Five Best Tuesday Columns

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Paul Moreno in The Wall Street Journal on running against the courts President Obama's preemptive warning to the Supreme Court not to overturn his health care law puts him in a losing tradition. "President Obama is ignoring a lesson liberals and progressives should have learned long ago. None has ever succeeded in galvanizing popular opinion against the courts. In American politics, the goal is not to curb the judiciary but to co-opt it," writes Moreno. Beginning with turn-of-the-century progressives, Moreno details all the instances where presidents or candidates ran against the Supreme Court and subsequently lost elections. FDR initially made the same mistake with his court-packing scheme, but he eventually won out when he stayed in office long enough to appoint eight justices "the old fashioned way." "A decision striking down ObamaCare will not be, as Lincoln called Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), 'an astonisher in legal history' ... A wise progressive would welcome such a decision, respect the court, and then pack it."

David Brooks in The New York Times on America's two economies Brooks highlights an article by Tyler Cowen in The American Interest, which argues that America may be on the verge of an export boom, fueled by newly efficient business models. "His work leaves the impression that there are two interrelated American economies. On the one hand, there is the globalized tradable sector — companies that have to compete with everybody everywhere ... On the other hand, there is a large sector of the economy that does not face this global competition — health care, education and government." The economies are growing apart. The first economy, Brooks says, is pressured to become efficient and dynamic, and it often attracts Republicans. The second provides more jobs but isn't as competitive, and it attracts more Democrats. He writes, "I don't know which coalition will gain the upper hand. But I do think today’s arguments are rooted in growing structural rifts."

John Stossel in The Wall Street Journal on privatizing airport security Years after the government federalized airport security under the TSA in an effort to "professionalize" it, people complain of rude treatment and there's little evidence that the TSA is doing a better job foiling terror plots. "There is a better way: allow competition ... Instead of relying on a government bureaucracy, [some] nations let private companies compete for contracts. Those security companies try harder, because they know if they do a bad job they'll be fired. TSA bureaucrats know that no one can fire the government," writes Stossel. He describes studies of private screeners that show they do a better job detecting contraband, and he details some of the TSA's bigger failings."The TSA's urge to hold power is universal. All governments work that way ... whenever something goes wrong, no matter what it is, no matter if private solutions are perfectly possible, politicians instinctively react by demanding a government solution."

David Cay Johnston in Reuters on ending tax fraud The U.S. Justice Department's recent action against a chain of income tax preparation shops brings attention to the problems of fraud among tax preparers, but Johnston sees a solution. "The action underscores the potential for abusive business practices that taxpayers face because Congress has failed to embrace technology that would eliminate most tax returns ... About 100 million taxpayers — those whose income is entirely from wages and retirement funds, and who do not itemize deductions — should not have to file returns. The government already has the information it needs to calculate the taxes these people owe." Other governments have automated tax returns for these kinds of people, but Johnston says an entrenched lobby of interested firms that profit from preparing people's tax returns makes action in the U.S. unlikely. "Meanwhile, the way Congress has written tax laws, and the way courts interpret them, makes it hard to pursue tax cheats."

Joanna Weiss in The Boston Globe on 'Texts from Hillary' Texts from Hillary Clinton, a popular new meme that attaches hypothetical text conversations to a photo of the Secretary of State looking fierce, reveals a lot about her shifting political image. In most of the images, "Clinton is above the fray, for perhaps the first time in her political life — a time that happens to coincide with headlines about her record-high approval ratings and her triumph in meaningless prospective polls for the 2016 race ... There was a time, not long ago, when Clinton was the one who seemed to be trying too hard, trying to compete with Barack Obama’s effortless charisma." Weiss describes the evolution of the meme and the website that supports it. She suggests it grew so popular because it seized on a conversation people were already having about Clinton. " [I]f Clinton actually runs in 2016[, she] will have to sell herself again. But she will start from a different foundation."

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

About the Author

Eric Randall is an associate digital editor at Boston Magazine and a former staff writer for The Atlantic Wire.

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With efforts to repeal Obamacare collapsing, the GOP faces a difficult landscape as it looks ahead to 2018.

Here’s an after-action report, as Congress prepares to recess:

The signature Republican domestic-policy demand of the past seven years is dead again. Deader than ever. Brought down by Republicans themselves, in the face of nearly unanimously hostile public opinion.

Democratic constituencies have been mobilized to an intensity not seen since the worst days of the Iraq war. They have crowded town halls and barraged senators with phone calls and messages. The party’s serious internal differences—including over the future of health care—have been laid aside for the time.

Republican constituencies have been split and demoralized. Working- and middle-class Republicans have been put on notice: Their party wanted to cut their Medicaid and other health-care benefits. Why should they show up in November to vote for more of that?

Upmarket Republicans have been formally informed: Their party was duping them on Obamacare repeal, in all those years of yammering, it never developed anything like an alternative. The Obamacare taxes will remain in place, as will the law’s other costs and burdens. Why should they show up in November to vote for more of that?

The White House is melting down in recrimination, rage, and failure. While opponents condemn Trump as authoritarian and corrupt, supporters in Congress and media want to talk about almost anything else: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, dirty rap lyrics—anything.

Donors are hearing that funds donated to the Republican National Committee and other party funds have been used to pay the personal legal bills of the supposedly super-rich Trump family—and that more such spending is probably on the way.

The special counsel’s investigation is triggering more and more erratic behavior from the president. Trump has repeatedly and publicly denounced his own attorney general—the one cabinet secretary executing a policy generally popular with the party’s conservative base, immigration enforcement. And this before the investigation has resulted in any legal consequences.

The president has achieved the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a chief executive at this point in his tenure, despite generally favorable economic news and the absence of any acute foreign-policy crisis.

The Democrats need take only 14 seats to flip the House. There are 7 Republican incumbents on the ballot in California, where the president’s approval rating has tumbled to 25 percent, down five points since Inauguration Day. There are 5 more in New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie’s approval rating has plunged to 15 percent.

The 2018 Senate map favors Republicans, but the president has gone out of his way to tie the single most imperiled Republican incumbent, Nevada’s Dean Heller, tightly to him and to the unpopular health-care bill. The president is waging open war against Arizona’s Jeff Flake—and his approval rating has sunk below 50 percent in states that might otherwise have been thought of as pickup opportunities, including Missouri and Michigan.