FAST TAKES
From the right: ‘Groundhog Day’ on Paris Outrage
Left-wing outrage over President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord sounds remarkably like the uproar President George W. Bush faced for quitting the Kyoto Protocol, recalls Marc Thiessen at the American Enterprise Institute. Yet “the predicted [climate] apocalypse never happened.” On the contrary: The US “reduced emissions faster than much of Europe thanks to business innovation.” Fact is, “whenever the GOP kills fatally flawed treaties and agreements, the left howls.” Indeed, the “hysteria” over Paris “is evidence that [Trump] made the right decision.” Advises Thiessen: “Keep the pangs of outrage in perspective. We’ve seen this movie many times before.”
Foreign desk: Door’s Still Open on Jerusalem Embassy
Breaking his campaign promise to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem — just like his predecessors — was a pretty conventional move for a president who likes to “shake things up,” notes Eli Lake at Bloomberg. But the White House insists “the question is not if that move happens, but only when.” And officials say Trump “believes he can use the embassy issue as leverage.” Not “as a carrot to the Israelis in exchange for concessions on settlements,” as has been done before, but “as a stick with Israel’s Arab neighbors . . . to pressure the Palestinians in the peace negotiations.” So “given Trump’s defiance of the experts on the peace process, it’s entirely plausible that sometime in the future he will also defy them on Jerusalem.”
From the left: Dems Are Too Rich for Their Own Good
The “changing demographic makeup of the Democratic coalition” is creating a problem for party leaders, laments Thomas Edsall at The New York Times: “Trouble brews when a deeply held commitment to the underdog comes into conflict with the self-interested pocketbook and lifestyle concerns of the upper middle class.” He recalls Bernie Sanders’ soak-the-rich tax plan, which “would have made political sense” when the “economic elite” were solidly Republican. But last November, they split evenly between Trump and Hillary Clinton. So “the problem for the Democratic Party is that ‘them’ has become ‘us.’ ” And, asks Edsall, “can a political party impose costs on its own constituents, especially those voters who make up the most influential faction of the party, the affluent and well educated,” and remain politically viable?
Historian: Battle vs. ISIS Won’t End in Iraq and Syria
The biggest question raised by the recent Manchester bombing, and others like it, “is whether there’s a global solution to these types of assaults,” warns Owen Matthews at Newsweek. But “the deeper issue . . . is that open societies have no real defense against terrorist tactics.” As with the IRA and the Red Brigades in generations past, “are Western countries willing to sacrifice basic democratic values — by employing measures such as detention without charge — in order to protect themselves? And how will they deal with the Muslim communities within their borders that continue to hatch extremists?” ISIS’s “often-stated aim is to disrupt and destroy the decadent West to make way for an Islamic theocracy.” And “a basic principle of asymmetric warfare is to panic a stronger opponent into overreacting.”
Policy wonks: Pension Costs Killing Higher Education
Widespread state-level spending cuts to higher education are commonly assumed to be “just another consequence of states tightening” their fiscal belts,” note Daniel DiSalvo and Jeffrey Kucik at US News & World Report. But state tax revenues nationwide “now exceed pre-recession levels and spending in almost every [other] budget category has grown since 2008.” And “the most notable increases are on public employee pensions, which grew the fastest in terms of total liabilities and expenditures. In short, pensions are crowding out higher education.” Fact is, “it is easier — and more politically expedient — to cut higher education than it is to cut other areas.” But “the true costs of higher education funding cuts,” they warn, “will not be seen until future generations.”