Environment

I had breakfast today at the usual table in the usual restaurant with a very smart journalist who works for a large salmon colored newspaper. We both had oatmeal because a guy just can't get enough soluble fiber. 

My friend said that at the moment the most over-used term in Washington is "defining moment." Of course, the reason the phrase-turning classes keep returning to this particular phrase is that they are cockeyed optimists. They keep believing that such a moment will happen and they will begin to understand who Barack Obama is. They don't want to have to grapple with the notion that he has already defined himself. They keep hoping that he is really will emerge from the chrysalis of his learning curve months in the presidency as the glorious butterfly of change everyone hoped he would be in the first place. The fact that there is precious little evidence this is likely to happen doesn't daunt them. They'll stick to their s.o.p. of doing the analysis they want and hoping that reality catches up to them sooner or later.

Personally, I'm getting a little worried. (Actually, I'm kind of perennially worried. Not as bad as my ex-wife who actually believed she was going to be hit by Skylab. But able to nonetheless find the cloud around every silver lining.) For months I have been going around saying this is a new generation of leadership, noting that Obama entered high school after Vietnam and his practice as a lawyer after the fall of the wall (that's the Berlin Wall, for you kids who don't remember). But so far, on key issues he has been acting like he isn't the first of a new breed but that he is actually the last baby boomer.

This may be due to the lack of creativity of some on his team who have ignored Rahm Emmanuel's famous admonition not to let a crisis go to waste and who have failed to carpe the damn diem to make this a transformational moment with regard to finance or health care. (The jury is out on foreign policy and climate.) But whatever the case, as recent polls have shown, the "yes we can" of the campaign seems have just been the prefix to "yes we can keep doing business as usual."

Still, all is not lost. Every day new opportunities arise for the President to have that defining moment and to demonstrate to critics that something resoundingly new is happening.

I was thinking of this last night at the big annual dinner for Conservation International, a terrific organization that has done the math and realized that when it comes to planets we have exactly one. Absent spares, they are focused on doing what we can to keep this one habitable. That was reason enough to show up. But the food was good and it was a great group of people. 

(It attracted a much better bunch than Michele Bachmann's latest effort to teabag America, the anti-health care rally that reputable news organizations said had 10,000 attendees and that Fox News said had 40,000. It says something about Bachmann -- no relation to 70s Canadian rockers Bachman Turner Overdrive except to the extent that we might all hope she soon joins them in obscurity --that at an event co-organized by a Republican Rep. named Steven King and bringing together some of America's most deranged wingnuts that she was the scariest person in attendance.)

Sitting not 20 feet from me at the CI event were Energy Secretary Steven Chu, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, actor Harrison Ford and many, many vegetarians. Chu gave the main address and by any traditional Washington standards the remarks were remarkable. On the one hand the speech lacked any effort at soaring rhetoric or even structure for that matter. His delivery was uninspired. The talk came with 30 or 40 often very complex slides. In other words, we got remarks from a Nobel Prize winning scientist who was interested in facts and thoughtful analysis. He was the un-orator and a welcome, refreshing and even urgently needed alternative to the usual DC gloss. The point: the climate crisis is real and that the President is committed to addressing it and that if we harness creativity, science and engineering we can solve the problem. Oh ... and if we don't the Chinese will get there ahead of us and they will be the be neficiaries of the first big tech boom of the 21st Century. 

Listening you thought, "that's what I'm talkin' about!" But then reality sank in when I saw Rep. Edward Markey, co-author of the House climate bill, walk by and all the prognostications of a weak deal on the heels of a cobbled-together face-saver in Copenhagen came rushing into my brain. This is the great issue of our time (you can debate the trajectory of global warming all you want...you can't debate what's happening to the polar regions or the glaciers of the Himalayas). And unless something changes we are going to fumble the ball forward in the hopes that we can pick it up at some point in the future.

Obama could change that. As Al Gore said today, he could go to Copenhagen. Indeed, he should go there. If he could go for the Chicago Olympics ... supporting what's little more than a global marketing scam ... then presumably he can go to show that something like saving the planet is worth the trip and even the risk that things won't all work out so well. Two-thirds of Americans under 30 see this as a critical issue. Only the boomers and older are undecided. The president needs to pick a team. Is he with the next generation or the last one?

Same is true with China and his upcoming Asia trip. On this front, I frankly think he is trending in the right direction. I think that Obama, to paraphrase foreign policy expert Elle Woods, recognizes that Asia is the new Europe. Furthermore, after decades of pundits speculating about this, I think he can make this real with a productive trip to the region this month. 

The key: the turnabout is fair play meeting of the year. After 10 months at least significantly defined by how the Obama Administration is dealing with the banking community, now the president has to go meet with his banker. They have a full agenda: a deal on climate, collaboration on Iran and North Korea, the coordinated soft-landings of our national currencies. Pay more than lip service to the importance of the relationships ... produce real progress on these fronts ... because actions really do speak louder than words ... and he passes another critical test when it comes to proving this administration is about something new.

Two final related points:

At a meeting I was at with a bunch of big institutional investors in Chicago this week, the scenario for world markets that many were most concerned about was that of a failed Treasury auction ... something they felt was more plausible now than at any time in memory. The aftershocks for the global economy would be pretty darn grim. Avoiding this nightmare is perhaps job one in the U.S.-China relationship at the moment.

And on the climate issue ... as on health care ... I am starting to become embarrassed to call myself a centrist. The folks in the middle are among the greatest obstacles to the kind of reform that is really critical to demonstrating it is no longer business as usual in Washington. (After the entire Republican Party, that is.) My only consolation comes from the fact that most of these people are not what I consider to be real centrists.  They are actually "middle-ests", splitting the difference between left and right. True centrists don't take both sides and divide by two, they use every tool at their disposal to advance the national interest, regardless of what labels might be hurled their way. 

In short, we need courageous, centrist, post-Baby Boom leadership ... and absent a defining moment or two in this direction, all the moments that have come before will do the defining. Fortunately, in times like these, potentially defining moments crop up with alarming regularity.

Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty Images

The speech by China's president, Hu Jintao, to the U.N. pledging to meet "carbon intensity targets" should be a wake-up call to the United States on several levels.

First, it shows that while the United States dithers, China has not only moved ahead in green technology, they have also moved ahead in terms of shaping the global debate about how to reduce carbon emissions and enhance efficient energy use. We can argue about the level of their targets. (They, predictably, are far too low.) We can argue about their methods, their desire to shift responsibility elsewhere or even their sincerity about aggressively pursuing their goals. But we can't argue with the fact that with Hu's comments they edged ahead of the United States in terms of seizing the initiative at this week's climate talks.

Second, in a related vein, it shows that where the United States fails to lead, others are willing to step in. In fact China, whose leaders were visibly discomfited when earlier this year it was suggested that they were now part of the G-2 with the United States, seems to relish both being out front on this issue ... and leaving the U.S. stammering about the problems of having to work with the Congress.

Third, it just shows how out of touch the U.S. Congress is on climate. The scientific world gets it (see today's FT piece on the weight of scientific studies.) The governments of most of the rest of the world's countries get it. But we keep making up excuses as though somehow Mother Nature would slow down out of respect for Senate protocols.  These do-nothings are great at coming up with excuses and with compromises that suck the meaning out of any legislation. But in this case, the consequences are global -- impeding progress in combating a critical threat and, at the same time, dramatically undercutting American prestige.

That China's formulation of "carbon intensity targets" is not the emissions caps that we and the Europeans have been urging on them is of consequence, but it is not central. Their commitment to reducing the output of carbon associated with each dollar of GDP is at least a respectable initial proposal. At least their words and their body language ... not to mention their quarter trillion dollar national investment in green technology ... say they are taking this seriously. They are not simply fiddling while the atmosphere burns (or at least warms up measurably) as are their counterparts on Capitol Hill.

How galling must it be to be U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern, a dedicated, earnest agent of change, a guy who really wants America to lead, who is held back by "realistic" estimates of what Congress will permit? Hopefully, the Chinese action and the efforts of other countries this week will cause the administration to shift strategies. They too should have a proposal on the table and they should push for what they think is needed.  And then, they should go sell that on the Hill. If Congress won't lead, they must.

Fortunately, Congress's primary excuse on this front -- that China will drag its feet -- is now gone. They will no doubt quibble with the Chinese method and intent. But watching from this seat, they will seem mighty small in doing so and many, whose goal was really to cater to special interests like that minority of businesses who are still not taking this seriously, will seem utterly derelict in their duties.

China will need to do much more than Hu will promise this week. But he and his government deserve credit for reminding the U.S. Congress what leadership can be about.

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

Despite a growing desire on my part to avoid the cage-match side of blogging, it is hard not to respond to Christian Brose's post "What is David Rothkopf smoking?" Brose seems to have, in President Obama's words, become all "wee-wee'd up" over my article in Sunday's Washington Post. I respond, of course, as a public service because so much of what he said provides a useful insight into how far we have come since the days of the Bush administration and how desperate Bush apologists are to find a way to suggest that their man and the policies they promoted were not actually the nadir of American foreign policy.

I should note however, that I also do this reluctantly because I think Brose is a pretty good writer and a fairly thoughtful guy. Still, when someone suggests that I have been a member of "the foreign policy hoi-polloi that went into intellectual hibernation in 2004 and only awoke this January" I figure, it's probably OK to offer a few words on behalf of my views. (Although it does explain the acorn residue I found in my cheeks.) 

I will ignore for a moment the fact that Brose clearly is willing to spot the world the first term of the Bush administration as indefensible and focus on his core notion that somehow the years Condi was at State were almost indistinguishable in intent, concept and execution from what we have seen to date from the Obama team. It should be noted that coincidentally Brose was a speech-writer at State during the Bush administration.

Let's take his points one at a time:

• Brose opens with a snarky summary of my article. The thrust is: Obama foreign policy is not revolutionary and I am kissing the asses of the Obama administration. I refer folks back to the past eight months of daily blogging as evidence that I have no inclination to butter up the new team and regularly do not. He does not note that he spends the entire article kissing the wholly discredited asses of his former employers.

• He then goes on to wonder aloud how anyone who "thinks and writes about foreign policy for a living" could think Clinton or Obama are transforming U.S. foreign policy. I have to admit, whatever the flaws in their individual policies, I find it hard to see how anyone could think they are not. Does he really think these folks just picked up where George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney left off? In Iraq? In Afghanistan and Pakistan? With their approach to engagement? With their commitment to multilateralism? With their approach to Guantanamo or torture? With their outreach to the Muslim world? With their commitment to reverse nuclear weapons proliferation? I could go on ... but will just take his main points in succession to continue in this vein.

• Brose lists Bush administration development "advancements" to suggest that they effectively covered the waterfront when it comes to reforming the development process. While Bush actually did some good here (and I didn't argue he didn't), that doesn't mean the work is done or that what the Clinton team is doing at State is not promising. The Obama team inherited an aid apparatus that was still deeply dysfunctional, underfunded and focused on missions that were not core. The QDDR process I mention in the article represents a commitment to strategic reevaluation that recognizes the fluid nature of international affairs today and seeks to institutionalize change in much the same way that the QDR does at DoD. Further, there is a massive amount of work that needs to be done if development policy is to be rendered effective in the current environment ... creating the ability, for example, to effectively do post-conflict reconstruction that so flummoxed the Bush administration for so long comes to mind, as does a civilian-side Goldwater-Nichols and other ideas that are currently being reviewed within State and the NSC process.

• His next paragraph argues that since the Bush administration participated in many multilateral forums that is the same thing as the Obama administration's commitment to the centrality of new partnerships. Can he actually believe that the Bush administration was a champion of multilateralism? By this same theory all people who go to church are virtuous and I, who talk a very good diet game, am actually 20 pounds lighter than reported this morning by the scale. Admittedly, there was a line in my article that was cut due to space considerations that I wish had been left in which said that while many of the current policies have roots in the past, what is happening now is very different because of the way it is being approached, the centrality it is being given, the degree of involvement of top officials, etc. Nothing illustrates this as much for me as the role emerging powers are being given. First, this is not a "Bush-era" inheritance. I know. Because I actually helped develop and run the first inter-agency process focused on U.S.-Emerging Markets relations during the Clinton years. Second, he cites a four-year-old Condi speech in which she mouths words he may have written about partners in the emerging world but seriously, wasn't he paying attention? At the time she did it, the perception that the U.S. was arrogantly acting apart from the rest of the world was near its apotheosis. The core concepts of Bush era foreign policy were of "us and them" and of our ability and willingness to effectively act alone or within sham coalitions to advance our interests. The core concept of the Obama administration is that just won't work anymore and that effective partnerships with a core group that includes new allies are the sine qua non of international progress.

• He then goes on to say that the administration has too little to show for its efforts. He minimizes restoring American relations with the world as if that weren't central to foreign policy. He then argues that this is not so meaningful because "cooperation has not always followed." Seriously? Will the Obama-Clinton restoration of America's relations with the world only be complete if everyone in the world cooperates with us always? This reveals his core misunderstanding of the nature of the kind of partnerships on which the Obama-Clinton team is seeking to build U.S. foreign policy. Also, in terms of not having much to show for their efforts, that's just ridiculous. Only seven months into their efforts U.S. policy has changed dramatically in Iraq and in AfPak, the administration has become deeply involved in the Arab-Israeli issue (which took the Bush administration about 7 years to discover), it has helped engineer an international response to the financial crisis, it has restored America's damaged reputation worldwide, the president's Prague and Cairo speeches represented dramatic breaks with the Bush past and set U.S. policies with the Muslim world and re: elimination of nuclear weapons in a new direction, and so on. It's just the beginning ... but it is a beginning very unlike the past eight years.

• Further his one-sided assessments of issues worldwide is full of inaccuracies. He says others won't help with Guantanamo but fails to note the benefits accruing to us from shutting it down. He says India and China don't share enthusiasm for a climate deal while failing to acknowledge that we are in a global negotiation, that the United States is now deeply involved as an advocate for progress for the first time or to note the differences in position between India and China (China is much more forward leaning and inclined to a deal). He inaccurately suggests that the only thing we can agree with the Russians is to reduce the number of nukes (as if that were a small thing). He says Pakistan is dysfunctional but fails to note how much more we are currently doing to address that. He says Iran and North Korea are a still difficult while failing to acknowledge the recent progress made with the North Koreans or that engagement with Iran is a real departure (on which the jury is admittedly still out).

• He concludes with the notion that we "are still a world of nations" (simplistic and wrong ... we are a world of many actors some of the most important of which on key issues are non-state actors) and that the Obama administration has been getting "mugged" by our differences since coming into office. This suggests again a misunderstanding of the nature of international relations. Good foreign policy does not produce a problem-free world. It just minimizes threats while advancing our interests. But, it also fails to note the central point that no doubt will resonate in the mind of the rest of the planet...which is that during the Bush years, it was the United States that was mugging the world and the system of international law we had fought for a century to advance.

That's the key point about these early days of this new foreign policy team. All administrations talk about partnerships and new relationships. To my mind, this one seems to believe what it is saying and is doing something about ... and at the very least is not as transparently hypocritical about such matters as was its predecessor. That in and of itself is perhaps the transformation most of the world was most hoping for. 

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

I was one of those kids who grew up in the '60s mesmerized by the space program. I actually, geekily, wrote NASA regularly requesting pictures of astronauts and sending in my own ideas for spacecraft, mission patches and the like. They would reply with thick envelopes full of press releases and eight by tens of my astronaut heroes, glossy proof that in our times anything was possible.

I watched the moon landing from summer camp where my store of newspaper clippings on space shots was the focus of considerable commentary (and not in a good way...leading to plenty of taunting, hazing, and one night alone on a tiny mosquito infested island in the middle of our lake). We had a small black and white television in the lodge up there in Readfield, Maine and we watched the ghostly images of Neil Armstrong leaping off the lunar lander ("yes...yes...the Lunar Excursion Module...the L.E.M...." cries out the little geek with black-framed glasses sitting as close as possible to the screen fully aware that his outburst will lead to the short-sheeting of his bed). It was not just moving for me, it was life defining. It was evidence that ours was an era apart and it was a harbinger of more amazing things to come. We didn't need Harry Potter. We had real magic happening before our eyes.

Sadly, in terms of the space program, that day 40 years ago this week was a high water mark emotionally if not technologically and in the years since we seem to have lost our sense of adventure and our connection to the ancient human impulse to constantly explore as far as possible beyond the limits of our knowledge. Our decision not to build as we might have on the achievements of the Apollo program is to me a sign we suffered a failure of national imagination.

During the presidential campaign last year, there was a conscious effort to draw analogies between John Kennedy, the symbolic father of the space program, and Barack Obama. There was a clear sense that association with the Kennedys would offer Obama a "right stuff" infusion. Personally, I found the whole business pretty distasteful, in part because I feel that Kennedy is almost certainly the most over-rated American political leader of the 20th Century and that there is an unsavory dimension to his history and that of his family that neither reflects well on them, nor on those who choose to overlook it. I also don't much buy into that greatness by association formula that is so popular within spin community.

That said, here we are six months into the Obama administration and there are strong indications that the president did not take the analogies lightly, that he is in a real way aspiring to the Kennedy example. Indeed, despite the inevitable grappling with both the learning curve and the curve balls thrown by circumstance, I think it is possible to argue that Barack Obama more than any recent president has sought to set goals that if achieved would have massive, global and ennobling consequences.

In fact, in a few key areas at least the President of the United States has broken free of the gravitational pull of Washington incrementalism and he already has us embarked on not one but perhaps as many as three different moonshots, national initiatives of importance comparable to those we cheered when back when British Open runner-up Tom Watson was still young.

One of these is closely related to the dark underside of the space program, the nuclear arms race that had us all as kids cowering in our school hallways beneath the winter coats that were supposed to protect us from thermonuclear fireballs. It is Obama's pledge, made in Prague, to seek the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons programs that resonates most like Kennedy's commitment to put a man on the moon in ten years. It seems impossible. It is redolent with hope. It would mark a breakthrough in the history of human civilization. In fact, it would mark multiple breakthroughs including both advancing the cause of peace and security worldwide and moving us toward more effective next generation global governance mechanisms. In this latter case, the breakthrough would come because there is no way to achieve Obama's goal without a successor to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that guarantees the international community the right to inspect at will and the right to use all means including force to ensure compliance.   

Another existential threat, climate change, is the target of another of Obama's moonshots. He has powerfully articulated his belief that global warming and continued reliance on fossil fuels exposes the United States and the world to manifold risks. Finally, the United States is seeking to play a leadership role in crafting an international agreement to reduce green house gas emissions. At the same time, the U.S. is investing unprecedented sums in cultivating alternative energy forms and finding ways to capture and harmlessly store carbon. Success on this front could well be the defining achievement of the current generation of world leaders. (Interesting what a vitally important role the Department of Energy, long the black hole of the U.S. bureaucracy, plays in two of these signature Obama initiatives.)

A third moonshot is the president's commitment to fix America's broken health care system. While this may seem prosaic and hardly as elevating as launching men into space or ending the threat of a nuclear or climatic end to human life on earth, nothing less than the role of the United States as a leading nation depends on our ability to get our arms around the massive underfunded liability we face in retirement health care. At the same time, when the last major economy on earth finally agrees with all the other developed nations that healthcare is a fundamental human right, it will represent a watershed in our view of the nature and role of governments. And the costs associated with this particular challenge will almost certainly exceed those associated with the space program...by at least 250 times. (The roughly 180 billion 2009 dollars it cost to put a man on the moon is roughly the same as was allocated for the AIG bailout. So by that measure, already the Obama Administration has plenty more moonshots to its credit.)

Each of these objectives is worthy and each is a massive undertaking. Any administration that accomplished one would secure its place in history. Throw in a few other largish objectives -- like achieving peace in the greater Middle East -- and there's no denying that America's long drought of vision and ambitions on a grand scale is over. We're no longer in the school uniforms or "don't ask, don't tell" territory any more, Toto. (Of course, it's worth remembering that we put a man on the moon at the same time as we fought the war in Vietnam, launched the "Great Society", implemented the Civil Rights Act of 1964...all effectively under the remarkable and under-appreciated leadership of Lyndon Johnson.)

But of course, the reason that today we are seeing replay after replay of Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the moon in a decade is because we actually achieved the goal. As of now, all three of Obama's moonshots seem even more unlikely to be achieved than did putting a human on a satellite of earth 240,000 miles away. But for the moment, it's worth celebrating the fact that we are thinking big again, that we are still game for attempting the worthy but seemingly impossible which is why I am declaring today a cynicism free national holiday in honor of the imagination, chutzpah, and hard work that made the achievement of July 21, 1969 possible. I even feel my imagination stirring a bit. But rest assured, I am not planning on building a model spent nuclear fuel disposal facility in my bedroom or sending fan mail to climate envoy Todd Stern. The last thing I need is for my wife to start short-sheeting our bed. 

Matt Stroshane/Getty Images

Two men were overheard chatting at a Cosi restaurant in DC this weekend. One said, "You know, with the death of Ed McMahon, Farrah, and Michael Jackson, I think the 70s also died. They're over with once and for all." The other guy said, without hesitation, "I'd believe that if Jimmy Carter weren't still president."

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I just overheard the conversation. (Please read on for my rather different view.) 

Personally, I found the obsessive retrospectives about Michael Jackson a little disgusting. His commercial success for a few years as a pop singer seemed to trump the dark and unsavory aspects of his life. But he was no hero. He was certainly no one to be celebrating. Unless of course, you were an ayatollah. Because one of the truly transcendental ironies of recent history has to be the fact that a symbol of the worst sort of Western spiritual and social corruption...celebrity worship, drug culture, financial excess, debauchery...ended up providing just the distraction that the keepers of the Islamic Revolution's flame in Tehran needed to direct the world's attention away from their abuses of their own people. 

In an instant, the really important story of tens of millions struggling to be heard in Iran was swept off the air by the death of a 50 year old accused pedophile in America. CNN, which had been congratulating itself daily for bringing the "green revolution" in Iran to the world as only it could in an instant tossed its news judgment out the window and started offering 24/7 retrospectives on how Michael Jackson chose the red leather jacket he wore in the "Thriller" video.  It was an appalling, cheap and cynical programming choice made worse by the fact that other major stories...from the Congress passing the landmark Waxman-Markey climate legislation to the coup in Honduras...were left to play the role only of journalistic spackle, filling in the cracks between paeans to a man who spent the last twenty years shocking the world with his unhinged depravity.

The sad reality is that none of the celebrities who died in the past week say much good about American culture or the state of hero worship in America. 

Which brings us back to Obama and the overheard Carter crack. Because one way that Obama is clearly unlike Carter is that he has already achieved something momentous and, occasional cigarette aside, he actually does offer Americans a leader whose story is legitimately inspiring. It is far too early to tell whether he will be able to add to a legacy that has already been assured by the fact of his election...but Friday's passage of the Waxman-Markey legislation and the administration's vigorous defense of the bill is a sign that it just might.

The change in the America's stance on the issue of global warming is one of the most dramatic and meaningful of the Obama era. (Don't believe me? See Angela Merkel's recent comments on the subject.) It will not be easy to get Senate passage of similar legislation. Insiders on the Hill with whom I have spoken suggest that in all likelihood the Senate bill will be sidetracked by the healthcare debate and may not be even voted until after the Copenhagen climate summit. This in turn will mean the United States goes in saying "we can go this far if China and India commit to reductions" which is perhaps not optimal, but may well be a good negotiating position.

And if China and India and the other developing countries do commit to meaningful emissions reductions within a reasonable period, then early in 2010 Senate passage and a final bill going to the President seems likely. (One senator told me that the key to selling the bill is letting Americans know they won't be the only ones sacrificing and that for him, the Chinese are the lynchpin. In fact, he said the issue of coal-burning Midwestern states vs. the alternative energy loving coasts is overstated and that  it will be fairly easily settled via "the usual horse trading that goes on up here.") 

The United States has never been closer to meaningful action on combating climate change and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. It would be a simultaneous breakthrough in climate security, energy security and economic security. The opposition's antics on the legislation (including Representative Boehner's reference to the just passed legislation as a piece of shit) well illustrated their desperation and cluelessness.  In fact, the people on the wrong side of this legislation once it passes will be seen as being on the wrong side of history and will be very vulnerable to election challenges on those grounds. Especially since recent estimates, like those of the Congressional Budget Office, underscore how minimal the financial impact of the cap and trade provisions of the bill will be on the average family.

I wish CNN and others in the broadcast media had covered this story as they should have and given the president the great credit he deserves for fighting for it. (A nuanced stance which, over the weekend included the airing of the president's principled objections to provisions in Waxman-Markey requiring tariffs be levied against nations that don't commit themselves to emissions reductions.) The well being of millions and perhaps the fate of the planet hangs in the balance and as a consequence, I think a fair case can be made that we could have cut back on the interviews with Lisa Marie and Dame Elizabeth long enough to let the news creep through the maudlin aggrandizement of a featherweight, self-inflicted, altogether tawdry American tragedy.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

The buzz on Capitol Hill and among administration insiders is that the House may ultimately pass some form of cap and trade legislation. It won't be as effective as most leading climate change advocates had hoped; it's likely to be full of the free allocations and offsets that are the price of gaining political support. The swing votes here are the likes of Virginia's Rick Boucher, a long-term Democratic representative of that state's coal country. The problem is going to be in the Senate, where Republicans are railing on against what they are characterizing as a weak-economy crushing "electricity tax" and some centrist Dems are worried about their own states' dependency on coal. 

As a consequence, although the administration has sent a clear message that progress on setting a price on carbon is a central concern for them and that they want a bill this year, there is some concern it might be punted off until next year...or, given that next year is an election year which means that anything that even looks like a tax will be semi-radioactive, until 2011. While opponents of the legislation may breathe a sigh of relief they should be careful what they wish for. Because leaving this issue hanging is very likely to prove to be more of a drag on the economy than actually putting a cap and trade system in place. 

The arguments of the anti-cap and trade, anti-carbon tax crowd actually fail on several levels. 

First, it is easy to reduce your exposure to such a proposed tax: use less carbon. That's the point of the tax, actually, to change behavior. The average family can save nearly $1000 a year simply by embracing some basic conservation and efficiency measures like improving insulation, weather-stripping windows and doors, using more efficient light bulbs and lowering water temperature a few degrees. Credible estimates (which is to say those from the EPA, MIT, and Peter Orszag and not wildly inflated ones from John Boehner) of the cost of implementing cap and trade range from $50 a family to $1300 a family.

Which leads to the second point, which is that only by creating such a tax can we ensure organic growth in the new green energy industry that will help stimulate job creation and growth at a time when traditional sectors are failing to do so. 

Third, of course, the government can send the revenues from the tax right back into the economy, thus setting up a stimulus to directly offset any possible negative impacts of the tax. 

But perhaps most importantly, given the fact that one way or another we like the rest of the world will have to find a way to limit carbon emissions, failing to come up with a legislative approach to managing the problem may actually have worse economic consequences than introducing this modest tax. Because the market knows change is coming but until it gets a signal as to what its nature will be, it is going to sit on its hands and not invest in new projects. We've already seen this happen. Would you invest your money in a coal fired plant right now? Would you lend money to one? Not knowing what the costs will be when we charge a price for carbon? Not knowing what the liabilities would be? Well, neither would most people.  Which is why between 2008 and 2009 the U.S. Energy Information Administration drastically reduced its forecast for investments in new coal-fired generation capacity through 2030, from 104 GW to 46 GW. That is equivalent to a reduction in the estimate of approximately 100 new coal plants representing investment in perhaps the $600 billion-$1 trillion range. 

At the end of its press release, the EIA noted that this change "reflects the behavior of investors and regulators who, in their investment evaluation process, are implicitly (or explicitly) adding a cost to many proposed power plants that employ GHG-intensive technologies. Additions of new coal-fired power plants are significantly reduced from earlier projections."

Much of what might have gone to coal plants may go to other technologies, of course. Estimates, for example, for natural gas powered plants are up.  Which is a good thing that  indicates that the threat of a tax has some beneficial aspects, as well. But even so, uncertainty is taking its toll on all power plant investment. A Reuters article last month framed the problem by noting:

Lack of clarity on future power prices makes it difficult for lenders to evaluate a new power plant's prospects.

The potential for renewable power mandates, carbon limits and the return of electric demand growth as the economy recovers 'create a huge capital formation need,' said Terence Darby, managing partner of Energy Investors Funds Group, a private equity company.

As regional power surpluses decline, 'it creates a huge need for capital with no clear way to get it,' Darby said."

Not passing a cap and trade provision in the energy bill this year won't solve this problem. It will be expected in the future or regulatory steps will be expected to have a similar impact on fuel and technology choices. So the result will be an uncertainty tax that may be more damaging than any carbon tax currently envisioned. New investment will not flow. New projects won't get built. New jobs will not be created. It is these considerations that have led so many major utility executives to support cap and trade.  Their industry literally cannot stand a period of prolonged doubt about the regulatory, investment and market environment they are going to face in the years ahead.

In short, when you add together the benefits coming from restoring investment flows and creating the conditions needed for the real job creation, innovation and growth a green revolution may support, passing cap and trade may very well be much more stimulative than fumbling the issue as the Congress currently looks like it might do.   

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Because it is downright silly to evaluate a president after only 100 days -- especially on his performance in an area as complex and wide-ranging as foreign policy -- and because it is doubly unfair to evaluate someone by arbitrary metrics, let's try another approach. Let’s establish a scale by which we can judge the President after four years in office, one full term. This way he can know in advance how he's going to be graded (we’re fairly confident he is a loyal FP reader), and we can discuss his presidential achievements and slip ups in foreign policy in more meaningful terms.

Of course, with a couple hundred countries and dozens of cross-cutting issue areas to consider, it would be impossible to list every important metric in one blog posting....even given my tendency toward, um, full-figured postings. So, let me pick ten and you can add others.

1. Iraq

This is the issue that more than any other in international relations differentiated Obama from his opponents during the 2008 election cycle. And with this issue, like so many others, the initial metric is going to be: does he leave it better than he found it? In this case, this will mean living up to his promise to withdraw most American troops...while at the same time ensuring that Iraq doesn't backslide into chaos endangering the region. (It'll be interesting to see whether, if confronted with the possibility of disorder in Iraq, Obama and Americans in general are willing to accept a strongman who puts a lid on the country even if that means democracy is not exactly robust. You know, like Saddam.) It is also essential that problems within Iraq do not spill over into other countries be they renewed stirrings of a desire for an independent Kurdistan or tensions associated with Shiite-Sunni rivalry. By this metric, the most likely outcome -- messy, below optimal democracy, reasonable stability, moderate violence, and no need for more than say, 50,000 U.S. troops -- would be seen as a victory.

2. Iran

Right now the relationship is strained -- which is a polite way of saying we've been at each other's throats for three decades -- but there is nonetheless hope for a dialogue that produces a somewhat enhanced relationship and a tolerable outcome on the issue of Iran's nuclear program. Iranian regional aspirations, especially as expressed through the actions of its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, are also worrisome. Live up to the hopes by establishing some kind of on-going, even sporadic dialogue and a peaceful nuclear program with ironclad inspection and enforcement mechanisms that include disposing of waste elsewhere, probably in Russia, would earn a pretty good grade. Progress by covertly and overtly U.S.-backed Iranian reformers producing a chance at a bigger diplomatic opening and more control of Hezbollah's meddling outside Iran would be even better. Triggering and allowing a nuclear arms race in the region is an automatic F. Working this all out through effective multilateral cooperation is a key to a passing grade.

3. AfPak

I'm a pessimist about our prospects here so frankly, I would consider it a passing grade if we don't end up with more troops there than we have right now and if the whole of Pakistan is not being run by fundamentalists. Losing more of Pakistan or Afghanistan to the Taliban, al Qaeda, or other extremists or having the two countries serve as a base for another attack on India or elsewhere, would bring the overall grade down a lot. This is Obama's war. Colin Powell's "you break it, you own it" dictum applies. Capture Osama you get an automatic A here, though more importantly, the president probably also gets an automatic reelection. Actually achieve military success and shore up democracy and attitudes toward America in Pakistan and not only does Obama get an A but Richard Holbrooke gets a Nobel Prize and probably his own talk show or cabinet post, whichever he would prefer.  (Please note: I am a very big Holbrooke fan. If he can't help here, no one can.)

4. Israel-Palestine

This is an area in which most American presidents are happy to keep the burners set to simmer. But few American presidents have raised expectations of better relations with the Muslim world and this is the symbolic issue for the entire region. Some concrete progress must therefore be made for his regional policy to be considered a success. A Syria deal seems to me the most likely outcome, but the successful development and introduction to you should forgive the expression, a roadmap to a two-state solution is a sure-fire way to push up the overall grade almost regardless of what happens elsewhere. Engineer this and Obama gets the Nobel Prize (sorry George Mitchell, maybe you can finally become baseball commissioner.)

5. China

Ok, now we have a G2, what are we going to do with it? This is an area where Obama can blaze a real trail in 21st Century foreign policy, forging a doctrine of interdependence with a critical partner that is also a likely rival on key issues. Given that no progress can be expected on arms control, economic recovery, combating climate change, managing global trade, and dealing with hotspots from Iran to North Korea without Sino-U.S. cooperation...and that more progress can be made than may be expected if we forge a new kind of really substantive working partnership....this is an issue that is not in the headlines daily that ought to be front of mind for the President nonetheless. This is really where an Obama doctrine outlining how the U.S. now must learn to work with countries with which we have major differences will take its most meaningful shape. Let its long-term development being overtaken by successive crises of the hour and again, automatic F.

6. The Atlantic Alliance

Eight-five cents of every defense dollar on earth is spent within the Atlantic Alliance. If the United States is to slip the bonds of being the world's sheriff, the only way to do it is to revitalize this alliance and to develop practical guidelines for out-of-theater actions where support is not as anemic as it has been recently for our AfPak efforts. Further, these relationships are the foundations of America's foreign policy historically and these countries are on many issues our most natural allies. The United States cannot achieve multilateral success without restoring and maintaining a partnership here at a level that transcends the grievous damage done during the past eight years. 

7. Reinventing the Multilateral System

Everything needs to be fixed or newly created...the IMF, the World Bank, regional banks, global financial regulations more generally, the non-proliferation regime, the WTO, the UN Security Council, a global environmental organization-and it needs to be done with a new core group leading the way. This includes the United States, Japan, the EU and the BRICs.  Find a way to strengthen these organizations, fund them, create structures that reflect the new emerging global power structure, move beyond the toothlessness of previous global regimes and Obama may do more good than being successful in any of the other areas cited here. Do little and it will make it much harder for the United States to leverage its constrained resources into the kind formula for international leadership that the century will demand.

8. Combating Climate Change

While mentioned above, failing to set a price for carbon or to take other crucial steps to reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels could cast the administration in a very bad light in the eyes of future generations (those with gills and webbed-feet). While I overstate likely outcomes, we are in a period which much produce progress or damage may well be done that could have very serious security consequences for us even beyond implying continuing dependence on dangerous and unstable oil-producing regimes. There are plenty of metrics here but the ultimate one is simple: implement a carbon pricing mechanism by the end of these four years or you get another automatic F.

9. Quarterbacking the Global Economic Recovery (This Includes Protecting the Well-Springs of Domestic Economic Strength -- Notably the Dollar)

This is the issue on the minds of everyone right now and if the crisis endures well into 2010 it is already likely that mid-term elections will make it harder for the President to achieve other goals here. Fail to engineer a substantial recovery by 2012 and the administration will be unable to get the extension from the professor that it inevitably will argue it needs to achieve all the goals set out above. Get 'er done and not only does the president get a high overall grade, but he gets that automatic four year extension on all his other work -- a four year extension. Be seen as responsible for permanently weakening the dollar and driving up the price of borrowing for a debt-addicted United States, automatic F.

10. Manage the Unexpected and Yet Defining Crisis We Can Hardly Predict

It will come...perhaps several will come...or they will involve hostages or terrorist attacks or a coup or an unexpected natural disaster and as the previous occupant of the Oval Office (who achieved a very unusual F for his eight years of foreign policy mismanagement, bad study habits, and violation of the U.S. constitution) will tell you, all your progress can be undone in the public's eye in an instant. This is a critical part of being president and a key here is setting up a team and a process that can handle the unexpected. Has he done this? Well, he certainly has taken promising steps in that direction.

Extra-Credit

Several areas may be important in a real way, but they probably won't rise to the level of the ten cited above in shaping his final grade. These include keeping a lid on Mexico and the Quartersphere, the part of the hemisphere we will really be focusing on re: drugs, stability, and immigration, the regional issues that touch our borders.  Also: Many of the thorniest foreign policy problems we face can be found in Africa (this may be where the unexpected crises come from although my money is on traditional locations or Central Asia). Massive war, genocide or humanitarian disaster(s) in Africa on Obama's watch may damage his grade. Sadly, it only ever takes maintaining the unhappy status quo there for American presidents not to be graded on their performance there at all. Bush probably did better there than most recent presidents and it didn't help his grade one bit. Finally, if the world continues to love us...or the president...or his powerful secret weapon, Michelle...which is the area in which perhaps the most progress has been made in the first three months, he'll also get extra credit.

So, that's my take. Now start studying Mr. President. There will be a test tomorrow. And every day you remain in office.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Obama is now coming to the end of the candyman phase of his presidency. That's the part where he can play to core constituencies and those whose support he would entertain with big gifts -- stimulus money, tax cuts, and promises of policy changes. It's the part where the booty of an election win is spread around -- jobs are given to loyal supporters, and foreign policy victories are scored simply by telling a once-disgruntled ally what they've long been waiting to hear.

But now starts the hard part. Now, the president must grapple with the tough part of leading -- where friends don't get what they want, where allies are pushed and prodded and threatened and punished if they don't fall into line. When force is required, and all eyes are on the United States and the policy initiatives that are under fire can no longer be blamed on the last president.

To help prepare for this period, here are 10 tough decisions that Obama will face in the very foreseeable future.

1. Cap-and-trade

Will he soon be forced to sacrifice putting a price on carbon for political expediency? Will he actually be willing to trade cap and trade for health care as current conventional wisdom would have it...and then enter into a midterm election year when doing a cap and trade deal may be even harder? Will he be willing to use the classification of carbon as a pollutant as a regulatory bludgeon on this issue hard... and necessary... as that may be on many industries?

2. Failing economy

When the U.S. economy underperforms estimates in the next few years, will he be willing to increase taxes on middle class taxpayers... or exacerbate class tensions by continuing to place all the burden on the most affluent Americans? Where is he willing to make meaningful cuts? Defense? Entitlements? 

3. Necessary roughness

He won't use force in Iran to stop proliferation; that already seems clear. But will he use it to stabilize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal should it come under siege? Or to stop massive slaughter in Central Africa? Where will he be willing to use force in a place that the U.S. is not already engaged in a conflict?

4. Walking the walk

Europeans love hearing a U.S. leader talk multilateralism, but they don't yet seem to realize that when he talks the talk, they have to walk the walk. Will he be willing to confront and pressure them to step up in a way they did not at the last NATO meeting?

5. Open trade vs. U.S. jobs

How and when will he reconcile his promises to the world to maintain open trading systems and his promises to unions to protect American jobs? Since he can't, who is he willing to anger when he backs off his competing pledges? 

6. When the bailouts only go so far...

What will happen when it is clear that GM can't be saved in its present form and the resulting dislocation will knock tens of thousands of people out of work?

7. An uncooperative Israel

What happens when ultimately his desire to mediate in the Middle East and to reduce tension runs up against an ally, Israel say, who is not cooperative? Is he willing to pay the political consequences of confronting the Israeli government? What if they are in the right and Hamas or Iran is clearly the problem? Is he willing to pay the political consequences of getting tough on them?

8. China & Russia

Is the United States willing to accept growing Chinese or Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere due to their engagement and our disengagement? What happens when resource pressures force the United States to say no to big international aid programs at precisely the moment when he and his team want to give more? Is he willing to be unpopular overseas to maintain support at home? 

9. Wall Street

If it is clear that Wall Street firms can't recover without paying Wall Street salaries... or that the administration can't function without actually hiring lobbyists... is he willing to back off his completely understandable but perhaps impractical populist stances on these issues, admit he was wrong and defend a course of action that is unpopular but necessary?

10. No more Mr. Popular

On what issues is he willing to actually be unpopular? Thoughts? (This is only a partial list of course, and your suggestions are welcome.) Personally, I'm willing to bet that he rises to the test and sooner than you would think.

One good sign from my perspective: the apparent decision to hire Harold and Kumar, Van Wilder and "House" star, Kal Penn, to join his public liaison team. After all, who better to get down into the weeds of an issue or to help the president achieve the high highs promised in the campaign than Kumar? Next up: Neil Patrick Harris for surgeon general (why put all that valuable Doogie Howser experience to waste?)

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