Published for www.washingtonpost.com, March 20, 2012

Americans and Europeans will remember the last several years as a period of economic insecurity. But the economic history of our times will be recounted very differently in the rest of the world. As developed nations have struggled with financial instability and unsustainable debt, developing economies have raised hundreds of millions out of poverty. Our long economic winter is a pleasant summer in distant places.

According to the World Bank, extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1.25 a day — has been declining in every developing region. The first Millennium Development Goal set by the United Nations — to cut the global rate of extreme poverty in half between 1990 and 2015 — was achieved in 2010, well ahead of schedule. Much of the good news has come in emerging markets such as Brazil, China and India. But on the African continent, the rate of extreme poverty has fallen below 50 percent for the first time since 1981.

As president of the World Bank since 2007, Bob Zoellick has seen this mixture of global economic panic and progress as closely as anyone. When he steps down in June, he will leave the rarest of legacies: a multilateral institution with its reputation enhanced. Zoellick acted decisively to help stabilize the finances of struggling nations during the worst of the financial crisis, as well as to provide relief to countries hit hard by a worldwide spike food prices. He has increased transparency at the bank while successfully raising funds to recapitalize it.

Zoellick is the most rigorous and unsentimental of idealists. During an interview in his office, he explained recent progress against global poverty in two words: “economic growth.” And growth is mainly a function of the policies and attitudes of nations themselves. “Development does not work unless local people own it,” says Zoellick. “If local people haven’t decided to do what it takes, it won’t happen.”

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, March 15, 2012

It is extraordinary how far some will go to knit the random scraps and patches of events into the quilt of a narrative. So the Susan B. Komen controversy, resistance to the administration’s contraceptive mandate, a stag-party joke by Foster Friess and a cruel epithet from Rush Limbaugh somehow add up to a Republican war on women, sure to provoke the political backlash of an entire gender.

American women haven’t behaved as predicted or demanded. President Obama’s job approval has risen or, more recently, fallen independently of the chromosomal status of voters. Men and women, it turns out, resent dipping into their retirement savings to drive to work.

Recent opinion surveys on the contraceptive mandate, in particular, have shown women to be an independent-minded lot. In coverage of its own recent poll, the New York Times conceded that the views of women on this topic are “split.” By a plurality of 46 percent to 44 percent, women believe that employers should be able to “opt out” of providing birth-control coverage for religious reasons. But opinion is not really “split” on the question of whether “religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital and university” should be able to opt out of offering coverage. Women support this proposition by 53 percent to 38 percent.

How is this possible? Americans overwhelmingly endorse contraception and regularly practice what they preach. Most believe — myself included — that child spacing and preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases are public goods. Why not impose this social consensus on all private institutions?

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, March 12, 2012

The teleprompter is again center stage in American politics — as, come to think of it, the darn thing often is.

Rick Santorum, who is partial to the prohibition of many things, argues that the demon autocue should be next. “I’ve always believed that when you run for president of the United States,” Santorum recently said in Mississippi, “it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter, because all you’re doing is reading someone else’s words to people.”

On this issue, Santorum cannot be accused of hypocrisy. His Super Tuesday victory speech, delivered in Steubenville, Ohio, did not make use of a teleprompter — or any other form of rhetorical discipline. It was a 20-minute ramble of lame jokes, patriotic platitudes and half-developed campaign themes. On the evidence of these remarks, Santorum’s guiding philosophy is “free enterprise” and “free people” held together by free association. He vaguely honored Ronald Reagan for saying inspiring words, without bothering to contribute any of his own. He praised the “greatest generation” without crafting a single phrase that captured their accomplishments.

That night was, perhaps, the high-water mark of Santorum’s presidential campaign — the culmination of nine months of effort and sacrifice. But the moment found him, quite literally, speechless. The world will not long remember, or even briefly recall, the Steubenville address.

Santorum’s condemnation of scripted communication has understandable political motivations. Lampooning President Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is a popular conservative sport. And Santorum — fresh from spewing on John Kennedy’s shoes and questioning the value of a college education — has an interest in praising the virtues of impulsive, unfiltered language. It is the backhanded praise of his own failures.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, March 8, 2012

Having decided on their nominee, Republicans seem determined to humiliate him a few more times.

On Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney secured more convention delegates than all of his opponents combined, making a good case for his mathematical inevitability. Once again, the candidate who looks like a Boy Scout won a political knife fight.

But Romney also decisively lost Oklahoma and Tennessee to a candidate, Rick Santorum, who lacks organization and message discipline. In Ohio, Romney finished within 0.8 percentage points of renewed speculation on the whereabouts of Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush. In Virginia, he couldn’t break 60 percent against a candidate, Ron Paul, who wants to slash funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has appeared on Iranian state television to criticize U.S. foreign policy.

Primary campaigns are often long, close, bloody affairs. Recall Bush vs. McCain in 2000, or Obama vs. Clinton in 2008. But these, compared with 2012, were clashes of titans. Romney has shown weakness against a series of relatively weak opponents. Even in the absence of a clearly electable alternative, a portion of the GOP wants to leave a wound on its likely leader.

For all of his considerable skills and virtues, Romney is not a natural fit for the GOP nomination. But this is not entirely a bad thing.

Romney is an ideological mismatch for the current iteration of the GOP. In an increasingly conservative party, he is consistently losing very conservative voters. (In Ohio, Santorum carried them 48 percent to Romney’s 30 percent.) This group seems emboldened by the 2010 election — convinced that, since any Republican nominee is likely to beat Barack Obama, it is important to pick the most uncompromising one.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, March 5, 2012

It is the temptation of the columnist to universalize the moment — to present transient trends as exceptional, predictive and permanent. A direction is presented as a destiny. A snapshot is expanded into an epic. But history — driven by decisive contingencies — pays little mind.

Eight months ago, President Obama was losing the debt debate with congressional Republicans. His approval rating was approaching an all-time low, with support collapsing among independents and fading among Democrats. “I think it would be a good idea,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), “if President Obama faced some primary opposition.”

That seems a different political world from our own. But the presidential election is eight months away.

Republicans currently have their troubles. The primary process has not been kind to its likely winner. Mitt Romney has been battered by a series of opponents — really by the series of millionaire Republican PAC donors who splurged on negative ads against him. Romney himself has sometimes sounded like a millionaire Republican businessman — not a stretch for him — with a luxury car buyer’s interest in Detroit and a team owner’s interest in NAS­CAR. The nomination contest has driven up Romney’s negatives while revealing limitations in appealing across class lines.

Romney’s manner isn’t the whole problem. His opposition to the auto bailout — whatever the economic policy explanation — has added to blue-collar suspicions. His use of immigration as a wedge issue against Rick Perry and other Republicans has complicated his general-election appeal to Hispanics.

But Romney has been fortunate in the weakness of his opponents. If he eventually secures the nomination, his luck may hold.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, March 2, 2012

For me, the Koran-burningin Afghanistan brought back memories of the horrible morning at the White House when photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison surfaced. This is not to argue that an act of negligence at Bagram Air Base is morally comparable to the grinning barbarity of military police at Abu Ghraib. It is only to empathize with an administration facing events that aren’t its fault but that are its problem.

The pie chart of an American military operation is dominated by honor and excellence, with a sliver of incompetence and abuse. The sliver can make a lot of news. In these cases, the president’s role is to serve the interests of the nation and the troops under his command. If those interests are best secured by an apology, there is no dishonor in it.

The Taliban have naturally exploited America’s trash-dump blunder. Domestic critics of President Obama, and opponents of the Afghan war, have attempted to do the same. Newt Gingrich, with typical enraged incoherence, occupied both camps. He charged that Obama, by his apology, had “surrendered” — and then proceeded to urge American surrender. “If Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, doesn’t feel like apologizing,” said Gingrich, “then we should say goodbye and good luck, we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care.”

Gingrich would shape U.S. grand strategy in a fit of personal pique with a foreign leader. It is the type of Republican foreign policy attack that makes Obama look like Metternich.

More serious critics of the war contend that the Afghan reaction to the Koran-burning incident — including the treacherous killing of American officers — indicates a doomed counterinsurgency campaign. Afghan hearts and minds, they argue, are beyond winning.

The frustration is understandable, but the case is overstated. The current crisis, says Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, is “far more than a blip, but less than a catastrophe.” According to O’Hanlon, the United States is consistently more popular in Afghanistan than elsewhere in the Islamic world. Betrayal by Afghan soldiers and officials is disturbing and damaging but not generalized or dramatically growing. Many Afghans fear a hurried U.S. departure far more than they resent America’s presence. And Karzai’s reaction to the Koran incident has been measured, particularly when compared with past tantrums.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, February 27, 2012

Both of the leading Republican candidates have an authenticity problem — they possess too much of it.

Rick Santorum is an authentic social conservative who seems to believe that the nation can be argued into moral self-improvement. It is the high calling of a Jesuit high-school teacher but is less appealing in a presidential contender.

Mitt Romney is an authentic rich person. Not that there is anything wrong with that. America’s capacious tolerance should extend even to the wealthy, who have the added challenge of trying to fit through a needle’s eye.

Romney’s wealth is not ill-gotten. His problem is political. He talks about money as though engaged in a discussion with his stockbroker. So $374,000 from paid speeches is “not very much.” He is “not concerned about the very poor,” on the assumption that the safety net is enough for them. His wife “drives a couple of Cadillacs.” While not a racing enthusiast himself, Romney has “some great friends that are NAS­CAR team owners.”

A single gaffe is a political flesh wound. A series of gaffes that confirm a damaging stereotype is potentially fatal.

These blunders not only reinforce a traditional Republican weakness, they threaten to diminish a large Republican advantage — Barack Obama’s dramatic disconnect with blue-collar whites. The candidate who talked of small-town Americans as clinging “to guns or religion” lost white working-class voters by 18 points in 2008. In 2010, congressional Democrats lost the same group by 30 points. A similarly dismal performance by Obama in 2012 would open vast blue portions of the electoral map to Republican raids.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, February 24, 2012

Anyone who has worked at the White House is keenly aware of two gaps.

The first is the gap between the obsessions of the media and the challenges of the country. So Rick Santorum explains his views on the pill and Satan, while nuclear inspectors leave Iran in failure and the president again enters the Situation Room to clarify his flawed options.

The second gap is between the classified knowledge possessed by the White House and the confident cluelessness of commentators. The people making difficult choices on Iran know things we don’t.

But some things can be asserted with confidence. By building a broad international coalition against Iran and applying effective sanctions, the Obama administration has raised the stakes of the confrontation. More accurately, it has built a broad coalition by raising those stakes. After an initial period of naivete, the administration concluded that inducements would not be enough to hold back Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The only hope is the application of costs that Iran cannot bear. The resulting sanctions are biting. But having made the case for urgency and concerted action, it would be difficult for President Obama to tell the world “never mind” and shift to a strategy that accepts Iranian membership in the nuclear club.

Sanctions have not caused Iran to back down, but the approach is not yet exhausted. It is worth another twist of the tourniquet to reduce significant exceptions and exemptions.

The Iranians have traditionally used diplomatic meetings as a method to weaken sanctions in exchange for the promise of more meetings. A negotiation conducted by America and Europe that eases pressure only as a reward for compliance would send a final signal of seriousness.

The history of negotiations with Iran justifies a cautious pessimism. In the event of failure, one man’s reaction will matter most. And Obama needs to know his mind before indecision begins to limit his options.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, February 20, 2012

An extended, contentious nomination contest paradoxically hones and improves a presidential candidate — except when it nonparadoxically does not.

It is increasingly difficult to argue that the GOP is benefiting from the struggle between Mitt Romney and the challenger — alternately outsider and insider, hefty and svelte, conservative and more conservative — who isn’t Romney. Internal Republican ideological debates, while interesting to Republican ideologists, have little relationship to electoral needs. The longer these controversies continue, the longer President Obama has to regain his political balance.

This is increasingly obvious on the economy, where the election will be won or lost. Republican candidates have a strong case to make against Obama’s dismal, craven economic performance. Instead they are competing to be viewed as the most resolutely anti-bailout. Given the beliefs of Republican primary voters, this is a rational political move. It makes little sense as a national message.

Rick Santorum has attacked Romney for seeking a bailout of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games. He feels compelled by ideology to attack a patriotic success story — an event that attracted 2 billion viewers and inspired the United States five months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps he should call on American athletes to melt down their 34 medals won at the Games to repay the government.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, February 16, 2012

The central narrative of the Republican nomination contest is easy to summarize: Any candidate who is perceived as the main opponent to Mitt Romney immediately ties or leads Mitt Romney.

Rick Santorum’s surge tracks with recent precedent. His support is about the same as Rick Perry’s at his peak. A little higher than Herman Cain’s crest. A little lower than Newt Gingrich’s pinnacle.

But Santorum is not only Romney’s latest challenger, he is the most serious. Perry did not possess presidential-level skills. Cain lacked any apparent qualification for high office. Gingrich managed to systematically confirm every doubt about his style and stability.

Santorum, in contrast, has shown the ability to learn. While his initial debate performances were peevish and unappealing, he has grown more confident and likable over time. He has effectively prosecuted Romney’s public record while avoiding anger or overreach. (He pointedly refused, for example, to attack Romney’s business achievements and personal wealth.)

The former Pennsylvania senator possesses strengths that neatly fit some of Romney’s weaknesses. Santorum combines a deeply held social conservatism with an authentic blue-collar appeal. Romney has trouble competing in either category. While Santorum is very conservative, he avoids being a conservative caricature. He was one of the Senate’s main advocates of global health programs and a champion of faith-based anti-poverty efforts.

Full post here