Further on the Iraq front, shifting now from US policy to domestic politics. The Armchair Generalist picks up on press coverage of Democratic disunity on the Iraq war and how it benefits the GOP. Frustrating, agreed. A fatal flaw, not necessarily.

I'm less concerned about Democratic disunity than is the Washington press corps, which loves the "Democrats squabble" script. The main threat from disunity isn't the failure of Democrats to offer an alternative "plan" (the favorite prescription of the punditocracy, see Social Security). Rather, the threat of disunity is only if Democrats waste their ammunition on each other rather than keep it aimed squarely on Bush.

The best candid version of this argument is Digby's "pincer" strategy earlier cited by Eric Martin as an interesting perspective on the political gavotte.

I think that we are seeing a Democratic pincer movement that is going to fatally squeeze the Republican policy. On the one side we have the growing Cindy Sheehan withdrawal movement, very emotional very compelling. It's the right argument, but its main purpose is to weaken Bush --- there is no chance in hell that it will force a complete troop withdrawal. On the other side he has the Democratic establishment calling for more troops and a greater effort to gain international support. Bush cannot do that either. He is trapped. All he can say is "stay the course" which is not adequate to win and ensures that we lose slowly and painfully.

I'm sorry to have to reduce this to politics. It is an absolutely horrible situation that should have been prevented and wasn't. That was our failure. But it has happened and it is what it is. The only thing we can do is ensure that Republicans are held accountable for this failure and prepare the ground for the future. If I thought we could convince the GOP to do anything different, I would put politics aside and say that we should all work together. But that is clearly impossible. They will not listen. They will not admit that they've made any mistakes.

Rodger Payne at Duck of Minerva takes Digby's insight one step further. He explains the merit of advocating escalation as a way of peeling the "Jacksonians" away from their unconditional support of the Bush Admin. It's a way of demonstrating that the Bushies aren't really "fighting to win" -- a mortal sin in the Jacksonian scheme of things. Given the practical impediments to escalation, it's a strategy that's hard to sustain, but it's an interesting way to get past the key first step -- overcoming the "denial" stage that the President's policies are working. Payne's proposal also suggests how Democrats can join their voices to Republicans critics in attacking the objectives and conduct of the war -- a good way to counter attempts by the White House to use Iraq as a wedge issue.

Finally, I continue to try to make the case that "withdrawal" vs "stay the course" is a phony debate, and it's one to be avoided by opponents of the Bush Admin's conduct of the Iraq war. The real challenge is to shift the discussion to how best to achieve the mission -- which has already become one of damage control, despite the rhetoric of the President and Vice President -- while at the same time holding the Bush Admin accountable for the mess they've created.

From the perspective of damage control, the steps being taken by DOD and State in recent months reflect on-the-ground reality and are for the most part moving in the right direction. The risk of a widening gap between rhetoric and reality is that major decisions, such as the constitutional drafting process, will be driven by White House political imperatives rather than best judgments of what's good policy. [caveat -- there are credible arguments for pushing for a constitutional draft on schedule, but the White House's need for "progress" quite naturally raises unhealthy suspicions -- both by Americans and Iraqis -- that US politics are dominating the Iraqi constitutional process.]

As I've argued for months, Bush is out on a limb. I agree with Digby -- since Bush can't admit mistakes, all he can do now is ramp up the "noble cause" and "stay the course" rhetoric. Where I disagree with Digby is that I think the Bush Admin policymakers have already abandoned the "stay the course" strategy -- they're trying to stage manage a gradual withdrawal while minimizing damage to US interests, with an occasional photo-op to boost the claim that "we're making progress" and the phony "stay the course" strategy is working.

With his recently announced schedule of Iraq speeches, Bush will certainly try to turn the war into a wedge issue a la Vietnam. He may succeed again, but it's not going to be nearly as easy as it was in the 2004 elections. The portion of the public that can be mobilized with standard flag-waving is declining, not just because the news from Iraq has been depressing but because the stated objectives (freedom on the march and the 9/11-flypaper theory) are less and less credible. With the growing rhetoric/reality gap, the old arguments aren't going to satisfy an American public that is getting increasingly frustrated, whether they think withdrawal or escalation is the better direction to go in.

I'm not sure what sort of Democratic "plan" would serve to both unify the Democrats and counter the wedge politics of the White House. And I don't think one's necessary. There's an old principle that when your political opponent is drowning in public, don't throw him a lifepreserver by shifting attention off him and onto yourself. Surely the Democrats can remain united on two core arguments against the Bush Admin: competence and credibility.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

I already went ballistic on the first report about Gen Byrnes getting the ax for marital indiscretion. So my outrage meter can't really go much higher. This Huffington Blog entry from Margaret Carlson just confirms my conviction that we've got a "values crisis" on our hands.

But here's what grabbed my attention. Way down in the [NYT's] piece, we learn that the officer appointed to determined if Byrnes should be court-martialed for a consensual affair is Gen. Dan K. McNeill. The Army has it wrong. If anyone should be court-martialed, it should be Gen. McNeill. Two prisoners were murdered on his watch and he covered it up.

I came to know McNeill when he was just a Lt. Gen. commanding forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, oversaw Bagram prison and then, the polite word is misled, officials about what happened to two innocent prisoners there. He claimed the two died of natural causes. Both were murdered.

McNeill kept stonewalling even after an autopsy showed that there'd been no natural causes in the death of a peasant named Dilawar. Rounded up in a bad sweep of Khost, Dilawar, who had never been away from his parent's home and was innocent of any animosisty towards America, much less violence, was hung from the ceiling of his cell for five days in between bouts of interrogation where he was kicked and beaten so badly the coroner's report said his leg had turned to pulp.

After natural causes became suspect, McNeill claimed Dilawar had died from coronary disease.

After McNeill left Afghanistan, a new inquiry was reopened in Washington (thanks to a New York Times investigation). Low-level soldiers and MP's have been indicted; some are on trial now. But guess what? McNeill was promoted to full general.

And now he sits in judgement of Byrnes.

Let's be clear what I'm not arguing about. It's a discussion for another day whether the US military should consider modifying its code of conduct when it comes to highly personal matters that don't directly involve one's job performance. Nor am I questioning the right of a superior to discipline a subordinate for disobeying an order. Finally, I am not endorsing Carlson's view that Gen McNeill should be court-martialed. I have no informed opinion. Most of the military's snowstorm of investigations on detainee treatment have taken a narrowly legalistic approach, looking for direct orders and smoking guns. I am willing to believe that the investigators didn't ignore glaring grounds for prosecuting McNeill.

The juxtaposition of Byrnes/McNeill has far more serious implications for our society's values than the actions in either case, taken in isolation. One of the purposes of conduct standards for officers is to promote confidence in the military's leadership -- confidence essential both to subordinates' willingness to follow and to civilians' trust in the judgment and competence of the military's leaders. Discipline in any specific case is a matter of discretion within a broader system of conduct. Confidence in the way standards of conduct are enforced -- that discretion will not be "abused" -- is essential to confidence in the system as a whole. Discretion is abused when those with power or with privilege of some sort are able to escape discipline applied to others. But discretion is also abused when discipline (or lack of discipline) fails to be proportionate, not only to the specific offense but to other disciplinary decisions.

There's been a lot of talk about accountability or lack thereof in the military's handling of detainee abuse and torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. "Command responsibility" is certainly an important element of ensuring integrity of performance, as I've learned in some detail from Phil Carter. Setting abstract ethics to one side, in purely instrumental terms, failure to hold higher-ups accountable is corrosive for morale and discipline up and down the line. Cover-ups, lack of candor and shoddy excuses, which go hand in hand with lack of accountability, drive a poisonous credibility wedge not only between military leadership and those they lead but between the military and society at large.

But the enforcement of conduct standards is not simply a matter of punishment, or weeding out people who don't meet the standards. Just as with rewards, such as promotion, disciplinary actions are also an important means to collectively define and reaffirm, within the military and for society more broadly, the types of behavior and results that are valued. Specific decisions about how to enforce the standards necessarily reflect a priority of values -- how seriously an institution's leadership holds certain values and how they try to reconcile values that may conflict.

Both promotions and disciplinary actions speak louder than words when it comes to communicating which values are most important to the military's current leadership. And the current leadership is saying that conflict with a superior over one's sexual behavior is a terrible, terrible thing. But you don't even blot your copybook if you're involved in command failures that include murders on your watch and the destruction of the military's public credibility on sensitive matters important to the nation's security. Apparently "necessities of war" as defined by the Secretary of Defense overrides all other values if you're a senior enough officer, even if it doesn't serve to absolve underlings. I certainly hope the Byrnes episode is not simply a display of the growing obsession with "sexual morality" as the touchstone for American "values."

So whether the military means to or not, it's sending out three strong messages. The lives of foreigners who get caught up in our war against terrorists are less important than an officer's marital indiscretion. Little guys will take the fall when things get messy. And our values don't actually reflect principles of ethical behavior and integrity, they're whatever the political masters of the day determine.

Somehow one of America's most important institutions has lost perspective on what's important. And it's lost sight of the fact that its actions speak far more loudly than words, reflect on our country as a whole, and are being heard round the world.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

There's hardly a spot in the political blogosphere where you won't find some commentary on the right-wing slime-fest over Mark Felt. I'm not sure which cri de coeur I've found more offensive -- so far it's a toss-up between Ben Stein and la Noonan, who equate Nixon's resignation with the unleashing of Pol Pot's killing fields.

Yet I find a certain sympathy for their all too evident agony. The frustrations they have suffered, for more than thirty years, are all gushing forth in one grand orgy of angst, resentment, fear and loathing. Because try as they might, they've lost the battle over the framing of one of the great pieces of American political mythology. As one of the commenters to a Josh Marshall post noted at the new TPMCafe:

I listened to some local wingnut radio on my way home yesterday and was surprised by the reaction. The majority of the callers in my 30 minute drive, not only rejected the false choice of hero/snake, but overwhelmingly agreed Felt did the right thing. Many also noted that most of the criticism was coming from members of the Nixon admin.

It must be profoundly gauling for the ex-Nixon gang to realize that the real battle for myth and memory isn't with their great political and philosophical enemies, the liberals and hippies. No, they're up against Hollywood, the home of their own myth-making hero Ronald Reagan. They know to their chagrin that when it comes to political mythmaking, Hollywood trumps all.

So when they dutifully pen their steaming op-eds or show up to foam on the cable shows, they're not fighting the Democrats of today, or even those of an earlier generation. They're taking on Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Hal Holbrooke, and Jason Robards. They're trying to erase the memorybanks of all those millions of cable and DVD viewers -- in both the US and international markets -- who have watched a clattering teletype announce the list of indictments and convictions amid the sounds and images of the unwinding Nixon presidency and the peaceful transition of power. They're trying to eradicate the emotional experience of sharing with Redford and Hoffman -- and with Deep Throat -- the bittersweet vindication of exposing the crimes of all the presidents' men.

That's a fight over American mythology that a bunch of over-the-hill speech writers and cable show pundits just aren't going to win.

Gene Sperling has penned the best simple explanation I've read of how a pension and disability system should be structured, and where private accounts would fit into such a system. His pre-obituary for the bamboozlepalooza, "Bush Private Accounts Are Dead Shark" (HT Woody Allen), will be read mainly for its assessment of GOP and Dem tactical maneuvering. But it is actually a tidy little essay on the principles of a "three-legged stool," which should underpin the logic of any scheme if it is to be supported by Democrats and reasonable Republicans.

Sperling expresses far more succinctly the key points I made more than three months ago, when last I took up the dreaded Social Security topic.

Social Security is simply the wrong vehicle for pushing the worthy and important goal of increasing ownership and savings among working Americans. In our three-legged retirement system [government benefits, employer-based pensions, personal investments]... Social Security is the only leg free of market and economic risk.

When communities were devastated by corporate scandals or bankruptcies in 2001 and 2002, many families saw not only their pensions dissipate, and retiree health benefits evaporate, but even their housing values decline as their hard-hit neighborhoods spiraled down.

The only part of their financial package that didn't join this spiral was Social Security. With privatization, those families would have seen their Social Security benefits drop, as well. That is why those of us who support new investment incentives like Universal 401(k)s should be the ones most adamant about the importance of keeping the Social Security leg of our retirement system completely risk-free.

Sperling then proceeds to outline why it's important for the three legs to be kept separate and distinct.

The second substantive rationale for a hard "no" on privatization is that virtually every private-account plan is designed to make Americans undervalue the social-insurance benefits of Social Security and overvalue their private accounts.

To see why, imagine a father who decides to invest $5,000 in the market and $5,000 in a combination of fire insurance, life insurance, and auto insurance. After one year, he happily notes that his market investment has risen 6 percent. Yet, because he neither died, saw his house burn down nor experienced a serious auto accident, he concludes he got a negative annual return on his $5,000 insurance investment and, therefore, cancels all of his insurance policies.

Of course, this father would be a fool. No rational person measures the value of insurance by an annual return. Yet, when Bush tells Americans to compare the return on their private account with the return they get with a Social Security system -- which provides valuable insurance against poverty, devastating disability, and the early death of a provider -- he encourages exactly that foolish comparison.

And here's the pernicious effect over time of Bush's political "optics" in action:

Bush leads Americans to ignore the value that goes to the recipients of survivor and disability insurance -- almost a third of all Social Security beneficiaries -- and the almost 100 percent of workers who can go to bed knowing that if such misfortune occurs, Social Security will help their families maintain a modicum of economic dignity.

Bush's plan is designed to even further exacerbate this false comparison. By requiring borrowed funds for private accounts to be paid back not from the accounts themselves but by reducing Social Security benefits, his plan is designed to make private accounts seem deceptively large and Social Security benefits appear deceptively small.

This absurd design serves only one purpose: to encourage the healthy and the well-off to misconstrue Social Security as a bad deal.

Now, you may say, it may or may not be a bad deal for the healthy and well-off. But isn't the real point that the current program is more than is necessary to provide a safety net to keep folks from really falling through the cracks. Wouldn't it do the trick to provide a means-tested small safety net for everyone, with a bigger private investment portfolio portion that varies for each individual by the size of his or her contributions? And I would respond, that depends what's happening with the other legs of the stool -- not merely from the vantage of individuals but for the overall structure of the economy.

We need to take Sperling's analysis one step further -- to what's happening with the second leg of the stool, employer-based pensions. This is the story of the rapid demise of the defined-benefit system. Business has been shifting to defined-contribution plans at an accelerating rate, leaving the financial risks with the employees. According to Business Week:

The number of defined-benefit pension plans has plunged from 112,000 in the mid 1980s to fewer than 30,000 today. The tally of workers earning a pension has fallen more slowly, but their ranks now total just 17 million, down from 22 million 20 years ago.

Where defined-benefit systems have survived, they are increasingly endangered species. Many plans are experiencing crises in funding, and they remain most common in "legacy" industries like the older airlines and autos. These industries simply cannot continue their previous levels of employee benefits and stay in business.

The result has been a growing crisis at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, where it is rapidly losing its ability to fund its liabilities from premiums. To compound the difficulty, as the GAO just reported this week, the government's current pension accounting rules allow companies to use techniques that can mask significant funding shortfalls. Any "cure" for the PBGC's own balance sheet will undoubtedly accelerate the move away from defined-benefit plans, even as the mopping up of old problems grows more expensive by the year.

Give the Bush Administration credit in one sense -- they have proposed to address the PBGC issue head-on rather than continue to temporize, despite screams from many industries. The PBGC problem is frequently described as an "S&L crisis" in the making, and the Bush Administration seems to have taken the lesson from the S&Ls to heart. Continuing to tinker with the rules to accommodate an arrangement that no longer makes much economic sense is simply running up the costs while delaying the inevitable. The PBCG isn't going to "grow out of" its dilemma any more than the S&Ls did. And make no mistake about it -- the outcome will be the same in both cases -- the disappearance of a type of financial service that has lost its economic logic as the structure of US competition has shifted. The only question is when, at what cost, and who will bear those costs.

The Bush Administration's approach to the PBGC is an implicit acknowledgment that global competition has made defined-contribution arrangements -- those that shift financial risk to employees -- the only realistic option for most individual employers. But when we look at this shift in financial risk from the view of American business as a whole, the picture is becoming far less attractive. A system without predictable levels of retirement income is a system in which a considerable portion of the consumer confidence and spending power of the American middle class would be subject to the volatility of investment portfolios. In three-legged stool terms, over the past few decades one of the legs of the stool has started to change length frequently and is coming loose -- making for a rather wobbly stool.

Now why would we compound this financial uncertainty, exacerbate business cycles, and reinforce financial crises, by cutting the size of the one leg that is fixed and steady? This is one of the reasons why most captains of industry and finance (other than the sell-side guys in the brokerage firms) have been noticeably missing in action on the score of privatizing Social Security. They understand that the health of the American economy and American business depend on a secure, confident middle class. They know full well that over the past decades financial risks have been shifting from business to individuals. Few but the true-believers see much virtue in shifting more risk onto individuals from a widely-accepted, easily administered government program.

Shouldn't Democrats, as well as US business and labor together, be supporting policies that strengthen both legs of the stool?

For the employer-based-leg of the stool, it's time to face up to the fact that defined-benefit plans are going to be phased out over the coming years. The costs to both individual employees and taxpayers may be extremely high if corporations and unions persuade Congress to delay the day of reckoning. Shouldn't we be pushing for the orderly conversion of existing defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans in the private sector?

And as the financial security of the employer-based-leg of the stool decreases, shouldn't we be strengthening, not weakening, the Social Security leg of the stool?

Courtesy praktike's burrowing into the bowels of legal reform programs. From the American Bar Association's program on promoting the rule of law in Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East, the Judicial Reform Index:

Factor 5: Judicial Review of Legislation
A judicial organ has the power to determine the ultimate constitutionality of legislation and official acts, and such decisions are enforced.

Factor 6: Judicial Oversight of Administrative Practice
The judiciary has the power to review administrative acts and to compel the government to act where a legal duty to act exists.

Factor 7: Judicial Jurisdiction over Civil Liberties
The judiciary has exclusive, ultimate jurisdiction over all cases concerning civil rights and liberties.

Factor 8: System of Appellate Review
Judicial decisions may be reversed only through the judicial appellate process.

Brought to our attention by Digby (and Avedon Carol posting on Eschaton), via a post on judicial review on ars technica. From a Congressional Research Service summary of the provisions of the REAL ID Act, which Sensenbrenner in the House has attached to the supplemental budget for Iraq and Afghanistan.

II. Waiver of Laws to Facilitate Barriers at Border44

Section 102 of the IIRIRA generally provides for construction and strengthening of barriers along U.S. land borders and specifically provides for 14 miles of barriers and roads along the border near San Diego, beginning at the Pacific Ocean and extending eastward. IIRIRA § 102(c) provides for a waiver of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA)45 and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)46 to the extent the Attorney General determines is necessary to ensure expeditious construction of barriers and roads...

H.R. 418 [the Real ID Act of 2005] would provide additional waiver authority over laws that might impede the expeditious construction of barriers and roads along the border. H.R. 418 would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any and all laws that he determines necessary, in his sole discretion, to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads under IIRIRA § 102...

Section 102 of H.R. 418 would amend the current provision to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any law upon determining that a waiver is necessary for the expeditious construction of the border barriers. Additionally, it would prohibit judicial review of a waiver decision or action by the Secretary and bar judicially ordered compensation or injunction or other remedy for damages alleged to result from any such decision or action.

Hey, prak, maybe it is time for you to get shrill again, after all.

Awhile back I was reminiscing about how so many of today's most heated debates carry rather strong echoes of the past. And now we have further proof that some disputes just can't seem to ever die. The principal of McCord Middle School in Benton Harbor, Michigan has ordered the school band not to perform "Louie, Louie" in Saturday's Grand Floral Parade, held as part of the Blossomtime Festival.

Most readers will be familiar with this staple of raunchy dancing that's part of the repertoire of every band that plays at an American sporting event. What would generations of that soon-to-be-endangered species, "sexy cheerleaders," have done without a bit of bump-and-grind to "Louie, Louie." And Animal House afficianados will recall John Belushi's thoughtful explication of the significance of the lyrics. The website LouieLouie.net -- devoted to the production of a documentary on the history of the song, its composer/lyricist Richard Berry, and many of its performers -- has inventoried more than 1,600 recordings. Wikipedia reports that what is believed to be the world's largest jam session was held in 2003 in Tacoma, Washington, where 754 guitarists played a ten-minute rendition of "Louie, Louie."

For me, however, "Louie, Louie" is simply one of the great urban myths. So where else to look than that cornucopia of cultural artifacts, Urban Legends.

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Gee, when you put it that way ...

DOBBS: Are you surprised when you focus on the two deficits we just talked about, the trade deficit, and the budget deficit? The budget deficit is 3.6 percent of our GDP. The trade deficit is reaching just almost 6 percent of GDP. And the president is talking about reforming Social Security. Does that surprise you?

BUFFETT: Well, it's an interesting idea that a deficit of $100 billion a year, something, 20 years out, seems to terrify the administration. But the $400 plus billion dollars deficit currently does nothing but draw yawns. I mean the idea that this terrible specter looms over us 20 years out which is a small fraction of the deficit we happily run now seems kind of interesting to me.

Note: Warren Buffett is a very rich and successful man. George W. Bush has failed at nearly everything he's tried. To whom would you go for advice?

Yet another sign that The Party is intent on imposing its will:

WASHINGTON, May 1 - The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.

Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state.

It's really hard to see this as benign, as Tomlinson claims. It may be time for me to get shrill again.

With all the ink split and airwaves filled about John Bolton and UN reform, very little in the way of "what exactly do we mean by reform" has been discussed by either proponents or opponents of Bolton's nomination. I admit to a certain sympathy for Tom Friedman's recent takedown of the GOP cries for "UN reform."

"Reforming the U.N." is without question one of the most tired, vacuous conservative mantras ever invented. It is right up there with squeezing "waste, fraud and abuse" out of the Pentagon's budget.

Still, I think Suzanne Nossel does us all a terrific service at Democracy Arsenal in explaining where UN reform really does matter. She outlines a number of key issues, as well as the stands being taken by different players.

Suzanne presents her piece as "on the margin of the Bolton debate." If, however, as has been speculated, the White House is considering pushing Bolton to the Senate floor even if the Committee sends his nomination with a negative recommendation, the sole reason -- other than an assertion of presidential power -- will be to tar the Democrats as "UN-huggers" who don't want an "effective UN." Such a circus will do neither the Democrats nor US foreign policy any good.

For that reason, I think it's extremely healthy for the policy blogs like Democracy Arsenal to expand beyond Bolton himself to the specifics of UN reform. The point is not that the Bush position on reform (at least as it's likely to be pursued by Rice) is either necessarily disingenuous or bad per se. Nor is it that the Bolton opponents are opposing Bolton as a way of undermining Bush's position on the UN. Rather, it's that Bolton is the wrong guy to pursue a reform agenda that is broadly shared on both sides of the aisle.

To make that case effectively requires Bolton's opponents to do more than simply saying "me too." It's not enough to say vaguely that the UN needs reform. That isn't very persuasive, and it has the added negative effect of being just general UN-bashing, rather than focusing on expanding on what the UN does well and changing it where it needs to change.

Suzanne also makes the point that it's important to identify where specific reform priorities overlap with Kofi Annan's proposals, and where the sticking points are. As she illustrates, a lot of those sticking points will be found in disagreements between the US and either Annan or other groups of countries, NOT between a majority of Republicans and Democrats.

Suzanne points us to a recent speech at the UN by Shirin Tahir-Kheli, the person Condi Rice has put in charge of the reform effort and the response to Annan's proposals. There are lots of tricky issues that are finessed in the speech. But I think most of us will find there's much to like in the Rice agenda so far. Which just makes the Bolton appointment all the more maddening and inexplicable!

{cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism}

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?