– James Pethokoukis is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –

The state of the dollar probably hasn’t been a first-tier political issue in the United States since, say, the presidential election of 1896. Back then, it manifested as whether or not America would stay on the gold standard or switch to a bimetallic one. (The William Jennings Bryan “cross of gold” speech and all that.)

The aftershocks of the global financial crisis may now be propelling the dollar back to the political forefront. The greenback’s continuing slide makes it a handy metric that neatly encapsulates America’s current economic troubles and possible long-term decline. House Republicans for instance, have been using the weaker dollar as a weapon in their attacks on the Bernanke-led Federal Reserve.

For more evidence of the dollar’s return to political salience, look no further than the Facebook page of Sarah Palin. The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee — and possible 2012 presidential candidate — has shown a knack for identifying hot-button political issues, such as the purported “death panels” she claims to have found in Democratic healthcare reform plans. In a recent Facebook posting, Palin expressed deep concern over the dollar’s “continued viability as an international reserve currency” in light of huge U.S. budget deficits.

She might be onto something here, politically and economically. A recent Rasmussen poll, for instance, found that 88 percent of Americans say the dollar should remain the dominant global currency. Now, the average voter may not fully understand the subtleties of international finance nor appreciate exactly how a dominant dollar has benefited the U.S. economy. But they sure think a weaker dollar is a sign of a weaker America.

And that’s the political problem for the Obama administration. Its benign neglect of the dollar is another example of an economic policy — along with TARP and the $787 billion stimulus — that the White House thinks is helping the economy, but many Americans find wrongheaded.

In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman makes the usual case for a weaker dollar: It helps U.S. exporters and is a necessary part of a global economic rebalancing. And there is some truth in that, particularly the idea that Rising Asia will result in a less-dominant dollar.

But Krugman too easily dismisses the idea that the dollar’s decline could tumble out of control. Former Clinton economic officials such as Robert Rubin and Roger Altman have been making the case that investor concern about budget deficits could lead them to abandon the dollar. As Altman argued in a Financial Times op-ed piece today: “The dismal deficit outlook poses a huge longer-term threat.

Indeed, it is just a matter of time before global financial markets reject this fiscal trajectory. That could lead to a punishing dollar crisis.”

Now many Democrats and liberals, like Krugman, don’t want to hear such talk, fearing a rerun of the Clinton era when the progressive policy agenda was sacrificed on the altar of budgetary rectitude.

But that is a tremendous political and economic gamble, one that may result in taunting Republican cries of “Who lost the dollar?”

John Taylor has maintained that it was the government's reaction to Lehman that freaked out financial markets. Now Luigi Zingales and John Cochrane make a similar pitch in the WSJ:

On Sept. 22, bank credit-default swap (CDS) spreads were at the same level as on Sept. 12. (CDS spreads are the cost of buying insurance against default.) On Sept. 19, the S&P 500 closed above its Sept. 12 level. The Libor-OIS spread—which captures the perceived riskiness of short-term interbank lending—rose only 18 points the day of Lehman's collapse, while it shot up more than 60 points from Sept. 23 to Sept. 25, after the TARP testimony. (Libor—the London Interbank Offer Rate—is the rate at which banks can borrow unsecured for three months.)

Why? In effect, these speeches amounted to "The financial system is about to collapse. We can't tell you why. We need $700 billion. We can't tell you what we're going to do with it." That's a pretty good way to start a financial crisis.

The man who will almost certainly become Japan's next prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, is promising to cut the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

That is a far more ambitious target that can be found in the legislation currently making its way through Congress. The cap-and-trade bill passed by the House of Representatives would trim U.S. emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels. That translates to around a 6 percent cut from 1990 levels.

But even that lesser reduction seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. Climate change legislation faces a tough road in the Senate, and it may get pushed back to 2010 or beyond.

Cap and trade is, like healthcare reform, in trouble, and for many of the same reasons:

- There doesn't seem to be an acute crisis. Polls show that the vast majority of Americans are satisfied with their healthcare. Reasons for complacency can also be found in recent developments in climate change. A new NASA study notes global temperature increases have stalled out this decade, likely because of decreasing solar irradiance.

Obviously some dire event, such as a terrible swine flu season or a brutal spike in temperatures, could refocus public attention and concern. But for now there doesn't seem to be an emergency to motivate either voters or lawmakers.

- Most people won't see an immediate benefit. Proposed changes in the U.S. healthcare system wouldn't immediately change the current insurance coverage of most Americans, despite new government spending and higher taxes. Likewise, cutting carbon emissions will likely incur big costs today with any tangible benefits coming later this century. During a recession, neither provides the sort of cost-benefit analysis that strapped Americans are likely to find compelling.

- Both plans seem off point. If you asked Americans what was the biggest problem facing America, polls show, the most common answer would probably be unemployment rather than healthcare or the environment. And that is one problem, at least as gauged by the unemployment rate, seemingly getting worse rather than better.

To quote the man who jumped from a burning airplane with no parachute, "First things first!" Americans seem to agree.

Given a possible weak economic recovery and worker anxiety about jobs, neither a strong cap-and-trade climate change bill, nor a carbon tax bill, may happen anytime soon.

Instead, a better option might be more government-funded research into technological fixes. The Bjorn Lomborg-led Copenhagen Consensus recently released a list of proposals -- such as marine cloud whitening and carbon storage -- that could give more bang for the buck than new regulation and taxes.

If politics is the art of the possible, new green technology may be all that environmentalists can realistically expect from America.

Mickey Kaus gives his theory:

It’s easy to forget that, even if Obama’s health care effort is bogging down, the effort itself still serves his presidency as a crucial time-waster, tying up Congress and giving him a reason to postpone (or the public a reason to ignore) those other divisive, presidency-killers. Obama needs some excuse for putting off unpopular Democratic demands; health care’s a good one. If he keeps failing to pass health care until spring, that might not be such a bad outcome. In fact, even quick passage was maybe never in his interest. There are things more unpopular than struggling. ... Cap and trade, immigration legalization, “card check”—these are not what you’d call confidence building appetizers leading up to the main course of Obama’s presidency.

Me: None of it works when Americans have less and less confidence in Obama. And that number will continue to work against him as long as unemployment stays high.

Here is a devastating critique of the idea of healthcare co-ops in place of a true public option (via Tim Foley at Change.org):

We’re guessing at the details, since they haven’t been divulged. How it would work? Does the government give seed money in the form of grants to set these up? Does it give loans? Who, pray tell, does it give this seed money to? How long would it take to get one of these co-ops up and running? How long would it take them to get a network of doctors? Since the co-op would start with no customers and presumably no bargaining power, how long would it take for insurance companies to be quaking in their boots?

That said, we do know a lot about them:

• We know that we used to have health care co-ops in this country. What happened to most of them? As Professor Timothy Stoltzfus Jost explains, “The Farm Security Administration withdrew support in 1947, and they collapsed. They had a hard time getting going anyway.”
• We know the ones that have been relatively successful have had their own network of providers, like Kaiser or the VA. However, the best of them took decades to develop – up to 60 years.
• The GAO looked at health insurance co-ops in 2000. These weren’t the same idea – they would allow small businesses to pool their employees in a co-op to shop for insurance. The GAO’s conclusion? They don’t work very well and did nothing to lower costs.
• The fact that a health co-op is a non-profit won’t in and of itself yield competition. As I pointed out earlier, “Conrad’s home state of North Dakota has 475,000 people enrolled in the not-for-profit North Dakota Blue Cross Blue Shield. That’s not just competition – it’s a monopoly, 60% of the market. Guess what? It hasn’t helped. Premiums jumped 74% in the past seven years.”
• Most co-ops won’t be as successful as already-existing Blue Cross plans, which means they won’t have market clout to lower costs or change the game for private insurance. Which is, you know, the whole point.
• Conrad introduced the co-op in June to solve a political problem – find common ground to allow the Senate Finance Committee to release their bill. So far, the Finance Committee remains at impasse, we’ve seen no bill, and every other committee has been done for weeks now. Great job.
• By the way, Republicans aren’t biting. They say the co-op is a public option in sheep’s clothing. So they’re against it.
• And, of course, progressives are furious at even the hint that there won’t be a public option, so they’re against it, too.

I guess Conrad succeeded in uniting the left and the right. Unfortunately, they seem to be united against his idea – the same idea whose sole existence is not to make American health care better but to win votes.

President Barack Obama has told Americans to be skeptical of reports of an end to the recession, saying the downturn has "many more months" to run. Given the recent retail sales data, Americans seem to be listening to their economist-in-chief.

Obama may well be right in his dour forecast. Whatever the next quarter or two of GDP numbers say, continuing high unemployment and depleted personal wealth should keep the vibe more recessionary than expansionary. It's tough to be cheerleader-in-chief, after all, when people's pocketbooks are telling them a starkly different story.

But another issue is exacerbating Americans' sour attitudes and raising doubts about the president's competence: healthcare reform. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll shows identical pluralities of 49 percent disapproving of both Obama's handling of the overall economy and his handling of healthcare policy.

Healthcare reform poses three problems for Obama. First, it seems to cost way too much in an era of trillion-dollar budget deficits. Americans are now as obsessed with budget deficits as they were in 1992, when fiscal concerns helped make Ross Perot a presidential contender. Second, many Americans are skittish about increased government involvement in the sector. Third, an inability to push healthcare reform through a Democrat-dominated Congress makes both the president and his Congressional allies appear ineffectual (as does the dithering over whether a public option needs to be part of any reform plan).

Now, political historians will note that a healthcare reform fiasco helped sink Democrats in the 1994 midterm elections -- despite a fairly strong economy -- and forced President Bill Clinton to shift to the right and work with congressional Republicans. Together, Clinton and the Republicans balanced budgets, cut taxes and reformed welfare.

But why wait for a political disaster to change course? If Obama wants to deliver meaningful change to the nation's healthcare system, why not a grand compromise with Republicans that would also bring along centrist Democrats.

Call it the Purple Plan, one that brings red and blue together. Make health insurance mandatory and subsidize those who can't afford it. (That's the blue part.) But at the same time dismantle employer-based health plans, which prevent consumers from understanding the true costs of their healthcare decisions. In any case, employer plans are just an accident of history. (That's the red part.)

The simplest way of dismantling them, according to an analysis by McKinsey, would be to make the money spent on health insurance by employers available as cash, tax free, to employees. "Insurers would then compete for customers with policies that offer better value for the money," according to McKinsey. "The combination of invigorated supply and demand is the only healthcare reform plan that will avert the economic disaster that otherwise awaits us."

A Purple Plan for the centrist - or purple -- president many Americans thought they were voting for. It would bolster the president's popularity, lift American spirits and help restore the economy.

What might stand in the way of a robust economic turnaround. Gary Becker outlines the following factors:

The federal government is creating many programs, such as reducing student loan repayments and mortgage payments for persons with low incomes, which discourage the unemployed from finding jobs, and encourage the employed to become unemployed. The proposed caps of various kinds on executive pay, especially in the financial sector, the large government debt being created due to huge fiscal deficits that will put upward pressure on interest rates, the European style reorientation of anti-trust policies toward protecting competitors rather than consumers, the enormous excess reserves that have a considerable inflation potential, the federal government's likely incompetent management of two of the three American auto companies and a major insurance company, and the planned creation of a consumer czar that will interfere with the goods and services offered consumers are examples of policies that are likely to discourage business investment and risk taking.

Me: It is not about aggregate demand, gang, it's about confidence.

C’mon, how about some Walter Mondalesque candor from the Obama White House on taxes? Yes, yes, it was 25 years ago this summer that the Democratic presidential candidate self-immolated on the issue at his party’s convention in San Francisco. But surely Americans have become more urbane and sophisticated since then as to what makes for sound economic policy, oui?

[Find out five ways to boost the economy and create jobs]

Nope. If you had any doubt that higher taxes are still poisonous policy in center-right America, all you had to do was listen to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday. He briskly and precisely walked back the White House from the ambiguous statements made by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers on the Sunday chat shows. “I am reiterating the president's clear commitment in the clearest terms possible that he's not raising taxes on those who make less than $250,000 a year," Gibbs said.

But what’s so clear, Mr. Gibbs? “Commitment” in this context is a schemer’s word, the much-weaker-yet-more-conniving sibling of “guarantee.” Did Broadway Joe express a mushy “clear commitment” to winning the 1969 Super Bowl? Clearly not. In any event, feel free to ignore Gibbs or any other White Housespinmeister who gives the impression that President Obama raising middle-class taxes would be the equivalent of playing himself in a Hollywood biopic -- so unlikely as to be fanciful. It’s not and here’s why it will happen eventually:

1) Obama knows the budget math doesn't work. Put aside today’s budget mess. It’s gospel among center-left wonks (the kind of folks who give Obama economic advice) that structural government spending as a percentage of GDP is headed sharply higher over the long term because of entitlements -- and there’s little that can be done about it. The ratio has been around 20 percent or so the past few decades, and number crunchers forecast a sharp rise to 25 percent (best case scenario) to 30 percent (worst case) of GDP over the next few decades. Tax revenues typically hover around 18 percent of GDP. That gap -- representing $500 billion to $1 trillion a year -- will need to be closed or else cause economic chaos. The possible answers: a) less spending, b) higher tax revenues from higher growth, or c) higher tax revenues from higher rates on the non-wealthy. Oh, and the wonks are convinced “a” is a political impossibility and “b” an economic one. They're wrong, but that's what they think.

[See if Obama's big economic gamble is paying off]

2) Obama seems to prefer tax hikes to spending cuts. Reduced future healthcare spending needs to be a huge part of the budget solution, and ObamaCare doesn't make the grade at this point. Right now the various Obamacrat plans actually make things worse by failing to "bend the curve." What’s more, Obama has proposed nothing as president to make Social Security solvent. And during the campaign, his preferred fix was higher payroll taxes rather than commonsense measures like extending the retirement age or changing how benefits are calculated. Of course, Obama has also proposed raising income, investment, corporate and energy taxes. Cut spending or raise taxes – for Obama it’s an easy pick, unfortunately.

3) Obama has already tried raising taxes. Let’s, for the sake of argument, ignore the increased federal cigarette tax that would certainly seem to be a violation of Obama’s tax pledge. Call it a misdemeanor offense. But what about his cap-and-trade proposal, a de facto energy tax on everyone? Before the plan was modified in the House, the White House expected the plan to bring in some $80 billion a year from 2012 to 2019 by auctioning off carbon emission permits (probably to pay for healthcare reform). And making energy more costly is as about as broad-based a tax as you can get.

[Find out how healthcare taxes would affect you]

4) Obama’s advisers are for higher taxes. Let’s review, for example, what White House economic adviser and guru Larry Summers said on Sunday about tax hikes: “There is a lot that can happen over time. It is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what." Indeed, Summers won’t rule it out because he thinks all the Bush tax cuts need to go, not just the ones for so-called rich folks. Here is Summers from earlier this year on Meet the Press when he put no qualifiers on letting the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010: “I don't think there's any question they have to be repealed. The country can't afford them for the long run. … They can't be, they can't be part of the long-run budget picture.” Not for anyone, it seems.

5) Obama doesn’t seem to think high taxes are harmful. Think about this: Not only was the top income tax rate a stratospheric 70 percent when President Reagan took office in1981, the tax code was not indexed to inflation. A lethal combo for economic growth. But here's what Obama wrote about the Reagan tax cuts in The Audacity of Hope: "The high marginal tax rates that existed when Reagan took office may not have curbed incentives to work or invest, but they did distort investment decisions -- and did lead to the wasteful industry of setting up tax shelters.” That's it! Heavens, if Obama doesn’t think the pre-Reagan tax code wasn’t a disincentive to working, saving and investing, is there any tax system that he would find anti-growth?

Bottom line: The belief in the need for higher, European-style taxes (like a VAT) fills the policy cloud that surrounds Obama. It's hard to overstate this. It's right up there with global warming. Obama knows he faces a looming fiscal crisis and higher taxes will be his weapon of choice. To paraphrase Mondale, "Obama will raise middle-class taxes. He won't tell you (yet). I just did.

– James Pethokoukis is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own —

Time for a political reality check. Government-run public health insurance that competes with private plans — a Democratic dream since President Truman suggested it in 1945 — may not be dead for now on Capitol Hill, but its vital signs are awfully faint.

Of course, many proponents are hoping to use the congressional August recess to rally the grassroots and the netroots for one final push come September. And maybe that will work.

But it’s more likely that Democratic leaders in Washington will use the break to tell the outside-the-Beltway crowd the cold truth: If they want something that can be legitimately called “healthcare reform” to pass in 2009, they need to quit wasting time, energy and money on the fading dream of a public plan and instead work to get other key elements passed.

And what might those elements be?

Analyst Daniel Clifton of Strategas Research makes an educated guess. He thinks President Obama may get the chance to sign an $800 billion (over 10 years) bill that would contain features such an individual mandate to buy health insurance, subsidies up to 300 percent of the poverty limit to purchase a regulated plan through a health insurance “exchange”, and an expansion of Medicaid.
Obama might even get his commission that would try to determine what Medicare pays doctors and hospitals — now that the Congressional Budget Office has determined it would pretty much be powerless.

As one lobbyist put it: “I would see this as mostly a symbolic victory (for Republicans), as the Dems can get most of what they want without calling it a public option. Frankly. it’s pretty close to the Massachusetts model.”

Ah yes, the Massachusetts model. The state passed sweeping reform in 2006 under Governor Mitt Romney. What would a similar approach mean for America?

Well, there would be a lot fewer uninsured people. Massachusetts has halved the number of people without health insurance, with just 2.6 percent not currently covered.

But the reform has been far less successful bringing down costs. For starters, original cost estimates for Commonwealth Care projected the program would cost $400 million in 2008 and $725 million in 2009. The actual numbers were $628 million in 2008 and $869 billion for this year.

Moreover, health insurance premium costs continue to rise at a rapid clip of 9.4 percent a year, compared with 7.7 percent for the United States on average. As the Urban Institute found: “Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate. Furthermore, health insurance premiums are growing even faster than health care costs in the state.”

So America might find itself in 2012 with lots more people covered, but in an ever more expensive system. And President Obama might find himself doing what Romney’s Democratic successor, Governor Deval Patrick, is doing: cutting back the subsidies that allow poorer residents to buy insurance.
The state is also considering moving away from from fee-for-service medicine, where doctors are incentivized to perform lots of pricey procedures rather than focusing on results.

But Obama and Democrats might also make this argument: We expanded coverage and now it’s time to finish the job by getting costs under control. And the only way of doing that is … a public insurance option!

Indeed, the Urban Institute makes the same argument that Team Obama surely would: that the presence of a national plan would force insurers to compete with a plan with strong bargaining power and, as an arm of government, a powerful financial interest in containing costs.

What’s happening in Washington isn’t the end of healthcare reform, it’s  merely the end of the beginning.

If Ben Bernanke were running TV ads, taking polls and holding town hall-style meetings, it wouldn't be any clearer that he's conducting an explicit reelection campaign for another four-year term as Federal Reserve chairman come next January. Oh, wait a second, he just did hold an unprecedented town hall meeting. And it was one worthy of a presidential candidate charming primary voters in Iowa.

At the Kansas City Fed last night, Bernanke answered a couple dozen questions from 190 area residents for a three-part public television broadcast. Like a veteran politico, he tossed out the occasional platitude ("The best way to have a strong dollar is to have a strong economy"), railed against Washington ("I don't think the American people want Congress running monetary policy"), gave a riveting and heroic personal narrative ("I was not going to be the Federal Reserve Chairman who presided over the second Great Depression"), and got downright folksy when talking about too-big-too-fail ("When the elephant falls down, all the grass gets crushed as well").

Message to America: Ben Bernanke, a pharmacist's son from Dillon, South Carolina, feels your pain. Now it's not as if previous Fed chairmen haven't campaigned for another four-year hitch. But the usual modus operandi is to curry favor with the Electorate of One -- the president -- who will be doing the renominating. And the precise mechanism has been a growth-friendly monetary policy.

Of course, the Fed has already been, to use Bernanke's town hall phrase, "putting the pedal to the metal" to bolster the fragile economy and financial system. And that's sure been to Wall Street's liking. A Reuters poll last month found that economists rated Bernanke at eight out of 10 for his handling of the financial crisis.

But Bernanke's smart to try and also get Main Street on his side. Obama, for instance, might prefer a more dovish Fed chair, such as San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen, who'll worry more about unemployment than inflation as the 2010 and 2012 elections near. Bernanke's pushback against Obama's proposals for a consumer financial protection agency is also another sign of his independence.

Plus, the president could desire to make more diversity history by nominating the first woman Fed chair -- while leaving it to aides to rip Bernanke in background briefs to reporters. ("He was part of the Fed team that left rates too low for too long and failed to regulate Wall Street." "Remember, he called the mortgage crisis a $100 billion problem." "Bernanke was way too slow to ease in 2007.") What's more, Bernanke has to worry about a Congress where populists in both parties have been critical of his role in providing bailouts to Wall Street banks and AIG, as well as Bank of America's takeover of Merrill Lynch.

So if Bernanke wants to keep his job, the PR campaign should continue. More TV interviews like the one he did on 60 Minutes in March. Maybe a televised town hall meeting in each Fed district. How about a Chairman's Blog? And if we start heading into November and Obama still hasn't renominated him? Two words: Oprah Winfrey.