SUNDAY/MONDAY MUST READS – UPDATED

I’m holed up at an intriguing conference on health care reform….(more on that later), so I’ll make this fairly quick:

Here are THREE Must Reads and ONE Must Watch:

1. THAT SIXTY MINUTES INTERVIEW

Last night when I had dinner with a hoard of very smart health care reform policy wonksters, one of the first-broached topics of conversation around the various tables was the Obama 60 Minutes interview, the universal opinion being that it was an gargantuan relief to have someone elected to high office in the U.S. who displayed a strong preference for, as one person put it, “evidence-based” ideas.

Here’s a link (to the Swamp’s link) to the interview.

************************************************************************************************************

2. PROP 8 & COLORADO’S EQUAL PROTECTION CHALLENGE

A lot of people believe that the key to the gay marriage issue is eventually going to be found in the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In this morning’s LA Times UC Hastings law professor Brian Gray explains that there is already a successful precedent for such a challenge when, twelve years ago, the US Supremes struck down a law in Colorado based on equal protection when the Colorado voters attempted to restrict gay rights.

In that decision (Romer v. Evans ) Justice Kennedy wrote: “If the constitutional conception of ‘equal protection of the laws’ means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest.”

Hastings makes sure to say that such a case would be no slam dunk as Prop. 8 is not the same as Colorado’s Prop 2. Yet, he says, there is an essential similarity….

Anyway, read it.

**********************************************************************************************************

3. MO DO ON THE HILLARY-FOR-STATE ISSUE

On Sunday, Maureen Dowd had a pretty savvy take on the question of whether asking Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State is really good idea or a really bad idea.

Good or bad, the key in contemplating the Hillary question is to look past the immediate move and see the whole chess board. Dowd does just that.

Here’s a clip:

On the down side, Hillary would be taking over a big and demoralized government bureaucracy, after proving with her campaign that she does not know how to run a big and demoralized group of people.

On the up side, she would never have to exaggerate her foreign policy résumé again; this time, she really would be brokering peace and flying into places where they’d try to fire at her.

And if she worked hard enough — and she would — she could restore clarity to Foggy Bottom, the striped-pants center of diplomacy so maligned and misused by W. and Dick Cheney on their Sherman’s march to war in Iraq and in their overwrought bid to become the only hyperpower.

If Barry chooses Hillary as secretary of state, a woman who clearly intimidated him and taught him to be a better pol in the primaries, it doesn’t signal the return of the Clinton era. It says the opposite: If you have a president who’s willing to open up his universe to other smart, strong people, if you have a big dog who shares his food dish, the Bill Clinton era is truly over.

Appointing a Clinton in the cabinet would be so un-Clintonian.

***************************************************************************************************************

4. SAVE/DON’T SAVE: WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE $&%$#@*& AUTO INDUSTRY UPDATE BELOW

This morning’s NY Times has an interesting article speculating about how if GM and/or Ford and Chrysler are allowed to go belly-up, that while it will be “painful,” for a while, it won’t be the catastrophe that some predict because, in time, the foreign car makers will step in to fill the breach and a “new equilibrium” will eventually result, jobs will be rescued, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Okay, well, maybe. And then again maybe not.

So, before we encourage our elected representatives to go all Lehman Bros. on the American auto industry, I strongly recommend reading Friday’s article by The New Republic’s senior editor, Jonathan Cohn, about why we likely need to rescue the automakers (but with some new and strict rules imposed as part of the bailout).

Here’s the story’s opening:

General Motors has come to Washington, begging for a $25 billion bailout to keep it and its ailing Detroit counterparts going next year. But nobody seems too thrilled about the prospect. Liberals dwell on the companies’ gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles. Conservatives obsess over all the well-paid union members with gold-plated benefits. And people of all ideological backgrounds remember how they used to buy domestic cars, years ago, but stopped because the cars were so damn lousy. “The downfall of the American auto industry is indeed a tragedy,” the Washington Post editorial board sermonized recently, “but the automakers and the United Auto Workers have only themselves to blame for much of it.” And, if they have only themselves to blame, the argument goes, why do they deserve taxpayer help? Let them fail and file for bankruptcy. In the long run, the economy will be stronger and the workers better off. It’d be worth?the short-term pain, which might not even be so severe.

In normal times, with another company, that might be correct. But these are not normal times….

No kidding. Read the rest.

************************************************************************************************************

UPDATE: This morning’s WaPo has an OpEd by economist Jeffrey Sachs that complements what Jonathan Cohn says above. Read it! Here’s the opening:

A government-supported restructuring of the auto industry is urgently needed for our economic and energy security. If the Bush administration allows the auto industry to collapse, it will compound the panic that started with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Washington should seize the opportunity to begin a new era of U.S. technological leadership in the global auto industry, starting with an immediate loan.