Robert Wright

The Pentagon is bracing for the fiscal cliff. This week the White House Budget Office directed it to plan for $500 billion in cuts it may have to make over the next ten years if cliff-averting negotiations fail. The negotiations may of course not fail, but it's still worth asking: in the event that our military resources really did shrink significantly, how much damage would that do to our national security?

Here's my initial estimate: zero.

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One premise of the people who built the "fiscal cliff"--who committed Congress to either make big inroads on the deficit or have big inroads made automatically, meat-cleaver style--is that government debt is central to our economic problems. What if they're wrong?

I don't mean "What if public debt isn't a problem?"--because it is, and I don't doubt that addressing it in some measure is a good idea. I mean: What if public debt is such a small part of the problem that we're setting ourselves up for pain followed by disappointment? What if we'll make lots of budget cuts, dampening economic activity in the short term, only to find that the long-term benefits, while real, are dinky in the scheme of things, and there's a much bigger problem that's been left unaddressed?

That's the view of some analysts whose voices aren't getting much airtime amid all the freaking out about the fiscal cliff. They say that private debt--mortgages, credit card bills, business loans, etc.--is a much bigger problem than public debt, and we're going to have to confront it before we truly recover from the great recession.

This summer my Atlantic colleague Steve Clemons published a report on this subject--co-authored with entrepreneur Richard Vague, and based on data Vague had collected. It makes for bracing, and sometimes scary, reading. Especially when you realize that, as Financial Times columnist Edward Luce notes in discussing the Clemons-Vague paper, private debt is "higher as a share of America's GDP than anywhere in Europe."

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According to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Bibi Netanyahu has delivered "the worst possible slap in the face" to President Obama. Olmert was referring, of course, to Netanyahu's announcement that Israel will proceed with a settlement project that, the New York Times reported, "has long been condemned by Washington as effectively dooming any prospect of a two-state solution." (An article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz seconds Washington's assessment--see headline above.)

Olmert may be overstating things, but not by much. Certainly Netanyahu's settlement surprise isn't the show of gratitude Obama had reason to expect after the US voted with Israel against Palestine's bid for nonmember observer status at the UN--a bid so reasonable and innocuous that Israel and the US, in opposing it, were in a minority of 9 out of 147 voting nations. And some of those 9 were on our side only because of American arm twisting. (Olmert himself thought it was a mistake for Israel to oppose the resolution.)

In a way this was more than a slap at Obama. It was a slap at the United States. Terrorism is one of America's main national security threats, and the hatred of America by some Arabs and Muslims is the most valuable asset terrorist recruiters have. So stoking that hatred by voting to thwart the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians makes America less secure. To put a finer point on it: Stoking that hatred makes our children more likely to die a violent death 5, 10, 15 years from now.

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A few days ago I floated the name of William Burns as a possible secretary of state. (Strictly speaking, Burns, not his name, would be secretary of state -- but I'm following standard Washington journalistic usage here.) And such is my esteemed position within the Washington establishment that the very next day President Obama ... um, went about his business as usual.

But I haven't given up on the Burns meme! (Maybe it's, as they say, a slow burns.) Meanwhile, in the interest of fairness, I'll air some of the other names that are being mentioned for the job.

Interestingly, a few of them are Republicans. Josh Rogin reports at Foreign Policy that the administration is vetting Chuck Hagel for a national-security post, possibly secretary of defense or secretary of state. And Jim Lobe of Lobelog mentions several Republican prospects -- Richard Lugar, Bob Zoellick, and Jon Huntsman.

I like the idea of a Republican secretary of state, and it's the kind of thing Obama would probably like. But let's face it: Lugar is 80, Hagel isn't very articulate, and a Zoellick pick would violate the unspoken never-choose-a-secretary-of-state-with-an extremely-thin-moustache rule. And as for Huntsman: he used his last Obama administration diplomatic post -- ambassador to China -- to launch a presidential campaign. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it took the form of amping up provocative rhetoric toward China as he was leaving his post. Sometimes provocative rhetoric is in order, even from an ambassador, but to trot it out for personal political reasons strikes me as cheap and deeply irresponsible. Besides, Huntsman reminds a little of the character Leland Palmer on the old TV show Twin Peaks. And [spoiler alert!] Leland, it turned out, killed Laura -- his own daughter.

The one candidate that no one seems to be advocating is Susan Rice. And I don't think that's just because of the political obstacles she faces. My sense is that pretty much nobody thinks she'd do a good job as secretary of state.

One of the more full-throated endorsements of Rice I could find was on this website, where Jeffrey Goldberg went so far as to say she'd make a "plausible" secretary of state. Granted, he said, "She's brittle, she's inexperienced, she lacks the stature to challenge President Obama, and she is no great foreign policy genius." And, granted, during the Benghazi turmoil "she should have been more careful about what she said when she said it." (But, hey, so what if your secretary of state goes around the world saying ill-advised things?) Still, he said, Rice does have some redeeming features. For example, "She has had some very public failures. A secretary of state nominee -- anyone in high office, really -- should have some experience with failure, and she has it." So there's that.

With Susan Rice's prospects of becoming secretary of state now uncertain at best, thoughts naturally turn to John Kerry as the alternative candidate. But should they?

Kerry would by most accounts make a fine secretary of state. Certainly, as James Traub recently noted, he's got the visuals down -- solemn, suave, tall, etc. Plus, he's well-traveled and knows a lot about the world beyond America's borders.

But there's that nagging downside to moving Kerry out of the Senate: Now that Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has lost his reelection bid, he lurks as the likely Republican candidate in the special election that would be held to fill Kerry's seat -- and, unlike other Republican politicians in Massachusetts, he could actually win. Indeed, conspiracy theorists have suggested that the Republican opposition to Rice is motivated partly by a desire to turn Kerry's seat in the Senate from blue to red.

And Kerry wouldn't be vacating just any old seat, but the seat that holds the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, which he occupies very ably. Robert Menendez of New Jersey would be in line to fill that spot -- a prospect that, according to reporter Laura Rozen, is viewed dimly in the White House because "the White House has a lot of problems with Menendez on foreign policy issues."

With Rice's nomination in doubt and a Kerry nomination having so much practical downside, maybe it's time to consider a third candidate? And who should that be? I'm not qualified to say -- I don't keep close track of all the D.C. foreign-policy players. But a couple of weeks ago, I did an informal email poll of people I know who keep closer track. And the favorite candidate, by a large margin, was William Burns, currently deputy secretary of state.

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Is Hamas a puppet of the Iranian regime? An affirmative answer to this question is, from the point of view of Bibi Netanyahu, a dual-use rhetorical technology: (1) It helps justify the recent bombardment of Gaza (since one goal of the operation was to deplete an Iranian-supplied missile stock that Iran could in theory activate against Israel in the event of war). (2) It helps justify Netanyahu's uncompromising stance toward Iran (since, the more pervasively threatening Iran seems to Israelis, the easier it is to convince them that the Iranian regime is beyond the reach of negotiation).

The Hamas-as-Iranian-puppet narrative gets help from American media. Consider, for example, this week's New York Times piece by David Sanger and Thom Shanker asking what the recent Israel-Gaza conflict tells us about how a possible war with Iran might play out. Referring to Netanyahu and President Obama, Sanger and Shanker write:

And one key to their war-gaming has been cutting off Iran's ability to slip next-generation missiles into the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, where they could be launched by Iran's surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, during any crisis over sanctions or an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

The confident assertion that Hamas is an Iranian "surrogate"--a claim Sanger and Shanker never get around to substantiating--is oddly out of touch with recent developments in the region.

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There's reason to hope that the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel will lead to an easing of Israel's suffocating economic blockade of Gaza. The ceasefire text said that "opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods... shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire." But, more than 100 hours later, we're still waiting for word of actual progress.

Meanwhile, if you're wondering where to turn for background information about the blockade, I have this guidance: stay as far away from mainstream media as possible.

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Warning: Before you click 'play' on this video, I recommend that you turn the volume down, because the music is jaw-droppingly hokey. Aside from that, though, I think this is pretty cool--a kind of time-lapse emotional thermometer of the United States as it endured Hurricane Sandy. The video is based on a computer analysis of the "location, intensity, and tone" of Sandy-related tweets, according to the Facebook page for the Global Twitter Heartbeat project (a collaboration between the University of Illinois and Silicon Graphics International). Second warning: They freeze the action right before Sandy makes landfall, milking the drama. But it's worth the wait, IMHO.

[Update, 11/21, 3:55 p.m.: The ceasefire announced today envisions "opening the crossings and facilitating the movement of people and transfer of goods..." Too soon to say what this will mean in practice.]

President Obama and Bibi Netanyahu are on the same page when it comes to the justification for Israel's bombardment of Gaza. Netanyahu : "No country in the world would agree to a situation in which its population lives under a constant missile threat." Obama: "There's no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders."

It's true that if, say, Canada were lobbing missiles into the US, the US wouldn't tolerate it. But here's another thing the US wouldn't tolerate: If Canada imposed a crippling economic blockade, denying America the import of essential goods and hugely restricting American exports. That would be taken as an act of war, and America would if necessary respond with force--by, perhaps, lobbing missiles into Canada.

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On Monday my Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg began a post with this sentence: "Rockets are flying from Gaza into Israel at a fast clip, and Israelis, it is said, are divided on the question of how to respond."

That same day I came across this report from Ma'an, a Palestinian news agency:

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In my previous post I complained about the militarization of the CIA over the past decade, as exemplified by its role in overseeing drone strikes and as symbolized by the appointment last year of Gen. David Petraeus to head the agency. I also took a shot at the American foreign policy establishment for not focusing on the big questions--such as: Is this whole war-by-drone-strike thing, whatever its short-term payoffs, a disastrously bad idea in the long run?

Now I bring you exhibit A, someone with the ultimate in foreign-policy-establishment credentials who enthusiastically defends drone strikes while apparently giving no coherent thought to their long-term implications. I refer to Max Boot, the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Petraeus, his wife, and Paula Broadwell at his CIA confirmation hearings. (AP)

When, in the fall of 2011, David Petraeus moved from commanding the Afghanistan war effort to commanding the CIA, it was a disturbingly natural transition. I say "natural" because the CIA conducts drone strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is involved in other military operations there, so Petraeus, in his new role, was continuing to fight the Afghanistan war. I say "disturbingly" because this overlap of Pentagon and CIA missions is the result of a creeping militarization of the CIA that may be undermining America's national security.

This trend was clear during the Bush administration, but it accelerated under President Obama, who greatly expanded drone strikes, and it reached a kind of symbolic culmination when Obama nominated this four-star general to run things at Langley. That would have been the perfect time to reflect on the wisdom of the convergence of the CIA's and Pentagon's jobs. But, instead, the network of journalists, think tankers, public officials and others who constitute the foreign policy establishment preserved their nearly unblemished record of not focusing on the biggest questions.

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I just stumbled on a chart put together by Nate Silver back in August of 2011, before he was as celebrated/notorious as he is today, and before Republicans had decided who their presidential candidate would be. This chart has a more subjective basis than most of Silver's graphics, but I think it's useful. In particular, as I'll explain below, I think it's a good Rorschach test for Republicans as they continue to ponder the meaning of their electoral defeat. (Color refers to the region the candidates are from, and the size of each circle represents their popular support as measured by polls.)

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To judge by this story in the Washington Post, you'd think House Speaker John Boehner is ready to lead Republicans toward a new era of bipartisan cooperation:

Republicans are "willing to accept new revenues," Boehner said, suggesting he is willing to break with the orthodoxy of many influential Republicans out of a desire to "do what's best for our country."

But it turns out that by "new revenues" Boehner isn't referring to President Obama's plan to raise tax rates on the rich. Rather, like Mitt Romney, Boehner is a fierce champion of conveniently-unspecified-magical-loophole-closing.

There are certainly lots of loopholes worth closing, and if Boehner and Obama can agree on some big ones that should be closed (unlikely), I say go for it. But if Boehner thinks Obama should do this instead of raising tax rates for the rich, I have a question: Why would Obama do that?

The Bush tax cuts are set to expire for everyone at the end of the year. Obama wants to let them expire only on households making more than $250,000 a year (that's his "tax hike for the rich" -- returning tax rates paid by the rich to pre-Bush levels). Joshua Green in Businessweek lays out the path to getting this done:

Obama can propose a "middle-class tax cut" for the 98 percent of American households earning less than $250,000 a year -- while letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more -- and dare the Republicans to block it. If they do, everyone's taxes will rise on Jan. 1.

Does John Boehner want to be seen as raising taxes for all Americans because he couldn't stand the thought of confining the burden to the 2 percent of Americans who could bear it without breaking a sweat? Boehner would do this after voters rejected a Republican presidential candidate precisely because he was seen as sacrificing the interests of ordinary Americans for the interests of the rich? As Clint Eastwood was once famous for saying (back before he was famous for talking to empty chairs): Make my day.

We have a new president! I mean, not in the sense of the president being someone other than Barack Obama. But in the sense of the president being a second-term Obama rather than a first-term Obama. That makes a big difference. There's a tendency to emphasize the negative part of the difference -- as in "lame duck." But there's a kind of liberation that comes from being a lame duck, and that can bring a lot of good.

The good flows from two things: Worrying more about legacy -- about how posterity will judge you -- and worrying less (in fact, not at all) about getting reelected. Right now, shortly after Obama's triumph, I may be feeling too optimistic about how much good can come from these things. But I'm sure some good can come from them. In any event, here are some issues that I hope will benefit from a liberated Barack Obama:

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The Columbus Dispatch, the only newspaper in Ohio's biggest city, has declared Ohio a "toss-up" between President Obama and Mitt Romney. This will please the Romney camp, which has been fighting hard against the "Ohio is Obama's rock-solid firewall" narrative.

For reasons I'll explain, this headline is misleading. And it's tempting to think it's intentionally misleading. After all, the Dispatch endorsed Romney (and in fact hasn't endorsed a Democrat for president since 1916). And the lead paragraph of the story under the "toss-up" headline does have a certain Mitt Romney-pep-rally quality to it: "The 'Ohio firewall' precariously stands for President Barack Obama, but a strong Republican turnout could enable Mitt Romney to tear it down on Election Day."

Still, I think we can give the Dispatch the benefit of the doubt and assume that its own firewall -- the church-state separation that is supposed to keep a newspaper's editorial stance from coloring its reporting -- is intact. Because there's a simpler explanation for the "toss-up" headline: It rests on the same slightly-too-simple way of thinking about polling that lots of reporters and other Americans evince every four years.

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Let me be clear: I'm not saying Obama supporters should be worried about Tuesday's election. After all, most polling analysts and all the betting markets have President Obama as the favorite. But if you're like me -- an Obama supporter who for whatever perverse reason scans the horizon for glimmers of gloom -- you'll want to be in touch with the most plausible grounds for pessimism. I summarize them below. These worries may or may not be valid, but they're the best I've got.

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I live in central New Jersey, and Hurricane Sandy has taught me two things: (1) there's actually something kind of charming about losing your electrical power; (2) the charm wears off after 18 hours. I'm now approaching hour 50.

The charming part is pretty predictable: bonding with neighbors over your common adversity; huddling with the family around the fireplace to stay warm; getting the feeling, right after splitting some firewood, that, gosh darn it, you really could fend for yourself if civilization collapsed and we were all forced to pursue the hunter-gatherer business model.

The charm-wearing-off part comes when you realize how labor-intensive the hunter-gatherer business model is. For example: Every time you want a cup of coffee you have to drive to a Starbucks. (Of course, if you were an actual hunter-gatherer, you would walk to the Starbucks--but you get my point.)

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I recently argued that America is more likely to wind up in a war with Iran if Mitt Romney is elected president than if President Obama is re-elected. The idea wasn't that Romney is any more eager to attack Iran than Obama. Rather, Romney is less likely to reach a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue--and the longer that issue goes unresolved, the more likely war is to happen, whether via American attack, Israeli attack, assassination tit-for-tats that get out of hand, a misconstrued naval mishap in the Persian Gulf, whatever.

But Iran isn't the only place where a Romney presidency would increase the chances of American involvement in war. The second most likely venue is Syria. I'm not saying Romney is likely to get American militarily involved in Syria--just that he's more likely to do so than Obama is.

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Like Gen. Francisco Franco in 1970s episodes of Saturday Night Live, Mitt Romney's momentum is still dead. The eight tracking polls I've been reporting on since they started reflecting post-debate polling show a net drift, since Monday's final pre-debate polling, of 0.9 points toward Obama (compared with 1.0 yesterday, 0.6 the day before, and 0.9 the day before that).

But this stasis could get disrupted any day now. About 5 percent of voters are still telling pollsters they're undecided. And traditionally,* late-deciding voters -- which this 5 percent certainly qualifies as -- wind up mainly voting against the incumbent.

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