President Obama SOTU Address Feb 24 2009

Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States:
I've come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here.
I know that for many Americans watching right now, the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others. And rightly so. If you haven't been personally affected by this recession, you probably know someone who has - a friend; a neighbor; a member of your family. You don't need to hear another list of statistics to know that our economy is in crisis, because you live it every day. It's the worry you wake up with and the source of sleepless nights. It's the job you thought you'd retire from but now have lost; the business you built your dreams upon that's now hanging by a thread; the college acceptance letter your child had to put back in the envelope. The impact of this recession is real, and it is everywhere.
But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this:
We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.
The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.
Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities - as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.
The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.
In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely - to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that's what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.
It's an agenda that begins with jobs.
As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government - I don't. Not because I'm not mindful of the massive debt we've inherited - I am. I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships. In fact, a failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years. That's why I pushed for quick action. And tonight, I am grateful that this Congress delivered, and pleased to say that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is now law.
Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs. More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector - jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges; constructing wind turbines and solar panels; laying broadband and expanding mass transit.
Because of this plan, there are teachers who can now keep their jobs and educate our kids. Health care professionals can continue caring for our sick. There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.
Because of this plan, 95% of the working households in America will receive a tax cut - a tax cut that you will see in your paychecks beginning on April 1st.
Because of this plan, families who are struggling to pay tuition costs will receive a $2,500 tax credit for all four years of college. And Americans who have lost their jobs in this recession will be able to receive extended unemployment benefits and continued health care coverage to help them weather this storm.
I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work. I understand that skepticism. Here in Washington, we've all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.
That is why I have asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort - because nobody messes with Joe. I have told each member of my Cabinet as well as mayors and governors across the country that they will be held accountable by me and the American people for every dollar they spend. I have appointed a proven and aggressive Inspector General to ferret out any and all cases of waste and fraud. And we have created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent.
So the recovery plan we passed is the first step in getting our economy back on track. But it is just the first step. Because even if we manage this plan flawlessly, there will be no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis that has severely weakened our financial system.
I want to speak plainly and candidly about this issue tonight, because every American should know that it directly affects you and your family's well-being. You should also know that the money you've deposited in banks across the country is safe; your insurance is secure; and you can rely on the continued operation of our financial system. That is not the source of concern.
The concern is that if we do not re-start lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.
You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.
But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can't afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.
That is why this administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence, and re-start lending.
We will do so in several ways. First, we are creating a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans, and small business loans to the consumers and entrepreneurs who keep this economy running.
Second, we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and re-finance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values - Americans who will now be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped bring about. In fact, the average family who re-finances today can save nearly $2000 per year on their mortgage.
Third, we will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times. And when we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible, force the necessary adjustments, provide the support to clean up their balance sheets, and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy.
I understand that on any given day, Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives banks bailouts with no strings attached, and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decisions. But such an approach won't solve the problem. And our goal is to quicken the day when we re-start lending to the American people and American business and end this crisis once and for all.
I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won't be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.
Still, this plan will require significant resources from the federal government - and yes, probably more than we've already set aside. But while the cost of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade. That would be worse for our deficit, worse for business, worse for you, and worse for the next generation. And I refuse to let that happen.
I understand that when the last administration asked this Congress to provide assistance for struggling banks, Democrats and Republicans alike were infuriated by the mismanagement and results that followed. So were the American taxpayers. So was I.
So I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you - I get it.
But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. My job - our job - is to solve the problem. Our job is to govern with a sense of responsibility. I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive, but I will do whatever it takes to help the small business that can't pay its workers or the family that has saved and still can't get a mortgage.
That's what this is about. It's not about helping banks - it's about helping people. Because when credit is available again, that young family can finally buy a new home. And then some company will hire workers to build it. And then those workers will have money to spend, and if they can get a loan too, maybe they'll finally buy that car, or open their own business. Investors will return to the market, and American families will see their retirement secured once more. Slowly, but surely, confidence will return, and our economy will recover.
So I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary. Because we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession. And to ensure that a crisis of this magnitude never happens again, I ask Congress to move quickly on legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system. It is time to put in place tough, new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation, and punishes short-cuts and abuse.
The recovery plan and the financial stability plan are the immediate steps we're taking to revive our economy in the short-term. But the only way to fully restore America's economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world. The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care; the schools that aren't preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit. That is our responsibility.
In the next few days, I will submit a budget to Congress. So often, we have come to view these documents as simply numbers on a page or laundry lists of programs. I see this document differently. I see it as a vision for America - as a blueprint for our future.
My budget does not attempt to solve every problem or address every issue. It reflects the stark reality of what we've inherited - a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.
Given these realities, everyone in this chamber - Democrats and Republicans - will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me.
But that does not mean we can afford to ignore our long-term challenges. I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.
For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.
In each case, government didn't supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.
We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril, and claimed opportunity from ordeal. Now we must be that nation again. That is why, even as it cuts back on the programs we don't need, the budget I submit will invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education.
It begins with energy.
We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we've fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.
Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders - and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again.
Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history - an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.
We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.
But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.
As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.
None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy. But this is America. We don't do what's easy. We do what is necessary to move this country forward.
For that same reason, we must also address the crushing cost of health care.
This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, one million more Americans have lost their health insurance. It is one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas. And it's one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of our budget.
Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold.
Already, we have done more to advance the cause of health care reform in the last thirty days than we have in the last decade. When it was days old, this Congress passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for eleven million American children whose parents work full-time. Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives. It will launch a new effort to conquer a disease that has touched the life of nearly every American by seeking a cure for cancer in our time. And it makes the largest investment ever in preventive care, because that is one of the best ways to keep our people healthy and our costs under control.
This budget builds on these reforms. It includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform - a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It's a commitment that's paid for in part by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And it's a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.
Now, there will be many different opinions and ideas about how to achieve reform, and that is why I'm bringing together businesses and workers, doctors and health care providers, Democrats and Republicans to begin work on this issue next week.
I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.
The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a pre-requisite.
Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.
This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow. That is why it will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education - from the day they are born to the day they begin a career.
Already, we have made an historic investment in education through the economic recovery plan. We have dramatically expanded early childhood education and will continue to improve its quality, because we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life. We have made college affordable for nearly seven million more students. And we have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children's progress.
But we know that our schools don't just need more resources. They need more reform. That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We'll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools.
It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American. That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
I know that the price of tuition is higher than ever, which is why if you are willing to volunteer in your neighborhood or give back to your community or serve your country, we will make sure that you can afford a higher education. And to encourage a renewed spirit of national service for this and future generations, I ask this Congress to send me the bipartisan legislation that bears the name of Senator Orrin Hatch as well as an American who has never stopped asking what he can do for his country - Senator Edward Kennedy.
These education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children. But it is up to us to ensure they walk through them. In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child. I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children's education must begin at home.
There is, of course, another responsibility we have to our children. And that is the responsibility to ensure that we do not pass on to them a debt they cannot pay. With the deficit we inherited, the cost of the crisis we face, and the long-term challenges we must meet, it has never been more important to ensure that as our economy recovers, we do what it takes to bring this deficit down.
I'm proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks, and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities.
Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we're starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade.
In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them. We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use. We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn't make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.
In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. But let me perfectly clear, because I know you'll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut - that's right, a tax cut - for 95% of working families. And these checks are on the way.
To preserve our long-term fiscal health, we must also address the growing costs in Medicare and Social Security. Comprehensive health care reform is the best way to strengthen Medicare for years to come. And we must also begin a conversation on how to do the same for Social Security, while creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans.
Finally, because we're also suffering from a deficit of trust, I am committed to restoring a sense of honesty and accountability to our budget. That is why this budget looks ahead ten years and accounts for spending that was left out under the old rules - and for the first time, that includes the full cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price.We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war.
And with our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat al Qaeda and combat extremism. Because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens half a world away. As we meet here tonight, our men and women in uniform stand watch abroad and more are readying to deploy. To each and every one of them, and to the families who bear the quiet burden of their absence, Americans are united in sending one message: we honor your service, we are inspired by your sacrifice, and you have our unyielding support. To relieve the strain on our forces, my budget increases the number of our soldiers and Marines. And to keep our sacred trust with those who serve, we will raise their pay, and give our veterans the expanded health care and benefits that they have earned.
To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend - because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists - because living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger. And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.
In words and deeds, we are showing the world that a new era of engagement has begun. For we know that America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America. We cannot shun the negotiating table, nor ignore the foes or forces that could do us harm. We are instead called to move forward with the sense of confidence and candor that serious times demand.
To seek progress toward a secure and lasting peace between Israel and her neighbors, we have appointed an envoy to sustain our effort. To meet the challenges of the 21st century - from terrorism to nuclear proliferation; from pandemic disease to cyber threats to crushing poverty - we will strengthen old alliances, forge new ones, and use all elements of our national power.
And to respond to an economic crisis that is global in scope, we are working with the nations of the G-20 to restore confidence in our financial system, avoid the possibility of escalating protectionism, and spur demand for American goods in markets across the globe. For the world depends on us to have a strong economy, just as our economy depends on the strength of the world's.
As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us - watching to see what we do with this moment; waiting for us to lead.
Those of us gathered here tonight have been called to govern in extraordinary times. It is a tremendous burden, but also a great privilege - one that has been entrusted to few generations of Americans. For in our hands lies the ability to shape our world for good or for ill.
I know that it is easy to lose sight of this truth - to become cynical and doubtful; consumed with the petty and the trivial.
But in my life, I have also learned that hope is found in unlikely places; that inspiration often comes not from those with the most power or celebrity, but from the dreams and aspirations of Americans who are anything but ordinary.
I think about Leonard Abess, the bank president from Miami who reportedly cashed out of his company, took a $60 million bonus, and gave it out to all 399 people who worked for him, plus another 72 who used to work for him. He didn't tell anyone, but when the local newspaper found out, he simply said, ''I knew some of these people since I was 7 years old. I didn't feel right getting the money myself."
I think about Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was completely destroyed by a tornado, but is being rebuilt by its residents as a global example of how clean energy can power an entire community - how it can bring jobs and businesses to a place where piles of bricks and rubble once lay. "The tragedy was terrible," said one of the men who helped them rebuild. "But the folks here know that it also provided an incredible opportunity."
And I think about Ty'Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina - a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom. She has been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people sitting in this room. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us for help, and says, "We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world. We are not quitters."
We are not quitters.
These words and these stories tell us something about the spirit of the people who sent us here. They tell us that even in the most trying times, amid the most difficult circumstances, there is a generosity, a resilience, a decency, and a determination that perseveres; a willingness to take responsibility for our future and for posterity.
Their resolve must be our inspiration. Their concerns must be our cause. And we must show them and all our people that we are equal to the task before us.
I know that we haven't agreed on every issue thus far, and there are surely times in the future when we will part ways. But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed. That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months, and where we return after those debates are done. That is the foundation on which the American people expect us to build common ground.
And if we do - if we come together and lift this nation from the depths of this crisis; if we put our people back to work and restart the engine of our prosperity; if we confront without fear the challenges of our time and summon that enduring spirit of an America that does not quit, then someday years from now our children can tell their children that this was the time when we performed, in the words that are carved into this very chamber, "something worthy to be remembered." Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

From The Sunday Times (London)
Mad, maddening America, the wisest of all
The US is hobbled by bigotry but it has an unrivalled vitality that pushes it ever forward
Andrew Sullivan
America can drive you up the wall. To Europeans and world-weary Brits, it can sometimes seem almost barmy in its backwardness. It is a country where one state, Arkansas, has just refused to repeal a statute barring atheists from holding public office but managed in the same session to pass a law allowing guns in churches. It incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than even Russia and aborts more babies per capita than secular Europe.
Darwin remains a controversial figure, but Sarah Palin was a serious candidate to be vice-president. Last week the California legislature took five days to prevent the entire state from going bankrupt; and more than three months after the election, and five months since the financial system went kablooey, the Treasury secretary had not mustered the staff sufficient to craft the details of a rescue package for the banks.
There are times in the quarter of a century since I arrived in America that I have been tempted to throw my hands up in frustration. To give a brutal, personal example, I’ve lived in the US since 1984. I’ve made a home and a life here. But I still cannot even begin the process of becoming a citizen because the United States makes it illegal for anyone with HIV to get a green card.
The ban was passed in the 1980s in a moment of total, ignorant panic. It took two decades to repeal it last summer, and the government bureaucracy still hasn’t changed the regulation. There are only 12 countries in the world with such a draconian policy on HIV-positive immigrants: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan and the good old USA. Quite some company, no?
Another small insanity: the residents of the city I live in, Washington DC, America’s capital, do not have any representation in Congress. Since the founding of the country, the district has never been formally a part of a state, and so cannot, according to the constitution, have representatives in the House or the Senate. Imagine the residents of Westminster not having any MPs in the Commons. The residents of Bagh-dad, in fact, have more democracy than the residents of Washington but no one in government cares enough about this actually to amend the constitution to make that change.
And yet I stay and love it and defend it, even as it can push me to bang my head against the wall at times and may eventually throw me out altogether. Why? Because I’ve learnt over the years that the constitutional system that seems designed to prevent change has more wisdom in it than some more centralised parliamentary systems; and because the very chaotic, decentralised and often irrational mess of American state and federal politics also allows for real innovation and debate in ways that simply do not occur as vibrantly elsewhere. The frustration and innovation are part of the same system. You cannot remove one without also stymieing the other.
Take gay rights, a cause dear to my heart. Many Europeans feel quite smug about their enlightenment, and the transformation of the debate in Britain in the past decade has been as profound as it has been welcome. But few doubt that America pioneered the gay rights movement, as the movie Milk, up for eight Oscars tonight, underlines. New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 1970s forged a liberation movement that changed gay lives throughout the world.
Yet even now, though I have a marriage licence, something no gay couple in Britain have, my five-year relationship is not recognised by the federal government. In Massachusetts, a state where gay marriage is legal and where I married my partner Aaron in August 2007, the licence is no different in any respect from that given to heterosexual couples. Civil partnership may provide rights at a national level, but it is still indeli-bly a separate and lesser institution than marriage itself, and offers a lesser measure of the social, psychological and cultural acceptance that civil marriage provides.
In California, gays just suffered a horrible setback as a majority narrowly voted to take away marriage rights. But at least they had a chance to get them in the first place. And the debate was a real and raw one – which made victory more meaningful and defeat more profound.
In America, the bigotry you face is real, unvarnished and in the open. In Britain, it can come masked or euphemised or deflected into humour. It hurts much more to punch a brick wall than to punch a deep velvet cushion. But if you punch hard enough, the wall will one day crumble, while the pillow will constantly absorb the blows.
There is plenty of religious bigotry and fundamentalist rigidity and crude sectarianism in America. But there is also a clear and invigorating religious energy that takes the question of God seriously and does not recoil from it in apathy or world-weariness. Give me a fundamentalist to argue with any day over someone who has lost the will to care that much at all.
On race, of course, this is especially true. No civilised country sustained slavery as recently as America or defended segregation as tenaciously as the American South until just a generation ago. In my lifetime, mixed-race couples were legally barred from marrying in many states. But equally in my lifetime, a miscegenated man who grew up in Hawaii won a majority of the votes in the old slave state of Virginia to become the first minority president of any advanced western nation.
That is the paradox of America; and after a while you find it hard to appreciate anything more coherent. What keeps America behind is also what keeps pushing it relentlessly, fitfully forward.
That Canadian genius Leonard Cohen put it best, perhaps. In his anthem Democracy he called the United States “the cradle of the best and of the worst”.
You live with the worst because you yearn for the best, because the worst in its turn seems somehow to evoke the best. From the civil war came Abraham Lincoln; from the Great Depression came FranklinD Roosevelt; from segregation came Martin Luther King; and from George Bush came Barack Obama. America may indeed drive us up the wall, but it also retains a wondrous capacity to evoke the mountain top and what lies beyond.

jurisprudence Reform School
Five myths about prison growth dispelled.

By John Plaff (SLATE)

The United States has a prison population like nowhere else. With one out of every 100 adults behind bars, our incarceration rate is the highest in the entire world. Our inmates—1.5 million in prison, with another 800,000 in jail—comprise one-third of the world's total. This is a surprisingly recent development. After barely budging for 50 years, our incarceration rate increased sevenfold (to 738 per 100,000 people) between 1978 and 2008.
The system is now at its breaking point. Federal judges in California just issued a tentative order demanding that the state release nearly 60,000 inmates over the next three years to alleviate intolerable overcrowding. New York state's sentencing commission released a 326-page report calling on the Legislature to cut back on severe drug sentences. And with budgets growing ever-tighter in a collapsing economy, states are beginning to realize that large prison populations are boom-time luxuries they can no longer afford.
Reform is inevitable. But if we are going to rein in our prison populations, we should do so based on facts, not on unfounded perceptions or shocking anecdotes. So let's start by dispelling some of the myths that surround the breathtaking prison growth of the past three decades.
Myth No. 1: Long sentences drive prison population growth. The stories that capture our attention are the low-level crooks who get 25 years for stealing three $400 golf clubs. But these cases get a lot of press precisely because they are exceptional. And the attention goes to the sentence imposed, not the time actually served, which may be far shorter.
Our data on time served is imperfect at best, but it appears that the time served by the median prisoner is about two years, sometimes much less. It is easy to focus on the people who are serving decades-long sentences for life or life without parole, but they make up only about 10 percent and 2.5 percent of the total prison population, respectively. The two-year median, meanwhile, holds true both in notoriously punitive states like Michigan and in more lenient ones like Minnesota. Not only is the absolute amount of time served low, in general, but in many states that amount remained flat over much of the 1990s.
So what is actually driving prison population growth? Admissions. Far more offenders who in the past would have received nonprison sentences are being locked up for short stints, driving up the overall population. Stop admitting as many people, and the prison population would shrink rapidly. Cutting back on long sentences is far less likely to have the same meaningful effect.
Myth No. 2: Low-level drug offenders drive prison population growth. It is popular, perhaps almost mandatory, to blame the boom on the War on Drugs. But it is just not true. Only 20 percent of inmates in prisons (as opposed to jails) are locked up for drug offenses, compared with 50 percent for violent crimes and 20 percent for property offenses; most of the drug offenders are in prison for distribution, not possession. Twenty percent is admittedly much larger than approximately 3 percent, which was the fraction of prisoners serving time on drug charges in the 1970s. But if we were to release every prisoner currently serving time for a drug charge, our prison population would drop only from 1.6 million to 1.3 million. That's not much of a decline, compared with the total number of people in prison in the 1970s—about 300,000.
In fact, the war on drugs does play a role in the prisoner increase. But it's an indirect one. State "predicate felony" laws, for example, impose longer sentences on offenders with prior records: A drug conviction may not send someone to prison, but it will make him serve more time for any future crime he commits. This suggests that simply tackling long drug sentences, as reformers in New York state have done, may miss the real problem.
Myth No. 3: Technical parole and probation violations drive prison population growth. Recent advances in drug testing and other forms of monitoring have sparked concern that we are sending more and more parolees back to prison for minor infractions. And as with all the factors discussed here, there is a kernel of truth to this one. In 2005, about one-third of all people admitted to prison were on parole at the time (though not necessarily returning because of a violation). But the rate of parolees returning to prison has been stable for the last decade, suggesting that this doesn't account for recent growth.
More important, changes in the number of people being returned to prison from parole closely follow changes in the number of prisoners being paroled out of prison—and there are always more people going out than going in. In other words, the number of parolees returning to prison is rising only because the number of people out on parole is rising.
Myth No. 4: In the past three decades, we've newly diverged from the rest of the world on punishment. Given that our incarceration rate before the mid-1970s is one-seventh the rate of today, it is easy to think that we're suddenly acting like outliers. But the fact is that American views on punishment have been harsher than Europe's since the birth of this country (although politicians may overestimate the extent to which they must be tough on crime to win elections). More strikingly, if we look back historically at the lockup rate for mental hospitals as well as prisons, we have only just now returned to the combined rates for both kinds of incarceration in the 1950s. In other words, we're not locking up a greater percentage of the population so much as locking people up in prisons rather than mental hospitals. Viewed through this lens, what seems remarkable is not the current era of mass incarceration but the 1960s and '70s, during which we emptied the hospitals without filling the prisons. Any reform agenda that does not acknowledge the ingrained nature of our punitive impulses will surely fail.
Myth No. 5: The incarceration boom has had no effect on crime levels. Sometimes, crime rates have fallen as the prison population has risen (the 1990s and 2000s) or risen as the population fell (the 1960s). At other times, however, the crime rate has risen even as the prison population also rose (the 1970s and '80s). Perhaps, people argue, no real relationship exists between the two.
But this is not the right way to think about the problem. We have to ask what the crime rate would have been but for a given number of prisoners, and simple population trends cannot answer this. The best numbers available, controlling for a host of challenging statistical problems, suggest that the growth in prison populations contributed to up to 30 percent of the crime drop during the 1990s.
Thus, reducing prison populations may lead to more crime. But only to a point. Many of the low-level offenders we lock up today do not pose serious threats, so if we let them out first or don't send them to prison to begin with, the effect may be initially slight. Moreover, while prison has helped reduce crime, it's not the most efficient tool we have. A dollar spent on police, for example, is 20 percent more effective than a dollar spent on prisons.
Given that, what's the most cost-effective prison reform strategy? We need to stop admitting many minor offenders, even if they're serving only short sentences. We need to focus less on high-profile drug statutes and more on the ways small-fry drug convictions cause later crimes to result in longer sentences. Once we start admitting fewer people to prison, we should shift money from prisons to police. If this seems like tinkering, rather than a sweeping fix, that's because it is. See Myth No. 4: Reformers shouldn't waste their breath trying to turn us into Europe.John Pfaff is an associate professor of law at Fordham Law School.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

From The Sunday Times
Republican Taliban declare jihad on Obama
The president wants bipartisanship; the right has promised him all-out war
Andrew Sullivan

Goodbye to all that? Washington, it appears, has other ideas. Barack Obama campaigned on a platform of pragmatic liberalism and an end to frothy ideological warfare in Washington. From the beginning of the campaign he went out of his way not to engage in Republican-bashing or even Clinton-bashing. He was intent on bringing reason and open-mindedness to America’s often fraught ideological debates. He was incandescently clear that he rejected the toxic partisan atmosphere that had dominated the Bill Clinton and George W Bush years.
Since November he has largely walked the walk. Yes, there is a down payment on future government spending in the stimulus bill - on healthcare, the environment and education. But given the urgency of the economic downturn and the few tools left to counter it, a little overshooting is not the worst option in the next 18 months. And he did his best to accommodate Republican concerns - adding deeper and wider tax cuts than his own party was comfortable with.
He went to Capitol Hill to talk directly with members of the other party in the more ideological House of Representatives – spending more time with them than even Bush did. He asked three Republicans to be a part of his cabinet, including Robert Gates, Bush’s defence secretary. He went to dinner with key Republican columnists before reaching out to those who had supported him in the election. And this open hand was met with a punch in the face.
From the outset, the Republicans in Washington pored over the bill to find trivial issues to make hay with. They found some small funding for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases prevention; they jumped up and down about renovating the national mall; they went nuts over a proposal - wait for it - to make some government buildings more energy-efficient; they acted as if green research and federal funds for new school building were the equivalent of funding terrorism. And this after eight years in which they managed to turn a surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit and added a cool $32 trillion to the debt the next generation will have to pay for. Every now and again their chutzpah and narcissism take one’s breath away. But it’s all they seem to know.
John McCain gives you the flavour. Fresh from a dinner in his honour hosted by Obama, he abruptly dismissed the stimulus package as the “same old” spending of the distant Democratic past. His closest Republican ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, declared: “This bill stinks.”
Pete Sessions, chairman of the Republican congressional committee, explained that the Republican strategy was going to be modelled on jihadist insurgency. “I’m not joking,” he added. “Insurgency we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban.”
Rush Limbaugh, the dominant figure among the Republican base, fresh from broadcasting a ditty called Barack, the Magic Negro, declared in the first week of the new Congress that he hoped the new president would fail. The stimulus bill got no Republican votes in the House, and only three Republicans - all from the Obama-voting states of Pennsylvania and Maine - backed him in the Senate. McCain went to the floor of the Senate to growl that three votes did not make the bill bipartisan.
Bitter? At the end of last week we saw just how bitter. One of the Republicans who had agreed to serve in Obama’s cabinet, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, abruptly pulled out, after what he described as “fair warning” to the president.
Gregg had been under intense pressure from the Republican base, especially in his home state, for cooperating with the devil. He claimed the reason for his sudden withdrawal was that he couldn’t stomach the stimulus. Yet only a week earlier he had said: “We need a robust [stimulus package]. I think the one that’s pending is in the range we need. I do believe it’s a good idea to do it at two levels, which this bill basically does, which is immediate stimulus and long-term initiatives which actually improve our competitiveness and our productivity.” He then tried to argue that his authority over the 2010 census as commerce secretary had been compromised. But that turned out not to be true, either: it was just that a census that could well add millions of Hispanic voters to the rolls had the Republicans eager to prevent a Republican imprimatur on it.
Gregg was a victim of fast-shifting Republican politics. Reeling from the election, watching a new president coopt some of their number and get alarmingly high approval ratings from the public, members of the opposition party made a decision to become an insurgency.
From the disciplined House vote against any stimulus bill to the Gregg withdrawal, they are busy trying to revive the clear ideological warfare of the 1990s. As they did with Clinton 16 years ago, they are going to war. The context – the worst global downturn in decades - is irrelevant. If you have safe Republican seats in a party dominated intellectually by rigid ideologues, then your path of least resistance is total political warfare. It is certainly easier than forging difficult and messy legislative compromises that might even redound to the president’s advantage if the economy recovers.
It’s not clear, however, that total war on the president is going to be a better way forward. Before the latest twist, a Gallup poll found that Obama’s handling of the stimulus package had almost twice the public support of the Republicans’. In a period of acute economic anxiety, Americans outside the Republican base may not be so thrilled to find a replay of the 1990s. Obama won in part because he seemed not part of that drama.
The Democrats and the liberal base have responded to all this with a mixture of cynicism and their own partisanship. They rolled their eyes at Obama’s outreach to Republicans; they hated the inclusion of the other party in the cabinet and had to swallow hard not to complain about the postpartisan rhetoric. Their cynicism is well earned. But my bet is that Obama also understands that this is, in the end, the sweet spot for him. He has successfully branded himself by a series of conciliatory gestures as the man eager to reach out. If this is spurned, he can repeat the gesture until the public finds his opponents seriously off-key.
Ask yourself this question: who, in the end, won the partisan warfare of the 1990s - Clinton or the Republicans? In 1993 the Republicans thought they had dispatched Clinton for good; he won re-election hands down three years later and left office, even after Monica Lewinsky, with high ratings. Obama may not believe that history repeats itself. But he’s surely aware that it often rhymes.

Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential
By NICHOLAS WADE (NY TIMES)
Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential
By NICHOLAS WADE
Darwin’s theory of evolution has become the bedrock of modern biology. But for most of the theory’s existence since 1859, even biologists have ignored or vigorously opposed it, in whole or in part.
It is a testament to Darwin’s extraordinary insight that it took almost a century for biologists to understand the essential correctness of his views.
Biologists quickly accepted the idea of evolution, but for decades they rejected natural selection, the mechanism Darwin proposed for the evolutionary process. Until the mid-20th century they largely ignored sexual selection, a special aspect of natural selection that Darwin proposed to account for male ornaments like the peacock’s tail.
And biologists are still arguing about group-level selection, the idea that natural selection can operate at the level of groups as well as on individuals. Darwin proposed group selection — or something like it; scholars differ as to what he meant — to account for castes in ant societies and morality in people.
How did Darwin come to be so in advance of his time? Why were biologists so slow to understand that Darwin had provided the correct answer on so many central issues? Historians of science have noted several distinctive features of Darwin’s approach to science that, besides genius, help account for his insights. They also point to several nonscientific criteria that stood as mental blocks in the way of biologists’ accepting Darwin’s ideas.
One of Darwin’s advantages was that he did not have to write grant proposals or publish 15 articles a year. He thought deeply about every detail of his theory for more than 20 years before publishing “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, and for 12 years more before its sequel, “The Descent of Man,” which explored how his theory applied to people.
He brought several intellectual virtues to the task at hand. Instead of brushing off objections to his theory, he thought about them obsessively until he had found a solution. Showy male ornaments, like the peacock’s tail, appeared hard to explain by natural selection because they seemed more of a handicap than an aid to survival. “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick,” Darwin wrote. But from worrying about this problem, he developed the idea of sexual selection, that females chose males with the best ornaments, and hence elegant peacocks have the most offspring.
Darwin also had the intellectual toughness to stick with the deeply discomfiting consequences of his theory, that natural selection has no goal or purpose. Alfred Wallace, who independently thought of natural selection, later lost faith in the power of the idea and turned to spiritualism to explain the human mind. “Darwin had the courage to face the implications of what he had done, but poor Wallace couldn’t bear it,” says William Provine, a historian at Cornell University. (Read commentary by Dr. Provine on passages from "On the Origin of Species." )
Darwin’s thinking about evolution was not only deep, but also very broad. He was interested in fossils, animal breeding, geographical distribution, anatomy and plants. “That very comprehensive view allowed him to see things that others perhaps didn’t,” says Robert J. Richards, a historian at the University of Chicago. “He was so sure of his central ideas — the transmutation of species and natural selection — that he had to find a way to make it all work together.” (Dr. Richards comments on "On the Origin of Species.")
From the perspective of 2009, Darwin’s principal ideas are substantially correct. He did not get everything right. Because he didn’t know about plate tectonics, Darwin’s comments on the distribution of species are not very useful. His theory of inheritance, since he had no knowledge of genes or DNA, is beside the point. But his central concepts of natural selection and sexual selection were correct. He also presented a form of group-level selection that was long dismissed but now has leading advocates like the biologists E. O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson.
Not only was Darwin correct on the central premises of his theory, but in several other still open issues his views also seem quite likely to prevail. His idea of how new species form was long eclipsed by Ernst Mayr’s view that a reproductive barrier like a mountain forces a species to split. But a number of biologists are now returning to Darwin’s idea that speciation occurs most often through competition in open spaces, Dr. Richards says.
Darwin believed there was a continuity between humans and other species, which led him to think of human morality as related to the sympathy seen among social animals. This long-disdained idea was resurrected only recently by researchers like the primatologist Frans de Waal. Darwin “never felt that morality was our own invention, but was a product of evolution, a position we are now seeing grow in popularity under the influence of what we know about animal behavior,” Dr. de Waal says. “In fact, we’ve now returned to the original Darwinian position.”
It is somewhat remarkable that a man who died in 1882 should still be influencing discussion among biologists. It is perhaps equally strange that so many biologists failed for so many decades to accept ideas that Darwin expressed in clear and beautiful English.
The rejection was in part because a substantial amount of science, including the two new fields of Mendelian genetics and population genetics, needed to be developed before other, more enticing mechanisms of selection could be excluded. But there were also a series of nonscientific considerations that affected biologists’ judgment.
In the 19th century, biologists accepted evolution, in part because it implied progress.
“The general idea of evolution, particularly if you took it to be progressive and purposeful, fitted the ideology of the age,” says Peter J. Bowler, a historian of science at Queen’s University, Belfast. But that made it all the harder to accept that something as purposeless as natural selection could be the shaping force of evolution. “On the Origin of Species” and its central idea were largely ignored and did not come back into vogue until the 1930s. By that time the population geneticist R. A. Fisher and others had shown that Mendelian genetics was compatible with the idea of natural selection working on small variations.
“If you think of the 150 years since the publication of ‘Origin of Species,’ it had half that time in the wilderness and half at the center, and even at the center it’s often been not more than marginal,” says Helena Cronin, a philosopher of science at the London School of Economics. “That’s a pretty comprehensive rejection of Darwin.” (Dr. Cronin's comments on Darwin's text.)
Darwin is still far from being fully accepted in sciences outside biology. “People say natural selection is O.K. for human bodies but not for brain or behavior,” Dr. Cronin says. “But making an exception for one species is to deny Darwin’s tenet of understanding all living things. This includes almost the whole of social studies — that’s quite an influential body that’s still rejecting Darwinism.”
The yearning to see purpose in evolution and the doubt that it really applied to people were two nonscientific criteria that led scientists to reject the essence of Darwin’s theory. A third, in terms of group selection, may be people’s tendency to think of themselves as individuals rather than as units of a group. “More and more I’m beginning to think about individualism as our own cultural bias that more or less explains why group selection was rejected so forcefully and why it is still so controversial,” says David Sloan Wilson, a biologist at Binghamton University.
Historians who are aware of the long eclipse endured by Darwin’s ideas perhaps have a clearer idea of his extraordinary contribution than do biologists, many of whom assume Darwin’s theory has always been seen to offer, as now, a grand explanatory framework for all biology. Dr. Richards, the University of Chicago historian, recalls that a biologist colleague “had occasion to read the ‘Origin’ for the first time — most biologists have never read the ‘Origin’ — because of a class he was teaching. We met on the street and he remarked, ‘You know, Bob, Darwin really knew a lot of biology.’ ”
Darwin knew a lot of biology: more than any of his contemporaries, more than a surprising number of his successors. From prolonged thought and study, he was able to intuit how evolution worked without having access to all the subsequent scientific knowledge that others required to be convinced of natural selection. He had the objectivity to put aside criteria with powerful emotional resonance, like the conviction that evolution should be purposeful. As a result, he saw deep into the strange workings of the evolutionary mechanism, an insight not really exceeded until a century after his great work of synthesis.

Obama's Strange Obsession
by Tina Brown (Daily Beast)
Obama’s going to win his stimulus package—but only after he’s gone through the political equivalent of a near-death experience. What has he learned from it?
I for one hope he dumps his obsession with “bipartisanship.” It’s time for him to recognize that overrated concept as what it was: a campaign theme designed to sharpen the contrast between his own reassuring serenity and the Republicans’ crazed, kill-’em-all negativity. It worked—but now the election’s over.
This president and his party received a full-throated mandate to promote a new political agenda. He knows that we all know that the country was run into the ground by his predecessor and his predecessor’s party. So why in these desperate times does he seem to care so much about being liked by the side he defeated? On inauguration eve, he bestowed on Sen. John McCain the very nice gesture of a dinner honoring his service. But McCain understood this as a mere pause in political combat, like that First World War Christmas truce when British and German troops played soccer and sang carols together for a few hours before returning to the slaughter.
This past week you could feel a dry-mouthed, stomach- knotted apprehension in the national perception of our brave new president.
Last week, a rejuvenated McCain headed right back to his Senate trench to machine-gun Obama’s stimulus package as if nothing had happened on November 4 or January 20. The Republicans, in a sudden resurgence of discipline, turned themselves back into the insurgents rather than the architects of the present chaos. And Obama himself seemed taken aback, as if he was really surprised that his friendly overtures didn't get him a single Republican vote in the House and only three predictable ones in the Senate.
Obama has let everybody think that “bipartisanship” means that the party that just lost the election after screwing up the country and the world gets to have veto power over the party that won. Or that if the Republicans choose to vote against his program it must be his fault. Or that for a policy to be good it has to be supported by the very politicians who just got through spending a year denouncing it. Meanwhile, the economic avalanche that will bury us all ominously gathers force.
Obama should talk to Bill Clinton about the difficulties he had at the beginning, when he inherited an economic mess from a departing president named Bush. Clinton passed his first budget without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Before it led to the longest economic expansion in US history, it led to a Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms. But Clinton’s problem was high interest rates, and he had to raise taxes and curb spending to cut the deficit. Now, interest rates are near zero, and Obama is cutting taxes and raising spending, neither of which is political poison. With the unemployment figures for January climbing to 7.5 percent and almost certainly going higher, elaborate rituals of “civility” are low on the list of things anyone cares about.
The strange thing is that Obama, famous for his stirring rhetoric, is only today boarding Air Force One for a manic few days of stimulus selling (though he’ll have more flak still when the financial rescue for ailing banks hits the fan on Tuesday).
Yet right after his thrilling assumption of office there would have been no better time to stand up for social programs in the package he presumably cared about. Instead, Democrats started acting as if the NEA had caught a STD. And if he didn’t really care about those programs, how come he exposed himself to easy ridicule that tarred the whole initiative?
For a solid week, the media noise was nothing but an echo chamber of Republican talking points about the Democrats having crammed in frivolous pork that had nothing to do with “real” recovery. Obama could have fought for more and given up less, arguing that his economic plan is a vision of how to rebuild America. The Bush tax cuts were social engineering, too, and they passed with Democratic votes. Bipartisanship indeed! There’s no such thing as a budget that isn’t social engineering. The only question is which end of society gets to drive the engine.
I can only think that the Geithner and Daschle tax debacles threw Obama and his new team seriously off their game. Daschle’s slapdash oversights and complicated lobbying relationships were probably the first of many occasions when Obama’s campaign song will come back to haunt him. A promise to purify politics seems a luxury there isn’t time for now, as potentially fraught with unhelpful distraction as a campaign to clean up the morals of Hollywood. Anyway, it’s the Augean stables of Wall Street for which we are all shovel-ready.
Sadly, when it comes to personal finances, smart, idealistic people can be just as sloppy, naïve or secretly greedy as the people they vow to eject from the system. Daschle’s silly red glasses betrayed a weakness for glamorous trappings. The boy genius Geithner turned into an absent-minded professor when he filled in his tax returns. The trouble is that an inattention to the details of money is not exactly what we want in a Treasury secretary at the moment.
What’s baffling is that after so much malfeasance by the banks and rating agencies, public figures still don’t understand there’s a cloud of free-floating public rage waiting to alight on any nominee for office who hasn’t cleaned up their act.
This past week, you could feel a dry-mouthed, stomach-knotted apprehension in the national perception of our brave new president. There were uneasy conversations around town about how the Hillary camp always said he wasn’t tough enough or experienced enough to fend off the Republican attack dogs. Obama should understand that bipartisanship is what you can claim after you’ve beaten down the opposition. It’s a theme for victors, not supplicants. Only then do you invite them all over for a Chardonnay and cheese reception where, through gritted teeth, they toast the outcome they tried to thwart.

Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. .

From The Sunday Times (London)
Obama calmly buries the legacy of Mr Toad
Bush was a reckless near-dictator; his successor is returning power to the people
Andrew Sullivan
Because we live in a practical world where nothing is ever totally new, it is possible to see there is as much continuity between the administrations of George W Bush and Barack Obama as discontinuity. The massive stimulus package being prepped for presidential signature follows a similar, if more modest, effort by Bush. More than 140,000 troops are still in Iraq and it will not be easy to withdraw them. The war in Afghanistan grinds on. The fantastic debt of the past eight years will soon increase by an even more fantastic amount. The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay cannot simply be let go, however haphazard and clumsy their detention.
And yet there is something unmistakably different about Washington. Obama clearly sees the presidency as a different institution from his immediate predecessor. The constitution itself has been quietly but swiftly rebalanced by the manner and tone and executive orders of Obama.
This is a good thing. Bush the dauphin lived and breathed a monarchical sense of the office from his father and his political godfather (Dick Cheney). The monarch decided. If you were lucky you’d get an explanation later, usually dolled up in abstract pronouncements about freedom advancing or work being hard. The president, in his own mind, had only one “accountability moment”: the election of 2004. The rest of the time he saw the presidency as a form of power to be used with total boldness and declarative clarity. It didn’t matter that in 2000 he won fewer votes than his opponent. He acted as if he had won a landslide. As Garrett Epps recently put it, Bush “treated the White House much as Kenneth Grahame’s Mr Toad treated a new automobile - a shiny toy to be wrecked by racing the motor, spinning smoke from the tyres, and smashing through farmyards until the wheels come off”.
At times, Bush’s indifference to the system around him bordered on a kind of political autism. One of the oddest aspects of his presidency was his tendency to declare things as if merely saying them as president could make them so. This was dramatically intensified by wartime: the president pronounced; Congress anaemically responded; the base rallied. At the start, it felt like magic, but as reality slipped through the fast-eroding firewall of reckless spending and military misadventure, Bush’s authority disappeared all the more quickly - because his so-certain predictions were so obviously wrong.
The Decider, we eventually discovered, had no response to this. He just had to keep deciding and asserting, to less and less effect, that he was right all along. Hence the excruciating final months. Within a democratic system, Americans had replicated all the comedy and tragedy of cocooned authoritarianism.
Buried within this was something more sinister. The events of 9/11 undoubtedly required energetic executive action, as the founding father Alexander Hamilton once described the virtue of the president. In an emergency, the genius of the American executive is its ability to act more swiftly than a parliament or Congress. But over time, we realised the following. Bush did not see his immense war powers as temporary. Because the war had no end, his extra-constitutional war powers also were now permanent. The war, moreover, was not just abroad. It also included the homeland and anyone in it. So an American citizen, Jose Padilla, was picked up at O’Hare airport, locked in a cell, tortured until he was a mental case and finally charged with much lesser offences than the government had first warned of, and he is still languishing in jail.
President Bush declared that he was the sole arbiter of the law, broke it repeatedly in wire-tapping, torturing, extraordinary rendition and detention, and dared Congress and the Supreme Court to stop him. In the end, the court did begin to hedge him back in. Congress? Not so much.
The executive claim, however, was larger than ever previously made. The battleground was potentially anywhere: your bedroom, your telephone, the security queue at the airport. The Decider was answerable only - and only retroactively - to the people, whose will legitimised him.
Now look at Obama. He has just won an election victory more profound than any Bush did, and by a much larger margin. And yet what one senses is restraint. This president, one recalls, is a constitutional lawyer and a deliberative fellow. He began life as a community organiser, a role that seeks to facilitate rather than to dictate, to provoke others to take responsibility rather than seizing it always oneself.
And what the critics misread in his sober inaugural speech was its classical structure and its awareness of what the oath of office had just done to him. He was not running any more. He was presiding.
His job was not to rally vast crowds, but to set the scene for the broader constitutional tableau to come to life. Yes, Obama set some clear directional goals, but the key difference is what came next: a window not for presidential action but for constitutional invitation. The invitation is to the other coequal branches of government to play their part; and for the citizenry to play its. This is an understanding of the president as one node in a constitutional order - not a near-dictator outside and superior to other branches of government. It is a return to traditional constitutional order.
You saw this in the flurry of modest but piercing executive orders quietly gutting the near-dictatorial powers seized by Cheney on behalf of the dauphin. You see it in the patient understanding that Guantanamo cannot be closed overnight, although the world-view that gave us Guantanamo has already been abolished. You saw it also last week as the Democratic president spent two long hours with House Republicans seeking consensus - which he did not require to pass the law - on the stimulus package. The Republicans never had that kind of respect from Bush. And they rewarded Obama with unanimous opposition in the vote on the package. But the symbolism was telling.
From the Decider we now have the Presider. If Bush was about the presidency as power, Obama is about the presidency as authority. And this is not a Democratic or Republican issue, or even a liberal or conservative issue. It is one form of conservatism – authoritarian, bellicose and protective - being replaced by another: consensual, traditional, cautious. It is the conservatism of law replacing the conservatism of action.
It’s fascinating to watch this deep difference in understanding slowly but unmistakably realise itself in public actions. The system - as the founders once hoped - is correcting itself after one of the most unbalanced periods in American history. It took the self-restraint of one man to do it.

From The Times (London)
Britain 'headed' for deepest slump in 60 years
As consumers cut their spending on a scale not seen for decades, Britain will enter the gravest recession of the post-war era
Gary Duncan, Economics Editor
The sharpest plunge in consumer spending since the Second World War will drive Britain this year into its deepest economic slump for 60 years, according to the country's leading economic research institute.
The headlong retreat from the high street by consumers is set to reach a scale not seen for generations, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research says in a bleak assessment of Britain's worsening prospects.
Consumer spending this year is set to plummet by 3.8 per cent - double the scale of a previous record annual drop, of 1.6 per cent, suffered in 1991, the institute forecasts.
The grim trend, already clear from the waning fortunes of troubled retailers, marks a sharp reversal after a decade in which consumer spending climbed at an average of almost 3.5 per cent a year.
The institute throws its weight behind a growing number of forecasts that Britain faces its gravest recession in the postwar era.
It expects the UK economy to shrink this year by 2.5 per cent and it concludes that the decline would be even steeper, at 2.7 per cent, but for the spillover into Britain from President Obama's planned $800billion (£558billion) stimulus measures in the United States.
The plunge in consumer spending predicted by the institute comes des-pite an expected resurgence in Britons' earnings growth, with real disposable incomes of households tipped to rise by 3.3 per cent this year, after an anaemic 1.5 per cent increase last year.
The boost to British competitiveness from a weak pound will offer a rare glimmer of hope, helping UK exports to rise by 2.4 per cent next year and pave the way for a recovery, the institute finds.
However, the first glimmerings of recovery will not emerge until this winter, with GDP set to keep falling through the third quarter.
The depth of the recession is set to take a big toll on the Government's finances, the report adds.
The Chancellor will be forced to borrow £128billion in 2009-10, £10billion more than his £118billion projection, and up to £140billion in the 2010-11 financial year.
It says that after excluding the cost of financial sector rescues such as Northern Rock, national debt will be 70 per cent of GDP by 2012-13, against the Treasury's 57 per cent forecast and almost double the 36.5 per cent for 2007.
— The Bank of England has lent £185 billion to Britain’s banks under its special liquidity scheme, it has revealed. The scheme, under which banks and building societies were allowed to swap illiquid assets for UK Treasury Bills, closed last Friday. It was launched last April. Describing use of the scheme as having been “considerable”, the Bank said that 32 banks and building societies had accessed the scheme — more than four fifths of those able to do so. The Bank said that they had swapped assets worth some £287 billion for UK Treasury Bills, but said that its valuation of these securities, as of last Friday, was only £242 billion.