I am an enormous fan of The Decembrist's commentary on the intersection of policy and process. He has few competitors -- in or out of the blogosphere -- when it comes to insights on political strategy. But those of us who are political junkies love tactics as well. And Mark Schmitt's most recent contribution is a delicious item on how Harry Reid is, at least so far, running tactical rings around Senator Frist.

Much of Frist's problems may stem from a single personal weakness -- or perhaps more accurately, the lack of a strength shared by those Senate leaders who have been most formidable, such as LBJ. Frist isn't a one-on-one "listener," with the result that he is guilty of the cardinal sin for a Senate leader -- he doesn't know where his votes are or where they may be a week from now if the scene shifts slightly.

When combined with the fact that Frist is being pulled every which way by the various constituencies he needs to mount a presidential campaign, the picture is not a pretty one.

Ezra Klein proposes that Senate leadership positions should be reserved for those who forswear any immediate presidential ambitions.

So if future Senates want themselves to function, they should pass a new rule: no majority leader or minority leader is allowed to run for president in the next presidential election. If you hold the position in 2005 and resign in 2006, no go until 2012. If you become majority leader in 2009, you got to bracket your hopes until 2016. You've got to be out of the leadership for four whole years before you can run for president. Hopefully, that'd keep the opportunists from running and help install those who care about, and like, the Senate as an institution.

Someone who lives and breathes legislating, and loves nothing better than to talk with his colleagues about it. Sounds old-fashioned, but it just might work. Harry Reid, anyone?

[Cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism]

Praktike points us to some China-related comments from Chairman Greenspan today. The China remarks appear in a column by Greg Ip (WSJ) -- see prak's post -- who reported on comments that weren't in the Greenspan statement (which was all budget process), Ip characterizes Greenspan as "the latest U.S. official to turn up the volume on China."

Ip is far more experienced at Greenspan-ology that I, but I have a decidedly different take on today's comments. Seems to me Greenspan's telling folks to cool their jets. That a revaluation of the yuan is going to happen when it's in China's interest and they're not going to be pressured into it. Pressure is, if anything, counter-productive because it produces cross-the-board tensions that are really quite unncessary.

Greenspan indicated, and I agree, that the Chinese know full well that it's -- sooner or later (and increasingly sooner) -- going to be necessary to revalue. They've been openly trying to prepare for it for some time -- especially in their financial system (which as we all know isn't the strongest, to put it politely). In fact, as Greenspan seems to have noted according to Ip, one of the main pressures for revaluing is increasingly the strains on their financial system from the hot money they can't sterilize and the asset bubbles and over-investment in some regions and sectors. All that is undermining many of the benefits they're trying to extract from the current exchange rate as well as their ability to manage macro policy.

I'd expect that Greenspan's real audience for the comment about the revaluation sooner rather than later is the markets -- there are a lot of concerns about too rapid a readjustment, the impact on global growth, and a hard landing. For the masochists among us, Brad DeLong has been keeping a running inventory of "hard landing" fretting and commentary over the past few days (from David Altig, Bruce Barlett, and Krugman & Setser).

I read Greenspan's China remark as similar to his comment about oil prices a couple of weeks ago -- that they'll work their way through the global economy in a fairly orderly adjustment of supply and demand. So Greenspan's trying to keep everybody calm.

I think he's also signaling to Congress that their impatience is both unnecessary and not doing the markets any good. American business is concerned about all the trade war noises. A big tariff increase may make "good politics" domestically, and it may seem to some not materially different from an exchange rate adjustment in macroeconomic theory. But in practical terms, it sure doesn't make American businesses who actually have to produce and sell stuff happy to hear about big unilateral tariffs against a key trading partner, and it shouldn't make their employees happy either.

As The Economist notes today in a piece on Congress' new-found love-affair with protectionist noisemaking, even the National Association of Manufacturers isn't keen on the tariff games.

Nobody in Congress, alas, seems to care about breaking WTO rules. The aim is to be seen to be bashing China loudly. Mr Bayh is holding up the confirmation of Rob Portman, the new trade representative, until his bill is voted on. Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, Duncan Hunter, a conservative Republican, and Tim Ryan, a Democrat, have cooked up a law that allows American companies to use “exchange-rate manipulation” as a reason for demanding protection under America's trade laws. And the Congressional China Currency Action Coalition has filed a Section 301 petition asking the Bush administration to file a formal case to the WTO complaining about the yuan.

In the 1980s, a rising trade deficit—at that time with Japan—fueled protectionist pressure in Congress. Ronald Reagan introduced the notorious “voluntary export restraints” on Japanese steel and cars. The Reagan team also abandoned its laisser-faire attitude to currency markets and, through the Plaza Agreement, engineered a sharp drop in the dollar.

The current bout of China-bashing is not a replay of the 1980s. Back then, large American firms, particularly the Detroit car giants, led the clamour for protection. Now big business, which relies heavily on Chinese inputs, is quieter. The shouting comes from smaller American suppliers. And even the noisier business groups, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, are relatively nuanced. Though the NAM wants Beijing to revalue the yuan, it does not support the Schumer bill.

I just love how every time the chickens start coming home to roost from the pursuit of bad (or non-existent) US policy, the US politicians (of both parties I might add) all run to blame somebody else. Doesn't strike me that Greenspan is falling into that old bad habit. But it's pretty disgusting when it comes from the profligates who have been at least titularly in charge of conducting US economic policy like Snow, and I don't have much more patience for grandstanding from folks who should know better like Schumer and Bayh.

If Democrats want to turn up the volume, let's start with making noise about the ridiculous energy bill that's actually being voted on in the House but that could, if enough Senators got behind some of the more sensible proposals out there, be changed in the Senate with, I might add, some White House support. (The House bill's so bad even Bush bashed it this week.) Hey, and where was the volume on the estate tax or bankruptcy bills that really mean something directly to people? Nah, it's easier to blame somebody else for the consequences of the consumer-spending and debt binge we've enjoyed for years. Sheesh!

BTW -- Just to respond to Roubini's remark that prak quotes in his post on Greenspan. I disagree with the emphasis by Roubini and many others on the loss of value of foreign reserves as one of the major pressures on the Chinese to revalue early. Hey, it's only money. The Chinese have humongous problems they're trying to grow their way out of -- e.g. SOEs, banking system, labor mobility, development in inland regions. 16% of one year's GDP doesn't look like all that outrageous a price tag when you look at things from their perspective.

UPDATE re the reserves losses discussion: For more on the impact of losses on reserves held by the PBoC (Peoples Bank of China), see this post from Brad Setser yesterday. He concludes:

The PBoC may still have a positive cash flow, but it is sitting on a large expected valuation loss on both its dollar and its euro reserves. Diversifying out of dollars does not help much; the best way for the PBoC to reduce its prospective loss is to stop adding to their reserves. And in any case, it might want to start provisioning against that future loss now ...

The real debate here is not whether the losses are "just paper" losses or not -- the losses from a revaluation would be very real, though they could be partially offset by the PBoC's ongoing profits from issuing renminbi cash. The real question is whether these mounting losses are a worthwhile price to pay to sustain China's rapid export growth for a while longer.

And as I suggested, at least until recently when some of the downside of an overvalued currency started undermining the gains, the answer from the Chinese has clearly been "It's worth it." I see them in quite a different position from other Asian central banks who are being forced to digest a lot more dollars than they'd like.

In the comment thread Brad also helps sort out some of the confusions that are common in discussions of the risks of revaluation to China's banking system. Worth a read.

Alas:

Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush (news - web sites).

The Senate, by a 51-49 vote, rejected an attempt by Democrats and GOP moderates to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year's budget, preventing opponents from using a filibuster — a tactic that has blocked repeated past attempts to open the Alaska refuge to oil companies.

... not completely over yet, as the Times explains:

For drilling to take place, the Senate will later have to pass a measure explicitly authorizing the opening of the wildlife refuge to drilling, something that until now has been prohibited. Then the House of Representatives would have to explicitly authorize drilling as well.

UPDATE: Steve Soto has an interesting theory on why Hawaii's two Senators voted to drill.

The good folks at Centerfield are mildly chuffed exasperated that Congress is wasting its and everyone else's time with steroids in baseball. Perhaps this kind of cowpie, along with the increasingly obvious and odious stench of corruption emanating from chez Bugman, is why only 37% of the American people think highly of the job Congress is doing. Actually, I'm surprised the number isn't lower.

Unlike the nice moderates at Centerfield, I'm a partisan, so let's be perfectly clear about this: the GOP is in firm control of Congress, and it's almost completely their fault that Congress sucks.

nadezhda corrects my faux-British in comments below. lorry, lift, whatever.

For those of you interested in the Senate hearings on the legislation to update the FOIA being sponsored by Sens Cornyn and Leahy, they begin at 10:00AM EST today (Tuesday March 15) and can be heard via streaming audio at the CapitolHearings.org site that CSPAN runs for Senate hearings. Just scroll down to Judiciary -- Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security Subcommittee.

A highly unusual moment of insight from Dick Morris:

So why did the GOP not deliver the mortal blow when they could have easily done so? My guess is that the White House stopped them from doing so. Bush and Rove must have sent signals to lay off the cloture rule. Only an intervention of that order of magnitude would have been sufficiently effective to vitiate the carefully laid plans of the Republican majority.

But if the administration did intervene and stop the emasculation of the filibuster on judicial nominations, why did it do so? Why would the president voluntarily make it easier for Democrats to torpedo his judicial nominations?

President Bush and Karl Rove probably figured that they did not want the power to appoint judges without opposition from the Senate Democrats. They realized that without the filibuster there was nothing to stop them from nominating judges who would cling to a hard right-wing agenda on Roe v. Wade and other issues, permanently alienating much of the country and driving a stake into GOP efforts to reach out to independents and women.

Bush needs the filibuster so that he can nominate judges who will not drive a wedge into the politics of America. He needs an excuse to tell his far-right friends why he is not naming a new Clarence Thomas or William Rehnquist or Antonin Scalia to the court. Bush grasps that such an appointment would be a step that would shatter the unity he is achieving after his reelection. And he needs the filibuster to keep the loyalty of his base even as he disappoints their most earnest expectations.

Bush might submit a nominee who would trigger a filibuster when the Supreme Court vacancy comes. He might then be forced to name a more moderate alternative. Or he might circumvent the process entirely and name a nominee acceptable to all, as Bill Clinton did. But, in any case, Bush needs the filibuster. That’s why it is still on the rulebooks.

Right ... so worried about unity, that W. In any case, he's probably right about the Lucy holding a football strategy at work here.

UPDATE: James Joyner thinks Bush is a "true believer" who would like nothing better than to nominate another Scalia type. Actually, I think Scalia compares favorably to the latest crop of extremist nominees. There is one point to be made, in any case: Bush has pretty consistently pushed a maximalist, no-compromise negotiating strategy on judicial appointments, and gotten his way on the vast majority without having to resort to the "nuclear option." That's always his style, because he doesn't negotiate with himself. Or something.

I am soooo not falling for this:

President Bush will seek deep cuts in farm and commodity programs in his new budget and in a major policy shift will propose overall limits on subsidy payments to farmers, administration officials said Saturday.

Such limits would help reduce the federal budget deficit and would inject market forces into the farm economy, the officials said.

The proposal puts Mr. Bush at odds with some of his most ardent supporters in the rural South, including cotton and rice growers in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, and more than 100 farm groups are gearing up to fight the White House proposal. The administration's willingness to push the proposal, despite such protests, suggests how tight the new budget will be.

Most of the subsidies are paid to large farm operators growing cotton and rice and, to a lesser degree, corn, soybeans and wheat.

Mr. Bush would set a firm overall limit of $250,000 on subsidies that can now exceed $1 million in some cases.

I would be overjoyed if something like this actually happened, but I'm confident that the welfare-staters in Congress will put them back in. As is, I suspect, the White House.

I must apologize for being remiss in my duties here at chez Nadezhda over the past few days. The front desk has been left empty for extended periods, and it's really my fault. Praktike has been on an amazing production streak at LaT and the Chef has been covered with dust from head to toe reclassifying the entire central library collection at TerrorWiki. Prak has been kind enough to cover the front desk here from time to time.

I've been off doing some remodelling, as well as planning another room (I'm afraid I'm a frustrated interior designer at heart!). And I forgot to leave a note on the door to go round back.

So here's a bit of something until the crew leaves and I get the construction mess cleaned up.

These are comments I wrote over at Eric Martin's place a week before the inauguration. I think you might find some of it relevant to discussions since the inaugural address -- how the Bush Administration is repositioning re the "GWOT" vocabulary, the relations between the CIA and DOD in covert operations, and the rumbles of cross-border excursions in Iraq.

The comments aren't addressed to the specifics of the current brouhahas, but sometimes I have to remind myself to keep the big picture in mind as I react to specific events or disclosures, especially the more outrageous. So I find it helpful to occassionally go back to look at something I said, even if it was only a week ago. [ed., no comments about senior moments now, you hear?]

---

For context, the discussion at Eric's was about Norman Podhoretz' "revisionism in real time" (to use Eric's felicitous formulation) and the various "enemies within" to which Norman's salvo was likely addressed. My remarks begin with an important and timely question from Alex:

A serious question: If Bush decides to invade another country [i.e. Iran or Syria, ed.], do you think he will attempt to use the congressional authorization from the Iraq War for permission, OR do you think that he will ask for a new authorization, OR do you think he'll just go ahead?

Sorry, I'm impatient. Can't wait for your answers. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THIS CONGRESS WITH AUTHORIZE ANY NEW WAR DURING THE REMAINDER OF THIS PRESIDENCY, excepting following an attack of course. Zero.

My response, edited a bit for readibility but otherwise just stream of keyboard:

See the excellent recent Lawrence Freedman piece on The Iraq Syndrome, which will be Rumsfeld's legacy, in the same way Robert McNamara's was the Vietnam Syndrome. My very quicky remarks on Freedman are here.

I believe Freedman is absolutely correct about an Iraq Syndrome. There's a big difference between a significant portion of the public being willing to continue to support (or at least not openly oppose) Bush and the US invasion because "America right or wrong." They get their backs up when somebody suggests that the President and the US did the wrongn thing.

It's another thing altogether for those same people to support a further adventure. They're going to be awfully gun-shy, pun intended.

The causus belli would have to be sufficiently major that it triggered the viscera of Americans across the political spectrum. The US would have to feel itself under direct attack -- not some argument of possible future threat that must be prevented or preempted. Unless we have a meltdown of our political system, the Bush Doctrine as a military strategy is dead, but there's not anything yet in its place.

If a new intervention were pushed by the Bush Administration, a much larger portion of the general public this time around would want to know in great many more of the details about military overstretch, quagmires and exit strategy, possible "blowback," etc. These issues were dismissable in the wake of 9/11, with the drumbeats being echoed by the MSM, and with the "lessons of Vietnam" dismissed as either irrelevant or "we've gotten over Vietnam by now."

By contrast, Iraq is, shall we say, still fresh in the mind? We've got a new situation that's looking more and more like quagmire from any and every angle. And this time around, the MSM has a whole other narrative in which to filter and frame pronouncements from the Bush Administraton.

I'd say the foregoing description of a general public that is more cautious or less willing to take Bush's pronounements on faith is similarly equally true for a goodly portion of Repubs on Capitol Hill. Most are not of the neo-con persuasion. Also, they're politicians, so the reluctance of a larger portion of their voters, and the willingness of a larger number of their home districts to take a hard look at the bill-of-goods the Bush Admin would be selling if they followed the Poddy script, is likely to put the brakes on any adventure. We're already hearing rumbles from Repub Congressmen after visiting their home districts.

All of this is equally applicable, BTW, to any proposal for humanitarian interventions that involve peacemaking -- not just helping disaster victims like the tsunami. The Iraq Syndrome will put any thoughts of a repeat of interventions in the Balkans, or going into a Sudan, under the microscope across the political spectrum, not just from the old-fashioned anti-war Left or the isolationist Right.

The thing to watch for is mission creep in Iraq. Please note that although Rumsfeld was pretty direct about denying US-supported Iraqi death squads (by the Pentagon, didn't say anything about the other agency, heh) he was notably less straightforward about crossing the border into Syria by US special forces.

[ed., I highlighted Rumsfeld's statements on Syria because I found astounding the naivete of certain right-wing bloggers when they dumped on Rumsfeld for being too "casual" in his reaction to the Newsweek article on the Salvador option. Donald Rumsfeld may decide to appear breezy some times in responding to the press, but his responses are never "casual." If he said he hadn't read the article, you can go to the bank on the statement as being factually accurate. If you inferred, however, that he was unaware of every last jot of every sentence in the article in terms of what he could and couldn't safely say, you are a fool. He is the only one of the leading lights of BushAdmin1 to have been caught in an out-and-out falsehood over the invasion of Iraq only once. And that case appears to have been a slip of the tongue he has regretted fiercely. Always, always parce Rumsfeld -- most especially when he's being "casual."]

I hate to keep returning to Vietnam, but there are features of that conflict that should at least be examined occasionally. One is the understandable temptation by both the WH and the military to go to where they think the source of the problem lies -- across the neighboring borders. The international and domestic political fallout can be considerable, as the Cambodian bombings demonstrated. And mission creep can also be a factor in spreading instability outside of the country of conflict. That's just a commonsense observation, not a moral judgment.

Now one of the big problems is that, unless we take Kristol's proposal and bomb the Syrians openly, the BushAdmin and the military have to conduct deniable operations. That means one or both of two things. We ultimately engage unofficial/paramilitary groups to do the incursions. We lie through our teeth about it publicly.

The latter course was adopted by the Nixon WH with respect to Cambodia (hey -- Kerry's Cambodia story to this day can't be documented because it's shrouded in a system designed for deniability). And at some point, deniability exploded in their face, and LBJ's Credibility Gap became Nixon's Grand Canyon of government-by-deceit. That was a terrible scar on US domestic politics writ large, not just on the future conduct of US foreign policy.

Now, as for Finlandization [ed. appropo of Podhoretz]. I don't have a reference for you at my fingertips that gives you a broader history. But it's the Poddy codeword for the sinister policies of creeping appeasement of the guys who were running the show in Reagan II -- not the stalwart anticommunists of Iran-contra and the NSC but the (sneer) diplomats. He and Midge were still yammering about Finlandization at conferences on Europe after October 1989!

The reemergence of Jimmy Baker must have them in a cold sweat. Baker is the incarnation of evil because he's so much more plausible than the cartoonish anti-war Left. Granted the Podhoretz crowd is all geared up for realtime revisionism (take a gander at Roger Simon's comment section on the Podhoretz article if you want to see an awesome example of your [Eric's] meme in action). But if you want to know who their real enemy is, it's Jimmy Baker and his ilk because that smooth talker is one dangerous man.

-----------------------------

Follow-up from Alex:

[O]ne major difference between now and Cambodia is the media. I think secret runs into Syria would land on Al Jazeera in a heartbeat, although I do allow for the possibility that there is lots going on in Iraq that we simply don't know is happening. From what I understand from press reports, the press is quite restricted from moving around by the insecurity.

Another question that I find interesting to contemplate is the military force size question in relation to the possibility of invading "the next country." Unless all the retired military analysts are lying about our force strength, attacking a new country doesn't seem feasible at this time. And that begs the question of just what we would do if WE were attacked here and wanted to retaliate. Shift forces from Iraq or Afghanistan?

I think if it really came to that, particularly following an attack, that there would be a serious readjustment in the world view to send troops, including NATO and maybe UN, to replace troops in Iraq and redirect them (maybe borrow some from Afghan., too). What I don't like is being in the position of being so vulnerable, especially for no good reason.

I heard that Baker had made a statement, but I haven't tracked down what he said yet. In fact, I have been waiting for him to speak ever since Scowcroft's and Zbig's comments last week. What I would dearly love to know is the current status among Bush 41, Brent and Baker. Can you say strained?

------------------------------

From nadezhda to Alex --

Here's a link to a press report of Baker's speech.

It's about time! However, the way I read the situation, Baker is out there running interference for Dubya. This is where the BushAdmin is generally headed, but somebody's got to tell the faithful that it's time for a reality-based policy. Rude awakening for many, I fear, if the comment thread on Roger Simon re the Podhoretz article is any indication.

They're at it again! Congress just can't seem to resist sticking their fingers in the foreign policy pie. This time, it's over the International Criminal Court. Granted, not the most sympathetic or easily defended of international endeavors from the US viewpoint. But Congress had already taken a major pot shot at it by conditioning military assistance on agreements to grant immunity to US servicemen.

Now they've buried in the Omnibus spending bill a provision that conditions economic assistance on immunity agreements.

Congress's action may affect U.S. Agency for International Development programs designed to promote peace, combat drug trafficking, and promote democracy and economic reforms in poor countries. For instance, the cuts could jeopardize as much as $250 million to support economic growth and reforms in Jordan, $500,000 to promote democracy and fight drug traffickers in Venezuela, and about $9 million to support free trade and other initiatives with Mexico.

At the behest of the State Department, a provision has been aded for executive waivers for NATO members and other key allies. So the countries most likely to be affected are the small poor ones that aren't strategically important to the US. Likely the ones most in need of the assistance, of course.

[UPDATE 1:30PM EST 11-29-04] Further information on which countries would be affected and the political battle lines within Congress is in a OneWorld.net piece today by Jim Lobe.

The PBGC funding crisis, which is finally getting the ink it deserves, is often laid at the feet of the lengthy, painful restructuring of the large traditional airlines. Although they're not the only firms involved, they certainly represent a significant part of the current problem, which is primarily the heritage of the era of defined-benefit pensions.

As employers continue to abandon defined-benefit-style pension programs, the PBGC exposure will not grow substantially in future decades from new pension practices. Putting aside the issue of whether shifting all financial risk to employees is a sustainable system politically in the long run, the big problems for the PBGC are handling the legacy of labor practices in older industry structures.

Now comes a proposal in the Wall Street Journal -- devilish details to be worked out -- jointly offered by an unusual trio, representing the perspectives of the PBGC, airline management, and airline workers. That in itself makes it worth looking at. The three authors clearly share a common villain: Chapter 11 bankruptcy. One doubts that it is the cause of the dilemma, but the three agree that it is certainly making things worse all around -- a "lose, lose, lose," they claim.   more »