The difference between Jack Lew and Bill Daley

In Congress, Lew’s stock is unusually high. He has emerged as one of the members of the Obama administration Republicans prefer working with. Earlier this year, Ben Smith, then at Politico, profiled Lew under the headline: “Lew: A liberal GOP says it trusts.” The piece included an admiring comment from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Daley, by contrast, has struggled to win over both White House staff and Congress. The initial hope was that he would help win business and Republican support for the White House’s initiatives. Neither hope panned out. Relations between Republicans and the White House are at a low ebb. But under Daley’s leadership, relations between the White House and Hill Democrats also grew frayed. And few in the White House found him an inspiring leader or were impressed with the results of the strategy he helped craft through 2011.

“It’s not the arrests that convinced me that “Occupy Wall Street” was worth covering seriously. Nor was it their press strategy, which largely consisted of tweeting journalists to cover a small protest that couldn’t say what, exactly, it hoped to achieve. It was a Tumblr called, “We Are The 99 Percent,” and all it’s doing is posting grainy pictures of people holding handwritten signs telling their stories, one after the other…These are not rants against the system. They’re not anarchist manifestos. They’re not calls for a revolution. They’re small stories of people who played by the rules, did what they were told, and now have nothing to show for it. Or, worse, they have tens of thousands in debt to show for it.”

Ezra Klein, Who are the 99 percent?  “We Are The 99 Percent” Tumblr here. (via ilyagerner)

(via ryeisenberg)

joshsternberg:

Ezra Klein knocks the cover off the ball in his analysis of last night’s debate. 

The most telling moment of Thursday’s GOP debate wasn’t when Michele Bachmann cooly stuck a knife between Tim Pawlenty’s ribs, or when Rick Santorum plaintively begged for more airtime, or when Mitt Romney easily slipped past questions about his record on health-care reform. It was when every single GOP candidate on the stage agreed that they would reject a budget deal that was $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. Even Fox News’s Bret Baier couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He asked again just to make sure the assembled candidates had understood the question.

Great lede, right? And his equally strong conclusion:

After the debate, the punditry immediately turned to who won and who lost. Pawlenty, most said, was the clear loser. Romney, Bachmann, and maybe the absent Rick Perry were the possible winners. I would look at it more broadly.

The losers in tonight’s debate were anyone who wants to see the sort of compromise necessary for the political process to work, and anyone who has been convinced that they can achieve their goals simply by restating their convictions. As for the winners? Well, I didn’t see too many of those.

Just wait until the secessionist and the barracuda get involved. 

Somebody please have Ezra Klein interview Rand Paul

  • Can the federal government set the private sector’s minimum wage?
  • Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants?
  • Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform?
  • Can it tell toy companies to test for lead?
  • Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors?

These are the sort of questions that Paul needs to be asked now, because the issue is not “area politician believes kooky but harmless thing.” It’s “area politician espouses extremist philosophy on issue he will be voting on constantly.”  - Ezra Klein 

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