An Uncivil War
By PETER CATAPANO

The ThreadThe Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum.
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barack obama, budget, Paul Ryan

With spring holidays upon us, it is perhaps appropriate to recall that there are times at which we must, if we are to be fully human, loose ourselves from the rationalist-materialist bonds of our daily existence and remember that life is about more than money.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

But this isn’t one of those times.

After all, it’s April 15, tax day, and surely not by coincidence, the release date of the film version of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” It is also the end of a week during which a massive and sprawling debate over the massive and sprawling United States budget has gripped legislators, commentators and the president himself in a struggle of rhetoric and ideology out of which Ms. Rand could have surely spun another novel.

Clearly, it is not a time for doves and olive branches. It’s a time for arguing, money and political cage matches.

For some, though, it is a time of rest.

Refreshed? Let’s continue.

And so, as we gather here, let us not reflect on budget details: on the bloodless math, the cost of Medicare, on tax cuts or defense spending, on the superrich, the uninsured, the unemployed, the destitute. Let us rather observe in quiet awe the power of money itself, and the speed with which the fight over it has divided the governing branches of the country, and turned everybody fighting mad and mean.

Exhibit A: President Obama’s budget speech on Wednesday, which, with its firm refusal to give ideological ground to the Republicans — and specifically to the budget plan put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin earlier in the week — quenched the thirst of Obama’s parched liberal supporters, but inflamed almost every one else.

The speech, titled “The Country We Believe In,” delivered at Georgetown University in Washington, was short on math but long on philosophical lines in the sand of the sort that led Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic to quickly exclaim, “That was a clear, unambiguous, morally grounded defense of the welfare state — as strong and stirring as I’ve seen from this president.” (Right, welfare state; he meant that in a good way.)

A tonic note from the speech, here:

The America I know is generous and compassionate. It’s a land of opportunity and optimism. Yes, we take responsibility for ourselves, but we also take responsibility for each other; for the country we want and the future that we share. We’re a nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI Bill and we saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives. That’s who we are. This is the America that I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit our investment in our people and our country.

To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.

(The full text of the speech is here.)

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post saw the speech as a welcome moral appeal for all things Democrat:

For some time now, a bunch of us have been wondering when — or whether — Obama would step up and make a strong case for an expansive vision of Democratic governance. With Republicans initiating what may be the most consequential argument over the proper role of government in decades — a debate over the legacy of the great liberal achievements of the 20th Century — we’ve all been wondering whether Obama would respond with a level of ambition and seriousness of purpose that he’s shown when taking on other big arguments.

By this standard — in rhetorical terms — it’s fair to say Obama delivered. Sure, the speech trafficked a bit in the usual “speaking hard truths to both sides” positioning. And speeches are the easy part: Obama’s words jarred against recent actions, and what Obama actually does in the months to come will be what either ratifies today’s promises or renders them meaningless. But Obama did offer perhaps the most ambitious defense he may have ever attempted of American liberalism and of what it means to be a Democrat.

On the other side, the big guns came out firing. Surprisingly, there was widespread indignation that the most successful politician in the United States would make a major speech that was … political. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal called Obama “the presidential divider,” and asked, “Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1?”:

We ask because President Obama’s extraordinary response to Paul Ryan’s budget yesterday — with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions — was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama’s fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign. …

Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan’s plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. “Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America,” he said, supposedly pitting “children with autism or Down’s syndrome” against “every millionaire and billionaire in our society.” The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.

Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship — which “starts,” he said, “by being honest about what’s causing our deficit.” The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.

That’s pretty harsh. But Jonathan Chait at The New Republic basically says, Yeah, so?: “Of course, Obama’s speech was partisan. He was recognizing that the budget debate reflects a stark partisan divide over basic values. yet the genius of Paul Ryan has been to frame a debate over values as a largely ideology-free exercise in accounting. Ryan objects to progressive taxation and the modern welfare state in philosophical terms. But since most Americans disagree — they want no cuts in Medicare at all and higher taxes on the rich — Ryan must present his case, in pecuniary terms …” Chait adds later: “[Obama's] speech was so wounding to conservatives because he exposed the philosophical stakes they have labored to obscure. What’s more, Obama understands the phoniness of Ryan’s pose as earnest budget wonk.”

But here is the response of Representative Ryan, who you will notice actually looks really hurt and insulted that he was invited by the president to the front row of the speech only to have his budget plan rhetorically dismantled by the leader of the free world.

Some choice quotes from Ryan’s response:

What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief. What we heard today was a political broadside from our campaigner-in chief.

We need leadership. We don’t need a doubling down on the failed politics of the past.

This is very sad and very unfortunate. Rather than building bridges, he’s poisoning wells.

Exploiting people’s emotions of fear, envy, and anxiety is not hope; it’s not change. It’s partisanship. We don’t need partisanship. We don’t need demagoguery. We need solutions.

Grover Norquist, writing at Fox News, defended Ryan and criticized the president’s rhetoric as a sort of seasonal disorder — campaign season:

Obama the candidate is back. The President has gone into hibernation. This speech was about what he would do if he was President, not what he will actually do. The hard decisions are put off until, conveniently, after 2012 and 2014. Tax hikes will be automatically triggered if the budget is not kept down. Imagine. All congress and the president have to do is keep spending and an automatic tax hike will hit Americans. No fingerprints on a tax hike vote. The perfect zipless tax hike. This goes into the politician Hall of Fame.

Second, the President’s advisors are scared of the Paul Ryan budget proposal that will be voted through the House of Representatives this Friday. Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has actually gone to the work of writing down a budget. The President’s speech today was an endorsement of sorts of a series of essays written by retired politicians Simpson and Bowles.

Ross Kaminsky at The American Spectator thought Ryan’s volley was on the mark, and saw a bit of what he thought might be a future wordsmith-in-chief:

I enjoyed the “failed politics of the past” remark, a phrase straight out of the Obama playbook, thus reminding the nation of how far we are from “hope and change” (which Ryan then mentioned explicitly.) …

“Poisoning wells” was an effective metaphor, casting Barack Obama as both politically and economically toxic.

And Ryan’s repeated emphasis on Obama’s partisanship — and the poor manners of inviting senior Republican congressmen to a speech in which Obama all but called them baby-and-granny-killers — is the first step on a long road toward restoring in voters’ minds the view of the GOP as a party of ideas versus the Democrats as a party of tired, old, mindless redistribution.

Ryan’s response to Obama shows why in a decade or so, when Paul’s children are older, he would be a tremendous candidate for president of the United States.

None of this back and forth resembles anything like dignified political discourse, but perhaps the clearest sign of the toxic level of the debate came in an unscripted moment, when a few choice words from the president, apparently spoken in private, were caught by a live microphone at a fundraiser in Chicago Thursday night.

In this aside, Obama goes after Ryan again, this time aiming at his voting record:

When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he’s just being America’s accountant … This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill — but wasn’t paid for.

Also, if you listened carefully you heard what might be described as Obama’s Joe Pesci moment — You think we’re stupid? — in which he scoffs at Republican attempts to chip away at his health care bill in the budget negotiations:

I said, “Let me tell you something. I spent a year and half getting health care passed. I had to take that issue across the country and I paid significant political costs to get it done. The notion that I’m going to let you guys undo that in a six-month spending bill?” I said, “You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We’ll have that debate. You’re not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we’re stupid?”

Sigh.

At this point, there was very little shock in response to this sort of talk coming from the president. Charles Lemos as MyDD put it succinctly: “We would all be better served if President Obama were this candid more often and not reserve such insights for those who can afford tens of thousands of dollars for a dinner with the president. No doubt, it is, nonetheless, very refreshing to hear what the president really thinks.”

Refreshing? It might as well be spring.

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barack obama, budget, Paul Ryan