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March 11, 2007 - March 17, 2007 Archives
On The Ground
Jerome Armstrong writes that Hillary Clinton has a clear lead in New Hampshire organizing, which I think is to be expected, but that even given expectations it's impressively clear. Edwards also has some substantial organization there, but Barack Obama has fallen behind. I was given a similar account at a level that was, frankly, way beyond my ability to comprehend, of the state of play in South Carolina.
I don't have a really strong opinion as to whether or not 2008 is likely to follow the 2004 pattern, but it is worth recalling that the way '04 worked essentially nothing mattered beyond the outcomes in Iowa and New Hampshire and that when it comes to winning those primaries ground organizing is more-or-less king.
Liberal Unpopularity
Kevin Drum remarks a bit on the perennial unpopularity of self-identifying as a "liberal" no matter how popular liberal policies may or may not be. I now can't find the link, but I think one of the most telling pieces of data I ever saw on this was something that broke ideological self-identification down by race. Self-identifying as a liberal turned out to be less popular among African-Americans than it is among white Americans. This even though everyone knows that African-Americans are much more likely to vote for Democratic candidates and have more left-wing views than white people on most issues.
The Pardon Issue
Mark Kleiman points out that Democrats can pass a bill stipulating that "no funds" be used to issue a pardon in violation of this guideline from the Pardon Attorney's office:
No petition for pardon should be filed until the expiration of a waiting period of at least five years after the date of the release of the petitioner from confinement or, in case no prison sentence was imposed, until the expiration of a period of at least five years after the date of the conviction of the petitioner. Generally, no petition should be submitted by a person who is on probation, parole, or supervised release.
That would, of course, have the effect of preventing Bush from pardoning Scooter Libby. Republicans could, clearly, filibuster any such bill. But from where I sit, that's a political fight Democrats would like to have on their hands. First Pete Domenici politicizes corruption investigations, then he mounts filibusters to prevent justice being done to felons inside the Bush administration, etc.
A Lazy Post
Tony Smith has a pretty great article in today's Post. I'm just going to quote a bunch of it:
Iraq had flustered the congressional Democrats because Democrats don't have an agreed position on what America's role in the world should be. They want to change the Bush administration's policy in Iraq without discussing the underlying ideas that produced it. And although they now cast themselves as alternatives to President Bush, the fact is that prevailing Democratic doctrine is not that different from the Bush-Cheney doctrine.
Many Democrats, including senators who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, embraced the idea of muscular foreign policy based on American global supremacy and the presumed right to intervene to promote democracy or to defend key U.S. interests long before 9/11, and they have not changed course since. Even those who have shifted against the war have avoided doctrinal questions.
But without a coherent alternative to the Bush doctrine, with its confidence in America's military preeminence and the global appeal of "free market democracy," the Democrats' midterm victory may not be repeated in November 2008. Or, if the Democrats do win in 2008, they could remain staked to a vision of a Pax Americana strikingly reminiscent of Bush's. . . .
The early positions of the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates illustrate their party's problem. The front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has not moved from her traditional support of the DLC's basic position -- she criticizes the conduct of the war, but not the idea of the war. Former senator John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama are more outspoken; both call the war a serious mistake, but neither has articulated a vision for a more modest U.S. role in the world generally.
It isn't easy to offer a true alternative. The challenges to world order are many, as are the influential special interests in this country that want an aggressive policy: globalizing corporations, the military-industrial complex, the pro-Israel lobbies, those who covet Middle Eastern oil. The nationalist conviction that we are indeed "the indispensable nation" will continue to tempt our leaders to overplay their hand. The danger lies in believing that our power is beyond challenge, that the righteousness of our goals is beyond question and that the real task is not to reformulate our role in the world so much as to assert more effectively a global American peace.
As I say, I agree.
Unhooked Again
I think my colleague Ann Friedman has the last word on Laura Session Stepp's jeremiad against the hook-up.
That's the Ticket!
I have to say, I really think more pro-lifers should do blog posts spelling out the close connections between opposition to abortion rights and opposition to contraceptives generally. While I obviously disagree with the "double no" conclusion of Katherine Jean-Lopez and the Pope, I agree with them about the connectedness of these issues and I'm fairly confident that the more people who see the linkage, the less viable pro-life politics will become.
God Still Against Global Warming
The National Assocation of Evangelicals has rebuffed an effort by James Dobson and other old guard preachers-slash-GOP-operatives to get the NAE to drop a "creation care" plank expressing the need to combat global warming and return to an exclusive focus on banning abortions and cutting taxes.
Much more from Ed Kilgore here.
An Army of Kagans
While The Weekly Standard has to make do with using Frederick Kagan's wife to write articles proclaiming the Kagan surge plan a success, The Washington Post believes in integrity and trots out brother Robert Kagan to do it instead. Maybe someday we can get Donald Kagan's take on all this. If only the whole world were made up of members of the Kagan family, then maybe George W. Bush would be a really popular president.
At any rate, you're not supposed to mention Robert Kagan in polite professional punditry circles without observing that he's much smarter and a much more honest writer than your average neocon. This pearl of wisdom even has the virtue of being true. Sadly, as Glenn Greenwald exhaustively demonstrates, this really isn't saying very much. For a neocon, he has a great analytic track record on Iraq, which means his track record is horrible rather than, say, horrifyingly horrible. That he gets to slander his employers at the Post in the first graf of his terrible column merely demonstrates how nice it must be to be a conservative . . . well-worked refs are the best refs to have.
Who's Backsliding?
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt helpfully publishes under his own byline to assure us that dissent from the anti-Putin line that dominates the DC conventional wisdom reflects hatred of America. In fact, he's missing the point. "Who lost Russia? As the world's biggest country backslides ever more quickly into authoritarianism," Hiatt writes, "the answer you hear increasingly is: the United States."
Continue reading "Who's Backsliding?" »
Kids These Days
Ann Hulbert profiles the views of persons given the unfortunate label "Generation Next," those of us between the ages of 18-25. She says that "what makes Gen Nexters sui generis — and perhaps more mysterious than their elders appreciate — are their views on two divisive social topics, abortion and gay marriage." In particular, "Young Americans, it turns out, are unexpectedly conservative on abortion but notably liberal on gay marriage."
Given that 18- to 25-year-olds are the least Republican generation (35 percent) and less religious than their elders (with 20 percent of them professing no religion or atheism or agnosticism), it is curious that on abortion they are slightly to the right of the general public. Roughly a third of Gen Nexters endorse making abortion generally available, half support limits and 15 percent favor an outright ban. By contrast, 35 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds support readily available abortions. On gay marriage, there was not much of a generation gap in the 1980s, but now Gen Nexters stand out as more favorably disposed than the rest of the country. Almost half of them approve, compared with under a third of those over 25.
There seems to be more bark than bite on that abortion result. "Roughly a third" and "35 percent" are very similar numbers when you're talking about statistical surveys with margins of error. Hulbert then starts offering a lot of speculative thinking about what accounts for "Generation Next" opinion on this and that. I note that, like many authors, Hulbert seems to both assume that the Generation Next cohort is demographically identical to the Baby Boom cohort except for age. Relatedly, the background assumption of her speculation seems to be that differences in opinion are accounted for by the fact that white middle class young people have different views about things than do white middle class older people.
In fact, as you can read here (PDF) the median age of non-hispanic white Americans is 40.3, of African-Americans is 30.9, of Asian Americans is 34.5 and of Hispanics is 27.2 -- these are big differences. Thus, when you compare 18-25 year-olds to 50-64 year-olds you're comparing a youth cohort that's substantially less white than your middle-aged cohort which, all on its own, can make a big difference without anyone necessarily "disagreeing with their parents" about anything. Some parents have more children than others. This also seems to indicate that occassionally voiced fears (or hopes) that highly religious conservative parents will wind up outbreeding liberals is unwarranted.
Alternamom At Last
I'd read David Brooks' critique; I'd read Michael Agger's defense, but today I think I met my very first real-life Alternamom ("hipster mom" is the term I would have used). Sporting stylish plastic frames, all-black attire, and a stroller that appears to have been sent from the future, here she is in 14U my very own hip U Street hang-out. Insofar as this social trend seems likely to result in more babies crying while I try to get my blog on, I have to say I agree with Brooks. Thank the lord for my Etymotics 6i earphones.
UPDATE: This is the stroller. "Popular with celebrities and the uber rich" according to the friend who tipped me off to its identity. I kind of want one. Could maybe use it to carry groceries?
Growing Up
To try to clarify a point from my post on Vladimir Putin, I don't really think there's anything wrong with the American political elite being nostalgic for the international climate of the 1990s and the way it was more friendly to the unfettered exercise of American power.
Nevertheless, people -- including political elites -- ought to understand that that was an anomolous situation and that moment has passed. It happens to be the case that China and Iran are dictatorships while Venezuela and Russia are illiberal plebiscitary regimes but this has relatively little to do with America's policy disagreements with them. No conceivable set of domestic political arrangements is going to change the fact that the Russian government wants to ensure that governments in the "near abroad" will be friendly to Russian interests (think of US policy toward Central America and the Carribbean), that China wants to be a great power on a par with the USA, that Iran thinks it should be a leading regional power, or that Latin Americans resent American political and economic domination of the Western Hemisphere. Grown-up policy recognizes that countries are going to have interests and desires that can't be wished away by hoping for democracy and that the essence of foreign policy is finding ways to reconcile those interests with our own priorities rather than whining about the fact that very few countries are interested in becoming Japan-style client states unless they really have no choice in the matter.
Neoliberalism and Its Discontents
While agreeing with much of what Ezra Klein and Ben Adler have to say about the declining fortunes of neoliberal punditry, I think they're both far too harsh in their assessment.
Continue reading "Neoliberalism and Its Discontents" »
Sweet
The Wizards' loss to the Knicks was a bitter pill, but knowing the 'zards played a small role in generating ephemeral improvement, saving Isiah Thomas' job, and thus ensuring New York hoops fans years of further frustration is prize enough.
Giuliani's Judges
Rudy Giuliani's strategy for coping with his liberal record on cultural issues seems to be to agree to appoint very conservative judges to the federal bench. My guess is that the problem here is that, in light of his record (indeed, in light of his record on judicial appointments) is going to have to be much more explicit about his desire to appoint abortion-banning judges than someone with a pro-life record would. Consequently, he might wind up actually creating a bigger problem for himself with pro-choice moderates than a pro-lifer willing to be vague (see, e.g., Bush, George W.) has.
Mars, Bitches
NASA can find and track most of the nearby asteroids that could hit and damage the Earth, but there is not enough money in its budget to finish the project within a 15-year deadline mandated by Congress, according to an agency report released Friday.
Link. Program costs for doing this properly would be not-very-high in the scheme of things. Instead, we're getting a Moon base.
Dallas: Where's The Love?
Eric Neel says he respects the Mavericks but just can't fall in love with them as a great team. He blames Mark Cuban. Closer to the mark, I think, I saw Skip Bayless on ESPN this afternoon talking about "so-called superstar Dirk Nowitzki." The correct term for that sentiment is "crazy." Dirk is averaging over 25 points per game while shooting 50 percent from the field and over 90 percent from the line (42 percent from beyond the arc, thank you very much). Have I mentioned that he's seven feet tall and snags 9.5 rebounds per game? Three and a half assists isn't terrible, either. Oh, and Dallas plays with the league's third-slowest pace, depressing all of his numbers.
There is, in short, an irrational reluctance to embrace Nowitzki as a superstar. People seem almost resigned to him winning the MVP rather than celebrating his greatness. This, even though it's actually quite rare for the proverbial "best player on the best team" to also make an extremely strong case that he's having the best individual statistical season in the league. Is it because he's German? Because it seems unfair for a seven footer to have such a sweet shot? Who knows? Frankly, I feel it too.
Awesome News
A mysterious coalition of conservative Democrats and "lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel" have persuaded the party that it would be a mistake to flex some legislative muscles and make an effort to constrain the Bush administration's ability to take the country into a war with Iran. Since history has, after all, shown that when granted broad military authority Bush usually uses it wisely as a subtle negotiating tool and with brilliant results. Or something.
To state the obvious, while Israel and the United States are different countries with presumptively different interests, on really big region-wide issues one doesn't really see a ton of divergence. Insofar as letting a reckless and incompetent administration guided by a blinkered ideology have a free hand to launch a misguided war with Iran is bad for the United States it's also not going to end well for Israel.
UPDATE: Let me be clearer about the point of convergence. My analysis of the situation is that bombing Iran is not merely a poor policy option all things considered, but is likely to prove very ineffective at delaying Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon (physical damage done to the program will be undone by diplomatic damage done to the fairly successful international effort to curb Iranian acquisitions). Insofar as this is correct, we're not going to be doing Israel any favors by bombing. Obviously, the myth of the Osirak raid has even more power in Israeli politics than in US politics, so Israeli politicians don't necessarily see it that way, but they're still mistaken.
Cheney Attacks
Pelosi fires back:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Cheney's remarks prove that "the administration's answer to continuing violence in Iraq is more troops and more treasure from the American people."
I still don't feel that Democrats have located the appropriately disrespectful tone for responding to Cheney's foreign policy pearls of wisdom. If David Duke were to slam Pelosi as insufficiently committed to white supremacy, she wouldn't start quibbling with him. Getting smeared by Cheney isn't the same as that (but let him complain then come back with, sorry, it's easy to get confused when you're talking about one of congress' foremost supporters of the apartheid regime in South Africa), but it's still a situation where his attacks should be worn as a badge of honor. Substantively, the man is a horror. Conveniently, he's also wildly unpopular. I mean, he's got to be one of the least-popular major American political figures ever. It seems to me that "When Dick Cheney criticizes the House Democrats, that's how we know we must be doing something right" is along the right lines. I mean, I think the period during which Cheney and his "gravitas" were well-respected around the nation is long behind us at this point.
Varieties of Neoliberalism
Some people probably find this topic obscure and pointless, but even though "neoliberalism" sort of names nothing and sort of names everything, I think it's actually a pretty important topic. And Mickey Kaus makes an important point about it:
Continue reading "Varieties of Neoliberalism" »
The Dead-Enders
Brendan Nyhan brings some information on the Dick Cheney issue:
While it's true that Cheney is wildly unpopular, he's actually not any more unpopular than President Bush at this point. For instance, the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll (March 9-11) has job approval for Bush at 37 percent and Cheney at 34 percent. In part, that's a reflection of the fact that President Bush's approval is heavily concentrated among conservatives, who at this point may like Cheney more than Bush. More importantly, Bush is the most unpopular president at this point in his term since Harry Truman in 1951. It would be hard for Cheney to do much worse.
I didn't know that. Cheney's historically been less popular than Bush, so I assumed that as Bush sunk into the thirties Cheney would dip down into the twenties. Apparently, though, about a third of the country is composed of GOP dead-enders who won't turn on either man come what may. The larger point stands. Cheney -- and, it seems, Bush -- have dropped down to pathetic levels of unpopularity and there's no reason for political timidity whatsoever in responding to attacks they level.
UPDATE: Haggai points out that a New York Times poll has Cheney at a ridiculous 18 percent.
UPDATE II: In update to his post, Nyhan notes that there's a question-wording difference. The Times asked about favorability whereas the other poll was about job approval. The Bush-Cheney gap appears to exist in favorability questions, but increasingly not in job approval ones.
Political Reform
I keep forgetting that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has for some reason been allowed to re-invent himself as a fake expert on the national security issues of the contemporary Middle East. Elsewhere in that issue of Democracy, however, you'll find Mark Schmitt's smart take on the failures of the 1990s-vintage campaign finance reform movement and charting a course for more fruitful action in the future.
I think what I agree with most is the section in page three which points out the limits of "corruption and the appearance of corruption" as the rationale for reform. Those are important values, of course. But one can't talk seriously about election rules without also considering values like trying to preserve some measure of political equality. And perhaps most important of all, trying to ensure that competitive elections even happen in the first place. The best cure for corruption (or, indeed, the appearance of corruption) is almost certainly for elected officials to regularly face vigorous challengers. That means the emphasis has to less be on "getting the money out of politics" than on getting at least some political money into the hands of ordinary people.
The Madness
One astounding fact I notice each year as "March Madness" descends upon is that people who cover the NBA appear to believe that NBA GMs will be non-trivially swayed in their drafting decisions by team success enjoyed by amateur athletes playing in a single-elimination tournament. I think that's crazy. Precisely what's fun about the NCAA Tournament -- what puts the madness into March -- is that the tournament format makes the ultimate outcomes fairly random. It might make some sense to super-weight a player's individual performance during the Tournament since, presumably, you're getting a look at how the guy responds to pressure and to a somewhat more consistent level of competition than you see in the regular season. But Chad Ford says that "if Texas A&M struggles early, [Acie Law] could slide behind all of the freshmen point guards with NBA potential" and that "if [Mike Conley] can help lead Ohio State to a NCAA title as a freshman, a number of GMs will come calling in the mid-to- late first round."
It's a six-round single-elimination tournament! A team that wins 89 percent of the time wins six in a row less than half the time. This just can't be your decisive factor in assessing whether Law is better than Conley. TNR has a March Madness blog, incidentally, for tournament coverage. I'll be rooting for Texas out of deference to the roommate and because I saw Kevin Durant play live in high school so I feel like I discovered him even though every scout in the country already knew all about him.
The Summer of War
As I believe I've acknowledged, I wrote some pretty dumb things back in the day. Nevertheless, I never came even remotely close to writing anything as inane as this: "Even after September 11th, Marvel Comics and other publishers are disseminating comic books that actively promote a destructive cynicism and mistrust of the United States Government." That was April 2003. Shockingly, though, Cliff May is actually bragging about his small role in bringing that pearl of wisdom to light. He must really not like the Ultimates 2 story arc.
Attorneys
Everyone here reads TPM, right? I don't actually need to say anything about the Washington Post blockbuster pointing out that several administration officials have been lying to congress about the sacked US Attorneys.
Climate Scientist
I'm not qualified to fully assess the scientific accuracy of An Inconvenient Truth, but unlike some New York Times reporters I know the difference between science and social science. To wit, the Gray Lady:
“He’s a very polarizing figure in the science community,” said Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist who is a colleague of Dr. Vranes at the University of Colorado center. “Very quickly, these discussions turn from the issue to the person, and become a referendum on Mr. Gore.”
Roger Pielke, Jr. isn't an environmental scientist. Read his about me page (emphasis added):
I am currently a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. At CU, I am also a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Before coming to CU in 2001, I spent 8 years as a staff scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in their Environmental and Societal Impacts Group (now called ISSE). I have a B.A. in mathematics, an M.A. in public policy and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado.
Time for another blogger ethics panel?
Credibility
New Dem Dispatch on Iran from the DLC calls for "Effective diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force." Obviously, I think it's the case that diplomacy can be rendered more effective through credible threats of force. Unfortunately, an awful lot of people -- especially hawkish Democrats seeking out a sensible middle ground here -- seem slightly confused about the concept of credibility. The credibility of a threat is overwhelmingly an objective property of the threat, and not something that's seriously altered by, say, noting that "all options are on the table." Thus, important aspects of the wisdom of threatening to use force against Iran actually wind up reducing to the wisdom of actually using force against Iran. Or, in the immortal words of Outkast, "don't pull that thang out, unless you plan to bang."
The reason people in the sensible center don't think we should just go bomb Iran next week is that it's quite unclear how much this would really set the nuclear program back, while reasonably clear that it would improve Iran's diplomatic situation and strengthen the hand of the hardliners at home. If I thought (as, say, Reuel Marc Gerecht does) that was wrong; if I thought airstrikes would significantly set back the Iranian program, weaken the Iranian regime, and leave our diplomatic efforts against Iran intact, then it would seem to me that the case for actually bombing after a period of curt diplomacy ("verifiably disarm or we'll bomb you") would be strong. But if you don't believe that -- and I think the sensible center mostly doesn't -- then the threat isn't credible. If a bombing campaign would do more to strengthen the regime and relax its growing diplomatic isolation than it would to set back the nuclear program, then the regime would be relatively eager for us to bomb them. Insofar as they think counterproductive airstrikes are the likely alternative to negotiations, they're less -- not more -- likely to negotiate.
That's the crux of the matter. Credible threats are good. But the threats must actually be credible. If your threat is credible, you can make it clearly and plainly. But it's clear from the overall policy proposal that the DLC (rightly) doesn't regard our threats as very credible. As they say, "our security goals can best be advanced by maintaining a united front with leading powers and world bodies that share our interest in stemming nuclear proliferation and discrediting terrorism." But if the threat's not credible, you're best off not making the threat; you can't magically turn a non-credible threat into a credible one by wishing.
WTF?
Why on earth would Alberto Gonzalez literally use the phrase "mistakes were made" with reference to sacking US Attorneys unwilling to play partisan politics with the law -- is he trying to look guilty? Bitter, maybe, that he didn't get that SCOTUS seat he thought he was in for?
In other unwise statements news, I haven't gotten to this part of my review copy of Bob Shrum's memoir yet, but even the chapter near the beginning about when Shrum was on the college debate team kind of makes him seem loathesome. And this is to say nothing of the man's weird hatred of Jimmy Carter.
Best. Article. Ever.
Check it out -- an article that's largely about me and how aweosome I am.
Guerilla War in Somalia
Good post from Eric Martin. Good joke from Jim Henley: "Eric Martin discovers a curious fact: if locals bomb foreign troops when there are no American reporters around to hear it, it still makes a guerrilla war." The point being that conquering foreigners and reconstructing their political arrangements is objectively difficult, and not just something rendered hard by the liberals in the MSM.
Education Policy for the Paranoid
A lot of people look at the No Child Left Behind Act's requirement of "100 proficiency" and smell a rat; an obviously impossible goal. I would read Richard Rothstein's "'Proficiency for All': An Oxymoron" for a detailed explication of this view. Then many, including Kevin Drum, move from this to a paranoid account of the motives behind the provision. "What incentive does anyone have to label 99% of America's public schools as failures?" he asks, "That's crazy, isn't it?"
Answer: Anyone who wants the public to believe that public schools are failures. This would primarily consist of conservatives who want to break teachers unions and evangelicals who want to build political momentum for private school vouchers. The whole point of NCLB for these people is to make sure that as many public schools as possible are officially deemed failures.
I'll happily agree that this provision seems somewhat ill-advised to me. However, the "secret plot to destroy public schools" account of the whole point of NCLB has some problems. Does Kevin really expect me to believe that this is what Ted Kennedy and George Miller, the law's leading Democratic supporters in the Senate and the House, are up to? These are big-time liberals. Perhaps they're wrong -- Kennedy's certainly not above criticism -- but it's absurd to think that they're leading agents behind an enterprise whose whole point is to dismantle the public school system.
Continue reading "Education Policy for the Paranoid" »
Christians Against Torture
National Association of Evangelicals says:
The NAE board endorsed "An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in An Age of Terror." The 18-page document, which was produced by Evangelicals for Human Rights and can be viewed at www.evangelicalsforhumanrights.org, states: "From a Christian perspective, every human life is sacred. Recognition of this transcendent moral dignity is non-negotiable for us as evangelical Christians in every area of life, including our assessment of public policies. We write this declaration to affirm our support for detainee human rights and opposition to any resort to torture."
The document affirms the doctrine that "United States law and military doctrine has banned the resort to torture or cruel and degrading treatment. Tragically, documented cases of torture and inhumane and cruel behavior have occurred at various sites in the war on terror, and current law opens procedural loopholes for more to continue. We commend the Pentagon's revised Army Field Manual for clearly banning such acts, and urge that this ban extend to every sector of the United States government without exception, including our intelligence agencies."
That's via Mark Kleiman. The full statement is here in PDF. The NAE board also recently flipped off Dobson et. al. when they tried to excommunicate a newer generation of leaders who decided to stray from some elements of Republican Party orthodoxy. And good for them. The correlation in this country between observant Christianity and political support for agenda of aggressive warfare, torture, etc. has been notably dissonant in recent years. Now, perhaps, things are turning around.
The Experience Thing
John Judis makes the point that none of the major presidential candidates have any real foreign policy experience. He also makes the argument that this actually matters, that the post-war presidents with relevant experience -- Eisenhower, Nixon, H.W. Bush -- managed to avoid the sort of early blunders that he says characterized other leaders:
John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton eventually enjoyed considerable success, but they began poorly--Kennedy in the Bay of Pigs, Reagan in Lebanon, and Clinton in Somalia, Tokyo, and the Balkans. Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush were disastrous flops, and Jimmy Carter (except for Camp David) floundered.
I'm not 100 percent sure on this. Carter, it seems to me, floundered more domestically than abroad. And in foreign policy terms floundered more later than early. His big triumph at Camp David came before his flounder-like handling of the Iranian Revolution. But I think there's something to it. Inexperienced candidates tend to make reference to the fact that they'll be backstopped by veteran advisors and professionals which is, of course, true. The trouble is that what inexperienced presidents-elect normally do is decide that they want to keep their options open and parcel out the top jobs such that all the major strains of thought present within his party are represented at a high level. This, in turn, tends to lead to some of the floundering. People with conflicting visions get appointed because the president doesn't have a clear vision of his own, and then the president approaches his early big decisions as a personnel management issue (how do I keep the whole team on board) rather than figuring it out.
I think there's potentially a real problem here. A Democrat taking office in 2009 is going to face an ongoing national security crisis -- call it "the Bush administration legacy" -- from Day One. And, unfortunately, it's not going to be possible to just press a button and undo it all.
US Attorneys
Someone should probably explain to Jonah Goldberg the difference between a district attorney and a US attorney. That said, a slightly off-message point about this scandal. Now that it's happened, doesn't this seem like a good time to reconsider whether it really makes sense to organize federal prosecutions in this manner? As we're seeing here, a President of the United States who treats his US Attorneys like run-of-the-mill political appointees is doing something dangerous and disturbing. We don't want -- with good reason -- the people in those jobs to think of themselves as part of the president's team. They're supposed to behave as agents of the state and of the law rather than as agents of the political regime of the moment.
But at the same time, they . . . formally are just political appointees. Their independence rests on a combination of tradition, and then the secondary tradition that the candidates are actually chosen not by the president but by the local senator. Norms, however, can be broken, as we're seeing at the moment. Mightn't it make more sense to actually change how this system works to insulate people in those positions from day-to-day politics to a greater extent?
Does Jim Henley Control The Iraqi Police?
So this is pretty weird. Jim Henley did a post noting that Iraq doesn't provide the best circumstances for whoring or making time with the local girls, wondering who, if anyone, American troops were having sex with. He handed the assignment off to Spencer Ackerman, who's in Iraq at the moment. Coincidentally, Spencer was present for a meeting between an Iraqi police commander and a US army officer during which the Iraqi had the exact same question.
The official answer turns out to be that our troops aren't having any sex at all, but it doesn't seem especially plausible that this rule is being met with 100 percent compliance.
Obama-mania
Good on him -- pissed off an AIPAC audience by noting that Palestians are suffering a lot under occupation. Gutsy. And, obviously, true. I was trying to think of the last time someone said something similar to a similar audience, but what I came up with was . . . Paul Wolfowitz, which isn't the most flattering comparison.
UPDATE: Absurdly, meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi seems to have gotten booed for . . . observing that the Iraq War has failed. You would think pro-Israel advocates would be willing to recognize basic accurate facts about events in the region.
NCLB Paranoia Again
Kevin Drum responds to my earlier post. I think Kevin Carey provides further persuasive evidence in favor of the anti-paranoid position. In brief, there are lots of people out there who argue in favor of privatizing primary and secondary education in America. You don't see those people praising NCLB very much. Ergo, it seems very unlikely that NCLB is a secret plot to privatize the American school system.
UPDATE: Even more from Andrew Rotherham. I should say that I think one could fairly say that there seems to me to be a certian objectionable arrogance in the way important aspects of a major education reform seem to rely on wink-nod understandings among insiders, things not meaning what they seem to mean, issues being kicked down the road in odd ways, etc. To see politicians actually moving toward dismantling a public school system, though, you need to look to the Utah where they're adopting the most comprehensive voucher plan ever seen. These are, recall, the same Utah legislators who hate NCLB.
No, When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?
I had really thought Jon Chait's initial reply to Joe Lieberman's deranged complaint that "there is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism" was perfectly adequate, but Jonah Goldberg seems interested in this goofy debate perhaps we should turn the question around: Why does opposition to the anti-war movement inspire greater passion among conservatives than does opposition to Islamist extremism?
In my opinion, it's a mixed bag of motives. Hating liberals has been a core element of American conservatism since long before anyone knew or cared what Islamist extremism was. What's more, a lot of conservatives are greedy. Write a book about how Hillary Clinton is like Musolini and you might sell some copies; get paid. Of course, that doesn't really excuse it since the reason liberal-bashing books sell better than earnest tomes about counterterrorism policy is, precisely, that conservatives are more emotionally invested in liberal-bashing than in opposing Islamism. There's also the fact that your average conservative probably doesn't know any radical Islamists personally, so they kind of carry a psychological grudge against liberals that they don't share with regard to Islamist extremists.
Take That . . . Um . . .
More women than ever on Forbes' billionaires list. The Independent Women's Forum sees "irrefutable proof that women don’t need government programs to help them make it in the business world—a fact our friends at NOW and similar organizations are unwilling to admit." Ann Friedman, by contrast, actually read the list and noticed that "every woman in the top 100 has inherited her wealth, not shattered the glass ceiling to earn her millions."
Further down the list, it's true, you do find self-made female billionaires like J.K. Rowling and Oprah Winfrey. But, again, the success of celebrity entertainers actually says nothing about whether or not women face unfair disadvantages in the business world writ large.
Blogger Ethics Panel
This is really absurd. Democratic Pollster Doug Schoen goes on Warren Olney's NPR show to back Fox News and talk smack about the netroots. As Matt Stoller points out he manages not to mention during this that he's actually a paid contributor to Fox News. He's also business partners with Mark Penn, pollster to Hillary Clinton and the DLC.
It's a dirty, dirty businss out there in the consulting world. Sundry "strategists" appear on television, disclosing neither their business relationships with candidates nor their business relationships with corporate clients nor, in this case, their business relationships with conservative media outlets. And yet, any candidate who the consultants don't like will have a heck of a hard time getting DSCC or DCCC support for his campaigns. So everybody just plays along quietly.
Dallas-Phoenix
Suns pull out a double OT win thanks to a . . . brilliant defensive play by Steve Nash? Weird. But what an awesome game. There's gonna be a lot of must-see games in the Western Conference playoffs this year which, thanks to time zones, is going to mean little sleep for me.
Perpetual War
Hillary Clinton is, I think, to be congratulated for stating reasonably clearly that her vision of "bringing the troops home" from Iraq after she becomes president doesn't actually entail our troops not being in Iraq. Instead, The New York Times reports, "she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military." The troops will be brought home only in the sense that "Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence -- even if it descended into ethnic cleansing."
If Clinton really lived up to her reputation as an unusually "calculating" politician, I think she would have simply kept this under wraps until after the primaries (or maybe even after the general election) but most of the time she's pretty clear about where she stands. It's just not where I stand. I'd be interested in hearing what Edwards, Obama, and Richardson think about this. My impression is that most of what passes for the Democratic national security establishment agrees with Clinton.
2nd Amendment
Julian Sanchez says the "collective right" interpretation of the second amendment doesn't make sense. And, indeed, it doesn't really. But then again, neither does the "individual right" reading which would leave the right of individuals to buy anti-tank missiles and nuclear bombs "shall not be infringed." The clearest thing about the text, after all, is that it says nothing whatsoever about "handguns" -- the word is "arms" so whatever our right to arms is, that's a right to arms not to puny guns.
Like much of the constitution, the second amendment turns out, upon examination, to be an ambiguously worded political compromise written hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Obviously, if you were going to start over from scratch nobody would write it that way.
Cashing In
Rudy Giuliani is on the Hugo Chavez payroll. Interesting stuff.
Morals
Jason Zengerle's understandably disappointed that Barack Obama didn't offer a simple "no" to the question of whether or not he agrees with General Pace that homosexuality is immoral. I will just say that for all the pouncing on Pace this past week, it'sworth noting that I think the real liberal point here is that the joint chiefs' views of the morality or immorality of particular sexual practices are really neither here nor there as far as legal discrimination against gay and lesbian servicemembers are concerned. Presumably we have among the ranks of our generals some serious Catholics who think the use of contraceptives is immoral. I'm certain the officers' corps includes many people who think abortions are immoral. No doubt you also have conservative-minded officers of many faiths who think all premarital sex is immoral.
Obviously, though, we're not going to purge all the people who do those things out of the military. Which is what liberalism is all about -- not a quest to achieve a moral consensus on all things and then have it universally applied, but a quest for fair terms of social cooperation that don't require universal moral consensus. The military of a diverse society is bound to include disagreements about what is and is not immoral, so beliefs about the morality of particular sexual practices per se can't be the basis of our policy. The issue at hand is whether there's any real reason to believe the prohibition on openly gay and lesbian soldiers is necessary to maintain military effectiveness and all the evidence suggests that it isn't.
The 80 Percent Solution
Per continuing blog debate about No Child Left Behind, Kevin Drum observes:
What really bugs me is that politically we're forced to create (and fund) a system that applies to every school system in America even though we all know perfectly well that 80% of our school systems are basically OK and could probably be left alone. It's the other 20% -- the low-income schools located largely in urban inner cities -- that need help.
That's close to true, but the way it goes off the mark is very important. Setting your impoverished inner-city schools aside, there are two kinds of ways the other schools could be considered "basically fine." One would be that taking advantage of their more favorable financial situation and the fact that they're not actually drowning in children from bleak socioeconomic circumstances, they do a good job of educating all the students who come through their doors -- even those who do come from bleak socioeconomic circumstances. Call those, "Type A" good schools. The other kind of good school would be one that just has so few students coming from bleak socioeconomic circumstances that it's average performance level looks pretty good, even though some students are doing no better than the kids in the bad inner-city schools. Call those, "Type B" good schools.
Continue reading "The 80 Percent Solution" »
It's Good to be the Attorney General!
Murray Waas for National Journal:
Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.
Yesterday, though, Jonah Goldberg and his readers made the point that no matter what Gonzalez may have done wrong and no matter how bad he may be at his job, it's imperative that he not be fired because that would make liberals happy.
If It Ain't Broke
I have a combination of lavish praise and criticism for this Michael Hirsch article on foreign policy doctrine in The Washington Monthly. First, lavish praise. It's the first article I'm aware of to seriously argue a point that I had hoped to be the first one to argue: We don't need "new ideas" in American grand strategy. The old ideas were basically fine. Then came the combination of 9/11 and George W. Bush's decision to abandon the old ideas in favor of new and terrible ones. The confluence of the 9/11 disaster and the disaster of Bushism have convinced many people that the old ideas are discredited or inadequate, but actually everything was fine until Bush tried to abandon the tried and true path of prudent internationalism.
I think this is very right and very important. Everyone should read the article, study the argument, and take it to heart.
Hirsch then kind of grafts this doctrinal point onto a point about Barack Obama which, in turn, is parasitic on an argument about two of Obama's advisors -- Samantha Power and Tony Lake. Hirsch argument about those two might be right, but I don't think he really brings the proof. It's also always worth asking "compared to whom?" Lake and Power, as best I can tell, have a much better track record over the past 4-5 years than do most comparably establishmentish national security people.
UPDATE: Let me say more. This is not to deny that pre-Bush US foreign policy entailed, over the decades, some very serious pragmatic and moral flaws. I think it used to be the case, however, that the main elements of US strategy were basically sound, and presidents sometimes made bad decisions. Bush has turned things on their head and adopted a fundamentally flawed strategy from which he occassionally deviates by doing non-catastrophic things. In particular, it's as if Bush ransacked post-WWII history looking for the areas where American policy has been at its worst -- Indochina and Central America -- and decided to apply the animating spirit of those errors across the board. This is sort of the argument of Empire's Workshop by Greg Grandin and also sort of the argument of The Folly of Empire by John Judis both of which deserve more attention than they got.
History Written By the Victors
So here's an interesting factoid. Here in the West, opinions about 300 naturally diverge. Everyone agrees, however, that the Greeks won the war and defeated Xerxes' efforts to subdue them. The government of Iran, it seems, disputes this maintaining that "no Greek king dared to stand up to the Persian Empire or the Emperor Xerxes" and King Leonidas "lost his head and Iranian fighters threw his head before Emperor Xerxes's feet and told him that he had attempted a suicide attack to Persian Army."
It's interesting that even Iran's contemporary theocrats regard themselves as the heirs to all the pre-Islamic Persian emp
