A Certificate of Embarrassment
With sardonic resignation, President Obama, an eminently rational man, stared directly into political irrationality on Wednesday and released his birth certificate to history. More than halfway through his term, the president felt obliged to prove that he was a legitimate occupant of the Oval Office. It was a profoundly low and debasing moment in American political life.
The disbelief fairly dripped from Mr. Obama as he stood at the West Wing lectern. People are out of work, American soldiers are dying overseas and here were cameras to record him stating that he was born in a Hawaii hospital. It was particularly galling to us that it was in answer to a baseless attack with heavy racial undertones.
Mr. Obama practically begged the public to set aside these distractions, expressing hope that his gesture would end the “silliness” and allow a national debate about budget priorities. It won’t, of course.
If there was ever any doubt about Mr. Obama’s citizenship, which there was not, the issue was settled years ago when Hawaii released his birth certificate. The fuller document that Mr. Obama had to request contains some extra information, including his parents’ signatures and the name of the hospital where he was born, but it was unnecessary to show his legitimacy.
So it will not quiet the most avid attackers. Several quickly questioned its authenticity. That’s because the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race. It was originally promulgated by fringe figures of the radical right, but mainstream Republican leaders allowed it to simmer to satisfy those who are inflamed by Mr. Obama’s presence in the White House.
Sarah Palin said the birth certificate issue was “fair game,” and the public was “rightfully” making it an issue. The House speaker, John Boehner, grudgingly said in February that he would take Mr. Obama “at his word” that he was a citizen, a suggestion that the proof was insufficient. He said, however, that it was not his job to end the nonsensical attacks. “The American people have the right to think what they want to think,” he said at the time. That signal was clearly received. Lawmakers in nearly a dozen states introduced bills requiring presidential candidates to release their full birth certificates.
It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious “other” would have been conducted against a white president.
There was a price to the party for keeping the issue alive; inevitably, it was picked up by a cartoon candidate, Donald Trump, who rode birtherism directly to the prime-time promontories of cable TV. The Republican establishment began to wince as it became increasingly tied to Mr. Trump’s flirtations with racial provocation, and Karl Rove told him to knock it off. Naturally, he did not.
Finally, his taunting and the questions of television correspondents obliging Mr. Trump got on the president’s nerves. Mr. Obama was tactically smart to release the certificate and marginalize those who continue to keep the matter alive. It is tragic that American politics is fueled by such poisonous fire. Mr. Trump quickly moved on to a new fixation, questioning Mr. Obama’s academic credentials. Mr. Boehner, and other party leaders, have a new reason to call a halt to the politics of paranoia and intolerance.
The Limits of Fed Policy
For too long policy decisions by the Federal Reserve were cloaked in secrecy and Alan Greenspan, the longtime chairman, was notoriously Delphic. So it was good to see the current chairman, Ben Bernanke, meeting the press on Wednesday, in the first of what are to be quarterly question-and-answer sessions. It shows that the Fed has learned, albeit the hard way, that it must build understanding and support for its policies.
For all the talk, there is little Mr. Bernanke can say, or do, to alter today’s grim economic realities. The tools the Fed has to raise or lower interest rates, are not, by themselves, going to fix what most ails the economy today: continued high unemployment; falling home prices; weak income growth; the erosion of the manufacturing sector.
Only fiscal policy can directly address those crushing problems. That requires Congress and the White House to agree on ways to raise and invest taxpayer dollars for specific programs, projects and recovery efforts.
That is not to imply, as Fed critics contend, that current Fed policy has failed. Its most controversial action — a $600 billion bond-buying program intended to keep long-term interest rates low — has succeeded in preventing a deflationary spiral and has correlated with more robust job growth. The Fed’s decision on Wednesday to continue the bond-buying program as scheduled through June, together with its decision to keep interest rates near zero for the foreseeable future, represent sensible support for a still fragile economy.
So long as fiscal policy is off the table, the economy is likely to limp along for years. The White House has some good ideas, including proposals to boost educational achievement and, importantly, to raise taxes for needed spending. A bipartisan group of senators have recently proposed creating an infrastructure bank to lend out seed money — and attract private capital — for major public works projects. But most Congressional Republicans are fixated solely on cutting federal spending as quickly as possible, and have successfully dominated debate and policy-making.
In his press conference, Mr. Bernanke emphasized the need to control the long-term budget deficit. Just as clearly, he emphasized that the best approach would be to enact a credible plan soon — to be implemented over time. If only Congress would take heed.
It is important that the Fed not prematurely raise interest rates or otherwise tighten its policy. The Fed’s ability to boost economic activity is limited. Unfortunately for now, monetary policy is the only game in town.
Recidivism’s High Cost and a Way to Cut It
Corrections costs for the states have quadrupled in the last 20 years — to about $52 billion a year nationally — making prison spending their second-fastest growing budget item after Medicaid. To cut those costs, the states must first rethink parole and probation policies that drive hundreds of thousands of people back to prison every year, not for new crimes, but for technical violations that present no threat to public safety.
According to a new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Center on the States, 43 percent of prisoners nationally return to the lockup within three years. The authors estimate that the 41 states covered in the study would reap a significant savings — $635 million in the first year — if they managed to cut their recidivism rates by just 10 percent. For California’s hugely costly prison system, that would mean $233 million in savings; for New York, $42 million; and for Texas, $33.6 million.
The study, which looked at prisoner release data in 1999 and 2004, found recidivism rates varied widely. Some of the highest rates were in California (57.8 percent) and Missouri (54.4). New York is slightly under the national average (39.9 percent). Oregon had the lowest: only 22.8 percent of inmates released in 2004 returned within three years. Crime has also declined significantly.
In the 1990s, the Oregon Legislature created a rating system that allows parole officers to employ a range of sanctions — short of a return to prison — for offenders whose infractions were minor and did not present a danger. A parolee who fails a drug test can be sent to residential drug treatment or sentenced to house arrest or community service. In 2003, the state passed a law requiring all state-financed correctional treatment programs to use methods that have been shown to improve client compliance and to reduce recidivism.
Pressured by the dismal economy, many states, including New York, are looking for ways to cut recidivism. The wise approach would be to adopt the programs that have proved so successful in Oregon.
The Duty of Counsel
We strongly oppose the federal statute known as the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans recognizing same-sex marriage. House Republicans should not have used taxpayer money to hire outside lawyers to defend it. But the decision of those lawyers, the law firm of King & Spalding, to abandon their clients is deplorable.
King & Spalding had no ethical or moral obligation to take the case, but in having done so, it was obliged to stay with its clients, to resist political pressure from the left that it feared would hurt its business. Paul Clement, a former solicitor general who quit as partner in King & Spalding over the decision, said, “a representation should not be abandoned because the client’s legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters.”
Justice is best served when everyone whose case is being decided by a court is represented by able counsel.
When Brown v. Board of Education was argued almost 60 years ago, two of the great American lawyers squared off, Thurgood Marshall for the winning side of desegregation and the renowned Wall Street lawyer John Davis for the principle of separate but equal. Segregation in public schools was the law of the land then.
The Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, remains on the books despite rulings against it. That did not mean the administration was required to defend the law, and it was right to decide to stop. But that is separate from the law firm’s action.
About twice every three terms, the justices hear a case in which one side is abandoned by a party in the lower courts. The court appoints counsel for that unpopular side, and he argues for the client as best he can. Last week, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. expressed the court’s gratitude to the appointed lawyer in such a case. King & Spalding seems to have forgotten that ideal of advocacy.
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