John Nichols | The Nation

Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials at a meeting in George W. Bush's Oval Office. (Reuters/Larry Downing)

George W. Bush’s presidency began on a note destined to inspire skepticism.

Bush did, after all, lose the ballot-box count at the close of his 2000 run for the nation’s top job by 543,895 votes. But with a boost from an outdated Electoral College system and a Supreme Court that decided to make an extraordinary intervention on his behalf, the son of the forty-first president of the United States became the forty-third president of the United States.

And in what historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., long ago identified as the era of the “imperial presidency,” the fact of his tenure entitles Bush to something George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison never got: an official presidential library and museum.

Bush has gone all in.

His library and museum are the biggest of the thirteen that have been established to recognize former presidents: 226,560 square feet on the grounds of the twenty-three-acre Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University near Dallas.

His is also the most expensive of these monumental endeavors, with a $250 million price tag.

But it may not be the most thorough.

News reports tell us that:

Politics is downplayed; the 2004 reelection campaign goes unmentioned. And essentially invisible are Karl Rove, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who the president became somewhat estranged from in his second term.

Bush wants to be remembered as a statesman, not a hawk.

Why would anyone who is hoping to be remembered as a statesman want to avoid being associated with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney?

To ask the question is to answer it.

A case might be made for giving Bush a pass when it comes to downplaying Rumsfeld—whose Pentagon role kept him of the fringe of domestic policy making and who surely took a backseat to Cheney when it came to foreign policy.

But Cheney and Rove were not exactly spectators in the George W. Bush White House.

As Bush’s senior advisor, deputy chief of staff and political czar, Rove proudly positioned himself in the tradition of Mark Hanna, the Gilded Age political operative who created an assessment system to channel the riches of the robber barons into a scheme for “buying” elections with what came to be known as “The Money Power.” Rove’s updating of Hanna’s approach—via his network of contribution-bundling “Bush Rangers” and “Bush Pioneers” and his more recent machinations with the American Crossroads combine—created a crony capitalist behemoth that delivered mightily for Wall Street and the energy industry but steered the party away from core conservative principles and set the stage for the economic turbulence that rocked the last years of his protégé’s presidency.

As Bush’s first-term prince regent, Cheney guided Bush away from the basic premises and principles on which he had campaigned in 2000. Cheney showed little taste for the “compassionate conservatism” that was Bush’s most appealing—and I would suggest sincere—message of the 2000 campaign. And Cheney abandoned Bush’s stated skepticism about positioning the United States as a nation-building “policeman to the world,” embarking instead on a neoconservative rewrite of American foreign policy objectives which, from the very first days of the Bush-Cheney administration, saw the country begin to reject international diplomacy and cooperation in favor a heavy-handed approach that would eventually include invasions, occupations and pressure tactics so crude that some of the country’s closest allies distanced themselves from its endeavors.

Rove liked, or at least appreciated, Bush. They came up together politically and there is no question that at key “decision points” along the former president’s political trajectory, the man they called “Bush’s Brain” did his best to serve his candidate. Which, of course, also served Rove’s ambition to be a defining figure not just in the Republican Party but the broader conservative movement—in much the same way that Mark Hanna’s “service” to William McKinley made it possible for Hanna to define the politics of another era (and to become a very wealthy and powerful figure). But just as Hanna’s name became associated with the backroom deals and abuses of power that progressive reformers (many of them Republicans) decried a century ago, Rove’s name is now synonymous with manipulation of the political process by billionaires, corporations and their cronies.

Cheney’s relationship with Bush was always more complex than Rove’s. It is much harder to suggest that the former vice president ever really served Bush. As Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff during the harshest days of the Bush-Cheney tenure, well explained it, Cheney “became vice president well before George Bush picked him. And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush—personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.”

What this all adds up to is a quite understandable choice by Bush to downplay his former associates.

Aides report that Bush was a very hands-on player in the development of his museum. “He literally looked at every exhibit and said ‘I want this one, and I want that,’ ” says George W. Bush Foundation President Mark Langdale.

So it is that the space devoted to the former president’s commendable efforts to tackle AIDS and malaria in Africa is by all accounts quite substantial. And the section dealing with his stated commitment to “Protecting the Environment” is a good deal grander than those mentioning his response to Hurricane Katrina or the Wall Street meltdown of September 2008.

Such choices fit within the broad debate about Bush’s legacy, which the former president—who is mounting a campaign to improve his image—well understands.

Bush seeks to make a case for himself.

But he does not want to shoulder the burden of the Rove and Cheney legacies.

This is understandable. Ron Suskind noted in his 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill, that Rove and Cheney often appeared to roll over Bush in a mad rush to advance their preferred agendas.

Famously, following the Republican success in the 2002 off-year elections, Treasury Secretary O’Neill (a former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and CEO of Alcoa) counseled that new tax cuts for the rich would be economically and fiscally unwise. Bush seemed to agree. “Haven’t we already given money to rich people?” Bush asked. “Shouldn’t we be giving money to the middle? Won’t people be able to say, ‘You did it once, and then you did it twice, and what was it good for?’ ”

Rove immediately told the president to: “Stick to principle. Stick to principle.” Cheney was typically blunt, explaining: “You know… Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the midterm elections, this is our due.”

Nine days after O’Neill argued against more tax cuts, he got a call—not from Bush, but from Cheney—asking him to resign.

Stories like that offer a fair measure of insight into why Bush would want Americans to remember him, as opposed to Rove and Cheney. Or at the least, to remember him in a better light than his political czar and his vice president. So it is understandable that the focus of The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum would err in that direction.

The problem, of course, is that it was Bush who gave Rove and Cheney the extraordinary power they enjoyed through his first term. And as O’Neill reminds us, that power defined the Bush presidency. Rove and Cheney may indeed have formed a “a praetorian guard that encircled the president.” But it was from Bush, not anyone else, that they gained the authority to form the circle.

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In the middle of Bush’s tenure, Paul O’Neill said: “The president started from scratch and relied on advice of ideologues without any honest brokers in sight.”

There is case to be made that, as Bush’s presidency progressed, he came to recognize that Cheney, in particular, was not the honest broker he needed. Indeed, the story of Bush’s claiming of his own presidency during his second term is the stuff of interesting history. But it is a history that requires a clear recognition of the role that Rove and Cheney played—not a history where the “praetorian guard” remains “essentially invisible.”

Read TheNation.com's exclusive excerpt from Jeremy Scahill's new book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.

The Boston Globe’s online homepage. (www.bostonglobe.com)

When editors at The Boston Globe recognized that their city had been bombed by suspected terrorists who were still at large, they immediately mustered a substantial and experienced newsgathering team to cover one of the most tragic, frightening and unsettling moments in the long history of a great American city.

They got the story, from the epic photos of the heroism of emergency workers last Monday to the remarkable announcement on Friday night of the apprehension of the second suspect in the bombing attack.

the Globe’s web headline, published minutes after the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, reflected the interests and emotions of a great city as a great newspaper should: “Alive, Conscious, Captured.”

Bostonians read the Globe all last week with a passion, as they did the tenacious Boston Herald, its smaller rival in a rare competition for big-city readers. Along with the Globe’s Boston readers, millions of people across the United States and around the world made the paper’s website an Internet hot spot.

That most of this reading occurred online is not news. What we call “newspapers” are better described today as “newsrooms.” It is silly to talk of an “old media” versus “new media” divide. A daily paper is still printed, and some of us love the experience of reading it. But, especially in rapidly-evolving “breaking news” moments, it’s the website that’s got the dynamism. And Twitter: the Globe now has 275,000 followers.

“This shows how vital (metro daily newspapers) are when disasters strike,” Globe editor Brian McGrory told The Huffington Post. “The  Globe and its website became something like a town square, where people turned for information and they got it.”

The Globe’s site was packed with instant and detailed coverage and analysis and superb editorials on the conflicts and concerns that arise in these moments. Some mistakes were made along the way, as is always the case when news is breaking so rapidly. But the Globe’s 24/7 coverage—which placed immense demands on its staff and on its limited resources—was overwhelmingly accurate, detailed and insightful. Media writer Seth Mnookin hailed the paper’s coverage of the bombing and the search for the killers as “Tireless. Dogged. Spirited.”

And the Globe’s coverage was something else: Free.

The paper knocked down the paywall that separated potential readers from what is usually a subscription-only website. Editors stripped a banner across the top of the webpage reading: “BostonGlobe.com is currently available to all readers.”

The readers came. On the day the paywall came down, the paper attracted 1.2 million unique visitors—six times the normal amount. Of course, dramatic events drew readers; of course, many of the new readers were from outside the Boston area. But the numbers were way, way higher—locally, nationally and even internationally—because readers did not have to jump through digital hoops and type in credit card numbers.

So dropping the paywall made sense from a standpoint of civic responsibility and from the classic journalistic standpoint of wanting to get new information and ideas to the broadest possible audience.

But it was not viewed as as economic success for the Globe, which is currently up for sale and wrestling with all the financial challenges that face American newsrooms. On Monday, the paywall will return.

That’s understandable but, to my view, unfortunate.

It is no secret that this is an era when major media outlets are desperate to find ways to pay for journalism. In some cases, this really is because they are out of touch with their audience and because alternative media is simply more compelling. But, more often than not, this is because of a dramatic shift in media economics. Advertising revenues that once sustained vast newsgathering operations, with deep commitments to cover communities, states, the nation and the world, have collapsed. And online advertising does not begin to provide sufficient support to pay for the journalism even of popular news sites.

Many publications (including The Nation), and most major dailes, have experimented with strategies to get people to pay for news stories, columns and editorials.

the Globe erected a subscription-style paywall two years ago to try to collect revenue from readers. It has had some success with this approach, as have other publications that are experimenting with models that charge for individual articles or groups of articles.

But when all news broke loose, dropping the Globe’s paywall was a “no-brainer.”

The decision by the editors to collapse the paywall at a critical juncture for the city the paper has covered since 1872 was not unprecedented. A number of major papers did so when Superstorm Sandy was hitting, as did several during in the aftermath of the Boston bombing.

But the Globe’s move was especially wise, and valuable. And it ought to provoke a new discussion about whether paywalls make sense, economically or journalistically.

Newsrooms needs resources to pay reporters, photographers and editors to produce quality journalism that is sufficient not only to inform citizens but to sustain a democratic discourse. And it’s not wrong to ask readers, listeners and viewers to contribute. Indeed, Los Angeles Times national writer Matt Pearce announced Friday night: “If everybody in Boston doesn’t pay the Globe back with a subscription after all this, not sure what more you could ask from a newspaper.”

I agree. If Boston pays the Globe back with a flood of new subscriptions, I’ll be thrilled.

But we ought not presume that this will be the case.

Americans who recognize the importance of not just journalism but the daily amalgamation of journalism that is produced by classic urban newsrooms—with substantial numbers of at least reasonably compensated reporters, columnists, editors, photographers, graphic specialists and all the other people who once made newspapers work and who now make news-oriented websites work—should be thinking of how to get the most news to the most people.

The huge readership—and the huge regard—that the Globe achieved during a critical week in the history of its hometown reminds us that there are a lot of readers out there who don’t leap paywalls.

That’s unhealthy for the future of big urban newsrooms, for the future of journalism and for the future of a vibrant and nuanced democratic discourse.

A lot of traditionalists would like to imagine that the people will eventually pay. After all, they say, newspapers have always charged for subscriptions—or copies on the newsstand.

But the Internet is different. It’s built on the premise that information should be free. And even if some newspapers make some money by erecting them, veteran technology writer Mathew Ingram correctly notes that paywalls that are hailed as “successful” still are not “making up for the continuing decline in print ad revenue.”

So it is that newspapers keep closing, cutting back and laying off reporters, photographers and editors.

But it’s not just the economic challenge that worries me. When a paywall limits access to the journalism produced by a great city’s newsroom, the public debate suffers. People can still get information, but they are edged out of the core conversations of their community—and often toward sources that reinforce rather than challenge and expand assumptions.

My point here is not to suggest that metropolitan dailies—or, to be more precise, the newsrooms that now produce the most popular news sites—can or will simply provide great reporting and analysis at no cost. What I am suggesting is that publications should be examining alternatives to paywalls.

If we learn anything from the Globe’s experience of recent days, it is that it’s a good idea to make information and ideas available to all readers in a moment of crisis. But why isn’t it a good idea to make information and ideas available during elections? During great debate about national, state or local priorities? Or during periods when cities are “getting back to normal” after terrifying events?

In other countries, journalism is sustained with public subsidies and tax breaks—not just for muscular public broadcasting systems but for print and digital journalism. There are, as well, models for running newsrooms (like that of The Tampa Bay Times) as nonprofit or low-profit enterprises, and for leveraging foundation money and community investment to sustain journalism. Some communities—including St. Louis and Seattle—have seen the use of public radio stations as platforms for sites bring together laid-off newspaper reporters to cover local news.

People who care about journalism can and should be engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about how to sustain journalism in the twenty-first century. And this week’s decision by the Globe to drop its paywall should get not just reporters, editors and publishers thinking about those alternatives. It should get citizens engaged with the issue.

Here’s why:

For Boston in particular, but for the nation in general, this past week has been daunting. People haven’t just wrestled with the news, they have wrestled with questions about the news means.

It is natural in such a circumstance to try to figure things out, to struggle with questions about specific events and about broad threats and deep fears. About clues and indicators. About responsibility and accountability. About the balance between public safety and civil liberties.

This wrestling with issues and ideas, this search for explanations, can be frustrating and contentious. But it’s healthy. It means that people are engaged. Even when they make mistakes, they tend to do so sincerely.

What’s important is that citizens have a steady flow of information and analysis and—of particular significance in so intense a circumstance—thoughtful reflection that helps steer the discussion beyond kneejerk reactions.

This is what the Globe provided. Its coverage was rich and nuanced. Its commentary was adventurous and challenging. Editorials provided comfort and perspective, reminding readers: “The fact that the Marathon takes place on Patriots Day may or may not have been a factor in the attack; it is, absolutely, a part of what makes the event unique, a celebration of both nature and history, the coming of spring and the region’s connection to the Revolutionary War.”

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The Globe’s editorial pages even found room to defend Family Guy, noting: “A real-life terrorist attack isn’t an appropriate source of humor. But some snippets of old movies and TV shows are bound to prompt cringe-inducing associations in the wake of an attack; still, viewers will understand the difference between a calculated insult and an unintended coincidence. So, while Fox executives showed commendable sensitivity in taking the unusual step of removing an old ‘Family Guy’ episode that involved the Boston Marathon from the web, it was an unnecessary gesture.”

That’s one example of the Globe’s many invitations to think freely, while focusing on what matters. A great paper—even if it’s not read on paper—can still do this, especially if it speaks to everyone. That’s what the Globe did last week. It deserves celebration and emulation—especially of the banner that reads: “available to all readers.”

How not to normalize terrorism in the wake of what happened in Boston? Read Aura Bogado’s interview with Sohail Daulatzai.

Congressman Keith Ellison. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

America is not broke, despite what advocates for austerity would have us believe.

This is a very wealthy country.

Unfortunately, transfers of that wealth are not taxed in the same way as the work of American nurses, carpenters, bus drivers and shop clerks. As a result, the federal government struggles to balance budgets, and a yawning gap, between a super-rich 1 percent and the great mass of everybody else, keeps growing.

Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, wants to do something about that.

Ellison is reintroducing his Inclusive Prosperity Act, a proposal to add a small “financial transactions tax” on high-volume, high-speed trading by Wall Street speculators. The tax—similar to one that the US imposed until 1966, and to taxes maintained by 40 countries worldwide—would generate roughly $1 trillion in revenue over 10 years.

That’s money that can help to stabilize federal finances and pay for programs that are currently threatened by the proponents of austerity.

“A lot of people in Washington like to talk about reducing the debt and deficits. Well if you really care about reducing the deficit, how about asking Wall Street speculators to pay their fair share?” says Ellison. “This bill will add a tax of a fraction of a percent on transactions made by the same Wall Street firms and stock traders who crashed our economy in 2008. This tax alone will generate up to $300 billion a year in revenue, stabilizing the deficit and allowing us to invest in the things that matter—education, roads and bridges, and health care for our seniors and veterans.”

Ellison recognizes reality.

“We’re not broke," he says. "We’ve got plenty of money. It’s just not in the hands of the American people because the people with so much of the wealth bought lobbyists and influence to get loopholes for themselves so that they would not have to pay for the civilization that is America.”

Ellison’s not listening to the lobbyists. He’s facing the facts.

“The money is in the hands of the most privileged and well-to-do Americans, many of whom churn—and I don’t say ‘trade,’ I mean ‘churn’—stocks, bonds and derivatives on Wall Street,” says the congressman from Minnesota who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “So one of the ways for us as Americans to recoup the money is to tax them when they do this churning of these financial assets. It’s a transaction tax. It is appropriately named by its most vigorous advocates a ‘Robin Hood Tax.’”

The Robin Hood Tax won’t solve all of America’s budget problems. But the union that has been leading the advocacy for passage of Ellison’s proposal, National Nurses United, notes that it “would create a Wall Street sales tax, providing critical new revenue for such critical needs as jobs, healthcare, education, and the international fight against HIV/AIDS and climate change. It would also allow the U.S. to join the rest of the world in a growing system of financial transaction taxes.”

Ellison’s bill is attracting support from more members of Congress—Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, Judy Chu, D-California, John Conyers D-Michigan, Barbara Lee, D-California, James McGovern, D-Massachusetts and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia—and from leaders of groups such as National People’s Action, the National Organization for Women, HealthGAP and Friends of the Earth,

"As the Inclusive Prosperity Act demonstrates, there is not actually a scarcity of public funds for global public goods," Friends of the Earth officials explained in endorsing the Robin Hood Tax movement. "It is a question of political will."

That will is growing, in the US, and abroad.

Eleven European countries—including key US allies and trading partners—are currently in the process of embracing financial transaction tax proposals.

There’s a dawning international recognition that the answer to austerity is not merely to defend necessary programs from assaults by billionaire-funded groups such as America’s “Fix the Debt” coalition—and the politicians who defer to the pressure for cuts. It is to find the resources to maintain existing programs and to fund new initiatives.

This is something that Americans who seek to establish a genuine safety net for the ailing, the aged and the vulnerable—as well as the whole of society—well understand. That’s why, after Ellison reintroduces his legislation, the Robin Hood Tax Campaign, National Nurses United and other supporters of a financial transactions tax will rally and march in Washington on April 20.

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Their message is directed not just at Congress but at the Obama administration, which has been slow to embrace international efforts to implement the Robin Hood Tax.

They’re demanding that Treasury Secretary Lew and President Obama “Stand with the People NOT Wall Street,” and saying, “Wall Street banks and corporations are raking in record profits while our communities continue to suffer job losses and cuts to public programs. Instead of lining the pockets of corporate fat cats, this money should go to our children’s Head Start programs, Grandma’s retirement, and fixing our broken healthcare system. It’s time for the administration to stand with the people and tax Wall Street.”

Working America, the AFL-CIO's primary non-union offshoot, is launching a 50-state strategy. Read Josh Eidelson's report.

Representative Greg Walden. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The most misread—perhaps the proper word is “miscovered”—story of the current budget wrangling in Washington is that of Republican Congressman Greg Walden’s savage condemnation of President Obama’s proposal of the “chained-CPI” Social Security cut.

“When you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again,” declared the congressman from Oregon, “I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country.”

That stirred a fair measure of criticism from the regular readers of talking points distributed by the “Fix the Debt” coalition of Wall Street billionaires who want to cut benefits for the vulnerable in able to fund tax cuts for, um, Wall Street billionaires. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough ripped Walden: “[He] attacked the president from the left. He was harsher than I think Bernie Sanders was. He was harder on the president than I’ve seen Robert Reich be.”

True believers in the austerity fantasy were upset that a Republican was objecting to balancing the budget on the backs of seniors, orphans and people with disabilities. The Club for Growth complained that “the last thing Republicans should attack the Democrats for is for making the most minor reforms to our entitlement programs.” Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin proposed that Republicans “muzzle” Walden. Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who knows Walden, was so upset about anti-cuts talk coming from his side of the aisle that he declared that “for Republicans to do this is beyond shameless.”

So the headlines announce that Republicans were squabbling. As if that is news.

The real news, the story that is not getting anywhere near the attention it merits from Sunday talk-show pundits and Sunday talk-show politicians, is the story of why Walden is saying what he is saying. And why the austerity caucus is so upset.

If Walden were merely a Republican backbencher representing a retirement community, or if he were a freshman congressman from a swing district, his remarks would be dismissed as a predictable exercise in political self-service.

But Walden is no newcomer to the House, or to high-stakes political campaigning.

He’s one of the savviest political players in Congress. A veteran state legislator who managed congressional campaigns before his own election to the House in 1999, he “gets” how to win elections in competitive regions and states. And his fellow Republicans recognize this reality: He chaired the House Republican Leadership through 2010 and, when Republicans retook the chamber that year, he chaired the House Majority Transition Committee.

Walden is now the head of the National Republican Campaign Committee, meaning that he is responsible for making sure that Republicans hold their House majority in 2014. That explains why Walden is ripping the president’s decision to go with “chained-CPI.” And it explains why austerity opponents are ripping Walden—they fear that any rips in the fabric of fantasy that suggests only a cuts agenda (as opposed to a growth agenda) will balance budgets.

Walden is not reading from the “Fix the Debt” playbook.

He is interested in winning elections.

And he knows that a Democratic president talking about Social Security cuts is a winning issue for Republicans.

A cynical winning issue, to be sure. But a winning one all the same.

Indeed, even as top Republicans went through the motions of criticizing Walden, one of his closest aides pointed to polling that shows overwhelming opposition to Social Security cuts and explained with regard to the congressman: “His job is to hold the House.”

Translation: Ripping the president’s “chained-CPI” proposal is smart politics.

Here’s why.

Even if it is cynical for the party of Paul Ryan to object to assaults on Social Security and Medicare by a Democratic president, the cynicism works. Pointing out—loudly—that a Democratic president and his allies are abandoning a historic Democratic commitment does not turn Democratic voters into Republican voters, it turns Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents into non-voters.

This has long been the essential element to Republican success in mid-term elections.

A key to the Republican breakthrough of 1994 was the fact that former President Bill Clinton had advocated for and eventually signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. The scheme, while enormously popular with Wall Street speculators and newspaper editorial writers, was feared and despised by union members. Those voters stood down in congressional districts across the country. Turnout was abysmal, dozens of Democratic House members lost and Newt Gingrich became the Speaker of the House.

Never mind that Clinton had secured passage of NAFTA with the help of Gingrich and the Republicans. Frustration among union voters who had enthusiastically backed Democrats in 1992 gave the advantage to the GOP in 1994.

Similarly, in 2010, many of the prime talking point for Republicans as they displaced Democrats in congressional districts across the country were taken from the traditional Democratic playbook: Obama had not done enough to create jobs, it was said, and Obama’s health reforms “took” $700 billion from Medicare. Turnout tanked among likely Democratic voters.

Never mind that the obstruction of job creation came from the Republicans, and never mind that Medicare efficiencies associated with the Affordable Care Act project were embraced by Republicans like Ryan in their budget plans. The disappointment among Democrats created an “enthusiasm gap” that favored the Republicans.

Greg Walden, who was a prominent Oregon legislator and potential gubernatorial candidate in 1994, and who was an essential player in the House Republican leadership in 2010, knows the history. Unfortunately, too few Democrats "get it." Of course, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, does; he refers to a Democratic president undermining Social Security as "terrible politics." So, too, does Congressman Bill Pascrell, the New Jersey Democrat who says of the president's "chained-CPI" advocacy, "Seniors vote in even heavier numbers, proportionately, in off-year elections. So just looking at a political standpoint...I would think that this would be a damning blow to our chances of taking back the House next year."

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That’s what Greg Walden is counting on.

That's why he's saying what he is saying.

Anyone who is interested in the politics of 2014 knows that Greg Walden is not pontificating about policy. He is laying political traps that will spring on the Democrats if they put their party on the side of “chained-CPI” and the austerity agenda.

Meanwhile, Darrell Issa and company ramp up their assault on the Postal Service. Read Allison Kilkenny's take.