Starobin first. His rap on the downfall of Bill is that Daley was brought in as chief of staff to bring Wall Street, miffed that Obama was kissing their ass 23/6 instead of 24/7, back on board. The idea was that with Daley in charge to reassure the Wall Street money boys, the Administration could indulge in some Clintonesque triangulation and forge a long-term deficit-reduction program that would be good for the economy and secure Wall Street’s backing for Obama in 2012.
I think all that’s accurate as far as it goes, but I think there’s a little more. I think the idea was that Bill could tell his big bucks buddies “The President and I can deliver a majority of the Democrats. You guys need to go to McConnell and Boehner and talk some sense into them, and get them to deliver a majority of the Republicans. That way, we can get a consensus.”
The problem was, McConnell and Boehner had already sold their party’s soul to the Tea Party. After two years of unrelenting opposition to everything Obama had done, after two years of drinking “Obama’s a European fairy” Kool-Aid, the Tea Party wasn’t going to sober up now that they were in power. We’ve got the power! Let’s go crazy! Which is what they did.
Daley might have kept his job if he hadn’t stupidly tried to continue triangulating when it was obvious that there was no Republican corner, blaming “both sides” in a Politico interview, when the Democrats in Congress had deeply compromised themselves with their core constituencies, only to have the Republicans laugh at them. Congressional Democrats had already suffered hugely from unilateral triangulation in 2009 when they passed ObamaCare, putting themselves in the position of raising taxes (on the uninsured) and cutting benefits (for Medicare recipients). To be pissed on again, this time from the White House, for being insufficiently “reasonable” was more than they deserved.
Daley was given what turned out to be an impossible job, and he ended up blaming his allies instead of his enemies. Not a good choice.
Okay, what about Kagan? Well, this Kagan is one of the bad Kagans, one of the intellectual architects for the entirely unnecessary and grossly unsuccessful invasion of Iraq, which he will surely claim is all not his fault, though, in fact, he is one grossly hypocritical son of a bitch on this point (which is a rather large point).
Judging from the articles listed here, Kagan has more or less reinvented himself as a “thoughtful neocon,” who takes the big picture, which is an awfully convenient way of not having to deal with all the stupid, disingenuous things you’ve said in the past. Still, I like his article, which is devoid of Krauthammerish hand-wringing over “decline,” said decline only capable of being arrested by a doubling of defense spending and an invasion of Iran, coupled with a policy of regime change for Russia and China—that is to say, a commitment to an eternal Cold War, a Cold War to be waged against invented enemies rather than real ones.
