21st Century Agenda for America

This is a make or break week for immigration reform in the Senate.   The Washington Post this am has a fair scene setter, Backers of Immigration Bill More Optimistic, that includes a good rundown of potential amendments - some designed of course to kill the bill. 

Both the Post and the Times have lede editorials on immigration this morning, and the Times had yet another story yesterday about how the immigration debate is ripping the GOP apart (going to be interesting to watch this part of the GOP debate tomorrow night). 

My friends, this is it.  As we wrote recently, we have a come a long way since a bill passed the House in late 2005 calling for the arrest and deportation of all undocumented immigrants in America.  A Times poll from 10 days ago show 2/3rds support for all the major elements of the bill, including offering the undocumenteds a path to citizenship.  A deep and broad coalition supports this new bill, including the Catholic Church, the Chamber of Commerce, important labor unions and many immigrant rights groups.  Leading politicians of both parties have worked hard to pass immigration reform, including the President, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Fear, uncertainty, anger have been overcome.   

I hope everyone in the NDN community will take a simple action today: call your two US Senators and tell them you want them to work hard this week to pass the Kennedy-Kyl bill. 

You can mention that you believe this final bill needs to do three things: 1) crack down on the border and in the workplace; 2) deal sensibly with the flow of future workers; and 3) offer a reasonable path to legal status and citizenship to those already here.  For good measure you can add that you find the new point system for future immigrants unwise; that you are concerned that that the 200,000 workers a year in the guest worker program need a path to citizenship; that the "touchback" provision that requires those with the new "z" visa to return to their home countries to apply for a green card should go; and INS needs the financial, management and political support required to deal with what will be a massive management challenge for a less than optimal agency. 

Friends, we have spent millions of dollars, conducted hundreds of briefings, written way too many emails and blogposts, lobbied policy makers big and small, conducted detailed polling and worked this issue hard with national reporters.  Our community has played a very significant role in recognizing the importance of this issue, and helping get this close to a good deal.  We must work hard this week to make sure we do not miss this historic opportunity to fix our broken immigration system, and demonstate to the American people that with new leaders Washington can and will tackle the most important challenges facing the nation today. 

For more on NDN's work on immigration reform, click here.  

I saw about three-quarters of it (had to help put my kids to bed).  Some initial thoughts:

- Sure looked like a group of smart people trying to figure out the right path for the nation.  And it is clear that the Democrats know that actually being the next President is going to be very hard.  They are really trying to get to the heart of matter on most of the big issues, which perhaps made this debate seem less canned and political than previous ones. 

I really enjoyed the way, at times, the candidates refered to one another and talked about how they could work with them, etc.  It often felt like even though they may have disagreed on certain matters, they were all on the same team.  I thought Clinton and Obama were especially effective at this, and were very respectful of their peers.  One of the things the candidates are clearly picking up so far from voters is that after the disapointment and deceit of the Bush era they are looking for real answers and a real leader.  Folks want to have an honest and respectful discussion about their future. 

- In keeping with this last thought I thought the regular folks in the audience asked much better questions than the journalists.  It was amazing how thoughtful their questions were, how concise and understandable and germane, and how respectful the people were of the folks on the stage.   It was refreshing to watch, and the candidates seemed to really seemed to work hard to be respectful back and actually answer the questions.

- It still feels early.  It is only June, and it felt like it tonight.  

- CNN may have stumbled on to an important precedent tonight.  Their rule that the candidates had to answer the question asked, and could not talk about any other issue - or risk being cut off - helped keep the conversation more substantive.  I hope all future debates follow that rule.   All in all I thought the length - 2 hours - and novel format made this one much substantive and less scripted than usual.  CNN deserves credit for improving on the form, though the two other non-Wolf journalists seemed to be an afterthought

- Did it seem like Wolk kept cutting Richardson off? Or was that my New Mexico sympathies playing out?

- Why was Lou Dodds allowed to play a major role in the coverage tonight?  Is CNN unaware of how offensive he is to many Democrats?

All in all it was a good night for our democracy.  We desperately need more open forums like this, where there can be honest, forthright discussion of the big issues facing the nation.  CNN and the candidates did a good job.  It will be interesting to see how it contrasts with the Republicans Tuesday night. 

Be interested in hearing from you.

Peggy Noonan offers yet another take on the conservative crackup in today's Wall Street Journal.  The most compelling graphs:

What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker--"At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.

and...

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose his party the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.

The most visable manifestation of this crackup is the extraordinary recent change in Party Identification.  The reputable Pew Center just released a study showing that in the last five years, the country has moved from 43-43 D/R to 50-35, an extraordinary 15 percentage point shift.  In many ways this the most important new data in politics today. 

For more on our thinking about the end of the conservative ascendency visit our Meeting the Conservative Challenge section of our main web site.

To read the whole piece visit
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010148&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage. 

Taken together press accounts from the Middle East and new stories here at home all remind us that no matter happens with our troop levels in Iraq, the troubles of today's Middle East and the Muslim world are among the most urgent foreign policies challenges facing the nation, and are likely to be with us for a very long time.   As the Iraq Study Group implored, America needs to fashion a diplomatic, economic and military for the region, not just Iraq.  It needs to be a long-term, patient strategy, and it is going to cost our nation and the rest of the modern world a lot of money.  

I think it is time that the Democrats, who have done so much to force a much needed dose of realism into the Iraq debate, start doing the same for the region and the rest of Muslim world - for we should have little doubt that for all the money we've spent, the lives lost, the injuries sustained and prestige damaged, this region of the world is much more dangerous and unstable today than prior to 9/11.  Our failure in Iraq has been an epic one, as it has unleashed forces we little understand and certainly cannot control. 

Consider this passage from a front page New York Times piece from Monday:

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. In the Jordanian airport plot, the authorities said they believed that the bomb maker flew from Baghdad to prepare the explosives for Mr. Darsi.

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of the Internal Security Forces in Lebanon, said in a recent interview that “if any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand.”

Last week, the Lebanese Army found itself in a furious battle against a militant group, Fatah al Islam, whose ranks included as many as 50 veterans of the war in Iraq, according to General Rifi. More than 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting the group at a refugee camp near Tripoli.

The army called for outside support. By Friday, the first of eight planeloads of military supplies had arrived from the United States, which called Fatah al Islam “a brutal group of violent extremists.”

The group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, was an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed last summer. In an interview with The New York Times earlier this month, Mr. Abssi confirmed reports that Syrian government forces had killed his son-in-law as he tried crossing into Iraq to collaborate with insurgents.

A Danger to the Region

Militant leaders warn that the situation in Lebanon is indicative of the spread of fighters. “You have 50 fighters from Iraq in Lebanon now, but with good caution I can say there are a hundred times that many, 5,000 or higher, who are just waiting for the right moment to act,” Dr. Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident in Britain who runs the jihadist Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, said in an interview on Friday. “The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist.”

Or this passage, from another Memorial Day front page story:

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.

“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”

But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

Or this story from a few days earlier about new findings from the newly liberated Senate Intelligence Committee:

Most of the information in the report was drawn from two lengthy assessments issued by the National Intelligence Council in January 2003, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," both of which the Senate report reprints with only minor redactions. The assessments were requested by Richard N. Haass, then director of policy planning at the State Department, and were written by Paul R. Pillar, the national intelligence officer for the Near East, as a synthesis of views across the 16-agency intelligence community.

The report includes lists indicating that the analyses, which were reported by The Washington Post last week, were distributed at senior levels of the White House and the State and Defense departments and to the congressional armed services and appropriations committees. At the time, the White House and the Pentagon were saying that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, democracy would be quickly established and Iraq would become a model for the Middle East. Initial post-invasion plans called for U.S. troop withdrawals to begin in summer 2003.

The classified reports, however, predicted that establishing a stable democratic government would be a long challenge because Iraq's political culture did "not foster liberalism or democracy" and there was "no concept of loyal opposition and no history of alternation of power."

They also said that competing Sunni, Shiite and Kurd factions would "encourage terrorist groups to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq." Because of the divided Iraqi society, there was "a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so."

While predicting that terrorist threats heightened by the invasion would probably decline within five years, the assessments said that lines between al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world "could become blurred." U.S. occupation of Iraq "probably would boost proponents of political Islam" throughout the Muslim world and "funds for terrorist groups probably would increase as a result of Muslim outrage over U.S. actions."

So, here we are.  Iran has become a regional hegemon and made great strides towards nuclearization.  Lebanon's government is no longer in control of its own country.  Iraq is a failing state that is exporting its chaos throughout the region.  Scared by the Shia revival so eloquently described by Vali Nasr, Sunni Arab states are now treating Al Qaeda as a legitimate ally in its fight against the Shiites.  After all these years Bin Laden is still on the loose.  Our great ally, Pakistan, also now fearful of Iran, is helping revive the Taliban.   Two groups America considers terrorist organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, were elected to power in the region in elections our government sanctioned.  Israel, one of our nation's most important allies in the world, has been weakened by a war that I believe they fought because of their perception that America has become an ineffective actor in the region. 

So, what exactly has gone right over there these past 7 years? Perhaps a trillon dollars spent, a terrible degradation of our military, tens of thousands of casualities, a dangerous lost of our prestige and ability to project power and a Middle East more unstable than before.  What in our history can compare to this extraordinary set of miscalculations and mistakes?  But more importantly, what do we do now?

As essential as setting deadlines for a troop withdrawal may be, it is time for Democrats to begin confronting this broader reality, and start the process of fashioning a much deeper and long term strategy for what has become the most important and troubled region in the world today.

For those of us who have been working to fix our broken immigration system, this has been a very good week.   The new Kennedy-Kyl bill made significant headway through the Senate.  Bad amendments were defeated.   Good amendments, particularly the Bingaman amendment limiting the new guest worker plan to 200,000 a year, passed.

Perhaps overlooked in what was a busy week is how the opposition to what is the central provision of what has been called Comprehensive Immigration Reform collapsed, and how a clear national consensus to offer undocumented immigrants legal work status and a path to citizenship has emerged.  This is no small accomplishment, no small development in what has been a very difficult debate, and must be seen as a tremendous victory for Senator Kennedy and those advocating sensible reform.

This opposition, which now includes Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while it has had many components, has been led since late 2005 by Congressional Republicans.  Their goal was to defeat any bill that had legalized the work status and offered a path to citizenship to the 12 million undocumented immigrants and their families.  Ten of millions of dollars of ads were run in races across the country demonizing Hispanic immigrants and supporters of sensible reform, and in many cases, the ads compared Mexican immigrants to Muslim terrorists.   It was a central plank of virtually every Republican campaign in the nation, from Rick Santorum to JD Hayworth.  While the President and some Senators, led by John McCain, opposed this strategy, they failed to persuade their colleagues and the ads and the campaign continued.

This strategy, of course, didn’t work, and I believe was one of the most significant political miscalculations of a political party in the modern era.  The Republicans demonization of immigrants, reminiscent of Pete Wilson’s efforts in California in the 1990s cost their Party in three ways: first, it has tremendous opportunity costs.  The hundreds of millions of dollars of paid and free media they invested in the issue gained them little or nothing politically.  This money and time and message could have been spent much more productively for them in other ways.  Second, it deeply angered Hispanics, the fastest growing part of the American electorate.  Hispanics swung 20 points to the Democrats and their turnout went up 33% from 2002.  And finally, it reinforced the central argument of the Democrats in 2006 – that Republicans were more interested in politics than solving the big problems facing the nation.  The national GOP whipped up a national frenzy around our “broken borders,” never offered a cogent solution to what is a very real problem and then blocked a sensible bi-partisan effort that would have gone a long way to mending our broken immigration system.

Which brings us to this week.  While we believe the new Senate bill needs further improvement, there should be little doubt that the Republican Party, Republicans in the Senate and the American people have joined the Democrats in embracing the central tenet of what progressives have fought for in this debate – a path to citizenship.  Opponents to the 2006 Senate bill like John Kyl have now embraced the citizenship provisions.  The new Chair of the RNC is a pro-immigration reform Hispanic immigrant, Mel Martinez.  And a new New York Times poll out today shows two-thirds of the nation now supporting a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/us/25poll.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin).

While there is a long way to go in this debate, their should be little doubt now that the nation and the leaders of both parties have come to consensus on one central tenet of the immigration debate – there must be a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.  For those of us in the trenches on this tough and important issue, we should sit back and recognize that for all the anger and contention significant progress has been made, and it is now much more likely that the lives of 12 million people will be dramatically improved this year. 

Finally, it should be noted that yesterday the Congress voted overwhelmingly to raise the minimum wage.  This has been a very high priority for NDN, and coupled with the progress made on immigration reform, demonstrates that this new Congress is taking the necessary steps to help improve the lives of those people in the United States struggling the hardest to get ahead.  If immigration reform passes this year, tens of millions of families will have had their lives directly affected, and improved, by the actions of this new Congress.  Given the inaction of recent years, these are no small accomplishments for Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi. 

This week marks a critical moment in the struggle of so many to move the nation from the disappointing era of Bush to a new and more hopeful era for the nation.  The Senate and House are working to craft a new and better approach to the Middle East; the House Democratic Caucus discussed the new trade deal Tuesday at its weekly meeting; and the Senate has begun a vital and important debate on how to best fix our broken immigration system. 

To help our community better participate in these consequential debates, we offer up the following:

On a new strategy for the Middle East – We are excited to release a recently conducted video interview with noted Middle East expert, Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival.  Professor Nasr, now of the Fletcher School at Tufts, has had a profound influence on our thinking about the Middle East.  You can learn more about his book, read his writing, watch his appearance on The Colbert Report or watch our in-depth and probing interview with him here. 

On Immigration Reform – NDN is proud to be part of the national coalition working to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.   On our site you can read our recent statements about the new bi-partisan approach to immigration, watch video of several informative immigration events, including our recent March event with Senators Reid, Kennedy, Salazar and Menendez, and watch and listen to the television and radio ads run by NDN and our affiliate the NDN political fund during the national immigration debate last year. 

On Globalization – On our site you can find the work of our Globalization Initiative, headed by former Clinton chief economic advisor Dr. Robert J. Shapiro.   There you can find our statement about the new trade deal negotiated by Chairman Charlie Rangel,  watch video of our public forums, including a compelling interview with SEIU’s Andy Stern, read a new paper which advocates putting “A Laptop in Every Backpack,” and review our many essays, reports and commentary that seek to craft a new economic strategy for America.

When the American people tossed the Republicans from power last year they were making a clear statement that they wanted their representatives in Washington to stop playing politics and work towards solving the great challenges facing the nation today.   We should be heartened at the progress made so far by the new Congress, and the eagerness of Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi to take on the hard things and not just the easy ones.  

But we should not be under any illusions – ushering in a new era of progress isn’t going to be easy.  Our community, which has contributed so much in the past, simply must stay engaged and active, and work to support in every way those leaders and initiatives working to repudiate the disappointing politics of the Bush era and help make this new century as exciting and successful for America as the one just past. 

The Washington Post weighs in with an editorial detailing the victories Democrats won in the new bi-partisan trade deal (read our statement here). 

While we should all be pleased with the spirit of this deal, it would be advisable for those wanting to garner votes to create a bigger context for the coming debate.  The data is very clear here - in this decade globalization has been very good for those with capital and for American corporations, but has not been so good for American workers and families. 

A vital strategic goal for those of us who believe in the benefits of liberalization must be to help our elected leaders come up with an agenda that successfully reverses the sluggish job growth and weak income and wage growth of our time.  To believe that the American people will accept the current way the economy is unfolding is niave.  Poll after poll, and the core economic data show that for about two-thirds of all Americans the economy is not what they want it to be.  They are losing faith that this century's global economy has the capacity to give them the opportunity and upward mobility all generations of Americans have to come to expect.  Making the American economy work for more Americans is one of the most important governing challenges of our time, and one NDN has been relentlessly focused on for the past several years in our Globalization Initiative.  

So in the days ahead I think it would be wise for those looking to build public support for this new trade policy to talk about what their strategy is bring greater prosperity to our workers and kids.  We've offered many ideas - raise the minimum wage, reform our immigration system, put a laptop in every backback, bring broadband to all Americans, fix our health care system so all Americans can have adequate insurance and good care, give our workers the option of card check, adopt the Speaker's innovation agenda, significantly increase funding for the teaching of science and math in all schools - the list goes on and on.  And it is time for once and for all to stop throwing out "TAA - trade adjustment assistance" as a sop that everyone knows isn't an adequate response to the realities we face today. 

The conversation about trade cannot happen in a vacuum.  Unlike the 1990s, globalization is neither seen to be, or is, working for a majority of Americans.  If the American people and their elected leaders are being asked to support greater liberalization, they must be told in clear terms what the strategy is to help them achieve the American Dream in a much more competitive age.  These conversations need to be linked.  And those looking to build public support for further liberalization need to get serious about offering not just a new trade policy, but a comprehensive economic strategy for America in the 21st century that helps ensure that globalization works for all Americans. 

"Nearly 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy advanced a new trade policy that cemented Democrats as the party of free and fair trade.  Today, we build on that tradition to announce a new bipartisan breakthrough for fair trade – where we expand opportunities for American businesses, workers and farmers.

Our economic future rests upon our ability to open new markets for U.S. goods and services so that we can continue to capitalize upon the innovative spirit of the American people.  We must also do much more to address the consequences of globalization and how many working families are faced with increased economic insecurity.

Free trade must be fair trade. For that reason, the inclusion of basic, internationally recognized labor and environmental standards in our trade agreements have been long-standing Democratic priority. 

Enforceable labor standards ensure that our trading partners abide by the most fundamental standards of common decency and fairness – prohibitions against child and slave labor, protection from employment discrimination, and the right for workers to form a union.

Similarly, protecting our planet is a core Democratic value and must be reflected in the core of our free trade agreements, not as a side agreement.

Last November, Americans voted for a New Direction, and that includes a right direction on trade – where labor and environmental standards are at least as valued as our financial interests. 

Today marks a new day in trade policy so that we can raise living standards in the U.S. and abroad, expand markets, spur economic growth and uphold strong labor and environmental standards.”

Steven Pearlstein has a thoughtful look at the new bipartisan deal on trade in today's Post.

Last NDN's Globalization Intitiative released the first paper in A Series of Modest Proposals to Build 21st Century Skills: A Laptop in Every Backpack.  In that paper Simon Rosenberg and Alec Ross of the One Economy Corporation argue that:

Achieving the American Dream in this century increasingly requires fluency in the ways of this network and its tools – how to acquire information and do research, how to construct reports and present ideas using these new tools, how to type and even edit video.  We believe we need a profound and urgent national commitment to give this powerful new 21st knowledge, essential for success in this century, to all American school children. 

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom posted the paper to his site, and you can see it here.

But not everyone seems to agree.  Last week, the NYT published Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops an article that raised serious questions about laptops in schools:

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

From the same article:

Many school administrators and teachers say laptops in the classroom have motivated even reluctant students to learn, resulting in higher attendance and lower detention and dropout rates.

I heard a very good analogy recently that helps makes sense of these seemingly divergent cases.  You can provide the same set of tools to two different people; one may build a masterpiece and the other may build a sinking ship. And we have more examples of masterpieces than we do of sinking ships.  For examples of some of those masterpieces, visit: 

The One-to-One Institute -- http://sparty.crt.net/121/     

The Consortium for School Networking -- http://www.cosn.org/      

The International Society for Technology in Education -- http://www.iste.org/