The Summit.

What a fun way to spend a day at work! Anyway, just 2 moments to point out now that the transcript is available:

1. In response to the argument that the government should not be regulating minimum insurance standards because .. the government shouldn't be regulating things, period:

THE PRESIDENT: We could set up a system where food was probably cheaper than it is right now if we just eliminated meat inspectors and we eliminated any regulations in terms of how food is distributed and how it's stored. I'll bet in terms of drug prices, we would definitely reduce prescription drug prices if we didn't have a drug administration that makes sure that we test the drugs so that they don't kill us.

But we don't do that. We make some decisions to protect consumers in every aspect of our lives. And we have bipartisan support for doing it, because what we don't want is a situation in which suddenly people think they're getting one thing and they're getting something else -- they're harmed by a product.

2. And a funny moment:

THE PRESIDENT: Let me just make this point, John, because we're not campaigning anymore. The election is over.

SENATOR McCAIN: I'm reminded of that every day.

On a related note, this is a great piece by Ezra Klein about the "philosophical" differences between the two parties that people kept bringing up.

...just as many people discover religion in the face of tragedy, the GOP appears to have discovered philosophy in the face of a Democratic majority.

Anniversary.

It was exactly a year ago when I went to La Guardia to pick up Olive. She turned out to be the sweetest thing and I never stop being amused by the simplest things she does. Like this morning when she jumped up on the bed, licked my face and decided to lay down on my face, of all the places. Here's to our first year together, my little beast.

The Weird Idiocy of the Filibuster in the Senate.

The Senate just passed the $15b jobs bill, with 70 yeas and 28 nays.

Now, the extremely weird thing is that the cloture vote (ie, ending debate on the bill to allow for the actual vote on the merits of the bill, ie breaking the filibuster) was 62 to 30.

In other words: on Monday night, there were 8 people who didn't even want to allow a vote on the bill who by Wednesday morning voted in favor of the bill.

Huh??

Edge.

Having grown up in one country and lived all of my adult life in another, yet not really identifying with or feeling fully at home in either, I appreciated Tony Judt's essay on the New York Review of Books blog.

Speaking of which, his recent collection of memoirs in the last 3 issues of NYRB is well worth purchasing the online subscription. But in case you're hesitating, here's the first one from the series, which can be accessed for free.

Hear That, McCain?

On CNN's Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer asks NATO military chairman about gays in the military:

BLITZER: Let's talk about gays serving openly in the military. It's a big debate here in the United States as you well know, right now. Most of the NATO allies, including in Italy, allow gays to serve openly in the military. How is that working out in the NATO alliance?

DI PAOLA: I think it's working out quite well. In the end, fundamentally, the issue here is the sexual orientation is not an issue insofar as you being a soldier or whatever you would be in the environment you are working for, that is not a problem. Sexual orientation is a personal matter, not a matter for state policy.

BLITZER: So it hasn't undermined unit cohesion, combat readiness?

DI PAOLA: Absolutely not. If there is misconduct, applied to a gay or non-gay, that would be treated as misconduct. So your sexual orientation does not have to influence the environment in which you work.

BLITZER: When NATO troops, whether from Canada, Britain, or Germany, or France or Italy, serve in Afghanistan, for example, with U.S. combat troops and there are gays serving side by side, have you seen one example of an incident that has undermined the ability to fight?

DI PAOLA: I have not seen it. I am not aware of it. Of course, I don't know all the cases that might have happened. But I'm not aware of any cases of any relevance.

SO, for someone to argue against gays in the military, they not only have to explain why the US military is different in this respect from almost every other military in NATO, but also why it is a problem for gays to serve in the US military when US troops routinely serve along side with gays from other countries during NATO missions. I guess the only possible answer would be that American gays are somehow lesser or more problematic when serving openly than foreign gays, and I am dying to see someone explain that.

Editor-At-Home.

All I have to say about Krugman's profile in the New Yorker is that when I become a big time columnist/writer/academic, I hope Daniel will be my at-home editor. Because that's really neat.

Tufts, Blonde.

Reality imitates fiction - it's just a little sad when it choses to imitate Legally Blonde .. the timeless classic featuring Reese Witherspoon who gets into Harvard Law thanks to a video in lieu of an application essay.

That was my first thought when I read about Tufts encouraging college applicants to make YouTubes of themselves. But I'll let the admission dean explain the brilliant idea in his own words:

Lee Coffin, the dean of undergraduate admissions, said the idea came to him last spring, when watching a YouTube video someone had sent him. “I thought, ‘If this kid applied to Tufts, I’d admit him in a minute, without anything else,’ ” Mr. Coffin said.

Really? Great.

Truth With An Error Range.

A recent article by Megan McArdle cause a mini storm in the health blogging circles. Moved by the assertion made by Ezra Klein back in the fall that Joe Lieberman was willing to cause the deaths of hundred of thousands of people by threatening to block reform, McArdles goes on to examine the link between mortality and health insurance and after finding various reasons to ignore or disqualify various studies on the issue, she concludes that while there might be some effect, it's hard to tell how big it is and because it's hard to measure exactly how big it is, it's probably too small to matter.

Needless to say, McArdle has been attacked from all sides (actually, mostly from the left) for this article and it's easy to see why. While her article doesn't insist that health insurance is irrelevant and she does say "even if we did agree that insurance rarely confers significant health benefits, that would not necessarily undermine the case for a national health-care program" by launching a pedantic attack on a statistic, she helped to undermine what many would consider a "logical" case for expanding health coverage to everyone.

There are two reasons why I find this whole debate incredibly annoying and offensive.

First of all, by making a reasonable case that the effect of health insurance on mortality are hard to determine precisely she then goes on to argue that we can't say how large it is. If one study says 50, another study says 200, it could probably as well be 0, seems to be the argument. The truly annoying thing about this argument is that from everything McArdle says, she doesn't seem to actually believe that there is no relationship, but she is suggesting that it might be small and either way no one can claim with any certainty what exactly it is.

I guess McArdle deserves credit for correctly identifying a problem with the studies of this sort - they aren't perfect and they aren't precise. However, does it mean they are thus entirely irrelevant? That's what she seems to be suggesting in her concluding paragraph: "we should have had a better handle on the case for expanded coverage—and, more important, the evidence behind it—before we embarked on a year-long debate that divided our house against itself." Translation: why didn't you pro-reform morons get your facts straight before wasting everyone's time with this non sense for a whole year?

Therein lies the insane contradiction of what McArdle is saying: on the one hand, she discredits the assertion that expanding health insurance saves lives by showing how evidence is hard to attain; on the other hand, she says we need better evidence to show exactly how many lives were saved by health insurance. Unless we have an exact measurement, it's useless; if it pretends to be exact and precise it's probably wrong.

McArdle's sophistry is equivalent to asking a man on a boat in the middle of an ocean how deep the water underneath is. The man clearly sees that the water is very deep but he has no good way to measure it until he realizes that he can tie a heavy rock to one end of a thread, drop it in the ocean and measure the length of the thread until the rock hits the bottom. Of course the bottom of the ocean is uneven, so multiple measurements will result in different results. Faced with this imperfect technique and variation in results, McArdle would probably say that we can't conclude that the ocean is very deep. Even though it is intuitive and obvious to all the rest of us that the ocean is very deep, because one can't measure exactly how deep, she would suggest there's some likelihood it's shallow, and maybe we're all just imagining the ocean in the first place. In the case of health care, McArdle's logic would suggest that because we can't exactly measure the link between insurance and health outcomes, we shouldn't be so obsessed with providing insurance to everyone. In the case of our man on a boat, McArdle would probably send the man without an oxygen tank to find something on the bottom of the ocean because he can't prove exactly how deep it is. Despite the preponderance of logic, common sense, intuition and countless anecdotes of people who lose their lives because they can't get the care they need, McArdle is totally unmoved and declares the deep ocean of the problems that uninsured have a mere mirage.

The other reason why this debate is incredibly annoying is because it's entirely besides the point. Yes, it would be great if we could say with total certainty how many people die each year because of lack of insurance and it would be awesome if we could therefore accuse someone blocking reform of killing hundreds of thousands of people. But even in the absence of that, the case for reform is no weaker. In fact, disproving (or undermining) any one "estimate" does not change the fact that the system is incredibly broken and unfair. And while it might be fun to play around with statistics to make a case one way or the other, the truth has an error range and no estimate or projection can be relied upon with absolute certainty. Ultimately, this debate is about values and trade-offs and I wish those hiding behind pseudo-statistical analysis would debate it as such.

What Now?

New article for Zahraničná politika. Other articles here.

What Now?

On January 19th, 2010, the good people of Massachusetts were voting to elect a US Senator to replace the deceased Ted Kennedy, a Democrat who held the seat since 1962. Ever since the Republican candidate Scott Brown was announced the winner of that election, the Democrats have been in a crisis that is threatening to completely dismantle the young Obama administration.

First some background is due. Prior to this election, the Democrats (in combination with the independent Joe Lieberman) held 60 seats in the Senate, and the Republicans held 40. Because a Republican won the seat, the Democrats lost their 60-vote majority. Now, in most legislative bodies, a 59% majority is still a perfectly good majority to pass a bill. Not so in the US Senate, where the rules require that in order to take a vote on a bill, the debate has to be formally brought to conclusion by 60 or more votes. Therefore, losing the 60th seat amounted to losing the ability to pass anything in the Senate. While Democrats technically still have a majority of seats in the Senate, what matters more is the other 41 seats occupied by Senators that represent 37% of the US population, who can bring the Senate to a halt any time they wish. If you thought that the US was a representative democracy, you might want to rethink that.

There is no area that illustrates better the effects this has had on American politics than healthcare. Prior to the special election, before the Democrats lost their 60th seat in the Senate, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed their version of reform. Like they would with any other bill, after passing their respective versions, the representatives of the two bodies started negotiating a compromise bill that could be put to vote and passed in both chambers of Congress, thus finally enacting health reform, after nearly a year of hearings, negotiations and compromises - and a century of failed attempts. Indeed, when the President set the date for his first State of the Union speech for January 27th, 2010, it was commonly expected that he will list health reform as one of his first year accomplishments.

The situation changed dramatically on January 19th when a Republican won the Massachusetts senate seat. The implications of this loss quickly reverberated throughout DC. On a practical level, the loss of the 60 vote supermajority meant that the standard route that everyone envisioned prior to the election - passing a compromise bill in both chambers - was no longer a viable option, since the Democrats were now one vote short of the necessary supermajority in the Senate. As a result, the only option to still pass reform was for the House to simply adopt the bill already passed by the Senate prior to the special election. (Remember, as long as both chambers of US Congress pass the same legislation, it becomes law.) With a Democratic majority in the House and a simple majority required to pass a measure, one might think that concluding this saga would be a breeze.

However, what happened in Massachusetts had a much more profound impact than simply losing a seat in the Senate. With a solidly Democratic state like Massachusetts suddenly voting Republican, the narrative that quickly developed in the media was that the election in Massachusetts was basically a litmus test for Obama, his administration and the Democrats at large. The failure of a Democrat to secure the seat despite hugely favorable position in the polls just a few weeks prior to the election was being interpreted by many as a sign of meaningful dissatisfaction in the electorate. Even more specifically to healthcare, many commentators insisted that popular opposition to the current reform effort occurring in the Congress was behind the downfall of the Democratic candidate. Whether or not these theories have any truth to them, it is understandable that all Democrats in the Congress must have asked themselves what this means for them and their prospects during the midterm elections in November. After the loss in Massachusetts, which no one saw coming, are they risking their reelection by voting for the health bill? Something along these lines must have been happening, because by January 21st, the speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared that she doesn't have the votes to pass the Senate bill.

This chain of events clearly had an effect on Obama's State of the Union speech. Instead of taking a victory lap for passing health reform, Obama felt it necessary to urge the legislators: "Do not walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close. Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people." Certainly, these are not words of someone confident in the imminent passage of the bill; on the other hand, some optimists in the pro-reform crowd might have rejoiced: he still cares about reform, despite what happened in Massachusetts! Clearly, Obama did not drop the issue entirely; however, the fact that he spent barely 5 minutes in the second half of his 69 minute speech on something that he and the Congress spent a whole year deliberating would suggest that he would rather not risk being remembered as the president who went down in flames in his first term due to his aggressive insistence on health reform. Instead, Obama used the speech to outline new priorities - the economy, financial sector reform, and the deficit.

At this point, many have written off health reform as dead. The irony of the situation is that not many envisioned the process getting this close - and its path certainly was not easy. After the August recess and a wave of attacks from all sides this column all but predicted its failure. Which is why after passing through both chambers of the Congress, it seemed all but inevitable and very few could see what would stop its momentum - until that fatal election in Massachusetts.
So what does this all mean for Obama, the administration and Democrats generally? On the one hand, it is hard to make a bulletproof argument that the Democrats should keep on marching fearlessly without a second thought about public preferences - an arrogance that was the staple of the last two administrations. On the other hand, it is not exactly obvious that letting health reform fail will save them from the anger that is brewing in the American public and that was at least part of the reason for the Democratic loss in Massachusetts. Yes, health reform has become less popular - a quick look at the polls can prove that (http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/healthplan.php). Still, will simply reversing course on health care be the saving grace for the Democrats? Unlikely. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling shows that the Democrats' chances at the midterms are not necessary better if reform fails - in fact, fewer people are likely to vote Democrat if reform fails. It seems that whatever damage health care is doing to the Democrats has already been done and retreating from it now can only do more damage. As Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic pointed out, letting reform die would have a threefold effect: first, it will discredit the party in the eyes of those who supported the effort - their base; second, it won't prevent the Republicans from campaigning against them as supporters of reform (they voted for it once before!) - and flip-floppers (they keep changing their minds!), and third, it will rob them of the chance to point to one big accomplishment. The last piece is the most critical one, not only in a symbolic sense (passing bills means "getting things done") but also in a practical sense, that is, there were enough concrete positive measures that would become effective immediately and be perceive positively. And so, even if the public is now riled up against reform, once they started experiencing its early benefits, they would quite possibly appreciate it.

Thinking about the current situation more broadly, if the result of the special election is the failure of health care, I deeply worry about the next 3 years and the ability of this administration to do anything at a time when crucial reforms are desperately needed in America. For if this one road block has the power to create such paralysis among the Democrats that they are not able to take the roads that are still widely open to them to deliver on a key domestic priority, what are their chances to tackle their next agenda items that are just as important yet controversial, like the economy, financial sector reform, climate change? And more importantly, if they fail on this one occasion, why should they deserve to even have the chance to try? After all, how can the country and indeed the whole world face the challenges of the post-Great Recession era with an impotent US government? My message is simple: wake up, Democrats, or die.

30 million reasons.

In today's column, Brooks lists the reasons to support and oppose the healthcare bill currently under consideration in the Senate.

His reasons to oppose the bill anger me, each in its own unique weakly reasoned and misleading way. But the thing that bothers me the most is the opening sentence:

"The first reason to support the Senate health care bill is that it would provide insurance to 30 million more Americans."

Brooks spends exactly 21 words in his 800-word column on this fact as if to quickly get that out of the way so he can talk about the important stuff.

Well, here is my list:

1. It will expand health insurance to 30 million Americans.

2. It will be budget neutral .. and I don't care what Brooks says about the alleged political inconceivability of spending cuts. If you really believe that you can't support legislation because the Congress will never be able to stick to its targeted savings embedded in it, that's political nihilism and effectively invalidates any further debate. On the one hand he wants more cost control, on the other hand he doesn't believe that the cost cutting measures in place will be implemented. What exactly does that leave the Congress with then?

3. It will expand health insurance to 30 million Americans.

4. It will save tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives every year.

5. In case you missed it, it will expand health insurance to 30 million Americans.

6. It will launch a host of ideas to improve the system.

We're not talking about anything revolutionary or immediate here but I have absolutely no idea what else Brooks is looking for that would:

(a) improve quality and efficiency

(b) correct all the messed up incentives currently in place

(c) cut not just wasteful spending but also total spending (that seems to be what he is looking for in his reason to oppose # 2)

(d) and at the same time do all magic this BY MEANS OF A SINGLE BILL and AT THE SAME TIME not be achieved with some measure of government involvement in the current system (which he cites as reason #4 to oppose).

Brooks is opposing the bill because it fails to live up some vague ideal of "getting the fundamental incentives right" .. but he also expects us to believe that it's a tough call for him, and he "flip flops" every day, as if the bill kept changing dramatically overnight from one that fundamentally transforms the system to a bad one that only insures 30 million more people without bending the cost curve.

As if all this time it seemed like we might, in the end, suddenly, find the holy grail .. and - OMG, oops - we didn't, so - sorry 30 million uninsured Americans, better luck in 16 years!

And those 350,000 of you that die in the meantime because you have no coverage - you can rest in peace because .. we didn't slow innovation!

You Know You Made It When ..

.. a dorky historian uses you as an example of flamboyance.

"To be recommended humble discretion by President Sarkozy is like being counselled modesty in dress by Lady Gaga, or self-denial by a banker."

Thanks, TGA, for a hump day chuckle. And an otherwise good article on the Swiss minaret craziness.

Boeuf Bourguignon.

Because this blog does have "eat" in its title, some pictures from my effort to make Boeuf Bourguignon a la Julia Child.

You start with oil, butter and bacon, of course.

You pat the beef dry with paper towels and display it on a white cutting board to take a nice picture.

Then you do a million other steps, all of which you forget to take pictures of .. oh, except the onions ..

.. and mushrooms ..

.. all of which are sauteed in butter - naturally! While the beef is braising in the oven for 3 hours, you realize you're starving and you run out to buy some cheese - how French! - and consume tons of it with crackers and wine.

When the meat is done and your whole home smells like butter and beef, you take a nice picture of the beef ..

.. and conclude that you're entirely too full of cheese to eat much of it. Refrigerate and reheat it the next day, when the flavor developed into even more orgasmic dimensions.

Bon Appétit!

Warning: This recipe was developed by Julia Child to prevent weight loss by long distance runners despite training as much as 50 miles per week. Reading this post alone is equivalent to consuming a tablespoon of butter. Eat some bread.

Clueless.

I have to admit: I have no idea what the US should do in Afganistan and I don't have a strong view on Obama's decision about this on Tuesday. And judging from reading the million and a half comments about it in the last few day, nor does anyone else really. Given the insane mish-mash of entirely contradicting elements of the genesis of the war, the current situation and the variety of possible ultimate goals, it's impossible to have an answer that will be entirely satisfying to anyone - and so the critics abound.

Meanwhile, I like the analysis of the Tuesday speech put forth in this TNR article:

"the rhetoric does, I think, help to answer a question that a lot of pundits have been puzzling over for the past year: What, exactly, is Barack Obama's overarching worldview when it comes to foreign policy? For a long time, I've felt I didn't really know. After last night's speech, I suspect Obama doesn't really know either. A politician who is capable of sounding such dissonant notes in the same speech is a politician who is still figuring out his first principles of foreign policy. This might help explain some of the more confusing things about Obama's first year in office: how, for instance, a president who has found his way to a human-rights-friendly policy on Afghanistan could have seemed so cold to human rights in his approach to Iran and China; or how a candidate who once spoke forcefully about the need to address genocide in Sudan has proven to be such a disaster on the issue now that he is in office."

On a slightly different note, I really enjoy the proposal to institute a war tax to pay for this insanity. And not because I want to pay more taxes, but because it exposes the hypocrisy of proponents of escalating the war who at once want to send more troops, but don't want to pay for it with tax hikes, even thought they are allegedly fiscally conservative (yes, I'm talking about Republicans here). And, in a sense, it will put the question to the nation as a whole: is this war worth paying for and if it's not worth paying for, why is it worth fighting?

Dubai.

An interesting article about Dubai .. but this part is particularly insightful:

"In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex. But they only want to have sex with boys – 15- to 21-year-olds. I'm 27, so I'm too old now."

Marie's Secret?

"In VR [velvet revolution], it is not just the Abbé Sieyès who survives. Louis XVI gets to keep a nice little palace in Versailles, and Marie Antoinette starts a successful line in upmarket lingerie."

Timothy Garton Ash in a recent article in the NY Review of Books, explaining one of the differences between old-style revolutions and velvet revolutions.

Tough First Years.

Regarding Obama's first year, Joe Klein makes a good point:

"Stepping back a bit, I do see a metapattern that extends over the 40 years since Richard Nixon's Southern strategy began the drift toward more ideological political parties: Democrats have tough first years in the presidency. Of the past seven Presidents, the two Bushes rank at the top in popularity after one year, while Obama and Bill Clinton rank at the bottom, with Jimmy Carter close by. There is a reason for that. Democrats come to office eager to govern the heck out of the country. They take on impossible issues, like budget-balancing and health care reform. They run into roadblocks — from their own unruly ranks as well as from Republicans. They get lost in the details. A tax cut is much easier to explain than a tax increase. A foreign policy based in bluster — railing against an "axis of evil" — is easier to sell than a foreign policy based in nuance."

Human Inventions.

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason.

While listening to NPR I came upon a segment with Thomas Frank who has an article in Playboy (slightly unfortunate venue) about Glenn Beck. During the segment he points out the conservatives' reverence for the founding fathers generally and Beck's obsession with Thomas Paine in particular.

False Choice.

According to Brooks, "we face a brutal choice. Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one. We all have to decide what we want at this moment in history, vitality or security."

It is strange to conclude that reforming health care is a simple trade off between vitality or security from the fact that the current bills do not bend the cost curve (and never could, by Brooks' logic), when the principal reason why this is so is because Republicans, the great conservative minds, did everything in their power to strip serious cost containment out of every version of the bill (eg, independent Medicare payment commission, "death panels", strong public option etc.).

Yes, Brooks is right to point out that the current bills would do little do contain costs, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should ask ourselves if we want to give up growth for security. The question we should be asking ourselves is if we are willing to give up what he calls "a more decent society" only because the current system is phenomenally resistant to change without even asking ourselves why that is so and what can be done about it.

Suprise!

Americans don't give a flying monkey about bipartisanship, when it comes to getting the public option.

"Which of these would you prefer – (a plan that includes some form of government-sponsored health insurance for people who can’t get affordable private insurance, but is approved without support from Republicans in Congress); or (a plan that is approved with support from Republicans in Congress, but does not include any form of government-sponsored health insurance for people who can’t get affordable private insurance)?"

Fifty one percent said they preferred the public option; 37 percent said they preferred a bill with some support from Republicans in Congress. Six percent said neither and seven percent expressed no opinion."

Good to know that Americans care more about the substance of the bill than they care about holding hands with their evil twins on the other side of the political spectrum. Because, really, bipartisanship doesn't pay your health care premiums when you get fired and the insurance companies denies you coverage because you're pregnant or diabetic.

And as Tapper points out, this might embolden the Democrats to go ahead with the public plan with no Republican support and, maybe, this means we can end the obsession with Olympia Snowe. Unfortunately, I don't think it's that simple: the reason why they might need at least one Republican vote - and Snowe's seems the most likely to come on board - is because there are some Democrats and Independents who might vote to filibuster a bill with a public option in it.

Ridiculous Conclusions.

And since I'm all about blogging again, why not post my upcoming article in Zahraničná politika? I'm back on Obama, with gloves off.

Ridiculous Conclusions

Sometimes the tactical decisions that Obama makes make one wonder what the man really believes in. And, increasingly, they don't even seem to produce their purported goals.

When the President received criticism for being the first president since 1991 not to receive the Dalai Lama during his most recent visit to Washington in October, the press was promptly educated by his senior adviser Valerie Jerrett that "it is not a signal of any lack of commitment to human rights .. that's a ridiculous conclusion to draw." At the same time, Jerrett admitted it is "a fair point to make" that the decision to postpone the meeting was made out of respect to Chinese sensitivities to Tibet. In other words, it was a tactical move, not a principled move; the appearance of bending over backwards to please the Chinese should not be disconcerting - the President knows what he's doing - trust him.

To be sure, America's dependence on China is hardly a secret. With some $2 trillion in US government bonds, China is the largest holder of the US debt and thus the largest funder of its massive deficits. Amicable relations with China are therefore a clear priority for US foreign policy. And yet, this sort of diplomatic calculus could hardly justify not meeting with the Dalai Lama. For one thing, even George W. Bush received him during his visit in 2007 (and awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal) and other Congressional leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, met with him during his most recent visit in October. Of course, this was enough to make the Chinese dissatisfied: shortly thereafter, China accused the US of interfering with their internal affairs. In the end, Obama's tactical move not only enraged those who think the US should take a principled stand on human rights in China, but it also failed to deliver the goal of pleasing the Chinese government, instead encouraging them to make even more ambitious demands.

To anyone who has been watching Obama's presidency with a little bit of a critical eye, this scenario looks eerily familiar. In fact, we witnessed a similar tactical blunder even before the Obamas moved into the White House, when then president-elect asked Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration ceremony. For the sake of context, this choice was controversial due to Warren's widely publicized support for Proposition 8, an anti-gay marriage ballot measure in California during the November election. The choice of an extremely conservative pastor was widely seen as Obama's attempt to reach out to the conservative base and passionately criticized by his largely progressive supporters. In the end, it did very little to improve national cohesion (as evidenced by the largest partisan gap in Obama's job approval ratings, according to PEW) and at the same time offended his socially progressive supporters.

Fast forwarding to last summer, we saw the same pattern emerge during the health care reform debate. As the debate quickly focused in on the question of the public plan - a government run insurance option - the legislators increasingly looked to the White House for guidance. At this critical juncture, in an apparent attempt to bring some Republican support on board, the President and his advisors, through interviews and press conferences communicated the message that while the President supports the public plan, it is "not the entirety of health-care reform" and "not the essential element". Ironically, this telegraphed flexibility did not make Republicans any more constructive in the reform efforts. In fact, despite the president's soft-pedaling on one of the key components of reform, it seems likely that if reform passes, it will happen with no Republican votes.

Obama's willingness to make sacrifices to achieve greater goals - Dalai Lama vs the Chinese, progressive issues vs national cohesion, public option vs bipartisan support - is theoretically understandable as shrewd political calculus. However, it is then imperative to judge his effectiveness in making these trade-offs and, so far, it seems to be very limited. In fact, it seems that every time the President decides to give something up, he receives very little in return. The impression it creates is one of an almost pathological desire to please his opponents even if this disregards the sensitivities of those that might be hurt in the process.

It is certainly understandable how his predilection for compromise and trade-offs would make Obama appealing to a certain committee in Norway. At home, however, he is testing the patience of his liberal base. It is ironic that one of the common criticisms of George W Bush was his inflexibility. These days, Democrats sometimes wish that Obama would exhibit some of that stubbornness, at least when it comes to defending their interests – the promises he made a year ago.