Politico

In the wake of admissions of marital infidelity by Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, the political left has seemed downright gleeful in its accusations of conservative hypocrisy.

My phone has been ringing off the hook with reporters asking whether social conservatives are ready to bolt the GOP. But where would they go? After all, hypocrisy is an equal opportunity destroyer.

Too often, the left exploits human failing among conservatives while ignoring similar problems in its own camp. President Bill Clinton wagged his finger at the cameras and lied under oath about an affair with an employee. Rep. Barney Frank had a “companion” running a call service with scant political fallout. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer visited high-priced prostitutes but has already rebounded to appear regularly on political talk shows and pen a weekly political column.

Then there’s John Edwards, Jim McGreevey, Michael Huffington — the list goes on.

Marital infidelity is not a Republican or Democratic problem. It is a human problem. It should not be a surprise that politicians who support family values sometimes fail to live up to them. After all, they are subject to the temptations and moral weakness inherent in us all.

Many on the left would rather we abandon all standards of moral conduct. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” they cry. But they fail to mention the next part of the verse, when a loving Jesus who understands our weaknesses said, “Go and sin no more.”

No one is asking for perfection. But our society’s failure to live up to all of its own goals does not mean we should abandon them. Perhaps we need to appreciate a little more those who do meet those standards, including President Barack Obama.

The recent spate of affairs and sexual misconduct reflects disturbing trends in society as a whole. Rep. Mark Foley was caught sending sexual messages to underage male congressional pages at a time when “sexting” was becoming a serious concern in many families. Spitzer was caught spending thousands of dollars on prostitutes at a time when online pornography has become a billion-dollar-a-year industry. Popular culture values personal and immediate gratification over self-sacrifice and patience.

And we know the effects. Half of marriages fail, and 40 percent of births are to single mothers. Social science has confirmed the high price of broken homes and fathers’ absences on children’s development.

So are we headed the way of Europe, where politicians’ sexual misconduct is no longer an obstacle to high office? Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi can brag about being the most popular leader in the world even as he halfheartedly deflects accusations of, among other transgressions, “consorting with minors,” as his ex-wife put it.

But I believe personal conduct is still important to most Americans. Marriage and family scandals still affect careers because, outside the cocktail circuits of Manhattan and L.A., most Americans crave a world in which politicians love their spouses and children and maintain personal decorum in their lives.

Most people feel grief when a marriage fails, when someone is addicted to drugs or alcohol, when someone struggles with inner demons. These scandals affect politicians because, even though we all know that perfection is ever elusive, marriage and family mean something.

Most people care about the impact on society when someone falls, no matter who it is. We care about the things our children hear when the news is on and about teaching our children how to press on to higher goals, rather than to surrender to the lowest common denominator in ourselves.

Will they always make it? No. But it’s curious that the left — which fanatically preaches against cigarette smoking, even though some will light up, or in saving the earth, even though some will litter — refuses to discuss other standards of conduct that affect people just as much. It’s not wasted effort to talk about our hopes and dreams for our children, including the desire that they make it to their golden anniversaries.

No one can excuse the behavior of these two men, but their failure to live up to the standards they promoted does not make those standards any less valid. The good news is that political scandals still scandalize because most Americans continue to value moral conduct in their politicians and in themselves.

Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer is president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.

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To the growing list of those victimized by the Mark Sanford scandal, add fiscal conservatives. The South Carolina governor’s fall from grace — following his acknowledgement of an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman, for whom he went AWOL earlier this month — effectively deprives the fiscally conservative wing of the Republican Party of one of its highest-profile spokesmen.

Even before the oddities of Sanford’s leaked e-mails and sudden disappearance were thrust upon the nation, Sanford had his quirks. But at least these quirks were not hypocritical. The stories of how Sanford once insisted on sharing a single cup of soda with colleagues and bedded down on a futon in his congressional office to save money may or may not seem normal, but few would argue that they were inconsistent with his ideology of fiscal rectitude. So, in his own eccentric fashion, Sanford appeared to embody his political message, always a plus in political gamesmanship.

But now, unless Sanford can rehabilitate his public image with record speed, his days as a symbol of fiscal conservatism are over. Yet his disappearance comes as the otherwise flailing GOP actually has a case to make, after the recent spending binge under President Barack Obama.

According to the mid-June NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 60 percent of respondents said that Obama and Congress “should worry more about keeping the deficit down — even if that means it will take longer for the economy to recover,” according to an analysis by NBC’s Mark Murray. Other polling has found similar results. But to make hay of this issue, the GOP needs spokesmen who can sell fiscal conservatism and do it in a way that doesn’t allow it to be overshadowed by social conservatism.

Congress offers one potential pool of fiscally conservative icons. In the House, the obvious pick would be Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, who’s young, telegenic and credible — but, on the national scene, virtually unknown. In the Senate, the somewhat older equivalent is Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who plans to retire at the end of next year.

Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina have the right fiscally conservative credentials, but their staunch social conservatism and their bases in the GOP heartland make them unlikely ambassadors to regions where the party needs to court swing voters.

And even though Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has a record on earmarks and federal spending that hits many of the right notes with fiscal conservatives, he’s nobody’s pick after his losing presidential bid last year.

Another potential pool consists of Sanford’s fellow governors. But with the ongoing recession and state budget crunch, virtually every governor in the nation faces financial troubles. Just ask California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger how much fun he’s having these days. The pressure to raise taxes or increase spending is immense, and Republican governors are going to be navigating between the Scylla of alienating the Republican base and the Charybdis of alienating rank-and-file voters in their own states.

Asked whether he’s worried about this state of affairs, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said he’s not.

Norquist rattled off several Republican governors who could fill the role, including Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Sarah Palin of Alaska and Haley Barbour of Mississippi. Another politician who could vault to national prominence if he wins a hotly contested Senate primary in Florida is former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, who is running an underdog campaign against the state’s more moderate Republican governor, Charlie Crist.

“All have good spending records and have worked to build their parties,” Norquist said.

He also pointed to a number of former Republican officeholders who are still in the limelight: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Ohio Rep. John Kasich.

“The party spokesman on spending will be the nominee in 2012,” Norquist said. “Until then, there will be leaders like Ryan, who is today’s Jack Kemp.” He added that “the movement has many spokesmen, and not all are elected. All the talk radio guys and columnists are good on spending.”

Of Norquist’s suggested candidates, the politicians who could probably attract the most independents and even Democrats include Jindal — if he can recover from his widely panned response to Obama’s State of the Union address earlier this year — Romney, Kasich and Pawlenty.

“Pawlenty is walking the fiscal responsibility walk in Minnesota and is in a strong position to capture a lot of this segment of the GOP coalition,” said Phil Musser, a consultant and former executive director of the Republican Governors Association.

There’s one silver lining for the GOP: Whoever the new standard-bearer for fiscal conservatives is, he or she will have some time to develop a voice. After all, whether fiscal conservatism lives up to its potential as an issue for the GOP depends on how the economy develops and how much tolerance the American public has for Obama’s approach.

Louis Jacobson authored the Out There column covering politics in the states, which ran in Roll Call and on stateline.org.

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POLITICO’s Arena contributors discuss the team of Henry Waxman and Ed Markey and the climate bill.

Daniel Becker, director, Safe Climate Campaign

“Unfortunately the energy-climate bill has more holes than cheese. Chairmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey and Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried mightily. Despite long odds, they came up with a bill that begins to cut emissions, pushes the states to start shifting to renewable energy sources and orders new coal plants to capture 50 percent of their carbon emissions.

“But the standards for the emissions don’t come near the 17 percent claimed by supporters. Even if they did, they would be far less than what scientists say must be achieved to avoid dire consequences. The bill’s renewable energy provisions fall far short of what technology can provide.”

Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

“It has major flaws which must be addressed before being passed into law. The bill fails to ensure that an adequate amount of replacement energy is available to compensate for the bill’s declining cap on fossil fuel emissions. Moreover, H.R. 2454 is not conditional on an international treaty, which removes any leverage U.S. negotiators have in international climate change negotiations and would put domestic industries at a competitive disadvantage.”

Daniel M. Kammen, professor, University of California, Berkeley

“The American Clean Energy and Security Act is an exceptionally important statement and moment. It essentially encompasses recognition — long overdue — of the need to treat the environment with respect by establishing a price for pollution and recognition that we can use the market to help spur innovation. Yes, the Waxman-Markey bill is complex and extensive, but it signals both a critical need to clean our energy economy and a chance to create in the United States the companies that can lead the next Industrial Revolution. It is not a perfect bill but absolutely should be passed.”

Robert N. Stavins, professor, Harvard University

“Like any legislation, the Waxman-Markey bill has its share of flaws, but its medium- and long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change are sensible, and the central mechanism it uses to achieve those targets — an economy-wide, comprehensive cap-and-trade system — is, for the most part, well-designed. With some exceptions, the bill’s cap-and-trade system will achieve meaningful reductions in carbon dioxide emissions at minimal cost to the economy.”

Joseph Romm, senior fellow, Center for American Progress

“‘Aye’ is the only possible vote for members of Congress who care about their children and grandchildren — and their own place in history. This is arguably the single most important vote a member will ever cast. If we fail to stop catastrophic global warming, future generations will not care what we have done on issues like health care, the deficit and Iraq.”

David Boaz, executive VP, Cato Institute

“Nay, nay, a thousand times nay! The ever-growing Waxman-Markey bill — 646 pages, 932 pages, 1,201 pages — attempts to impose huge cost increases on American families’ consumption of energy without openly imposing a tax increase. But Martin Feldstein of Harvard writes, ‘The tax imposed by the cap-and-trade system is therefore equivalent to raising the family’s income tax by about 50 percent.’ And as The Washington Post noted, the bill includes a great deal of little-discussed federal regulation … even though the economic argument for schemes like ‘cap and trade’ is that market incentives are more efficient than command-and-control regulation.”

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POLITICO Arena contributors provide reaction to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race. The Ricci v. DeStefano case reversed a decision that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed in her current position as a federal appeals court judge. 

“The Supreme Court’s opinion on Ricci is not surprising and should have no impact on the Sotomayor nomination. Chief Justice John Roberts has been consistently opposed to affirmative action since the blistering critique he wrote of it while special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in the Reagan administration. He rejected any idea of supporting it because it ‘required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates.’

“Justice Antonin Scalia has a record of strong opposition to affirmative action dating at least back to his 1979 Washington University Law Quarterly article ‘The Disease as Cure: In Order to Get Beyond Racism We Must First Take Race Into Account,’ which criticized Justice Harry Blackmun’s supportive opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

“Justice Clarence Thomas, of course, is on record in opposition. And Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has wavered all over the place, has generally been opposed.

“What to do now: Mend-it-don’t-end-it solutions at the state and local level should be adopted, just as President Bill Clinton did with national policy after the Adarand Constructors’ anti-affirmative-action government contracts case.

“Also, new, more moderate justices, who would have remanded a case like this one for further analysis and consideration of a remedy, must be appointed.” 

Marion Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal professor of American social thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and a former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

“Now that the Supreme Court has ruled on the Ricci case, Judge Sotomayor can be fully questioned about it at her Senate confirmation. The fact that she was reversed will certainly add fodder for those on the fence and those who oppose her.

“Some of the more germane questions that should be asked are these: Why, at the time, did you feel that the Ricci case should have been dismissed on its face and not heard by your court? Your decision in the Ricci case was a terse, one-page decision, yet the Supreme Court decision was more than 90 pages that covered, in depth, the appellants’ equal protection and other constitutional claims. Why did you not take up the appellants’ constitutional arguments?

“The facts are that the U.S. Supreme Court has had seven of Sotomayor’s decisions before them and has agreed with her reasoning only once. She needs to explain the thought process by which she weighed the facts and applied the law in the Ricci case and every other case that has come before her.

“Judge Sotomayor certainly did not give the appellants in the Ricci case a ‘day in court’ that would have allowed their constitutional arguments to be fully appreciated or considered by the appellate court. Judge Sotomayor’s peer on the court in the Ricci case, Judge Jose Cabranes, was so concerned that she disregarded the constitutional arguments of the appellants that he wrote a blistering dissent that took Sotomayor to task.

“At the end of the day, will this latest reversal by her potential future peers derail her confirmation? I doubt it. What it will do is add at least another long day of questioning. The Democrats appear to have enough votes to get her out of committee and to the Senate for a vote. And I predict the Republicans will be a lot fairer to Judge Sotomayor than the Democrats were to Samuel Alito or John Roberts in their hearings.”

Bradley Blakeman served as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2004.

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The Obama administration has been, so far, hierarchical and even conservative in its thinking. Following and even surpassing the Bush administration’s reliance on an M.B.A.-trained elite, which drove the country nearly to ruin, the Obama approach seems to boil down to finding the smartest guy in the room, rather than utilizing people with hands-on experience or acquired wisdom.

This fixation on hierarchy has been unexpected for an administration whose stock sold on the notion of being something other than the same old, same old. Yet as it turns out, the Obamanians seem to be as narrow, if not narrower, than their much-disdained predecessors.

Early on, President Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour gained power in places you would not expect it to — winning critical victories in overwhelmingly white, socially conservative Great Plains and Midwestern states. Yet today, he has built one of the narrowest administrations, both ideologically and regionally, in recent memory.

This trend became apparent in a new National Journal study of the administration’s top 366 officials. To be sure, the Obama team has more Hispanics, African-Americans and women than its predecessors. But beyond gender and color, the Journal reports, this is an administration of remarkable sameness.

For one thing, people with practical business experience — outside of finance — have little role in formulating economic policy. This differs from the Bush administration’s tilt toward traditional autocracies; this is more rule by the cognitive elites. A history of real problem solving seems to matter less than the quality of university pedigrees; the Obama team appears to be a bit like a giant law review, drawing on only the best and brightest from places such as the University of Chicago, Oxford, Harvard and Stanford, as well as some elite think-tank denizens.

This narrow gauge is even clearer geographically. There are few people around the president who come directly from exurbs or small towns; virtually all the inner circle hail from a handful of locales — Washington, Chicago, New York, Boston and the Bay Area. Remarkably, according to the National Journal, only 7 percent worked last year in a state carried by John McCain. Red appears to be one color that does not pass diversity muster for this administration.

The danger here is not so much inexperience but a vision clouded by similar experiences and prejudices from the liberal wing of the baby boomer generation. The president remains broadly popular with the young, yet his administration is actually older than that of President George W. Bush. Obama may be a millennial matinee idol, but his administration appears boomer-dominated in its point of view.

This may explain why Obama has focused so much on the old obsessions of left-leaning boomer elites — health care, civil rights, pacifistic foreign policy — and less on the issues, notably job and wealth creation, that matter most to those younger than 50. Even on the environment, an issue with great appeal to millennial Americans, his approach has been less community-based and consensual and more dogmatically and centrally directed than might appeal to a generation shaped by social networking and the Internet.

Of course, Obama still could change course and evolve into the bold, innovative leader needed for these fast-changing times. However, to get there, he must be more than merely articulate. This president needs a surer and more current approach to dealing with epochal challenges whether on the public squares of Tehran or on this country’s Main Streets.

Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of www.newgeography.com. Penguin will publish his new book, “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050,” in February 2010.

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Does a public option ‘make sense,’ as Obama says?

David Orentlicher, professor and co-director, Center for Law and Health, Indiana University schools of law and medicine

“A public option will help, but we need more fundamental reform. It is important to harness market-based incentives to contain health care costs, but targeting the incentives on patients isn’t the answer. As long as we have some form of health care insurance, individuals will not face the full costs of their decisions, so will lack the needed motivation to limit health care spending. Moreover, patients are not very good at distinguishing between necessary and unnecessary care, so will often fail to seek care when they really are sick. This makes for poor health care and raises health care costs in the long run. To really cut health care costs, we need to change the way physicians behave, and that means changing their incentives. When physicians are paid more to do more, they will be inclined to do more, even when treatment is not necessary. Ideally, we would compensate physicians based simply on the quality of care that they provide, but that is very difficult to implement. Patients may fare well or poorly for many reasons other than the quality of care that they receive.”

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, professor, Washington and Lee University School of Law

“Absolutely. Private insurance has failed America. It has had 75 years to make health care available to all Americans and to control health care costs, and it has succeeded at neither. More Americans are dropped from private insurance every year, and premiums are projected to increase 9 percent next year (which means that the actual increase in the cost of private insurance for next year could exceed significantly the projected total annual cost of health care reform projected by the Congressional Budget Office).

“Perhaps the biggest problem is that little competition remains in private insurance markets. In a third of the states, one insurer dominates half the market; in two-thirds, the top three carriers control two-thirds of the market. In many local markets where insurance is actually sold, the situation is much worse. In my home town, one insurer holds 87 percent of the market. Lack of competition is particularly a problem in rural areas.”

Steve Steckler, corporate executive

“A public option only ‘makes sense’ if you believe five things:

“1. That private insurers are colluding on the price of premiums and the specifics of coverage, and therefore need to be kept ‘honest’ (in which case, we have laws against dishonesty and collusion, so why not simply enforce them?).

“2. That private insurers and the competition among them have no value (since a public option has value only as a means of displacing them if they are not, in fact, colluding).

“3. That there is no other way to cover the uninsured who can’t afford health insurance (in which case, the food stamp program and EITC, one a voucher and the other a tax credit, must be failures).

“4. That somehow the public option will miraculously fail to replicate the decades-long experience of Medicare and Medicaid in zooming past even the most pessimistic forecasts of their costs.

“5. That profit is merely an extra cost and that its pursuit in a competitive market buys nothing (in which case you really are a socialist, not a Democrat).”

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President Barack Obama owes a great deal of his political appeal and his position to his masterful use of words. That makes it all the more puzzling that he has failed to recognize their crucial importance to the courageous people struggling to make their own voices heard in Iran.

The president’s initial instinct of caution was appropriate, to a point. It was important for the world — and for Iran’s leaders — to see that events in Iran were being driven by the righteous outrage of Iran’s people and not fomented by outside forces.

But as the hours turned into days, as police beat and killed protesters, as journalists were confined or ordered out of the country, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei unilaterally declared the election fair and ordered protesters out of the streets, Obama’s restrained words sent all the wrong signals.

Officials in the West Wing apparently spent much of the weekend debating whether Obama should use the word “unjust” in a written statement describing the situation. What’s to debate? Can any American credibly argue that killing peaceful protesters is somehow just?

The word “justice” carries a great deal of significance in the Islamic faith, which is all the more reason it was important to use it. Yet after a chorus of criticism and strong resolutions from both houses of Congress, Obama’s parsed weekend words seemed to spring more from his own political calculation than from personal conviction.

The president’s explanation for his remarkable restraint is that he wants to avoid meddling and to preserve his opportunity to engage in dialogue with Iran’s leaders. I, too, believe that dialogue and listening are critical to our international diplomacy. But the desire for dialogue is no excuse for the president’s failure to take a strong, unequivocal stand for human rights and human freedom.

The State Department issues an annual report on the status of religious freedom around the world. Understandably, the countries whose governments are the worst at repressing people’s rights to worship freely don’t like it very much. That’s why we do it. We want to shine an uncomfortable spotlight on violators and take an uncompromising stand for a fundamental human right.

I’ll never forget visiting a classroom in China, where a young American Fulbright scholar was teaching Chinese high school students English based on the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The curriculum included King’s famous “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” with its profound warning that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I realized that the students were learning so much more than another language. They were learning about our values and why we proudly herald them not only in our own country but also around the world. China’s approach is very different. China’s leaders want to run their country as they please and allow other governments to do the same. China does not like it when American leaders raise concerns about human rights and religious freedom in China. Yet regardless of the reaction of others, America stands proudly and should always speak loudly for people’s rights to speak freely, participate in their government and worship as they choose, because we understand that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

On my first trip to Saudi Arabia, I visited a women’s college. I was asked by a young woman why American women think that Saudi women are repressed. I answered in a way that I believed was both true to our values and culturally sensitive. I explained to the young woman that as an American woman, my ability to drive was an important part of my freedom, allowing me to work and care for my family. I went on to say that I understood that her culture and traditions were different. I was criticized by some for being insensitive, but on my bookshelf sits an autographed copy of a book written by well-known Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky. It is inscribed: “Dear Under Secretary Hughes, It is clear from your first trip to Saudi Arabia that you can be a powerful voice promoting freedom in the world.”

A fundamental responsibility of America’s leaders is always to be the world’s most powerful voice promoting freedom. Unfortunately, in his caution, Obama has abdicated that responsibility at a historic moment for the people of Iran.

As Sharansky writes, “I have come to understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil.”

The people of Iran have found the inner strength to confront a great wrong. America owes them the moral clarity to see it and say it.

Karen P. Hughes is global vice chairman of Burson-Marsteller. She served as under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs from 2005 to 2007.

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POLITICO’s Arena contributors play ‘Jeopardy!’ with the category of Obama’s news conference.

Julian Zelizer, professor, Princeton University

“Answer: ‘Some other time.’

“Question: ‘President Obama, when do you plan to move forward with your promises to reform the political process — campaign finance, lobbying, ethics — to try to change the underlying problems with how Washington works?’”

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor, Harvard Business School

“Answer: ‘We must seek change, with empathy for those who are suffering. But those on the other side make some good points that we should listen to. So we will take the high road and find common ground.’

“Question: ‘What are your plans for (fill in the blank: Iran, health reform, Palestine, auto-state job losses …)?’”

Pejman Yousefzadeh, attorney and blogger

“Answer: ‘I am certainly moved by what has gone on in the country, and of course, we watch what is going on with interest, but the United States really ought to make sure that it does not get itself too involved in matters there, for fear that we might be called “imperialists.”’

“Question: ‘How are you going to address the ongoing demonstrations in Iran?’”

Rory Cooper, director of strategic communications, The Heritage Foundation

“Answer: ‘Let me be clear, as I’ve said before, um, a massive global warming tax on American families would help the environment. It actually doesn’t.’

“Question: ‘Mr. President, last week your top health care adviser, Linda Douglass, talked to the AP about your often-challenged claim that under your government health care plan, Americans who like their current private plan could keep it. The AP said, “White House officials suggest the president’s rhetoric shouldn’t be taken literally.”

“‘What else that you’ve said should not be taken literally?’”

David Boaz, executive vice president, Cato Institute

“Question: ‘In the thick of the primaries, you declared, “I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home.” Now you say you will take 18 months to withdraw some troops, and you will leave 50,000 troops in Iraq after that. What didn’t you know when you promised voters that you would bring this war to an end and bring the troops home?’”

Christine Pelosi, Democratic commentator

“Answer: ‘I’m for the White Sox and a public option. Yes we can.’

“Question: ‘Mr. President, you campaigned saying that we could judge your presidency on whether you passed universal health care, got combat troops out of Iraq and fought global warming via clean energy jobs. Now, many of your supporters fear you are backing away from your promise to deliver universal health care with a public option — that you spent the money and effort on bailouts for Wall Street, not health care on Main Street. Will you make the tough choices necessary?

‘Simply put, Mr. President, in the battle for universal health care, are you with the Washington-based Nationals or Teddy Kennedy’s Red Sox Nation?’”

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Deficits matter again.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. During the campaign, Barack Obama and his advisers thought that concern about deficits was passé. But the financial crisis and the government’s stimulative response have brought back deficit politics and endangered both the timing and the substance of health care reform.

Obama’s campaign team did not see the value in wearing green eye shades. It thought that deficit politics was for suckers and that it shouldn’t be limited to small-bore domestic initiatives. Its political point was that voters would reward the Obama administration for bold programs and not care so much if deficits went up a bit.

This attitude follows a long history of both parties alternately embracing and ignoring balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. In the era of Democratic dominance from the New Deal to the Great Society, Republicans often couldn’t defeat Democratic initiatives but could claim to manage them in a fiscally responsible way.

Within Republican ranks, there was a criticism of this fiscal conservatism as taking on the role of “tax collector for the welfare state.” And the Reagan years saw the Republican emphasis shift from balanced budgets to lower taxes. And some saw indirect fiscal virtue in cutting taxes and running deficits, believing that deficits would “starve the beast” of government, as there would be no money to propose or expand domestic programs.

After 12 years of Republican presidents, President Bill Clinton aimed to reassure markets that Democrats could manage the economy. And 1992 saw Ross Perot taking nearly 20 percent of the vote, running in the middle of the political spectrum and emphasizing balanced budgets as one of his top priorities. Throw in a growing economy and six years of Clinton and a Republican Congress checking each other, and the result was budget surpluses.

Finally, Bush’s tax cuts, national security spending and congressional spending had some Republicans arguing that the party was abandoning its principles of smaller government.

With this history, it is not hard to imagine why Obama’s economic advisers thought that Obama could afford to run higher deficits, even though many hailed from the deficit-conscious Robert Rubin circle of the Clinton administration. Obama could argue that Clinton had already made the case for economically responsible Democrats and that Bush had made the case for Republican fiscal irresponsibility.

But the financial crisis changed everything. Economists across the political spectrum saw the virtue in running huge temporary deficits in order to avoid the greater evil of deflation. Deficits in the trillions of dollars for a couple of years now seemed almost sensible. The Obama administration used this emergency to its benefit to pass many of its smaller priorities in a large stimulus package.

But this early burst of spending also puts his longer-term priorities on shakier ground.

The administration’s argument about health care has been that it is both an emergency and a necessity for the long-term fiscal health of America. It is an emergency because people are losing jobs and health insurance. But it is also the key to bringing down long-term deficits, as government health spending is projected to grow at tremendous rates.

This twofold argument is the key to why the administration has laid out a very ambitious timetable. The most politically advantageous time for any new administration to pass a big initiative is in the first year, when the president’s popularity is high, Congress is compliant and midterm elections are far away.

But Obama has an additional incentive for speed. This is the year of emergency spending with enormous deficits. The increased spending on health care will be costly, but in the context of large deficits and economic emergency, the additional spending may get buried in the pile of red ink.

If health care slips to Year Two or Three, worries about deficits will have grown. Short-term economic reasons for running big deficits will have given way to a realization that debt is piling up and deficits must come down. Add to this the growing scrutiny — by the Congressional Budget Office, Republicans and others — of Obama’s claim about long-term containment of health costs.

Obama is right that the fall is the most advantageous deadline by which to pass health care. To get there, he will have to compromise to pass something significant — but well short of universal coverage. Otherwise, if the health care debate still rages in 2010, he may face defeat of his health care initiative and head into the midterm elections with Republicans rejuvenated by moderate and independent deficit-conscious voters.

John Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Kudos to conservative lawyers Doug Kmiec, Ted Olson and Ken Starr for sticking to their principles about executive branch nominations. When the Republicans held the White House, Kmiec, Olson and Starr argued that Democratic senators had a duty to defer to the president when he nominated judges and executive branch lawyers. Now, with a Democrat in the White House, they have held to that position.

Kmiec, who ran the Office of Legal Counsel for the president under Ronald Reagan, wrote a letter calling upon senators to confirm Dawn Johnsen, President Barack Obama’s embattled nominee to head the OLC. Olson and Starr came to the defense of Harold Koh, the former dean of the Yale Law School whom Obama has nominated as legal adviser to the State Department.

What Kmiec, Olson and Starr have done is important. In recent years, Washington has seen a rise in partisan bickering over nominations to the lower courts and executive branch offices. This trend toward nastier confirmation battles does the country real harm: It prevents presidents from forming an effective government, and it discourages good people from serving in public office.

I do not mean to suggest that senators should always defer to presidential nominations. On the contrary, in my book “The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process,” I contend that senators have not only the right but the responsibility to scrutinize the ideology, as well as the professional credentials, of Supreme Court nominees. Supreme Court justices often serve for decades, and they deal with a steady diet of momentous and controversial issues.

But nominations to the lower courts and executive branch positions are another matter. Lower courts rarely see the politically charged, unresolved issues that dominate the Supreme Court’s docket. And if you don’t like an executive branch official, the solution is to vote for the other party in the next presidential election — not to filibuster his or her nomination.

With their nonpartisan leadership on this issue, Kmiec, Olson and Starr have shown us a path out of the wilderness. I and other liberals should remember their example — and follow it — the next time a Republican is in the White House.

Christopher L. Eisgruber is the provost of Princeton University, where he also serves as the Laurance S. Rockefeller professor of public affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values. His books include “The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process” (Prince­ton University Press, 2007).

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