Obama Will Seek Citizenship Path in One Fast Push

Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats will propose the changes in one comprehensive bill, the officials said, resisting efforts by some Republicans to break the overhaul into smaller pieces — separately addressing young illegal immigrants, migrant farmworkers or highly skilled foreigners — which might be easier for reluctant members of their party to accept.

The president and Democrats will also oppose measures that do not allow immigrants who gain legal status to become American citizens one day, the officials said.

Even while Mr. Obama has been focused on fiscal negotiations and gun control, overhauling immigration remains a priority for him this year, White House officials said. Top officials there have been quietly working on a broad proposal. Mr. Obama and lawmakers from both parties believe that the early months of his second term offer the best prospects for passing substantial legislation on the issue.

Mr. Obama is expected to lay out his plan in the coming weeks, perhaps in his State of the Union address early next month, administration officials said. The White House will argue that its solution for illegal immigrants is not an amnesty, as many critics insist, because it would include fines, the payment of back taxes and other hurdles for illegal immigrants who would obtain legal status, the officials said.

The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future.

A bipartisan group of senators has also been meeting to write a comprehensive bill, with the goal of introducing legislation as early as March and holding a vote in the Senate before August. As a sign of the keen interest in starting action on immigration, White House officials and Democratic leaders in the Senate have been negotiating over which of them will first introduce a bill, Senate aides said.

“This is so important now to both parties that neither the fiscal cliff nor guns will get in the way,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat who is a leader of the bipartisan discussions.

A similar attempt at bipartisan legislation early in Mr. Obama’s first term collapsed amid political divisions fueled by surging public wrath over illegal immigration in many states. But both supporters and opponents say conditions are significantly different now.

Memories of the results of the November election are still fresh here. Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing electorate, turned out in record numbers and cast 71 percent of their ballots for Mr. Obama. Many Latinos said they were put off by Republicans’ harsh language and policies against illegal immigrants.

After the election, a host of Republicans, starting with Speaker John A. Boehner, said it was time for the party to find a more positive, practical approach to immigration. Many party leaders say electoral demographics are compelling them to move beyond policies based only on tough enforcement.

Supporters of comprehensive changes say that the elections were nothing less than a mandate in their favor, and that they are still optimistic that Mr. Obama is prepared to lead the fight.

“Republicans must demonstrate a reasoned approach to start to rebuild their relationship with Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the director of immigration policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino organization. “Democrats must demonstrate they can deliver on a promise.”

Since the election, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pledged to act on immigration this year. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he again referred to the urgency of fixing the immigration system, saying it was one of the “difficult missions” the country must take on.

Parallel to the White House effort, Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, have been meeting with a group of at least four other colleagues to write a bill. Republicans who have participated include John McCain of Arizona, who has supported comprehensive legislation in the past; Jeff Flake, also of Arizona, who is newly elected to the Senate; and Mike Lee of Utah. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida participated in one meeting last month.

Democrats in the meetings include Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat; Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado.

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The Next Four Years

The Simpson-Bowles commission sketched out a vision of what a Grand Bargain might look like. Obama and John Boehner tried to craft some semi-Grand Bargains. There was a lot of talk at think tanks of what the best combination of tax reform and entitlement reform might be.

The “fiscal-cliff” fiasco has persuaded many smart people that a Grand Bargain is not going to happen any time soon. A political class that botched the fiscal cliff so badly are not going to be capable of a gigantic deal on complex issues. It’s like going into a day care center and asking a bunch of infants to perform “Swan Lake.”

Polarization is too deep. Special interests are too strong. The negotiators are too rusty. Republicans are not going to give up their vision of a low-tax America. Democrats are not willing to change the current entitlement programs.

So as the president enters his second term, there has to be a new controlling narrative, a new strategy for how to spend the next four years.

As you know, I am an earnest, good-government type, so the strategy I’d prefer might be called Learning to Crawl. It would be based on the notion that you have to learn to crawl before you can run. So over the next four years, legislators should work on a series of realistic, incremental laws that would rebuild the habits of compromise, competence and trust.

We could do some education reform, expand visa laws to admit more high-skill workers, encourage responsible drilling for natural gas, maybe establish an infrastructure bank. Political leaders would erode partisan orthodoxies and get back into the habit of passing laws together. Then, down the road, their successors could do the big things.

I may be earnest, but I’m not an idiot. I know there is little chance that today’s partisan players are going to adopt this kind of incremental goo-goo approach. It’s more likely that today’s majority party is going to adopt a different strategy, which you might call Kill the Wounded. It’s more likely that today’s Democrats are going to tell themselves something like this:

“We live at a unique moment. Our opponents, the Republicans, are divided, confused and bleeding. This is not the time to allow them to rebuild their reputation with a series of modest accomplishments. This is the time to kick them when they are down, to win back the House and end the current version of the Republican Party.

“First, we change the narrative. The president ran in 2008 against Washington dysfunction, casting blame on both parties. Over the years, he has migrated to a different narrative: The Republicans are crazy. Washington could be working fine, but the Republicans are crazy.

“At every public appearance, the president should double-down on that theme. The Democratic base already believes it. The media is sympathetic. Independents could be persuaded.

“Then, wedge issues. The president should propose no new measures that might unite Republicans, the way health care did in the first term. Instead, he should raise a series of wedge issues meant to divide Southerners from Midwesterners, the Tea Party/Talk Radio base from the less ideological corporate and managerial class.

“He’s already started with a perfectly designed gun control package, inviting a long battle with the N.R.A. over background checks and magazine clips. That will divide the gun lobby from suburbanites. Then he can re-introduce Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform. That will divide the anti-immigration groups from the business groups (conventional wisdom underestimates how hard it is going to be for Republicans to back comprehensive reforms).

“Then he could invite a series of confrontations with Republicans over things like the debt ceiling — make them look like wackos willing to endanger the entire global economy. Along the way, he could highlight women’s issues, social mobility issues (student loans, community college funding) and pick fights on compassion issues, (hurricane relief) — promoting any small, popular spending programs that Republicans will oppose.

“Twice a month, Democrats should force Republicans to cast an awful vote: either offend mainstream supporters or risk a primary challenge from the right.”

Just as Senator Mitch McConnell made defeating President Obama his main political objective, Democrats seem likely to make winning back the House their primary political objective. Experts are divided on how plausible this is, but the G.O.P. is unpopular and the opportunity is there.

This isn’t the Washington I want to cover, but it’s the most likely one. How will Republicans respond to this onslaught? I have no idea.

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The Weekend Word: Reversal

In Today’s Times:

Backing off from their tough stance on the nation’s finances, House Republicans said Friday that they would support lifting the debt limit for three months if Congress could pass a budget in that time. The move paved the way for deficit reduction talks and most likely will head off a default by the federal government, Jonathan Weisman reports.As President Obama is sworn in for a second term, the donors who worked hardest to get him there are angling for plum embassy posts, following unspoken rules like preparing to serve for just a short time to make room for others. As many as 300 people are vying for about only 30 positions, Nicholas Confessore and Sheryl Gay Stolberg report.Heading into his inauguration, Mr. Obama holds the approval of a slight majority of Americans, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Respondents are deeply polarized by party, Jackie Calmes and Megan Thee-Brenan report.

Weekly Address:

Mr. Obama called on Congress in his weekly address to join the White House in taking steps to prevent gun violence by requiring universal background checks, banning assault weapons and strengthening law enforcement. “Like most Americans, I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms,” he said. “But I also believe most gun owners agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking few from causing harm on a massive scale.”Representative James Lankford of Oklahoma, the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, asked Democrats to pass a budget in the Senate and work with Republicans to address the nation’s spending. “But because government debt really does affect all of us, Republicans will not simply provide a blank check for uncontrolled spending, irrational borrowing and constant nickel-and-dime tax increases,” he said.

Washington Happenings:

The Obama and Biden families will begin the weekend of inauguration festivities by participating in a community service project Saturday as part of the National Day of Service.On Sunday, Mr. Obama will be officially sworn in for a second term at the White House and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Naval Observatory. Later, they will speak at an inaugural reception at the National Building Museum.

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Now What, Liberalism?

Tom Edsall on politics inside and outside of Washington.

The argument of the political commentator Walter Russell Mead that the United States has reached an end-stage death match between liberal constituent groups has received widespread attention, especially in the conservative blogosphere.

Mead, who teaches at Bard College, contends that

The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore. The gaps between the social system we inhabit and the one we now need are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper over them.

In many respects, liberalism is a fat target. Dozens of city and state public employee pension plans are on the verge of bankruptcy – or are actually bankrupt – from Rhode Island to California; in 2010, a survey of 126 state and local plans showed assets of $2.7 trillion and liabilities of $3.5 trillion, an $800 billion shortfall. The national debt exceeds $16 trillion.

Mead labels the “institutions, ideas and expectations” of contemporary liberalism the “blue model”:

In the old system, most blue-collar and white-collar workers held stable, lifetime jobs with defined benefit pensions, and a career civil service administered a growing state as living standards for all social classes steadily rose. Gaps between the classes remained fairly consistent in an industrial economy characterized by strong unions in stable, government-brokered arrangements with large corporations—what Galbraith and others referred to as the Iron Triangle. High school graduates were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that provided a comfortable lower middle-class lifestyle; college graduates could expect a better paid and equally secure future. An increasing “social dividend”, meanwhile, accrued in various forms: longer vacations, more and cheaper state-supported education, earlier retirement, shorter work weeks, more social and literal mobility, and more diverse forms of affordable entertainment. Call all this, taken together, the blue model.

While American business abandoned the blue model long ago, especially the notion of providing secure employment and defined benefit pensions on retirement, American government, in Mead’s view, has not. Costs “are now exploding according to the immutable logic of demographic and actuarial facts, and it is clear that the government can’t pay them into the future.”

Hmm. I e-mailed Mead to ask what a functional, “post-blue” model of the liberal state might look like, and he wrote back:

Apologies that I don’t have a fully formed alternative social model ready to drop on a grateful nation, but whatever insights I come up with I will be happy to share on the blog. Believe me, I am working on it. Creating the policy framework to capture the full power of modern information processing capability to raise social productivity is a big part of it.

Finding that Mead is far less radical in his thinking than his critique of contemporary liberalism would suggest, I thought I would move on to more quantitatively inclined analysts of social insurance regimes. So I contacted two economists, Richard Freeman of Harvard and David Autor of M.I.T.

Freeman directly addressed critics of big government:

As long as we have big problems — climate change, terrorism and terror states with nukes, threats of pandemics, adjusting to China, India catching up with us, etc. — and have big banks that can destroy economies and big companies which can harm us per cigarettes and pollutants — I do not see what shield we have but government. The solutions to these problems are collective ones, which mean government.

What is troubling is that governments are flawed, influenced by special groups, and so on. But, Freeman wrote

I would rather be ruled by an elected government than the top 1000 billionaires on Forbes’ list — so I don’t think the issue is big government but the way government operates and hope that technology and information and media offer some chance for us to get a better handle over what big government does. Also I am not sure what you can shrink that would not open space for other big entities less limited by law and less sensitive to reaction of people.

Autor is a nationally recognized expert on the federal disability program, Social Security Disability Insurance, which he (and many others) consider to be “malfunctioning.” Autor writes that “it’s inducing a lot of desperate people to choose government dependency over work.” Given this line of analysis, Autor might be expected to be a critic of liberalism. By e-mail, I asked him “Is the disability program a prime example of the dysfunctionality of liberalism, or is it a unique problem not characteristic of the liberal agenda?”

His reply:

It’s neither. It’s an example of a program that was set up to do a lot of good and still does a lot of good, but one that has not changed with the times. Republicans are as complicit in this policy failure as Democrats. Neither has had the stomach to touch the program since the early 1980s, following Carter’s and then Reagan’s disastrous attempts at reforms. Every advanced country needs and has a disability program. But not all of them are on the same unsustainable trajectories as the U.S.’ program. Countries that are far more liberal than the U.S., like the Netherlands, have had the wisdom and courage to reform their disability systems to stem abuses while maintaining needed social insurance.

Autor argues that a reformed disability program should be a part of a structure of safety net programs that would provide a level of security that

arguably makes the public more not less receptive to accepting disruptive changes in market conditions. If the safety net is effective and voters understand that, they can safely support policies that have long-run benefits and short-run costs without putting themselves at personal economic peril.

In one significant respect, Autor agrees with Mead’s sense that government is no longer responding as flexibly and vitally as it needs to:

We’re going to have a social safety net. The question is whether we’re going to have a rigid set of institutions and incentives that have been ossifying since the 1950s, or whether we’re going to belly up to the bar and modernize these systems in light of how the world has changed and what we’ve learned from economics and social policy in the intervening half century.

Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban design at Chapman University, faults the contemporary left from a different angle. Using apocalyptic language similar to Mead’s, Kotkin argues that the Democratic Party and the left are dominated by what he calls “gentry progressives”: largely white, well-educated, culturally liberal urbanites.

In an essay published by Forbes a month after Obama’s decisive re-election, Kotkin wrote:

The now triumphant urban gentry have their townhouses and high-rise lofts, but the service workers who do their dirty work have to log their way by bus or car from the vast American banlieues, either in peripheral parts of the city (think of Brooklyn’s impoverished fringes) or the poorer close-in suburbs. This progressive economy works for the well-placed academics, the trustfunders and hedge funders, but produces little opportunity for a better life for the vast majority.

Kotkin makes the case that the celebrated Obama coalition uniting well-educated, often upscale liberals, with such struggling, often disadvantaged constituencies as single women, racial and ethnic minorities, and the young is fragile at best:

The class issue so cleverly exploited by the president in the election could prove the potential Achilles heel of today’s gentry progressivism. The Obama-Bernanke-Geithner economy has done little to reverse the relative decline of the middle and working class, whose share of national income has fallen to record lows. If you don’t work for venture-backed tech firms, coddled, money-for-nearly-free Wall Street or for the government, your income and standard of living has probably declined since the middle of the last decade.

Entitlement reform, a darling of gentry progressives who share Mead’s fear that “costs are now exploding according to the immutable logic of demographic and actuarial facts,” is perhaps the quintessential case study of the inclination of the progressive elite to disregard the distributive consequences of their reform initiatives. Take the case of those calling for gradual reduction in Social Security benefits – either by raising the retirement age or switching to a “chained” Consumer Price Index (a revised inflation index which cuts government spending by reducing annual cost of living adjustments).

Who would be most affected? Those in the bottom 20 percent of the elderly who depend on Social Security for 84 percent of their annual income, and those in the next quintile dependent on Social Security for 83 percent of their income. At the beginning of 2012, the average Social Security benefit was $1,230 a month, or $14,740 a year.  For 35 percent of elderly white beneficiaries, for 42 percent of Asian-Americans, for 49 percent of blacks, and for 55 percent of Hispanics, Social Security represents 90 percent or more of total income.

In the current debate over financing the cost of income support forolder Americans, the chained C.P.I. proposal has more political support than the progressive alternative of raising the current $113,700 cap on the amount of income subject to the payroll tax. Low-income Social Security beneficiaries are not equipped to absorb cuts in benefits that a switch to a chained consumer price index would entail; on the other hand, according to the centrist Tax Policy Center, raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax could completely cover Social Security costs into the foreseeable future without reducing benefits.

Obama’s victory and the growing evidence of an emerging majority Democratic coalition pose the danger that the left will take false comfort. The demographic forces currently powering the Democratic Party in no way guarantee a resilient coalition assured of a long-term competitive advantage.

In addition to the glaring class conflicts between the party’s upscale cultural liberals and the larger body of Democratic voters with pressing material needs, there are a host of potential fissures.

In cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Houston, African-Americans are competing with Hispanics and others for government jobs, good schools, good neighborhoods, political power and basic resources.  Republicans are looking toward these tensions to see how their party can capitalize on them.

Insofar as austerity advocates force Obama and Democrats in the House and Senate to accept budget cuts, similar ethnic and regional conflicts will plague the party, undermining political unity.

The determination of the Obama administration and many of its Congressional allies to raise taxes on the affluent is not, in political terms, cost-free. The Democratic Party has made huge gains – although short of a majority – among upper-income voters, and inasmuch as Democratic tax policies threaten the standard of living of this cohort, upscale left partisans may get cold feet.

The much larger hurdle facing contemporary liberalism is the need to reconfigure the welfare state in ways that maintain popular support while addressing a host of conflicting forces:

The aging of the population is steadily reducing the ratio of workers to retirees, expanding the “dependency ratio,” even as global competition drives governments worldwide to reduce corporate and individual taxes, cutting off the revenues to finance social welfare spending.Other demographic trends, particularly the erosion of supportive extended family networks and the rising numbers of single elderly, serve to increase the demands for benefits from the welfare state.Austerity policies enacted in response to high deficit and debt levels have resulted in increased voter suspicion of the “undeserving” poor and of “free riders” who are perceived as getting more out of government programs than they pay in, weakening support for the welfare state. Similarly, means testing old-age income security initiatives – particularly Social Security –would inevitably undermine universal support.

Liberalism now faces the job of paying for its own success in helping people live longer. The progressive ethos, currently embattled, has a proud history. What is uncertain is whether a durable social consensus can be mobilized in the face of the global economic pressure to reduce taxes and limit the scope of government. The Democratic left faces a daunting, but not necessarily insurmountable, obstacle.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 17, 2013

An earlier version of this column gave the wrong number for the current cap on income subject to the payroll tax. In 2013, the cap is $113,700, not $110,100, which was the limit last year.

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Democrat Ekes Out Senate Win

They expected that George A. Amedore Jr., a state assemblyman whose family has a successful home-building business in the capital region, would have no trouble making the jump to the Legislature’s upper house. Democrats sued to block the creation of the seat, but failed.

Yet on Friday, 73 days after Election Day, Mr. Amedore conceded defeat to a little-known opponent: Cecilia F. Tkaczyk, a Democrat who, in addition to serving as vice president of the local school board, is also the vice president of the Golden Fleece Spinners and Weavers Guild.

Ms. Tkaczyk (pronounced KAT-chik) was ahead by 18 votes — out of more than 126,000 cast — after a batch of contested ballots was counted in Ulster and Albany Counties. (Another uncounted ballot was found in Montgomery County, but it remains unclear whether it will be counted.)

“No one believed our campaign had a chance in a district hand-carved by Republicans,” she said, “and yet the power of good ideas and a strong campaign proved itself.”

Ms. Tkaczyk, from Schenectady County, is a third-generation farmer, and among her hobbies is spinning wool from her flock of Jacob sheep. She, unlike Mr. Amedore, also favors putting in place a system of public financing for state elections; supporters of election reform, including Jonathan Soros, a son of the billionaire financier George Soros, poured money into an independent-expenditure campaign supporting her.

“She ran a great race and was a great candidate,” Jonathan Soros said. “Voters want this reform, and they’re actually willing to vote on it.”

The race was for a seahorse-shaped district that stretches from the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson Valley. Ms. Tkaczyk, by trade a housing policy expert, emerged from Election Day with a narrow lead, but Mr. Amedore overtook her during a court-supervised counting of paper ballots, and a judge declared him the winner in late December.

But an appeals court ruled last week that 99 additional disputed ballots should be tallied, and on Wednesday, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, declined to hear an appeal, allowing the ballot-counting to proceed.

“It was especially gratifying for the school board member and farmer to defeat the exceedingly wealthy assemblyman for whom the district was tailor-made,” said Dan Cantor, the executive director of the Working Families Party, which backed Ms. Tkaczyk. “David beat Goliath on this one, and that’s always a satisfying feeling for everyone involved.”

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Above the Debt Ceiling, Boehner Might Find a Blue Sky

A valuable principle of negotiation is to “never bargain with someone who does not have the power to say yes,” and Mr. Boehner has demonstrated that he lacks that power. He couldn’t even persuade his caucus to agree on a Plan B counterproposal and had to let Vice President Joseph Biden and Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, steer the deal that avoided, or at least postponed, the so-called fiscal cliff.

I have a suggestion for how Mr. Boehner could have himself invited back to the negotiation party. But first, let’s take stock of where we are.

What has been accomplished, for better or worse, is that the Bush-era tax cuts for families earning less than $450,000 a year have been made permanent — or at least as permanent as anything in the tax code can be. Those earning more than $450,000 face a tax increase. There are further complications, of course, but the important thing is that there was no substantive tax reform, and no decisions about spending. The final bill even preserved the tradition of corporate welfare by extending a subsidy to Nascar.

Over the next few months, Congress faces a new series of deadlines:

The spending cuts mandated by the sequestration will begin on March 1, unless Congress delays them again. Congress needs to pass a “continuing resolution” or government will shut down, as it did in the 1990s during the standoff between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. And, finally, the debt ceiling will need to be raised or the government will no longer be able to pay its bills to Social Security beneficiaries, the military or the owners of government bonds — a group that includes nearly everyone with a retirement account.

I have listed these deadlines in increasing order of their hazard to our economic health. The spending cuts would be tough and arbitrary but gradual. Incurring them for a couple of months would be bad, but not horrible. Closing down the government is more serious. And even if you’d like a smaller government, you probably still want essential services to continue.

OF the three, the debt ceiling is likely to arrive first and is simultaneously the most serious and the most ridiculous. It’s serious because it’s unthinkable that the government would stop paying its bills, and the ramifications if we defaulted on our debt payments would be catastrophic for the nation and the global economy. We don’t even want to think about going there.

But the debt ceiling is also ridiculous, because the law is redundant. It’s a tradition for members of Congress who aren’t in the same political party as the president to make sanctimonious speeches against raising the debt limit, to keep that president from running up big bills. Yet it is Congress, in fact, that determines how much we spend and how much tax revenue we collect. Our representatives and their predecessors passed the bills and authorized the spending that got us to this place. If they want to reduce the deficit, they should cut spending, increase revenue, or both. But what they should not do, under any circumstances, is to look back at the decisions they have already made and conclude that it would be smart to declare the United States bankrupt, thus creating a second global financial crisis.

Which leads to my proposal for restoring Mr. Boehner’s relevance: He should propose that the debt ceiling be raised for at least two years or, even better, propose that it be abolished. He wouldn’t need a majority of his own party to vote for such a bill, of course, because it would have wide support among Democrats. He would just have to propose it and persuade some of his colleagues to support it. That would be enough.

Here is why I think this is a good idea, for him, the Republican Party and the country:

Congress has plenty of incentives to make a deal on spending. Taxes have already been increased and Republicans are eager to even the score. The sequestration-induced spending cuts coming on March 1 should provide more than enough impetus for Congress and the president to agree to something, even if it’s only a plan to undertake serious tax reform and a comprehensive evaluation of all government spending. By removing an option that we should never rationally use, we can immediately accomplish an often-cited Republican goal — reducing global uncertainty — and likely restore our triple-A credit rating. The Bipartisan Policy Center has estimated that the dillydallying about the debt ceiling last time, which ticked up interest rates, will end up costing more than $18.9 billion over 10 years, about the same amount as the recent Medicare “doc fix, ” which blocks cuts to doctor reimbursement rates.

Tea Party conservatives would undoubtedly be outraged by this suggestion, arguing that Republicans need to retain the debt ceiling threat if they are to get the best possible deal from the Senate and the president. But taking this crazy threat away from a group that just might use it is precisely the point.

By undertaking this act of unilateral disarmament, Mr. Boehner and whichever Republicans had the courage to join him would be signaling that they’re willing to engage in the serious discussions the country needs, and to put pressure on Democrats to do likewise. Anyone who has a large bomb and is threatening to push the button doesn’t deserve to be a party to these discussions.

Richard H. Thaler is a professor of economics and behavioral science at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Richard H. Thaler is a professor of economics and behavioral science at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

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A multihued future

So much for voter suppression. So much for the enthusiasm gap. So much for the idea that smug, self-appointed arbiters of what is genuinely "American" were going to "take back" the country, as if it had somehow been stolen.

On Tuesday, millions of voters sent a resounding message to the take-it-back crowd: You won't. You can't. It's our country, too.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party scored what can only be seen as a comprehensive victory. Obama won the popular vote convincingly, and the electoral vote wasn't even close. In a year when it was hard to imagine how Democrats could avoid losing seats in the Senate, they won seats and increased their majority.

Republicans did keep control of the House, but to call this a "status quo" election is absurd. After the 2010 midterm election, Republicans had the initiative and Democrats were reeling. After Tuesday, the dynamics are utterly reversed.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the conservative bloviators who were so convinced that Mitt Romney would defeat Obama, perhaps in a landslide, and proceed to undo everything the president has accomplished.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh was almost wistful: "I went to bed last night thinking we're outnumbered. … I went to bed last night thinking we've lost the country. I don't know how else you look at this." He then launched into a riff about Obama and Santa Claus that is too incoherent to quote. Apparently, we are all elves.

Sean Hannity, on his radio show, was angry: "Americans, you get the government you deserve. And it pains me to say this, but America now deserves Barack Obama. You deserve what you voted for. … We are a self-governing country, and the voice and the will of 'we the people' have now been heard. America wanted Barack Obama four more years. Now you've got him. Good luck with that."

As is often the case, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly was a bit more perceptive: "The White establishment is now the minority," he said Tuesday evening, before it was clear that Obama would win. "The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore."

No, Bill, it's not.

African-Americans made up a record 13 percent of the electorate in 2008. Many analysts attributed this spike in turnout to the novelty of being able to vote for a Black major-party presidential candidate. This year, some pollsters factored into their projections the assumption that the Black vote would decline to a more "normal" 11 percent.

But on Tuesday, African-Americans once again were 13 percent of all voters -- and probably played an even bigger role than this number would indicate in re-electing Obama.

Look at Ohio, arguably the most hotly contested swing state. African-Americans make up only 12 percent of the state population, but according to exit polls, they constituted a full 15 percent of the Ohio electorate on Tuesday. Blacks, in other words, were more motivated to vote than Whites.

Ohio also happens to be a state where Republican officials sharply curtailed early voting. If, as many suspect, this was a transparent attempt to depress minority turnout by making it harder for working-class Ohioans to vote, it didn't work. In fact, it backfired.

Look at Colorado. In 2008, Latinos were 13 percent of the electorate; just over 60 percent voted for Obama. On Tuesday, Latinos made up 14 percent of Colorado voters -- and, according to exit polls, three-fourths of them supported the president. Think this might have something to do with Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" immigration policy? I do.

Nationwide, roughly three of every 10 voters Tuesday were minorities. African-Americans chose Obama by 93 percent, Latinos by 71 percent, and Asian-Americans, the nation's fastest-growing minority, by 73 percent.

These are astounding margins, and I think they have less to do with specific policies than with broader issues of identity and privilege. I think that when Black Americans saw Republicans treat President Obama with open disrespect and try their best to undermine his legitimacy, they were offended. When Latinos heard Republicans insist there should be no compassion for undocumented immigrants, I believe they were angered. When Asian-Americans heard Republicans speak of China in almost "Yellow Peril" terms, I imagine they were insulted.

On Tuesday, the America of today asserted itself.

This time, it was about us -- who we are as a nation -- and a multihued, multicultural future.

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Democrats Are Split Over How to Shape Approach to Gun Bills

Many Democrats, and some Senate Republicans, believe the only legislation that has a whisper of a chance of passing would be bills that are tightly focused on more consensus elements like enhancing background checks or limits on magazines, subjected to debate in committee and then brought to a vote after building bipartisan support.

That would be a departure from recent years, when the leadership often sidestepped committees and sought to take fights directly to the floor.

Others, particularly those senators who have long fought for gun control measures, believe a plodding process allows too much time for opposition to build, and prefer to fast-track measures by adding them as amendments to other bills, even blocking bills in ways that have angered Democrats, until they are granted votes on those ideas.

“We can’t sit around for months talking and letting the gun lobby run out the clock,” said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. “If we’re going to make progress, it’s essential that we move quickly and start voting as soon as possible.”

Democrats are united on one point: For any legislation to reach the Senate floor, Mr. Obama will have to put the full weight of his office and bully pulpit behind it.

Without constant public pressure and a concerted effort to woo conservative Democrats, especially those up for re-election in red states in two years, there will be little impetus, numerous Democrats said, to move legislation along. Democrats also may be forced to decide whether to endure a lengthy legislative battle on guns at the expense of priorities like immigration.

Recognizing that public pressure is going to be required to move such contentious measures, the president’s former campaign aides in the weeks ahead will convert the Obama for America operation into a different kind of outside political group led by Jim Messina, Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, according to people familiar with the plans. The new organization will be able to raise money for grass-roots campaigning on behalf of the president’s second-term agenda, they said.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader who has spearheaded other legislation desired by the White House, will take a more passive role with any gun legislation, aides to Senate Democrats say, letting the administration set the agenda and allowing senators to press ahead through their committee leadership or interest in the issue.

Mr. Reid, who was deeply disturbed by the shootings last month in Newtown, Conn., is a longstanding gun rights supporter, a necessity for any statewide official from Nevada.

Mr. Obama’s efforts on Capitol Hill will provide the most crucial test of whether the mass shooting in Newtown, and the obdurate response from the National Rifle Association, has ushered in a new chapter in a legislative era that began in 2004 with the expiration of the assault weapons ban. Since that time, most new gun legislation has emerged in statehouses, and Washington has largely enforced gun rights.

The political sensitivity around guns can be gauged somewhat through the measured statements of lawmakers long associated with gun rights.

“Some have asked whether I will try to block or filibuster this debate because of my support of the Second Amendment,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who in 2009 sponsored a successful measure that repealed a gun ban in national parks. “My goal is the opposite. I believe Congress has a responsibility to review all of our laws and make adjustments as necessary in a transparent, open and deliberative manner.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and has a mixed legislative record on guns, said the first hearings he would schedule in the new Congress would be on gun legislation. Mr. Leahy was the only senator to attend an event with Mr. Obama this week to announce his push on gun laws.

Ashley Parker contributed reporting from Williamsburg, Va., and Michael D. Shear from Washington.

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Democrats Behaving Badly

Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, couldn’t just stand back and relish the recent spectacle of House Republicans making callous fools of themselves by stalling aid to communities walloped by Hurricane Sandy. He wasn’t satisfied that these Republicans were vilified not only in the news media but also by some members of their own tribe, like Peter King and Chris Christie. No, he had to get into the ring himself, and his genius strategy once there was to pit one storm’s victims against another’s, to stage a bout between Atlantic City’s splintered boardwalks and Louisiana’s failed levees. What a titan of meteorological tact.

Noting that Congress had provided help after Hurricane Katrina more quickly and generously than after Sandy, Reid said: “The people of New Orleans and that area, they were hurt, but nothing in comparison to what happened to the people in New York and New Jersey. Almost one million people have lost their homes. One million people lost their homes. That is homes, that is not people in those homes.”

Let’s put aside, for the moment, his fleeting difficulty distinguishing a biped with a weak spot for reality TV from a wood, brick or maybe stucco structure in which several bipeds watch TV. Let’s focus instead on his math. The one million figure is easily more than twice the combined tally of domiciles not only destroyed but also damaged in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It’s an invention. And if comparisons are to be made, consider this one: as a result of Katrina, 1,833 people died — more than nine times as many as died in connection with Sandy. Using the word “nothing” anywhere in the vicinity of Katrina defies both belief and decency, and Reid was indeed forced last week to apologize, his effort to shame his Republican foes having brought a full measure of shame to his own doorstep, yet again.

Why did he make the effort in the first place? Democrats came out of the 2012 elections looking good, and the country’s changing demographics suggest that they could come out of 2016 and beyond looking even better, especially if Republicans don’t accomplish a pretty thorough image overhaul. And that overhaul isn’t exactly proceeding at a breakneck pace. The perseverance of far-right obstructionists in the House stands in the way, leaving the party in grave trouble. If its foes were smart and humble, they’d do what a sports team with a big lead does. They’d play error-free ball.

Not Reid. And not President Obama, whose recent actions have been careless at best and cavalier at worst. There was the gratuitously provocative nomination of Chuck Hagel for defense secretary, followed by the gratuitously insulting invitation of Louie Giglio, a Georgia pastor, to give the inaugural benediction. That plan was abandoned after the revelation of Giglio’s past remarks that homosexuality offends God, that homosexuals yearn to take over society and that a conversion to heterosexuality is the only answer for them. Giglio would have been the second florid homophobe in a row to stand with Obama and a Bible in front of the Capitol — Rick Warren, in January 2009, was the first — and while it appears that this double bigotry whammy wasn’t the administration’s intent, it’s an example of vetting so epically sloppy that it gives an observer serious pause about the delicacy with which Obama and his allies, no longer worried about his re-election, are operating.

The pick of Hagel underscores that indelicacy. There’s a potent case to be made for his installation as secretary of defense, but there are potent cases for others, and it’s hard to believe that Obama couldn’t have found someone who shared his values and would further his agenda but wouldn’t be such a guaranteed lightning rod for his Jewish, LGBT and female supporters, all of whom played crucial roles in his November victory.

Regarding women, Hagel’s record on reproductive freedom is as conservative as his record on gay rights, and it included his support for a ban on abortions in military hospitals, even for servicewomen prepared to pay for the procedures themselves. What’s more, Obama rolled Hagel out in a cluster of other high-profile nominees (John Brennan, Jack Lew, John Kerry) sure to be noted for their gender uniformity and to rekindle questions about the predominantly male club of advisers and golf and basketball partners who have the president’s ear. The upset was predictable and avoidable.

It has been noted, rightly, that the president put two additional women on the Supreme Court and that his percentage of female appointees is as good as President Bill Clinton’s was. But given the march of time since then, and given the questions raised during his first term about how valued women in the administration felt, and given his drumbeat that he was a champion for women in a way Mitt Romney could never be, shouldn’t he be surpassing Clinton? Going out of his way? There’s a perverse streak of defiance in him, and as donors and even Democratic lawmakers have long complained, gratitude isn’t his strong suit.

While Hagel lurched toward his confirmation hearings and Giglio skittered away, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it was sending each of the 35 Republican freshmen in the House a “tea party membership card,” which spelled out their rights to put “ideology over solutions,” to be horrid to women, to coddle Big Oil and “to create and/or ignore any national crisis.” Thus did the Dems turn legitimate gripes into schoolyard taunts that were more likely to inflame G.O.P. freshmen than to bully them into bipartisanship. What, beyond the theater of the gesture, was the point of it?

Granted, Republicans had done their own adolescent taunting, calling Democrats lap dogs in the Nancy Pelosi obedience school. But Democrats pride and market themselves as the reasonable adults in the equation, and that’s part of their currency with many voters. Why fritter it away?

And why abide the overwrought antics of Reid? He once compared opponents of Obama’s health care reform to enemies of emancipation. He took valid questions about Romney’s low tax bill and spun them into the unsubstantiated claim that Romney hadn’t paid any taxes for an entire 10-year period. Then he said the burden was on Romney to prove the charge untrue. Good thing our criminal courts don’t work that way.

Just before and after the 2012 election, it looked as if Republicans might be successfully burying themselves. All Democrats had to do was hammer the nail in the coffin. But the way they’re behaving, they’ll raise the dead.

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Obama’s First Term: A Romantic Oral History

Nadav Kander for The New York TimesClockwise from top left: Joseph R. Biden Jr., vice president; Desirée Rogers, former White House social secretary; Jon Favreau, speechwriting director; Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser; David Axelrod, former senior adviser.

Four years ago, on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration, this magazine devoted nearly an entire issue to a photo essay, “Obama’s People.” The photographs, 52 of them, depicted a team arriving on a wave of hope despite inheriting an economy in trouble, a collapsing auto industry, two wars and a continuing terrorist threat.

Four years later, they have met some of those challenges, been daunted by others and created new ones of their own. The economy is better but still anemic. Osama bin Laden is dead and the Iraq war over, but Afghanistan remains a morass and the prison at Guantánamo Bay remains open. The auto industry has been saved and health care expanded, but national debt has soared. A dictator in Libya has been toppled, but a dictator in Syria slaughters his own people undeterred.

Roughly half of the people in the photo essay are now gone, some embittered by realities they did not anticipate or cast aside by a president cutting losses. The gauzy hope of 2009 has faded into the starker realism of 2013. The Washington they promised to transform is as divided as ever. As the president prepares to take the oath of office for a second term, his team looks back at the four years that brought them to this point. Told in their own voices, the story is, unsurprisingly and perhaps out of necessity, a romantic one.

Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council (2009-11): I remember coming out of the transition office the day before the inauguration, and it was like walking into a street festival. It was sunny, and people were happy, and there were tons of people, and it was very, very festive.

Desirée Rogers, White House social secretary (2009-10): We had a certain amount of time to prepare the home for the first family. Someone asked me, “What side of the bed does the president sleep on?” I’m like, Yikes, I don’t know if I know that. For people that look like me, for my race, to be there and to have witnessed that — I just kept thinking about my grandfather and how he would feel had he lived to see this day, because in so many instances the gentlemen that served the president looked like my grandfather.

During the swearing in of the president, Chief Justice John Roberts mangles the words in the oath.
Gregory Craig, White House counsel (2009-10): This opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel says that if the president does not say all the words of the oath, then he is not president of the United States. I said, “Is there anybody over there that really thinks he’s not president?” David [Barron, acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel] said: “No, no, no, we all think he is president. But there may be a judge somewhere, or some hearing could be called on this, or it could be a problem in the future.” I thought, We gotta fix this. There was a long line of people waiting to shake hands with the president in the residence. We said, “Mr. President, can we talk to you a second?” There was a little bit of, “You gotta be kidding.” I said, “I’ll call the chief justice’s chambers and see if he can come down.” The chief justice carried his robes, and the president arrived. The chief justice goes into the corner and says, “This is a ceremonial occasion, I’m going to put on my robe.” The chief justice is doing it from memory again, and I thought to myself, Would it be wrong for me to go forward and say something? At which point, the president says, “Now, let’s keep this real slow.” They did it, and that was it.

Shortly after taking office, Obama decides to sign a large spending bill with thousands of earmarks to avoid undercutting Congressional support for his $800 billion stimulus package. In doing so, he helps establish an image of himself as a big spender.
David Axelrod, White House senior adviser (2009-11): He was very much of a mind to veto the bill. We were in the midst of trying to pass the Recovery Act, and some of his legislative folks said, “Mr. President, you can veto the bill, but if you do, you jeopardize our ability to pass the Recovery Act.” He was very frustrated. He just kind of glared, and he ultimately sort of nodded. I’m not sure he even said anything. But I know in retrospect that was probably one of the decisions he regretted the most.

In March 2009, after a sharp debate among his advisers, Obama decides to bail out the auto industry.
Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff (2009-10): All the advisers were divided, the public was absolutely against it. Nobody is giving you consensus, there is no consensus. Nobody had ever done what we were about to do. And he picks the hardest option.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

A collection of pictures on Page 36 this weekend with an article about President Obama’s first term includes members of the administration or key players during Mr. Obama’s first term; not all of them are members of the administration. Also, the pictures tinted blue represent either members of the administration or key players who are planning to leave or who have already left — not only those who have left.

And Ken Salazar, who is not shown as one of those leaving, announced after the magazine had gone to press that he was stepping down as Secretary of the Interior, as expected.

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Gosar won by a wider margin than most

Early this year, many political insiders thought Republican freshman Rep. Paul Gosar was in trouble.

Vote margins between Republican and Democratic candidates in U.S. House races

With his Congressional District 1 redrawn to make it more favorable to Democrats, the Flagstaff dentist announced that he was going to run for re-election in the neighboring District 4 in western Arizona, which is heavily conservative. There, he faced competition from Ron Gould, a state lawmaker, and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who was considered the favorite.

But Babeu dropped out after a scandal tainted his campaign, and Gosar went on to win the primary.

Now, totals from the Nov. 6 general election show that Gosar won re-election by a wider margin than any of his colleagues or soon-to-be colleagues except one -- senior delegation member Ed Pastor, a Democrat who faced only a Libertarian candidate.

Gosar had a 38 percentage-point margin over Democrat Johnnie Robinson in the rural district that includes Lake Havasu City, Prescott and part of Yuma. It helped that the district is considered one of the most conservative in the state and Robinson was virtually unknown.

In the 5th Congressional District in the far East Valley, also one of the more conservative districts in the state, former Republican Rep. Matt Salmon won re-election with a 34 percentage-point margin in his race against Democrat Spencer Morgan. He had the next-highest margin after Gosar.

Even entrenched incumbent Reps. Trent Franks, a West Valley Republican, and Raúl Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, drew smaller margins.

Gosar attributes his support to campaigning for votes in the fall, pretending he was "20 points down," despite his likely success in the general election after clinching a tough August primary.

"We've always gone anywhere and everywhere to listen to people; whether it be one person for coffee, three farmers for coffee or breakfast or 300 veterans, we come and talk," Gosar said. "It's part of the mantra of a health-care provider. When you walk into my office, I can't start pulling teeth. I have to ask you, 'What hurts, and how can I help you?'"

In a separate measure of support, voter turnout was lowest in the Hispanic-heavy districts held by longtime Democratic incumbents Pastor and Grijalva.

The total votes cast in Pastor's west Phoenix district, 128,379, and Grijalva's southern Arizona district, 168,980, were tens of thousands below Arizona's other House races. The most popular House contest, won by Republican Rep. David Schweikert, drew nearly double the number of ballots.

Voter apathy is likely one factor in the low turnout, given that Pastor and Grijalva were nearly assured re-election.

But the congressmen mostly blamed demographics. Pastor's district, largely lower-income, has fewer registered voters because more people are young, undocumented immigrants or have criminal pasts that preclude them from voting, he said. But groups such as Mi Familia Vota worked hard to sign up as many voters as possible, he said.

Grijalva argued the Democratic Party needs to spend more money to get voters to the polls, even in places where a competitive race may not be in play, because other races such as the statewide U.S. Senate contest could have benefited.

"You're kind of left to your own devices," he said. "We've never been able to match the turnout I had the first time I ran."

Redistricting also may have hurt turnout in Pastor and Grijalva's races. The once-a-decade redrawing of the political map cut out some of the congressmen's highest-performing neighborhoods.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Obama nominates Kerry for State post

President Barack Obama has picked Sen. John Kerry for secretary of state, hailing him as an extraordinary lawmaker who has played a central part in every major foreign policy debate of the past 30 years.

Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and decorated Vietnam veteran, would replace Hillary Rodham Clinton if he's confirmed by his fellow senators.

"Today, I'm looking ahead to my second term, and I'm very proud to announce my choice for America's next secretary of state, John Kerry," Obama said. The president added: "Over the years, John has earned the respect and confidence of leaders around the world. He is not going to need a lot of on-the-job training."

Kerry's path to the nomination cleared last week when another candidate -- United Nations ambassador Susan Rice -- announced she would not pursue the post. Kerry, who turned 69 this month, has had a lifelong involvement in foreign issues. The son of a foreign service officer, Kerry fought in Vietnam and later became a leader of a veterans group that opposed the war.

Elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982, Kerry won his first U.S. Senate race two years later and is currently in his fifth term. He secured the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2004 but lost the general election to incumbent President George W. Bush. During his Senate years, Kerry opposed U.S. assistance to Nicaraguan rebels during the 1980s and criticized the Iraq war during his 2004 presidential bid against Bush.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Level the field for charter and public schools

(PNI) Leveling the playing field on public-education funding is long overdue.

We must change the fact that charter schools receive public funds and can receive exemptions under Arizona's state procurement rules. These rules are in place to ensure public dollars -- your tax dollars and mine -- are spent fairly, competitively and without conflict of interest.

Recent Arizona Republic articles highlight the charter schools' administration and board members' link to quite expensive purchases. It is no wonder that administrative costs are higher for public schools; they must adhere to rules that charters can be exempted from.

It is time to level the playing field as well as protect our public dollars. Charter schools should be required to follow the same set of rules as Arizona public schools because they receive part of the same public funds.

-- Karen Havird, Phoenix

A sex-offender dilemma

Republic reporter Michelle Ye Hee Lee identified just a few of the many symptoms of the sex-offender issues that face our communities ("Unwanted, unsettled, unaccounted for," A1, Sunday).

The focus must remain on the big picture and where our continued failure to act by our current (and past) elected officials will soon take us.

Their failure, despite being informed that something needs to be done today, likely will mean some poor child will have to be hurt or abused before they do what is required to help resolve or at least improve the system.

Yes, it will take tax dollars. Yes, there are many more sex offenders in prison waiting to be released and need some place to go. So, stop wasting time talking about failures and pointing fingers and start talking about solutions and taking responsibility.

-- Michael White, Peoria

More political alienation

I write in response to Nomiki Konst's timely column, "Arizona Democrats need to update plan to grow party base" (Opinions, Saturday).

I believe the column, although directed at Democrats, applies equally to both major political parties.

The growing number of voters who register as independent certainly reflect a range of rationales, but one is a growing sense of alienation from the traditional "political-party mentality" pervasive in both groups.

I have not yet registered as an independent but have seriously considered this option because of my negative assessment of the functioning of the Arizona Democratic Party.

Political parties must reinvent themselves to become relevant and viable as voices of the people they claim to represent, rather than the established and well-financed interests currently in full control of the levers of power.

From my point of view, the Democratic Party has the right core values and perspectives; it just functions and campaigns so much like the other party that it fails to distinguish itself as a preferred choice worthy of allegiance.

-- Melvin Hall, Scottsdale

Arizona now purple state

I must disagree with Nomiki Konst's column claiming Arizona Democrats had a bad year ("Arizona Democrats need to update plan to grow party base," Opinions, Saturday). That was true only for the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Democrats won all three winnable congressional seats and ran the closest race for U.S. Senate since Dennis DeConcini's victory in 1976. Further, they picked up four seats each in the Arizona House and Senate. And only two states (North Carolina and Georgia) had narrower margins for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama than did Arizona among the 24 states Obama lost. We are indeed now a purple state.

-- Gary Peter Klahr,

Phoenix

Driver's license solution

It seems there is a simple solution to the "problem" of issuing driver's licenses to young people who have qualified for work permits to avoid deportation under President Barack Obama's executive order.

Since the state can issue different types of licenses, why can't the MVD create a license that expires at the conclusion of the executive order and be clearly labeled "Not a United States citizen"?

My daughter's license before she turned 21 was clearly labeled that she was a minor to prevent her from going into bars. Why can't the same type of logic be applied here?

This would satisfy the governor's fears of the license being misused or of attempts to illegally gain benefits that the license holder is not authorized to receive. The kids need to be able to drive to work.

Why is this so hard?

-- Chip McTiernan,

Youngtown

Fed up with greedy CEOs

Regarding "Hostess done in by brass" (Letters, Friday):

I believe Americans are fed up. Not with all Republicans. Not with all Democrats. With greed.

What I am frustrated by is excess. I see the excessive salaries paid to CEOs and professional athletes and entertainers.

Maybe if they had to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on every cent they earned, it would also help fund those programs.

--Kelly Murray, Tempe

Seasonal sharing needed

You recently reported that the Harris Poll found that Americans plan to spend more this Christmas season than last but are less likely to give a charitable gift. How dismaying!

To think that another necktie for Uncle Elmer may be on the list but not a donation to help the one in four children in the U.S. who lives in poverty suggests the milk of human kindness has curdled.

As we express relief that we have not suffered the awful devastation of Hurricane Sandy, we omit a donation to the American Red Cross or Salvation Army in favor of yet another toy for little Joey.

With the unprecedented demand for emergency food, we fail to give a can of peanut butter or a donation to the Association of Arizona Food Banks and instead give a box of candy for Auntie Em.

Even your stories of real people who benefit from the Season for Sharing may be overrun by our own Season for Spending.

-- Ruth Wootten, Tempe

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Kyl was a natural legislator, uncorroded by political game

(PNI) From the political notebook:

It is revealing and emblematic that Jon Kyl didn't devote his farewell address in the U.S. Senate last week to reminiscing about his 26 years in Congress. Instead, he provided a thoughtful exposition of the political principles and causes that he has sought to defend and advance during his time there.

Kyl is what Margaret Thatcher called a "conviction politician." Holding office was a means to an end, not the end itself.

Kyl was not a natural politician. But he is a very disciplined person, and he doggedly set out to do the things that are necessary to win elections better and more comprehensively than anyone else. His campaigns left as little as possible to chance. And he leaves office as one of the most successful politicians in Arizona's history.

Kyl was a natural legislator. While not a natural politician, he understood the political beast and the give-and-take of legislating. And he usually had two advantages: a greater mastery of the topic and a better sense of where he wanted to end up. Kyl went to Washington to matter. He did.

A long career in politics is usually corrosive. The game becomes more important than the outcome. Such an evolution is almost an iron rule, which is one of the reasons I support term limits.

Kyl is a close friend. I never detected the corrosion in him. The game never became more important than the outcome.

Kyl rose to the highest level in the game and leaves office as the second-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate. Yet he seemed to retain a healthy detachment from the political power game in which he was a principal player. He was able to participate in the game to advance the causes he believed in without being completely absorbed into the game.

In fact, during Kyl's entire 26 year career in Congress, the only thing I saw that I thought truly changed him was becoming a grandfather.

That says a lot.

Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva is also a conviction politician, although decisively from the left. He reminds me a bit of Jeff Flake, current congressman and senator-elect, in this sense: Grijalva is a far more important national political figure than is commonly understood in Arizona.

Grijalva is co-chairman of the Progressive Caucus in the House, which is sort of the uncompromising liberal wing of the Democratic Party. It takes positions well to the left of the House Democratic leadership, particularly on fiscal issues. I think its positions are almost universally wrong-headed for the country. But I do give it credit for this: For the most part, the Progressive Caucus doesn't duck the tough questions or issues. In that respect, it offers far more honest leadership than President Obama or the official Democratic congressional leaders.

Recently, more than 200 environmental and other liberal organizations recommended Grijalva to be secretary of the Interior. This was remarkable because it isn't clear that the current secretary, Ken Salazar, is leaving.

Now, I think it would be a disaster for Grijalva to be secretary of the Interior. It would be the left's equivalent of Ronald Reagan appointing James Watt to the position in the 1980s.

The Interior secretary has to balance a lot of competing interests. Republicans strike the balance at a different point than Democrats, so elections matter regarding the regulation of public lands. But without a balance, the competition becomes destructive political warfare.

Grijalva ain't about balance. But it is testimony to his national importance that somany groups lined up behind him to try to shove himto the front of the line in case the position does come open.

Grijalva deserves more attention here in Arizona.

All the wrong lessons are being drawn from the failure of House Speaker John Boehner to get the votes necessary to pass his bill extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone except those making over $1million a year. The real lesson is that a big deal isn't possible. Only a very small one is.

Obama and congressional Democrats are being unrealistic about what House Republicans will accept in revenue increases. House Republicans are being unrealistic about what Democrats will accept in budget cuts and entitlement reform.

Unless Boehner is willing to commit political suicide by bringing to the floor a big deal he negotiates with the president that is opposed by a majority of his caucus, kicking the can down the road again is the only thing that's politically achievable.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@

arizonarepublic.com.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Senator Inouye of Hawaii, elected in 1959, dies at 88

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON Recovering from war wounds that left him with one arm, Danny Inouye wanted a cigarette and needed a light.

The nurse at the Army hospital in Michigan threw a pack of matches on his chest. He wanted to curse her. Instead, she taught him how to light it one-handed.

"Then she said, 'I'm not going to be around here for the rest of your life. You'll have to learn how to light your own matches, cut your own meat, dress yourself and do everything else. So from now on you're going to be learning,'" Inouye recalled decades later.

From that moment on it seemed like nothing would stop a determined Daniel K. Inouye, who died Monday after a uniquely American life defined by heroism in war and decades of service in the Senate -- and a lifelong love of Hawaii symbolized by his last utterance.

"Aloha."

Inouye, who broke racial barriers on Capitol Hill and played key roles in congressional investigations of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, was 88.

A senator since January 1963, Inouye was currently the longest serving senator and was president pro tempore of the Senate, third in the line of presidential succession. His office said Monday that he died of respiratory complications at a Washington-area hospital.

Less than an hour after Inouye's passing, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Inouye's death to a stunned chamber. "Our friend Daniel Inouye has died," Reid said somberly. Shocked members of the Senate stood in the aisles or slumped in their chairs.

Inouye was a World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient who lost an arm to a German hand grenade during a battle in Italy. He became the first Japanese-American to serve in Congress, when he was elected to the House in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state. He won election to the Senate three years later and served there longer than anyone in American history except Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who died in 2010 after 51 years in the Senate.

President Barack Obama, a native of Hawaii, said in a statement, "Tonight, our country has lost a true American hero with the passing of Sen. Daniel Inouye. ? It was his incredible bravery during World War II -- including one heroic effort that cost him his arm but earned him the Medal of Honor -- that made Danny not just a colleague and a mentor, but someone revered by all of us lucky enough to know him."

Obama also sent a tweet that ended "Aloha, Danny."

Inouye died after a relatively brief hospitalization. Once a regular smoker, he had a portion of a lung removed in the 1960s after a misdiagnosis for cancer. Just last week, he issued a statement expressing optimism about his recovery.

Despite his age and illness, Inouye's death shocked members of the Senate.

"I'm too broken up," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who becomes president pro tem of the Senate. Leahy also is poised to take over the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie will appoint a replacement, choosing from a list of three candidates selected by the state Democratic Party. "We're preparing to say goodbye," Abercrombie said. "Everything else will take place in good time."

Whomever Abercrombie appoints would serve until a special election in 2014.

Inouye has represented Hawaii since it became a state in 1959, first in the House. He was handily re-elected to a ninth term in 2010 with 75percent of the vote.

Inouye became president pro tem of the Senate in 2010, a largely ceremonial post that also placed him in the line of succession to the presidency, after the vice president and the speaker of the House.

Earlier, he had taken the helm of the powerful Appropriations Committee, where he spent most of his Senate career attending to Hawaii. At the height of his power, Inouye routinely secured tens of millions of dollars annually for the state's roads, schools, national lands and military bases.

Although tremendously popular in his home state, Inouye actively avoided the national spotlight until he was thrust into it. He was the keynote speaker at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and later reluctantly joined the Senate's select committee on the Watergate scandal. The panel's investigation led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Inouye also served as chairman of the committee that investigated the Iran-Contra arms and money affair, which rocked Ronald Reagan's presidency.

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Taxes raised with no fiscal responsibility

(PNI) Three-fourths of households will see their taxes go up on the promise that spending will be looked at in the near future. Huh?

Ronald Reagan raised taxes on the promise that for every dollar of tax increase there would be $3 of future spending decreases. George H.W. Bush raised taxes on the promise that for every dollar of tax increase there would be $2 of future spending decreases. In both instances, the taxes were immediately raised, but the Democrats reneged and spending cuts never came about.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have never shown the slightest interest or the required courage necessary to begin genuine debt reduction. They skirted the law by not passing a budget in three years. The president ignored his own committee's report on how to reduce the deficit.

Instead, Democrats continue to divide Americans by playing class warfare and promoting the crass emotion of jealousy. Individual initiative and responsibility no longer apply.

-- Lowell Ziemann, Scottsdale

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Offer thanks, not judgment, this Thanksgiving

(PNI) On this Thanksgiving Day, I hope all Arizonans and Americans will take time to truly reflect and pray and ask themselves these questions: Do you have a roof over your head? Do you have food on your table? Do you have a loved one who is in the hospital and receiving medical care whether or not they have insurance?

If you can answer yes to these questions, you are richly blessed. Please don't complain if our government has helped others in need achieve these three basic needs. Be thankful that you live in such a great nation that helps its own.

Please don't judge those who may not have reacted to negative experiences the same way you did. Count every blessing, deeply reflect and pray for all those less fortunate than you. In every way, we are the same.

Happy Thanksgiving.

-- Diana Hurst Wyllie,

Phoenix

Redistricting was a farce

So now, Arizona, which has a large majority of conservative Republican citizens overall, is being represented in the House by five Democrats and only four Republicans. This is a direct result of the underhanded gerrymandering pushed through earlier by the so-called Independent Redistricting Commission.

The commission was headed by a longtime Democratic Party activist who falsely filed as an independent when she was certainly not nonpartisan. She then banded together with the two Democrat members to ram through all the redistricting maps and decisions by a party-line 3-2 majority in all cases.

The redrawn maps, which greatly favored the Democrats in the election process, ended up with the desired result of having a Democratic Arizona majority in the House, even though this does not represent the desires of the majority of Arizona citizens.

The worst part is that this farce cannot be remedied for another 10 years. I guess crime does pay, as long as you're a crooked politician.

-- Brian Callahan, Sun City

Obama's gift: Respect

To those who think we voted for Barack Obama because we've received or expect to receive "gifts" from him:

Many of us voted for the president because he offers us the gift of respect.

Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and many other Republicans have shown contempt for women, minorities, LGBT people, immigrants, the poor, recipients of food stamps, Social Security and Medicare and -- above all -- contempt for honesty.

When you treat people with respect, we'll respect you in return. If you're contemptuous, we'll return your contempt with interest.

-- Tony Chambers, Tempe

Tax hike won't hurt rich

Do the voters really believe their taxes will not rise? Only the wealthy will see an increase?

Are the people so naive that they don't realize the wealthy have plenty of tax shelters and ways to hide their money? The middle class will bear the burden of these tax increases, not the wealthy.

A realistic voter.

-- J. A. Younger, Scottsdale

Not the captain we need

Having Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett do an "overhaul" of the voting process is like giving the captain of the Titanic the keys to a newer, bigger ship.

-- Tom Dunning, Payson

Embassy safety is crucial

The partisan wrangling over Benghazi is a sideshow to the real problem of addressing the purposes of our U.S. diplomatic objectives in the Islamic world.

Our embassies, consulates and missions are hiding behind fortresses with blast-resistant barriers, iron fences with razor wire and armed security guards. Embassy personnel have restricted access to the public and travel in body armor and reinforced vehicles. Increased security perimeters in vulnerable locations will not resolve how we communicate in Islamic countries.

If local governments cannot protect our missions, we should leave. The real issue for Congress is to rethink our global diplomatic mission in light of the overall terrorist threats and not score political points on a setback that exposed our vulnerabilities everywhere.

-- Don Sharpes, Scottsdale

GOP must change views

Since losing the presidential election, there has been a lot of talk among the pundits about changing the Republican Party. I contend there is no Republican Party, just as there is no color purple.

The Republican Party is a combination of people with many different viewpoints. To change the shading of the party, there must be change to the viewpoints of its membership.

For example, adopting a Dream Act for the sake of wooing voters is not a change in viewpoint, it is superficial. Allowing abortion and contraception for votes is not a change in viewpoint.

I therefore also contend that this change is more difficult because the views held by many, particularly in Arizona, are deeply ingrained.

Change can happen only when we change our views, and that comes from learning tolerance for other human beings.

-- Mike Ullery, Glendale

Hamas' deadly strategy

Question: What's the real reason Hamas fires rockets into Israel?

We would be wrong to believe they think they can significantly hurt Israel's citizens or military by doing this. The larger strategic purpose is simple: to provoke an Israeli air war on Gaza.

Look behind this cynical action and you'll find their strategic success: worldwide TV coverage of children killed and mass demonstrations in other countries supporting Hamas.

It is, clearly, the hate-filled, brainwashed Hamas leadership that brings the human tragedy of war on themselves.

-- Steve Berliner, Buckeye

The elephant in the room

OK, I'm going to say it. I'm going to say what no one seems willing or able to say:

Ken Whisenhunt must go.

-- Mary Ann Bashaw, Phoenix

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