mr. Obama has responded to recent political heat by apologizing — and expanding the scope of his discreditedyou can keep it” promise.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Souring Views of Obamacare

President Obama continues to face problems with public opinion. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports:
The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds the public’s views souring on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in November, with about half having an unfavorable view of the law and a third having a favorable view, a gap that was seen only once before, during the Republican presidential primaries in 2011. This negative shift in opinion comes amid heavy news coverage of the website problems plaguing the law’s online health insurance exchanges and stories about individuals being dropped from their insurance coverage because their plans don’t meet minimum requirements set by the ACA, stories that were followed closely by more than half the American public this month. The partisan divide on the law continues, but support among Democrats dropped sharply this month after rallying in September and October. Views among women also shifted this month, and for the first time in Kaiser tracking, the share of women with an unfavorable view outnumbered those with a favorable view by a large margin (48 percent versus 32 percent). Visibility of the health insurance exchanges increased among the public overall in November, but reaching the uninsured with information remains a challenge – about four in ten uninsured say they’ve heard nothing at all about the new marketplaces to date, and two-thirds say they still don’t have enough information about the law to know how it will impact them. Still, nearly six in ten of those who currently lack coverage say they plan to get insurance in 2014.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Historical Figures Who Outlived JFK

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It is fascinating to consider some of the historical figures who outlived him.  The point here is not to satisfy a morbid curiosity, but to make a point about history.  "The past is never dead," William Faulkner wrote, "It's not even past."  Memories of the past shape current events, and people who took part in historic events often live long enough to reshape those memories.

Just hours before he died, Kennedy called former vice president John Nance Garner (who served under Franklin Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941) to wish him a happy 95th birthday.  Here are other major figures who were still alive on the fateful day:

  • Winston Churchill (d. 1965)
  • Charles deGaulle (d. 1970)
  • Herbert Hoover  (d. 1964)
  • Harry Truman  (d. 1972)
  • Dwight Eisenhower (d. 1969)
  • Douglas MacArthur (d. 1964)
  • Gen. Bernard Montgomery (d. 1976)
  • Adm. Chester Nimitz (d. 1966)
  • Hellen Keller (d. 1968)
  • Margaret Sanger (d. 1966)
  • Upton Sinclair (d. 1968)
  • Norman Thomas (d. 1968)
  • John Steinbeck (d. 1968)
  • Bernard Baruch (d. 1965)
  • Joseph P. Kennedy (d. 1969)


Senator Obama on the Filibuster

Yesterday, Senator Reid invoked the "nuclear option," ending the filibuster for judicial and executive nominees.  As previous posts have explained, Republicans and Democrats alike have changed sides on the issue, depending on which party is in the majority at the moment.  President Obama is no exception.  He announced his support for the nuclear option, but as a minority-party senator, he denounced it.  Below is the full text of his remarks (Congressional Record (daily) April 13, 2005, pp. 3511-3512):
Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to think about the implications of what has been called the nuclear option and what effect that might have on this Chamber and on this country. I urge all of us to think not just about winning every debate but about protecting free and democratic debate.
During my Senate campaign, I had the privilege and opportunity to meet Americans from all walks of life and both ends of the political spectrum. They told me about their lives, about their hopes, about the issues that matter to them, and they also told me what they think about Washington.
Because my colleagues have heard it themselves, I know it will not surprise many of them to learn that a lot of people do not think much gets done around here on issues about which they care the most. They think the atmosphere has become too partisan, the arguments have become too nasty, and the political agendas have become too petty.
While I have not been here too long, I have noticed that partisan debate is sharp, and dissent is not always well received. Honest differences of opinion and principled compromise often seem to be the victim of a determination to score points against one's opponents.
But the American people sent us here to be their voice. They understand that those voices can at times become loud and argumentative, but they also hope we can disagree without being disagreeable. At the end of the day, they expect both parties to work together to get the people\'s business done.
What they do not expect is for one party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game so they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet.
The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this Chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock will only get worse.
I understand that Republicans are getting a lot of pressure to do this from factions outside the Chamber, but we need to rise above "the ends justify the means" mentality because we are here to answer to the people-all of the people, not just the ones who are wearing our particular party label.
The fact is that both parties have worked together to confirm 95 percent of this President's judicial nominees. The Senate has accepted 205 of his 214 selections. In fact, we just confirmed another one of the President\'s judges this week by a vote of 95 to 0. Overall, this is a better record than any President has had in the last 25 years. For a President who received 51 percent of the vote and a Senate Chamber made up of 55 percent of the President's party, I would say that confirming 95 percent of their judicial nominations is a record to be proud of.
Again, I urge my Republican colleagues not to go through with changing these rules. In the long run, it is not a good result for either party. One day Democrats will be in the majority again, and this rule change will be no fairer to a Republican minority than it is to a Democratic minority.
I sense that talk of the nuclear option is more about power than about fairness. I believe some of my colleagues propose this rule change because they can get away with it rather than because they know it is good for our democracy.
Right now we are faced with rising gas prices, skyrocketing tuition costs, a record number of uninsured Americans, and some of the most serious national security threats we have ever had, while our bravest young men and women are risking their lives halfway around the world to keep us safe. These are challenges we allwant to meet and problems we all want to solve, even if we do not always agree on how to do it. But if the right of free and open debate is taken away from the minority party and the millions of Americans who ask us to be their voice, I fear the partisan atmosphere in Washington will be poisoned to the point where no one will be able to agree on anything. That does not serve anybody\'s best interest, and it certainly is not what the patriots who founded this democracy had in mind. We owe the people who sent us here more than that. We owe them much more.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Mandatory Medicaid

At The Wall Street Journal, Nicole Hopkins writes of her mother, who had bought insurance on the individual market.  After the insurer told her that it was ending her old plan in favor of a more expensive one, she went to an exchange, which enrolled her in Medicaid.
Of course, Medicaid is not a new option for my mother; she knew that she was poor enough to qualify for cost-free health care. It was a deliberate choice on her part to pay that monthly $276 out of her own pocket. Clearly she had judged that she received a personal benefit from not being on Medicaid.

"I just don't expect anything positive out of getting free health care," she said. "I don't see why other people should have to pay for my care, whether it be through taxes or otherwise." In paying for health insurance herself—she won't accept help from her family, either—she was safeguarding her dignity and independence and her sense of being a fully functioning member of society.
Before ObamaCare, Medicaid was one option. Not the option. Before this, she had never been, in effect, ordered to take a handout. Now she has been forced to join the government-reliant poor, though she would prefer to contribute her two mites. The authorities behind "affordable care" had erased her right to calculate what she was willing to spend to preserve her dignity—to determine what she thinks is affordable.
That little contribution can mean the difference between dignity and despair.
For the truly poor, being institutionally forced to take welfare is demoralizing. The Affordable Care Act is at risk of systematizing learned helplessness by telling individuals like my mother that they cannot afford to care for themselves in the way they could before the law was enacted. "This makes me feel poorer than ever," she said.

Native Advertising

At The Washington Post, Erik Wemple writes:
One of the hottest issues in journalism today is “native” advertising, the tricks that publishers deploy to elide the domains of journalism and advertising. BuzzFeed has sustained gray-bearded criticism for its boundary-defying listicles. The Atlantic earlier this year ran a native ad from the Church of Scientology that inflamed its audience and prompted an apology and a review of Atlantic procedures for approving ads. Forbes, The Washington Post and the Huffington Post are also experimenting with this approach to funding journalism.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Obamacare and Bad Poll Numbers

Gallup reports:
Uninsured Americans who have visited a federal or state health insurance exchange website generally have been unhappy with their experience. Sixty-three percent of those who have visited say their experience using the health exchange was negative, including 30% who say it was "very negative." About a third, 34% say their experience was positive, with 5% rating it as "very positive."
Gallup also reports:
  The 56% of U.S. adults who now say it is not the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage continues to reflect a record high. Prior to 2009, a clear majority of Americans consistently had said the government should take responsibility for ensuring that all Americans have healthcare.
Trend: The Role of the Federal Gov't in Ensuring Americans Have Healthcare Coverage
















CBS reports:
President Obama's job approval rating has plunged to the lowest of his presidency, according to a new CBS News poll released Wednesday, and Americans' approval of the Affordable Care Act has dropped it's lowest since CBS News started polling on the law.

Thirty-seven percent now approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, down from 46 percent in October -- a nine point drop in just a month. Mr. Obama's disapproval rating is 57 percent -- the highest level for this president in CBS News Polls.

A rocky beginning to the opening of the new health insurance exchanges has also taken its toll on how Americans perceive the Affordable Care Act. Now, approval of the law has dropped to 31 percent - the lowest number yet recorded in CBS News Polls, and a drop of 12 points since last month. Sixty-one percent disapprove (a high for this poll), including 46 percent who say they disapprove strongly.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Obamacare: The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned

Juliet Eilperin and Sandhya Somashekhar report at The Washington Post:
The Obama administration brought in a private consulting team to independently assess how the federal online health insurance enrollment system was developing, according to a newly disclosed document, and in late March received a clear warning that its Oct. 1 launch was fraught with risks.
The analysis by McKinsey & Co. foreshadowed many of the problems that have dogged HealthCare.gov since its rollout, including the facts that the call-in centers would not work properly if the online system was malfunctioning and that insufficient testing would make it difficult to fix problems after the launch.
The report was provided to The Washington Post by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Eilperin follows up: 
White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama was told in April about a review of HealthCare.gov's problems, but Carney declined to specify the details of the briefing.
In his November 14 press conference, however, the president said:
Okay, on the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to. Had I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great.

I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don't think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity a week before the website opens if I thought that it wasn’t going to work. So clearly, we and I did not have enough awareness about the problems in the website. Even a week into it, the thinking was that these were some glitches that would be fixed with patches, as opposed to some broader systemic problems that took much longer to fix and we’re still working on them. 
National Journal reports:
A top technology official in the development of the Obamacare enrollment website said Tuesday that 30 to 40 percent of the online marketplace remains to be built.
Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, testified at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday, where he claimed responsibility for making sure the technology pieces of the site are in place.
According to Chao, repairs to HealthCare.gov are ongoing, and security testing of the site is being conducted daily and weekly. Yet a significant portion of the overall federal exchange system still needs to be built.
Asked by Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., what portion of the enrollment site had yet to be created when the site launched Oct. 1, Chao said he did not have an exact percentage but that all functions prioritized for the lauch were completed and tested. However, now in the second month of implementation, a significant amount remains undeveloped.

The Gettysburg Address

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

At The New York Times, historian Allen Guelzo writes:
The warning Lincoln issues is his admission that the Civil War was testing whether or not democracies are inherently unstable — “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.” Today, many take democracy for granted as the endpoint of political development. But it did not look that way in 1863. The French Revolution, which promised to be the American Revolution’s beachhead in Europe, swiftly circled downward in the Reign of Terror and then the tyranny of Bonaparte; democratic uprisings in Spain in 1820, in Russia in 1825, in France in 1830 and across Europe in 1848 were crushed by newly renascent monarchies or subverted by Romantic philosophers, glorying in regimes built on blood, soil and nationality rather than the Rights of Man.
The outbreak of the American Civil War only gave the monarchs further reason to rejoice. The survival of the American democracy had been a thorn in their royal sides, unsettling their downtrodden peoples with dreams of self-government. That this same troublesome democracy would, in 1861, obligingly proceed to blow its own political brains out — and do it in defense of the virtues of human slavery — gave the monarchs no end of delight.
Lincoln’s task at Gettysburg was to persuade his hearers, on the evidence offered by three days of battle, that democracy’s sun had not set after all. Gettysburg was not only a victory, but a victory won with the Union Army’s back to the wall, and its news came, appropriately, on July 4.
 At The Los Angeles Times, historian Ronald C. White writes:
In his final three sentences Lincoln pointed away from words to deeds. He contrasted "what we say here" with "what they did here."
In this closing paragraph, he continued his use of repetition: "To be dedicated; to be here dedicated." And: "We take increased devotion"; "the last full measure of devotion."
Lincoln, who always chose his words carefully, here selected words that conjured up the call to religious commitment he heard regularly in the preaching at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington.
At this point in his delivery, Lincoln made the only addition to the text he had written. He interjected "under God." Unlike words added extemporaneously in earlier speeches, which he often edited out before he allowed a speech to be published, Lincoln included "under God" in subsequent copies of the address.
Those words pointed toward the next phrase, "a new birth of freedom," with its layered political and religious meanings. Politically speaking, at Gettysburg he was no longer defending an old Union but proclaiming a new one.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Journalism and Chopped Quotations

Many posts have dealt with the mechanics of newsmaking, which involves various backdoor exchanges and negotiations between journalists and sources.  Sometimes the product is less than fully accurate.

Mike Allen reports at Politico:
HOW THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE – READ A QUOTE AS PUBLISHED, AND HOW IT WAS EMAILED TO THE REPORTER – “GOP group money down, hints at donor uncertainty,” by AP’s Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines and Steve Peoples in Boston: “The biggest Republican-leaning money machines are spending dramatically less to help the party ahead of the 2014 congressional elections, a year after big-dollar conservative groups poured millions into unsuccessful campaigns … Groups such as American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce no longer are willing to risk major investments on hard-line conservatives who embarrassed GOP leaders last fall and rattled the confidence of party donors. … ‘Unlike previous cycles, we won't be sending good money after substandard candidates with weak campaigns,’ said Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for the conservative super political action committee American Crossroads.” http://goo.gl/ADHArB
--HERE’S COLLEGIO’S FULL QUOTE: “There was obviously some donor fatigue after 2012 but we're getting past that now, and donors are awakening to the best Senate map and set of candidates republicans have seen in several cycles. Wherever opportunities lie in 2014, Crossroads will be there -- but unlike previous cycles we won't be sending good money after substandard candidates with weak campaigns.”
November 19 update -- Eric Wemple writes at The Washington Post:
When Collegio saw his quote, he wasn’t pleased. “I said, ‘Wow, they pulled that out of context,’” Collegio tells the Erik Wemple Blog. So he zipped his entire quote over to Allen,* who turned the before-and-after comparison into the top item in this morning’s “Playbook.”
...
In other words, says Collegio, “What they used as the quote came after a dash and a but, yet the quote pretended as though it was its own self-sustaining sentence.” The point that got chopped, says Collegio, is that American Crossroads is “very optimistic.”
AP spokesman Paul Colford rips back, “Our story is based on solid reporting that goes beyond his quote, which we were under no obligation to run in full.”
Decades ago, such a quote-rebutting moment would have been unthinkable. People who felt they got misquoted might have complained to the news organization — probably to no avail — and railed about the mistreatment in phone conversations with their peers. Perhaps they’d ring up one of the handful of media critics out there. Today there are so many delicious options, including a statement on the company Web site, Twitter postings, Facebook, etc. Even better than all of those, “Playbook” itself. The space that Collegio managed to grab is worth a good $35,000, and now the entirety of Influential Washington knows how American Crossroads feels about next year’s elections. That’s a win.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Legal and Technical Trouble for Obamacare

At The Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler explains limitations of the president's "fix" to Obamacare:
It’s nice that regulators may forbear enforcing the relevant regulatory requirements, but this is not the only source of potential legal jeopardy. So, for instance, what happens when there’s a legal dispute under one of these policies? Say, for instance, an insurance company denies payment for something that is not covered under the policy but that would have been covered under the PPACA and the insured sues? Would an insurance company really want to have to defend this decision in court? After all, this would place the insurance company in the position of seeking judicial enforcement of an illegal insurance policy. If there’s an answer to this, I haven’t seen it [but see below]. It’s almost as if the Administration has not thought this through. As Sarah Kliff reports, this supposed “fix” creates a “big mess.”
...
The new policy announced by the President does not alter any of the PPACA’s legal requirements. Under the PPACA, only plans that meet various requirements are “qualified health plans” (QHPs). Only QHPs may be sold on exchanges or satisfy the minimum coverage requirement (the individual mandate). More importantly, under Section 300gg-6 insurers are barred from offering health insurance plans in individual and small group markets that do not include the essential health benefits package. This obligation remains. Would it affect the enforceability of such an insurance policies terms in private legal dispute in state court? It’s understandable if insurance companies will be in no rush to find out.
The Washington Post reports:
The Obama administration will consider the new federal insurance marketplace a success if 80 percent of users can buy health-care plans online, according to government and industry officials familiar with the project.
The goal for how many people should be able to make it through the insurance exchange is an internal target that administration officials have not made public. It acknowledges that as many as one in five Americans who try to use the Web site to buy insurance will be unable to do so.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Cabinet Blues

At Politico, Glenn Thrush explains that a Cabinet post is not nearly as powerful as it sounds.
Sixteen years ago, president Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor, Robert Reich, summed up the frustrations of adjusting to life in the Cabinet, where even a close personal relationship with the president, dating to their Oxford days, didn’t spare him from being bossed around by arrogant West Wing nobodies. “From the view of the White House staff, cabinet officials are provincial governors presiding over alien, primitive territories,” Reich wrote in a classic of the p---ed-off-secretary genre, Locked in the Cabinet. “Anything of any importance occurs in the national palace.”
Two presidents later, the Cabinet is a swarm of 23 people that includes 15 secretaries and eight other Cabinet-rank officers. And yet never has the job of Cabinet secretary seemed smaller. The staffers who rule Obama’s West Wing often treat his Cabinet as a nuisance: At the top of the pecking order are the celebrity power players, like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to be warily managed; at the bottom, what they see as a bunch of well-intentioned political naifs only a lip-slip away from derailing the president’s agenda. [Energy Secretary Stevn] Chu might have been the first Obama Cabinet secretary to earn the disdain of White House aides, but he was hardly the last.
“We are completely marginalized … until the s--- hits the fan,” says one former Cabinet deputy secretary, summing up the view of many officials I interviewed. “If your question is: Did the president rely a lot on his Cabinet as a group of advisers? No, he didn’t,” says former Obama Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
Little wonder, then, that Obama has called the group together only rarely, for what by most accounts are not much more than ritualistic team-building exercises: According to CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, the Cabinet met 19 times in Obama’s first term and four times in the first 10 months of his second term. That’s once every three months or so—about as long as you can drive around before you’re supposed to change your oil.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Federalism and Obamacare

The president's Obamacare decision yesterday on health care is an example of federalism in action.  Louise Radnofsky writes at The Wall Street Journal:
Q: What just happened?
A: President Barack Obama said he wants to let insurance carriers keep selling policies that they earlier cancelled because they didn’t meet standards set by the 2010 Affordable Care Act. He said his administration would ask state insurance commissioners to permit insurance companies to make that move.
...
Q: Can Mr. Obama make this move on his own?
A: White House officials said the administration had the authority to make a temporary policy change of this kind. They cited as a similar example the president’s decision to defer the removal of immigrants who came to the country without authorization when they were children. Republicans said then the president might be overreaching his authority, and they sounded similar notes Thursday. “I am highly skeptical that they can do this administratively,” said House Speaker John Boehner of the move.
Q: Why do state insurance commissioners have to sign off?
A: Insurance is regulated by the states, and the state commissioners had already approved the plan cancellations. They have final say over whether plans are reinstated.
Q: Will insurance commissioners agree?
A: That’s hard to tell right now. At an earlier stage of the debate, some insurance regulators took a dim view of carriers trying to keep policy holders on old plans, as the Journal reported in September. Others have signaled more enthusiasm and one, Dave Jones of California, has already been pushing big carriers in his state to let policy holders stay on their existing coverage a little longer.
But The San Francisco Business Times offers a caveat about California:
Jones also said he has no authority in state or federal law to require Covered California or health insurers in the state to follow the new policy that President Barack Obama announced this morning, which would encourage insurers to allow individual policyholders to continue in existing plans through 2014.
Earlier, the Affordable Care Act required insurers to cancel those plans if they weren't compliant with its regulations, unless they were in effect in March 2010 — when the ACA was enacted — and hadn't been altered since.
It's unclear at this point if Covered California will, or can, follow Jones' recommendation or if insurers like Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente and Health Net will follow the insurance commissioner's suggestion that they notify individual plan policyholders of the opportunity to extend current plans beyond Dec. 31 and through 2014. 
Sarah Kliff writes at The Washington Post:
It took about three hours exactly for states to start pushing back against President Obama's request that regulators allow insurance plans to offer current products in 2014.
Washington state insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler has announced that he will not allow insurance companies to do so.
"In the interest of keeping the consumer protections we have enacted and ensuring that we keep health insurance costs down for all consumers, we are staying the course," he said in a statement moments ago. "We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies. I believe this is in the best interest of the health insurance market in Washington."
I covered the National Association of Insurance Commissioners for about two years really closely. ... One thing you quickly learn covering the NAIC is that it has a wing of really progressive, liberal insurance commissioners, about five or six regulators who regularly work together. Kreidler is without a doubt part of that camp and one of the most liberal insurance regulators in the country.
It does feel a bit weird to have one of the most liberal regulators be the first out of the gate to oppose Obama. At the same time, it also makes sense: What Kreidler is doing is a full-throated defense of the Affordable Care Act.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Obamacare Is Ailing

The president is having a bad week. USA Today reports:
The bottom-line number on HealthCare.gov didn't even meet the lowest of expectations: 26,794.

That's the number of people who were able to navigate through the troubled federal health exchange's website to select a health insurance plan in its first month of operation, the administration said in a highly anticipated announcement Wednesday.

All told, 106,185 individuals have selected an insurance plan through state and federal exchanges — and another 396,261 were found to be eligible for the expanded Medicaid insurance. Still, those numbers represent only 1% of the estimated 48 million Americans without health insurance, and are far short of the 7 million the Congressional Budget Office had said were expected to sign up in the first year.
Liberal pundit Ezra Klein writes that Democrats are starting to break with the administration on the issue:
The most serious manifestation of that break is Sen. Mary Landrieu's "Keeping the Affordable Care Act Promise Act." It's co-sponsored not just by the usual moderate Democrats -- Landrieu and Dianne Feinstein and Mark Pryor and Kay Hagan -- but also by Oregon liberal Jeff Merkley. It's worth noting that Merkley is up for reelection in 2014.
The argument Landrieu is making on behalf of the bill will appeal to many Senate Democrats. "When we passed the Affordable Care Act, we did so with the intention that if you liked your health plan, you could keep it," she said on the Senate floor. "A promise was made and this legislation will ensure that this promise is kept." It's an underplayed dynamic of the current political storm that many congressional Democrats feel Obama broke a promise he made to them, as well.
The bill Landrieu is offering could really harm the law. It would mean millions of people who would've left the individual insurance market and gone to the exchanges will stay right where they are. Assuming those people skew younger, healthier, and richer -- and they do -- Obamacare's premiums will rise. Meanwhile, many people who could've gotten better insurance on the exchanges will stay in bad plans that will leave them bankrupt when they get sick.
 Gallup reports:
Americans' views of the 2010 healthcare law have worsened in recent weeks, with 40% approving and 55% disapproving of it. For most of the past year, Americans have been divided on the law, usually tilting slightly toward disapproval. The now 15-percentage-point gap between disapproval and approval is the largest Gallup has measured in the past year.

The results are based on Gallup's annual Health and Healthcare poll, conducted Nov. 7-10.

Currently, 73% of Democrats, 39% of independents, and 8% of Republicans approve of the healthcare law. Approval is down at least marginally among all three groups since Gallup's last update in late October.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The President's Public Standing

Gallup reports that the president's public image has taken a hit:
After six messy weeks -- defined chiefly by the partial government shutdown and troubled rollout of the federal government's healthcare exchange website -- President Barack Obama's reputation with the American public has faltered in some ways, but not in others. Most notably, for the first time in his presidency, fewer than half of Americans, 47%, say Obama is a "strong and decisive leader," down six percentage points since September.
Similarly, the share of Americans who view Obama as "honest and trustworthy" has dipped five points. Exactly half of Americans still consider Obama honest and trustworthy, but this is down from 55% in September and 60% in mid-2012 as Obama was heading toward re-election.
Americans' confidence in their chief executive to manage the government has also waned five points since September, to 42%. However, this level is similar to 44% in June and 45% in June 2012.

On the positive side for Obama, more than half of Americans -- 54% -- continue to believe he appreciates the problems Americans face in their daily lives, down only two points since September. And while far fewer than half -- 38% -- say he has a clear plan for solving the country's problems, this is typical for Obama, as well as for most recent presidents.
 Quinnipiac University reports:
American voters disapprove 54 - 39 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, his lowest approval rating in any Quinnipiac University national poll since he became president, as even women disapprove 51 - 40 percent, according to a national poll released today.

Today's results compare to a slight 49 - 45 percent disapproval October 1. President Obama's lowest score before today was a 55 - 41 percent disapproval in an October 6, 2011 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

Today, disapproval is 58 - 37 percent among men, 91 - 6 percent among Republicans and 63 - 30 percent among independent voters. Democrats approve 79 - 14 percent. White voters disapprove 62 - 32 percent while black voters approve 75 - 15 percent and Hispanic voters disapprove by a slim 47 - 41 percent margin.

Voters in every income and age group disapprove of the job Obama is doing, with the biggest disapproval, 59 - 36 percent, among voters over 65 years old.

For the first time today, American voters say 52 - 44 percent that Obama is not honest and trustworthy. His previous lowest marks on honesty were May 30, when 49 percent of voters said he was honest and 47 percent said he wasn't.

"Like all new presidents, President Barack Obama had a honeymoon with American voters, with approval ratings in the high 50s. As the marriage wore on, he kept his job approval scores in the respectable, though not overwhelming, 40s. Today, for the first time it appears that 40 percent floor is cracking," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"Any Democrat with an 11-point approval deficit among women is in trouble. And any elected official with an 8-point trust deficit is in serious trouble."

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Relinquishing Citizenship

Our chapter on citizenship discusses ways in which Americans can stop being AmericansThe Washington Post reports:
This item just in via an “activity” report from the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, headlined “Soul Legend Relinquishes U.S. Citizenship.”
Long-time Swiss resident Tina Turner” was in the embassy Oct. 24 to sign her “Statement of Voluntary Relinquishment of U.S. Citizenship under Section 349 (a)(1) of the INA” — the Immigration and Naturalization Act.
...
The key word in the embassy report apparently is the term “relinquishment.” That means, a knowledgeable source told us, that she did not “formally renounce her U.S. citizenship under 349(a)(5) Immigration and Nationality Act, but took Swiss citizenship with the intent to lose her U.S. citizenship.” As opposed to formal renunciation — a much more complex process, we were told — there are no “tax or other penalties for loss of citizenship in this fashion.”

Troubled Rollout of Obamacare, Continued

The Washington Post reports:
Roughly 40,000 Americans have signed up for private insurance through the flawed federal online insurance marketplace since it opened six weeks ago, according to two people with access to the figures.
That amount is a tiny fraction of the total projected enrollment for the 36 states where the federal government is running the online health-care exchange, indicating the slow start to the president’s initiative. The first concrete evidence of the popularity — and accessibility — of the new federal insurance exchange emerged as the White House has been preparing to release this week the first official tally of how many people have chosen coverage using the Web site, HealthCare.gov.
Reuters reports:
President Barack Obama's healthcare reform has reached only about 3 percent of its enrollment target for 2014 in 12 U.S. states where new online health insurance marketplaces are mostly working smoothly, a report released on Monday said.

States with functioning exchanges have signed up 49,100 people compared with the 1.4 million people expected to be enrolled for 2014, according to the report by healthcare research and consultancy firm Avalere Health.

With enrollment in the federal HealthCare.gov website serving 36 states stalled by technical failures, the weak sign-ups for functioning insurance exchanges could be due to the administration's difficulty to promote the program as a success, Avalere said.

The government is due to release national enrollment figures for the month of October this week. Open enrollment ends March 31, 2014.
USA Today reports:
Since the launch of Obamacare, residents nationwide are finding themselves targets of ACA scams. It's making the already-troubled debut of a controversial law even more confusing.

"It's an opportunity for scammers, and scammers very rarely leave an opportunity unfulfilled," said Mark Rasch, a former computer crime and fraud prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The scams come in many forms -- as e-mails, phone calls and imposter websites. Some rely on ignorance about what the health-care law actually covers, such as one touting that recipients could qualify for cheaper auto insurance. (Hint: The ACA does not affect car coverage.) Others are websites designed to look like the government-sanctioned Healthcare.gov.

Most are designed to steal from people, be it their money or their identities, Rasch said.

"They're very difficult to investigate as a scam, because it's not a scam. It's hundreds of scams by thousands of people," said Rasch, who runs Maryland-based Rasch Technology and Cyberlaw.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Compliance Jobs

Our chapter on bureaucracy and the administrative state discusses the cost of complying with federal regulations.  At The Hill, Ben Goad and Julian Hattem report that growing regulatory activity has created jobs in the compliance industry
ObamaCare, the Dodd-Frank Act and other large federal undertakings have led to an outpouring of new agency rules derided by business groups and defended by advocates.

But the regulations have also been a boon for professional compliance officers paid to help companies understand and adapt to the new requirements.

“Staff to track compliance issues is on the rise, and it has been for the last several years,” said Richard Riese, senior vice president for regulatory compliance at the American Bankers Association. “And, at the moment, there’s no prospect it will decrease anytime soon.”

Data kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows an 18-percent increase in the number of compliance officers in the United States between 2009 and 2012, according to an analysis conducted by the conservative American Action Forum (AAF).

At last count, there were an estimated 227,500 compliance officers employed in the United States, according to the BLS. The bureau defines a compliance officer as an employee responsible for evaluating conformity with laws and regulations.
And compliance has fostered the growth of interest groups:
Over the last five years, membership at the Health Care Compliance Association has grown at a rate of roughly 9 percent annually, according to Roy Snell, the trade group’s chief executive.

He said the compliance industry’s growth reflects a shift within companies to consolidate compliance duties under a single officer or department.
From the AAF report:

 

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Obamacare Remains Problematic

The New York Times reports on hospitals such as Memorial Health in Savannah:
Many of these patients were expected to gain health coverage under the Affordable Care Act through a major expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor. But after the Supreme Court in 2012 gave states the right to opt out, Georgia, like about half the states, almost all of them Republican-led, refused to broaden the program.
Now, in a perverse twist, many of the poor people who rely on safety-net hospitals like Memorial will be doubly unlucky. A government subsidy, little known outside health policy circles but critical to the hospitals’ survival, is being sharply reduced under the new health law.
The subsidy, which for years has helped defray the cost of uncompensated and undercompensated care, was cut substantially on the assumption that the hospitals would replace much of the lost income with payments for patients newly covered by Medicaid or private insurance. But now the hospitals in states like Georgia will get neither the new Medicaid patients nor most of the old subsidies, which many say are crucial to the mission of care for the poor.
“We were so thrilled when the law passed, but it has backfired,” said Lindsay Caulfield, senior vice president for planning and marketing at Grady Health in Atlanta, the largest safety-net hospital in Georgia.
Gallup reports:
In the midst of widespread news coverage of problems with the federal health exchange website, relatively few uninsured Americans (18%) -- the primary target population for the exchanges -- have so far attempted to visit an exchange website. The percentage is slightly higher, 22%, among uninsured Americans who say they plan to get insurance through the exchanges.
...
Gallup previously found that less than half of uninsured Americans (44%) who plan to get insurance say they will do so through an exchange, and about one in four say they are more likely to pay a fine instead of getting insurance. These findings help explain the low percentage of the uninsured who have attempted to access the exchange websites
Politico reports:
Only five people have fully completed the enrollment process in the D.C. insurance exchange, according to information compiled by lawmakers from four of the insurance companies participating in the exchange.
Two people enrolled in CareFirst BlueShield plans during October and three enrolled in Kaiser Permanente plans during the month. No enrollment data has been collected by UnitedHealthcare or Aetna as of Nov. 4 or Oct. 24, respectively, the companies said.
The information was collected by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). 
MediaIte reports:
“Thnx Mr. President.” That’s all former MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan had to say to President Barack Obama on Thursday when he announced that the health insurance plan he purchased on the individual market after leaving the news network was being cancelled. The new plan he was eligible would cost him 3.5 times more than his previous plan.
“I bought a catastrophic health policy for $170/mo when I left MSNBC,” Ratigan confessed. “Obamacare cancelled the policy. New rate $600/mo. Thnx Mr. President!”

Friday, November 8, 2013

Poverty, California, and Seniors

The Los Angeles Times reports:
An alternative way of measuring poverty shows that nearly 2.8 million more people are struggling across the country than officially calculated, the U.S. Census Bureau reports – and California has by far the biggest share of people in poverty, eclipsing states such as Mississippi and Louisiana.

The alternative yardstick, known as the supplemental poverty measure, is different from the official poverty rate in a few key ways: It takes tax credits and other government benefits into account. It also counts necessary expenses such as child care and out-of-pocket medical costs.
In addition, it considers the different costs of housing from state to state. That makes a big difference in California, where the broader measure counts more than 8.9 million people living in poverty between 2010 and 2012 -- far higher than the 6.2 million tallied the official way.
The alternative measure found that 16% of Americans, nearly 50 million, are living in poverty, versus the 15.1%, or roughly 47 million officially counted.

The official poverty line is the same “whether you live in New York City or Kansas,” said Marybeth Mattingly, director of research on vulnerable families at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. “This looks at what housing actually costs where you live.”
Using the alternative measure, California had the highest poverty in the country between 2010 and 2012 – 23.8% -- followed by the District of Columbia and Nevada. The official measure ranked Louisiana, Mississippi and New Mexico at the top during that period.

A graph from the Census report shows that poverty among the elderly is much higher in the alernative measure:

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Knowledge and Accountability

At The Monkey Cage blog, Larry Bartels writes:
David Broockman has a new paper exploring the views of nearly one thousand incumbent state legislators regarding electoral accountability. Broockman’s findings suggest that these elected officials see a lot of scope for nonsense and delusion in their relationships with their constituents.
For example, only 15 percent of state legislators agreed that voters “usually know who in government to blame” when they “don’t like a particular public policy.” If voters don’t know who to blame, why not shut down the government?
Are you surprised that elected officials are ideologically “polarized”? Only 42 percent of state legislators said that “Moderate candidates and politicians win significantly more votes.” Many expressed doubt that most voters “decide who to vote for based on the issues” (38 percent in general elections, 46 percent in primaries).
Do politicians see the electorate as ”a rational god of vengeance and of reward,” as Key colorfully put it? Not so much. Almost 60 percent agreed that “voters usually base their choices on only very recent events,” and 35 percent agreed that voters “sometimes decide whether to vote for incumbents based on things completely unrelated to politics, like whether their favorite football team recently won a game.”
The problem is not just with the voters, however.  As we point out in the textbook, state governments are not especially transparent  and the media provide uneven (and diminishing) coverage of state government -- especially where state capitals are isolated from population centers.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Christie and the 2013 Elections

Our chapter on elections discusses state and local races, and our chapter on federalism features of photo of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (who just won reelection) with Cory Booker, the Newark mayor who has become a US senator.  At The Daily Beast, Lloyd Green writes that Christie's landslide reelection yesterday puts him into presidential contention:
As he goes forward, Christie will need to address the questions that clouded his consideration as Romney’s running-mate. Christie will need to assure the party about his own integrity, and his tendency to conflate government with his own self. “Steering government contracts to friends and political allies” is not the best trait for a former federal prosecutor.

Still, the nation having endured Bill Clinton and the Devil in the Blue Dress, Bush 43’s eleventh-hour disclosures about driving under the influence, Obama’s alleged sweetheart deal with corrupt businessman Tony Rezko, and Romney’s offshore and overseas investments, Christie is far from being out of contention.

America has re-defined deviancy down. If a plagiarizing Joe Biden can become vice president, while a plagiarizing Rand Paul can mull the presidency, and a grifting Hillary Rodham Clinton can be the Democrats' leading contender, then Christie should be allowed his moment of glory.

Christie has done more than just log frequent flier miles by jetsetting around the world. He has demonstrated that bipartisanship is more than a dream or a speech applause line. Christie showed that he could reach across the aisle during Superstorm Sandy and he did it again on Election Day, winning two thirds of independents and a third of Democrats.

The scrum over the nation’s future did not end yesterday. The results remained too equivalent. Rejection of Obamacare was not enough to carry the day for Cuccinelli. The Tea Party lost, but it was not vanquished. In New York City, Bill de Blasio—an ex-Sandalista—romped to election as Mayor, while across the Hudson River, a moderate conservative had a landslide win of his own. There was something for everyone.