Democrats and Financial Regulation

Kevin Drum makes the point that when it comes to asleep-at-the-switch on financial regulation, there's blame enough to go 'round at both parties (link). I'll drink to that: Democrats have a lot to be ashamed of here. Kevin mentions Charles Schumer, the target of a New York Times searchlight this morning, but there are plenty more. He could surely have mentioned (ex) Senator Tom (Mr. Credit Card) Daschle , (ex) Senator Joe Biden from MBNA, or Senator (if he is a Democrat?) Joe Lieberman, the enabler of sloppy accounting. Or, of course, Barney Frank, Mr.FNMA/GNMA.

With people like Daschle and Biden, I suppose you have the old familiar problem: small state, big interest. With Barney Frank, I think the problem is a bit different. I have to admit a lot of ambivalence here. On the one hand, Frank is probably the smartest and funniest man in Congress sinice the departure of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Alan Simpson, and may well be better briefed than anyone at all. On the other hand, he believes a lot of extremely dopey things. I don't think he is in the pocket of FNMA/GNMA in quite the way the Wall Street Journal would have us believe (though I have to keep reminding myself: just because the Journal believes it doesn't mean it's wrong). I do think he is starry-eyed out over the cause of expanded home ownership, and lets himself be blinded by all kinds of abuses in consequence. I'm glad he has a seat at the tables of power, and I love it when he skewers and eviscerates the idiocies of his opponents. I just wish there were somebody around to sit on his head once in a while. Trouble is, you'd have to be smarter than Barney Frank to do it, and the list of candidates for that slot is not long.

Reid, Biden and the Vice-Presidency

Well, good news for somebody, I suppose (link):

In a move to reassert Congressional independence at the start of the new presidential administration, the vice president will be barred from joining weekly internal Senate deliberations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun.

Reid’s decision to exclude Vice President-elect Joe Biden from the Senate arena where he spent most of his adult life is intended to restore constitutional checks and balances that tilted heavily toward the executive branch during the Bush presidency.

That's Lisa Mascaro in (guess what) the Las Vegas Sun. The point, as she reminds us, is to redirect form the era of Dick Cheney in which every Tuesday morning "traffic in the Senate halls came to a standstill ... as Secret Service agents cleared the way for the VP and his entourage." Just for good measure, Mascaro reports that the incoming vice-president, barely-former senator Joe Biden, thinks this is just fine "“He and Senator Reid see eye to eye on this,” Mascaro quotes a spokesperson as saying.

Couple of thoughts:

• One's first impulse is: boy, Obama will come to regret that. On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe it's another whiff of an unsettling scent around the Obama administration: the suggestion that the incoming president may want not so much as to lead as to reign. If he doesn't want to assert himself over the Senate, what will he do when the Senate undertakes to assert itself over him?

• On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a Senate--a Congress--more passive and supine than the current item (Republicans and Democrats alike). If anything--anything--puts a bit of zing back in their zinger, the republic may be the winner.
  

She'll Be What?

What Joe Biden Could Have Said (But It's Just as Well He Didn't)

What Joe Biden might have said:

"May I call you Joe"--? Sure, if you like. I never have been much hung up on titles.

But you might want to ask yourself: do you want to call me Joe? This is a decision you'll have to make for yourself. Still, as well-wisher, I will offer a suggestion. That is: it's an issue of decorum. Strictly speaking, anybody can call anybody by their first name. But as a matter of self-respect, some people want to be choosy about how free they are with the the easy approach. They think that a too-free use of the first name is a sign of impertinence or disrespect; even downright rudeness.

So, you like to remind people that you've been paying attention to me since you were in second grade. I suppose this might in itself explain why you feel the kind of intimacy with me to put us on a first-name basis, just as celebrities (real celebrities: not just politicians) get bales of mail every morning from folks who can't shake the notion that the celebrity, if s/he knew them, would be their best friend. This is a common failing, but that it is a failing is something on which you and I could probably agree.

On the other hand "second grade," may be designed to remind people that I am very, very old (or at least that you see me as such: I can assure you that I think I'm young enough to show a few new wrinkles). If that is the case, you might want to consider what people will think of you when they see that this is how you treat your elders.*

Or I may be taking entirely the wrong approach here. From an entirely different perspective, I can observe that there are people who like to use the first name on comparative strangers as a way of throwing them off balance, of putting them off guard. You may have experienced this kind of intrusion from your insurance salesman, or your gynecologist. My suspicion is that you don't take kindly to that kind of thing when it happens to you. Are you happy with what it says about you when you do the same thing to others? Remember I'm not answering the question here; if is for you you with your own sense of self-worth to make that decision for yourself.

Indeed, Governor^, may I suggest that this is one of the challenges and fascinations of a political career: you get to know yourself. You get to understand how much you will allow yourself to be bullied, and how much to bully; what you require of other people and what you expect of them; in deed, you learn about your own notions of respect, and self-respect, and self-worth.

So be my guest, Governor. Call me "Senator," or "Joe," or "old fuzzy," or anything you like. Your call; I hope you are satisfied with the choice you make.

*You may be tempted to respond by saying "but John McCain is even older!" True, but my guess is that you've pretty much written him off now anyway; you're shooting for 2012.

^Shorter Joe:

Sure. But I think I'll call you "Governor Palin."

Footnote: Yes, I call her Sarah all the time. But I'm not running for anything.

Palin (Biden) Overheard

Yah, wal, he's been in the Senate for 32 years and the French haven't attacked Delaware either.

(Actually, isn't it 35?)

Bidenmania

Loose thoughts on Biden:

• C-Span today recycled a Biden appearance at the National Press Club, from a few months back when he was still a candidate for the Presidency. I gotta say, I really do not see why he never got traction. His own story--and the way he told it--would seem to be a campaign manager's dream: hard-working middle-class parents; Catholic schools; strong family values; plus a hilarious story I hadn't heard before about his mother and the nuts-and-bolts cufflinks (--preview it here--I wouldn't be suprised if we hear it from the Convention?). And while the McCains are busy tut-tutting Obama as having rejected Hillary because she didn't agree with him--seems to me the charge would be just as true (or truer) about Biden. In the Press Club speech, Biden made it clear that he thought Obama's approach to foreign policy leadership was naive, vulnerable to rookie error. He's dead on there, and I'm delighted that Obama will have so seasoned and savvay a player at his elbow.

• Glen Greenwald has a fascinatingly ambivalent piece up in which he quarrels with Biden's record (mostly a fair cop), yet in the end concedes that Biden was a pretty good pick-- "there were far worse possibilities, and few better ones." Indeed, Greenwald goes so far as to point out that Biden's (pretty tepid) record of opposition to the administration on civil liberties issues is in some ways better than Obama's. But I think what bugs Greenwald most is not Biden's record per se as the warmth with which he is being received by the Washington establishment--David Ignatius (eeuew!), David Brooks (gack!), Fred Hiatt (oh, gag me with a spoon!) --in an update, Andrew Bacevich puts the point even better. It's a worthwhile point, but it confronts us with a conundrum: there is a Washington establishment--a "permanent government," if you will--and no president is going to make it to first base unless he comes to terms with them (a small voice whispers "Jimmy Carter," here, and "Richard Nixon"). Obama is not part of it; Biden (even though he goes home every night) pretty much is. Can Biden help Obama to cope with these guys, without being swallowed up by them? The future, as the editorial writers like to say, lies ahead.

• Monica Langley's Wall Street Journal piece is wonderful inside baseball, but it highlights (implicitly) an important point: Biden really wanted this. He wasn't just waiting around to be Secretary of State. He worked all the angles and cheerfully tramped on the faces of a couple of competitors to get where he is today. Apparently the vice-presidency is not seen as a dead-end job any more.

• For a weird and wonderful West Wing angle, go here.

• Am I more pumped about Biden than I was/am about Obama? Actually, that just might be the case.

Update: Here's another--others have made the point, but Charlie Cook puts it well.

Okay by Me

Sure, he's a chatterbox, but you listen to him and he's informed; he's balanced and he's on the side of the angels. And yes, I know he voted for the war; that's history. I guess my only regret is that I was kind of hoping he might be secretary of state.

Biden Again

I seem to be at risk of becoming a one-man Joe Biden campaign committee (link). Now that's a thankless job for you--not quite as thankless, perhaps, as representing Biden's colleague, Chris Dodd, or his former colleague Mike Gravel and all the rest of the I-forget-how-many also-rans in the Democratic primary. But I caught Biden at the National Press Club (via C-Span) and I gotta say--yes, his teeth are too white; his hair is too packaged, and he still prattles, but of all the candidates of either party, he is perhaps the one who is easiest to listen to, who actually says a little something that moves the ball down field. Some highlights (all from memory, I was on the exercise bike, and did not take notes):

• There aren't a dozen senators who sincerely believe that the President is on the right track; they're just trying to pick the right moment to bail--not to early (so as to offend the base) or too late (so as to go down with the ship).

• Left with the current mess, the next President will have a smaller margin for error than any President in modern times.
  

• He's the right guy to solve the health care problem because solving health care is a matter of making a deal (aka "reaching consensus"), and he knows how to make a deal (that for you, Hillary).

• The next President will have to be a foreign policy heavyweight (that for you, everyone else in the race).

Indeed, Biden on the stump makes so much sense, you have to wonder, why on earth is he running (perhaps particularly considering that stuff about margin for error, supra)? I can think of two reasons: one, perhaps the more obvious, is that he's not running for President; he's running for Secretary of State. But two: he simply thinks he is more experienced, better trained-okay, all-round more competent--than anybody else in the race.

It is to laugh: does anyone think we have ever elected the "most competent" person to the Presidency? Maybe Washington. By a stretch, possibly Eisenhower. Certainly not the great unexpected successes like Lincoln and Truman. Probably the best thing Biden can aspire to is to become a Democratic George Schulz--of whom Henry Kissinger said, if we chose a President for competence, it would be he.

Maybe the ultimate problem with Biden is that he came to the Senate at the age of 30, and we can never quite shake off the notion that he is a small, yipping cocker spaniel. Or maybe the problem is structural: at the NPC, someone asked him why, after Mark Warner left the race, did Biden not inherit the Democratic center? Not missing a beat, Biden responded:

"I did."

Back to Barack

I hardly expected to be doing a second post on Barack Obama, but the blowback on how to characterize him is just too beguiling to stay away from.

First, as to Joe Biden's sin of calling him 'clean,' and in particular to all those who are scandalized at Biden for, e.g., "bizarre, race-related crap" (link): oh, stop it. Biden is a prattler, but you know perfectly well what he meant, and that it is benign.

Second--the Yglesias thread (linked above) has a fascinating discussion on Obama and the "embarassing relative" problem--apparently Obama doesn't have one (unless you count his late father). It's an interesting issue, but it is hardly a black problem: think Billy Carter, or Roger Clinton (or, I guess, Neil Bush, except perhaps he is too insignificant to notice). And on the whole, properly managed, I suspect the "embarassing relative" is more of a help than a hindrance: which of us does not have an embarrasing relative, and thus find himself touched with a bit of compassion when we see it in others?

The really fascinating issue, though, is the rising discussion of whether Obama is "really black" (link here and many other places). Here's a hobbyhouse of mine: one of the great paradoxes of ethnic politics the social Heisenberg effect: look at any identity too closely and it isn't there any longer. Remember the old joke about the Jew who built a shul in his back yard, and then he built a second one. His friends asked him why and he said "that's the shul whose doorstep I won't talk, so help me God!" David Hackett Fisher wrote a marvellous book demonstrating that the category of WASP vanishes under scrutiny--Fisher identified four subgroups, but read it carefully and you can begin to discern a dozen more. Part of the attitude is, of course, the child of ignorance: my father was a Type #1.5 WASP; my mother was a Scandinavian, pardon a Swede, pardon a Gothenberger--but plenty of my students think of me as just The Man. A breakthrough movie about Chinese in California starred a Japanese actor; evidently the producers decided (rightly?) that the audience would never notice.

I listened to prominent academic deliver an arresting (and sometimes hilarious) paper showing how tangled up the U.S. Census categorization can be--how dare you put us in the same box as that guy? The speaker, as I remember, was pretty well committed to the idea that all categories were artificial with one exception--black (or perhaps "African American"). This one, she argued, was indissoluble.

I wondered then--what would she say about Hutus and Tutsis? Or all the West Africans who kidnapped all the slaves who wound up in America? Or--but that is exactly what we see surfacing in the new Obama-talk. The point must be that Obama cannot speak for blacks because he can't say "I am one of you." Well--narrowly, quite a few black politicians, historically, have come from the Carribean and so have a "one of you" problem from the get-go.

There is a fundamental irony here: if we are at the point where we are noticing that not all blacks lot alike (nor WASPS, nor all Swedes, nor all Chinese Asians), you might think we are making a kind of progress--isn't that what mixing it up, socializing, diversity education, are supposed to be all about? I wouldn't count on it, though: politics is the organization of hatreds (link) and it is far easier to manufacture distrust and division than it is to promote general understanding. Makes me long for the day when we wondered if the first black president was this guy.