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Biggest Stories of the Decade
Tweet Share on Facebook December 31, 2009 Comment (7)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, with Politics Daily's Carl Cannon, talking about the top stories of the decade. Carl is a thoughtful reporter and it was an interesting discussion. I figured that I might list here what I thought were the biggest stories from the last 10 years. Let me know in the comments section below whether I missed any (or missed on any).
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Most Admired: Obama, Clinton, Palin and ... Tiger Woods?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2009 Comment (6)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Gallup today released its list of the men and women Americans most frequently name as "most admired." There are the usual suspects: Barack Obama is the most admired man (the president virtually always is--George W. Bush was, even while his approval ratings plummeted) and Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman (for the 14th time in the last 17 years). Secretary Clinton did have some tough competition this time, from Alaska governor-turned-author Sarah Palin.
Of course this list is almost invariably an exercise in name recognition. See for example the four-way tie for 10th place among the most admired men, with each scoring 1 percent: Sen. John McCain, former President George H.W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, and golfer-turned-scandal star Tiger Woods. Clinton and Woods, tied. Insert joke here. "Ironically," Gallup notes, "Woods--who has some of the highest personal favorability ratings in Gallup polling history--did not finish in the top 10 until this year, following a personal scandal that caused those ratings to plummet."
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U.S. Population, 2010: 308 Million and Growing
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2009 Comment (50)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The United States will enter 2010 with a population of more than 308.4 million, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate. (Actually, their estimate is 308,400,408--they're nothing if not precise.) That's a 2.6 million person increase--0.9 percent--from their estimate entering 2009. Further, they estimate one new birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds, so in the time it took you to read this far, there have been three births and two deaths. Those figures are unchanged from the start of 2009. The rate at which immigrants enter the country has changed, marginally, down to one every 37 seconds in 2010 from one every 36 seconds in 2009. Make of that what you will. Overall, the Census folks figure that those trends add up to one person being added to the U.S. population every 14 seconds. (Net, I suppose.)
Of course the operative word here is estimate. This year we get to move past estimates and get real data to crunch, when the bureau conducts the decennial census. And those figures not only affect the distribution of congressional seats but also of $400 billion in federal funds to state, local and tribal governments each year. So when you get the form (only 10 questions this year) remember to fill it out.
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Obama: Filibuster Harming Democracy
Tweet Share on Facebook December 25, 2009 Comment (41)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I noted with approval the other day that President Obama has started inveighing against the misuse of the senate filibuster. "Look, the fact of the matter is, is that if used prudently, then I don't think [the filibuster is] harmful for our democracy," Obama told PBS (h/t TPM). "It's not being used prudently right now." He noted that the frequency with which the filibuster is currently used is "unheard of." He said: "If you look historically back in the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s ... you didn't see even routine items subject to the 60-vote rule."
And he's right. As I detailed a month ago, the frequency of filibusters has increased by a factor of 50 over the last half-century: During the 1950s there was an average of one filibuster per Congress, while the 110th Congress alone (covering 2007 and 2008) had 52 filibusters. That's nuts. More broadly, delaying tactics like the filibuster were used on 8 percent of major legislation in the 1960s, but they were used on 70 percent in the 110th Congress. So there's no question that the filibuster is not now being used in the same way it has been traditionally.
Not that the right wing noise machine is about to acknowledge that. You can see the line of attack wingers will mount in a column from today's New York Post:
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Texting While Driving? You're Six Times More Likely to Crash
Tweet Share on Facebook December 21, 2009 Comment (5)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
A new study gives us more data backing up what we probably already knew: Texting while driving is a really, really bad idea. According to the study, done by some University of Utah psychologists, drivers who text are six times more likely to crash than people giving their full attention to the road. And texting is actually markedly worse than talking while driving (which is also dangerous--even if you've got a hands-free device). According to the study, drivers' reaction time was 30 percent worse while texting but only 9 percent worse than when they were driving while speaking on the phone. Here's why, according to MSNBC's story on the study:
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Howard Dean Wrong to Urge Killing the Health Reform Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook December 16, 2009 Comment (17)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Howard Dean wants to make like Dr. Kevorkian on the current version of the senate healthcare bill. Telling Vermont Public Radio that the bill's current form--no public option, no Medicare buy-in--is "essentially the collapse of healthcare reform in the United States," Dean argues that it's time to scrap the whole thing and start over. "Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill," he said.
It would be much simpler. There would, for example, be no ban on excluding people from coverage based on pre-existing conditions. That's because reconciliation is a budget short-cut, meant to avoid filibusters on revenue raising and spending. So a lot of the regulatory guts of the bill--the ones that have the broadest public support no less--would disappear.
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Sunday Funnies: Nobel, Copenhagen and More
Tweet Share on Facebook December 13, 2009 Comment (2)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the topic of the moment in our political cartoon roundup this week, with a healthy dose of global warming and the Copenhagen talks (including a shot or two at the email scandal). Beyond this week you'll find cartoons poking fun at the jobs summit, Obama's Afghanistan policy, Republican purity, the healthcare debate, and of course Tiger Woods. And if that's not enough for you, check out our November political cartoon roundup, our October political cartoon roundup, our September political cartoon roundup, and so on. And don't forget our Year in Political Cartoons: 2009, stretching back to the inauguration, through fun like the beer summit, earmarks, the auto bailout, AIG, the White House flyover, Mark Sanford, Michael Jackson, and the tea party crowd.
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Poll: Illinois Voters Oppose Guantanamo North
Tweet Share on Facebook December 12, 2009 Comment (21)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Rasmussen released a poll today showing that Illinois voters oppose moving prisoners currently held at Guantanamo Bay to the supermax Thomson Correctional Center, by a margin of 51-38. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn favors selling the facility--which is currently close to empty--to the federal government and letting them turn it into a Guantanamo Bay north. The feds plan to fortify the facility to a level "beyond supermax" in order to handle its new inmates. (The citizens of Thomson, Ill., where unemployment is 10.5 percent, reportedly favor the deal as a potential job creator.)
If Rasmussen's polling is correct, we have a triumph of cheap demagoguery.
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News Analysis: Tiger Woods vs. Healthcare vs. Afghanistan
Tweet Share on Facebook December 11, 2009 Comment (3)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Pew has some new data out about both what news stories people followed last week and what news stories the media covered. The good news is that Americans don't seem interested in frivolous news. The stories that Americans said they were following "very closely" were Afghanistan (43 were following very closely), healthcare (42 percent), and the economy (41 percent)--all roughly double the numbers for Tiger Woods's problems (19 percent) and the White House party crashers (16 percent).
In terms of stories followed "most closely," the pecking order was healthcare (29 percent), Afghanistan (20 percent), and the economy (15 percent), with El Tigre's peccadilloes sliding in with 10 percent. Seven percent followed the story of the police officers killed in Washington state, and only four percent most closely followed the story of the White House crashers.
So how did the media do in terms of giving the people what they wanted? Mixed bag.
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Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech Echoes FDR, JFK
Tweet Share on Facebook December 11, 2009 Comment (13)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The president's landmark speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize was a classic Obama address. In a high-stakes setting, he tackled substantive issues--war and peace--with nuance and deft. He treated his audience like thinking adults. And (rarely in contemporary politics) received deserved praise from both sides of the aisle. The response to the speech, as Politico's Ben Smith aptly put it, is "the sound of consensus, one that seemed briefly in doubt a month or two ago."
And while he talked about the new challenges of a new era--"a decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats"--Obama also employed themes and language that echoed his 20th century forebears. Reading Obama's speech, I could hear echoes especially of FDR and of JFK.
