Thomas Jefferson Street

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I was there yesterday morning when George W. Bush appeared before an American Enterprise Institute audience at the Mayflower Hotel. Here is the video and here is the transcript. It was not the usual format. Bush and AEI's outgoing president, Chris DeMuth, were seated on the dais and spoke extemporaneously. Bush delivered some remarks, then DeMuth asked him questions; altogether, the program lasted for a little more than an hour.

One question DeMuth asked struck a chord with me, a question about Eliot Cohen's book Supreme Command. Cohen argues that civilian commanders in chief have to engage directly and even abrasively with their military commanders, to challenge and often to overrule them, in order to produce an effective strategy in war. He cites the examples of Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion. I thought Cohen's ideas were important and should be brought to the attention of the Bush White House. I wrote a review of the book for the Weekly Standard, and its editors made sure that multiple copies were sent to the White House. Word came out later that Bush had read the book. His initial response to DeMuth suggested that the book made little impression, although his further words suggested to me that he recalled the book and its argument but didn't want to answer the question directly. Instead, he launched into a riff I've heard before in meetings with journalists where I've been present.

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By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

Bush's auto bailout was announced Friday morning. Who wants to be the Grinch the week before Christmas? Not George W. Bush. Yet at the same time, he did not give General Motors and Chrysler a blank check. He imposed conditions, including the bondholders' haircut and reducing labor costs to the levels of those of foreign automakers in the U.S. This presumably will require negotiations on the bondholders' haircut and the UAW's contract, and the March 31 deadline means it will be the Obama Treasury Department that will determine whether the conditions have been met. This sounds to me much like the approach taken by Sen. Bob Corker in the Senate, an approach that was vetoed by the UAW and therefore by Democratic senators. It shows that there is still serious power in a lame duck White House—but also that its work is only temporary and to some extent can be undone by the incoming administration. This looks less like a solution and more like a continuing story, with lots of twists and turns available. But evidently the dire cash positions of General Motors and Chrysler prevented them from holding out until January 20, when a new Democratic administration and Congress could have voted them the money without requiring any concessions from the UAW beyond those it made (and in fairness they're not trivial) in their fall 2007 contracts.

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By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Why is the whole economic world dreading deflation? Just today, Reuters reported:

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said on Thursday that the U.S. central bank's duty now was to do everything it could to prevent deflation and it could worry about inflation later.

"Price pressures now are in the other direction," he said in response to a question at a World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth luncheon about potential future inflation. "We have to do everything we can to lift the economy up and prevent deflation from taking (hold)."

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By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

U.S. Senator Ken Salazar, who's been named by Barack Obama as the incoming Secretary of the Interior, is a good guy. He is an independent Democrat from southern Colorado, where his ranching family has lived for generations. Four years ago, when he won his seat in the Senate, he demonstrated, to national Democrats, his party's revived potential in the Mountain West. He has an enviable quality for a politician: like Ronald Reagan, folks tend to underestimate him.

Salazar is a moderate. When other Democrats turned their backs, he loyally maintained his friendship with Sen. Joe Lieberman, the traitor from Connecticut. Salazar's first shining moment in the Senate came when Republicans threatened to "nuke" the federal judicial selection process, and he joined with Sen. John McCain in the gang of a dozen centrist Republicans and Democrats who defused that confrontation.

I'm thinking that neither industry nor the professional environmental movement is entirely thrilled with Salazar's appointment to Interior. Yet not terribly angry either. Democrats out West tend to side with the tree-huggers, while recognizing the place that resource development and the recreation industries have in the regional and national economy. I have no doubt that Salazar will make sound, deliberate—maybe even cautious—changes in federal stewardship of the public lands.

Salazar's real challenge—as well as his historic opportunity, and political potential—lies not in policy, but in management. I have lived a life watching crooks in Washington and cannot remember a federal agency so mismanaged, gutted, demoralized and corrupted as George W. Bush's Department of the Interior.

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