David Brooks keeps telling us the Obama administration is smarter than it appears. Obama’s assembled advisers are “brimming” with smart domestic-policy ideas, he attests; alas, we see only reheated New Deal leftovers. And on Iran, he tells us:
What’s important is that the Obama administration understands the scope of what is happening. And on the big issue, my understanding is that the administration has it exactly right.
The core lesson of these events is that the Iranian regime is fragile at the core. Like all autocratic regimes, it has become rigid, paranoid, insular, insecure, impulsive, clumsy and illegitimate. The people running the regime know it, which is why the Revolutionary Guard is seeking to consolidate power into a small, rigid, insulated circle. The Iranians on the streets know it. The world knows it.
First, the Obama administration’s stance is so patently absurd and morally appalling that even Hillary Clinton wants to distance herself from it. Let it never be said that she has no core values.
Second, once again, where is the evidence of the president’s blazing insight? Is there any evidence — none is given by Brooks – that the Obama administration grasps the “scope of what’s happening”? His nod toward the “Supreme Leader,” constant invocation of “engagement” (as if to reassure us there is still a regime to engage with) and musing that it really doesn’t matter at this point how things turn out, all suggest just the opposite — that Obama and the prevailing members of his team have utterly missed the paradigm shift from election to rebellion and the potential for a national and regional reordering, should the mullahs’ regime collapse. (Even David Ignatius has lost patience, calling for the president to “express his solidarity with the Iranians who are so bravely taking to the streets each day,” pleading with him to let his “engagement” blather “sit” for now.)
If the president really is overflowing with new domestic innovations and really does intuit the potential for vast change underway in Iran, he’s doing an awfully good job of concealing both. Moreover, I don’t quite see the point of “laying low.”
There is of course another explanation: he’s a radical liberal on domestic policy and a Chas Freeman “realist” on foreign policy (e.g. hostile toward Israel, unconcerned with human rights, contemptuous of the idea of American exceptionalism). That isn’t the image he spun for the elite punditocracy during the campaign but it sure explains his actions since taking office.
I think the main problem with the argument that the sacred ballot is sacred is that it hardly ever used outside of voting or jury duty. I don’t think most Americans think that there is any particular bias for secret ballots in our society. Certainly one almost never has one in a work situation.
“…the CEOs also do not share the labor movement’s underlying belief that the decline of organized labor has contributed to income inequality….”
I’ll bet CEOs are just about unanimous on this point.
That tingling sensation going up the leg of Big Union might not be a thrill from BO’s soaring rhetoric, but rather the tires of BO’s bus. I, for one, sure hope so.
“But make no mistake: the central planks of EFCA — doing away with the secret ballot and mandatory arbitration – are withering on the legislative vine, no matter what the spinners say.”- Jennifer Rubin
Typically delusional. Maybe you should rely on more than one media outlet for your info. Politico reports that the compromise caves on the issue of card check (No one ever proposed eliminating the secret ballot as an option):
“A powerful coalition of three large retail business is considering what they once claimed was unthinkable: a compromise on the union-backed labor bill that opponents call “card check.”
“Starbucks, Costco and Whole Food are banding together as the Level Playing Field Committee, which has talked to more than two dozen Senate chiefs of staff about the idea.
…
The group has circulated six principles that include concessions to labor—most notably agreeing to let employees join a union by signing an authorization rather than voting to do so, but only if 70% of employees sign—but also the right for employers to initiate a union decertification proceeding.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20311.html
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal editorial board Friday conceded that card check does not get rid of the secret ballot: “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123751316400391295.html
Add these together and EFCA now looks like a lock.
The Hill:
“The compromise would allow workers to bypass secret ballot elections to form a union if 70 percent of them sign authorization cards stating their intention to organize. In the current version of the bill, workers could organize into a union if 50 percent of them sign cards.”
The secret ballot is toast.
Dave,
I just read your link to the WSJ editorial and am confused with the point of your including it:
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal editorial board Friday conceded that card check does not get rid of the secret ballot: “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter.”
My interpretation of the WSJ piece is that, essentially, the EFCA indeed DOES get rid of the secret ballot – or the essence of what the “secret ballot” is intended to accomplish.
Am I mistaken?
This is quite a hot info. I think I’ll share it on Digg.