Bill Manzi.com

Alan Greenspan’s new book, a memoir, will be hitting the bookstores shortly but is already creating a stir. Greenspan, an 18 year Fed Chairman, has been considered to be a leader of orthodox Republican economic thinking. Yet his book takes dead aim at the economic policies of George W. Bush and the Republican controlled Congress, essentially making the point that the G.O.P. abandoned fiscal conservatism for short term political gain. Greenspan has always been known as a deficit hawk, and he bemoans the policies that squandered the Clinton surplus and have driven us back to record deficits. Today’s Washington Post gives us a glimpse of the book, and tells of Greenspan’s effusive praise for President Bill Clinton.

While condemning Democrats, too, for rampant federal spending, he offers Bill Clinton an exemption. The former president emerges as the political hero of “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Greenspan’s 531-page memoir, which is being published Monday. Greenspan, who had an eight-year alliance with Clinton and Democratic Treasury secretaries in the 1990s, praises Clinton’s mind and his tough anti-deficit policies, calling the former president’s 1993 economic plan “an act of political courage.”

Greenspan takes dead aim at the Republican controlled Congress, singling out Denny Hastert and Tom Delay for criticism.

Greenspan accuses the Republicans who presided over the party’s majority in the House until last year of being too eager to tolerate excessive federal spending in exchange for political opportunity. The Republicans, he says, deserved to lose control of the Senate and House in last year’s elections. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way,” Greenspan writes. “They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither.”

“House Speaker Hastert and House majority leader Tom DeLay seemed readily inclined to loosen the federal purse strings any time it might help add a few more seats to the Republican majority,” he writes.

He adds three pages later: “I don’t think the Democrats won. It was the Republicans who lost. The Democrats came to power in the Congress because they were the only party left standing.”

He is critical of Democrats as well, singling them out for their propensity to spend excessively. His praise of Clinton stems from what I believe is Clinton’s intellectual curiosity and truly first rate mind.

However, he calls Clinton a “risk taker” who had shown a “preference for dealing in facts,” and presents Clinton and himself almost as soul mates. “Here was a fellow information hound. . . . We both read books and were curious and thoughtful about the world. . . . I never ceased to be surprised by his fascination with economic detail: the effect of Canadian lumber on housing prices and inflation. . . . He had an eye for the big picture too.”

Looks like an interesting read. Will it have any effect on politics? Will it have any effect on Republican economic theory? Read the Post story at this link.
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=billmanzicom-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1594201315&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

With the testimony of General Petraeus and a prime time address by President Bush tonight the Administration has launched a political counter-attack on war critics that has forcibly moved the Democratic leadership off of their original political course of all or nothing on the war. The Washington Post has written a series of articles detailing the political shift, including one today.

Democratic leaders in Congress have decided to shift course and pursue modest bipartisan measures to alter U.S. military strategy in Iraq, hoping to use incremental changes instead of aggressive legislation to break the grip Republicans have held over the direction of war policy.

The political change is bound to be unpopular with the strong anti-war party base, and reflects the fact that President Bush has managed to hold onto Republican support, despite some strong anti-war rhetorical flourishes from some leading Republicans. The Democratic efforts will center on so called moderate Republicans, especially those north of the Mason-Dixon line.

“We’re reaching out to the Republicans to allow them to fulfill their word,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said yesterday. “A number of them are quoted significantly saying that come September that there would have to be a change of the course in the war in Iraq.”

And what of the strategy and reaction?

After two days of congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker, the battle lines in the House and Senate over the war have begun to shift, with moderate members of both parties building new momentum behind initiatives that would force the White House to make modest changes to the military mission but not require a substantial drawdown of troops by a set date. Democratic leaders, who have blessed the new approach, now believe that passing compromise legislation is the first step toward more ambitious measures aimed at ending the war, although that tactic is likely to result in stiff opposition from Democratic activists who want a rapid troop withdrawal.

And the White House realizes the stakes and has pushed back hard, using the testimony of General Petraeus to solidify wavering Republicans.

But White House officials believe the president’s hand was strengthened by two days of testimony by Petraeus and Crocker.

“What this is really about at its core is congressional votes about a war policy,” Wehner said. “And that policy will go forward as long as Republicans hold — and that was the first order of business. And they achieved it very well.”

And so the political battle begins anew, but at a substantially different starting point from when Democratic legislative majorities seem poised to force a change in war policy. Have the Democrat’s squandered political opportunity, or was it ever realistic to expect them to be able to force change with the relatively thin majorities they hold? I expect as much intramural debate inside the Democratic Party as will occur between R’s and D’S.

Read the Post article at this link.

Hillary Clinton has ignited a heavy round of criticism for comments indicating that another terrorist attack would give Republican’s a political advantage, and that she was the Democratic candidate best suited to blunt that advantage. The Washington Post reports that speaking in New Hampshire Clinton said:

Speaking at a house party the night before, Clinton said, “It’s a horrible prospect to ask yourself, ‘What if? What if?’ ”

“But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world,” she said. “So I think I’m the best of the Democrats to deal with that, as well.”

The political response was immediate and harsh, with her rivals attacking and the online community being critical as well. From the Washington Post:

Clinton took an immediate hit online. Left-leaning bloggers accused her of conceding a key Republican talking point without a fight and blithely accepting a Karl Rove-like framing of the terrorism debate. A Democratic candidate, bloggers argued, should be able to confidently make the case that another terrorist attack might suggest mistakes in the approach to fighting terrorism embraced by President Bush and the GOP, instead of accepting the assumption that any threat to national security causes voters to flock to Republicans. Since Republicans are claiming an edge because there have not been attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, it seems illogical, bloggers argued, to say that the GOP would gain if there were another attack.

And what of Hillary’s past criticism of Republican’s for using “fear” as a political weapon. Well she takes a pretty good hit on the consistency issue as well.

Yet Clinton appeared to open herself to charges of hypocrisy over how to talk about terrorism in political campaigns. She herself had warned in the past about Republican attempts to use the threat of terrorism as a cudgel against Democrats. At a labor convention in February 2006, she said that the strategy of Rove, White House political adviser, boiled down to this: ” ‘Here’s your game plan, folks. Here’s how we’re going to win. We’re going to win by getting everybody scared again.’ Contrary to Franklin Roosevelt, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ this crowd is, ‘All we’ve got is fear, and we’re going to keep playing the fear card.’ ” Several Democratic contenders — ever-vigilant in responding to Clinton — leveled the same charge at her Friday after hearing her comments.

John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Bill Richardson all joined in the criticism. As Hillary positions herself for the general election has she ceded ground to Republican’s that plays into the politically old saw that Republicans are “tougher” on terror and national security than Democrats? I think she has. For Democrats burying that traditional political vulnerability is critical, but I think Hillary has missed the boat and somewhat re-inforced the Rove view in trying to do that. Read the Washington Post story here.