Matthew Duss:
"I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” That was Senator Barack Obama, speaking about Iraq in a 2008 primary debate. For a candidate who had seen his own campaign surge on the strength of his opposition to the Iraq war, it was a near-perfect distillation of the change he hoped to bring to America’s foreign policy discussion, long dominated by hawkish views that were shattering against the bloody reality of Iraq’s civil war.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama started—and won—a hugely significant debate about the proper uses of U.S. power. His declaration that he would not be afraid to talk to America’s enemies brought accusations of naiveté from both his Republican adversary John McCain and Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, who would go on to begin implementing that same policy toward Iran as Obama’s first Secretary of State.
Ending that mindset has proven a difficult task. The idea that military force is decisive in a way that diplomacy is not remains a very attractive one, especially for politicians looking for cheap ways to appear tough. And to be fair, Obama has moved slowly on this, often frustratingly so. There are policy areas, particularly the use of drone warfare, where he has continued the commitment to the use of force. But Obama’s Iran policy is one in which the president has followed through on that central promise of his candidacy, and with great results. In short, Obama’s Iran policy is the anti–Iraq war.
Chemi Shalev:
The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to be steadfastly and uniformly opposed to the deal: support for Netanyahu and vocal criticism of Obama are GOP gospel. The only hitherto silent force that might come into play to crack the solid wall of Republican hostility is big business and the oil industry, the titans of which are surely waking up to the possibility that Asian and European companies will be chomping at the bit to exploit the new business opportunities that would be created by the lifting of sanctions. According to most estimates, U.S. companies could export an annual $20-40 billion within a few short years, never mind the windfalls to be made from the world’s third largest producer of natural gas and fifth largest producer of oil.
Matt Viser:
With the demands of their respective leaders looming in the background, the relationship between Kerry and Zarif formed the centerpiece of the exhausting, sometimes testy, and ultimately successful negotiations in Vienna that led to the history-making deal announced Tuesday.
As Kerry pursued the pact, he spent more time with Zarif than with any other diplomat, according to a state department official. But as the possibility of a deal grew, so did frustrations with Zarif, who has a flair for the dramatic that seemed fitting in the neoclassical Palais Coburg, a richly appointed hotel that was the setting for the 18-day diplomatic finale.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Fred Kaplan:
What Netanyahu and King Salman want Obama to do is to wage war against Iran—or, more to the point, to fight their wars against Iran for them. That is why they so virulently oppose U.S. diplomacy with Iran—because the more we talk with Iran’s leaders, the less likely we are to go to war with them. Their view is the opposite of Winston Churchill’s: They believe to war-war is better than to jaw-jaw.
President Obama needs to be (and clearly is) sensitive to these parochial views of the region and the world, but he shouldn’t (and clearly isn’t) holding American interests hostage to them.
NBC News:
NASA's New Horizons probe hasn't even had a chance to send its best stuff back to Earth yet, but an analysis of color imagery and other data transmitted before Tuesday's flyby has already yielded surprising findings about Pluto and its biggest moon, Charon. Here are five revelations to keep an eye on
Nate Silver:
The smart money is still on the GOP eventually falling in line. Unlike Senate and gubernatorial primaries, which are one-off deals, the presidential nomination process proceeds for months, with states voting one at a time or in small groups. An anti-establishment candidate who wins a couple of early states, as Newt Gingrich did in 2012, may be quashed later on as the party rallies its resources against him. So it’s worth tracking endorsements, both for establishmentarian candidates like Jeb Bush and for others like Scott Walker who toe the line between running as “insiders” and “outsiders.”
But what if the GOP decides it needs to fall in love instead? It might make for the most fascinating nomination race of all time.
Vox:
The USA Today/Suffolk poll actually tested how seven different Republican candidates would perform against Clinton. Trump comes off the worst, by far. (The next-worst, Ben Carson, trails Clinton by 13 points.)
Given Trump's populist appeal — both his billionaire-outsider persona and the fact that he's running a campaign on attacking immigrants, which is an issue where many in the GOP base don't trust the party's leadership — it makes sense that the 17 percent of would-be primary voters who support him wouldn't care about "electability." If that trend held through the campaign — with the base supporting Trump as a way to stick it to the party's elite — that would be disastrous news for the GOP in the general election.
The good news for Republicans, though, is buried deeper in the poll. Donald Trump has by far the highest name recognition of any Republican candidate: only 2 percent of respondents hadn't heard of him. (Compare that to the 27 percent of people who haven't heard of Scott Walker.) That supports the theory, as raised by Vox's Andrew Prokop, that what looks like Trumpmentum in the polls is partly just name recognition. Once Trump wilts under scrutiny — or once other candidates manage to cut through the noise and get their names out there — that 17 percent of potential primary voters who support Trump might wander elsewhere.
David Cay Johnston:
21 Questions For Donald Trump
The Atlantic:
Other stories have been told about the website so bad it nearly broke the Affordable Care Act. The Obama administration was "running the biggest start-up in the world, and they didn’t have anyone who had run a start-up, or even run a business," David Cutler, a health adviser to Obama’s 2008 campaign, told The Washington Post in 2013. “It’s very hard to think of a situation where the people best at getting legislation passed are best at implementing it. They are a different set of skills.”
TPM:
With Eye on Fiscal Armageddon, Texas Set to 'Repatriate' Its Gold To New Texas Fort Knox
And in conclusion,
Vox:
Tuesday's Iran deal confirms something that has been clear for a while now: Barack Obama is one of the most consequential presidents in American history — and he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism.
Obama has reestablished productive diplomacy as the central task of a progressive foreign policy, and as a viable alternative approach to dealing with countries the GOP foreign policy establishment would rather bomb. He established a viable alternative to the liberal hawks that dominated Democratic thinking during the Bush years, and held positions of influence on Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. And he developed a cadre of aides who can carry on that legacy to future Democratic administrations, and keep a tradition of dovishness alive.