I still haven't made up my mind whether to direct an "open comment thread" on Tuesdays and Thursdays here, or just to forego any columns on these days altogether for the rest of the month.

But for today, I'd like to offer up this article from Katrina vanden Heuvel at the Washington Post. I think it's got parts in it that everyone will appreciate here, as well as being an excellent collection of links within the article itself. Of particular note is the last link in the article, to another exceptional article, an op-ed by Drew Westen that is definitely worth reading.

Discuss amongst yourselves...

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

This week is being touted, in the political world, as a big week in the state of Iowa. There will be a nationally-televised Republican presidential candidate debate, and then a few days later the Ames Straw Poll will take place. The straw poll is (as always) being hyped in the media as the "first voting" in the upcoming presidential nominating contest. But the media should pay more attention to what is happening in Wisconsin this week, because rather than some "vote"-buying exercise (that always proves itself to be completely meaningless in the grand scheme of the presidential election process), Wisconsin could prove to be a much better weathervane in terms of predicting which way the political winds will be blowing, come next year.

The less said about the Iowa straw poll the better, actually. The entire thing is an obscene display of how party machinery and blatant vote-buying have absolutely nothing to do with American voters actually choosing their president. The winner of the straw poll does not have any sort of "lock" on the state of Iowa, and indeed is often not even one of the top-tier candidates in the actual election. The only thing it accurately measures is the ability of each candidate to organize and pay for the massive people-moving which is required to do well in the straw poll (those buses to get "your" supporters to the straw poll don't pay for themselves, in other words). But beyond organizational, boots-on-the-ground mechanics, the straw poll measures precisely nothing of any real-world value (or even political-world value, for that matter).

Not so what will take place in Wisconsin tomorrow. Because tomorrow's vote is going to prove to be a bellwether in terms of how strong the Tea Party Republicans truly are, and how big their influence on next year's election may be. A good showing for Republicans tomorrow in Wisconsin will energize the Tea Party faction to bend the rest of the Republicans to their wishes throughout the entire campaign. Conversely, a win for Democrats tomorrow will show Democrats that the public is souring on the Tea Party creed, and will energize the Democrats for 2012.

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With the conclusion of the debt ceiling "crisis," the media pivoted swiftly to their standard larger questions (to them, at any rate) about any political event these days: "Who won? Who lost?"

Sigh. Well, in this one, we all lost. America lost. As the public got a close look at the innards of the political gastro-legislative tract, mostly they recoiled in horror. It's been said of Republicans that they get elected to Washington with the slogan "government doesn't work," and then they go about proving the truth of that statement with all their might. The past few weeks are a perfect example of this.

Finding "winners" in this mess is tough. Strangely enough, President Obama seemed to escape with the least political damage. The most fervent of his base said he surrendered and gave away the store, and the most fervent of his opposition is never going to give him credit for anything. But somehow Obama did manage a few scraps of victory in the power struggle. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are safe from cuts... for the next few months, at any rate. Obama will be able to extend the debt limit on his own (Congress is going to have a Kabuki vote each time, which will be meaningless) all the way through the 2012 elections, which was his "line in the sand" negotiating position. Neither was a sure thing, but these are mere scraps of victory, indeed. More intangibly, Obama's positioning as "the adult in the room" worked to a large extent, but that was fairly easy to do, considering how the other side was behaving.

The real winner, though, was the Tea Party. Even if some of them seem not to have gotten the memo. While some on the Left fulminated against the eventual deal, it was nothing compared to what some of the Tea Partiers were saying about it. "We only got 98 percent of what we asked for -- this is simply unacceptable!" seemed to sum up the hardest-core Tea Partiers' position.

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My apologies for the lack of a Thursday column. I really did want to write a column today, and was planning on next Tuesday being the first break here (see Program Note 3, at the beginning of Tuesday's column, for details). Unfortunately, I spent the day delving into the mysteries of Volvo braking systems instead. So I guess we're getting an early start on the new (temporary) Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule, here. Apologies, and all of that. But the brakes now work great, do not scream with the tortured grinding of metal-on-metal, and the car stops on a dime now. So, all in all, it wasn't too bad a day.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Every so often, I am moved to write a speech I'd dearly love to see President Obama give to the nation. This is one of those occasions. Call it a summertime daydream, if you will, but there's something going on right now in Washington that is downright obscene, and I think it would behoove the president to address it in the following fashion. I sure know I'd support his action, if he gave the following speech. And I suspect most everyone else would, too -- across the entire political spectrum.

Remarks as prepared for delivery by President Obama

Good evening, ladies and gentleman. I have a short statement to make, on the subject of yet another showdown in Congress -- all of whom apparently feel perfectly comfortable leaving town without doing their duty.

I cannot conceive of greater irony than the spectacle going on right now in Washington airports. Members of Congress are all flying home to enjoy a month of paid vacation (at taxpayer expense, of course). Most of them -- the ones who live outside the immediate region -- are flying home on airplanes out of airports which are all overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration. The cruel irony is that as Congress wings its way merrily off to sunny shores for a month, they forgot to pass a bill authorizing the F.A.A.'s budget. Talk about a free ride!

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[Program Note 1: Obama Poll Watch is presented today, rather than on its normal Monday, Wednesday, and/or very-occasional Friday. This is mostly due to the column being extremely short this month, and due to the fact that it was pre-empted yesterday because we were all so consumed with the debt ceiling deal announced over the weekend. We apologize for the inconvenience, and for the shortness of the column. More on that in a moment.]

[Program Note 2: ChrisWeigant.com is slightly changing the format of our main page. Rather than being able to view the most-recent story in full on the main page, we're just going to present a short excerpt. You can get to the story's page (where you can read both the story and the comments in full, without further clicks) by clicking on the title of the story, clicking "Comments" after the story's excerpt, or clicking the "Permalink" after the story (all three take you to the same page, although "Comments" scrolls you down directly to the Comments area). This will make the main page easier to navigate, we feel.]

[Program Note 3: As Congress leaves town this week for their month-long vacation (and what is regularly referred to as the "silly season" of politics in Washington, when political stories are few and far between), ChrisWeigant.com will be publishing columns on a reduced schedule of only Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. This will allow me time to work on a book proposal that has been on the back burner for far too long, and we apologize in advance for the month of reduced service. Which brings up a point -- in the space left on Tuesdays and Thursdays, would you prefer: (A.) nothing, just three columns a week; (B.) column re-runs of columns from, say, the past year; or (C.) what is called an "open thread" column, where you guys just hammer each other in the comments on whatever subject you feel like that day? Obviously, (A.) gets my vote because it is easiest, and (B.) would actually be the most time-consuming for me, but if we go with (C.) I may just toss out a question or an issue in a sentence or two for "debate amongst yourselves." Let me know your preference, if any, in the comments, and thank you in advance for your patience until Congress returns in early September. There may be a column this Thursday, but beginning next week it'll only be a M/W/F schedule until the second week in September.]

Debt ceiling drags Obama (and everyone else) down

As I warned, this is going to be a short one. There are, essentially, three reasons for this. One, the past month has been exhausting enough, politically. Two, it was a textbook example of a "one-issue month" where only one story dominated. Three, sometimes I am inherently lazy, and I guess you can call this one of those times. Sorry about that.

The easy answer to the question: "Who 'won' the debt ceiling debate?" is: nobody. The public sees everyone involved in a more negative light than when the whole manufactured crisis began. Hopefully, politicians will take note of this, but it is quite likely they will not, and this new standard of brinksmanship will become the norm, every time the debt ceiling debate arises. There's a comforting thought, after the past month, eh?

But while both Congress and the Republicans were scoring record lows in the polling, we're not concerned with them here, just with President Obama. And Obama had his own sort of "double dip" this month in the polls. He started off the month with his poll numbers still sliding back down after his "Bin Laden bounce" of a few months back, but his numbers were starting to stabilize. This held for about a week or so, but by mid-month the debt ceiling fracas was the main story on the news, and Obama's numbers slid downwards.

This puts Obama in the worst shape he's ever began a month, looking forward to August, but since the debt ceiling deal was struck he shows signs of bouncing back a bit. But let's look at the new chart for July, to begin.

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The House and Senate are getting ready to vote on the deal struck to avoid America defaulting on her debts. Nobody knows exactly the magnitude of what is being cut in detail yet, and the news media seem more interested in the eternal "who's up/who's down" horserace nonsense than in informing the public what exactly has been agreed to in this deal. This should come as no surprise, since it is (as always) ever so much more fun for "journalists" to blather on about "what it all means" seen through the political lens, instead of "what it all means" in terms of... well, what it actually is going to mean for America. Perhaps in a few days, when they get bored with the political aspects, we'll finally find out exactly what the cuts are going to cover.

One thing is for certain, though, and that is there will be a newly-formed joint congressional committee which is going to have a lot of power over the second stage of this grand debate. Currently, the progressive media seems most obsessed with pushing their own cutesy-poo names for this committee (I, for one, refuse to use the term "super Congress" -- since it is not, on many levels -- only the worst of the snappy and "oh-so-clever" names I've heard bandied about). Progressives should wake up and realize that, rather than winning the "media branding battle," they should instead start paying close attention to who exactly is going to sit on this committee. Because that is going to determine the outcome of this fight -- no matter what the committee is called by the inside-the-Beltway types.

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If I were a Hobbit, right about now I would be wondering just how the heck I wound up at the center of this Washington intraparty political fight, personally. What (I would ponder in my metaphorical Hobbit hole) had I done to any of these folks to deserve being dragged into this fracas?

It all started with a Wall Street Journal editorial, believe it or not. That's how far into Fantasyland we've traveled -- the most eminent conservative newspaper in the country had to reach back to J.R.R. Tolkien to explain what is currently going on in Washington:

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As I write this, the House of Representatives has still not voted on Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the debt ceiling. But no matter how the vote goes, the real question behind this week's action in the Republican caucus in the House may be whether Boehner will still be Speaker when the shouting's over and done. The simmering Tea Party factionalism may be about to explode into public view, in other words.

There are, of course, many possible outcomes to the whole debt ceiling struggle. Boehner could twist enough arms behind the scenes to pass his bill tonight. Or he may fail. Either way, the whole episode is going to leave a bad taste in the Tea Partiers' mouths, one assumes. Whether Boehner strong-arms enough of them to pass his bill or not, the very fact that he's had to postpone the vote several times now speaks to the contentious problem of keeping his caucus in line -- which he's never been all that good at doing.

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There are now only a handful of possible outcomes of the debt ceiling standoff in Washington. We'll get to them all in a minute in more detail. One way or another, it's a pretty safe bet that the issue will (at least temporarily) be resolved by the fifth of August, at the absolute latest. Bank on it. The reason for such certainty is a simple one: if the debate goes on in any way past that date, then it will start to cut into Congress' month-long summer vacation. Which is (as any observer of American politics should know full well) the one unthinkable bridge-too-far in Washington. Because Congress' vacations are sacred... at least, to them.

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