"Money Quotes" from the Sunday Times' Op-Ed

In “The Brightest Are Not Always the Best” Frank Rich, after reminding us that the title of David Halberstram’s 1972 classic - The Best and the Brightest - was ironic and bemoaning the fact that the mainstream press has failed to point out that Obama’s economic appointees have actual track records which have not always been as impressive as their resumes, notes in resignation that:

“Well, nobody’s perfect. Given that John McCain’s economic team was headlined by Carly Fiorina and Joe the Plumber, the country would be dodging a bullet even if Obama had picked Suze Orman.”

And speaking of Joe the Plumber, in “Typing Without a Clue,” Timothy Egan tells us he has a hard time stomaching the fact that Joe the Plumber got a book deal, especially since, unlike Joe:

“Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog getting a book deal.”

In “The Real Generation X” Thomas L. Friedman worries that rather than a title like “The Greatest Generation,” the book about his generation will be titled: “The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on MY Visa Card,” and makes the following call for a gas tax:

“Many people will tell Mr. Obama that taxing carbon or gasoline now is a ‘non-starter.’ Wrong. It is the only starter. It is the game-changer. If you want to know where postponing it has gotten us, visit Detroit. No carbon tax or increased gasoline tax meant that every time the price of gasoline went down to $1 or $2 a gallon, consumers went back to buying gas guzzlers. And Detroit just fed their addictions – so it never committed to a real energy-efficiency retooling of its fleet. R.I.P.”

Freidman’s logic is a lot better than his timing. A gasoline tax would be a game-changer not only for Detroit, but also for many a family and small business barely getting by, as Obama noted in his Meet the Press interview Sunday morning.

In “Abortion Politics Didn’t Doom the G.O.P.,” Ross Douthat claims that present pro-life advocates are, like Rick Warren, “more likely to be photographed touring poor nations that protesting outside abortion clinics” and concludes that it is the “pro-choice absolutism” of Roe v. Wade which has prevented compromise on the abortion issue rather than the fact that pro-lifers are “absolutists who reject compromise.” Douthat disagrees with commentators like Christie Whitman, Kathleen Parker, Max Boot and P.J. O’Rourke who claim that the social fundamentalists within the G.O.P. were to blame for hijacking McCain’s message and losing the election.
Douthat’s benign view of the pro-life movement might have had more credibility if he didn’t use their enthusiastic support of Sarah Palin as an example of an increasing open-mindedness, but aside from the politics, Douthat misframes the issue and misses the point. Roe v. Wade is not “absolutist” but itself the product of compromise and is reflective of where we as a nation were, and where we remain, on the abortion issue. That is why the pro-life movement is, to quote Douthat, “essentially trapped.” Maybe they should focus on young-earth creationism.

In “Defending a Pardon, Protecting His Power,” Seth Lipsky suggests that Obama should defend the Rich pardon on its merits. According to Lipsky, using the RICO statute to criminalize conduct like dodging oil price controls, evading taxes, and ignoring governmental trade sanctions was a stretch. I’m not so sure. I’m more sure that Obama should resists taking Lipsky’s bait.
Obama soon will be setting policy not only with respect to the Bush administration’s legacy of torture and illegal eavesdropping (and the attempt by the Republican Congress to immunize this and other illegal conduct), but also with what I suspect we will learn was widespread corruption and illegality within the lending and financial services industries. Obama should not risk undermining his credibility on these important issues by publicly embracing the Rich pardon, however much he might want to ease Holden’s path through the nomination process.

In “A Killer Without Borders” Nicholas D. Kristof brightens the holiday mood by adding global complacency about a deadly, infectious form of tuberculosis – XDR-TB – to our list of things to worry about, somewhere along with loose nukes, terrorism and global economic depression. I can’t bear to tell you about it. Instead, I urge you to set aside fifteen minutes and watch the video at


Copyright @ 2008 Anthony F. Cottone.