[Mb-civic] Pie in the Sky and a Big One for Bush (Review: Kennedy's 'America Back on Track') - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Pie in the Sky and a Big One for Bush
<>
By Eric Pianin
The Washington Post
Friday, April 21, 2006; A21
<>
America Back on Track
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
<>Viking, 210 pp

Does anyone still seriously believe that what Democrats need most is a 
new agenda?

In January, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Sen. 
Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) teamed up to unveil an agenda brimming with 
initiatives for education, health care, job creation and enhanced 
national security. Next up was a book by John Podesta, the former 
Clinton White House chief of staff, titled "Progressive Priorities: An 
Action Agenda for America," offering 14 new ideas for his beleaguered 
party. Then there was "The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy 
for Shared Prosperity," yet another book by a former Clinton White House 
adviser, Gene Sperling.

Now comes "America Back on Track," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's blistering 
critique of the Bush administration and his prescriptions for what ails 
the country. The Massachusetts Democrat has been one of the Senate's 
most dominant and enduring figures for more than 40 years, and even now 
Kennedy is at the center of virtually every major foreign and domestic 
policy issue. So it stands to reason that a new book by him detailing 
the nation's biggest challenges should command attention.

The 200-page broadside shows some flashes of provocative analysis. 
Kennedy asserts that President Bush has systematically and ruthlessly 
chipped away at constitutional protections in the name of national 
security and the war on terrorism. After surveying a troubling landscape 
of warrantless wiretaps, secret tribunals and secret government memos 
authorizing torture, Kennedy declares:

"Perhaps the greatest threat to our Constitutional democracy is the Bush 
administration's extreme view about the source and scope of its war 
powers and about its unilateral right to ignore laws passed by Congress. 
Behind closed doors the administration has devised controversial legal 
justifications for unspeakable torture, ignoring both congressional acts 
and court precedents."

Kennedy condemns what he terms the administration's unchecked power and 
its deceit in manipulating U.S. intelligence to justify going to war 
with Iraq. He complains that the Republican-controlled Congress has 
marched in lock step with Bush, making "a mockery" of the principle of 
separation of powers (although the book doesn't account for Congress's 
more recent tiffs with Bush as the president's approval rating plummets 
and congressional elections loom).

At a time when Bush reportedly is contemplating military as well as 
diplomatic measures to derail Iran's development of a nuclear 
capability, Kennedy charges that the U.S. government has contravened the 
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by developing "mini-nukes" and nuclear 
"bunker busters" for battlefield use. "How can the administration ask 
other nations, such as North Korea and Iran, to forgo nuclear weapons, 
and then develop new types of such weapons for us to use?" he asks.

For all its promise of a sweeping agenda for reform and renewal, 
"America Back on Track" plows a lot of familiar ground, and many of 
Kennedy's proposals seem more like liberal cant than pragmatic programs 
that might actually bridge the huge partisan and ideological divide in 
Washington.

Kennedy calls for a costly universal health-care program that would 
require huge increases in payroll and income tax rates; big increases in 
spending on job training, education and economic incentives to boost 
U.S. competitiveness abroad; and a 40 percent increase in the $5.15 an 
hour federal minimum wage, although Congress hasn't been able to agree 
to even a minor adjustment since 1997. Kennedy insists that these and 
other big-ticket proposals would pay for themselves in the long run, but 
right now they have the feel of political pie in the sky.

There are few others on Capitol Hill who are better storytellers than 
Kennedy. Who wouldn't love to kick back with the Massachusetts senator 
some afternoon and listen to him describe in rich detail the 
machinations of the latest controversy over immigration reform, or the 
administration's handling and leaks of intelligence? Yet Kennedy's new 
book offers a strangely sterile, civics textbook-type discourse on 
politics that leaves the reader perplexed and hungry for something more 
insightful. Even some of Kennedy's personal anecdotes about his 
legendary family come across as more sentimental than instructive.

Kennedy and his literary collaborator, Jeffrey Madrick, editor of 
Challenge Magazine, a bimonthly economics publication, clearly did not 
set out to produce a probing, insider's examination of the nation's most 
urgent problems. Rather, this book has the feel of a political 
compendium or an extended floor speech that Kennedy might have delivered 
in the Senate. Perhaps one day Kennedy may choose to write a different 
kind of book -- one that takes the reader into his confidence and draws 
more deeply on his unparalleled experience and knowledge of government 
and politics.

Pianin is The Post's congressional editor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042001747.html?nav=hcmodule
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