After basking a bit in the tea partiers' election-night shock when their insurgent darling Doug Hoffman went down in NY District 23, Frank Rich cautions:

The Democrats' celebration was also premature: Hoffman's defeat is potentially more harmful to them than to the Republicans....it increases the odds that the Republicans will not do Democrats the great favor of committing suicide between now and the next Election Day.

Quite so. But what may be bad for Democrats in the short term is good for the country.

The country needs the Republican party to step back from the brink. Other mature democracies have fringe parties that play primarily to voters' fears and fantasies, but those parties exist within multiparty systems. In times of stress their vote may approach or crack 20% of the total, and everyone draws a breath and notes the electorate's anger.

We have only two national parties. If one of them shrinks to attract the affiliation of less than 30% of the electorate and retreats entirely into fringe party thinking and tactics, that's dangerous. The tea partiers' lies and paranoid fantasies; their demonization of a reform effort as incremental, cautious, and indeed historically Republican in its genesis as the pending health care bills; their glorification of the willful ignorance of Palin and Bachmann and their rapt attention to transparent demagogues like Beck and Limbaugh, is all fringe party behavior. Those who equate health insurance mandates or voluntary end of life counseling with fascism are themselves potential fascists -- demonizers of opposition, rabid advocates of torture, paranoid fantasists.

If that fringe entirely captures one of our two parties, the next big shock -- a world market collapse like that predicted by Roubini, a major terrorist attack -- could push such people into power. If, meanwhile, new Republican governors in purple states go to work with even a modicum of pragmatism -as Christie at least will have to do -- that could have a powerful demonstration effect for Republican decision-makers.

Reporters are often excoriated for relying on anonymous sources. I can understand why they often have to. But David Brooks takes this to another level. He's hiding behind an anonymous consensus.

Brooks tells us "I've called around to several of the smartest military experts I know" to get their take on Obama's deliberations over Afghan policy. These "several" have a mysteriously unified persona. They're very, very smart and experienced. And lo, they all have the same worry. And lo, it looks an awful lot like Brooks's:

They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination.

In fact, this Brooks shadow cabinet longs for the return of George W. Bush:

But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.

The unanimous chorus is mysteriously sanguine about the odds of defeating the Taliban:

Most of them, like most people who have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, believe this war is winnable. They do not think it will be easy or quick. But they do have a bedrock conviction that the Taliban can be stymied and that the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be strengthened.

"Most" of "several" believe this? Right, there's consensus among the informed about staying the course. Funny that Andrew Exum -- who helped prepare General McChrystal's report, who does support the counterinsurgency effort, and who could in fact be one of Brook's sources, writes

I know about 50 really smart people on Afghanistan with lots of time on the ground there, and no two have the same opinion about what U.S. policy should be.

Brooks does voice a set of concerns worth considering:

...if these experts do not know the state of President Obama's resolve, neither do the Afghan villagers. They are now hedging their bets, refusing to inform on Taliban force movements because they are aware that these Taliban fighters would be their masters if the U.S. withdraws. Nor does President Hamid Karzai know. He's cutting deals with the Afghan warlords he would need if NATO leaves his country.

On the other hand, as several informed parties, e.g. Matthew Hoh and Rory Stewart, have noted, there's considerable evidence that ramped-up U.S. military presence, far more than presidential deliberations, drives Afghan villagers to support the Taliban. And as Joe Klein has noted, Obama's very public pause is in part calibrated to pressure Karzai, who's been "cutting deals with Afghan warlords" since he was first elected/installed. Indeed, going forward, Exum suggests (in a piece aptly titled Take Your Sweet Time, Obama):

The Obama adminstration has, I believe, some leverage at the moment, which it could use to affect the composition and behavior of the next Afghan government. As long as Afghanistan's ruling politicians--Hamid Karzai especially--think the United States might reduce its commitment to Afghanistan, they could be willing to accede to U.S. demands on key ministerial and provincial-level appointments....

while countless memoranda and manuals exist instructing U.S. servicemen on how to wage counterinsurgency campaigns at the operational and tactical levels, there is currently little guidance for how U.S. policymakers should use leverage over its Afghan partners. The Obama administration, if it's clever, will try to figure out the best way to use its leverage over Karzai and other Afghan politicians. And in that effort, they deserve time to succeed.

David Brooks purports not to trust the President. I do not trust David Brooks. I think the opinions he "reports" represent 57% of seven people he selectively elected to represent consensus, their musings massaged into unison by Brooks's authoritative editorial "they."

I do not fear that Obama will prove ultimately to lack "conviction" in his search for a policy that works in Afghanistan. I do fear that the powerful institutional forces of U.S. post World War II foreign policy consensus -- forces that shaped the policy of every President from Truman through Clinton, more for good than not -- will work with our latter-day polarized political shriekfest to constrain Obama into a full-blown counterinsurgency effort.

That effort might be the right choice. But politically -- and paradoxically, since public opinion is turning agains the war -- it's hard to see any President really putting on the brakes in mid-course.

Related posts:
Steve Coll vs. Rory Stewart
Obama to Karzai: No marriage no dowry?
David Brooks' lazy free market fantasy

Obama's speech before Congress laying out his health care plan doubtless made his core supporters' hearts soar -- those, at least, who don't consider a government-sponsored public option the indispensable heart and soul of reform. But what the speech needed to do politically was swing the center -- independents and the constituents of blue dog Democrats -- his way. That he set out to accomplish in at least four ways:

1. He spelled out how reform would make those who already have insurance more secure, and reassured seniors that he was strengthening rather than hollowing out Medicare.
2. He directly spelled out, denounced and debunked the lies and distortions that have dominated coverage of the issue all summer
   
3. He positioned himself in the center between "those on the left" who would a) prefer a single payer system and b) insist on a public option or bust, and "those on the right" who would a) end employer-based health care and completely individualize or b) simply try to kill any reform bill that has a chance of passing.
4. Returning to the theme that gave his rhetoric wings in the campaign, having carved out that center space for himself, he moved the center left by defining provision for the common weal as a central theme in American history albeit (balancing individualism and a healthy skepticism about government).

Let's take these one at a time.

1. Appealing to the insured: there are two parts to this: a) enumerating the risks that the currently insured face, and b) showing how the plan would alleviate them. Here's what Obama had to say on both counts:

a) But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem of the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you'll lose your health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day....

b) Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan:

First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.

That's what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan - more security and stability.

And on Medicare:

More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years. That is how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.

These steps will ensure that you - America's seniors - get the benefits you've been promised. They will ensure that Medicare is there for future generations. And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pocket for prescription drugs. That's what this plan will do for you. So don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut - especially since some of the same folks who are spreading these tall tales have fought against Medicare in the past, and just this year supported a budget that would have essentially turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.

2. Giving the lie to Palin and her ilk:

Still, given all the misinformation that's been spread over the past few months, I realize that many Americans have grown nervous about reform. So tonight I'd like to address some of the key controversies that are still out there.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

My health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a "government takeover" of the entire health care system. As proof, critics point to a provision in our plan that allows the uninsured and small businesses to choose a publicly-sponsored insurance option, administered by the government just like Medicaid or Medicare.

So let me set the record straight. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down....[defense of the public option follows]

3. Carving out the center:

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months....

It's worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I've proposed tonight. But its impact shouldn't be exaggerated - by the left, the right, or the media. It is only one part of my plan, and should not be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles. To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable for those without it. The public option is only a means to that end - and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. And to my Republican friends, I say that rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate concerns you may have.

4) Moving the center left and positioning government action for the common good as a core element of American identity: For this, Obama deployed the ghost of Teddy Kennedy:

He [Kennedy] repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that "it concerns more than material things." "What we face," he wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country."

I've thought about that phrase quite a bit in recent days - the character of our country. One of the unique and wonderful things about America has always been our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government. And figuring out the appropriate size and role of government has always been a source of rigorous and sometimes angry debate.

For some of Ted Kennedy's critics, his brand of liberalism represented an affront to American liberty. In their mind, his passion for universal health care was nothing more than a passion for big government.

But those of us who knew Teddy and worked with him here - people of both parties - know that what drove him was something more. His friend, Orrin Hatch, knows that. They worked together to provide children with health insurance. His friend John McCain knows that. They worked together on a Patient's Bill of Rights. His friend Chuck Grassley knows that. They worked together to provide health care to children with disabilities.

On issues like these, Ted Kennedy's passion was born not of some rigid ideology, but of his own experience. It was the experience of having two children stricken with cancer. He never forgot the sheer terror and helplessness that any parent feels when a child is badly sick; and he was able to imagine what it must be like for those without insurance; what it would be like to have to say to a wife or a child or an aging parent - there is something that could make you better, but I just can't afford it.

That large-heartedness - that concern and regard for the plight of others - is not a partisan feeling. It is not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character. Our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand. A belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgement that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

This has always been the history of our progress. In 1933, when over half of our seniors could not support themselves and millions had seen their savings wiped away, there were those who argued that Social Security would lead to socialism. But the men and women of Congress stood fast, and we are all the better for it. In 1965, when some argued that Medicare represented a government takeover of health care, members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, did not back down. They joined together so that all of us could enter our golden years with some basic peace of mind.

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

Here Obama not only managed to cast Ted Kennedy as a pragmatist of his own ilk; he cast core liberal values as a basis for consensus over the last seventy years. He echoed his 2004 Convention speech, and just about every major speech since, with his elision of the ideological divide between the parties: "That large-heartedness - that concern and regard for the plight of others - is not a partisan feeling. It is not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character." He has taken the ever-shrinking reality of Republican consent to the core institutions of the welfare state and used it to paint a consensus of American compassion. A bit of a stretch, but not entirely untrue, even in the recent shreds and patches of expanding SCHIP. And if the Republican party is to revitalize, it will be more true hereafter.

There is much to honor in Mousavi's statement issued today: his pledge never to hurt a countryman, his call for freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, rule of law.

And yet, he advances those principles in service of a delusion: that to uphold them is to return the revolution coopted by Ayatollah Khomeini to its pure origins, in which these principles flourished. From the start of his campaign, Mousavi has called for a restoration of the rule of law as established by the Islamic Republic. That is, for restoration of something that never was. Today, he laid out a vision of paradise lost, paradise to be regained:

30 years ago, in this country a revolution became victorious in the name of Islam, a revolution for freedom, a revolution for reviving the dignity of men, a revolution for truth and justice. In those times, especially when our enlightened Imam [Khomeini] was alive, large amount of lives and matters were invested to legitimize this foundation and many valuable achievements were attained. An unprecedented enlightenment captured our society, and our people reached a new life where they endured the hardest of hardships with a sweet taste. What this people gained was dignity and freedom and a gift of the life of the pure ones [i.e. 12 Imams of Shiites]. I am certain that those who have seen those days will not be satisfied with anything less. Had we as a people lost certain talents that we were unable to experience that early spirituality? I had come to say that that was not the case. It is not late yet, we are not far from that enlightened space yet.

The "enlightened Imam" would be the man who massacred tens of thousands of opponents and crushed all dissent, who prolonged ruinous war with Iraq for six fruitless years after turning back Iraq's initial territorial gains, and in that war sent teens and even preteens in waves of thousands to clear minefields with their bodies (the first Basiji, today's murderous militia); who imprisoned women in the hijab and generally set women's rights back fifty years: who murdered the leaders of the B'hai and made second-class citizens of the rest; who impoverished the country with his contempt for economic management; who united the people by demonizing the United States (against whom Iranians did have ample cause for resentment) and institutionalizing the murderous Antisemitism that now, adopted in full by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, threatens the world's stability -- who in short, made Khamenei look like a piker when it comes to crushing human rights and subverting the Republican government Mousavi professes to value.

Mousavi casts his current rivals as destroyers of "Republicanism"and hence of the Revolution:

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people's anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven. This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism. Imam's fantastic art was to neutralize these dichotomies. I had come to focus on Imam's approach to neutralize the burgeoning magic of these.

He treasures the notion that Islam and Republicanism are compatible. Perhaps they are. But Khomenei united them in demonic form by modeling the Islamic Republic after Plato's Republic -- the oldest blueprint we have for totalitarianism. The Guardian Council that falsified the vote count last week was a real-world enfranchisement of Plato's ruling class of philosopher kings. Khomeini's republicanism like Plato's, is based in absolute faith in the absolute wisdom of an educated elite invested with absolute power.

His rewriting of the history of the Islamic Republic notwithstanding, Mousavi has committed himself to the human rights that Obama today cast as the universal law of humanity:

As I am looking at the scene, I see it set for advancing a new political agenda that spreads beyond the objective of installing [sic] an unwanted government. As a companion who has seen the beauties of your green wave, I will never allow any one's life endangered because of my actions. At the same time, I remain undeterred on my demand for annulling the election and demanding people's rights. Despite my limited abilities, I believe that your motivation and creativity can pursue your legitimate demands in new civil manners.

We advise the authorities, to calm down the streets. Based on article 27 of the constitution, not only provide space for peaceful protest, but also encourage such gatherings. The state TV should stop badmouthing and taking sides. Before voices turn into shouting, let them be heard in reasonable debates. Let the press criticize, and write the news as they happen. In one word, create a free space for people to express their agreements and disagreements. Let those who want, say "takbeer" and don't consider it opposition. It is clear that in this case, there won't be a need for security forces on the streets, and we won't have to face pictures and hear news that break the heart of anyone who loves the country and the revolution.

Leaders can be transformed by the contract forged with their followers in the crucible of events. Mousavi's pledges to institute the rule of law and respect human rights constitute a religious man's strongest oath to his people, made with the world listening, in mortal political combat with those whom he charges with trampling those rights. Let's hope that if by some miracle he does come into power he will work to fulfill these pledges, whatever his delusions about the blood-soaked Khomeinist past -- and his own role in it.

In November 2007, Andrew Sullivan saw this promise in the prospect of an Obama presidency:

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war--not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a mo­mentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade--but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war--and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama--and Obama alone--offers the possibility of a truce.

On Sunday, at Notre Dame, Barack Obama held out that olive branch.

Speaking to the graduating class in the face of protests that a pro-choice politician had been invited, Obama aimed his speech squarely at the core challenge of democratic governance:

the question then is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate?

To answer that question, Obama spoke from within his own professed faith, at the same time setting limits to the authority of that faith. The speech was built on paradox, on the need to balance opposites that began with faith and doubt. As a cornerstone, Obama used a metaphor of the former President of Notre Dame, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who "has long spoken of this institution as both a lighthouse and a crossroads." In Obama's telling, the lighthouse became a figure for faith, and the crossroads for the humility that is born of doubt. He told the graduates that faith finds its strength in doubt -- and its authority (where others are concerned) in reason:

And in this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you've been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. In other words, stand as a lighthouse.

But remember, too, that you can be a crossroads. Remember, too, that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It's the belief in things not seen. It's beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us. And those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

And this doubt should not push us away our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open and curious and eager to continue the spiritual and moral debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us even as we cling to our faith to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works and charity and kindness and service that moves hearts and minds.

Obama has often said, as above, that faith is only relevant in politics insofar as it appeals to universal values and reason. This speech was about that limit - but also pushed against it, as Obama professed his own belief in one uniquely Christian doctrine:

Unfortunately, finding that common ground _ recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a "single garment of destiny" _ is not easy. And part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man _ our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see here in this country and around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times (my emphasis).

That reference to original sin gave the speech its charge. Ultimately, it was about how to act for good in a fallen world. It crackled from the first with dialectic energy, contrasting the ills of the world with the challenge to the fallen to do good:

Your generation must decide how to save God's creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it. Your generation must seek peace at a time when there are those who will stop at nothing to do us harm, and when weapons in the hands of a few can destroy the many. And we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity _ diversity of thought, diversity of culture, and diversity of belief.

It was about battles within as well as external challenges and conflict between ideological adversaries:

you've had time to consider these wrongs in the world; perhaps recognized impulses in yourself that you want to leave behind.

we know that the views of most Americans on the subject [of abortion] are complex and even contradictory...

It acknowledged, with startling honesty, irreconcilable differences:

Now, understand--understand, Class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it-- indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory _ the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

Obama projected calm at the center of the storm, standing as a President comfortable with protests against his very presence on the podium, using that conflict itself as a model for e pluribus unum:

And I want to join him [Father Hesburgh] and Father John in saying how inspired I am by the maturity and responsibility with which this class has approached the debate surrounding today's ceremony. You are an example of what Notre Dame is about.

How can a President profess a faith in original sin without "Christianizing" the public square? Obama did so by differentiating clearly between the specific doctrine that informs his own world view and the universal values that inform policymaking:

For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It's no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule--the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. The call to serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.

Obama has alluded to the Golden Rule and politicians' obligation to appeal to universal values in many, many speeches. What was unusual here -- I won't say unique, I'm sure he's done it in prior speeches -- was counterpoising that universalism with profession of a specific doctrinal belief. It was one more window into the way faith may inform Obama's worldview.

I say 'may' because I've always suspected that there's some mental gymnastics involved in Obama's embrace as an adult of specifically Christian faith. That process is described in Dreams from My Father as an emotional and social one. And indeed, at Notre Dame on Sunday, Obama held up his conversion as one more mystery of faith:

And something else happened during the time I spent in these neighborhoods [as a community organizer] perhaps because the church folks I worked with were so welcoming and understanding; perhaps because they invited me to their services and sang with me from their hymnals; perhaps because I was really broke and they fed me. Perhaps because I witnessed all of the good works their faith inspired them to perform, I found myself drawn not just to the work with the church; I was drawn to be in the church. It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.

Culture wars never end entirely. They burn high and low. But our generation is weary of them. And Obama is doing his utmost to hit reset on the hot buttons.

See also: The Gospel according to Obama

Ali Soufan, the highly skilled FBI interrogator who recently broke a seven year silence to assert in the New York Times that his successful non-coercive interrogations of al Qaeda operatives were halted in favor of an ineffectual course of torture, has a playwright's sensibility.

His Senate testimony on May 13 in a hearing on "What What Wrong" in Bush's OLC was a tragic narrative, rife with irony. The plot is simple: a highly successful, ethical enterprise steeped in the finest U.S. military tradition was thwarted in stages by a gang of malign incompetents who replaced it with an untested, ineffective, brutal program that did untold damage to our intelligence efforts as well as to our position in the world.

Philip Zelikow, in his testimony at the same hearing, allowed that the torture program may have yielded useful information but stressed its unacceptable costs. The irony in Soufan's narrative stems from his focus on the torture program's ineffectiveness as interrogation. The U.S. intelligence community sold its inheritance for a mass of pottage. Soufan weaves this core irony out of several strands:

Our tough guys were not brutal enough for al Qaeda:

Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse - the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example. This is why, as we see from the recently released Department of Justice memos on interrogation, the contractors had to keep getting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods, until they reached waterboarding and then there was nothing they could do but use that technique again and again. Abu Zubaydah had to be waterboarded 83 times and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times. In a democracy there is a glass ceiling of harsh techniques the interrogator cannot breach, and a detainee can eventually call the interrogator's bluff.

Torture is slower than classic relationship-building interrogation:

A third major problem with this technique is that it is slow. It takes place over a long period of time, for example preventing the detainee from sleeping for 180 hours as the memos detail, or waterboarding 183 times in the case of KSM. When we have an alleged "ticking timebomb" scenario and need to get information quickly, we can't afford to wait that long.

Torture neutralized our best operatives and sabotaged post-9/11 institutional reform:

Another disastrous consequence of the use of the harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the "Chinese Wall" between the CIA and FBI - similar to the wall that prevented us from working together to stop 9/11. In addition, the FBI and the CIA officers on the ground during the Abu Zubaydah interrogation were working together closely and effectively, until the contractors' interferences. Because we in the FBI would not be a part of the harsh techniques, the agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An FBI colleague of mine, for example, who had tracked KSM and knew more about him than anyone in the government, was not allowed to speak to him.

Furthermore, the CIA specializes in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting intelligence. The FBI, on the other hand, has a trained investigative branch. Until that point, we were complimenting each other's expertise, until the imposition of the "enhanced methods." As a result people ended doing what they were not trained to do.

The torture program was outsourcing run amok:

It is also important to realize that those behind this technique are outside contractors with no expertise in intelligence operations, investigations, terrorism, or al Qaeda. Nor did the contractors have any experience in the art of interview and interrogation. One of the contractors told me this at the time, and this lack of experience has also now been recently reported on by sources familiar with their backgrounds.

Soufan's crowning irony is to stress the naivete of those who prided themselves on their cold-eyed realism -- the gang that decided, in the words of the Gonzales torture memo, that the "new paradigm" of the war on terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

It was a mistake to abandon it [Soufan's noncoercive "Informed Interrogation Approach"] in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective, and play directly into the enemy's handbook. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that was working and naively replace it with an untested method. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that is based on the cumulative wisdom and successful tradition of our military, intelligence, and law enforcement community, in favor of techniques advocated by contractors with no relevant experience.

The mistake was so costly precisely because the situation was, and remains, too risky to allow someone to experiment with amateurish, Hollywood style interrogation methods- that in reality- taints sources, risks outcomes, ignores the end game, and diminishes our moral high ground in a battle that is impossible to win without first capturing the hearts and minds around the world. It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaeda.

"To steal a man's soul and give him nothing in return" is the highest aspiration of C.S. Lewis' devil Screwtape, a skilled operative at tempting humans to perdition. In Soufan's telling, the purveyors of so-called "EIT"--those who empowered Soufan's unnamed "outside contractor" (identified elsewhere as the former SERE psychologist James Mitchell) to institute his torture program-- sold themselves, the executive branch, and the U.S. intelligence community on just those terms.

A month ago, commenting on the G-20 meeting, the FT's Philip Stephens credited Obama with recognizing that "to understand the extent of US power - and it is still unrivalled - a president must also map its limits."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates elaborated that principle as the core strategy of U.S. foreign policy in a long interview with CNN last week.

He began with a primer on the power of apology and self-correction:

Q You've heard a lot of Republican criticism that he's going around the world apologizing about America. Do you accept that?

SEC. GATES: Well, I like to remind people that when President George W. Bush came into office, he talked about a more humble America. And, you know, you go back to Theodore Roosevelt and his line about speaking softly but carrying a big stick. I think that acknowledging that we have made mistakes is not only factually accurate - I think that it is unusual because so few other governments in the world are willing to admit that, although they make them all the time, and some of them make catastrophic mistakes.

And in speeches myself, I have said that at times we have acted too arrogantly. And I didn't feel that I was being apologetic for America. I just was saying because - I was just saying that that's the way we are in terms of being willing to recognize our own limitations, and when we make a mistake, to correct it, because I think the next line that I always use is, no other country in the world is so self-critical and is so willing to change course when we feel that we've strayed from our values or when we feel like we've been too arrogant.

So I think - I have not seen it as an apology tour at all, but rather a change of tone, a more humble America. But everybody knows we still have the big stick.

Gates proceeded to model this humility when discussion turned to Pakistan. He not only refused to patronize or denigrate Pakistani efforts against the Taliban but equated their failures with American failures in counter-terror and counterinsurgency over the past sixteen years:

Q But you do think that the [Pakistani] leadership gets it? Because I look at what's happened, Mr. Secretary. They have these Taliban forces, insurgency, 60 miles from the capital, 100 miles from the capital. And what they've done so far is move 6,000 troops from the eastern border to the western border out of an army of about a half-million.

This does not strike one as a full-throated response at every level that mobilizes the nation and its defense forces. Do you think that there is still a way to go for the Pakistani military in terms of focusing on this threat?

SEC. GATES: Well, I think what you have to do is look at it in some historical context. For 60 years Pakistan has regarded India as its existential threat, as the main enemy. And its forces are trained to deal with that threat. That's where it has the bulk of its army and the bulk of its military capability.

And historically, the far western part of Pakistan has generally been ungoverned. And the Pakistani governments going back decades would do deals with the tribes and the Pashtuns and would play the tribes against one another, and occasionally, when necessary, use the army to put down a serious challenge.

I think that - and partly it's because the Punjabis so outnumber the Pashtuns that they've always felt that if it really got serious, it was a problem they could take care of. I think the - that's why I think the movement of the Taliban so close to Islamabad was a real wake-up call for them.

Now, how long it takes them to build the capabilities, the additional military capabilities and the training that goes into counterinsurgency and so on and to develop the civilian programs that begins to push back in that part of the country, I think, is still a period ahead of us.

But I would just remind that, you know, the first al Qaeda attack on the United States was in 1993. We really didn't change much of anything we did until after we were hit on September 11th, 2001. So al Qaeda was at war with us for eight years, at least eight years, before we acknowledged that we were at war with them as well. And I think a little bit of the same denial has been going on in Pakistan. But I think that the recent developments have certainly got their attention.

Q Do you think they have the counterinsurgency capacity? Because at some level armies don't like to fight these kind of wars, as you well know. What armies like to do is have a big enemy so they can have a big budget and never have to fight a war. And that is, in effect, what has happened with Pakistan with India, which is they have this big enemy. It justifies a very large budget for the Pakistani military. But they don't actually have to fight, whereas this one, the insurgency, is one which they have to fight. They could lose. And so they worry, I think, that they even have the capacity. Do they have the capacity for real counterinsurgency?

SEC. GATES: Well, I think that they are at the beginning of the process of developing that capacity. But again, to provide some perspective, in 2003, when we went into Iraq, or even in 2001 and '02, when we went into Afghanistan, our Army didn't have that capacity either. We had forgotten everything we learned about counterinsurgency in Vietnam. And it took us several years to change our tactics and to get ourselves into a position where we could effectively fight a counterinsurgency.

So institutions are slow to change even in the face of a real threat. And I think that the Pakistanis are beginning to open up to others, to get additional help. I certainly hope that's the case. But I don't - it's not something where I would sort of blame the Pakistani army, because we went through the same process ourselves as we confronted a building insurgency in Iraq.

We had to learn all over again how to do this, and we had to acquire the equipment to do it effectively, completely outside the normal Pentagon bureaucracy, for the most part. So perhaps I have a little more understanding of the challenges that our Pakistani counterparts face than perhaps others.

Finally there was this discussion of the limits of our capabilities in Afghanistan -- and how to leverage the power that we do have:

Q You once said that the chief lesson you learned from 40 years in government was the limits of power. So apply that lesson to Afghanistan today. What do you think of - what are the limits to what America can do in Afghanistan?

SEC. GATES: Well, I have been quoted as accurately as saying I have real reservations about significant further commitments of American military - of the American military to Afghanistan, beyond what the president has already approved. The Soviets were in there with 110,000, 120,000 troops. They didn't care about civilian casualties. And they couldn't win. If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience. And I think there's a lot we can learn from that. And so I worry - it is
absolutely critical that the Afghans believe that this is their war. It is their war against people who are trying to overthrow their government that they democratically elected.

For all of its flaws and shortcomings, it is theirs. And they - we must be their partner and their ally. If we get to the point where the Afghan people see us as occupiers, then we will have lost. So the way we treat the Afghans, the importance of keeping the Afghans in the lead in many of these activities, the military as well as the civilian, I think is absolutely critical, so that they know - so that these villagers know that it's their people who are leading this fight. This isn't some foreign army coming in there, like all the previous foreign armies, to just occupy them.

Q But that means that a year from now, six months from now, you are unlikely to approve a request for additional troops in Afghanistan.

SEC. GATES: I would be a hard sell; there's no question about it. And I have not made a secret of that, either publicly or in government meetings. I think we will have - between the American military commitment and our coalition partners, the ISAF partners, we will have about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. That's only about 10,000 shy of what the Russians had. And I think we need to think about that.

My view is it would be a far better investment to focus on building the strength of the Afghan army and the Afghan police, making sure that of the numbers of people we have there, there are adequate trainers so that we can accelerate the growth of those forces.

It's that combination of a certain level of international support for the Afghan military effort and the growing of the Afghan security forces themselves. It's that partnership that I think eventually will be successful in Afghanistan. As long as - if we try to do it all ourselves, I think it won't work.

If we try to do it all ourselves, I think it won't work. What was that, up top, about the U.S. learning from its mistakes?

Related posts:
Defining democratization down
Gates the knife?
Gates: Have the army you'll go to war with

As Obama continues to channel Lincoln, Timothy Geithner might take some consolation in the intense vilification suffered by Lincoln's second Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.

George McClellan, the charismatic general who was a battlefield failure but a brilliant political infighter, blamed his drubbing by Lee in the Seven Days Battles on a lack of troops, as was his wont -- he constantly estimated Lee's troop strength at double its actual number. Stanton was his chief scapegoat, and others piled on. Doris Kearns Goodwin tells the tale in Team of Rivals:

The drumbeat began with McClellan, who told anyone who would listen that Stanton was to blame for the Peninsula defeat. "So you want to know how I feel about Stanton, & what I think of him now?" he wrote Mary Ellen in July. "I think that he is the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard or read of; I think that...had he lived in the time of the Savior, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of the Apostles"...

Democrats, unwilling to fault McClellan, were the loudest in their denunciations of Stanton. Spearheaded by the Blairs, conservatives charged that Stanton had abandoned both his Democratic heritage and his old friendship with McClellan...Democrat John Astor could not refrain from cursing at the mere mention of Stanton's name. "He for one believes, Strong reported, "that Stanton willfully withheld reinforcements from McClellan lest he should make himself too important, politically, by a signal victory"....

The New York Times promised not to engage in the "very fierce crusade" against Stanton, but begged the president, "if we are to have a new Secretary of War, to give us a Soldier--one who knows what war is and how it is to be carried on...If Mr. Stanton is to be removed, the country will be reassured, and the public interest greatly promoted, by making Gen. McClellan his successor. Even those who cavil at his leadership in the field, do not question his mastery in the art of war." As the weeks went by, and the pressure to replace him mounted, Stanton must have wondered how long Lincoln would continue to support him (447-48).

Lincoln's support for his Secretary under duress is famous, and Obama probably has had it in mind while brushing off calls for Geithner's resignation. Kearns Goodwin again:

In fact, not once during the vicious public onslaught against the secretary of war did Lincoln's support for Stanton waver. During the hours he had spent each day awaiting battlefront news in the telegraph office, Lincoln had taken his own measure of his high-strung, passionate secretary of war. He concluded that Stanton's vigorous, hard-driving style was precisely what was needed at this critical juncture...

And as always, the president refused to let a subordinate take the blame for his own decisions. He insisted to Browning "that all that Stanton had done in regard to the army had been authorized by him the President. Three weeks later, Lincoln publicly defended the beleaguered Stanton before an immense Union meeting on the Capital steps...

"I believe there is no precedent for my appearing before you on this occasion," he affably began, "but it is also true that there is no precedent for your being here yourselves." Reminding his audience that he was reluctant to speak unless he might "produce some good by it," Lincoln declared that something needed to be said, and it was "not likely to be better said by some one else," for it was "a matter in which we have heard some other persons blamed for what I did myself." Addressing the charge that Stanton had withheld troops from McClellan, he explained that every possible soldier available had been sent to the general. "The Secretary of War is not to blame for not giving when he had none to give." As the applause began to mount, he continued, "I believe he his a brave and able man, and I stand here, as justice requires me to do, to take upon myself what has been charged on the Secretary of War" (453-454).

Compare Obama's defense of Geithner at another appearance for which "there is no precedent" -- a sitting President's on the Tonight Show on March 20:

MR. LENO: Now, Treasury Secretary Geithner, he seems to be taking a little bit of heat here. How is he holding up with this? He seems like a smart guy --

MR. OBAMA: He is a smart guy and he's a calm and steady guy. I don't think people fully appreciate the plate that was handed him. This guy has not just a banking crisis; he's got the worst recession since the Great Depression, he's got an auto industry on -- that has been on the verge of collapse. We've got to figure out how to coordinate with other countries internationally. He's got to deal with me; he's got to deal with Congress. And he's doing it with grace and good humor. And he understands that he's on the hot seat, but I actually think that he is taking the right steps, and we're going to have our economy back on the move.

MR. LENO: Now, see, I love that it's all his problem. (Laughter.)

MR. OBAMA: No, no, no --

MR. LENO: -- I mean, when he came in you probably said, hey, this is not a problem. Now, it's, hey, you got this, you got that, hey, good luck. (Laughter.)

MR. OBAMA: No, no, but this is the point that I made, I think two days ago, when somebody asked, well, do you have confidence in Tim Geithner. I said, look, I'm the president, so ultimately all this stuff is my responsibility. If I'm not giving him the tools that he needs to make sure that we're moving things forward, then people need to look at me.

On the AIG thing, all these contracts were written well before I took office, but ultimately I'm now the guy who's responsible to fix it. And one of the things that I'm trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame. And I think Geithner is doing an outstanding job. I think that we have a big mess on our hands. It's not going to be solved immediately, but it is going to get solved. And the key thing is for everybody just to stay focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to.

Of course, that Lincoln was right about Stanton doesn't in itself prove that Obama is right about Geithner. The devil can always quote history for his own purposes. But the country, having "taken the measure" of Obama's judgment over the course of two years, may ultimately trust his judgment of character and ability within his own cabinet. The analogy, whatever its limits, does highlight the eternal law that in a crisis, the deputy at the fulcrum of the action bears the brunt of the fury.

It must be said too that Obama fudged his "buck stops here" routine a bit. Lincoln took responsibility for a very specific decision that was being vilified - refusing to send McClellan the troops for which he begged. Obama rolled all recriminations together and took responsibility for all without specifying any single controversial decision -- such as removing from the stimulus a measure that would have precluded paying the AIG bonuses -- as his own.

Given Americans' immersion in low tax ideology, how can Obama fund his ambitious plans long-term? Matthew Yglesias floats an idea whose time may have come:

some day I should write again about the idea of making tax brackets infinitesimal so that there is no "top bracket." This would have been unworkable 100 years ago, but with computers there's no reason we can't do it.

In other words, there should be an algorithm for perfectly progressive tax rates that ratchet up infinitesimally for every dollar earned, rather than bumping up abruptly at fixed thresholds.

More prosaically, Yglesias proposes adding new marginal tax brackets above the current top level ($357k). While he minimizes the potential for raising significant revenue this way, Nate Silver starts the math and finds otherwise:

What the discussion over the top marginal tax rate ignores, however (and what Ygelsias picks up upon) is that this rate has been assessed at very different thresholds of income. In 1940, for example, the top marginal tax rate was 81.1 percent -- but this rate only kicked in once you made $5,000,000 or more in income, which is equivalent to about $75,000,000 in today's dollars.

But today, the threshold where the top tax bracket kicks in isn't $75 million, or $5 million, or even $1 million ... it's a mere $357,700. The progressivity of the tax code stops there....

The question, of course, is why there isn't a millionaires tax bracket now ... or even a multi-millionaires tax bracket. I haven't run the numbers, but I'm guessing that if you established a new tax bracket at, say, 40.5 percent, that started at incomes of $1,000,000 or more, this would bring in as much revenue to the government as restoring the $250K tax bracket (which is really $360K now given indexing to inflation) to 39.6 percent, as it was under Clinton.

Brushing this subject without quite hitting on it, meanwhile, Clive Crook gives the rationale for creating new upper-level brackets -- though he himself favors the regressive but broader-based VAT:

Not everybody would regard two-earner households with an income of $250,000 a year as rich; and many of the taxpayers in question have seen their retirement savings, college funds and housing equity destroyed. The scandal of widening inequality that still animates the Democrats' thinking is a story about the top fraction of one per cent of the income distribution, not the top end of the middle class.

I wonder if Yglesias hasn't in fact stumbled on Obama's as-yet-veiled long range tax plans. Obama claims that he is going to tackle the long-term sustainability of the Federal budget; he's meanwhile planning large increases in Federal spending while promising not to raise taxes on anyone earning under $250k; and a core commitment in his campaign was to roll back the galloping rise in income inequality that Crook alludes to. There is a lot of wiggle room to raise taxes on the superrich while staying well below past U.S. norms. It's probably either that or a VAT. Or both...

As Republicans scream "socialist" at Obama, he is outflanking them by tying Republican stewardship of the economy to Wall Street's reckless mismanagement -- and dramatically contrasting his own budgeting practices and priorities.

While Obama spent two years as a candidate contrasting his proposed menu of investments and tax hikes on the wealthy with "the failed policies of the last eight [seven, six] years," his own budget enables a new level of sophistication in the contrast. Now, the Republicans in his telling are poor risk managers -- while Obama is a long-range planner and investor. From this weekend's weekly address:

My administration inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, the largest in history. And we've inherited a budgeting process as irresponsible as it is unsustainable. For years, as Wall Street used accounting tricks to conceal costs and avoid responsibility, Washington did, too.

These kinds of irresponsible budgets -- and inexcusable practices -- are now in the past. For the first time in many years, my administration has produced a budget that represents an honest reckoning of where we are and where we need to go.

It's also a budget that begins to make the hard choices that we've avoided for far too long -- a strategy that cuts where we must and invests where we need. That's why it includes $2 trillion in deficit reduction, while making historic investments in America's future. That's why it reduces discretionary spending for non-defense programs as a share of the economy by more than 10 percent over the next decade -- to the lowest level since they began keeping these records nearly half a century ago. And that's why on Wednesday, I signed a presidential memorandum to end unnecessary no-bid contracts and dramatically reform the way contracts are awarded -- reforms that will save the American people up to $40 billion each year.

While the budget itself proposes huge outlays for stimulus, health care reform, education, alternative energy and infrastructure, Obama has skillfully hedged ambitious spending plans with commitments -- and rhetorical emphases --on long-range budget planning. If promises of future frugality seem a bit easy, it's also true that Obama has laid down a marker, imposing ambitious deficit reduction targets on himself by which he will be measured before his term is out.

Meanwhile, he is only too happy to help Republicans tie themselves to the crony capitalism that enabled the bubblenomics of recent years.

Perhaps the nation is reaching a tipping point, at which we recognize that we are all vulnerable to catastrophic helath care costs -- if we're not uninsured, we're underinsured, or potentially under- or uninsured. The stories are everywhere, and they are Dickensian, as sharp a shame to our society as brutal orphanages and child factory labor became to Victorian England.

Yesterday, flipping around websites at lunchtime, I first read a Wall Street Journal article about under-insured Americans saddled with crushing health care costs. The stories concern families with serious illnesses who have jobs and "health insurance" -- and medical bills in tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars over and above what insurers will pay.

The three Cox children have a rare disease called Shwachman Diamond Syndrome, which curtails the production of bacteria-fighting blood cells and digestive enzymes needed to absorb nutrients properly. It can lead to life-threatening infection, bone-marrow failure or a deadly form of leukemia.

After Samuel, 7, Grace, 12, and Jake, 15, were diagnosed with the genetic disease earlier this decade, landing a job with good health benefits became the biggest priority for Mr. Cox. He gave up plans to run his own home respiratory-care business to work as a salaried medical-equipment salesman. In 2006, the family moved to North Carolina from Kansas City to be closer to specialists at Duke University.

But the Coxes' insurance covered only part of the children's care, which includes regular gamma globulin injections to boost their immune systems. At times, the children have seen specialists outside their insurer's network, requiring the Coxes to pay 30% of the bills. The companies that have insured the Cox children deemed some of their treatments experimental, which they don't tend to cover.

Until recently, the Coxes stayed afloat on a patchwork of Good Samaritan efforts and rising home prices. The parish of their former church, Abundant Life Baptist of Lee's Summit, Mo., rallied around them, even after they moved from the Kansas City suburb to North Carolina. A medical fund set up by the church raised tens of thousands of dollars. A separate annual fund-raiser organized by neighbors has generated more than $50,000. And the Coxes tapped more than $100,000 of equity from their former Kansas City home to finance travel to far-flung hospitals before selling it in 2006.

But the economic crisis is rattling their makeshift network of assistance...The Coxes face more than $40,000 in unpaid medical bills as the commissions that Mr. Cox makes on top of his $47,000 base salary dwindle. At the same time, the family's medical and dental premiums at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, the respiratory-device maker that employs Mr. Cox, jumped about 13% to $876 a month for 2009.

Next, over to Swampland, and find that Karen Tumulty is bringing the health care crisis home -- to herself and to her readers:

Like most journalists, I do my best to operate in a comfort zone of detachment. But the subject of my cover story in the upcoming edition of TIME is one about which I won't claim the slightest bit of objectivity. It is about my brother Patrick. Last summer, he found out his kidneys were failing; a few weeks later, he found out his health insurance wasn't going to pay for his treatment.

I used to think I was something of an authority on health care; I've covered its policy and its politics for 15 years. But when my family took its own trip through the frustrating maze that is this country's health care system, I discovered how much I had to learn. Health problems are behind half the bankruptcies in this country, and three-quarters of those bankrupt people had health insurance when they got sick. Just about anyone could be one diagnosis away from catastrophe. My editors decided to put this story on the cover not because it is so extraordinary, but because it is so common, and becoming more so every day.

So please read this story. And after you do, go find your health insurance policy and read it, too.

UPDATE: A number of Swampland commenters have suggested that we give our readers a chance to share their own stories. That's a terrific idea. There's now a link in the third paragraph of the story where Facebook users can share their own experiences. (You then scroll to the bottom of the page.) It's not perfect, technologically, but it does give us a way to gather feedback. Please give it a try.

Whitehouse.gov should try that "share your experience" exercise. As Jonathan Chait notes on his healthcare blog The Treatment, Obama, as he seeks to marshall the country in support of health care reform, is avoiding focusing solely or primarily on the plight of the uninsured. Not only is he spotlighting health care costs -- a matter of the country's long-term fiscal viability -- but he's also speaking in terms of Jacob Hacker's great risk shift:

But Obama also presented the cost problem as a problem for individuals--one that was crushing the insured as well as the uninsured, and in many cases transforming the insured into the uninsured:

In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages. An addition 9 million Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured. The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. Even for folks who are weathering this economic storm, and have health care right now, all it takes is one stroke of bad luck--an accident or an illness, a divorce, a lost job--to become one of the nearly 46 million uninsured or the millions who have health care, but really can't afford what they've got."

The emphasis is mine [Chait's], because that's the argument Obama and other reformers need to make. Pollsters will tell you, accurately, that the phrase "universal health care" does not play that well with the voters. That's because, when it's phrased that way, middle-class voters thinks that simply means paying more taxes so that people without insurance now can get it. What Obama is trying to do here is to suggest that everybody--the uninsured and insured--are vulnerable today, and that neither will be totally secure until we do something to guarantee coverage and make health care less expensive.

If Time and the WSJ are indicators, Obama may have the media behind him as he drives this message home. Let's see what other resources the Administration deploys to ramp up the conversation.

Want to see political power wielded the right way? Watch Obama's weekly address (hat tip to tonebobb):

I realize that passing this budget won't be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won't like the idea that they'll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that's how we'll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won't like the idea that we're ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that's how we'll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won't like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that's how we'll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

So am I.

The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don't. I work for the American people. I didn't come here to do the same thing we've been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I'll be fighting for in the weeks ahead - change that will grow our economy, expand our middle-class, and keep the American Dream alive for all those men and women who have believed in this journey from the day it began.

That's a pre-emptive strike against business interests lining up against key elements in his budget. It's an extension of his campaign message against Rovian political attacks into the policy battles now looming: not this time. We won't get blind-sided, swiftboated, outlobbied, outspent and out-spun. And he's not alone in this. The Times has a story about how the whole liberal policy establishment is primed to pre-empt and counter Harry & Louise-style attacks on the health plan to come and other major policy initiatives to reverse the great risk shift and wealth shift of the past thirty years:

Mr. Podesta's group [The Center for American Progress]is cooperating with two separate coalitions planning to fight for Mr. Obama's health care plan with television advertisements, interview appearances on cable news talk shows and e-mail campaigns.

"This is no longer going to be Barack Obama standing by himself getting pilloried by the special interests with no one pushing back -- if I can describe what it felt like in the White House in 1993," Mr. Podesta said Friday.

The defeat of the Clinton health care plan was a hard learning experience for Democrats. They were caught flat-footed by an insurance industry-backed campaign to kill the proposal. It is best remembered for advertisements featuring a yuppie couple, Harry and Louise, worrying about limits on quality health care.

"The battle had been lost by the time the progressive community and its allies began rallying around the Clinton bill," Mr. Neas said. "Now, people are prepared."

Obama likes to exhort listeners to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it towards justice. Major progressive forces are gearing up to swing the pendulum back toward can-do government.

And yet...a timely warning comes from Al Giordano, who points out that the lobbies to whom Obama threw down the gauntlet have as much influence with Democrats as with Republicans -- and of course will be concentrating more on Democrats than on Republicans in this new era. Interesting in this context that Obama, who generally shuns speaking in the first person singular in favor of the nonroyal "we," personalized this challenge. "I know they're gearing up for a fight...So am I." As Giordano puts it: "They've [Congressional Democrats as well as Republicans] all just been put on notice: oppose the reforms he's pushing and be portrayed as siding with those corporate interests against the American people."

One relatively self-contained test of Obama vs. lobbyist influence on Democrats will be over the tax rates for hedge fund private equity managers, whose (formerly!) enormous incomes are taxed as capital gains, at 15%--a lower rate, as Warren Buffet points out, than his secretary pays. When this issue came up last year, Democrats caved quickly to industry pressure. Raising taxes on these management fees is in Obama's budget. We'll see if it happens this time.

Some advocates of bank nationalization make it sound quick and easy -- get in, clean up, get out. As for wiped out shareholders and nearly wiped-out bondholders - tant pis, taxpayers come first.

FinanciaWeek's editor Ron Fink today offers a credible glimpse at one major complicating factor. Certain bondholders may command a strong measure of consideration:

Although it is impossible to prove their contention based on publicly available data, [some] analysts suspect that China's holdings of the debt of banks such as Citigroup and Bank of America are one reason the Obama Administration is hesitating to take over those banks and restructure them with taxpayer assistance.

Although an increasing number of experts contend temporary nationalization followed by a spin-off of the banks' good assets to private investors would be the most effective way to resolve their financial woes, that would wipe out the value of current shareholders' holdings. What's more, nationalization would force bondholders to take a substantial hit.

The U.S. government, these analysts say, is simply unwilling to subject Chinese financial institutions to such losses, particularly at a time when Uncle Sam needs these overseas lenders to finance America's growing deficits through Treasury bond purchases. While China needs these purchases to hedge its exposure to the dollar as a result of its reliance on exports, Beijing has been shifting its capital investment priorities from exports to domestic infrastructure--not surprising given U.S. imports have fallen during the recession.

The Chinese continue to buy U.S. debt, Fink notes, in large part because it's in their interest to support the dollar and so maintain the value of their export income. At the same time, Beijing is "shifting its capital investment priorities from exports to domestic infrastructure." A loss of what could be in excess of $150 billion on U.S. bank debt, triggered by nationalization, might prompt a more sudden Chinese turn away from Treasury bond purchases.

Nouriel Roubini, one advocate of nationalization who doesn't mince the difficulties, has suggested that the time won't be ripe for another six-odd months, when it's clear which banks are insolvent and nationalization of the largest insolvent banks can be done "at one fell swoop." The China hypothesis suggests another powerful motive to make haste slowly on this front:

...Mr. [Brad] Setser noted that.... he wouldn't be surprised if China were trying to reduce its exposure to the debt of Citi and B of A. "Post Lehman, post [Fannie and Freddie], it seems like China is shifting back into Treasuries quite quickly," he wrote.

So if the scenario that played out at Fannie and Freddie scenario is any indication, the Obama administration may be waiting for China to reduce its exposure to the debt of the latest U.S. financial institutions found lying near death's door before it nationalizes them.

Geithner may have got off on the wrong foot but he's no fool. It's neither ideology nor timidity that's holding back a bank cleanup. It's likely a matter of timing, damage control, first doing no harm, and minimizing unintended consequences. Drugs and exercise before radical surgery.

Many among the chorus of voices across the political spectrum now urging bank nationalization make it sound quick, clean and simple. The watchwords are "bite the bullet," "cut the Gordian knot"; the implication is usually that Obama and Geithner are wasting precious time and money and heightening market uncertainty by by dallying, trimming, refusing the grasp the nettle.

So it's striking that one of the highest profile advocates of nationalization, Nouriel Roubini, whose words today are freighted with the current gold standard of credibility, having forecast the market meltdown, argues yes, that selected behemoth banks must be nationalized -- but also that the time is not yet ripe. From today's Wall Street Journal:

So, will the highest level of government be receptive to the bank-nationalization idea? "I think it will," Mr. Roubini says, unhesitatingly. "People like Graham and Greenspan have already given their explicit blessing. This gives Obama cover." And how long will it be before the administration goes in formally for nationalization? "I think that we're going to see the policy adopted in the next few months . . . in six months or so."

That long? I ask. "Six months from now," he replies, "even firms that today look solvent are going to look insolvent. Most of the major banks -- almost all of them -- are going to look insolvent. In which case, if you take them all over all at once, you cause less damage than if you would if you took over a couple now, and created so much confusion and panic and nervousness.

While Geithner gets pounded for vagueness and Obama for timidity, look for Obama to follow the Emperor Augustus' watchword: festina lente. Make haste slowly. Wait till the bad bank harvest is ripe.

I'm not qualified to judge the wisdom or the direction of Geithner/Obama's long-term thinking about the banks. Or Roubini's, for that matter. I'm simply transliterating Roubini's implicit reading of what they're up to.

Here is the blueprint that Roubini and his colleague Matthew Richardson laid out in last Sunday's Washington Post:

Two important parts of Geithner's plan are "stress testing" banks by poring over their books to separate viable institutions from bankrupt ones and establishing an investment fund with private and public money to purchase bad assets. These are necessary steps toward a healthy financial sector.

But unfortunately, the plan won't solve our financial woes, because it assumes that the system is solvent. If implemented fairly for current taxpayers (i.e., no more freebies in the form of underpriced equity, preferred shares, loan guarantees or insurance on assets), it will just confirm how bad things really are.

Nationalization is the only option that would permit us to solve the problem of toxic assets in an orderly fashion and finally allow lending to resume. Of course, the economy would still stink, but the death spiral we are in would end.

Nationalization -- call it "receivership" if that sounds more palatable -- won't be easy, but here is a set of principles for the government to go by:

First -- and this is by far the toughest step -- determine which banks are insolvent. Geithner's stress test would be helpful here. The government should start with the big banks that have outside debt, and it should determine which are solvent and which aren't in one fell swoop, to avoid panic. Otherwise, bringing down one big bank will start an immediate run on the equity and long-term debt of the others. It will be a rough ride, but the regulators must stay strong.

Second, immediately nationalize insolvent institutions. The equity holders will be wiped out, and long-term debt holders will have claims only after the depositors and other short-term creditors are paid off.

Third, once an institution is taken over, separate its assets into good ones and bad ones. The bad assets would be valued at current (albeit depressed) values. Again, as in Geithner's plan, private capital could purchase a fraction of those bad assets. As for the good assets, they would go private again, either through an IPO or a sale to a strategic buyer.

The proceeds from both these bad and good assets would first go to depositors and then to debt-holders, with some possible sharing with the government to cover administrative costs. If the depositors are paid off in full, then the government actually breaks even.

Fourth, merge all the remaining bad assets into one enterprise. The assets could be held to maturity or eventually sold off with the gains and risks accruing to the taxpayers.

The eventual outcome would be a healthy financial system with many new banks capitalized by good assets. Insolvent, too-big-to-fail banks would be broken up into smaller pieces less likely to threaten the whole financial system. Regulatory reforms would also be instituted to reduce the chances of costly future crises (my emphasis).

Superficially, Roubini and Richardson seem to suggest that the Geithner plan is inadequate ("the plan won't solve our financial woes") and that nationalization is straightforward (4-step program). At the same time, they mark Geithner's stress test as a necessary first step, acknowledge the enormous difficulty and risk inherent in nationalization, and -- as in today's Journal interview -- stress the importance of timing in steering through the anticipated "rough ride." The key is to do it "in one fell swoop," and that can't be done yet.

Obama has built the reputation of a master of timing. Let's see how he rides the nationalization tiger.

On Lincoln's 200th birthday, in the latest of a long series of tributes to Lincoln, Obama cast Lincoln as the avatar of union - that is, of commitment to the collective effort that removes the fetters from individual effort. He drew his usual long historical framework: that we can meet the challenges of the moment because "we have been here before" -- Americans have, historically, mustered the collective will required to meet enormous challenges. Within that larger story, he set his usual shorter historical narrative -- the story of the last thirty years -- with unusual clarity and compression.

The short frame is: Reagan was a legitimate corrective to a state that had grown bloated; the Republicans who followed him were an overcorrection; it is time to restore collective effort, commitment to the common good, faith in government as a instrument in collective problem solving. Obama implicitly casts himself as an instrument of democratic self-correction:

And yet, while our challenges may be new, they did not come about overnight. Ultimately, they result from a failure to meet the test that Lincoln set. To be sure, there have been times in our history when our government has misjudged what we can do by individual effort alone, and what we can only do together; when it has done things that people can - or should - do for themselves. Our welfare system, for example, too often dampened individual initiative, discouraging people from taking responsibility for their own upward mobility. With respect to education, we have all too frequently lost sight of the role of parents, rather than government, in cultivating a thirst for knowledge and instilling those qualities of a good character - hard work, discipline, and integrity - that are so important to educational achievement and professional success.

But in recent years, we've seen the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction. It's a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government - this constant rejection of any common endeavor - cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges. It cannot refurbish our schools or modernize our health care system; lead to the next medical discovery or yield the research and technology that will spark a clean energy economy.

Once again, Obama casts moving the center left as a restoration of core American values. (Elsewhere, he's drafted not only Lincoln but Hamilton into this historical narrative -- two of our leaders,  who arguably did most to empower industrial and financial elites, as well as strong central government and collective effort.) He presents Lincoln's railroads, and his land grants, and his land-grant colleges, as precursors of his own intended alternative energy investments, and job creation, and school reform. He embraces Lincoln's injunction to "lift artificial weights from all shoulders [and give] all an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life" as the essence of what he has often defined as the always-unfinished American drive toward a "more perfect union."