In All Things

Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan is pushing back hard against the politicization of counter-terrorism efforts. He especially objected to the recent controversy over the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the foreign national who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day as it landed in Detroit. Republicans have criticized the administration for "Mirandizing"Abdulmutallab, informing him of his rights and procuring a lawyer for him, although it was recently revealed that he is cooperating with authorities now. The issue became an applause line for Sen. Scott Brown in his surprise win in Massachusetts.

Brennan appeared on "Meet the Press" this past Sunday and his criticism of the politicians was straightforward: "I am just very concerned on behalf of the counter-terrorism officials throughout the government that politicians continue to make this a political football." Brennan, it should be clear, is a lifer in the intelligence business having worked most of his life for the CIA, then appointed by President George W. Bush to 2004 to be the first head of the National Counterterrorism Center, and finally appointed by President Obama to be Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security. He is not, in short, a political hack.

The Republican attacks on the administration’s handling of the Detroit bomber have been especially obnoxious seeing as the Bush administration handled their shoe bomber in almost exactly the same fashion. Their attacks on the administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo and bring as many inmates there to justice as possible are similarly hollow when you recall that they have used civilian courts to try no less than Zacarias Moussaoui, a man who was actually complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

The Democrats, however, deserve not an ounce of pity. They have failed to erect the legal architecture that terrorism has made necessary. In this age of suicide bombers and mass murder, we need to find ways to prosecute terrorists, but we also have to find ways to protect innocents from attacks, even if that means that some of the standards of traditional jurisprudence should be set aside. The Left needs to realize that you can’t treat a terrorist like a common thief just as the Right needs to realize that the only way the Jihadists can win their war is if we abandon the standards of civilized, legal behavior that are one of the West’s most glorious achievements.

In the event, there is a blueprint for such a legal architecture. If the Democrats on the Hill or at the Justice Department would go to their local bookstore, they would easily find a copy of Ben Wittes’ "Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror." Wittes, who is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, lays out the issues involved in prosecuting terror suspects in ways that will make both the Left and the Right uncomfortable. His book has received widespread critical acclaim across the political and ideological spectrum, but so far no one on Capitol Hill or in the Administration has championed the effort to create new laws to deal with this new threat. Instead, both parties argue for solutions that reflect their biases, but which also reflect the ways in which they fail to grasp the unique challenges terrorism presents to our legal culture.

Brennan’s interview was powerful. I hope his friends in the White House listened as intently as his critics on Capitol Hill. And, I hope he can convince them that it is time that both parties recognize that putting new wines into old juridical skins is only a recipe for the continued politicization of an issue that surely should transcend petty politics.

Michael Sean Winters

The best part of last night’s Super Bowl was the game. But, the ads and the ceremonies that peppered the televised spectacle were more instructive about the state of our culture and the verdict they rendered was decidedly mixed.

I am generally a fan of President Obama. But, I don’t want to see an interview with the guy in the middle of my Super Bowl prep unless he is showing us a family chili recipe.

And, what is with the aging rock stars? Was anyone thrilled by the half-time show that featured the rock group "The Who"? Who knew the Who were still singing? They are ancient. Old news. Not at all hip. I am sure they were tested by market strategists and deemed safe for one of the largest national audiences of the year, and safety seemed to be the theme of both the ads during the game and the hoopla surrounding it. Another golden oldie, by Steve Winwood, "Bring me your Higher Love" was sung before the game. I remember that from high school. And the hard rock group "Kiss" appeared in an ad, their once fit bodies now clearly showing middle aged paunches. Are there no new rock groups? Is "retro rock" a cultural meme?

Of course there are new groups and edgier themes, but market researchers and ad execs like safe, as do their corporate bosses. Businesspeople prate on about innovation and risk, but they really like government subsidies, tax breaks and safe marketing strategies that are so boring they could not possibly offend. Even the controversial Tim Tebow ad about abortion was not really about abortion, in fact I am not sure what it was about except a nice looking Mom being loved by her nice looking son, which is fine, but I wonder how many people put down their buffalo wings to write down the website name of Focus on the Family that sponsored the ad. And, the Tebow ad was completely upstaged by the Betty White ad for Snickers. That was funny. Funny, too, were the E-trade ads and the Doritos ads. But, most of the ads were bizarre or boring. You have to wonder what is going on in the zeitgeist when so many ads feature people in their underwear.

Avant-garde is not an English phrase. Nor is bella figura. It is a shame. I could not help remembering the celebrations in Paris for the bicentenaire. In addition to the traditional military parade, they had a very avant-garde parade in the early evening, that finished at the Place de la Concorde. All the lights went out except for a few spotlights at the foot of the great column in the center of the square. There was American singer Jessye Norman, wrapped in a giant tricoleur, singing the French national anthem. I remember thinking what kind of outcry you would get if an American celebration of Independence Day featured a French singer? But, the whole French festivities had a, dare we say, joie de vivre, that the producers of the Super Bowl and its ads entirely lack.

I just finished reading Alan Lichtman’s book "White Protestant Nation" which has been my bedtime reading the past few weeks. A central theme of that work is the way our culture yearns for an anti-pluralist cultural ethic that is more than a bit dull. Lichtman shows the ways that Protestant culture, especially southern Protestant culture, intermixes with the corporate ethos to produce this dull, conservative bias in the broader culture. Or, in light of last night’s Super Bowl, we might ask: Who dat running the ad agencies (and the corporate boards that hire them) that produce so many boring ads and retro rock stars?

Bipartisanship has a better name than it should: As often as not, it yields an anodyne moderation that is unequal to the tasks facing the nation. Last year, President Obama scaled back the stimulus bill in hopes of attracting GOP support (he got none), when we now realize the stimulus needed to be larger and longer. The fabled 9/11 Report was produced by a bipartisan consensus and was one of the most internally contradictory texts ever produced. People confuse bipartisanship with consensus, with acting in the national interest, when in fact it can merely result in even less useful or effective policies that conflate the interests of the two parties.

Still, of all the many worries we should entertain about the country’s political life, the greatest is surely the general loss of confidence in government per se, the sense that government is some alien force obnoxious to our lives and interests, the idea that Washington is incapable of accomplishing anything good. This profoundly anti-democratic (small ‘d’) sensibility is first and foremost a moral failing, trusting in impersonal forces like "the market" or "science," rather than in our human capacity for self-governance. And so even if bipartisanship is only a facsimile of consensus, and not the genuine article, a facsimile is better than nothing.

And, so, the swearing in of Senator Scott Brown yesterday represents a sign of hope for the country, and especially for the Democrats. Yes, in the short term, the Dems took the hit. But, going forward, Republicans cannot escape responsibility for governance and Democrats know going in to every debate that they must bring along some GOP Senators. As well, when you have five moderate Republicans on board, you do not have to jump to Sen. Lieberman’s mood swings. The resulting policies may or may not be improved in terms of delivering health care, prosecuting terrorists or jump starting the economy. But, the underlying concern, the concern to show that government can accomplish something on behalf of the citizens who elected it, that will be strengthened.

Senator Brown, of course, will stand for re-election some day and if he likes being a Senator he is likely to be mindful of the progressive views of many Bay State voters, especially on social issues. It will be curious to see how the GOP treats him: They love him today, but this is a pro-choice Republican who has made his peace with gay marriage. And, he posed nude for a magazine. This is not a Jerry Falwell Republican. And, he voted for a health care bill in Massachusetts that has many of the features to which the Republicans object in the current reform effort at the national level. Sen. Brown needs to be careful lest he find himself as the second Senator from Massachusetts to be for something before he was against it.

Maybe the prospect of another snow storm has my thoughts turning in decidedly Augustinian ways this morning. To regain confidence in government seems like such a small thing, and bipartisanship seems like such a small means towards that admittedly small end. But, it is not a small thing after all. It is the last myth of Reaganism, the myth that government is not the solution to our nation’s ills but the problem. The myth is in the participle. Reagan was right that government is not "the" solution, but it may be "a" solution. It may be "a" problem but it is not "the" problem. Whatever else it is, government is a creation of ourselves and will be as good or as bad as we insist that it be. The new Senator from Massachusetts, like the still new President from Illinois, are in their positions of governance because we sent them there.

Michael Sean Winters

This morning is the National Prayer Breakfast. It is a gaudy affair, held in a ballroom not in a sanctuary, at which politicians are invited to strut their spiritual feathers. It permits reporters to write articles like the one in this morning’s paper entitled "Obama’s spiritual life largely private" which always send up alarm bells for me: When you find the words "faith" and "private" in the same breathe, you know you are in a Protestant culture.

There is nothing "private" about the Prayer Breakfast but the event is sponsored by a group that is something less than public, the Family. This is a group of conservative Christians, some of whom have recently been in the news for their support of a Uganda law that would require pastors and confessors to tell authorities if they know their parishioners are gay, so they can be put to death. Nice.

The Family was one of a myriad of conservative groups that flourished in the 1950s. (The Prayer Breakfast began in 1953.) The John Birch Society was another. The National Review was a third. This last, founded by William F. Buckley in 1955, made genuine contributions to the nation’s political life by bringing conservative ideas, articulately and intelligently defended, into the discussions of the intelligentsia. The journal today, like the conservative movement more generally, seems stuck in a rut of nostalgia. They pine for Reagan, although they criticized Reagan mercilessly at the time for being insufficiently conservative. They prefer the Old Rite. They long for the neighborhoods of the Cleavers of "Leave it to Beaver" fame, which did not have any of the multi-racial pluralism of today’s neighborhoods. Indeed, pluralism is not their strong suit: They may defend the free market, but they are horrified by the free market of ideas that is one of the West’s most significant cultural achievements.

The Prayer Breakfast itself will not be particularly ideological, especially not with Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero from Spain on the dais. (Was this a conservative set up? Obama with a real Socialist? Of course, the Pope greeted Zapatero when he was in Spain too.) But, there is an ideology underneath the event that is more problematic than usually admitted. The President will speak in the words of our "civic religion." He will, according to a source quoted in the Post "stress the importance of an openness to compromise and differing perspectives," which is a fine governing idea but a less fine theological one. The assembled in the Hilton ballroom will invoke the blessing of God upon America, an America that all the gathered politicians are trying mightily to recommit to material spending (and therefore hiring), but I wonder if any will note, with the psalmist, that "Whom God loveth, He chasteneth." (A propos of last week’s "Saturday Night Live," God must really love Martha Coakley.)

I long for the day when a President has the guts to RSVP in the negative to the National Prayer Breakfast. I long for the day when a President whose faith is truly "private" will decline to make his advisors available to reporters to inform the public that he gets "daily devotionals" on his email, or the details of his chapel attendance. That said, there was one very interesting comment in the Post’s article: A source "said that Obama has consulted religious leaders less often for his own personal guidance than for help walking through major public decisions – such as during the Afghanistan review process, when he sought advice on the ethical implications of war." (So, Cardinal McCarrick is ushered into the Oval not to pray but to plan!) This admission of the public consequences and implications of faith is a welcome tonic against the "my faith is intensely private" meme that most politicians adopt. To be clear: Faith, at least the Christian faith, is not private. It involves a community of believers, the Church, whose worship, creeds, and other teachings are as public as public can be. The Christian faith is rooted not in esoteric nostalgia but in historic claims about events in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. And, the God of America’s "civic religion," the God who will be invoked at this morning’s Prayer Breakfast is an idol, not a God, although the nostalgists in the Family may not recognize that. And, I wish Obama would skip the breakfast and go to morning Mass at St. Matthew's down the street!

The American Principles Project (APP), founded by conservative Catholic professor Robbie George, seems to have an inordinate fixation on gay people. In dealing with presidential appointments and, now, with the President’s promise to end "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," Professor George’s organization betrays a bigotry that is at the very least unseemly in a tenured professor.

Of the three Obama administration appointees APP has attacked – issuing "Action Item" alerts calling for people to contact their senators to oppose the nominations – two of the three were gay. The website of APP listed various opinions expressed by the nominees but also made sure to throw out traditional canards against gay people. Of Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, APP wrote that he is "a target of social conservatives for his past drug abuse and what they say is his promotion of homosexuality in schools, is under fresh attack after it was revealed that the pro-gay group he formerly headed recommends books his critics say are pornographic." I especially like the phrase "promotion of homosexuality" for its outdated caricature of gay people as predators. And the concern about "books his critics say are pornographic" puts one in mind of Sweet Alice Moore’s crusade in the early 1970s in Charleston, West Virginia to get such "pornographic" works as "Catcher in the Rye" removed from the school curriculum.

George’s attack on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is especially interesting. The APP website has again issued an "Action Alert" to try and prevent the policy from being overturned. They provide a link to an article by a group called Center for Military Readiness (CMR), an outfit which is similarly obsessed with the issue of gays in the military. In CMR’s analysis of the 2008 election, the first four items on their issues list were all related to gays in the military or, as they nicely put it, creating a "San Francisco military." Surely, Professor George, if not the people at CMR, knows that before San Francisco was a city, he was a saint, and a pacifist, so the allusion to a "San Francisco military" is as offensive to Catholics as it is to gays. Of course, APP earlier cited Sen. Inhofe as an expert on climate change which is a bit like citing Bishop Williamson as an expert on the Holocaust.

What "American Principle" is offended by letting gays serve in the military? Of course, APP notes that the military culture is different from civilian culture and that the military should not be a place to score political points. That argument sort of worked until yesterday, when Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Congress that ending "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" was "the right thing to do" and that ending it involved issues of institutional as well as personal integrity. And, of course, it would be curious to know how APP’s argument comports with Harry Truman’s decision in 1948 to integrate the U.S. military. Actually, one of the few clear, obvious "American Principles" that seems to apply to this discussion is the principle of civilian control of the military. But, Professor George’s organization is turning itself into the intellectual heir of General Douglas MacArthur and his fellow rightwing crazies, so perhaps we should not be surprised that this particular principle, still less recognition of Truman’s courageous and correct stand, do not meet Professor George’s partisan standards. The APP is trading in simple bigotry.

All these supporters of banning gays from serving openly in the U.S. military should be asked what they think of the career of Baron von Steuben. The Baron’s statue is one of four foreigners that grace Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. (Lafayette, Rochambeau and Kosciuszko are the others.) The Baron was in many ways the founder of the U.S. Army, training the Continental Army troops in discipline and drills at Valley Forge. He was also the first known gay man in the U.S. military.

None of this would matter if Professor George was not, in addition to running APP, promoting himself as a leading Catholic intellectual. A recent New York Times profile seemed to indicate that George was the intellectual driving force of the American Catholic bishops. The USCCB, of course, has not taken a stand on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" because the issue does not involve any Catholic principles either. But, the bishops who support and applaud Professor George should be aware of what they are signing up for. He is not only a thoughtful defender of natural law, he is also the proprietor of a D.C.-based advocacy organization that is embarrassing in its bigotry, especially embarrassing to an intellectual. Especially to a Catholic.

Michael Sean Winters

The President’s budget, announced yesterday, may have the finest calibration of budget details in the history of the human race. But, its delivery was not a political success and whether Budget Director Peter Orzag is a genius with numbers or not, he was not very adept as he made the round of the news shows yesterday explaining it.

The first thing to know about big annual announcements is that you need to decide in advance what you want the news cycle to focus on. It is not clear that the White House really thought that one through and, in the absence of any significant new direction or methodology, the press focused mostly on the size of the package. And that size is big, bigger than big actually, a stunning $3.8 trillion. As a news item, it plays directly into the Republican narrative that the President is spending our children’s future recklessly. It doesn’t matter whether the money is well spent, or needs to be spent. Unless there is news value in the way it is being spent, the press will focus merely on the size of the package.

Orzag was stuck defending goulash and budgetary goulash is difficult to defend. He discussed this proposal and that proposal. There was no central organizing theme. And, if you are defending goulash, he could have at least put budgetary honesty at the top of the list. You will recall that during the Bush Administration, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not in the budget at all, so about $200 billion of the Obama increase is attributable merely to the President commitment to simple honesty. Make the republicans defend their prior budgetary dishonesty and see how that sits with the Tea Party crowd.

Most of all, Orzag and the administration have failed to articulate the need for higher taxes on the wealthy. The wealthy do not pay nearly the share of federal tax dollars that they paid in the 1950s and 1960s when the economy was booming. And, there are whole categories of taxes that they do not pay at all. Social Security and Medicare are funded through a payroll tax, so people who take their money as management or professional fees and those who make millions in investment income do not pay anything towards the solvency of Social Security or Medicare which are the two most expensive items in the federal budget. Why should a billionaire investor pay nothing towards Social Security while a waiter or teacher or factory worker pay 14% of their income in payroll taxes?

The last major overhaul of the tax code was in 1986. Whether the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress survive the November elections or not, the President will be needing a bipartisan project for next year. It is not too soon to begin thinking about what that plan should be. But, the White House needs to think outside the box of very smart policy experts on this, and think about what will help make average Americans feel like someone is looking out for them. The answer, long proposed by Mike Kinsley, is a liberal version of a flat tax, retaining the progressive tax rates, but radically simplifying the code itself, ridding it of all the special tax breaks it contains, and removing the caps on payroll taxes and making those taxes more broadly applicable. After all, the Supreme Court has decided that corporations are individuals: Let’s tax them like they are.

Populism does not come easily or naturally to President Obama. He is not "one of the guys" and thank God for that. But, figuring out ways to address the budgetary crisis facing the nation is one big invitation to engage in the kind of populism the Republicans will have difficulty fighting. The tax code is not 14 volumes long because it needs to be. It is 14 volumes long because lobbyists have successfully gotten their special tax breaks inserted into it. The average Joe does not have a lobbyist doing anything for him. Obama needs to get past the policy experts, even the smart ones, and talk to the average men and women. See how they would react to such a proposal as a progressive flat tax. He might find that it is a winner, economically and at the polls.

Fred Hiatt has an essay in this morning’s Washington Post taking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to task for his turn-around on the bipartisan Conrad-Gregg proposal to establish a bipartisan commission to recommend structural changes to the federal budget which, like the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission, would recommend a package of changes that can only be voted on as a whole, up or down. The idea behind such commissions is that they get around the self-interest of individual members of Congress by creating a proposal that is too big to fail.

BRAC has been a success. The problem before BRAC was this: As the military became more high-tech and less infantry-dependent, we did not need so many military installations and we needed the money for new weaponry. But, no member of Congress wants a base closed in their district because such bases provide jobs and economic opportunity. So, the BRAC committee makes one proposal, to close a whole bunch of bases, and Congress must vote up or down on the entire list. They can’t lobby to have their base reinstated. And, in any given Congress, there are enough people who do not lose bases to vote for the entire list, especially when the Pentagon brass insists that they support the BRAC proposals.

The budget commission was designed to clear a similar political hurdle. Democrats defend entitlement spending to the death. Republicans hate new taxes to the death. The outlines of a compromise are clear: The Democrats need to agree to some way to restrain entitlement spending and the GOP needs to agree to some types of tax increases. But, at any given moment, neither side has an interest in pursuing such a compromise. Sen. McConnell, who once supported the measure, now opposed it because his party has a clear interest in avoiding compromise right now, especially if that compromise entailed giving up their anti-tax credential. The tea party crowd would be on them in a heartbeat. Thus, this morning’s piece by Hiatt who chastises McConnell and others for their inability to put the public interest above their own partisan interest.

Of course, the Founders expected politicians to act out of self-interest, enlightened self-interest to be sure, but self-interest nonetheless. And, the Founders were never clear about where precisely that "light" in "enlightened" was to come from. As I mentioned last week, even those who are in the vanguard of defending science from "denialism" are themselves susceptible of avoiding courageous conclusions when those scientific conclusions do not comport well with upper-middle class, or Upper West Side, moral sensitivities. And, there are people who are pro-life so long as that does not involve supporting a health care reform that would save lives but would hand President Obama a victory. As has been evident for some time in our political culture, people do think they are entitled not only to their own opinions but to their own facts, and both sides in the ideological debate have their own networks and think tanks to establish those "facts." Fox and MSNBC appear to live in parallel universes.

This is why the President’s meeting last week with congressional Republicans was so valuable and why the President should schedule regular "Question Time" sessions with members of Congress. It is hard to sustain a false fact in the face of repeated questioning. Over time, the sessions would entail more give and take, no doubt, which would also be good. But, there is not now in our current system a viable means for saying, "That’s not true" Justice Samuel Alito’s mouthing of those words at the State of the Union notwithstanding.

There is, of course, a deeper cultural issue here and one to which Pope Benedict XVI has been calling attention for decades. We live in a culture where the existence of "truth" is questioned per se, where everything is reduced to subjectivity, where even intelligent people feel the need in conversation to state, "Well, it’s only my opinion but…." The trouble at the heart of America’s constitutional system is a problem at the heart of modernity, the inability to discern ways to discern truth and accord it a role in our political debates alongside interests. Those who invoke the Crusades and such are correct when they assert that the absence of ontology has sometimes been a blessing. The problem is that there is no such thing as the absence of ontology. The questions of truth, and value and meaning are endemic. Mr. Hiatt is on to something, but he is on to more than he realizes.

The President sent a mixed signal about the future of health care reform in his State of the Union address. His words were clear: "Don't walk away from reform.  Not now.  Not when we are so close.  Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people. Let's get it done." Clear enough. The problem is that those strong words came after the President had discussed everything from jobs to climate change legislation to trade deals to community colleges. That is how you dial back in Washington. At this critical juncture, we encourage you to exercise the full influence of your office to urge Congress to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation." The group, which included many of the members of the President’s own Council for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, spoke to the moral aspects of the issue, which were unchanged by the special election results in Massachusetts.

Faith leaders have continued to call on the administration and Congress to recommit themselves to reform. Two days ago, I mentioned the letter the USCCB sent to members of Congress. Yesterday, the Catholic Health Association echoed the bishops’ call and the President’s words. Sister Carol Keehan, DC, president and CEO of CHA said in a statement: "We understand the political realities and concerns with passage of such important and far-raching legislation. But we firmly believe that now is not the time to let those concerns derail what may be the last opportunity of our lifetime to address the continuing shame of allowing so many individuals and families in our nation to go without access to affordable health care."

Earlier in the week, a group of prominent religious leaders wrote to the President, saying, "At this critical juncture, we encourage you to exercise the full influence of your office to urge Congress to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation." The group, which included many of the members of the President’s own Council for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, spoke to the moral aspects of the issue, which were unchanged by the special election results in Massachusetts.

Of course, while we’re thinking of the Bay State, when John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles of Courage, he had to go back to the nineteenth century to find seven of the nine profiles and little has changed to increase the courage quotient within the halls of Congress. Clearly, both the White House and Congress recognize that they need to set health care reform aside and work on a jobs bill first. I suspect the White House will also seek to have a major bipartisan victory on some issue, any issue, before trying to tackle health care again. So, how to proceed?

The White House should steal a page from recent Vatican history. Vatican II called for greater collegiality among the episcopate and in response Pope Paul VI set up the Synod of Bishops. From all around the world, bishops would come to address critical issues in the life of the Church. The first synod, in 1967 treated the topic "Preservation and strengthening of the Catholic faith, its integrity, its force, its development, its doctrinal and historical coherence." The 1971 Synod focused on the ministerial priesthood and justice in the world. The problem developed, however, that drafting documents that reflected each synod’s work was cumbersome and unwieldy. So beginning with the 1974 Synod on evangelization, the bishops spent their time in discussion and left records of their talks, with suggestions and proposals, on the Pope’s desk and let him put it all into a single document. The Pope could, as needed, call back the authors of the varied interventions, or the synod’s relators, to clarify a point. Thus, documents like Paul’s Evangelii Nuntiandi and John Paul’s Ecclesia in America were joint efforts, the ideas coming from the synod and the synthesis and integration of the ideas coming from the Pope.

President Obama needs to pull together all the different proposals on health care. He need not limit his ideas to the two bills that actually passed both chambers, but the process by which those bills passed should guide his thinking about what can, and cannot, pass. Obviously, he needs to have some long talks with Senator Olympia Snowe and other centrist Republican Senators but he should meet with the leadership of both parties (put it on C-SPAN just to shut up the crazies!), solicit their ideas and embrace the ones he can. If Minority Leader Boehner says he wants tort reform, give him tort reform but then ask what he is going to give. If he says "Nothing," walk outside to the waiting cameras. The President needs to have some long talks with Joe Liberman and Ben Nelson, the two members of the Senate Democratic caucus who caused the most grief. He needs to sort through the abortion issue and he needs to start with the fact that the only health care bill to garner a single Republican vote so far was the House bill that included the Stupak Amendment. The President will need to sit down one-on-one with key senators, not rely on Sen. Reid to deliver the votes, and with key members of the House. He needs to look them in the eye and make them promise to support the bill. He may have to scale back his goals. But, the key thing is that he must take the leadership role at this stage. Letting Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid continue to drive the process is to commit to more water-balloon handling: When the moderates squeeze here, the lefties will burst there, and nothing will happen. The President is not only head of state and head of government, he is the head of his party and he needs to exercise this latter role if he is to succeed in the first two.

The other thing the President must do on health care is remind independent voters that he is trying to make things better and the Republicans are not just obstructing his efforts, their obstruction amounts to a defense of the status quo. (It is imperative that he adopt one or two GOP reform suggestions as well, to be able to say that he is not trying to ram through an excessivley liberal program.) Independent voters are not leaning towards the GOP because they like the GOP’s proposals. They are leaning that way because they hate the status quo and the Dems are the party in power. They are registering their opposition to the way things are. The President needs to remind the country – every day and in every speech – that he is the one who is trying to deliver change and paint those who stand in his way as the defenders of the status quo.

Some have suggested that the House should pass the Senate bill. but Speaker Pelosi said she does not have the votes. So, there was a suggestion to pass the Senate bill as is, but with the simultaneous guarantee that the Senate, using reconciliation and thus avoiding a filibuster, will amend the bill to the House's liking. This smells of shanenigans and will only add to the perception that Washington is broken.

The battle for health care can yet be won. But, the methods of 2009 are best left in 2009. The President and Congress should work on a jobs bill. Then they should work on something bipartisan. But, come Eastertide, the President should take the health care issue by the horns and push, push, push for a successful reform bill. Only he can do it.

Michael Sean Winters

President Barack Obama knows how to deliver a speech about as well as anyone since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And, like Roosevelt, President Obama set out a vision for the coming year that focused on the economy, and specifically on the way the government can lay the groundwork for economic growth. Almost every issue he mentioned pivoted back to that central point.

The problem is that the Republican Party has a different vision of how the government can help the economy recover. And, they have this obnoxious habit, grown worse since last week’s special election, of acting as if Obama had not won the election in 2008. The President called on Congress to move beyond partisan bickering, but I wish he had been more willing to call out the GOP. When he goes to Capitol Hill to meet with GOP leaders, and they put out a press release saying nothing was accomplished before the meeting, you know they were not sincerely engaging him in the first place. If they put their political goal of impeding any administration efforts ahead of the need for the government to help turn the economy around, shame on them.

There is a place for honest disagreement between the parties and Republicans are entirely entitled to propose their own solutions to the economic crisis. Indeed, President Obama has apparently decided to meet them halfway before any negotiations are begun, announcing a series of tax cuts that will appease Republicans but will do nothing to actually improve the economy. A small business does not hire when a tax cut comes on line; a small business hires when its staff can no longer handle growing customer demand.

Many on the left have denounced the President’s proposal for a spending freeze on discretionary spending. He understands something they do not, and the section of the speech in which he explained the spending freeze was the most effective of the evening. He said, "families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions.  The federal government should do the same….Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't.  And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will." I do not know if the phrase "enforce this discipline" was intended to be so paternal, but it had the happy, and undeniably true, effect of pointing out the childishness of Congress.

 The President, like his predeccesor George W. Bush, tried to cast himself as an outsider, despite living in the most insider home in the nation. He spoke about Washington’s political culture as if he was not living in the middle of it. Sometimes this fell flat. On CNN, the Independents in a focus group flat-lined Obama when he made an inside joke about health care not being good politics. Self-deprecating humor is one thing, but of course a joke about health care was going to fall flat.

I had hoped the President would use the fact and form of the State of the Union speech itself to contrast his approach to governance with Washington’s dysfunctional traditions. I was hoping the President would give a brief, maybe 15 minute speech and avoid the hour-plus laundry list approach that he followed. Among other things, it is impossible to keep the focus on one central thing when you are reading a laundry list. For example, ending "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" in the military is a fine idea, an instance of simple justice that is long overdue. But, it has nothing to do with job creation and the economy and, just so, should have been left out. Instead, the reference sounded like typical interest-group politics.

The State of the Union also showed, vividly, the one thing President Obama does not have to worry about: his base. The Democrats in the focus group on CNN kept him at the top of their meters from the moment he walked in the door. The noisy, inside-the-Beltway lobby groups, and the still noisier blogosphere of the left, may give him trouble but rank and file Democrats still love the guy.

President Obama is uniquely gifted as an orator and the relaxed demeanor he exhibits in such situations shows a self-confidence that is as breath-taking as it is needed to tackle such an enormous set of of challenges. He has not only a surplus of confidence, but a surplus of intelligence, and he must remember that the rest of us don’t. He can speak about the stimulus money helping, but the rest of us need to see it. We need to see the high-speed rail lines being built, the wind farm being constructed, the bridges being replaced. In the days and weeks ahead, the President should find himself outside Washington, visiting businesses and schools and police stations where government is making a difference. The state of the Union is better because of the actions this president has taken. He just has to make sure the rest of us see that fact more clearly and last night was a good first step.

Republicans continue their victory dance on the grave of health care reform. I hope they will take a moment to read the letter they received from the USCCB yesterday. It calls upon all members of Congress "to come together and recommit themselves to enacting genuine health care reform that will protect the life, dignity, conscience and health of all." The letter reaffirms the Church’s teaching that "health care is a basic human right." Indeed, among the criticisms of the bills the Bishops cite is the fact that they do not go far enough, that they still leave too many uninsured, especially immigrants. The letter also reiterated the bishops’ support for the language passed by the House regarding abortion funding and called for additional conscience protections.

The letter was signed by Bishop William Murphy, head of the Domestic Policy Committee, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Chairman of the Pro-life Committee and Bishop John Wester, who leads the Bishops’ Committee on Migration. The letter is a fine, bracing reminder that the USCCB is not in the business of partisan politics, that the Church’s commitment to universal health care is long standing, and that health care is not merely a political issue but a moral one, involving basic human rights.

So, can we expect InsideCatholic to call for those who voted against health care reform in their respective chambers to be denied communion? Can we expect Archbishop Burke to accuse Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said "I hope so," when asked if health care was dead, will the Prefect accuse him of acting at the behest of "the Father of Lies?" Will the "Catholic Key Blog" in Kansas City denounce those bishops who suggested health care was not a right?

I completely respect the right of my fellow Catholics who belong to the Republican Party to disagree with the bishops on any and almost all political issues. I do not think they should be denied communion because of their disagreement. I do not think they should be labeled "bad Catholics" or "cafeteria Catholics" or "faux Catholics" because their stance is so at odds with the nation’s bishops. But, because they are so quick to deny the Catholic credentials of those of us who do not worship at the pagan altar of conservative ideology, I do question them, not because of their ideas, but because of their self-righteousness in condemning others. One can be wrong without being bad. But can one be a Christian and be so relentlessly, vindictively judgmental about others, not about their ideas, but about their souls?

To be clear, it is ideas, and political ideas, that are at issue. No one gets a free pass to say, for example, "I’m a Catholic and I do not believe the Holocaust happened." If anyone were to say, "I’m Catholic and I think abortion is a completely acceptable way of dealing with a pregnancy" you are dangerously close to finding yourself no longer a Catholic in any meaningful sense. And, of course, if you deny the Creed, you are no longer a Catholic by definition. But, deciding how to deal with Holocaust denial and with those who procure abortions raises a set of thorny political and juridical questions on which Catholics can entertain a variety of opinions.

One thing has been missing from all the statements on health care that have been coming from the USCCB. In their pastoral letters on nuclear weapons and the economy, drafted in the 1980s, the bishops made clear that their moral teaching had a diminishing degree of certainty as it moved from principles to specific policies, that we can be certain that the intentional taking of innocent, civilian life is wrong, but that we must admit less certainty when discussing precise war-fighting strategies, even those that unintentionally involve the killing of innocents. Issues of intention, in a world of mixed motives, are not so easy to assess and politics is always a world of mixed motives. In the current case, the USCCB’s judgment about the relative merits of the Senate and House bills regarding abortion rests on their guess as to what market forces will do. That is not the kind of ground upon which bishops should invoke their teaching authority with too much precision.

Still, of all the many actors in the struggle over health care reform, the Catholic Church has been the most consistent and the most credible. They have been so not primarily because our intellectual bearings are any better than anyone else’s, although the Church’s consistency in defending life puts partisans to shame on both sides of the aisle. The main reason the Church’s voice is so clear and so convincing is because of the good work the Church does nationwide caring for the ill, at places like Providence Hospital here in Washington, D.C. or at St. Joseph’s Living Center in Willimantic, Connecticut, to name only the two Catholic hospitals that have come to my family’s aid. It is the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor, giving dignity and comfort to the elderly poor, that gives the Church credibility when we denounce euthanasia. It is the work of the Daughters of Charity and other religious orders that give the Church authority outside its own walls when discussing health care. Many Catholics, mostly Catholic women religious, preach about health care with their hands and have done so for decades. Congress should listen.

Michael Sean Winters

Bad faith can be found in both the extreme left- and right-wing camps. It is most commonly found not among simple people, whose prejudices are close to the surface, but among intellectuals (and pseudo-intellectuals), people who claim to be one thing, but then, in an instant, they expose their less attractive motivations. Two instances in recent days evidence bad faith, one the result of a failure of imagination and the other simple disingenuousness.

Last Friday, I was listening to NPR’s "Science Friday" and host Ira Flatow had an interview with New Yorker writer Michael Specter to promote his new book "Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives." Most of the interview consisted of Specter citing examples of those who are unwilling to face facts, and how such a refusal leads them to conclusions that are wrong and even dangerous. A worthwhile project assuredly. For example, he poked fun at those who are afraid of genetically modified food and those who turn to homeopathic remedies for their ills, a fear and a hope both of which have no scientific basis.

But, then they took a call from a woman who asked if embryology showed that a fetus is sentient when an abortion happens, if that would change how we addressed the issue as a culture. The woman did not explicitly indicate that she was pro-life. She merely stated, following the premise of Specter’s work, that here was a factual point that could clarify the morally fraught issue. Instead of engaging her question, they jumped all over her. Specter took refuge in the claim that abortion was a moral issue and so he was not going to consider it, although the whole tenor of his argument is that the intellectual superiority he upheld is akin to moral superiority. Flatow turned her question on its head. I kid you not: He asked her if science showed the fetus did not feel any pain if she would change her views. In short, they both refused to acknowledge the implications of their oh-so pristine scientific stance when it forced them into an uncomfortable spot. It was shameful.

Just as shameful was an admission on the website of Professor Robert George’s organization, The American Principles Project. George, if a recent New York Times profile is any guide, spends most of his time convincing the world that he is the brains behind the American bishops. The article on his website is entitled, "Not to be forgot: Pro-Life movement helped halt Obamacare." So, the "American Principle" involved was not a defense of human life but a defeat of universal health insurance.

Catholics are free to oppose all manner of political proposals. But, the American bishops, unlike some of the fringe pro-life elements, supported the goal of universal health insurance not least because it is pro-life. They objected to any government funding of abortion but one of the two incarnations of "Obamacare," the House bill included the Stupak Amendment. When that amendment passed, even Richard Doerflinger, the USCCB’s point man on pro-life issues, said that the inclusion of Stupak meant that the bishops wanted the bill to move forward. No one has been able to explain to me how or why the Senate language was not at least as good as the House language on the issue of abortion, but I understand their commitment to Stupak. But, such distinctions are lost on George. The goal all along was not to pass pro-life health care but to stop Obamacare. That may be a Republican principle, but it is not an American one and it is certainly not a Catholic principle. George is merely being disingenuous. Trying to defeat a bill that would have helped millions of Americans get access to health care, without offering a reasonable alternative, is not pro-life.

The two examples above show the difficulty of proclaiming the Gospel in a complex intellectual and political universe. For some like Specter and Flatow, the problem is that they like their principles when they yield the results they want. For others like George, principles are putty in their political hands, to be twisted as needed. The Church, in advancing its concern for life, must never give up in its efforts to engage science in reaching its moral conclusions, and must call out those who follow science only where they wish to be led. And, the Church must be careful too about aligning itself with those, like George, whose agendas are more partisan than principled.