Obama's Janus Dilemma

As he takes the oath in this aptly named month, Barack Obama is faced with looking both forward and back over an enormous list of national problems.

Steering the country through economic minefields will obviously take almost all of his administration's energies but, to the extent that present difficulties are rooted in the disastrous Bush years, the past can't be totally ignored.

In cataloguing the major frauds and deceptions, Frank Rich in the New York Times asserts, "The more we learn about where all the bodies and billions were buried on our path to ruin, the easier it may be for our new president to make the case for a bold, whatever-it-takes New Deal."

In his interview, George Stephanopoulos asked the President-Elect about appointing a special prosecutor to "investigate the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping" and got an ambivalent response, "I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."

Those who were outraged by the Bush-Cheney assault on traditional American freedoms may be disappointed by such hesitation but will have to consider the priorities of doing things right for the future against punishing the wrongs of the past.

Stephanopoulos asked about Dick Cheney's advice: "Before you start to implement your campaign rhetoric you need to sit down and find out precisely what it is we did and how we did it."

Obama agreed but not in the way Cheney had in mind. Perhaps the best way to resolve his Janus-like dilemma is the answer Frank Rich got from Henry Waxman, Capitol Hill's "most tireless inquisitor into Bush scandals."

Though Waxman "remains outraged about both the chicanery used to sell the Iraq war and the administration’s overall abuse of power, he adds: 'I don’t see Congress pursuing it. We’ve got to move on to other issues.'

"He would rather see any prosecutions augmented by an independent investigation that fills in the historical record. 'We need to depoliticize it,' he says. 'If a Democratic Congress or administration pursues it, it will be seen as partisan.'”

For Obama, that may turn out to be the best Janus-like approach.

Making Scenes and Making Laws

As pop culture goes gaga over teenage vampires, Washington's idea of infusing new blood is a Congressional coup with 69-year-old Henry Waxman wresting chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from 82-year-old John Dingell.

Such generational change is stirring hopes on the left and fears on the right that Detroit will be pressured to stop making gas guzzlers as a start toward energy independence that could help the economy and slow global warming.

But the difference between the new chairman's Hollywood constituency, which feeds on trends like popcorn, and Washington, where inertia is a way of life, should give pause to those reading too much into the ascendance of Waxman, whose rise to power has been marked by championing such causes as expanding Medicaid coverage for children, helping AIDS patients and making generic drugs widely available.

But he is no Frank Capra hero, constantly grabbing attention with such stunts as horning in on the Valerie Plame publicity and hauling Roger Clemens in front of TV cameras for alleged steroid use.

In the Bush years, Waxman has had ample opportunity to strike poses, but how will he do at making deals that lead to legislation?

The Wall Street Journal is convinced that "Mr. Waxman, speaking for the upscale precincts of Beverly Hills, wants to phase out coal and cars that use gasoline. The coastal elites who now dominate Democratic politics will happily trade the blue collar for the green collar...It's obvious who now pulls the Democratic levers of power, and anyone in the energy or health-care business had better erect the barricades."

Nice imagery for a Hollywood movie, but how will it play out in Washington?

Greenspan, Greed and the Blame Game

Congressmen who used to hang on every word and kiss his ring got rough with the former Fed chairman today, as Henry Waxman bullied him to admit his fault for the subprime mortgage crisis ("Were you wrong?") and got a qualified mea culpa ("Partially").

The Greenspan grilling is at the respectable end of the national rage over the collapsing economy, bracketed on the far side of sanity by letters with white powder mailed to banks and regulatory agencies promising "payback time" for stealing people's money.

The rhetoric is different, but the impulse is the same: If the crops fail, find the witches who made it happen and burn them. But that didn't work in colonial times, and it certainly is not the answer to today's far more complex mess.

Greenspan, with his Ayn Randish faith in market greed, is far from innocent in the growth of the monstrous housing bubble, but he had plenty of help from fast-buck financial operators, politicians who resisted regulation and overreaching homeowners who thought prices would never fall.

Even his severest critic, Paul Krugman, has a kind word for him today, "At least he’s admitting that he got something wrong. That’s actually rare these days, especially among the people Greenspan associates with," quoting a memorable line, "For a man who was once remarkably hard to decipher, Alan Greenspan is now as clear as an empty Lehman Brothers office."

The rage will go on, certainly through Election Day, but after it runs its course, the new President and new Congress will have to settle down to making the hard choices that will get the country out of the ditch and persuade the public that doing that is more important than arguing over who drove us into it.

In an editorial today endorsing Barack Obama, the New York Times points the way:

"Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall Street and in Americans’ bank accounts. Mr. Obama has another vision of government’s role and responsibilities...

"Since the financial crisis, he has correctly identified the abject failure of government regulation that has brought the markets to the brink of collapse.

"The American financial system is the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies. Those ideas have been proved wrong at an unfathomable price, but Mr. McCain--a self-proclaimed 'foot soldier in the Reagan revolution'--is still a believer.

"Mr. Obama sees that far-reaching reforms will be needed to protect Americans and American business."

Myth of the Washington Outsider

As Republicans run away from George Bush in’ 08, one avenue they will take is that of the “Washington outsider.” Giulani and Romney can legitimately do that, and even Fred Thompson, who started as a Party lawyer during Watergate and went on to years as a lobbyist followed now by a second generation, will try.

But there is a contrarian case to be made that much of the Washington mischief of the past half century goes back to White House outsiders who didn’t know the rules of the game and where the boundary markers were.

Start with Nixon, the insider who always felt like an outsider, and surrounded himself with the likes of Mitchell, Erlichman and Haldeman, who didn’t know enough to worry about being caught doing the dirty tricks that brought them down.

During Reagan’s time, it was Oliver North et al who stepped over the line with Iran-Contra and got caught.

Now, with so much focus on Cheney’s fiefdom, it’s easy to forget that Karl Rove’s overreaching is at the heart of what Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman and other Democrats are trying to lay bare. It isn’t hardened Washington operators, but true-believing amateurs like Alberto Gonzales and his crew who stepped over well-established lines in the Justice Department.

This is not to glorify traditional politicians but, as voters look for answers, they may want to look carefully when candidates promise to change the ways of Washington rather than get the political process back under control. So far, the alternatives to politics as usual have turned out to be politics as nightmare.