Based on his experience as a Republican Party operative, Greg Mankiw is in fact well-positioned to give Barack Obama advice on how to reach compromise with Republican Party politicians. But based on his track-record as a Republican Party operative, Greg Mankiw is also the kind of guy who might engage in dishonest propaganda activities designed to make Republican Party politicians look good and their opponents look bad. His advice column seems clearly geared toward priority number two:

But now it is time to pivot and address the long-term fiscal problem. In last year’s proposed budget, you projected a rising debt-to-G.D.P. ratio for as far as the eye can see. That is not sustainable. Conservatives believe that if the nation credibly addresses this long-term problem, such a change will bolster confidence and have positive short-run effects as well.

It may or may not be the case that addressing the long-term fiscal problem is a good idea. But there’s no reason to believe this is a viable basis for a political compromise. Consider:

• When budget surpluses were projected 10 years ago, this was described by Republicans as a policy problem to be solved by tax cuts.
• When Republicans controlled the government, they consistently acted to make deficits larger.
• Republicans opposed the deficit-reducing Affordable Care Act.
• Republicans opposed the deficit-reducing American Climate and Energy Security Act.
• Republicans opposed the deficit-reducing DREAM Act.
• When Barack Obama proposed some deficit-increasing tax cuts, Republicans insisted that they would go along if and only if he added additional deficit increasing tax cuts.
• Republicans are planning to replace deficit-mitigating PAYGO rules with deficit increasing CUTGO rules.

Note that this is not a new development. There was a major battle within the Republican Party in the 1970s between a moderate faction associated with Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford and a conservative faction associated with Ronald Reagan. One key issue at that time was whether the focus should be on deficits or on low tax rates for rich people. And the conservatives won the battle. That’s why since 1980, the more conservatives you elect the bigger the deficit you get.

Rather than listening to Mankiw, my advice to Obama would be to take the lessons of history seriously. Republicans are deeply interested in lower tax rates on high-income individuals. There may or may not be other things they care about on some level, but the party’s level of concern about all other issues pales in comparison to its level of concern about lowering tax rates on high-income individuals. Policy compromises, if they’re reached, are overwhelmingly likely to involve Obama agreeing to lower tax rates on high-income individuals in exchange for Republicans agreeing to something else. That “something else” might entail net deficit reduction (as in the 1997 budget deal) or net deficit increases (as in the 2010 tax deal) depending on what it is Obama wants to ask for. But what Republicans want is lower tax rates on high-income people.

Ellen Nakashima and Craig Whitlock report for the Washington Post on the US military’s latest initiative in its never-ending quest to solve political problems with technological solutions:

This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a “soda straw” area the size of a building or two.

Most of all, this seems like a sad example of the decline of classical education in the United States. If you take current Air Force surveillance technology and ask “in what ways does this differ from the gaze of a gorgon” the natural response is “when you look into a gorgon’s eyes, you turn to stone, whereas today’s USAF surveillance has no petrification powers whatsoever.” The Gorgon Stare initiative appears to improve on current surveillance in a variety of ways, but involves absolutely no turning of anything into stone.

From the 1988 Democratic Party Platform:

WE BELIEVE that illegal drugs pose a direct threat to the security of our nation from coast to coast, invading our neighborhoods, classrooms, homes and communities large and small; that every arm and agency of government at every federal, state and local level—including every useful diplomatic, military, educational, medical and law enforcement effort necessary—should at long last be mobilized and coordinated with private efforts under the direction of a National Drug “Czar” to halt both the international supply and the domestic demand for illegal drugs now ravaging our country; and that the legalization of illicit drugs would represent a tragic surrender in a war we intend to win. We believe that this effort should include comprehensive programs to educate our children at the earliest ages on the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse, readily available treatment and counseling for those who seek to address their dependency, the strengthening of vital interdiction agencies, such as the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs, a summit of Western hemispheric nations to coordinate efforts to cut off drugs at the source, and foreign development assistance to reform drug-based economies by promoting crop substitution.

Democrats may not have won the election, but at least they got their “drug czar” job created and it’s policy wins that really count.

Steve Benen flags Chris Christie’s defense of leaving the state governorless amidst the snowstorm by, among other things, saying “My first and most important responsibility, in my view, is as a husband and a father.”

In a Real Talk sense, I think this is false. But be that as it may. What about Christie’s work in his second most important job? New Jersey, historically, hasn’t had the office of lieutenant governor. But the state authorities decided very recently that was a bad idea and created one. It’s really not a post that carries with it a ton of responsibilities, but filling in for the governor if a situation develops while he’s on vacation in Florida is on the list. Under the circumstances, it seems pretty clear that the governor and the lieutenant governor shouldn’t go on vacation simultaneously and that the governor should put some effort into working this out. Failure to coordinate the schedules properly hardly makes Christie history’s greatest monster, but it was an error. An error that nine times out of ten probably would have gone unnoticed, but the snowstorm meant the error turned into a problem for the state. The decent response to a small-but-real error is just to apologize and move on but Christie’s managed to turn an asshole persona into national YouTube stardom so I guess he thinks it’s best to act like a jerk.