But, as we’ve seen many times in the past decade, there are many problems that can’t be solved with tax cuts and deregulation – indeed, we now have several problems that were caused by tax cuts and deregulation, including our “stop me before I bet the house on derivatives again” financial sector.

We essentially have a thirty-year backlog of issues where the most effective solution is for the government to step up – and a Republican Party whose core belief is that government cannot solve problems. For thirty years they’ve preached that taxes are always a poor use of money, regulations simply get in the way of business, government assistance is always debilitating, and government programs to “promote the general welfare” are the worst of all sins. When your core belief is that Government Is The Problem, a government that actively tries to solve problems – with a social program that raises taxes, regulates industry, and helps the poor – is your apocalypse.

So when Obama proposed government action to fix a broken health care system, today’s Republicans had nothing to offer but opposition: Their core belief has led them to a dead end. All they have left is a rabidly partisan base that thinks health care reform is a first step toward taking their guns and confiscating their property. (And if you think the tea partiers went off the deep end during the health care debate, wait until we get started on immigration!)

There’s still a possibility that the GOP will make short-term gains in November 2010, although with the passage of health care reform they may face a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario: Instead of plying their base with tall tales about how they prevented death panels, they’ll be accountable to voters who can see the actual law. But any way you look at it, the GOP is now dancing to a tune Obama called two years ago: They’re running on the slogan “no you can’t” – and yesterday the Democrats proved that yes, they could.

A Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a “banana-eating jungle monkey” has apologized, saying he’s not a racist.

Ta-Nehishi Coates over at The Atlantic has had a lot of interesting things to say about the recent incident where a Boston police officer thought it was appropriate to arrest Prof. Henry Louis Gates for “disorderly conduct” because Gates had the temerity to question the officer’s actions. (The irony, of course, was that the officer’s most questionable action was the bogus arrest for disorderly conduct.) But among his most interesting observations is that no one admits to being racist except the hard-core supremacist types.

And so we get the unintentional comedy of a man apologizing for his racist remarks while desperately denying that he’s a racist — because our society only recognizes two types of racists: The Klansman, who admits it, and the closet racist, who publicly denies it. We don’t have a category for the self-proclaimed “good person” who occasionally lapses into unthinking prejudice, or who just isn’t self-aware.

Sullivan writes “McCain knew full well that Palin was unqualified to be commander-in-chief.” But here’s the thing: John McCain is unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief.

Back in January 2008 I attended a “practice caucus,” hosted for fun by the fine folks at Drinking Liberally. It was held a few days after Obama won in Iowa, and a few days before Hillary won in New Hampshire, so all the Democratic candidates were still in the running — and, unlike the real caucuses later that year, the atmosphere was cozy enough that the thirty or forty attendees could genuinely talk to each other about the merits of each candidate.

So we all pretended to caucus, declared for our candidates, and then made the rounds from one group to the next, trying to peel off an Edwards supporter here, or a Kucinich fan there, so that the numbers rounded up to give Obama one more delegate. I remember making the pitch for Obama and arguing that any of the Democratic Party’s top candidates would go on to win the 2008 election: Hillary could beat Guiliani, Dodd could beat Thompson, and so on for every combination on the list.1

But one of my arguments for Barack Obama was that he would most likely draw John McCain as his opponent — and that Obama was especially well positioned to bring out John McCain’s worst qualities. 2 And he did: McCain’s legendary temper, his age, his erratic and impulsive decisions, and his visceral, personal hatred of Obama were all on display throughout the 2008 campaign.

Admittedly McCain might have self-destructed no matter who he was running against, and his choice of Sarah Palin was only one of several Hail-Mary efforts to shake up a race he was clearly losing — but it was Palin who clearly revealed how reckless and unprepared John McCain really was. As disastrous as George W. Bush was for America, McCain would have been far worse: By now we’d be in a second Great Depression and a shooting war with Iran, just for starters.

1. In hindsight, John Edwards was the one Democratic candidate who could have blown the 2008 election and handed the White House to John McCain… which, among other reasons, is why Edwards will never, ever be forgiven or rehabilitated.
2. In fact I argued the GOP’s entire playbook would fail against Obama: Since 1988 the GOP has relied on what Josh Marshall calls the bitch-slap theory of electoral politics to belittle and marginalize their opponents — and Obama had repeatedly demonstrated that he could turn such attacks against the attackers, by either appealing to the public’s desire to change the tone of our politics, or by calling out the opponent and deftly mocking them.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

This analysis bothers me, because it implies there could only be one motive — vengeance — for enforcing our nation’s laws.

I think Obama urgently needs to prosecute lawbreaking members of the Bush Administration: Not as payback, but as a critical step in restoring the rule of law. As a step toward preventing the next generation of Nixonistas from romping into the Oval Office and violating laws with impunity, relying on Obama’s precedent that “bipartisan outreach” means forgiving the other party’s crimes.

I don’t want vengeance. I want the law enforced without regard to party affiliation, which would be a welcome change from what the party of Rove and Gonzales has wrought these past eight years. Instead of heeding Lincoln’s call to forgiveness, Obama’s Justice Department should follow a more recent creed: There are no Republican criminals and no Democratic criminals. There are just criminals.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxGPPK3e4bc

• It is, as others have noted, a genuine pleasure — after eight long painful years — to hear our new President speaking in complete sentences and giving intelligent answers to unscripted questions.
• My expectations for Obama have always been realistic: I thought he was the right candidate at the right time,1 and I supported him from day one, but I didn’t think he would lead us to the Promised Land or anything.

  That said, I’m starting to get the impression that we’ve all misunderstood — or underestimated — what Obama meant when he called himself a community organizer. At first I thought this meant merely that Obama had done hard yards in urban neighborhoods, had worked to bring jobs to communities, pull together voter registration drives, and so on: Good work, necessary work, but not an unusual activity or a sign of exceptional talent.

  Now I’m starting to think Obama meant community organizer as “a person who organizes communities” — that is, a person who recognizes (or creates) a shared purpose, and then organizes a community to achieve it. And, I’m starting to think, Obama has Einstein-level talent at this type of organizing: He’s rolling straight from the best-organized presidential campaign we’ve ever seen to the best-organized transition team we’ve ever seen, and shows no signs of stopping there.

  And this is Obama’s hidden talent. When all is said and done, Obama’s speech-making skills will be measured against Churchill and King and Lincoln — and I think people underestimate Obama because they pigeonhole him as a great public speaker, and assume his organizing skills are a secondary talent. In fact, the opposite is true: Obama’s soaring speeches are a gateway talent, and Obama’s real strength is that he’s devastatingly efficient at turning inspiration into action.

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

1. Specifically, I thought he was the first vote-with-your-heart candidate the Democrats had put forward in a long time, as opposed to vote-with-your-head candidates like John Kerry and the 2000 edition of Al Gore.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfe9hNxWXVw

…and then read this:

¹² For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

That’s Ephesians 6:12. When Obama talks about powers and principalities dividing us, and says it’s “the oldest trick in the book,” he’s talking about the Book, and he’s paraphrasing Scripture.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)