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Smart Defense
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Last month, Congressman Barney Frank called for a 25 percent cut in the defense budget--approximately $150 billion in annual spending--saying, "We don't need all these fancy new weapons. I think there needs to be additional review."
Predictably, the Republican backlash was swift. House Minority Leader John Boehner called Frank "incredibly irresponsible." House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee ranking member John McHugh (R-NY) labeled the proposed reduction "unconscionable." Democrats--especially those on the House Armed Services Committee --didn't exactly embrace Frank's target, either.
But Congressman Frank isn't backing down. In an e-mail to me yesterday he wrote, "Much of the reduction will come from ending the war in Iraq and from cutting unneeded weapons systems. I believe that it's appropriate to reduce defense spending, and this is a goal I wanted to set. I don't have specific details at this point, but I will be working with my colleagues to identify weapons systems that we can reduce, and I also want to look at drawing down the number of our overseas bases."
(41) CommentsNovember 18, 2008
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Ideas for Change
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Mark Green, president of the New Democracy Project and Air America, called me on the phone the other day to talk about the now released book he co-edited, Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President.
"So it turns out that these past eight years in the wilderness allowed--or compelled--scores of progressive thinkers to do promising work in think tanks, universities, congressional offices," he said.
Green told me he approached Center for American Progress (CAP) president John Podesta (now on leave to serve as transition chief for President Obama) in December 2006 about gathering together "the best thinking of progressive scholars, activists, and officials into a one-stop shopping, comprehensive volume discussing how to move from a conservative to progressive presidency." Green edited a similar book for President Clinton in 1991 and wanted to repeat the effort for the 2008 cycle.
(48) CommentsNovember 13, 2008
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The First 100 Days
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
At the end of this remarkable week, we're starting to look ahead to the First 100 Days of the Obama presidency. Already, we're hearing calls in the mainstream media warning the new administration "not to overreach." And working overtime, the Inside-the-Beltway Punditocracy continues to reveal its ability to ignore reality--even while describing itself as "realist"--with its claims that this is still a center-right nation, despite all evidence to the contrary.
But as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes in today's New York Times, "Let's hope that Mr. Obama has the good sense to ignore this advice...this year's presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies--and the progressive philosophy won."
Obama himself his talked about needing to measure his accomplishments over the first 1,000 Days, rather than 100, given the problems he has inherited from arguably the worst president ever (my words, not Obama's). Indeed, it will take years to undo the damage of the Bush administration and the conservative ideology that has dominated this country for nearly thirty years. But the First 100 Days are still crucial--not only in signaling to the American people and the world that the administration will take determined steps to repair this nation--but there is a historical precedent for the need to move forward expeditiously in order to seize the moment and the mandate.
(121) CommentsNovember 7, 2008
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Transformational Presidency
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Four years ago we gathered at The Nation to watch the election returns. Around midnight we began to weep. But we had to put out an issue the next day. So, through the grim night and bleak day after, as the Election 2004 verdict became clear, we held our emotions in check and worked to make sense of the disaster that had befallen the country. The cover of our issue that week was of a black sky, dark clouds obscuring a slim and crestfallen moon, with a simple headline: "Four More Years."
Four years later, our offices are filled with editors, writers, interns, and colleagues--some crying, this time with joy--all jubilant about the new era of possibility opened up by Barack Obama's victory. We know there is work ahead to build a politics of sanity and justice and peace. But tonight we simply celebrate.
Obama's election marks a remarkable moment in our country's history--a milestone in America's scarred racial landscape and a victory for the forces of decency, diversity and tolerance. As our editorial board member Roger Wilkins reminded us on the eve of the election, Obama's win "doesn't turn a switch that eradicates our whole national history and culture." But "win or lose, Obama has already made this a better country, made your children's future better."
(167) CommentsNovember 4, 2008
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Nation to New Yorkers: Vote Change Like You Mean It.
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
This item was originally posted on October 13.
"In an otherwise desultory fall election, there is one lever New York voters can pull on Election Day that will make a real difference – that of the Working Families Party…"
--The Nation, November 2, 1998Progressives face a constant dilemma between a transformative politics aimed at a fundamentally different, humane and sustainable society, and the compromises often needed to begin addressing people's immediate needs. Never is that dilemma more acute than in presidential election years, when the stakes are so high and the choices often so narrow.
(16) CommentsNovember 1, 2008
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Halloween, Elections and Haywire Emotions
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
I don't know about you but I am having a hard time sleeping, and a tough time focusing on the day-to-day tasks of my job. Sure, there's that big investigative piece waiting to run once the oxygen is back in the room after this extraordinary election. And there's all the knocking on wood and superstitious rituals that must be attended to as we head to November 4th. And there's the Nation's election pool which requires math reminding me of all the math we did during the delegate counting between January and June.
And who the hell organizes the calendar so a pumped up Halloween arrives the Friday before the mother of all Election nights?
I've decided to go to a Halloween party tomorrow night ....The tix for entrance: a contribution to Planned Parenthood on behalf of Sarah Palin. I may go as an Alaskan snow queen--after all, why waste the good stuff I picked up when the Nation cruise was in Juneau in July 2007...That was the same month the National Review and Weekly Standard cruisers docked and decided Juneau was not their kind of town....not for the elite bunch they were...and they quickly jumped at the invitation to lunch with Sarah Palin in the luxo Governor's mansion ...Meanwhile, The Nation cruisers hung with the people of Juneau at a rally organized by the city's Veterans for Peace.
(31) CommentsOctober 31, 2008
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Bachmann’s Blues
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Ever since Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's poisonous comments on Hardball ten days ago, it has looked increasingly possible that her deep red district might turn blue next week.
Her Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, a former mayor and state transportation commissioner, has raised more than $1.5 million since Bachmann channeled Joe McCarthy on MSNBC. The Washington Post reported today that Tinklenberg's fundraising "in a single week, is more than what any other Democratic challenger has raised in a fundraising quarter in the entire two-year election cycle."
Bachmann's constituents seem to be rejecting her politics of division, distraction and demonization as well. According to a new Minnesota Public Radio/University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute poll, Tinklenberg – previously considered a long-shot – now leads Bachmann 45 to 43 percent. Approximately 40 percent of the district's voters say that they have "re-evaluated [Bachmann] and are less likely to support her," and two-thirds disagree with her comments.
(94) CommentsOctober 27, 2008
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After Hardball
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Last Friday, one of the guests preceding my segment on MSNBC's Hardball was a then-little known Congresswoman from Minnesota named Michele Bachmann.
She's not little known now.
Bachmann said of Barack Obama, "I‘m very concerned that he may have anti-American views." She then called on the media to "take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?"
(147) CommentsOctober 23, 2008
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Bloomberg as Oligarch
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
The voters of New York City have twice voted by referendum to limit local elected officials to two four-year terms. But now Mayor Michael Bloomberg is attempting to circumvent the voice of the people and pass legislation that would award himself and the City Council a third term in office.
Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party (WFP) – a key member of the opposition fighting the legislation – deftly characterized Mayor Bloomberg's anti-democratic power grab when he said, "We've had two citywide elections on this very topic. Even Hugo Chavez had a referendum and abided by the results. Mayor Bloomberg should do the same."
The key issue here isn't term limits – whether one is for or against them – but whether we are a democracy. This is a case study of one man – our own version of an oligarch – trying to rig the rules of the game for his own benefit. He has decided that he's indispensable in these times of financial crisis, said that a referendum is too "distracting and time consuming," and moved to ram through "a plan that was hatched with a handful of fellow billionaires and business moguls."
(19) CommentsOctober 22, 2008
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Voter Registration Flashpoints
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
As we head into the final stretch of the election season, alarming reports of dysfunctional voter registration, purges of the rolls, and possible voter suppression are surfacing weekly, if not daily. The National Campaign for Fair Elections' hotline (866.OUR.VOTE / 866.687.8683) is already receiving roughly a thousand calls a day; while the majority of these are requests for information, some concern problems with registration. The New York Times reports that tens of thousands of voters may have been illegally purged from the rolls in swing states. Other news sources speculate there are 600,000 voters at risk of disenfranchisement in Ohio alone. What goes unreported upon amid all this turmoil is how effective the response has been, and what can still be done.
Take Montana. On October 8th, US District Court Judge Donald Molloy issued a scathing ruling denouncing the state Republican Party's effort to challenge the registration of 6,000 voters: "The timing of the challenges is so transparent it defies common sense to believe the purpose is anything but political chicanery." The Montana Republican Party and its leaders, he wrote, "are abusing the process."
The real danger is that the process itself is flawed. "We have an election system that's exquisitely designed for low rates of participation," says Tova Wang, Vice President of Research for Common Cause. "We're expecting increased turnout and we have a system that's not designed to handle it." While these problems are endemic throughout our fractured electoral system, three states--Virginia, Florida, and Ohio--present both the challenges we face and the measures we might take to solve them. All three are closely contested, and an Obama victory will require every one.
(120) CommentsOctober 20, 2008
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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Thoughts on politics, current affairs, riffs and reflections on what’s in the news and what’s not--but should be.
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