Writing in The New York Times today, Marc Ambinder notes that “During this election cycle, a suspiciously large number of candidates with thin résumés and barely formed political identities are beating well-financed, better-established opponents. What’s more, these upstarts are winning primary races, in no small part, by running against the notion that their opponents were endorsed by the party — by running, that is, against the parties themselves.” He points to In Florida, where Marco Rubio pushed Gov. Charlie Crist out of the Republican Party and Rick Scott, a former hospital chief executive, beat establishment pol Bill McCullum in the gubernatorial primary; over a party-preferred candidate; in Alaska, where the inexperienced, Sarah Palin-backed Joe Miller beat incumbent senator Lisa Murkowski; in Pennsylvania, where Rep. Joe Sestak beat incumbent Senator Arlen Specter. He might have mentioned, where GOP activists denied the nomination to incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett.

Ambinder argues that this is a reaction against the parties, and well it might be. But I think it is a revolt against the system. For years, people have telling pollsters that they are unhappy: small and shrinking approval ratings for Congress, and also low approval ratings for journalists. People have become disgusted with the entire system–the unresponsive candidates, the money-drenched system that is beholden to special interests, and a legislative branch that refuses to address the nation’s problems. Washington’s problem is that in offices and families and communities throughout the country, people know how to make decisions. They reason, they argue, they vote, they move ahead. People know that Washington’s paralysis, it’s bickering and finger-pointing, is not a necessary by-product of decision-making. And given everything else that’s going on, especially the economy, they are revolting.

Our politics may be as badly broken as at any time since before the Civil War.

At an event marking the end of fasting during Ramadan at Gracie Mansion last night, Michael Bloomberg continued his staunch defense of the right to building an Islam community center in Lower Manhattan: “ I understand the impulse to find another location for the mosque and community center. I understand the pain of those who are motivated by loss too terrible to contemplate. And there are people of every faith — including, perhaps, some in this room — who are hoping that a compromise will end the debate. But it won’t. The question will then become, how big should the ‘no-mosque zone’ around the World Trade Center be? There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it, too, be moved? This is a test of our commitment to American values. We must have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy. And we must put our faith in the freedoms that have sustained our great country for more than 200 years. . . .Before closing, let me just add one final thought: Imam Rauf [above], who is now overseas promoting America and American values, has been put under a media microscope. Each of us may strongly agree or strongly disagree with particular statements he has made. And that’s how it should be — this is New York. And while a few of his state ments have received a lot of attention, I would like to read you something that he said that you may not have heard. At an interfaith memorial service for the martyred journalist Daniel Pearl, Imam Rauf said, “If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul: ‘Shma Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ehad; Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,’ not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one. If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one.” In that spirit, let me declare that we in New York are Jews and Christians and Muslims, and we always have been. And above all of that, we are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose. There is nowhere in the five boroughs that is off limits to any religion. By affirming that basic idea, we will honor America’s values, and we will keep New York the most open, diverse, tolerant and free city in the world.”

Click here for Mayor Bloomberg’s full remarks.

Three cheers for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his ardent defense of religious freedom. His position is in keeping with the best traditions of New York City and America. The people who are opposing the mosque are either know-nothings like Sarah Palin, or worse, far worse, scare-mongering manipulators like Newt Gingrich, who is up to the old political trick of making himself seem like a demon-slayer by demonizing the small, vulnerable and innocent among us.

Rep. Anthony Weiner in The New York Times: “While I appreciate the concern over the future of civility in politics, I believe a little raw anger right now is justified. Democrats make a mistake by pretending there is a bipartisan spirit in Congress these days, and would be better served by calling out Republican shams.

“The specifics of the debate last week should be an example of an issue beyond partisan dispute. The bill in question was created to help the thousands of citizens who went to ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks. These are Americans who wanted to help, and who scientific studies now show are falling ill and dying in troubling numbers. . . .Though it should have been a legislative slam dunk, the bill was defeated on a simple up-or-down vote, with only 12 Republicans voting in favor. . . .

“It was frustrating to hear Republicans say these people didn’t deserve more help because, as one put it, “people get killed all the time.” Others called it another big entitlement program. Some said it was a giveaway to New York, or complained that the bill would have been paid for by closing a tax loophole. We responded to each of these arguments over the summer in the hours of hearings and markups of the bill. . . .There were also Republican objections that we put the bill on the “suspension calendar,” which is generally used for noncontroversial legislation. . . .What upset me most last week were comments voiced by Republicans who claimed to be supporters of the bill, yet who used their time on the House floor not to persuade skeptical Republican colleagues to vote yes but to excoriate Democrats for using the suspension calendar. . . .

“And I got angry. I didn’t break decorum, but I did say what I was thinking and feeling. . . . Instead of engaging in a real debate about how to address the challenges we face, Republicans have turned to obstruction, no matter the issue, and then cry foul after the fact. They claim to want an open legislative process with more consultation and debate, but the truth is they simply don’t want to pass anything. Meanwhile, conservative television and talk radio programs are full of false anger, intended to scare Americans. I think some genuine frustration at this misleading tactic is overdue. That’s why I got mad last week.”

I voted for Barack Obama for president. Today, I still like the guy, still admire him, have high hopes for him, and believe he could do a great job. But the truth is, when I had to choose between him and Hilary Clinton in the New York primary, I voted for Hilary. Why? Experience. I understand that neither of them had all that much time in the Senate, but I don’t think a person spends eight years living in the White House with the president of the United States, plus all those years in the Governor’s mansion in Little Rock, without learning a lot about governing

At this point, it’s hard to give Obama a grade. He did the impossible and passed the impassable bill–health care reform–but it did not include a public option. He passed a stimulus package that stopped the recession from getting worse but that wasn’t enough to turn the thing around; economically speaking, he violated the sacred Colin Powell rule, and did not enter with overwhelming force. He’s waging a war in Afghanistan for ill-defined objectives and without a defined constituency. He got a financial reform bill passed, but it doesn’t include the Volcker Rule, and perhaps even more damaging, has not become an instrument that has enabled to claim the narrative of the financial crisis. Instead, he has allowed the administration to be portrayed as incompetent, and even worse, hostage to the party’s exhausted response, big government deficit spending. And then he keeps getting slapped with problems unexpected and odd–the oil spill, the Shirley Sherrod mess.  “There is something loose and jittery about the atmosphere round Obama at the moment of which [Agriculture Secretary] Vilsack‘s clumsy over-reaction gives us a whiff,” writes Tina Brown in The Daily Beast. “ It’s as if inside the White House the belief in Obama’s inspirational charisma is still such that every time the ugliness of brute politics intrudes, it’s a startling revelation. The president’s cerebral goals aren’t supposed to be jostled by the coarse irrelevance of media bandits and ideological saboteurs. Except they are. Maybe recognition of this fact is what made Bill Clinton, at almost the same moment in his first mid-term elections in 1994, shove aside purists on his team like George Stephanopoulos and return to his devilish former consigliere, Dick Morris. Clinton knew he had to fight fire with fire, or sleaze with sleaze, that was more deft, more cunning.”

Or, in the stinging schoolyard  words of Sarah Palin, “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?”

I don’t think the second President Clinton–we could call her 44–would have been so cerebral. I’m pretty sure the Clinton playbook is pretty Chicago school (“If he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue”) and it’s applied to friends as well as foes. Somehow I don’t think a Clinton operation would have allowed Martha Coakley to run such a passive, brain-dead campaign that cost the Democrats an important Senate vote. I don’t think the White House would have been so above the fray and allowed Republicans such a wide-open free-fire zone.  I certainly don’t think the old “It’s the economy, stupid” gang would have failed to take ownership of the economy. This isn’t to say everything would have been better. I’m inclined to think 44 might not even have attempted health care reform, and I don’t really think she’d have pulled us out of Afghanistan because if Bambi has something to prove about his ability to wage war, a woman would have as much if not more.

But most of all, 44 would have shaken things up, just as Brown advises. If somebody wants to demonstrate to  me that Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett are doing a good job, I’d like to see the proof; in the meantime, I’d start looking for the Republican James Baker, the smoothest White House chief of staff of my life. (On the other hand, Hillary’s campaign staff kind of sucked, particularly the brainy but not brilliant strategist Mark Penn.) I’m afraid Robert Gibbs’s soft-spoken whine needs to go; he’s not forceful, and he counterpunches poorly. Where have you gone, Mike McCurry?

Time to retool and refuel: at this time in his presidency, Clinton began shedding (in one way or another) not only Stephanopoulos, but also  Dee Dee Myers, Bernie Nussbaum, Lloyd Benstsen, Les Aspin, Mack McLarty, and adding people like David Gergen, Lloyd Cutler, McCurry, and the indispensable Leon Panetta. If I were Obama, I’d move heaven and earth to convince ardent Hillary supporter  Ed Rendell to leave his cushy job governing the Keystone State and come serve as White House Chief of Staff.

Coming to the end of the second year of the Obama presidency, what is sadly apparent is that one of the most gifted politicians of my lifetime–gifted intellectually, gifted rhetorically–has completely failed to articulate the narrative of our times. It’s perplexing, but he has never explained chapter and verse how and why we have found ourselves mired in this economic situation full of debt, unemployment and uncertainty. He lost the narrative on his stimulus bill, he lost the narrative on health care reform, and he he lost the narrative on Wall Street reform. As such, he has been chewed up by his opponents, who have presented a garbled mass of half-truths and insinuations to undermine him. And although he is surrounded by excelelnt economic thinkers, none of them–not Timothy Geithner, not Paul Volcker, not Larry Summers–has been able to help the president recapture the narrative.

That’s why the president needs Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. A forceful advocate of greater accountability and transparency, Warren has spent the two years of the crisis clearly, cogently and concisely explaining to the American what’s gone wrong, and what needs to be done. Sometime soon, the president will appoint a director to run the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, an agency Warren has done much to envision and midwife into existence. But there is a storm brewing behind the scenes. As ABC’s Jake Tapper reports, sources say Treasury Secretary Geithner “has concerns about her appointment”–I think that means “opposes”– given some of the pointed criticisms Warren has made about the Obama administration’s policies.

• In Warren’s April 13 report on Treasury’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention program, she wrote that “Treasury’s programs are not keeping pace with the foreclosure crisis. Treasury is still struggling to get its foreclosure programs off the ground as the crisis continues unabated.”
• In her May 13 report on Treasury’s attempts to help small businesses, she wrote that “Because small businesses play such a critical role in the American economy, there is little doubt that they must be a part of any sustainable recovery. It remains unclear, however, whether Treasury’s programs can or will play a major role in putting small businesses on the path to growth.”
• In her June 10 report on Treasury’s AIG bailout, she wrote, “The government argues that AIG’s failure would have resulted in chaos, so that a wholesale rescue was the only viable choice. The Panel rejects this all-or-nothing reasoning. There is no doubt that orchestrating a private rescue in whole or in part would have been a difficult – perhaps impossible – task, and the effort might have met great resistance from other financial institutions that would have been called on to participate. But if the effort had succeeded, the impact on market confidence would have been extraordinary and the savings to taxpayers would have been immense.”

“Warren,” Tapper writes, “has been an aggressive watchdog over the Treasury Department and, more personally, a tough questioner of him in oversight hearings, for instance asking why shareholders and officials with US automakers had to make severe sacrifices to continue while recipients of TARP funds have made millions; or pushing Geithner to explain why AIG counterparties such as Goldman Sachs were paid 100 cents on the dollar.”

I can’t say that Geithner’s policies have been wrong; indeed, they mostly seem quite prudent. But He seems very much to be a Bank Man, meaning that he sees the interests of the big, powerful banks as one and the same as the interests of America. And goodness, we’re all adults here, maybe that’s right. But Geithner is not helping the president win the popular argument. The presence of Warren should help the administration win the policy fight, and even if she doesn’t change a single one of Geithner’s policies, it should force him to explain himself better. She is a talent and an asset and a force, and the president needs her on his team.

Anthony Gottlieb has a fascinating article about voting in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, in which he talks about the real limitation of Britain’s–and America’s–first past the post system. The really best part of the piece, however, comes at the beginning, where he explains how the Doge of Venice was selected for five centuries:

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The oddest entertainment story of the week reports that Aaron Sorkin has agreed to write the screenplay and direct the film of The Politician, Andrew Young‘s account of his disappointing time as an aide to the vain, dishonest and dishonorable Senator John Edwards, and Young’s complicity is hiding the extra-marital affair  and pregnancy that Edwards and his ditsy gal pal Rielle Hunter that the conducted while running for the presidency. This seems like an unlikely pairing of artist and subject matter. I admire Sorkin quite a bit; I’m a loyal fan of The West Wing. But Sorkin, though hipper and occasionally cynical, is really very romantic about politics.  Nobody likes a hero more than Sorkin; nearly every character he created for The West Wing had a clean mind and a full heart and a staunch belief in America, and suffered a crisis of conscience if he or she so much as deposited a gum wrapper in the wrong recycling repository. (The same was true with A Few GoodMen! And for The American President, in which even Michael Douglas played a square-jawed hero! It was even true of Sports Night, which practically oozed integrity!) Even Charlie Wilson’s War, for which Sorkin wrote the screenplay, sanitized the coke-snorting, skirt-chasing congressman of the title, rendered him an innocent bystander in all those hut tubs he frequented, and had him tear up over poor Afghan orphans. How much of that transmogrification can be blamed on Mike Nichols and Tom Hanks is an open question, but I didn’t see Sorkin take his name off the whitewash of the wascally Wilson. But there are no heroes in The Politician. Edwards comes across as an odious charlatan, Elizabeth Edwards as a harridan and a user, Hunter as a homewrecker, and Young as pathetic, self-deluding, enabling, complicit doormat. If ever a subject called for the talents of black-hearted satirist like Armando Ianucci, this was it. Instead, it goes to a man who is only slightly edgier than Steven Spielberg.

In On theatlantic.com, images from the Gulf.