The New Republic

Should Obama’s campaign focus on inequality?

“For political purposes, it doesn’t much matter how an argument is received by people who are sure to support you. What really matters is its effect on voters who may be open to persuasion. And for Obama, that means white voters.”

-William Galston, Why the President’s Campaign Shouldn’t Focus on Inequality

(Photo Courtesy of Getty Images)

Should Obama run as a populist?

“Obama is nobody’s idea of “just folks.” He’s too cosmopolitan, multiracial, professorial, self-controlled, and physically fit to present himself as an incarnation of the American common man. His otherness has always inclined him toward an E Pluribus Unum approach rather than Us Against Them.”

- Geoffrey Kabaservice, Should Obama Run as a Populist? Part One of a TNR Symposium

Photo courtesy of The Moderate Voice

Is climate change a wedge issue versus Romney?

“Looked at another way, though, climate change might not be a bad thing for Obama to talk about—as a wedge issue, with certain audiences. Specifically, the well-educated swing voters who backed him last time around but may be taking a look at Romney, who showed strength with upscale voters in the Republican primary. National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar recently argued that this is a real vulnerability for Obama:

It’s easy to forget, now that Obama is preaching a populist message on the campaign trail, that a major part of his support came from the very 1 percent that he’s now calling on to pay their fair share in taxes. Obama carried the super-wealthy—those making $200,000 or more a year—with 52 percent of the vote, 17 points more thanJohn Kerry won in 2004. But now surveys show Obama losing significant ground with affluent voters, trailing Romney 49 percent to 43 percent among those making $100,000 or more in the latest Quinnipiac poll—his worst showing among any economic demographic.”

- Alec MacGillis (and a quote from Josh Kraushaar), Is Climate Change A Wedge Issue vs Romney?

Photo courtesy of Earth beat Radio

How important are the vices of off-duty Secret Service agents?

“Surely the unspoken rule till now has been that traveling Secret Service agents may go to prostitutes provided they receive, um, secret service. Try as I may to be shocked or angered by this variation on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” I cannot. A gay person employed by the government should not be forced to hide his or her sexual orientation. But neither should a john employed by the government be encouraged to over-share with his or her superiors. They’d rather not know. I’d rather not know. Unless of course it gets in the way of getting in the way of an assassin’s bullet.”

- Timothy Noah, Secret Service Sex: The TV Show

Photo courtesy of Farraguter

Should Obama attack Romney for being hollow or extreme?

“Left without a manufactured scandal or over-hyped gaffe to talk about these past few days, the media circus has turned its attention to matters of a higher order: campaign semiotics. Specifically, the apparent shift in the framing of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney, from casting him as a hollow man who “lacks a core” to casting him as someone who’s been sticking to a conservative, even extreme line for a while now on, among other issues, immigration, women’s health care, and the Ryan budget plan, which he recently declared “marvelous.” Monday, Politico went so far as to divine the big dog’s footprints in this messaging transformation, tracing it back to a meeting that Bill Clinton held with Obama’s top strategists back in November—“A more effective strategy, Clinton has told anyone who would listen, would be to focus almost exclusively on Romney’s description of himself as a ‘severe conservative,’ to deny him any chance to tack back to the center, according to three Democrats close to the situation.””

- Alec MacGillis, A False Choice For Obama’s Anti-Romney Message

Photo courtesy of seattlepi

How did Barack Obama become Bill Clinton?

“Because of Clinton’s reputation as the father of the permanent campaign and Obamaland’s disavowals of his techniques, it’s tempting to regard the two most recent Democratic presidents as diametric opposites. In many ways, however, Obama’s presidency has followed a remarkably Clintonian trajectory. Clinton also came into office hoping to bridge Washington’s partisan divide. As Bob Woodward reported in his bookThe Choice, Clinton was stunned when Republicans told him they would vote en masse against his deficit plan only hours into his presidency. “I didn’t run for president to be a bare-fanged partisan,” he told Woodward, before confessing that Republicans had turned him into one.”

- Noam Scheiber, From Hope to Hardball

Photo courtesy of blogspot

Would the best tax reform be to do nothing?

“Democrats and Republicans agree that the federal income tax must be reformed. They even agree on some common goals. President Obama’s budget proposal calls for “fundamental reform” that would “simplify the tax code and lower tax rates” while eliminating “inefficient and unfair tax breaks.” House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, which the House passed in March, collapses the existing six tax brackets into two, both of them (10 and 25 percent) much lower than the current top rate (35 percent), and similarly pledges to eliminate “special-interest loopholes.” The Obama budget and the Ryan budget, a Bloomberg View editorial notes with approval, “aren’t as far apart as you might think.””

- Timothy Noah, No Deal

Photo courtesy of Exchange Gold For Cash

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Why is Obama’s World Bank pick proving so controversial?

“Outsiders must be a little mystified as to why the Obama administration’s nomination of Jim Young Kim to lead the World Bank has kicked up so much dust in the development community. I suspect the casual observer thinks: “Such a nice man, a doctor devoted to HIV/AIDS and to the poorest in the poorest places. Why the fuss?”

But picking a new World Bank head is a little like picking a new Pope. The process isn’t just about the individual candidates for the position, but about the overall direction of the faith. And so, the controversy over Kim’s nomination is not really about Kim himself. It’s a debate about a philosophical schism in the development community.”

Lant Pritchett, Why Obama’s World Bank Pick Is Proving So Controversial

Photo courtesy of Bloomberg