Jon Henke's blog

 As a signatory to the Demand Question Time petition, I urge you all to sign up and spread the message.  It is being heard by the White House and Congress. Our politics would be healthier if politicians got to ask, and answer, questions with less mediation, less theatrics, less stagecraft and less sloganeering.  Sign the petition and ask them to do it.

Demand Question Time

Mindy Finn and David Corn discussing Demand Question Time on Hardball last night. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UPDATE: Note which party is willing to have a more candid, public, unmediated debate.  And which is not.

Democrats were thrilled with President Barack Obama's performance at last week's question-and-answer session with the House GOP, but it's the Republicans — not the White House — who are embracing a call to make question time a regular part of American political life.

Ross Douthat makes two crucial points.

#1 - Online success is less about the technology, and more about the ideas and motivation.

[T]here’s no necessary connection between online organizing and liberal politics. The Web is just like every pre-Internet political arena: ideology matters less than the level of anger at the incumbent party, and the level of enthusiasm an insurgent candidate can generate.

#2 - Unfortunately, Republican politicians still have very little in the way of real ideas...

If liberals are feeling disillusioned, though, their right-wing imitators may be ripe for an even greater letdown. The Obama administration has at least gone some distance toward enacting an agenda that the net-roots left supports. The “right roots” activists are rallying around politicians who are promising to shrink government without offering any plausible sketch of how to do it.

#1 is about winning the battles (elections) & #2 is about winning the war (better government).  Achieving #1 without addressing #2 is an establishment-protection racket.   Republicans need to insist on more than the usual tax and spending rhetoric.

By now, everybody knows about the shockingly bad electoral conditions for Democrats.  If a Republican has a good chance to win Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, then almost every Democrat in the country has to be scared stiff.

But the electoral problem creates a more immediate predicament for Democrats, and I think we're going to see two sustained Democratic freak outs as they try to figure out how to address this.

• The 2010 elections may mark the end of the Democrat's ability to move a lot of the really big legislation/regulation.
• But if they try to move the really big legislation/regulation before the 2010 elections, they're only going to make their electoral situation worse.

The first Democratic freak out will be an internal Congressional fight in 2010 over whether to (1) move big and fast while they still have the votes, or (2) slow down and preserve as many seats as they can.

The second Democratic freak out is going to occur in 2011 and beyond, when Democrats try to figure out what the lesson of the 2010 elections really is.

• Progressives - and especially the netroots - will say the lesson is "Damn the Republicans, Full Speed Ahead", but that's what they always say.  Revolutionaries like bold action more than practical details.
• Moderates/pragmatists will say the lesson is "don't try to do too much, take smaller steps, make reasonable compromises".  But that is more effective at maintaining power than accomplishing major policy goals.

I think Congressional Democrats are going to become awfully pragmatic.  I'm not really sure where the White House will end up, especially if Rahm Emanuel leaves.  We are definitely going to see a lot of bargaining and ugly deal-making.

Nobody would have predicted this a year or two ago, but....is this going to be the triumph of the DLC over the Progressives within the Democratic Party?

Mark McKinnon (a colleague of mine at Arts+Labs) writes about the uneasy dance between the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement.

Much of the media and most Democrats are dismissive of what is truly a grassroots movement. But the Tea Party has shown remarkable energy in its short life span ... It’s a very interesting dance right now watching the courtship between the movement and GOP candidates and officeholders. ... [T]he movement is wary of being identified as “Republican” or being controlled by any individuals or organization ...

The Tea Party crowd is unlikely to actually become a third party, but their ability to leverage energy behind candidates and policies could be very similar to what MoveOn.org has accomplished on the left. Movements are also often identified by a clear leader. The question that remains: Who will that be?

I think it is an open question whether the tea party dynamic should really be called a "movement" yet.  There is a fine line between movement and mob, and that line is defined by whether they are making progress or noise. 

The Tea Party outrage could organize around viable policies and strategies to accomplish their goals. That would be a movement.  But if it does not identify viable policies and strategies to accomplish their goals - and leadership to move them forward - then the outrage without progress will eventually reduce them (us) to a mob.

However, I'm not sure a tea party movement will resemble Moveon.org.  A Democratic activist once told me he was surprised that (he'd heard) the largest Tea Party email list was only about 50,000 people.  Compared to Moveon.org's many millions of emails, that seemed inconsequential.

That's a key misunderstanding.  The Left think this is an organized, top-down effort - a few organizations spinning up the sheep to do their bidding. That's why they kept insisting this was "astroturf".  But that's exactly wrong (and a serious under-estimation of the legitimacy and broad resonance of the outrage).

The tea party movement is not a single organization with millions of email addresses.  It is tens of thousands of small groups and individuals, each of which has dozens, hundreds or thousands of email addresses.   The tea party movement really is a decentralized, spontaneous, grassroots reaction.

Of course, that has up and down sides. Instead of organizing to accomplish specific victories (as Moveon.org has done on occassion), they may more closely resemble the anti-war crowd - full of sound and fury, but without much specific direction. The anti-war "movement" eventually became alienated or folded into organizations like Moveon.org.

The immediate problem both Tea Party activists and Republicans face is that, while they know what they don't want, they don't have a lot of clear ideas about how to accomplish what they do want. "Be principled" is not a strategy. 

The Tea Party crowd may not end up being a movement, but that's ok.  The energy itself is important to maintain until the policies and organizing vehicles do emerge.

Micah Sifry writes an important essay about hope, change and disillusionment: "The Obama Disconnect: What Happens When Myth Meets Reality".

[T]he image of Barack Obama as the candidate of "change", community organizer, and "hope-monger" (his word), was sold intensively during the campaign. Even after the fact, we were told that his victory represented the empowerment of a bottom-up movement, powered by millions of small donors, grassroots volunteers, local field organizers and the internet. [...] The truth is that Obama was never nearly as free of dependence on big money donors as the reporting suggested, nor was his movement as bottom-up or people-centric as his marketing implied. [...] 

The problem for Obama and the Democrats today, as they head into 2010, is that much of their activist base appears to have swallowed too much of the wrong half of the myth: they thought that Obama would be more of a change-agent, and never really embraced their own role.

I wrote about this in 2008: "The election of Obama did not empower people. It empowered politicians. ... Hope and Change got people on board the Democratic bus. Political convenience will throw them under it."

Sifry has recognized a deep flaw in the Democratic/Progressive message: Progressives preach "empowerment", yet they constantly move power to Washington, DC and away from local and state government.  As a matter of pure statistics, individual voters have more power at the local level than the State level, and more power at the State level than the Federal level.  Decentralization + voter mobility is even more empowering.

And yet, power continues to consolidate in Washington, DC.

Ezra Klein has been arguing that "a political system too dysfunctional to avert crisis is also too dysfunctional to respond to it."  David Roberts has said that critically important issues rest "in the myopic, sociopathically indifferent hands of Ben Nelson, who represents one-half of one percent of U.S. citizens".  And you know what?  They're right.  While we may disagree on the policies that ought to be enacted - and on whether the problem is the filibuster or the public choice theory problems - it is true that there are many structural, political flaws in our collective decision-making process that make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to address difficult problems effectively.

Progressives continue empowering Washington, DC, but what they are ultimately empowering is a Single Point of Failure.

This discrepancy between the Democratic message and reality represents an opportunity for Republicans to both discredit the Democratic message and pursue a better, more reality-based agenda.  If Republicans want to pick up these voters alienated by the Obama Myth and tap into America's deep, populist interest in limited government and individual freedom, they should take advantage of this opportunity to legitimately "empower the people". 

A couple weeks ago, the American Family Association protested CPAC's inclusion of GOProud - a gay conservative group - as a CPAC 2010 sponsor.  They may say they don't hate homosexuals, but the AFA rhetoric makes it pretty clear that they don't want gay people around.

A spokesman for the American Family Association says a Republican homosexual activist group doesn't belong at a popular conservative political conference in February. ... "The bottom line is that homosexuality is not a conservative value," Fischer states emphatically.

Unsurprisingly, WorldNetDaily is leaping to participate in the bigotry, saying that "A viral alarm [is] spreading among conservatives that the American Conservative Union is accepting homosexual sponsorship for its annual Conservative Political Action Conference..." and adding "Campaign launched to reject support from homosexuals".  AFA Action is demanding other conservative organizations oppose GOProud participation at CPAC, saying "groups that promote the normalization of homosexual behavior should be resisted without reserve or compromise by any genuinely conservative organization."

Know how you can tell this is more about bigotry against gays themselves than principled opposition to any support for gay marriage?

• Dick Cheney is pro-gay marriage and opposed to federal marriage amendment....just like GOProud.  Go try to find an example of AFA or WorldNetDaily "resist[ing] without reserve or compromise" when he spoke at CPAC.  You can't.
• Ron Paul is opposed to a federal marriage amendment (he voted against DoMA) or a Constitutional ban on gay marriage...just like GOProud.  Go try to find an example of AFA or WorldNetDaily "resist[ing] without reserve or compromise" when he spoke at CPAC.  You can't.
• The Libertarian Party opposes government restrictions prohibiting gay marriage (they opposed DoMA and support "marriage equality").  Go try to find an example of AFA or WorldNetDaily "resist[ing] without reserve or compromise" when the LP co-sponsored CPAC.  You can't.
• Google supports gay marriage (they opposed Proposition 8 in 2008).  Go try to find an example of AFA or WorldNetDaily "resist[ing] without reserve or compromise" when the Google co-sponsored CPAC.  You can't.
• UPDATE: The Log Cabin Republicans, who support gay marriage, sponsored CPAC in 2005. Go try to find an example of AFA or WorldNetDaily "resist[ing] without reserve or compromise" when the the Log Cabin Republicans co-sponsored CPAC.  You can't.

American Family Association and WorldNetDaily are not defending traditional marriage or conservative principles. They're just being bigots.

I've made my case regarding gay marriage in the past, and I'll line up with Ed Morrissey of Hot Air on this story.  Commending CPAC's courage in accepting and defending GOProud's co-sponsorship, Morrissey writes that "GOProud’s priorities are fundamentally in line with [our key principles].  We should not allow a purity campaign to push away natural allies on the fiscal crisis that grips our country, and the opportunity we have to correct it in 2010."

I hope a CPAC speaker will address this matter and express support for GOProud...or even make the case for gay marriage.  I'm looking at you, Andrew Breitbart. Or perhaps it's time to start a "Draft Dick Cheney to talk about Gay Marriage at CPAC" campaign.

Should GOProud and CPAC face more of this during CPAC 2010, I hope that CPAC attendees, whatever their position on the gay marriage issue itself, will stand against the kind of bigotry that WorldNetDaily and American Family Association are peddling.

More than a few people have accurately observed that politics invariably turns into a a protection racket.  Note: None have made the point more enjoyably than the brilliant Mary Katharine Ham in this video.

In the Washington Examiner, Dr. Paul Hsieh (of Geekpress) points out that, even if they only intend to give people lower costs and more access, government tends to make offers that you can't refuse.  We already see this happening in health care, and more intervention will only exacerbate it - especially as the budget crunch becomes more a more immediate problem.

Suppose the mafia came to your town and forced everyone to purchase all their meals at mob-approved restaurants. The mafia would also select the menu items. [...]

Under any system of mandatory insurance, the government must necessarily determine what constitutes an "acceptable" plan. Hence, this creates a magnet for special interests seeking to include their pet benefits on the required insurance menu.

Massachusetts residents must purchase numerous benefits that they may neither need nor want, such as in vitro fertilization, drug abuse therapy and chiropractor services. If you'd rather purchase low-cost catastrophic-only insurance without those options, tough luck. Mandatory insurance thus violates the individual's right to spend his own money for his benefit according to his best judgment. [...]

Like the mafia, Congress wants to make you an offer you can't refuse. At least the mafia doesn't pretend that it's acting for your own good.

There is no doubt that our current health care system is deeply flawed, and I accept that health care presents a genuinely wicked problem for both markets and democracies.  However, the more complex the attempted "solution", the more room there is for errors, unintended consequences, protectionism and rent-seeking. We have already seen the administration try to buy off doctors, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and hospitals with legislative favors and protection. That's not an unusual error. That is how legislation works.

Current legislation may be a problem, but the biggest problems lay over the horizon where deficits and debt will force compromises and mandates driven more by public choice theory than public interest.

[Disclosure: I worked with the Doug Hoffman campaign. However, the views here are my own. I have not discussed this at all with the Hoffman campaign.]

The bottom line on NY-23:

• Doug Hoffman just won the Republican Primary. The general election is next year.

• There are two broken, corrupt, arrogant political parties we need to defeat.  We beat the Republican establishment in 2009.  We'll beat the Democratic Party in 2010.

• NY-23 is not really about Conservatives VS Moderates.  It is about the Establishment VS the Movement.

What happened in NY-23:

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that blue state Republicans had to nominate a "not too hot, not too cold" candidate - what my friend Max Borders called a Keynesian political strategy of tweaking the policy variables until you get a candidate whose positions seem most appealing to the most people.  Like Keynesian economic tinkering, it all works very well....until some fundamental shift reveals the underlying artificiality, and it all falls apart.

Political parties gain power by standing for something appealing.  But when a party gains power, it loses definition.  Rather than standing for something appealing and well-defined, they try to stand for anything appealing enough to win.  But you can only tinker so much before you destroy the brand that people had elected, and then you become the minority again.

The minority is where Parties and movements go to be reborn.  There, they have to figure out who they are, and what their mission is.  You can't storm the castle until you're all facing the same direction and focused on the same goals.  Sometimes - as in NY-23 - that involves telling the establishment "Thank you, but our mission is in another castle" (If I might borrow political wisdom from Super Mario Bros).

The establishment GOP - the NY GOP, the NRCC, the RNC and a few prominent Republicans - got behind another establishment GOP type in Dede Scozzafava. In any other recent year, she would have sailed through.  Not in 2009.

The public - including moderates, libertarians and alienated Republicans - has grown much more nervous about Democratic governance.  The Tea Party movement is just one manifestation of the sparks that are flying, but it goes far deeper than that, and the establishment GOP has been oblivious to, or dismissive of, these sparks. With Dede Scozzafava, the establishment Republican Party threw gasoline on top of the sparks and a brushfire erupted.  The result was the quintessential "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" campaign of Doug Hoffman.

What NY-23 Is About

The story of NY-23 is not "conservatives beat moderates" or "conservative loses to Democrat".

The story of NY-23 is "the Right starts dismantling the Republican establishment."  This is about how the Republican Party is defined and who defines it.

Right now, the movement wants the Republican Party to be defined by opposition to big government. Gradually, as new leaders arise, we will demand that the Republican Party be defined by its own solutions, as well, but rebuilding is an incremental process. We can hammer out the policy agenda and the boundaries of the coalition later.

For now, our job is to disrupt the establishment GOP.  If we beat Democrats while we're at it, great. But the first priority is to fix the Drunk Party - the Living Dead establishment Republicans. They're history. They just don't know it yet.

NY-23 was the first shot in that war.  It was a direct hit.  Next year, we start storming the castle.

Note: Below, I offer a suggestion that would actually help President Obama against his critics. And yet, his critics should support it because it is the right thing to do.

Virtually everybody - Right, Left and Media - agrees that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama is somewhere between premature and ridiculous. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has beclowned itself again. Given that context, it will be very difficult for Obama to accept the prize without appearing...well, ridiculous.  He might turn down the prize or even hand it over to one of the people who genuinely accomplished things. Both would be noble gestures by President Obama to correct an error he did not create.

However, the exceptionally smart James Pethokoukis offered a better idea...

Obama should accept [Nobel Peace Prize] on behalf of Reagan (defeating USSR), Bush I (freeing Kuwait), Clinton (free trade) and Bush II (liberating 50m)

This would be a masterful move by President Obama. Imagine this speech being given directly to the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the entire world:

I thank you and accept the honor you have bestowed. However, I do not accept the Nobel Peace Prize on my own behalf.  I accept it on behalf of The United States of America, the greatest force for good the world has ever known.

• I accept it on behalf of President Ronald Reagan, who led the final victory over the evil empire of Soviet communism.  America was right and the world is a better, more peaceful place because Ronald Reagan had the courage to win that fight.

• I accept it on behalf of President George H.W. Bush, who led the liberation of Kuwait. America was right and the world is a better, more peaceful place because George H.W. Bush had the courage to win that fight.

• I accept it on behalf of President Bill Clinton, who fought for, and won, more free trade around the world. America was right and the world is a better, more peaceful place because Bill Clinton had the courage to win that fight.

• And yes, even though I opposed the war in Iraq, I accept this Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of President George W. Bush, who fought for the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether or not the Iraq war was the appropriate policy, America is right to support freedom and democracy, and the world is a better, more peaceful place because George W. Bush had the courage to remove the tyrants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I do not accept this Nobel Peace Prize on my own behalf.  I accept it on behalf of America, that Shining City upon a Hill that has made this world a better place for us all.

Nothing would disarm his critics and rally the American public to President Obama faster than him giving this speech to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. 

UPDATE: President Obama's remarks this morning are a step in the right direction.  I hope he will go further and tell the world exactly what that leadership has been over recent decades.

"Let me be clear," Obama said. "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

Steven Hayward's "Is Conservatism Brain-Dead" has been much-discussed in the last few days, prompting some valuable introspection within the Right. I'll excerpt some of the more important points.

The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.  Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We've traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites.

President Obama has done conservatives a great favor, delivering CPR to the movement with his program of government gigantism, but this resuscitation should not be confused with a return to political or intellectual health. [...] When the ideas are absent, the movement has nothing to offer -- except opposition. That doesn't work for long in American politics. [...]

[S]ome on the right think talk radio, especially, has dumbed down the movement, that there is plenty of sloganeering but not much thought, that the blend of entertainment and politics is too outre. John Derbyshire, author of a forthcoming book about conservatism's future, "We are Doomed," calls our present condition "Happy Meal Conservatism, cheap, childish and familiar."

The key to fixing this problem is leadership - among elected officials, traditional movement leaders, grassroots...and, hopefully, new movement leaders. The question is whether those people will pick up this opportunity to lead...or make excuses, point fingers and retrench.  I'll repeat what I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election.

The rebuilding and renewal of the Right will start soon.  This will be very important.   The Right and the Republican Party are at an inflection point, and there are many directions things can go.   The destiny of the Right and the Republican Party will be determined in large part by the decisions you make in the days, weeks and months ahead.

• Some of you will say "we have learned our lesson", and then try to pass off cosmetic changes as Reform.  You are the problem.


• Some of you will say "Republicans need to fight/hold Democrats accountable", as if it is sufficient to be against Democrats.  The pendulum may eventually swing back to you, but you won't know what to do with it.


• Some of you will say "Republicans need to carry our message to the American people", as if the problem is that Republicans haven't been saying "tax cuts and limited government" loudly enough.  The problem is not the inability to communicate; the problem is that you have no idea how to actually deliver on those ideas.


• Others will say "Republicans need to be more principled", as if the problem is a mere lack of personal courage and principle by Republicans.  Even the best people can't limit government if there is not an effective strategy for implementation - for getting "from here to there".  You don't need better people.  You need a better strategy.

The problem is not Republican politicians, although many Republicans politicians are a problem.  The problem is not with the basic ideals of limited government and personal freedom, either.  The problem is a movement that plays small-ball and cedes responsibility for infrastructure to business interests, leadership that rewards those who make friends rather than waves, an entrenched Party and Movement support system that mostly supports itself, an echo chamber that has rotted our intellect, a grassroots that is ill-equipped to shape the Republican Party, and a Republican Party that has replaced strategy with tactics, substance with marketing.