Word: consensus
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...fact, Dodd said Thursday that he's still optimistic about a consensus bill. He hinted that when he unveils his draft on Monday, it will reflect the compromises he's already made with Corker. But common sense, as well as leaks from their talks, suggest that those compromises - stripping the consumer agency of enforcement power, exempting payday lenders from new regulations, blocking any state regulations that are stricter than federal ones - would remove teeth from the bill. And perversely, that would make consensus - which is pretty unlikely anyway - just about impossible...
...only hope for consensus is a bill that takes an unmistakably tough line on Wall Street, which could end up striking a political chord and persuading recalcitrant Republicans and unenthusiastic Democrats that they have to support it if they don't want to look like Wall Street apologists. Again, this is not a likely scenario; the health care experience suggests that even preposterous attacks on complex legislation can provide cover for opponents, and Republicans are already starting to portray tougher financial rules as a new Wall Street bailout. But this is at least a plausible scenario; a Harris poll released...
...face long odds. The money and power of the financial industry would be arrayed against it. There would be so many arcane moving parts - How much authority for the Fed? Should end users be exempt from derivatives regulation? Should something be done about naked credit default swaps? - that reaching consensus by August would be challenging even if everyone wanted it. And it's not clear that anyone is desperate to have it; there probably won't be another meltdown this year, and Democratic leaders may be content to let Republicans block reform so they can blast them as Wall Street...
...stakes in Iraq's political process - domestically and regionally - are high, and reflect the absence of a consensus on both fronts. Despite their distaste for Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Arab neighbors had long looked to his regime to serve as a regional bulwark against Iranian influence in the Middle East, and supported his eight-year war against the Islamic Republic in the 1980s. The U.S. invasion removed that bulwark, and Iran has profited greatly from Iraqi democracy. The governments elected since Saddam's overthrow have been uniformly friendly toward Tehran and dominated by Shi'ite parties. While none of these...
...voters all over the country simply choose a party or bloc, whose list of candidates is then allocated the number of seats in parliament proportional to its share of the total vote. The Prime Minister is chosen by a parliamentary majority. While the system may be designed to promote consensus, in the absence of consensus it can be a recipe for weak and unstable government. (Ironically, Israeli leaders can sympathize: their own proportional-representation system gives massively disproportionate influence to smaller parties, who claim control over ministries and their power of patronage as the price for their parliamentary votes...