“Where Have Ebola’s Fear-Mongers All Gone?”: The One Word You Haven’t Heard A Politician Say Since Election Day
Only two months ago, many Americans were gripped by fear of the uncontrollable spread of an apparently incurable disease that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected could strike 1.4 million people in West Africa before it came under control.
Amid such reports, it took only one case to touch off near-panic inside the United States: that of Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan after he was misdiagnosed by a Dallas hospital.
In the weeks that followed Duncan’s death, state and local governments reacted — and sometimes overreacted. Several schools barred teachers and children who had visited African countries that were nowhere near the epidemic. In Maine, a teacher was put on leave because she had visited Dallas.
And then election-year politics kicked in.
Members of Congress, mostly Republicans, warned that Ebola could be carried into the country by illegal immigrants or even terrorists, and demanded a ban on travelers entering the United States from the affected countries. Governors scrambled to draft quarantine regulations, producing a showdown between Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and a nurse he tried to confine to a tent. (The nurse won.)
And now? The crisis is all but forgotten. We’ve moved on.
The epidemic is ebbing in Liberia, but still spreading in Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization estimates there have been about 18,000 cases, including more than 6,300 deaths: tragic numbers, but far below the apocalyptic scenario once predicted.
Only four cases of the disease have been diagnosed in the United States, two of them in people who contracted the disease in West Africa. And we’ve learned that when Ebola is identified early, in a country with a functioning healthcare system, the disease is treatable after all.
“What’s the one word you haven’t heard a politician say since Election Day?” Democratic strategist James Carville asked me a few weeks ago. “Ebola!”
I’m not blaming ordinary people for reacting as they did to a deadly epidemic they’d been told was difficult to stop.
I’m not even blaming governors who scrambled to impose quarantines to stop the spread of a disease they didn’t know much about. Their job was to protect their citizens. And when they discovered that their initial reactions might have been too broad, they pared them back — even Chris Christie.
It’s worth remembering, as well, that the Obama administration initially did a ham-handed job of mastering the crisis. Dr. Thomas Frieden of the CDC started out by assuring the country that the situation was under control — even though it wasn’t, at first.
But there is one list of politicians who still deserve a measure of scorn: the ones who fanned fear for fear’s sake.
This week, those politicians shared in an award they probably didn’t want: the annual “Lie of the Year” prize conferred by PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Tampa Bay Times. They won, the paper said, because they deliberately “produced a dangerous and incorrect narrative” about an important global problem.
Before you dismiss that as another liberal media attack on the GOP, consider this: Last year’s PolitiFact winner for “Lie of the Year” was President Obama, for his promise that under his 2010 healthcare law, “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.”
The politicians mentioned in this year’s citation included Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), an ophthalmologist who may run for president.
His advice on Ebola included this warning: “This is an incredibly contagious disease. People in full gloves and gowns are getting it.”
Well, no, as thousands of medical workers in Africa can testify — not when true precautions are in place.
“This is something that appears to be very easy to catch,” Paul added. “If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party, they’re contagious and you can catch it from them.”
Theoretically true — but only if your cocktail party acquaintance is emitting fluids in your direction; Ebola can’t be transmitted by air.
Then there was Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), another physician, who managed to combine two hot-button issues, Ebola and immigration. Gingrey announced that he had received “reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever and Ebola.”
Other members of Congress speculated that terrorists might infect themselves, sneak into the United States and try to spread the disease in crowded places. PolitiFact carefully said it couldn’t count that as a lie, since it was mere speculation.
But it was surely intended to increase fear. And fear is a powerful emotion, much easier to provoke than to ease.
So now that the acute fear of Ebola has ebbed, we should pause for a moment to thank some Americans who didn’t panic — and, more important, even did something to bring the epidemic closer to an end: the courageous relief workers who went to Africa, not knowing whether they’d be allowed to return home, relief workers that included roughly 3,000 U.S. military personnel who accepted deployment to Liberia as part of their jobs, and whose clinic-building mission will be complete soon. And yes, even those politicians, beginning with President Obama, who didn’t panic.
By: Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times (TNS); The National Memo, December 18, 2014
“The ‘Obama Refuses To Lead’ Crowd Falls Silent”: It’s Striking To Realize What The President Has Done Just Since The Midterms
Kevin Drum pauses today to take stock of the recent actions from President Lame Duck.
So how have things been going for our bored, exhausted, and disengaged president? He’s been acting pretty enthusiastic, energized, and absorbed with his job, I’d say.
It’s funny, in a way, to think about how long ago the midterm elections seem. Seven weeks ago, President Obama was apparently supposed to be a defeated man, crushed by an electoral rebuke, pushed into irrelevancy by an ascendant far-right majority in Congress. It was up to the White House, the Beltway said, to start looking for new ways to make Republicans happy.
There’s a script that lame-duck presidents are supposed to follow, and gosh darn it, Obama would be expected to play by the rules, slipping further and further out of frame.
But given today’s developments, it’s striking to realize what the president has done over the 58 days since the midterms.
Obviously, there’s today’s historic announcement about U.S. policy towards Cuba. There’s also Obama’s breakthrough climate agreement with China, the successful secret mission that freed American prisoners in North Korea, and the sharp reduction of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
And that’s just foreign policy. Closer to home, the president has unveiled a major new immigration policy that will bring new hope to 5 million immigrants; he’s taken the lead on net neutrality; and he’s scored a series of confirmation victories in the closing days of the Senate.
All of this comes against the backdrop of an improving job market, a highly successful ACA open-enrollment period, falling gas prices, a Russian crisis that arguably benefits the United States, and the number of Ebola cases in the United States falling to zero.
The White House’s many critics don’t want to hear this, but if Obama were a Republican, it’s likely we’d be inundated with coverage about how “President Comeback just got his mojo back.”
Indeed, I continue to think about Dana Milbank’s column from two weeks ago today.
…Obama has demonstrated a preference to mull rather than to act. Former Obama Pentagon chief Leon Panetta, in his memoir, wrote that Obama too often “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.”
Today’s historic agreement with Cuba belies such criticism – plenty of presidents have talked about a more sensible course on Cuba, but this president actually did something about it. This required some bold leadership and a willingness to take a risk on a contentious issue, and Obama delivered.
To be sure, we can and should argue about the merits of the president’s decisions. Maybe this dramatic foreign policy shift is a major step forward, maybe not. Perhaps Obama’s post-midterm moves will advance the nation’s interests, perhaps not.
But the point is, for all the chatter about a disengaged president who’s reluctant to act, the last seven weeks prove those assumptions wrong. Obama has clearly taken charge, pursuing an ambitious agenda with striking vigor.
Every pundit who carelessly throws around the “why won’t Obama lead more?” cliches clearly needs to rethink the thesis.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 17, 2014
“Who’s Afraid Of Ted Cruz And Ken Cuccinelli?”: No Republican Is Conservative Enough To Avoid A Primary
Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) plan to fight President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration reform during the debate over the $1.1 trillion “cromnibus” spending bill didn’t go very well. Cruz raised a point of order against the bill, arguing that the portion funding the Department of Homeland Security is unconstitutional due to the president’s action. But Cruz’s move enraged his fellow Senate Republicans, unwittingly allowed Democrats to confirm some two-dozen Obama administration nominees who otherwise would not have gotten votes, and totally failed to stop the president. The measure was voted down 74-22, with 20 Republicans joining the Democratic majority to rebuke the Texas freshman.
Although Cruz reportedly apologized to his colleagues, the episode isn’t finished yet. Cruz evidently has a plan to get revenge against those who opposed him — with a little help from his friends.
In comments to Politico on Tuesday, Senate Conservatives Fund president Ken Cuccinelli suggested that his group — with which Cruz has a close association — will target the senators who voted against him in the coming elections.
“People’s votes may by themselves inspire folks to say: ‘I’m running against this guy or this girl,’” Cuccinelli warned. “I have a funny feeling that some people who weren’t thinking of running two weeks ago are thinking of running now.”
So will the seven senators on the ballot in 2016 who opposed Cruz — Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Dan Coates (R-IN), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mark Kirk (R-IL), John McCain (R-AZ), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) — lose their jobs for opposing the Tea Party hero?
Probably not. Under closer examination, Cuccinelli’s threat rings rather hollow.
As right-wing groups have repeatedly proven, no Republican is conservative enough to avoid a primary. No single vote would have been enough to prevent 2014 challenges to Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY), Pat Roberts (R-KS), or John Cornyn (R-TX) — the 2nd, 8th, and 13th most conservative members of the Senate, according to National Journal’s 2014 rankings — and helping Ted Cruz try to blow up a government spending bill would not have saved supposed RINOs like John McCain or Kelly Ayotte from drawing right-wing opponents.
Additionally, it’s not clear that incumbents should actually fear a challenge from the Senate Conservatives Fund. In 2014, the group backed three candidates challenging Republican incumbents: Matt Bevin in Kentucky, Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, and Milton Wolf in Kansas. All three bombed in spectacular fashion.
“Our members know that our candidates are underdogs,” an SCF spokeswoman told The Washington Post in October, in an effort to defend the group’s performance. “The establishment has a lot more money and is willing to smear conservative candidates with false attacks. But they still want us to keep fighting because otherwise we wouldn’t have people like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul in the Senate today.”
That’s true. But it’s also a perfect explanation of why Republican senators have no reason to fear standing against Ted Cruz.
It’s entirely possible that some of the senators who opposed Cruz’s point of order will fall in 2016. But it’s extremely unlikely that last weekend’s vote will be the incident that doomed them.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, December 17, 2014
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