My colleague at The Atlantic Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg has posted a wonderful 107-year old film created by Edison Studios of "The Night Before Christmas."

Here is her framing of what you can watch above.

Merry Christmas!

-- Steve Clemons

Garance Franke-Ruta, Senior Editor and Chief of the Politics Channel at The Atlantic, and I were privileged to have this picture taken with President and Michelle Obama.

It was a great evening -- and the President said some great things about The Atlantic for which he has actually been a contributor. Here is his piece, titled "Perfecting our Union" in which he reflected on the lessons of Lincoln for our time.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

-- Steve Clemons

I have gathered some more views on Chuck Hagel's potential -- and challenged -- nomination to serve as President Obama's Secretary of Defense.

Politico's Mike Allen is calling the nomination "toast" after Senator Chuck Schumer refused to say he would vote in favor of him. Remember that Senator Schumer -- who has many views of which I'm supportive -- nonetheless said in a Senate Democratic Caucus on one occasion, "a vote against John Bolton is a vote against Israel." Bolton never got his confirmation vote, though he did serve as a recess-appointed Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations.

But while Schumer hasn't said this, one can easily imagine him informally telegraphing to his colleagues that "a vote for Hagel is a vote against Israel."

Both are untrue of course. Whether Bolton had been confirmed or not as US Ambassador, he like other US Ambassadors is a steadfast defender of the US-Israel alliance. Chuck Hagel too would be a steadfast defender of an alliance that matters. The dividing line is whether one starts from the prism of U.S. security interests -- or starts with the Israel portal instead, or sees no line at all between them. No differences. 

In my view, Hagel is one of the smartest, most experienced strategists around today -- true to the strategic needs of a country in a fragile time.  He also has real combat experience under his belt -- having returned a sergeant from Vietnam 44 years ago this month.

Here are some other views that I have pulled together:

James C. Hormel, former US Ambassador to Luxembourg, challenged by Hagel in 1998 as being an inappropriate representative of the US because he was "aggressively homosexual", writes at his Facebook page:

Senator Hagel's apology is significant -- I can't remember a time when a potential presidential nominee apologized for anything.  While the timing appears self-serving, the words themselves are unequivocal -- they are a clear apology. 

Since 1998, fourteen years have passed, and public attitudes have shifted.  Perhaps Senator Hagel has progressed with the times, too.  His action affords new stature to the LGBT constituency, whose members still are treated as second class citizens in innumerable ways. 

Senator Hagel stated in his remarks that he was willing to support open military service and LGBT military families.  If that is a commitment to treat LGBT service members and their families like everybody else, i would support his nomination.

Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, former international affairs columnist for the New York Times, and columnist at Newsweek/DailyBeast sent this comment to me:

I am strongly supportive of Chuck Hagel for SecDef, and I strongly back him despite my disagreement with him on a number of issues. I'm for him because he's been right about some of the most critical issues of our time like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on the need to talk to and negotiate with adversaries (though again, I differ with him about Hamas).

He's also dead right about the pentagon budget being bloated. in the foreign policy community, these calls take great courage. to me, we need someone who can say hard truths to power at the National Security Council.

David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and contributing editor at Newsweek/DailyBeast:

What I find most dismaying about the debate over Senator Hagel is the utter absence from the public discussion of any mention of the single most important issue facing the next secretary of defense: how to preside over what will likely be the steepest military build-down since the 1970s with minimum harm to military capabilities.

There's nothing in the Hagel record to indicate that he brings any relevant experience or skills to this problem. I find it baffling that President Obama would short-list him for the defense position. I'd feel the same way if Chuck Hagel were B'nai Brith's man of the year.

Senator Hagel's supporters offer a case in his favor that would superbly qualify him as Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs in the Nixon administration. But that's not the job we're talking about.

Robert Dreyfuss, correspondent for The Nation, writes:

It's a sad commentary on both Barack Obama and the state of Democratic Party politics and its national security wing that the president, once again, is considering naming another Republican as secretary of defense. You'll recall that in 2009, Obama let Robert Gates, the Republican who served George W. Bush, stay on at the Department of Defense. Not that Gates was a neocon--no, far from it. But he was certainly drawn from the center-hawkish part of the American national security establishment, whose Democratic ranks include such execrable luminaries as Sam Nunn and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

This time, it's Chuck Hagel, a moderate Republican--who, 'tis true, might be flirting with becoming a Democrat, since he seems to think that the GOP has moved so far right that he can't even see its outer edges from Nebraska, his home state. It would be nice if Obama could find a liberal Democrat to run the Pentagon, someone who'd oversee the massive cuts in military outlays that are long past due, and who'd shut down the infatuation with the Special Forces, the drones and the "pivot" to the Pacific and East Asia.

But no, it's Hagel, it appears--someone whose decided tilt against Israel and its omnipresent allies in the Israel lobby (or, as Hagel calls it, the "Jewish lobby") is a strong point in his favor, especially if the United States is to avoid going to war against Iran in Obama's second term.

In any case, the Israel lobby--which, naturally, doesn't exist, and certainly, if it existed, would not call itself the Jewish lobby--is mobilizing all neoconservative hands on deck to stop Obama from picking Hagel.

On those grounds alone, I'm for Hagel.

Harriet "Hattie" Babbitt, former Deputy Administrator of USAID and Vice Chair, World Resources Institute wrote this:

Chuck Hagel's evolution on LGBT issues is a thing to be celebrated, not seen as a disqualification.  A failure to evolve would be a disqualification.
 
He should consider a  statement along the lines of, "Gay men and women in our military have proved themselves to be patriots and important members of our military.  As the recent examinations of their contributions have shown, a policy of exclusion would harm the combat readiness and the security of the United States. As Secretary of Defense, I would welcome their participation at every level of the armed forces."

Bing West, former Asst. Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and military author, writes in:

Hagel is overtly seeking the post. The Pentagon faces unremitting crises overseas and steep budgetary cuts.  The Pentagon needs a secretary who reluctantly accepts the position for the greater good, not for his own ego.

Adam Garfinkle, executive editor of The American Interest writes at his excellent blog, The Middle East and Beyond:

So, I am given to understand that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, which more or less boils down to its national director Abe Foxman's personal view of the planet from his Manhattan bubble, is not thrilled with the prospective (not even real yet) nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. According to Foxman, Hagel is not pro-Israel or anti-Iran enough for the job. Foxman has accused Hagel of invoking stereotypes that suggest not just anti-Israel attitudes but even anti-Semitism. He used the record of an interview Hagel gave to Aaron David Miller a few years back (more about that anon) when he was writing The Much Too Promised Land (2008) to support his accusation.

It's sort of ironic that an organization with the phrase "anti-defamation" in its own name should resort to defaming others. Well, maybe "ironic" isn't quite the right word; a few others also come to mind. But defamation it is, because the idea that Chuck Hagel is either anti-Israel or anti-Semitic is risible. It seems pretty clear that Mr. Foxman doesn't understand how much damage he does by tossing around such innuendo. It's even clearer that he doesn't want my advice. (I met him years ago within the confines of a closed meeting, but that's another story.) The damage done, and how it is done, is not clear to everybody, however--hence this note.

As it happens, Senator Hagel is in very good company as one of Mr. Foxman's targets. Another of those targets has been none other than Harry Truman.

Ari Melber, a contributor to MSNBC and contributing editor at The Nation, writes in an email:

No matter who wins the election, it seems like Republicans are always on the short list to run the Pentagon. If a policymaker with Hagel's exact background had a "D" next to his (or her) name, can anyone imagine that person even being considered for this job? 

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

I've reached out to a wide range of policy experts, pundits, and government officials (current and former) to share their thoughts on Senator Chuck Hagel's potential nomination as Secretary of Defense. I should note that my Atlantic Media colleague Michael Hirsh has published a powerful piece at National Journal indicating that the White House is considering a number of candidates, and not just Hagel. 

I think that the discussion about Hagel is important and a learning moment about national security strategy, about the future of the Pentagon and the kinds of wars we have been engaged in abroad, and about the nomination process itself run out of the White House.

Tom Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has worked for both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal and who has written some of the best accounts of America's command leadership in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars also serves as Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and Contributing Editor at Foreign Policy. He also writes the blog, Best Defense. 

Ricks shared the following thoughts on Hagel in response to questions I posed:

Clemons:  Can you share your thoughts on the strengths and/or weaknesses that Senator Hagel might bring to the position of Secretary of Defense?
 
Ricks:  I cannot remember another modern administration that pulled almost all its top national security officials from the Congress. Right now we have former members of Congress as the secretary of defense, secretary of state, president, and vice president. They are advised by a national security advisor and deputy national security advisor with backgrounds as Capitol Hill staffers. And now the president is said to be considering replacing the current people at State and Defense with two other senators -- John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.
 
Wait a minute. I thought diversity was a good thing! How about some people with backgrounds in academia (such as William Perry, who was a fine secretary of defense, or George Shultz), corporate America (such as David Packard), Wall Street (see Robert Lovett), the law (Edwin Stanton, Henry Stimson, Caspar Weinberger), career-track federal service (Robert Gates), or the military (George Marshall or Colin Powell)? How about people who have actually run something (members of Congress don't run anything but their offices).
 
President Obama's nightmare is said to be following in the tracks of LBJ -- that is, having a great domestic agenda undercut by backing into war. But he might pay more attention to JFK, who had a narrow team of advisors who thought they were smarter than everyone else. I think Obama is unnecessarily creating a vulnerability -- that is, why voluntarily wear blinders by getting people largely experienced in one relatively small aspect of the world? There is a reason that diversity is not just right but also smart practice. You'd think Obama would understand that.

It is interesting that if Hagel was nominated, President Obama would have three of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee colleagues close at hand -- Joe Biden, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. Fascinating comment from Tom Ricks. More to come.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Senator Jeff Bingaman is retiring after thirty years of shunning the spotlight and just getting great policy work done. I think he was a combination of Jimmy Stewart ala Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -- one of the nation's wisest legal minds....ever.

I think he is one of the greatest legislators I've ever known -- particularly his tendency to forfeit credit and let others more media-needy have the accolades in order to get things accomplished.  And he had the most wry wit in the Senate.

Steve Terrell of the Santa Fe New Mexican has written a refreshingly real and extensive profile of my former boss. It deserves a full read, but here's the opener:

When you talk to anyone familiar with retiring U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, certain words, phrases and comparisons keep popping up about the New Mexico Democrat.

Modest. Low-key. Soft-spoken. Studious. Unflashy. Centrist. A work horse, not a show horse.

A former staffer recently compared Bingaman to the title character played by Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And Congressional Quarterly's Politics in America once called the New Mexico senator "Mr. Spock in a Senate of Captain Kirks." A cover story on Bingaman in an Albuquerque magazine in the late 1980s referred to him as "the most boring man in the U.S. Senate."

Earlier this year, the conservative Washington Times wrote, "In a political world dominated by snappy sound bites and 30-second TV campaign ads, the Democrat stands out for his quiet, serious-minded style."

"He wasn't interested in accolades," retired Sen. Pete Domenici, Bingaman's Republican counterpart in the Senate for 26 years, said in a recent interview. "He and I worked together to get things done for the people of New Mexico."

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who has served with Bingaman for the past two years, describes him as a mentor. "Jeff is a rare combination of character -- brilliant and humble," Udall said in a recent Senate speech. "By Washington standards, Jeff is a man of few words. And when he comes to this floor to speak, we listen."

But, because of his imminent departure from the Senate, Bingaman's renown for shunning the media spotlight seems to have vanished in the past couple of weeks. There were interviews in national publications such as Politico and The Hill. There was a lengthy one-on-one interview with NBC TV's Chuck Todd. Bingaman even appeared on a popular comedy show, The Colbert Report, playing straight man to host Stephen Colbert.

I will miss Jeff Bingaman in the Senate -- and think that the nation will miss him even more.

-- Steve Clemons

Anderson & Low

Just received this wonderful holiday pic from London-based, turbo-talented photographers Jonathan Anderson & Edwin Low, called just "Anderson & Low" by their friends.

I love stopping in at the National Portrait Gallery in London -- and discovering photos there that they took. Kate Middleton enjoys their work also. 

Check out their great, often provocative and edgy material.

Happy holidays to all from Claremont, California -- where the Starbucks in the Village is buzzing with happy people at 5:30 in the morning.  Not kidding.

-- Steve Clemons

Editors at The Atlantic shared notes about the best books they read during the past year. These books did not need to be published in 2012 -- but read during the last twelve months.

My selection was Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening. Terrific book -- and a great holiday gift that goes well with a slice of Spielberg's and Daniel Day Lewis' Lincoln.

The clips from The Atlantic editors runs here -- and my bit is slide 24.

-- Steve Clemons

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Chuck Hagel voted in favor of John Bolton's nomination before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations.  This is important history as many attempting to sabotage Hagel's potential nomination as Secretary of Defense are hyping his reticence about unilateral sanctions against rogue nations and his refusal to jump on a couple of hug-Israel resolutions. 

The Bolton nomination was important because it was a high priority "get" by the hawkish wing of the hug-Israel-tightly lobby.  I worked hard then, in 2005, against Bolton's nomination by President Bush because I saw Bolton as the vanguard of an emergent class of Jesse Helms-inspired pugnacious nationalists who had deep disdain for and resentment against international institutions and treaties.   Their paranoia about the UN has led to moments like the recent Senate rejection of the UN Convention on Persons with Disabilities.

Those who see being pro-Israel as giving in to an emotionalism that draws no lines at disruptive and reckless Israel behavior wanted John Bolton badly, and I did my best to sway Chuck Hagel on his vote.  I failed.  Hagel voted in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in favor of Bolton - while Ohio Republican George Voinovich refused to endorse.

In later stages of the John Bolton battle, Senator Chuck Schumer made the statement in a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting that "a vote against Bolton was a vote against Israel."  Schumer, who strongly supported Bolton, was wrong on that front.  Every US Ambassador to the UN has been a friend to Israel and has been supportive of Israel's security interests.  Every US President has been supportive of Israel's core security interests - but there are legitimate differences on what pro-Israel means. 

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Foreign Minister, has a history of making disgusting, bigoted comments about Palestinians and Arabs.  He is a disgrace to Israel - and I find it objectionable that he sits in the Israeli Cabinet at the right hand of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  My stating that I find one, or even a few, of the leaders of Israel to be short-sighted, wrong-headed, and ultimately reckless about the security and interests of their own nation does not make me or anyone an anti-Semite or anti-Israel.  I had respect for Prime Minister Ohlmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - and have grown to respect a number of the positions of Ariel Sharon. 

But Chuck Hagel voted for John Bolton, who just before his appearance before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated that there is no moral equivalence between innocents killed in Lebanon during Israel's strike there - and those Israelis who may have been killed by Hezbollah incursions into Israel.  Again, I'm disgusted by what were Bolton's public remarks - which the State Department had the good sense to excise from his testimony moments before he gave it (issuing one set of remarks with the statements and then another without).

But Chuck Hagel voted for the guy Chuck Schumer wanted.  And AIPAC wanted.  And Israel itself no doubt wanted.

Bolton got a recess appointment - but he never got his confirmation vote.  And who was the block on this great friend of Israel and anti-United Nations crusader from getting confirmed? 

Not Chuck Hagel.  Try Senator Joseph Lieberman who refused to vote in favor of cloture because the Executive Branch would not share vital but classified information with Congress - either in the Base Relocation debate or in the John Bolton Case.  Then Senator Lincoln Chafee gave another assist at the final stage of the battle - but the three Senators who got in the way of the AIPAC-desired John Bolton were George Voinovich, Joseph Lieberman, and Lincoln Chafee.

Not Chuck Hagel. 

Hagel's instabake critics need to read up on some history and some facts about the man.  It's irresponsible of the Wall Street Journal and other publications to cast around the slanderous accusation of anti-Semitism, which is akin to bigotry and racism, when there are legitimate policy differences about Israel policy involved. 

Hagel has been a steadfast supporter of Israel and its interests - and has been the kind of friend to step back and not support Israel's Congressional Resolution production machinery when it is hyperventilating in ways that hurt itself. 

Hagel is a genuine friend of Israel's long term interests and believes that the status quo in Israel today is undermining Israel's status as a democratic and Jewish state.  Controversial statement?  Just about every responsible Israeli political official has said exactly the same.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Continue reading this article

-- Steve Clemons

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

"I am the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, clothed in immense power!" one can imagine Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi thinking after his jaw-dropping power grab these last few days.

Of course this is parody of the words roared by President Abraham Lincoln in Spielberg's stunning film, Lincoln, as the 16th American President ground down by a four-year, bloody civil war spent the entirety of his political capital procuring Constitutionally-based freedom for millions of American slaves.

At this point, we really don't know if President Morsi is actually planning to install himself as what Nobel Laureate Mohamed El Baradei has called a "new pharaoh" -- or whether he has committed to an inclusive democratic vision for Egypt which he believes requires extraordinary measures, much like Abraham Lincoln took while manipulating pols of his day procuring votes through patronage and threat.

The fact is that while Morsi has declared himself, at least for the moment, the maker of law, the implementer of law, and the overseer of himself who makes the law, his rhetoric is highly inclusive. He has frustrated many in the Muslim Brotherhood by not moving to establish more of a theocratic state and not moving against other of the newly established political parties and movements in the country. At a public level, Morsi says he is acting on behalf of all Egyptians -- not just those who are tied to the Brothers.

Morsi states that he is moving to reduce the authority and influence of those loyal to former President Hosni Mubarak -- and that first the army and then the courts have been havens for protectors of the old regime's interests.

Is Morsi the kind of leader who will aggrandize total power and then liberalize like a George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? Or is he more like a Lee Kuan Yew who can build a state and the facade of a democratic system while holding tightly to power for decades in all ways that matter?

We don't know the answer yet. But for those surprised by Morsi's moves -- as the State Department reportedly was after having just secured his pivotal support on a Gaza-Israel truce -- only naivete would lead one to believe that a healthy, balanced, checks-and-balance democracy would immediately succeed the kind of autocracy Mubarak mastered.

Despite the claims in the media today that Egypt's judiciary was fairly independent and respected, the fact is that the system -- all parts of it, including the judiciary -- were ruthlessly managed and sculpted by forces that stewarded Mubarak's interests and power.

There were no checks and balances in Egypt during Mubarak; nor during de facto head of state General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi's short reign; and for the time being, there will be no checks and balances during Mohammed Morsi's tenure -- at least not in this phase.

Given the conditions of Egypt's rotten political culture that are turbulent and unstable, it seems ridiculous to think that an Egyptian leader -- whether religious or devoutly secular, whether a man or a woman -- would automatically and successfully move the Egyptian political architecture into one based on checks and balance statecraft.

This doesn't mean that the protests against Morsi in Tahrir Square are wrong or illegitimate. They are in fact vital in the absence of other political checks on Morsi. Note this excellent survey of the scene by David Rohde titled "Morsi's All Wrong Power Grab."

In a political system that has not been forged over decades and centuries of Constitutional battle about the rights and prerogatives of branches of government, perhaps the people must rise in such a delicate time to empower other branches of government, while communicating what they believe to be the limits of Egyptian presidential powers. In other words, this conflict was inevitable: a new President whose party had been suborned and abused by the previous political order, mistrustful of institutions derived from that preceding era, is working to sweep aside those institutions and the people in them like any powerful executive would.

In a system of checks and balances, other parts of the political order rise to challenge the executive, vigorously defending their own turf and legitimacy. The people must allow both sides, or all three or four or five, sides in the institutional square-off to ultimately win, so that institutions are balanced each other not because they want to be but because there is no choice.

That is the strength and delicacy of democracy -- and Egypt is not nearly there yet.

The United States is in the proverbial glass house on this one as its own demonstration of a system of checks and balances is at a darker stage at the moment, when parties seem to relish strangling the interests of the state and the people rather than compromising across political lines. The world today sees a victorious American President styied almost immediately by challenges to his choice (Susan Rice) for Secretary of State as well as what looks to be a high-stakes game of brinksmanship over a tax and spending deal, or alternatively framed, an ideological train wreck going over what has become called "the fiscal cliff."

The US does have an active and vigorous system of checks and balances which can paralyze and stifle progress at times -- while at others, enabling enormous leaps forward as reminded by the Spielberg film's depiction of Lincoln ruthlessly securing passage of the slavery-banning 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

There have been numerous other times in US history when a US President or other Congressional leaders spent a vast amount of capital defying what many believed to be the immutable laws of political gravity as they then saw them. Universal suffrage was achieved this way. The nation's bipartisan commitment to advanced national security science and technology spending the same. Civil rights and voting rights for African Americans achieved. Educational fairness for women. Don't ask, Don't Tell's repeal. Major health policy reform during President Obama's last term. The passage of controversial nuclear arms reduction treaties. The list is longer than many might expect -- but each of these battles was extraordinarily difficult.

Those working hard to secure democracy by putting their jobs, reputations, and sometimes lives on the line -- particularly as we saw and continue to see in Tahrir Square -- know how hard it is to really achieve. The bottom line is that democratic practice depends on institutions evolving side by side, each challenging over and over again the rights and prerogatives, and terms of authority of each other in front of the public eye.

Egyptian President Morsi today says that he is committed to democracy and the rights of all Egyptians. He very well could be a power-hungry liar deceiving the nation as many other heads of state have done in the past. On the other hand, he may be telling the truth.

The public's interests are not well served by giving Morsi the benefit of the doubt. The public should protest and should remind him from whence power in the nation is really derived. People should demand their rights; should demand a non-corrupt and fair judiciary; an impartial police and security apparatus. But these things will not happen because Morsi is a benign or generous leader or has a vision of how to fairly evolve and develop the power of other branches of government not under his control.

These judges and their institutions; and then legislators; and perhaps generals must engage and secure their place in the democratic government equation. Indeed for Morsi to become a great leader and deliver on democracy and the successful transition from a dark era to a better one for Egypt, he needs to continue to challenge other weak or rotten sectors of society and should at the same time welcome the institutional battles that will ultimately limit his power.

This is what the people need to focus on and deliver. Revolution is always difficult. But knocking a leader from power is fundamentally a binary process -- a zero or a one. But it is the combination of impulses, competition for power in government, and a more nuanced, and complex balancing of institutionalized political equities that ultimately delivers democracy to a people.

After President Barack Obama's 2008 election when he was propelled to massive victory in part by standing as a refreshing foil to what many perceived to be the power-usurping White House of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney, I asked former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta what powers he thought an Obama White House would forfeit back. Podesta candidly and honestly replied, "Very few, if any."

This is the reality of executives that run governments everywhere. Their job is not to balance the various powers of government as a goal unto itself. They tend to want to be monarchs, achieving their vision as they see it for the benefit of the nation -- or all too often for themselves personally or the clans they represent.

Those who want to build democracy must shore up the other branches of government -- generals who will secure the interests of the military, smart policy-practitioning legislators who will protect their institutional power, judges unafraid of other branches of government. These conflicting corners is how democracy is ultimately forged -- and leaders like Morsi if they are true to their democratic rhetoric will both wince at the costs that come from other power centers and welcome their engagement.
 
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Three years ago, I wrote a piece for The American Interest grading President Barack Obama's foreign policy performance after one year. I gave him a poor mark as I believed then that in assessing Obama, only Iran mattered and not much constructive had happened on that track. Stanford University realist and former George W. Bush administration State Department Policy Planning Director Stephen Krasner wrote much the same.

Today, I feel differently about Iran and Obama.

When he entered office, Afghanistan and the collapsing global economy were the challenges of the day. There were a lot of other messes out there as well -- including what looked like a collision setting with Russia over Georgia and the deployment of ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe; a tumultuous Iraq; a complicated dance with China; and an eroding global commitment to keeping WMD and nuclear materials from spreading. The successful topping of Saddam Hussein after a US invasion removed Iran's most serious national security challenge and awoke in the Islamic Republic pretensions of regional hegemonic dominance, a return to empire Persian style. Israel had just flexed its military hardware muscle after border skirmishes -- attacking both Gaza and Southern Lebanon.

When he got the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania, Obama and his national security team had a lot on their foreign policy plate.

Any President, weighing the contending challenges both domestic and international competing for his time and attention, must make priorities, setting some things aside, delegating portfolios, personally delving into others.

I don't think Obama started out that well as a national security President. Intoxicated perhaps by the energy that comes from being elected to the most powerful position in the world, Obama tilted towards the "I'm my own best national security adviser" part of his personality, self-righteous in the belief that he knew better than others.

One example early on was that Obama failed to heed the counsel of former national security advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski who tried to get him to lay out the broad outlines of his vision for a peace deal between Israel and Palestine before the Israel elections in February 2009. They argued that Obama needed to show leadership, to 'make the weather', and have the political order in Israel respond to him. Instead Obama became the one who reacted after the fact to Israel's political currents -- ultimately outmaneuvered and shoved around by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the toxic issue of Israeli settlement expansion.

Obama bifurcated his Middle East peace effort appointing two competing helmsman wrestling for control of the portfolio in the appointment of George Mitchell as Envoy stationed at the Department of State and Dennis Ross on the National Security Council staff at the White House. Without going through the painful detail here, Obama inflicted loss on himself with miserable management of one of the challenges that he considered solving a vital U.S. national security objective.

Similarly, Obama made Afghanistan worse -- allowing some generals to pull him more deeply into a quagmire, committing more US military lives (and those of allies) and dollars into a situation that would require a level of adoption of the Afghan state by America that would have been extreme even for the most ardent of America's neoconservatives, who ought better to be titled neocolonialists.

Obama started badly -- but then he has corrected course, and done so smartly.

After getting his sea legs, Obama realized that America's stock of power was being eroded in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and that this appearance of military over-reach and exhaustion was compelling allies to doubt American resolve and also emboldening rivals.

Thus, Obama and his team, particularly under the direction of his second NSC Advisor Tom Donilon and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, began to focus on shrinking the footprint of US vulnerabilities and moving attention and resources to strategies that would yield large benefits to the country.

In other words, with Joe Biden leading the 'Iraq political stabilization effort', the Obama administration was able to maneuver Iraq's internal dealmaking to a point where American forces could be extracted and that chapter closed. After over-investing in Afghanistan, a black hole into which resources and lives were poured, Obama made the decision to target a departure date, to punctuate the end of what has been a costly and frustrating conflict.

Obama, at least for the time being, has taken his chips off the table on Israel-Palestine peace and diminished the handles that Benjamin Netanyahu has to manipulate him. Obama has shown the world that he has a more sensible strategy on Iran that the pugnacious Israel Prime Minister and is pushing a combination of both sanctions and diplomacy. Iran is standing by, watching the US enhancing its diplomatic position and power, as well as its military tool kit with withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, Iran sees US power on the rise -- rather than paralyzed in the military and political quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq. And thus it is not surprising that the New York Times' Helene Cooper and Mark Lander have reported that after the election, there will be a shift to bilateral US-Iran talks on Iran's nuclear program.

Obama has, for the most part, responded to the Arab Spring cautiously, refusing to allow the liberal interventionist or neoconservative ideology to trip America into yet another costly war. America's intervention in Libya was relatively successful and relatively inexpensive in terms of lives and dollars -- though the costs may not be fully in. We don't know what will come next in Libya, and the US, France, and England as well as the UAE, Qatar and Italy will bear some responsibility for outcomes there. But more importantly, regimes will be less likely in the future to forgo the nuclear weapons programs they are considering as shields to protect themselves from the kind of assaults the US helped unleash against Moammar Qaddafi.

Obama has managed the China portfolio well -- particularly after Tom Donilon took over the portfolio from others inside the administration after a 'reset' meeting in September 2010. And yes, Obama killed bin Laden; has taken down others in the global al Qaeda terror network; and deployed Navy SEALS to nail pirates.

Barack Obama has not turned out to be the kind of President who feels comfortable making the kind of strategic leaps that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger engineered -- but he does have a good sense of what the stock of American power can afford. He knows what enhances America's mystique as a super power and what undermines American credibility.

I do take serious exception to President Obama's over-reliance on drones and the disregard for international law in their deployment.  I think Obama doesn't fully understand that the blowback caused by his drone policy will continue to hit America and its allies for a generation.

It's not a perfect picture -- but there is a real effort on Obama's part to move America into to the black in foreign policy and out of the crusades that undermined America's position of respect in the world.

Mitt Romney's foreign policy outlook seems inchoate. I've listened carefully to the speeches he gave at the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute as well as to his comments on foreign policy during the GOP Convention and debates.  There is not much of a design, not much vision.  I've tried to compare a Romney and Obama 2nd term approach to the Middle East in this Chatham House paper and didn't have that much to work with.  I gave Romney as much credit as I could and tried to assume coherence in his views.

All that said, it's clear that Obama -- both the good and bad dimensions -- has more of a coherent plan for the US and leveraging its power in the world than Mitt Romney does.

That then makes the strategic choice at the ballot box easy today.

-- Steve Clemons

In terms of total increase in "federal debt to GDP" under U.S. presidents in the post-World War II era, Republican presidents during their terms have contributed far more to the debt load of the nation than Democrats.

Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all added to the federal debt significantly on a percent of GDP basis. On the Democratic side, President Obama -- who inherited the worst financial crisis in this era from his predecessor -- also ranks high in terms of contributing to the federal debt as a percentage of GDP.

Who reduced debt as a percentage of GDP the most?

When comparing by presidential term as in the chart to the side (click image to make larger), the big winner is Harry Truman, followed by Bill Clinton.  Eisenhower is next, followed by Johnson and Nixon, the Kennedy, and finally Jimmy Carter. All of these presidents reduced debt as a percent of GDP.

While absolute levels of debt may have been growing through much of this period (though not all), what really matters is what percentage of GDP that debt represents. Most U.S. presidents have been able to keep the debt to GDP ratio declining -- but in the very modern era, since 1980, only Bill Clinton has succeeded in massively decreasing America's federal debt to GDP levels.

When considering it on a per annum basis, the chart of presidential debt-reducers and debt-increasers remains mostly the same, though Barack Obama wins among those adding to the debt load with a per annum increase in debt to GDP of 12 percent. Ronald Reagan is next at 7 percent. As shown in the chart to the left, Truman and Clinton still clobber other presidents in terms of a per annum decrease in federal debt to GDP. 

When looking at the charts this way, it is fascinating to see what a stand-out the Bill Clinton presidency was in balancing the budget and achieving revenue surpluses. 

These data sets were assembled by a close collaborator and credit expert Richard Vague as part of a larger history of debt project that he and I are working on.

As the debates on who is responsible for the levels of federal debt continue to play out in the next 10 days before the election and the 66 days before the US hits a fiscal cliff, remember that the worst contributors to America's debt load were mostly GOP presidents -- with the single exception of Obama, who had a global economic tsunami crashing in on the White House and nation when he took the helm.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

During a major foreign policy address earlier today at the Virginia Military Institute, GOP presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney paid tribute to one of the school's most distinguished graduates, former Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State as well as Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.

Romney said of Marshall that he "helped to vanquish fascism and then planned Europe's rescue from despair. His commitment to peace was born of his direct knowledge of the awful costs and consequences of war."

What he didn't share about General Marshall was that he vehemently opposed recognizing Israel and instead favored U.N. trusteeship after British withdrawal slated for midnight, the 14th of May, 1948. 

As reported in a fascinating historical snippet by the late Richard Holbrooke, who helped organize presidential adviser Clark Clifford's papers for a co-authored memoir, then-President Harry Truman overruled George Marshall, the secretary of state he "revered" along with "James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson" and did recognize Israel. 

Truman's was a brave move, and in my view, a correct one -- but did lead to the wars that Marshall feared recognition of Israel would ignite.  Today, political Islam is on the rise in the Arab region -- and the failure of Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab League, Europe, Russia, the United Nations and the United States to achieve peace and the balancing creation of a state of Palestine remains a consequential, bleeding global ulcer.

Privately, Mitt Romney offered these dismissive words about the Middle East peace process:

[S]o what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem...and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.

Publicly today, Romney flip-flopped and committed himself to working to resolve the "unresolved problem":

Finally, I will recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel.  On this vital issue, the president has failed, and what should be a negotiation process has devolved into a series of heated disputes at the United Nations. In this old conflict, as in every challenge we face in the Middle East, only a new president will bring the chance to begin anew.

General Marshall was so disgusted with Truman's move that he stated in an ultra-secret memorandum that if Truman proceeded on Israel's recognition, he was going to vote against his boss in the next election. Nonetheless, Truman stood his ground and signed the note of recognition.

One wonders today whether Romney will ignore or listen to generals today -- like CIA Director General David Petraeus, former Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, CENTCOM commander General James Mattis, even the incumbent Joint Chiefs chairman General Martin Dempsey -- all of whom agree that establishing and recognizing a state of Palestine is vital to U.S. national security and to defending Israel's long-term security in the region. 

General Marshall had it wrong on Israel -- but today, generals are arguing that America can't afford a false choice between Israel on one hand and Arab interests on the other. 

Romney is making a false choice -- hugging tightly one part of a tough neighborhood with little interest in the rest. 

If Romney wants to get this right, he should leverage the credibility he is building with Israel's leadership and hold them tightly in place while simultaneously pulling a Truman and recognizing a state of Palestine. 

As reported by Holbrooke, Truman was irritated that the State Department had made him look like a liar in a commitment he had made to former Israeli president Chaim Weizmann.  Truman stating:

The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn't that hell? I'm now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I've never felt so low in my life ....

One can only hope that Mitt Romney works as hard as Harry Truman to reconcile the private statements and commitments he makes to his public statements.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

In a short bit, I'll be interviewing Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper in one of the Allstate-National Journal-Atlantic Heartland Monitor forums that Ron Brownstein has pulled together before the debates. The schedule is pasted below.

My bit with Hickenlooper, the first brewpub master since Sam Adams to become governor of a state, starts at 10 a.m. Central/12:00 noon EST.

The Opportunity Debate: Upward Mobility and the American Dream
Allstate - National Journal - The Atlantic
Heartland Monitor Poll on American Attitudes
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel
1550 Court Place, Denver

9:00 am
Registration and Coffee

9:30 am
Welcoming Remarks

9:40am
Poll Data Presentation
Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
Ed Reilly, FTI Consulting

10:00 am
Headline Interview
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
Interviewed by The Atlantic's Washington editor at large Steve Clemons

10:40 am
Panel Discussion
Floyd Cirulli, Cirulli Associates
Geoff Garin, Hart Research Associates
Dick Wadhams, Republican Strategist
Interviewed by National Journal editorial director Ron Brownstein

11:30 am
Headline Interview
Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO)
Interviewed by National Journal editorial director Ron Brownstein

11:50 am
Program concludes

Most pollsters put Obama ahead nationally -- but Rush Limbaugh says that it's a widespread pollster conspiracy and that actually Obama and Romney are in a dead heat.  I'm fine to go with Limbaugh this round (!).  It feels like a close race to me even if Romney has failed to leverage any of Obama's few missteps and has made so many of his own mistakes it's hard to keep count.  Bottom line is that lots of Americans are unhappy -- and there are enough undecideds to flip this thing.  I do think Obama will win if the race were held tomorrow -- but what if another bin Laden video turns up??  (Kidding ... just nervous about other Middle East types who draw red lines with markers at UN General Assembly sessions.)

I want the debates to matter -- and thus think that all Americans who are pondering the fate of the nation should spend time watching and wrestling with the proposals they hear from our future or given-one-more-chance leader.  I will be live-blogging the debates for both The Atlantic and The Washington Note -- and will be doing so along with Professor Jennifer Hopper's American Presidency class students -- some Dems, some GOPers, sitting in the same room, looking at the same screen -- at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.

Washington College, by the way, was launched in 1782 and actually had George Washington on its Board of Visitors when founded.  Very cool place. Perhaps Washington, a Virginian, helping to establish a school in the rival state of Maryland may have been one of the first truly American acts of that time, at least in education. I wonder if Mitt Romney or Obama will reference the nation's founding fathers or Washington.  What would George have done on drones? health care? corn crop subsidies? 

I do know that Hopper is going to spice up her "debate watch" much like CNN is going to do. 

First on CNN, I have learned through the grapevine that the network will have a split screen of both candidates the entire time of the debate.  CNN will run a clock showing how much speaking time each candidate actually gets -- and there will be an ongoing graph at the bottom of the screen showing the 'sentiment' of a group of genuinely undecided voters who will be watching the debate in Sony PlayStation mode. 

Washington College's Jennifer Hopper has her own deal and sent this to a few special guests she has invited to join her debate-excited students:

We will have the opportunity to engage with the debate in an interactive way -- a group of political scientists have developed an app that will allow students to react to what's happening in real time, by indicating if they agree or disagree with what the candidates are saying, and whether they think candidates are trying to "spin" an issue or "dodge" a question.

These researchers will then make the aggregate data from campuses across the country available to us, so we can see what you and your peers find to be the most (and least) effective moments of the debate. If you are interested in using the app during the debate, all you need to do is bring your smartphone, laptop, or internet-connected tablet to our debate viewing on Wednesday.  (Clemons Note:  I am bringing my smartphone -- but not upgraded to OS6)

I have attached here an email with more information for students -- note that participation is entirely voluntary and that your personal information and debate reactions will not be made public, they will merely be added to the overall summary statistics that the researchers compile.

Sounds fun.  Only bad part is that I'm in Denver the night before the debates and am planning to team up with National Journal & CNN's Ron Brownstein moderating a pre-debate event in the morning (join us if you are free -- and here).  I'll be interviewing Colorado Governor and beer and oil & gas expert John Hickenlooper at 10 am central time (watch live here). And then am flying, training and driving to get to the Eastern Shore of Maryland tomorrow night to do this promised live blogging.

Some other tidbits courtesy of MSNBC's Chuck Todd (@ChuckTodd) who posted this stuff on twitter:

57 minutes ago
Chuck Todd ?@chucktodd
As of 5pm ET, the two campaigns and the debate commission had yet to sign the memo of understanding on the rules for tmro night.

47 minutes ago
Chuck Todd ?@chucktodd
BTW, here are the loose rules: each candidate will get 2 mins to answer the initial question at the start of each pod, then open season

46 minutes ago
Chuck Todd ?@chucktodd
After the initial limit of 2 mins for opening answer, up to moderator to decide when a candidate's gone on too long. BTW, there are 6 pods

Well, then...he got distracted and retweeted:

45 minutes ago
Chuck Todd ?@chucktodd
Rt "@JerrySeinfeld: Think I'll drop into Gotham and try some new stuff tonight ."

Hope someone live blogs Seinfeld. Thanks to Politico for finding a great pairing of Reuters pics of Obama and Romney. More tomorrow. 

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

A new poll issued by the Arab American Institute (pdf here) yesterday and conducted by JZ Analytics reports that President Obama maintains a commanding lead over Governor Mitt Romney in the election but that Obama's edge has dropped by 15% since the 2008 election. 

Arab-Americans are defecting from both both the GOP and the Democratic Party and are increasingly identifying as Independents (24%), according to James Zogby.  That said Arab-American Dems stand at 46% of their population as compared to 22% who are GOPers.

In terms of what Arab-Americans thought was "very important" in guiding their presidential vote, the economy ranked far ahead of other issues.  In rank order, health care came next; followed by civil liberties, taxes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and US outreach to the Muslim Worlds.

In every category, Obama beat Romney in Arab-American voter perceptions of being able to deal with key issues of the day.  Obama's double digit gap was least in assessment of their respective ability to manage the economy.  Surprisingly, Obama's lead on economic capability was exactly the same as the Obama-Romney gap on managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The last graph of the brief showed that 'concerns about discrimination' had grown among all Arab-Americans from 2010 to 2012, regardless of faith.  Muslim Arab-Americans had very high levels of concern about discrimination; 7!% today as compated to 64% in 2010.  37% of Protestant Arab-American worry about discrimination with 29% of Catholics concerned.

There are reportedly 3.9 million self-identifying Arab-Americans in the United States, and an expected 1.1 million Arab-American voters in Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.  The poll shows an expected advantage for President Obama of 52% to 28% in these swing states.

Nonetheless, Obama's lead is less than that which he achieved in 2008, down to 52% from 67%.

It's interesting to consider whether Obama's powerful advantage with ethnic Americans has wilted 'enough' to give Romney an opportunity. 

As National Journal's Ron Brownstein has written and has explained frequently on CNN, the new mathematics of this election can be framed as "80/40".  He argues that in the last election Obama won the Presidency by winning 80% of all non-white voters in the country -- and won roughly 40% of white voters. 

Thus, the numbers to watch regarding Romney's challenge is whether he can take a chunk of either Obama's non-white voter base or shove Obama's white voter base to a level below 40%.  Right now, polls show Obama roughly at the 80/40 level -- but Brownstein says it's still close.

Thus, while Obama may be clobbering Romney in absolute terms with Arab-American voters and virtually every other ethnic group, the relative gap with at least Arab-Americans has diminished.

That should worry the Obama ranks -- and represents a strange kind opportunity for Team Romney in which Obama wins with many of these groups, like Arab-Americans, but doesn't win by enough margins to win overall.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

After President Obama's moving UN General Assembly speech that started with a story of who US Ambassador Christopher Stevens had been in terms of his life's passion for the Middle East and North Africa, the Romney camp issued a statement from former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky:

In his speech, President Obama listed the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, Syria, and Iran as major challenges facing the international community.  But those are three vital issues on which President Obama has unfortunately made no progress. The Peace Process is at a standstill, tens of thousands have been killed in Syria with Assad still in power, and Iran is hurtling toward nuclear weapons capability.

In his 2009 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama called for progress on the Peace Process and for an end to Iran's nuclear weapons program. Three years later, he's failed to deliver.  As has too often been the case with President Obama, the rhetoric doesn't match the policy.

The President and his national security team do deserve criticism for how some of these portfolios have been managed.  After all, Israel/Palestine had been the first major national security agenda item the President put his power and credibility behind, appointing former Senator George Mitchell to be his Envoy in seeking to secure real Middle East peace.

In a compelling but bleak New York Times assessment titled "Seven Lean Years of Peacemaking" by my New America Foundation colleague Daniel Levy, the negative results scream out.  Levy writes:

One thing is clear: The years from 2005 to 2012 have been seven decidedly lean ones for peacemaking and withdrawal and seven gluttonously fat ones for entrenching Israel's occupation and settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In these areas, almost 94,000 new settlers have been added since 2005, some settler outposts have been legalized and thousands of Palestinians have been displaced.

Obama should only get the blame for the 2009-2012 part of this portfolio -- but the failure to get Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on to a credible peace track with Palestinians has enormous strategic consequences for the country.

Dobriansky tells only part of the story as it was in both 2009 and 2010 that President Obama committed substantial portions of his UN General Assembly addresses to the problems of Palestine and Israel.  In 2010, he pointedly criticized the unwillingness of the parties to come together and pushed George Mitchell and others on his team to double down and get a deal done.  Obviously, with the resignations of both Senator Mitchell and Dennis Ross who had been Obama's Middle East wrangler on his National Security Team (both of whom had often worked at cross-purposes), ended Obama's efforts thus far on securing Middle East peace.

These results deserve both to be highlighted and criticized -- so thanks to Ambassador Dobriansky.

That said, would her candidate Mitt Romney do any better?

Yesterday we were given what were perhaps some of the most thoughtful comments yet expressed by Governor Romney on the turmoil in the Middle East and what can be done in response.  While his comments were not Palestine-specific and this may be the first time I have heard Romney address foreign policy and not make a single mention of Israel, his broad survey of the Middle East region and his assessment of the youth cover Palestine. 

Romney makes the sensible point that jobs matter, that economics is a major driver of both hope and desperation.    

Work has to be at the heart of our efforts to help people build economies that can create jobs, young and old alike. Work builds self-esteem. It transforms minds from fantasy and fanaticism to reality and grounding. Work does not long tolerate corruption nor will it quietly endure the brazen theft by government of the product of hard-working men and women. To foster work and enterprise in the Middle East and other developing countries I will initiate something I will call Prosperity Pacts, working with the private sector the program will identify the barriers to investment and trade and entrepreneurship and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. And, in exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights ....

The aim of a much larger share of our aid must be the promotion of work, and the fostering of free enterprise. Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives and nations more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America's own economy, and that is that free people pursuing happiness in their own ways, build a strong and prosperous nation.

Whether Romney is right or not, his jobs talk and the notion of "Prosperity Pacts" are a step ahead of the rhetoric that typecasts instability in the Middle East as a function of Islamic culture and fanaticism.  And the fact is that the Obama administration's policy towards places like Egypt and Palestine, Tunisia, and Libya is to try to lay groundwork for investment, aid, and jobs. 

So, Romney and the Obama administration actually are on similar tracks.  But the scale of what is needed in the region is staggering -- and small US programs or bland talk about job creation by the GOP presidential challenger doesn't come near to the level of economic course correction the region needs.

The more disconcerting gap between rhetoric and action is not on Obama's docket, however, but on Romney's.

What it not Mitt Romney who said at a fundraiser regarding Israel-Palestine peace, "this is going to remain an unresolved problem."

As Bill Clinton said during his Democratic National Convention speech, "it takes some brass to criticize the President for something you have done yourself."  In this case, it's out of place to take Obama down a notch on Israel-Palestine when your own candidate has no intention of trying to resolve the geostrategically significant ulcer.

And even more disconcerting were Romney's comments in Jerusalem about "culture" being the dividing line between the economic performance of Israel vs. Palestine.  As reported by Ashley Parker and Richard A. Oppel Jr., Romney said:

"Culture makes all the difference," Mr. Romney said. "And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things."

He added, "As you come here and you see the G.D.P. per capita, for instance, in Israel, which is about $21,000, and compare that with the G.D.P. per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States."

Notwithstanding Romney's significant errors on the GDP gap between Israel and Palestine, it's outrageous to assess Palestine's economic potential without considering that all they have done has been done under Occupation, with barriers to travel and commerce embedded throughout their territory which Israel occupies and dominates, often brutally.

It's easy to talk about jobs and "Prosperity Pacts", but tougher to put them into motion in addressing the economic needs of a growing MENA youth bulge that needed a massive number of jobs yesterday.

To make this interesting, I dare Mitt Romney to test his thesis personally in the way that former World Bank President James Wolfensohn did.  Wolfensohn invested his own money in an effort to get Palestinian-grown strawberries to markets in Europe and worked out deals with the Israelis and established a greenhouse project and processing infrastructure at Israel's Karni Crossing.  To make a long and sad story short, even the great James Wolfensohn failed to overcome Israeli arbitrariness in what it allowed and didn't in terms of earnest Palestine commerce with the rest of the world.

Let's see if Mitt Romney can devote a small bit of his fortune to getting a business up and running in Palestine.  Perhaps he could meet with his new employees and hear what they have to do to connect with their families and what humiliations they go through trying to get their kids to school or trying to take products to market.

Perhaps Romney would succeed in ways others in Palestine have not, but until then, it seems that, as Dobriansky framed it, the gap between rhetoric and results on the Romney vision for the region seems insurmountable.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

This is a guest note by Emma Green who works for The Atlantic and is a 2012 graduate of Georgetown University.

In Defense of Civil Protest

The gray rain that shrouded Charlotte during the Democratic National Convention was pouring as I walked through the dark parking lot of El Siloe Church toward a deceptively cheerful-looking blue Greyhound bus. It took a few shouts to get the attention of the people sitting inside, but after a moment, I was greeted by B., the person who works with the press for No Papers, No Fear. "I'm sorry for being short with you," he said later. "I'm just trying to get our people out of jail."

Inside the church gymnasium, I met Miguel and Fernando, two of the thirty-seven people who ended up joining the bus that set out from Arizona on the road to Charlotte one month ago. Neither man has a current visa or Green Card, and neither is an American citizen. Yet Miguel has lived and paid taxes in the United States for 14 years, and Fernando told me that almost all of the riders have been here for more than a decade.

They come from many places - El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, and Nigeria, among others - but they call the U.S. their home. "Sin Papeles, Sin Miedo," or "No Papers, No Fear" reads the giant black writing on the side of their bus, and they have stopped in Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, and other southern states across the U.S. to share this message with the press and work with members of the Latino community to make illegal immigration and deportation a bigger part of the national dialogue in the lead up to the 2012 elections.

Before leaving Arizona in July, several of the riders had already faced arrests and jail time for peaceful protests, including Miguel, who was arrested during a peaceful protest outside of Phoenix's Sandra Day O'Connor U.S. Courthouse by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in July. On Tuesday, ten of the riders were arrested in downtown Charlotte during a non-violent protest at the DNC; they were released later this week. "I have to admire them," said Fernando. "Not everyone does this... they know that if they get arrested, it may not just be a few days in jail - it might mean months or even deportation proceedings."

If the stakes are that high, why would a bus full of people who illegally live and work in the U.S. publically declare themselves in front of police officers and press members? What change can a handful of protestors - joining the ranks of the many, many other protestors who descended upon the DNC - actually create, especially given that President Obama has long been the democratic nominee for president in 2012?

If one of the aims of No Papers, No Fear is to prompt dialogue by drawing the attention of the national press, they have succeeded - several articles have been written about their efforts, including pieces in the New York Times and on NPR and NBC News. But when I spoke with B. at El Siloe, he was trying to find a sidewalk with an awning downtown, worried that journalists would not stand in the rain for a 10:30 pm press conference about the riders in jail. The bus make stops in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and a few other places before heading back to Arizona, where Miguel and Fernando will return open deportation cases.

Mitt Romney has said that he "opposes all 'magnets' that entice illegal immigrants to come [to the United States]," and as governor, he "vetoed in-state tuition benefits... and opposed driver's licenses for illegal immigrants." Even if President Obama does get elected to a second term, he was unable to pass the DREAM Act in 2010, and the deferred deportation policy created by President Obama and Janet Napolitano this summer only applies to people under the age of 30 who meet certain qualifications. Fernando, 21, and Miguel's daughter, 15, may fit within the demographic that could benefit from this policy, but Fernando did not think this is enough. "It's not just about one generation," he said. "It's about mothers and families and migrant workers... it's about the whole community."

As I rode away from the church with a friend who was giving me a ride, he observed that No Papers, No Fear is unlikely to affect the national conversation about illegal immigration, and more importantly, it is unlikely to change the opinions of those who disagree with their arguments for deferred deportation.

While gauging the overall impact of any protest or movement is clearly impossible, I suspect that he may be correct, at least in part. Those who disagree with the many versions of DREAM Act that have been introduced in Congress or other efforts to create deferred deportation policies for immigrants without criminal records are unlikely to read articles about No Papers, No Fear published here or elsewhere, and they are even more unlikely to be persuaded to change their minds, despite the emotional appeal of the riders' mission.

Yet, regardless of one's position on the broad issue of immigration, No Papers, No Fear should give us pause.

Arizona is not a great place for people without papers right now, said Fernando, "...and those who stayed, stayed to resist and fight back." With no elected officials to represent them and the threat of possible deportation looming, these people decided to board a bus and ride hundreds of miles across the country so that others like them might be a little less afraid to drive to work, a few members of the press might give a brief nod to their daily hardships, and they can publically declare themselves fully part of the United States after living here for many years. They boarded the bus because they have no advocacy tools other than their voices, despite the very real risk that their actions would result in arrest, jail time, or deportation.

If Miguel were to become an American citizen, he would want to own his own business, he said. If his deportation case moves forward, he will leave behind 14 years of his life, a wife, and three kids, two of whom were born in the United States. For him, coming to the DNC was less of a choice than a final gesture of hope that democracy can actually work, that defending a belief peacefully, publically, and at serious personal risk can change our policies.

There is nothing democratic about a national convention held to celebrate a candidate who has been the presumptive nominee since April and the assumed nominee for much longer - this kind of protest is a much more meaningful form of political action. The No Papers,

No Fear riders are not American citizens, but their efforts indicate the seriousness with which they take our political process and want to be acknowledged as full members of our community. That should be enough to make anyone, critic or not, seriously reconsider the way that immigration is handled in our country and talked about in this election.

-- Emma Green

Joe Cirincione, one of the nation's sharpest minds on nuclear weapons policy, just highlighted in Foreign Policy yet another big gulp moment in the viral video of Mitt Romney triggering shock and awe (wrong kind of awe though) across the political world.  Cirincione speculates, based on the recording, that Mitt knows little of nukes and even less of dirty bombs.  And the difference matters, big time.

Cirincione picks up something few others did in this clip from the Romney fundraiser:

If I were Iran, if I were Iran -- a crazed fanatic, I'd say let's get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting up, we'll just say, "Guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we're going to let off a dirty bomb." I mean this is where we have -- where America could be held up and blackmailed by Iran, by the mullahs, by crazy people. So we really don't have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

--Mitt Romney, May 17, 2012

The Ploughshares Fund President and former Carnegie Endowment and Center for American Progress nuclear wunderkind (approaching wunderelder) then implies that Romney isn't up to the job he is seeking and doesn't understand what may be the premier responsibility of the American president in a still-nuclear world.  Cirincione writes:

Governor Mitt Romney's description, caught on video, of what he considered the real nuclear threat from Iran has further undermined his national security credentials, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of nuclear threats. Iran's nuclear program has nothing to do with dirty bombs. Terrorists would not use uranium -- from Iran or anywhere else -- in a dirty bomb. It is unclear if Gov. Romney was just riffing, or if his advisors had fed him this line of attack. But it is dead wrong.

Nuclear bombs are serious business, and preventing their spread and their use against
the United States is perhaps the paramount duty of the president, who, of course, is also responsible for any decision to use America's own arsenal.

Does Romney really not know the difference between a dirty bomb, which as Cirincione points out has never been used, and a nuclear warhead?  Does Romney know that no matter what bomb Iran manages to put together, if it assembles one, that it will be primitive, and not have anywhere near the magnitude, destructive ability and lethality of any of the warheads in Israel's sizable arsenal?  Nuclear weapons are a dangerous business -- so too the materials that could contribute to a dirty bomb; but how one deals with each of these types of threats is radically different. 

President Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, has done a commendable job restoring global concern about nuclear materials management.  Obama hosted a major global summit in Washington focused on nuclear materials controls; got a revised START arms control treaty back in place with the Russians; used the US presidency of the UN Security Council three years ago to focus on nuclear and WMD proliferation.  Obama and Biden know the entire nuclear terrain well.

Let's think the unthinkable for a moment.  If Governor Romney got that 3 am call and learned that a dirty bomb had been successfully deployed in a US city, or perhaps in Israel or another ally, would he launch a nuclear weapon in retaliation?  These questions matter -- and it's not clear that Romney has the wherewithal at the moment to understand the responsibilities the US President carries for globlal nuclear stewardship.

In the mid-1980s, I had the privilege of working with RAND nuclear strategist and former USAF General Glenn Kent, who recently passed in April of this year, on an arms control related 'currency system' called "Standard Weapon Stations."  In its obituary, RAND recognized Kent for "devising the framework that would serve as the U.S. government's general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003."

Without going into too much detail, one of the technical problems in US-Soviet arms control at the time was trying to find a way to ease the comparison and trade-offs between a widening variety of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.  There were the slow-moving but powerful B-52 nuclear warhead-laden fleet, MIRVed and non-MIRVed warheads on a variety of nuclear missiles, some of which were launched from fixed but hardened sites, some on tracks, some on subs, some miniaturized and highly mobile on cruise missiles. Miles Pomper, Jeffrey Lewis (aka Arms Control Wonk), or William Potter could issue dozens of other innovative ways that the US President or Soviet Premier could blow up a large chunk of the world.  The differentiation in missile warhead throw-weight and accuracy made
negotiating across this complex portfolio more than just a political
problem -- but also a genuinely technical one.

When trading apples and oranges, or trading GLCMs for SLCMs or more, Glenn Kent smartly thought one needed a currency, or metric, that allowed easy trading of dissimilar nuclear weapons commodities.  Kent wasn't popular for this, nor I for me enthusiasm for his idea, because most thought that we were distracted by a gimmick and not understanding that politics more than anything else drove the deal-making.

What was fascinating at the time is that no matter who was President of the United States -- Ronald Reagan then and Jimmy Carter just before, or the people who wanted to rise up and challenge them like Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, eventually Bob Dole, Bill Bradley, Richard Lugar, John Anderson and more -- everyone had a basic, grounded understanding of nuclear weapons, their dangers, and an approximate understanding of America's arsenal as compared to the Soviets.  Folks at the time would joke about whether Ronald Reagan really had a grasp of the nuclear dangers and systems he was frequently speaking about. 

There was a rumor that possibly was urban legend (never have been able to find the quote) that Reagan thought a submarine-launched ballistic missile could be called back after launch.  I doubt Reagan said this -- but even if he had, Reagan knew enough about nukes after many tutorials and discussions with hydrogen bomb father and nuclear hawk Edward Teller that Reagan respected the devastation that a nuclear conflagration could generate.

I happened to be with Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter at West Point one day in the 1980s on the morning that the Los Angeles Times' Robert Scheer wrote about a leaked private letter from then President Ronald Reagan to Albert Wohlstetter, a direct and personal one, asking the famed conservative nuclear strategist to outline for Reagan's second term the key strategic opportunities and pitfalls facing the United States.  Wohlstetter was furious about Scheer's article and refused to discuss publicly what he might share with Ronald Reagan. 

But what one could surmise from both Reagan's letter and Wohlstetter's response is that the actor-turned-Governor-turned-President knew a lot about nukes.

It's not clear that Mitt Romney meets the Ronald Reagan bar -- or the bar set by any other US President in his fundamental appreciation for the nuclear weapons realities the White House must manage. 

One hopes that one of the anchors in the upcoming Presidential debates will pose a nuclear weapons related question to Governor Romney and President Obama. 

Note to the Governor:  a good place to start his tutorial on Iran would be a chat with CSIS' Anthony Cordesman who can give him a candid, Herman Kahn-style rundown on who will be the victor and vanquished in an Israel-Iran nuclear tiff (hint: not Tehran). 

Next, Dana Priest's well-researched and compelling profile of America's deteriorating nuclear weapons stockpile is another fantastic resource.  I'd probably count on Joe Biden and Barack Obama each being totally up to speed on all of this.

Good luck to the Governor in those debates should this topic come up.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

First of all, Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner has turned 10 and is in fantastic shape.

On other fronts, a bunch of readers have been saying, "Where are you Steve?? Why is The Washington Note stuck on Paul Ryan stuff from weeks ago??"

The truth is that I've been uber-busy and basically building a new strategy around how I would manage the content on this blog balanced that which I have on my "Voices" page at The Atlantic. Some of the content will be the same -- but the more fun, the more trivial, the more screed-ish, the stuff that hits the cutting room floor at the New America Foundation or The Atlantic will appear here.

OK -- cool stuff that caught my eye today that you might want to take a look at:

1. I've been trying for days to reach Alexis Madrigal, our flamboyantly moustached senior technology editor -- and have discovered that he is driving around the country as part of his new, perhaps annual "Start Up Nation" tour. Check it out.

2. I've been working on the idea of The Atlantic organizing a major "Gay Summit." Of course, it will be a GLBT Summit -- but then ran across Cason Crane's "Rainbow Summits Project."

I want to organize one of the first, large scale, 360 degree forums by a mainstream national publication on the emergence of gay issues in nearly every corner of society (360 degree means that, yes, we will invite the CEO of Chick-fil-A). And Cason Crane, a self-described "world traveler, passionate writer, voracious reader, avid runner, older brother, and student of anything and everything" studying at Princeton is hoping to raise money and awareness about The Trevor Project by being the world's first openly gay person to climb the Seven Summits.

Cason has also been trying to contribute to Palestine-Israel peace efforts -- which I admire; though it saddens me to think how unfortunate it is that climbing the world's highest peaks and making a statement about human rights, gays, and tolerance is so much more doable than getting Israel and Palestine on a peace track. Note to Obama administration: Get back to work on peace process. If you don't put Netanyahu to work, he will chase you Mr. President. Wait, that's happening...

You may be wondering what the link is between The Atlantic's "Gay Summit" and Cason Crane's Gay/Rainbow Summit? Well, none really -- but it just seemed like another take on 360 degrees, the gay crowd, and summits. Big tent.

3. Some news in media, including my media mother ship... BRUCE GOTTLIEB, former Chief Counsel of the FCC and General Counsel of Atlantic Media has just been named President of the National Journal Group, succeeding ANDY SAREYAN. Bruce is pictured to the left. Unsure which one Bruce is.

Also at Atlantic Media, editor of the blog Ghosts of DC, TOM COCHRAN, has just been named Chief Technology Officer of Atlantic Media. Cochran most recently served as Director of New Media Technologies at the White House. Although Cochran says he doesn't do paranormal stuff on his 'ghosts blog', I wonder if there are ghosts of new media technologies haunting 1600 Pennsylvania from the age of FDR or Kennedy -- certainly Nixon (ah...those tapes).

4. And in other media news, DANIELLE CRITTENDEN, mother of MIRANDA FRUM who is now staffing RYAN LIZZA at The New Yorker and wife of DAVID FRUM who is determined to make the Republican Party smart again some time in the next decade or two -- has ascended from Managing Editor of Blogs for Huffpost Canada to the new role of International Blog Editor for the Huffington Post Media Group.

Crittenden is also co-author with the Pulitzer Prize winning author Anne Applebaum of From a Polish Country House Kitchen: 90 Recipes for the Ultimate Comfort Food. The book appears in November this year and can be pre-ordered at Amazon. I would like to acknowledge that I have been a dutiful "taster" for recipes that have gone into this book but I do not receive any residuals from sales.

Onward and upward.

-- Steve Clemons

Reuters

Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan has accomplished something quite important. At both conventions, in the corner rooms of Charlotte and Tampa organized by media groups and political activist outfits, serious discussions unfolded about the real state of the economy and the different policy approaches Americans needed to consider.

Paul Ryan is the most ideologically severe vice-presidential candidate in a century, a commentator said at a National Journal/Atlantic economic policy dinner done on a not-for-attribution basis. But nearly everyone credits his selection with igniting a debate about tough choices on the economy that politicians and Presidents have been ducking for decades. The clear consensus emerging out of Tampa's GOP Convention and the DNC's in Charlotte is that there is a real choice being offered to Americans. The first option is "rigorous austerity" that could even further gut America's middle class and take the fallen standard of living to new lows. The second is a limited Keynesian approach that tries to reform while slashing spending.

There are also a couple of themes that aren't getting much air time but which deserve to be kicked around.

One of these, a charge leveled by Democrats about themselves, is that the Democrats have really screwed up--twice. The argument goes like this: Back in the 90s while the economy was expanding, the IT bubble was bubbling, and capital gains churning was filling federal and state coffers, Clinton--guided primarily by his economic mentor and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin--helped ignite a financial-sector privileged wealth production machine that didn't take into account the long-term consequences of American manufacturing decamping to foreign shores.

In other words, Clinton pushed the Uruguay Round of GATT, set up China's membership in the WTO, and removed the important barriers that divided retail banking from securities trading. Clinton was highly influenced by the economic policy practitioners on his team who carried with them all of the biases of neoliberal economics. Those who focused on the importance of manufacturing, of the role of government in seeing to the parts of the economic environment markets would not sustain, the importance of high-wage job creation, were pushed aside.

This is also exactly what happened during the first two years of the Obama administration, where those of a neoliberal persuasion prevailed over those who wanted to concentrate first on a serious jobs and infrastructure program.

That discussion came up frequently in the meetings in Charlotte.  Arianna Huffington even held a "shadow convention" (as she also did in Tampa) on the subject of what is really working and what not in job creation in the United States. She believes that the Democrats on the whole are not having a serious debate about the jobs crisis today and have not taken responsibility for their own mistakes in favoring banks' survival over that of families losing their homes and jobs on a massive scale. 

To be fair to President Obama, he inherited skyrocketing unemployment, collapsing global economy when he moved into the White House, and did take steps that stopped further, probably catastrophic implosion.  He called on people like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner in part because the world respected them and Obama needed to stop a global confidence crisis that was aggravating underlying economic instability. 

But Obama allowed voices like Austan Goolsbee, Jared Bernstein, and Paul Volcker to be sidelined, while really technical financial and economic geniuses like George Soros never got in the door. Obama allowed the neoliberal, macroeconomic financial-sector-über-alles types to prevail over the micro-economic jobs, housing, and manufacturing voices. 

Obama has shifted now and is pushing a jobs and infrastructure program that many Dems I spoke to in Charlotte say he should have led with in his administration. Ironically, the financial sector crowd that Obama bailed out are giving donations in droves to Mitt Romney, while many in the small donor base that previously supported Obama have lost their jobs and their homes and their willingness to send in $3.00 for a chance to play basketball or have dinner with the President.

Another of the issues being kicked around is whether Americans are indeed worse off or are better off than they were four years ago.

At the National Journal/Atlantic dinner mentioned above, a prominent pollster said that there is no doubt Americans are better off. In his view, the global economy was going over a cliff, the mounting job losses were staggering, and America was facing a genuine potential depression. He said that most today, however dissatisfied with the status quo, know that jobs are being slowly created, that the recovery is really happening albeit slowly, and that the economy is heading generally in the right direction.

National Journal's Jim Tankersley, however, disputes that assessment in a powerful piece that should be read in full. In the opening clip, he writes:

The middle class in America today is not better off than it was four years ago, not better off than it was at the end of the Great Recession in 2009, not even better off than when President Clinton left office in 2001.

This is the truth that Democrats must confront as they anchor their national convention theme in Charlotte on vows of support for American workers: The middle class has been declining for more than a decade, including through the Obama recovery.

Inflation-adjusted median income fell by 2.3 percent in 2010 (the last year for which official statistics are available) and dipped below $50,000 per year for the first time since 1996, the Census Bureau reports. Real median weekly wages last quarter were lower than at the same time in 2002--and down 1.5 percent from the second quarter of 2010.

Ouch. Tanerksley is right. Americans are down and out, and on whole more down and out than when Obama came in, even if the original downward momentum wasn't the president's fault.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons