Ending the Longest War

Rep. John Conyers

Chairman, House Judiciary Committee

Posted: June 6, 2010 11:33 A

This past week, the United States recognized a dubious milestone in our country's history as direct war spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistantopped $1 trillion. Unfortunately, we have reached a second milestone, with the War in Afghanistan passing the Vietnam War to officially become thelongest military conflict in American history.

Most historians agree that the Vietnam War began with the enactment of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, ended with the withdrawal of the last American troops in March of 1973, and lasted a total of 103 months. The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001 when President George W. Bush ordered air strikes against militant camps. As of today, June 7, 2010, the war has just ended its 104th month.

For many, the Vietnam War conjures up images of war fatigue, when a larger ideological and strategic rationale for going to war devolved into a sense that our country was trapped in a military quagmire that lacked a clear purpose, identifiable goals, and deliverable objectives. After nearly nine years of war, many Americans are beginning to have many of the same impressions about our military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We should remember that the United States originally attacked Afghanistan to disrupt the Al Qaeda terrorist network. In an interview with CNN last October, National Security Advisor, General James Jones, acknowledged that "fewer than a hundred" Al Qaeda militants remain in Afghanistan. And yet, the war continues.

Like Vietnam, America's political leadership struggles to justify the lives and treasure sacrificed in Afghanistan. Clear objectives have been replaced with murky concept-slogans, like "securing the population" or implementing "government in a box" in previously lawless areas, which seem to have only a tangential connection to allowing our troops to complete their mission and come home. For example, as we prepare for a new offensive in Kandahar, the failure of the Afghan police to impose order following the recent operations in Marja should cause Americans to question whether the current troop surge is helping to bring the war to a close.

In an interview with C-SPAN taped before his death last year, former Secretary of Defense McNamara noted that one of the Vietnam War's fatal flaws was the failure to recognize the existence of a civil war:

"We were fighting -- and we didn't realize it -- a civil war. Now, true, obviously there were Soviet and Chinese influence and support and no question that the communists were trying to control South Vietnam, but it was basically a civil war. And one of the things we should learn is you can't fight and win a civil war with outside troops, and particularly not when the political structure in a country is dissolved. So it wasn't the press that was the problem. The problem was that we were in the wrong place with the wrong tactics.''

McNamara's words should haunt us today, as we recognize this new standard for military occupation. No amount of firepower will convince the Afghans to decide how to coexist with each other. Political conflicts do not have military solutions.

The Vietnam War took 58,000 American lives, weakened America's image abroad for many years afterward, and sapped the ability of multiple presidents to pursue a robust domestic agenda at home. The War in Afghanistan is having a similar effect on our country.

Despite his many flaws, Richard Nixon recognized that there was a tipping point when our military presence in Vietnam could no longer be sustained. I believe we are close to a such a tipping point today. Many Members of Congress and citizen-activists are calling for withdrawal. I hope that you will join us. Securing a sustainable future for Afghans and Americans starts with bringing the troops home now. 

Rep. John Conyers, Jr. is the chair of the Out of Afghanistan Caucus.

BP and the Bankers: Anything in Common? You Betcha!

Robert Kuttner

Co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect

Posted: May 31, 2010 09:55 PM

Question of the Day: What do the oil catastrophe and the Wall Street collapse have in common?

Three big things, I'd say.

In both cases, a powerful, politically protected industry invented something that could not easily be repaired when it broke. We seem to be entering an age when complex technologies, whether financial or physical, sometimes literally have no solutions when they go haywire in unanticipated ways. We thought this might happen with nuclear power (and it still could); but for now deepwater drilling is the bigger menace.

Secondly, in both cases the proverbial ounce of prevention was not applied. Had existing laws been enforced, and had the political process not corrupted the regulatory process, these man-made calamities didn't need to happen.

In the case of the oil disaster, which is fast becoming the worst single environmental catastrophe ever, America's long-term failure to move away from dependence on carbon fuels combined with pure short-run political capture. By now, we should have been at the point of energy conversion where high risk, mile-deep undersea wells were not used at all. But even so, this blowout would have been averted had existing laws been enforced.

It's the same story with the financial collapse. We didn't need these exotic, doomsday financial instruments. And had the regulators not been in bed with the industry, the crisis would have been headed off at any of several earlier stages.

But the worst common element is this: both crises are teachable moments that our president could be using to transform public opinion. Yet despite these gifts from the progressive gods, President Obama seems congenitally unable to rise to the occasion.

It appeared, in the end game of the health reform effort and at moments in the financial reform fight, that we were seeing sparks of the Obama whom we so admired on the campaign trail. But Obama's performance in the oil disaster seems a case of one step forward, two steps backward.

If ever there were a moment to make clear that our energy future cannot be left to the energy industry, and to rally the public on behalf of a long term shift away from carbon fuels to renewable sources, it is now. Will we ever have a better, more graphic villain than BP? Will we ever have the public more on our side? Will we ever have Republicans with dirtier hands?

In the late sixties and early 1970s, the environmental movement burst on the national stage because the environmental assaults of that era were immediate and undeniable -- from oil spills to smog to the Cuyahoga River catching fire. Thanks to the victories of that era, environmental damage has become less palpable and pyrotechnic.

Global climate change, the ultimate menace, is gradual, insidious, ineluctable, contested, and seldom vividly symbolized. By contrast the BP blowout is immediate, tangible, and terrifying. Even the Limbaughs and the Becks cannot deny what is dominating TV week after week, and the right is making a fool of itself by lurching from attacking the president's daughter to blurting out that "accidents happen."

There is more than a germ of truth, however, in the right's argument that Obama was slow off the mark to get on top of this crisis, just as he was pitifully slow to clean house at the Minerals Management Service he inherited from Bush. And if the administration does not pick up its game, the Tea Party right will make the Gulf catastrophe Obama's fault, just as it has made the slow pace of recovery and the bank bailouts Obama's fault.

I have been in a number of conversations, as a journalist, a public lecturer, privately, and as author of the new book A Presidency in Peril, in which Obama loyalists urge me to cut the president a little more slack. It's only sixteen months into his presidency. He is still learning. He did, after all, deliver health insurance reform. In that battle, with two outs in the ninth inning, he discovered his inner partisan and fought for a Democrats-only bill, and prevailed.

And he is about to deliver financial reform, right?

But in both cases, the credit goes more to legislative leaders who would not let the bills die and to progressive lobby groups such as H-CAN and Americans for Financial Reform. There is still a furious fight over key provisions in the House and Senate reform bills, and in many cases Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is weighing in on behalf of weaker rather than stronger measures.

With the spotlight off legislative floor action, and a lot of the deals being made in backrooms, the financial industry hopes to gain back ground that it lost as public opinion shifted in favor of tougher reform measures.

The financial reform battle is an epic David-Goliath contest. The banking lobby spends more in a day than Americans for Financial Reform's annual budget. The leadership of AFR combined with the actions of courageous senators such as Maria Cantwell, Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, and a couple of dozen others, shows how public opinion could be rallied.

But imagine how much more reform we could get if the President of the United States clearly weighed in on behalf of David rather than Goliath.

This could also be a defining moment in the fight for a clean energy future if President Obama used it as such.

Time is running out for this president to lead. If he continues temporizing rather than leading, the moment passes, and the Republicans pick up substantial numbers of seats in Congress. The window closes, both for transformative progressive reform and for a successful Obama presidency. Even worse, the initiative passes to a truly lunatic rightwing.

I would say to the loyalists: Yes, this president faces multiple challenges that are really hard, as well as a fiercely obstructionist Republican Party and a grass-roots right in league with a media machine. But all crisis-presidents faced obstacles and the great ones turned them to opportunities.

The other day, one of the president's enthusiasts told me that Obama has been very successful in terms of the agenda that he set out to achieve. Sorry, but that doesn't cut it. A president has to play the hand history dealt him.

Robert Kuttner's latest book is A Presidency in Peril. He is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos.

Our Epic Foolishness

By BOB HERBERT

Published: May 31, 2010

If a bank is too big to fail, it’s way too big to exist. If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it’s too deep to be drilled in the first place.

Bob Herbert

Go to Columnist Page »

Related

• Times Topics: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010) | Afghanistan |Credit Crisis — Bailout Plan

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When are we going to stop behaving so stupidly? We nearly wrecked the economy and we’re all but buried in debt. But we can’t break up the biggest banks, and we can’t raise taxes. Now we’re fouling the magnificent Gulf of Mexico and ruining entire communities along the southern Louisiana Coast.

And, by the way, we’re still fighting a futile war in Afghanistan that we’ve been fighting with nonstop futility for nearly a decade. (I’m sure the troops saddled with this thankless task were thrilled to see fans and teams demonstrating their undying support for their efforts by wearing fancy baseball caps on Memorial Day.)

For a nation that can’t stop bragging about how great and powerful it is, we’ve become shockingly helpless in the face of the many challenges confronting us. Our can-do spirit was put on hold many moons ago, and here we are now unable to defeat the Taliban, or rein in the likes of BP and the biggest banks, or stop the oil gushing furiously from the bowels of earth like a warning from Hades about the hubris and ignorance that is threatening to destroy us.

BP and the Obama administration have been equally clueless about halting the millions of gallons of oil that have flowed into the gulf since the Deepwater Horizon explosion more than a month ago. President Obama’s top adviser on energy policy, Carol Browner, unintentionally underscored the monumental futility of the response in a comment she made on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“This is obviously a difficult situation,” said Ms. Browner, “but it’s important for people to understand that from the beginning, the government has been in charge.”

Got that? No one has been able to bring the crisis under control, and no one expects it to be brought under control soon, but the important thing for us to know is that the government has been in charge of this epic failure all along.

However and whenever the well gets capped, what we really need is leadership that calls on the American public to begin coping in a serious and sustained way with an energy crisis that we’ve been warned about for decades. If the worst environmental disaster in the country’s history is not enough to bring about a reversal of our epic foolishness on the energy front, then nothing will.

The first thing we can do is conserve more. That’s the low-hanging fruit in any clean-energy strategy.

It’s fast, cheap and easy. It’s something that all Americans, young and old, can be asked to participate in immediately. In that sense, it’s a way of combating the pervasive feelings of helplessness that have become so demoralizing and so destructive to our long-term interests.

People have talked about energy conservation for the longest time. But we have dawdled on making vehicles more fuel-efficient and weatherizing our homes and insisting that commercial buildings be more energy efficient, and so on. Turn those thermostats down a couple of degrees in the winter and up in the summer. Figure out ways to have a little fun while doing it.

We also need a carbon tax. The current crisis is the perfect opportunity for our political leaders to explain to the public why this is so important and what benefits would come from it.

Above all, I’d like to see the creation of a second Manhattan Project that would lead us in a few years to an environment in which alternative fuels are abundant, effective and affordable. We are a pathetically weak player in that game right now.

Instead of staring mesmerized at the tragedy in the gulf, like spectators at a train wreck, we should be trying to regain that innovative can-do spirit that made America the greatest of nations.

All around us is the wreckage of our failure to master the challenges confronting us. We see it in the many millions of Americans who remain out of work and whose hopes are not rising despite all the talk of economic recovery. We see it in the schools where teachers are walking the plank by the scores of thousands because of state and local budget problems.

We see it in the shrinking middle class and in the black community where depressionlike conditions are fostering not just a sense of helplessness, but despair.

What’s needed is dynamic leadership (it doesn’t have to come from the top) to reinvigorate the spirit of America and turn that sense of helplessness around.

Once Hopeful Northern Afghanistan is Disillusioned

So, just how many years do you think winning hearts & minds will take>? How can we afford to be in Afghanistan? Look at the counters running to the right. Our deficit? Debt? Our economy and infrastructure needs require us to get this fiscal nation-building off taxpayers' backs.

Wall Street's Victory Lap: How they beat gov't by the people

Simon Johnson
MIT Professor and co-author of 13 Bankers
Posted: May 26, 2010 08:56 AM

By now you have probably realized -- correctly -- that "financial reform" has turned into a victory lap for Wall Street.

When they saved the big banks, with massive unconditional support (both explicit and implicit) over a year ago, top administration officials promised they would be back later to fix the underlying problems. This they -- and Congress -- manifestly have failed to do.

Our banking structure remains unchanged, the rules will be tweaked at the margins, and the incentive and belief system that lies behind reckless risk-taking has only become more dangerous. (The back story, if you can still stomach it, is in 13 Bankers).

There is only one small chance for any sensible progress remaining -- and you are about to see this crushed in conference by the supporters of unfettered big banks.

Senator Blanche Lincoln's proposal with regard to derivatives has much to commend it. A fiduciary duty for swaps dealers vis-à-vis customers would be entirely appropriate -- in fact long overdue.

Real time price reporting should also help regulators at least begin to understand what is driving market dynamics, for example around the May 6 "flash crash" -- a point that Senator Ted Kaufman has also been making most forcefully.

Legal authority against market manipulation would be greatly strengthened and there would be more protection for whistleblowers. And the kind of transaction that Goldman entered into with Greece -- a swap transaction with the goal of reducing measured debt levels, effectively deceiving current and future investors, would become more clearly illegal. All of this is entirely reasonable and responsible -- and completely opposed by the most powerful people on Wall Street.

Of course, most of the anti-Lincoln fire has been directed against the idea that "swaps desks" would be "pushed out" to subsidiaries -- i.e., the big broker-dealers could still engage in these transactions, but they would need to hold a great deal more capital against their exposures, thus making the activities significantly less profitable.

It is striking that while Treasury argues that increasing capital is the way to go with regard to financial reform, they are adamantly opposed to what would amount to more reasonable capital levels at the heart of the derivatives business.

This is beyond disappointing.

No doubt the administration feels good about what it has "achieved" on financial reform. The public aura of mutual congratulation will last for about three weeks.

But outside of the inner White House-Capitol Hill bubble, it is very hard to find anyone well-informed about the financial system who thinks that anything substantial has changed or that risks will be better managed as we head into the next cycle.

"Business as usual" is the abiding legacy of the Obama administration with regard to the systemic risks posed by this financial system. Treasury and White House let us down repeatedly and completely in the last 18 months on financial sector issues -- just as they did (as decision-making bodies and as some of the same individuals) at the end of the 1990s.

At one point in early 1998, Larry Summers called Brooksley Born -- the last person who really tried to rein in the dangers posed by derivatives (and it was a much lower level of danger then compared with now). Summers reportedly said, "I have thirteen bankers in my office, and they say if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II."

We now seem to have come full circle to exactly the same people saying exactly the same things -- no doubt top people in the administration are now calling Senator Lincoln and impressing upon her a version of the same point made by Summers to Born.

The 13 bankers have won, completely. Here we go again.

This post originally appeared at The Baseline Scenario.

Hooray for Sen. Cantwell. (Be sure to send her thx).

Firedoglake's David Dayen says Lincoln is phony on derivatives reform: "And while Maria Cantwell was trying to make sure that Lincoln's derivatives legislation didn't pass with a massive loophole contained in it, Lincoln happily voted with the majority to move the bill. She wouldn't fight for her own amendment to fix her own signature piece of the legislation. And her post-passage statement makes no mention of this loophole...It's very clear that Cantwell, not Lincoln, was the driving force behind the derivatives title. According to Business Week, Lincoln couldn't even defend her own derivatives proposal at a Democratic caucus meeting, and Cantwell had to step in and bail her out. Lincoln was clearly fed the strong language, when she was planning a much weaker proposal with Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), to project an image of a populist Wall Street reformer for her suddenly tough primary challenge from Bill Halter. http://bit.ly/cSl9jU

More Than Just an Oil Spill

By BOB HERBERT

Published: May 21, 2010

The warm, soft winds coming in off the gulf have lost their power to soothe. Anxiety is king now — all along the coast.

“You can’t sleep no more; that’s how bad it is,” said John Blanchard, an oyster fisherman whose life has been upended by the monstrous oil spill fouling an enormous swath of the Gulf of Mexico. He shook his head. “My wife and I have got two kids, 2 and 7. We could lose everything we’ve been working all of our lives for.”

I was standing on a gently rocking oyster boat with Mr. Blanchard and several other veteran fishermen who still seemed stunned by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Instead of harvesting oysters, they were out on the water distributing oil retention booms and doing whatever else they could to bolster the coastline’s meager defenses against the oil making its way ominously and relentlessly, like an invading army, toward the area’s delicate and heartbreakingly vulnerable wetlands.

A fisherman named Donny Campo tried to hide his anger with wisecracks, but it didn’t work. “They put us out of work, and now we’re cleaning up their mess,” he said. “Yeah, I’m mad. Some of us have been at this for generations. I’m 46 years old and my son — he’s graduating from high school this week — he was already fishing oysters. There’s a whole way of life at risk here.”

The risks unleashed by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are profound — the latest to be set in motion by the scandalous, rapacious greed of the oil industry and its powerful allies and enablers in government. America is selling its soul for oil.

The vast, sprawling coastal marshes of Louisiana, where the Mississippi River drains into the gulf, are among the finest natural resources to be found anywhere in the world. And they are a positively crucial resource for America. Think shrimp estuaries and bird rookeries and oyster fishing grounds.

These wetlands are one of the nation’s most abundant sources of seafood. And they are indispensable when it comes to the nation’s bird population. Most of the migratory ducks and geese in the United States spend time in the Louisiana wetlands as they travel to and from Latin America.

Think songbirds. Paul Harrison, a specialist on the Mississippi River and its environs at the Environmental Defense Fund, told me that the wetlands are relied on by all 110 neo-tropical migratory songbird species. The migrating season for these beautiful, delicate creatures is right now — as many as 25 million can pass through the area each day.

Already the oil from the nightmare brought to us by BP is making its way into these wetlands, into this natural paradise that belongs not just to the people of Louisiana but to all Americans. Oil is showing up along dozens of miles of the Louisiana coast, including the beaches of Grand Isle, which were ordered closed to the public.

The response of the Obama administration and the general public to this latest outrage at the hands of a giant, politically connected corporation has been embarrassingly tepid. We take our whippings in stride in this country. We behave as though there is nothing we can do about it.

The fact that 11 human beings were killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion (their bodies never found) has become, at best, an afterthought. BP counts its profits in the billions, and, therefore, it’s important. The 11 men working on the rig were no more important in the current American scheme of things than the oystermen losing their livelihoods along the gulf, or the wildlife doomed to die in an environment fouled by BP’s oil, or the waters that will be left unfit for ordinary families to swim and boat in.

This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter.

No one knows how much of BP’s runaway oil will contaminate the gulf coast’s marshes and lakes and bayous and canals, destroying wildlife and fauna — and ruining the hopes and dreams of countless human families. What is known is that whatever oil gets in will be next to impossible to get out. It gets into the soil and the water and the plant life and can’t be scraped off the way you might be able to scrape the oil off of a beach.

It permeates and undermines the ecosystem in much the same way that big corporations have permeated and undermined our political system, with similarly devastating results.

Tired of the Wars Making You Poor? Act here:

From Alan Grayson:



Next week, there is going to be a "debate" in Congress on yet another war funding bill. The bill is supposed to pass without debate, so no one will notice.
What George Orwell wrote about in "1984" has come true. What Eisenhower warned us about concerning the "military-industrial complex" has come true. War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape, so much so that no one notices it anymore.
But we're going to change this. Today, we're introducing a bill called 'The War Is Making You Poor Act'. The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars. We're working to get co-sponsors in Congress, but, we need citizen co-sponsors as well. Become a citizen cosponsor today at TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com. Act Now.
http://www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com
Next year's budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American's income. Beyond that, leaves over $15 billion to cut the deficit.
And that's what this bill does. It eliminates separate funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and eliminates federal income taxes for everyone's first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for couples). Plus it pays down the national debt. Does that sound good to you? Then please sign our petition in support of this bill, and help us build a movement to end our permanent state of war.
http://www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com
The costs of the war have been rendered invisible. There's no draft. Instead, we take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war.
We put the cost of both guns and butter on our Chinese credit card. In fact, we don't even put these wars on budget; they are still passed using 'emergency supplemental'. A nine-year 'emergency'.
Let's show Congress the cost of these wars is too much for us.
http://www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com
Tell Congress that you like 'The War Is Making You Poor Act'. No, tell Congress you love it.
http://www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com

Read it & Weep. Then get the hell to work.

Simon Johnson

MIT Professor and co-author of 13 Bankers

Posted: May 21, 2010 09:21 AM

After nine months of hard fighting, yesterday financial reform came down to this: an amendment, proposed by Senators Jeff Merkley and Carl Levin that would have forced big banks to get rid of their speculative proprietary trading activities (i.e., a relatively strong version of the Volcker Rule.)

The amendment had picked up a great deal of support in recent weeks, partly because of unflagging support from Paul Volcker and partly because of the broader debate around the Brown-Kaufman amendment (which would have forced the biggest 6 banks to become smaller). Brown-Kaufman failed, 33-61, but it demonstrated that a growing number of senators were willing to confront the power of our biggest and worst banks.

Yet, at the end of the day, the Merkley-Levin amendment did not even get a vote. Why?

Partly this was because of procedural maneuvers. Merkley-Levin could only get a vote if another amendment, proposed by Senator Brownback (on exempting auto dealers from new consumer protection rules) got a vote. Late yesterday afternoon, Senator Brownback was persuaded, presumably by his Republican colleagues and by financial lobbyists, to withdraw his amendment.

Of course, Merkley-Levin was only in this awkward position because of an earlier lack of wholehearted support from the Democratic leadership -- and from the White House. Again, the long reach of Wall Street was at work.

But the important point here is quite different. If Merkley-Levin did not have the votes, it was in the interest of the megabanks to have it come to the floor and be defeated. That would have been a clear victory for the status quo.

But Merkley-Levin had momentum and could potentially have passed -- reflecting a big change of opinion within the Senate (and more broadly around the country). The big banks were forced into overdrive to stop it.

The Volcker Rule, in its weaker Dodd bill form ("do a study and think about implementing"), perhaps will survive the upcoming House-Senate conference -- although, because this process likely will not be televised, all kinds of bad things may happen behind closed doors. Regulators may also take the Volcker Rule more seriously -- but the most probable outcome is that the Fed and other officials will get a great deal of discretion regarding how to implement the principles, and they will completely fudge the issue.

Most importantly, everyone who wants to rein in the largest banks now has a much clearer idea of what to push for, what to campaign on, and for what purpose to raise money. This is the completely reasonable and responsible ask:

1. The Volcker Rule, as specifically proposed in the Merkley-Levin amendment


2. Constraints on the size and leverage of our largest banks, as proposed by the Brown-Kaufman amendment

When the mainstream consensus shifts in favor of these measures, or their functional equivalents, we will have finally begun the long process of reining in the dangerous economic and political power of our largest banks.

This post was originally published on The Baseline Scenario.

Finally, the Republicans Come Out to Fight: Where Is the President?

Simon Johnson

MIT Professor and co-author 

of 13 Bankers

Posted: May 19, 2010 10:22 AM

The Senate Republicans are refusing to allow a vote on the Merkley-Levin amendment, which would put a meaningful version of the Volcker Rule into law (splitting off proprietary trading from major banks).

After weeks of dancing around, the Democrats finally have a signature issue on which to fight. Senator Carl Levin frames it exactly right: "It's a sad day when the power of Wall Street can overwhelm the power of the American people in the US Senate."

This is the opportunity that White House claims it has long sought -- to have an intense fight on a financial reform issue that everyone can understand. Paul Volcker made his determination long ago: the big banks are too big and must, in this fashion, be broken up. Senators Merkley and Levin negotiated the precise language of their amendment in good faith. The Republicans have made their answer clear: No way.

Time for President Obama to make the call.

Only the president can break through the daily logjam of information. Only the president can define the issues in the simple, powerful and convincing terms that people can grasp. Only the president can insist -- this is a matter of urgent national priority.

The economic analysis (Volcker), political back-story (Brown-Kaufman and all that involved), and just the right rhetoric are already in place:

"We got into this financial crisis because Wall Street set the rules to benefit itself, and now with an assist from Senate Republicans, they're doing it again," said Merkley. "Obviously the lobbyists are afraid they'll lose this vote, and in typical Wall Street fashion their solution, with help from Senate Republicans, is to rig the result. Main Street is being shut out of this debate. It is time to stop letting Wall Street call the shots -- let this amendment have a vote."

"The long arm of Wall Street reached directly into the Senate chamber today," Levin said. "By blocking us from even debating this amendment, the Republican leadership is carrying Wall Street's water and standing in the way of real reform."

This is a defining issue for the president. Either he takes up the Volcker Rule -- proposed by his administration, to great fanfare (and some skepticism) in January. Or he rolls over -- admitting that Wall Street has won.

We know where Goldman Sachs and its fellow travellers stand on this issue -- adamantly and publicly opposed. And we pointed out here in February which way the Republicans were likely to go.

"But if you don't have the votes in the Senate, what can you do?" This one is easy. You stop the clock and put everything else on hold. The president calls the American people to order and asks them to take a long hard look at the issues and the corporate interests at stake.

And then you start to pound away. Day in and day out, the president and other leading members of his administration need to come out swinging with relentless pursuit of substance on TV talk shows and prime time speeches -- demanding an up-or-down vote on Merkley-Levin.

Admittedly, this may be awkward for leading officials, who have been rather accommodative to financial interests over the past 15 months or so. That's unfortunate (for them), but now entirely water under the bridge. All is forgiven to the policymaker who finally gets it and changes course in the right direction.

Don't move on. Pick up the baseball bat that Paul Volcker has given you. Either that or go down to the most embarrassing, humiliating, and memorable defeat in the history of Wall Street-Washington confrontations. It's the president's call.

This post was originally published on The Baseline Scenario