« March 23, 2008 - March 29, 2008 | Main | April 6, 2008 - April 12, 2008 » March 30, 2008 - April 5, 2008 ArchivesMarch 30, 2008Good BrandingFrom a Wikipedia article on Haiti: "Buteur took charge of the Cannibal Army and promptly renamed it the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti." That seems like a wise branding decision as it's hard to imagine a "Cannibal Army" having much appeal beyond its base. Musical InterludeI was listening to "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend and I thought of Hillary Clinton's adventures in Tuzla: "Why would you lie about how much coal you have? / Why would you lie about something dumb like that?" Oh well. BasraIt's a bit hard to focus on the war in Iraq while at a wedding, but as Kevin Drum wonders "what happens if the Mahdi Army beats the government forces and wins the Battle of Basra?" I have to wonder about the reverse. Maliki's hopes of a swift victory are obviously through, but what if Iraqi government forces, given enough time and Anglo-American support, manage to first crush organized armed resistance in Sadr City and then swing south and take control of Basra? Do Sadrists wind up winning local elections this fall anyway? Or does ISCI use its newfound military supremacy to intimidate people away from the Sadrists? Suppose Maliki winds up with a quasi-democratic mandate for a not-very-popular regime that we're now committed to supporting. Imagine the best case scenario here where over the next two or three years, US military, logistical, and financial support lets Maliki build an efficacious, pro-American, regime that's a bit lacking in the old popular legitimacy but that certainly manages to hold onto power. We've got a Mesopotamian Egypt or Saudi Arabia (or Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, etc). Maybe that's outrageously optimistic. And guess what, it's our support for regimes like that's the main driver of al-Qaeda terrorism. And for that matter, what does happen if the Mahdi Army beats the government forces and wins the Battle of Basra? There don't seem to me to be any scenarios in either direction where expending huge amounts of further American blood and treasure looks like a good option. Obama EverywhereThe latest in campaign videos: The prediction of an Obama victory in Pennsylvania seems badly off-base to me. Myths of DeclineDave Berri notes that despite the sense you frequently get of the NBA declining in popularity, attendance is actually way up: In 2006-07 the average NBA team attracted 726,954 fans during the regular season. And this was the all-time record. Let me repeat. Last season the NBA - which Shanoff says is declining in popularity - set an all-time attendance record. And this is a per-team average record (of course they also set a record for total attendance). So more teams and higher average attendance -- that seems pretty good. What's probably going on is that thanks to the proliferation of media everything has more of a niche vibe than it used to. Back before most people had cable, anytime anything was on television at all it was somewhere between 1/3 and 1/7th (depending on where you lived) of the total things available to watch on TV and there were no DVDs or websites or OnDemand offerings to provide further options. So anything that got above a certain "it's on television" threshold automatically acquired a certain air of mass relevance that, these days, is very hard for anything to achieve. ReliabilityAsked how to choose a good mechanic, Tyler Cowen responds that you should buy a Honda or a Toyota and you probably won't need a mechanic to do anything beyond the super-routine. I've never owned a car, but in second-hand anecdotal terms that definitely seems to be the case -- folks who own Hondas or Toyotas, even pretty cheap ones, rarely have problems whereas American cars are plagued with reliability issues. This often strikes me as an under-analyzed element in the saga of American deindustrialization; maybe it's not even true that American durable goods are far less reliable than Japanese brands, but it's certainly what a lot of people think. ThreatsOne thing to note about Hillary Clinton's Florida and Michigan strategy is the utter selfishness of it. Her best shot at getting her way on this issue is to keep observing, in a meta kind of way, that if the DNC disses Florida and Michigan by not seating their delegates, that this could hurt Democratic fortunes in Florida and Michigan in November. There are, however, any number of solutions to this problem. One, if Clinton dropped out and endorsed Obama, the delegates could be seated no problem. Two, 50-50 delegations could be seated without controversy, again removing the concern about MI and FL lacking representation. Three, leaders of the Democratic Party from all factions could reiterate that everybody knew the rules going in and the voters of Michigan and Florida have nobody to blame but their own state party leaders for creating this situation. But instead Clinton has chosen path four of deliberately setting up a train wreck, hoping that by credibly committing to the idea that she's happy to sink the party's fortunes in FL and MI if she doesn't get her way, she can thereby get her way. Basically, it's the same old kind of threats you saw with her big dollar fundraisers -- either the Democratic Party needs to serve the narrow needs of the Clinton family, or else the Clinton family will do their best to hobble the party. It's not a very appealing kind of message and I have a hard time imagining it'll work in the end. TrainingOne thing to keep in mind about the repeated failures of our effort to train Iraqi security forces is that it's always been a bit odd to think of this as a situation where more/better training is actually what's needed. At the end of the day, whatever the shortcomings of our training and equipping mission in Iraq, after all, it's better than anything the Mahdi Army or the domestic Sunni Arab insurgency or AQI or the Badr Organization has. The issue is one of politics, legitimacy, motivation, and leadership. Muqtada al-Sadr's men aren't well-trained or especially disciplined, but they are fighting for a cause they believe in and that's at least a first step toward creating an effective military force. No American-led training program is going to be able to make up for that kind of shortfall in the political legitimacy of the central government. The Latest On BasraAs best I can tell nobody's quite sure what's happening. Sadr offered a cease-fire, and a government spokesman kinda sorta appeared to accept the terms, but the fighting continues and it remains a bit unclear who's in control of which forces or what this is even about. What seems certain, though, is that Maliki badly miscalculated his ability to crush Sadr and is prepared for some kind of climbdown far short of his initial demands. Opening DayYou've got to wonder why the Nationals asked Bush to throw out the first pitch at the new stadium -- it was pretty much inevitable that he'd get booed by a DC crowd. And rightly so, the man deserves to be booed. But the fan's deserve a first pitch thrower who's not so boo-worthy. Couldn't they have gotten Mayor Fenty to open the Nats' season and sent Bush to a minor league game in Utah or some other place where he's still got a good approval rating? March 31, 2008Helen YglesiasI haven't really known what to say about this, but my maternal grandmother, Helen Yglesias, died early Friday morning. It's a sad thing to have happen, but she was an old woman (born in 1915), had been ailing, and went peacefully and comfortably after a full and successful life. Like my father and his father, she was a writer and published several novels after an unusually late debut in her fifties. Previously, she worked at literary editor at The Nation so you can see that the family is slowly moving right and selling out over time. There are a couple of brief biographies available online for those who are interested here and here though of course it's always slightly bizarre to read a "professional" account of someone like your own grandmother who you came to know and love at an early age when you didn't know anything about this sort of thing. Nevertheless, she led a fairly inspiring life when you get right down to it, always committed to her passions. Strange BedfellowsRichard Mellon-Scaife, well-known friend of progressive causes, announces that he has "a very different impression of Hillary Clinton today" than he used to, and "it’s a very favorable one indeed." No doubt he fears that Barack Obama's rhetoric of unity indicates that he may sell out to the right wing once in office. Lanny Davis, Clinton attack dog and Joe Lieberman fan, remarks of Scaife that he "would like to shake his hands for keeping his mind open despite the predisposed prejudice toward her." How nice. Overclass Blues
Daniel Gross brings some quality snark: Conservative critics constantly carp that the culture of poverty has encouraged a sense of dependency on Washington. Of course, in recent months, the bureaucracy—the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac—has generally ignored the struggles of poor homeowners. Yet it vaulted into action to save the bankers from their own disastrous bets. When Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth-largest investment bank, approached insolvency, the Feds orchestrated JPMorgan's acquisition of it. Now of course there's a reason for that; the poor and the middle class aren't "too big to fail." Still, this is where basic issues of justice come in -- the Bush/McCain policy in this regard is simply outrageous. People in need deserve some help, too. Photo by Flickr user Toni V used under a Creative Commons license Summers on the ShitpileLawrence Summers pronounces himself optimistic that actions already taken have set the stage for us to avoid further financial calamities and get back on the road to recovery without major dislocations. But he says we ought to take several further steps, including passing the Dodd-Frank bill to reduce foreclosures, and that efforts need to be made to get financial institutions to raise more capital and for the shareholders in the GSEs to accept more obligations to the public rather than have "their shareholders’ 'heads I win, tails you lose' bet with the taxpayer be expanded for this purpose." In general, Summers says that "at a time when much is being given to financial institution shareholders and management, action to help the economy and protect the taxpayer should be expected in return." This seems right to me. It doesn't make sense to let large institutions fail purely out of spite at a time when it's possible to rescue them and keep the economy humming along. But with great power to fail in a way that brings down the whole economy ought to come great responsibility to submit yourself to formal or informal regulatory oversight. Meanwhile, we need measures like Dodd-Frank and, in general, a social safety net that works for the broad public and not just for large financial institutions. The HorrorThere was a time when I never could have imagined I'd be reading stuff like this about my own country: At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one. Read the whole thing; I don't really have the heart to make a witty remark. Klobuchar CallI'm on a conference call right now with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar who's announcing her endorsement of Barack Obama. In an interesting effort to change the tone of the campaign, she started out by emphasizing that she believes the "Democratic Party is truly blessed this year with two presidents who would each be a strong president" and declined an invitation from David Corn to condemn Clinton for continuing her campaign. She just likes Obama better. In particular, she says Obama "has inspired an enthusiasm and idealism that we haven't seen in this country in a long time" and recalls that back in 2006, Obama "came to Minnesota several times during my own campaign for the senate and even then we saw the incredible enthusiasm he could generate." In terms of specific issues, she spoke about Obama's leadership on ethics reform following the 2006 election. She recalled that she "actually spoke with Barack" about the issue on the phone as she was driving across country to Washington after the election "and talked about ethics reform and then got a bunch of freshman senators together on a conference call" on the issue. A lot of the Democrats who won in '06 regarded ethics issues as having been crucial to their victory and were frustrated by the fact that many longstanding Democratic legislators weren't so keen on pushing it later. Obama, as someone who'd just been elected in the previous cycle, helped build bridges across that divide and make sure that something happened. Klobuchar also noted Obama's work on the risks of lead in kids' toys as "just another example of where he took on an issue that was ahead of its time." IntermediariesJust as a reminder of how absurd the notion that we need to stay in Iraq indefinitely to somehow curb Iranian influence, note that it took an Iranian general to help resolve the fighting in Basra. Ultimately, all that Iranian influence in Iraq shows is how badly we need to make some effort at a diplomatic opening with Iran. At the end of the day, we have very compatible interests in terms of wanting to fight al-Qaeda and ensure that oil general flows out of the Persian Gulf. Richardson as JudasI think James Carville's Washington Post column declaring Bill Richardson a "Judas" because apparently when Rep. Richardson accepted a post in Bill Clinton's administration he was making an ironclad commitment to support his wife's future presidential campaign misses the point pretty badly. Among other things, he seems to completely miss the lack of perspective involved in implicitly analogizing Hillary to Jesus. But more to the point, it really is a strange conception of the underlying dynamics. I imagine that many of the people Bill Clinton appointed to executive offices believed, as Richardson no doubt believed, that they were getting something more than patronage job offers. They believed they'd been selected for reasons that had at least something to do with their merits and that accepting didn't imply a commitment beyond service to their country and the administration for the duration of their appointment. Are we supposed to take it for granted that anyone who's not prepared to back a Michelle Obama 2024 presidential campaign ought to decline a position in Barack Obama's cabinet? SardoodledumI would never make light of another person's spelling-related difficulties, but this is pretty amusing: "Sardoodledom." New Blog on the BlockDo check out Kathy G.'s new blog, the G Spot; which I'm sure will be must-reading. Check her out on paid family leave, for example. FEMA and PatronageVia Robert Farley and the Monkey Cage here's some hot political science from Jowei Chen: In the aftermath of the summer 2004 Florida hurricane season, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) distributed $1.2 billion in disaster aid to Florida residents. This research presents two empirical findings that collectively suggest the Bush administration engaged in vote buying behavior. First, by tracking the geographic location of each aid recipient, the data reveal that FEMA treated applicants from Republican neighborhoods much more favorably than those from Democratic or moderate neighborhoods, even conditioning on hurricane severity, home value, and demographic factors. Second, I compare precinct-level vote counts from the post-hurricane (November 2004) and pre-hurricane (November 2002) elections to measure the effect of FEMA aid on Bush’s vote share. Using a two-stage least squares estimator, this analysis reveals that core Republican voters are easily swayed by FEMA aid - $16,800 buys one additional vote for Bush - while Democrats and moderates are not. Collectively, these results suggest the Bush administration maximized its 2004 vote share by concentrating FEMA disaster aid among core Republicans. As Farley says, this kind of finding makes you think about Katrina and New Orleans; would the response have been nearly so inept and ineffective if the victimized area had been more of a GOP-friendly kind of place? The Penny PrimaryPatrick Appel notes that Barack Obama is ready to abolish the penny. Good for him. The ThreatIt seems that DARPA is developing some kind of robotic attack insects despite clear indications that military robots will rebel and seek to enslave/exterminate us. The defense establishment's continued ignorance of the basic canons of sci-fi films is genuinely appalling. Iceland Attack
Via Paul Krugman, reports of a financial speculator attack on Iceland. You've got to figure that Iceland is almost uniquely vulnerable to this kind of thing. It's a rich country, but with a tiny population of only around 300,000 people that still left it with a 2006 PPP-adjusted GDP of just $12 billion. Under the circumstances, lots of individual people and institutions are rich enough to make huge waves in the Icelandic economy if they're so inclined. Photo of Reykjavík by me, available under a Creative Commons license The JFK FactorJoe Lieberman says "When I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain." This will no doubt offend a lot of liberal sensibilities, especially among Obama fans who have a tendency to compare their guy to the youthful energy and excitement that Kennedy inspired. But I think there really is truth to the idea that McCain's foreign policy is more JFKennedyesque than is Obama's. The difference is that Kennedy's foreign policy wasn't very good. Under first Truman and then Eisenhower, the United States established a constructive, internationalist approach to policy in Europe -- a strong NATO alliance would ensure that the western bloc didn't fall prey to infighting while also deterring Soviet attack. Combined with a strong bilateral alliance with Japan, the idea, as outlined by George Kennan, was that if the "free world" could stay united and defended it would ultimately outlast the fundamentally unworkable Soviet approach. In the third world, the Eisenhower administration did develop a taste for imperial adventures, but then first JFK and then LBJ took this much further in Vietnam and no good came of it. As I argue in Heads in the Sand, the Clinton administration mostly, and wisely, followed the internationalist elements of our Cold War policies -- policies that emphasized rule-governed cooperation among like-minded countries rather than coercive efforts to manipulate the destiny of foreigners. The Bush administration came into power and, for some reason, decided that the kind of thinking that gave us the Mossadegh coup and the Vietnam War was what the country really needed and McCain fits firmly into that tradition. The JuggernautJames Fallows points to an affecting example of China's continued impoverishment as reason why "who worry about China as the all-conquering juggernaut that has coped with every internal challenge and is sitting around thinking about how to take over the world" are off-base. And certainly there's something to that. But in other respects it's the still-in-many-ways-bleak reality of contemporary China that makes it seem threatening. If the PRC is such a juggernaut now what's it going to be like when the average Chinese person is, say, half as rich as the average American? And that China is still going to see itself as a relatively poor country that owes little to the world but is owed much from it. Depending on what kind of things you're inclined to worry about, that can look like a looming environmental catastrophe, a looming national security catastrophe, or probably one of any number of other kind of catastrophes. Of course the flipside is that it's also a great opportunity for a huge number of people to escape grinding poverty. As such it's difficult for me to let my outlook be dominated by worry. But I think I do see what the worriers are worried about. Reform in CubaThe reforms announced today by Raul Castro are hardly the last word in fixing Cuba's screwed-up economic system (and, of course, as we've learned from China economic reform needn't have any particularly close connection to political reform) but it's certainly a step in the right direction. It's high time for the United States to take a step in the right direction of our own by lifting some of the more draconian of our embargo-related restrictions on travel and so forth to Cuba. At the end of the day, both domestic economic reform and an end to American economic warfare are going to be necessary to alleviate the sorry conditions of the Cuban people. President ShortIs John McCain really only 5'7"? As Kevin Drum points out, it's been a mighty long time since we've elected a short person to the White House. To be sure, the shorter of two tall candidates sometimes wins, but this is another matter entirely. Gilbert's KneeAgent Zero says "People who usually have microfracture are usually big players who get off the floor. I don't jump, I don't get off the floor." I dunno, I'm pretty sure he does jump: It is true that these knee problems are normally associated with big men, but when you get down to it it seems like it's probably a bigger problem for a perimeter player. A tall guy with skills can be valuable to his team even if he's a bit slow and doesn't jump very well. A guy like Arenas, however, really depends on his quickness to make plays. Iraq ForeverI did a current on the situation in Basra and how its murky dynamics illustrate how current thinking merely ensures that the war will continue forever. April 1, 2008Paying OffAt least Hillary Clinton hasn't been cozying up to Richard Mellon-Scaife for no reason. Instead, he's got his papers running crazy articles about how crazy black man Barack Obama and his crazy black church pastor are personally responsible for high rates of crime in the African-American community. Jersey JudgesThe case of New Jersey v. Delaware gets decided 7-2 in favor of Delaware. The two dissenters, Scalia and Alito are both from New Jersey. Conservative jurisprudence in action, or just Garden State pride? I'm sure Clarence Thomas and John Roberts are too polite to offer their honest views of the matter. EmboldeningVia Patrick Barry, Max Boot offers a slightly different twist on the emboldening argument: "Just as Islamist militants were emboldened by the Soviet Union's retreat from Afghanistan in 1989, so they would be encouraged by our premature departure from Iraq." This kind of thing really needs to be taken apart. Did the emboldened militants follow the Red Army home from Afghanistan? No. Rather, a few years after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan the USSR collapsed under the weight of accumulated economic problems that had been exacerbated by the long and fruitless war in Afghanistan. Now it's true that Osama bin Laden has been known to cite the mujahedeen's success against the Soviets as evidence that his war on America is feasible. But to argue that Mikhail Gorbachev should have continued the occupation of Afghanistan indefinitely in order to prevent a terrorist attack in Manhattan twelve years later is absurd. In retrospect, there are a lot of things one wishes were done differently with regard to Afghanistan in the years 1989-2001 but endless Soviet occupation isn't one of them. Meanwhile, it continues to astound me how focused conservative thinkers are on purely subjective factors as key influences on events in the world. Does it really make sense to think that the main thing we should worry about is that al-Qaeda operatives will get bolder? (for the thousandth time, they seem pretty bold already) The Iraq War is, in an objective sense, squandering American resources and degrading the operational effectiveness of the U.S. security services while also, in an objective sense, bolstering al-Qaeda manpower. This sort of thing -- the impact of our policies on the real world -- seems much more important to me than the subjective emotional state of hard-core killers. An Iceland UpdateI alluded to the troubled financial situation in Iceland yesterday, but if you want a proper explanation check out Claus Vistesen's post at A Fistful of Euros which will explain what's happening. The comments thread, meanwhile, turned to an argument over whether or not it's correct to say that Icelanders are descended from Vikings. Daga says this is a kind of slur: Its much like saying that all palestinians are terrorists. to "go viking" was an action,neither a profession nor an ethnic entity. At the time it was either "landnaam" (landgrabbing) or pillaging-depending on the strenght and size of the party. Given that Iceland was completely unoccupied at the time of Norse settlement (no aboriginal population whatsoever), it would seem wrong to suggest that any landgrabbing was involved. My understanding is, however, that many of the settlers stopped off in Ireland en route to capture slaves, giving Iceland's population its mixed Nordic/Celtic character. Did Paul Berman Oppose the War?Spencer Ackerman catches Paul Berman trying to convince us that he was against the war in Iraq. Berman, in this incident, tries to chalk up the fact that many people think he supported the war to the fact "that afterward I haven't made a career of running around saying I told you so." Did he tell us so? The answer is that no, he didn't. Indeed, he's been telling us he told us so while simultaneously bragging that he hasn't been telling us so since at least November 2007. But the record is clear -- Berman didn't tell us so. He supported the war. He offered some caveats, yes, but they were caveats to his argument in favor of the war. Not only that, but as I showed in my earlier post on this subject, Berman was happy to be counted as a war supporter back in 2004 when he still thought that put him on the right side of history. War for War's Sake
Spencer Ackerman posted a powerful email from a junior officer currently serving in Iraq. I'll just nab an excerpt: In my opinion, what everyone fails to realize is that this is not a counterinsurgency. If we wanted to stay in Iraq, then it would be a counterinsurgency. But it is clear that our goal is to turn over power and pull out. So, in building our strategic endstate, it's pointless to set goals that relate to our presence in Iraq. If the "insurgency" is a function of our being there, then it is not an insurgency in terms of our endstate. For example, if one of our goals is to stop IED attacks on US forces, that is pointless. When we leave, there will be no more IED attacks on us forces. So our endstate needs to be different. We need to ask "if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?" and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur. This is correct but of course the policymakers in Washington some time ago shifted to a crazy equilibrium where continuing the war became the war's own rationale. Initially, we invaded to depose Saddam and destroy his WMD programs. So when at first the programs weren't there, we had to keep some troops in the country to look for them. What's more, some kind of new government had to be created. But then, contrary to what the Bush administration had expected, an insurgency started against our presence. The insurgents were killing our troops. Then beating the insurgents became the goal. Our troops had to stay in Iraq and risk their lives in order to kill the people who were trying to kill them to force them out of Iraq -- we couldn't leave until all the people who wanted us to leave were dead. From that point, the quality of the strategic thinking involved has only declined. John McCain's supporters get very upset if you suggest he wants the war in Iraq to continue for 100 years. After all, he stipulated that first the war would end, and then 100 years of U.S. troops running around Iraq peacefully would begin. What this misses is that the U.S. presence is one of the main issues at stake in the war. It's not that peace would suddenly break out if we left, but peace is certain to never break out as long as we stay. Counterinsurgency requires, among other things, political conciliation and conciliation requires us to leave but the hawks' logic requires us to stay and fight for the right to keep staying and fighting. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jason T. Bailey The Old People StrategyEd Kilgore has an excellent post on the oddly backward nature of John McCain's current "biography tour" and the general weirdness of the campaign emphasizing the idea that their candidate is genetically programmed to monger war through his jingoistic heritage (or something). Ed notes the analogy to Bob Dole's 1996 campaign, the last time the GOP thought having an old man talk fondly about long-past suffering was a good way to win elections. Relatedly, I think it was Matt Stoller who pointed out recently that the candidate with the more impressive military record lost in 1992 and 1996 and 2000 and 2004 so there's reason to doubt that McCain's genuinely impressive military record will serve as an ace in the hole for his campaign. What I'll say on behalf of this strategy is that it's the best way I can think of to try to take advantage of older people's potential discomfort with the idea of a woman or a black man in the White House that doesn't involve exploiting racism or sexism in a discreditable way. McCain's putting together an identity politics counter-narrative steeped in nostalgia; it didn't work against a white southerner running on a very cautious agenda, but 2008 is going to see the Democrats nominating an unorthodox candidate running on a more liberal agenda. To me, though, one primary issue in a McCain-Obama race is going to be how successful McCain can be at obscuring his enormous hostility to America's public sector retirement infrastructure. McCain's record, and that of his key economic advisors, is pretty clear -- these are people who want to gut Social Security and Medicare in order to clear budgetary space for an agenda of low taxes and many wars. The resulting situation will be fine for those senior citizens who, like McCain, had the foresight to divorce their first wife in order to marry an heiress and then secure a congressional pension, but others may not achieve such happy results. That could all be very damaging to McCain's old people strategy, but to be damaging Democrats will need to move on to the general election first. The Necessity of ContingencyThere's a series of fascinating, intellectually stimulating posts by Will Wilkinson, Daniel Larison, Matt Frost, and Reihan Salam. I had written something very long and nonsensical about all this, but what I have to say boils down to this -- life is full of attachments and affections that aren't strictly rationally defensible and there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, life would be terribly dull without such attachments. But what distinguishes the liberal's approach to his patriotism from, well, the wrong approach is that a liberal will recognize the contingency of it. Most people love the country where they were born and raised and think it's the finest in the world. Intelligent people don't lose that love, but they do recognize that, in fact, they love their country because they were born and raised there and not because it is, in fact, the finest in the world. That doesn't mean you stop loving your country, but it does mean that you open yourself up to other kinds of affections both bigger and smaller than "the nation" and also recognize that there's a circumscribed relevance to this sort of thing. But a cosmopolitan in the real world doesn't become one by purging himself of particularist affections, rather he multiplies them and recognizes that others have affections of their own and that these sentiments are all owed a certain amount of respect and consideration. Lurking behind really dogmatic professions of universalism, especially in the political arena, tends to be an especially rancid form of nationalistic hubris -- think of George W. Bush proclaiming that American interests and American ideals are one and the same and also completely congruent with the demands of the universal human yearning for freedom. April Fools!Iraq has chemical and biological weapons arsenals, plus an advanced nuclear weapons program and is likely to use these WMD to stage an attack on the American homeland using al-Qaeda proxies! The Presidency and Distribution
Dani Rodrick posts this chart from Larry Bartels' forthcoming book. It shows that under Republican administrations, incomes grow strongly for rich people, but barely at all for those of more modest means. Under Democratic presidents, by contrast, lower income groups see stronger income growth but everyone's income grows faster than it does under the GOP. That's striking stuff. Indeed, it's almost too striking. The president's control over domestic policy is pretty circumscribed and public policy has only a limited influence over the economy, so it's surprising to see such a strong effect. I'll be interested to read the book and see Bartels' account in more detail. My Kind of Scum, Fearless and InventiveI thought I might just quote Daniel Larison: The only thing more annoying than Joe Lieberman himself is his conceit, which many people indulge out of habit, that he is some kind of “centrist.” Perhaps if we think of the political spectrum as a series of rings surrounding a cavernous abyss (or perhaps a pit like the Sarlaac), then Lieberman and McCain can fairly be called “centrists.” I lose nerd points for needing to look Sarlaac up. The Flawed UNA new web magazine, Triple Canopy, seeks to bring a more authentically "magazine-like" quality to its presentation of content. It's an interesting technological and aesthetic enterprise and the content's pretty good, too. There is, for example, an interesting pre-"monster" interview with Samantha Power. I liked this part: HK: Do you think the UN is a functional organization? This is spot-on. There's a tendency to attribute policy failures of the UN's member states to "the UN" as if "the UN" is supposed to be able to take dramatic action in the face of indifference from the key countries. Meanwhile, you don't see the main people making this complaint arguing for measures to increase the independent capabilities of the UN organization. I note in Heads in the Sand that there are two kinds of people who point out inadequacies in existing international organizations (including the United Nations) -- those who genuinely want to do the difficult work of strengthening them and making it easier for them to cope with the problems they get charged with handling (which just so happen to tend to be the hardest problems in the world), and those who simply want to point to them in bad faith as part of a process of dismantling them. Meanwhile (and relatedly) one thing critics of the UN tend to get vague about is "compared to what?" When the project isn't being dismissed as totally ineffectual, it tends to get dismissed as utterly utopian. Both critiques are, in my view, wrong but they're also a bit schizophrenic. The truth is simply that the UN's mission is difficult so we shouldn't be shocked that problems remain nor should we ignore the fact that a great deal of good is being done. Michael Jordan Played Basketball Well
I think the "counterintuitive" style of journalism in which people sometimes appear to care more about producing an "interesting" argument than a true one gets pretty annoying. That said, surely there's something to be said for giving some consideration to originality of ideas and the goal of provoking further thought on the part of the audience. Do we really need a Richard Cohen column about how World War II was, in fact, a good war? Surely there's some more pressing topic that the precious Washington Post op-ed page real estate could be devoted to. It is, however, a reminder that I'm glad to work in a medium where there are no space restrictions and I can cover important things and trivial ones to my heart's content. Super Surrogates
Our corporate sisters at National Journal are doing a breakfast event tomorrow featuring surrogates for each presidential campaign and moderators Linda Douglass with Ron Brownstein and Chuck Todd beginning at 8 at the Columbus Club at Union Station. You can RSVP here if you're so inclined. Representing John McCain will be Lindsey Graham with Evan Bayh for Clinton and Dick Durbin for Barack Obama. I find the Clinton campaign's undying affection for Bayh, a thoroughly unimpressive centrist favorite, to be telling. Ukraine and NATOI don't have any kind of principled problem with the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine, but given that Russia seems very opposed to the idea it seems mighty odd for Bush to be pushing forward on the subject at this particular moment. It seems to me that it was just a few months ago when Iran's nuclear research programs were the greatest threat to humanity since Hitler and we were eager to secure Russian cooperation on UN action against Iran. But now we want to antagonize them over something that's not going to make any difference whatsoever to Americans one way or the other? The failure of U.S. policymakers to set priorities is a bit baffling. Why not ease up on Ukraine and try to work with Russia on stuff that matters more? It's not as if getting Ukraine into NATO will be some kind of boon to American security. Confused on BasraGiven the general fogginess of his strategy thinking, it comes as no surprise to see that both John McCain and his key advisor Randy Scheunemann don't really seem to have any understanding of the fighting that played out in Basra over the weekend. All of McCain's thinking about Iraq seems dominated by a desire to achieve "victory" and, consequently, he's unable to grapple with the reality of a multifaceted situation. For some reason he thinks that helping Nouri al-Maliki help Iranian-backed militias fight other Shiite militias constitutes rolling back Iranian influence and al-Qaeda. Because, basically, he thinks Iran is bad and al-Qaeda is bad, whereas we are good. Maliki is working with us, so he must be good, too, and whoever he's fighting must be the bad guys -- i.e., al-Qaeda and Iran. Nevermind that this has little relationship to reality, it fits with McCain's desire to see an honorable struggle in which we eventually prevail through gritty determination. Show Me The MoneyChris Hayes and Ezra Klein both hail this Gawker Media writer revolt. I like industrial action myself, but if it's really true as Felix Salmon reports that Valleywag writers get paid $9.75 per thousand pageviews then I'm not necessarily that sympathetic. If I got paid on that scale, I'm pretty sure I'd be making a lot more money than my current salary pays. I mean, it's nice not to feel under the gun the way a per-pageview salary structure would leave me, but I'd gladly give up that feeling of relief in order to double my take home pay. Poverty TrapVia Free Exchange, an interesting Drake Bennett article about Charles Karelis's idea that some poor people are so burdened by problems that it's not rational for them to address any particular problem: Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn't apply to the poor. When we're poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated. This is where the bee stings come in: A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb. The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems. The implication is that, basically, you need to intervene forcefully enough with spending, etc. to get poor people over the hump and into the "normal" range of economic behavior. April 2, 2008The Jolie FactorYesterday, Dana Goldstein observed that "Esquire's August 2007 cover featuring John Edwards was its worst seller of the year. Angelina Jolie, on the other hand, flew off the newsstands." According to Dana, "Esquire readers may not be all that interested in politics, but at least Esquire has attempted to cover the biggest election of our generation" in contrast to the major women's magazines. This whole line of thinking seems confused. For one thing, the August Esquire obviously sold poorly because Matt Yglesias was featured in GQ that month. For another thing, there's no doubt in my mind that Esquire readers were drawn to the Jolie cover primarily out of interest for her work with UNCHR, the ONE Campaign, and other such endeavors. Well, probably not. But still, her work on global poverty and refugee issues is noteworthy and admirable, there are worse people to be on the covers of our magazines. Wealth and AchievementPeople are generally aware that coming from a low-income background tends to impair achievement in school, but via Sara Mead, W. Jean Yeung and Dalton Conley look at wealth as a factor in "Black-White Achievement Gap and Family Wealth": This article examines the extent to which family wealth affects the Black–White test score gap for young children based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (aged 3–12). This study found little evidence that wealth mediated the Black–White test scores gaps, which were eliminated when child and family demographic covariates were held constant. However, family wealth had a stronger association with cognitive achievement of school-aged children than that of preschoolers and a stronger association with school-aged children’s math than on their reading scores. Liquid assets, particularly holdings in stocks or mutual funds, were positively associated with school-aged children’s test scores. Family wealth was associated with a higher quality home environment, better parenting behavior, and children’s private school attendance. Asset building remains a seriously under-discussed issue in American public policy in a whole variety of ways. Straight Outta Sesame StreetThe muppets perform N.W.A.'s "Fuck the Police" Not safe for work if your colleagues have no sense of humor. Confused on SadrThink Progress notes yet another instance of John McCain's fuzzy thinking on Iraq. In an April 1 CNN interview, McCain says "I said he was still major player and his influence is going to have to be reduced and gradually eliminated" thus establishing the prescience for which he's well known. But in mid-march he told CNN that "His [Sadr’s] influence has been on the wane for a long time." Basically, McCain has no idea. Because this is what when you're getting briefed by campaign staff you hired away from the know-nothings at the Project for a New American Century. Someday we may look back with nostalgia on the Steven Hadley Era. Muqtada's TriumphIn case this is unclear to anyone, I think Muqtada al-Sadr was the big winner from last week's battling: "The Iraqi government looks silly in the face of their ardent statements," said Joost Hiltermann, the deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a private group that studies international conflicts. He said the outcome shows "the Iraqi military doesn't have the ability to do much of anything." That said, unless you just stipulate that American interests require us to locate an Iraqi leader who'll consent to America staying in Iraq for 100 or 10,000 years then I'm not sure that Sadr strengthening his position is such a terrible thing. It's bad for the Bush/McCain vision of perpetual war for perpetual occupation, but if you think the U.S. should be getting out of Iraq, then a Sadr-led Iraq is no worse than a Maliki-led Iraq. Neither has a stellar human rights record, of course, but given the practical alternatives available, Sadr seems about as good as anyone else. Today's Transit FactRyan Avent observes that "A 25 percent reduction in federal highway spending would clear the way for a tenfold increase in annual federal transit spending–sufficient to produce a sea change in the way cities build their transportation networks." Given that driving, though a convenient and appealing way to get around, also involves substantial negative externalities, there's no rational basis for this kind of ratio in our federal spending. For all the discussion under way about how to use taxes, auctions, and regulations to force people to consume energy less lavishly, there's surprisingly little talk about the desirability of reducing the scale of our subsidies for inefficient uses. Small SegaHornets (and, yes, they're for real) center Tyson Chandler talks about, among other things, his disappointment in the Wire finale. He also says that his "Sega was too big to put in a bag" which doesn't jibe at all with my recollection of Sega size. Extreme Talent WantedAre you a young or aspiring journalist interest in new media? If so, you should definitely consider applying for the new Atlantic Media Fellowship: Our Atlantic Media Fellowship Program — Selecting 5-10 Fellows Our offices also feature a popcorn machine, which is pretty neat. Fallacies of LiteralismI have no doubt whatsoever that Republican pollster John McLaughlin can devise question wording that makes card-check unionization come out as unpopular, but whenever I see a result like that I always wonder why people bother. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of voters have no well-formed opinions about the Employee Free Choice Act whatsoever and even if you could get them to form an opinion on it, it almost certainly won't be a decisive voting issue for the overwhelming majority of people. And that's not because of some special characteristic of EFCA, it's just the way politics works. No real voters form opinions on hundreds of separate "issues" then score their political options according to their positions on the issues, and then decide who to vote for. If anything, the causation is likely to run in the other direction -- if all the politicians you trust tell you card check will lead to tyranny, you'll think that card check will lead to tyranny; but if the politicians you perceive as being on your side tell you card check is good, you'll think card check is good. Nevertheless, pollsters seem to be able to gin up a surprising volume of business by doing these kind of single-issue polls. Are people just eager to waste their money? In this case I suppose the rationale is that McLaughlin knows there are enormously wealthy interests who would very much like to invest in fighting EFCA, so if he can somehow position himself as the go-to guy for EFCA-related messaging he'll earn himself a nice bundle of cash. A Bit ConfusedVia Kieran Healy, the Pew Center finds some confusion among Obama haters, as "Nearly one-in-ten (9%) of those who heard a lot about Wright still believe that Obama is Muslim." Of course in a world where a politician can repeatedly confuse Iran with al-Qaeda and be specifically lauded for his knowledge of national security issues, I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect people to know that Muslims don't have pastors. Leaks NeededIt seems that the Bush administration is refusing to produce a declassified version of their latest Iraq National Intelligence Estimate because they're Journalism! The Yoo Coverup
I don't think I have the stomach to try to do any serious original analysis of John Yoo's now-declassified torture memos. As usual, you can find a lot of great legal analysis at Balkinization. But Yoo aside, you need to really be staggered by the mental processes of his employer. Some subordinate shows up in your office with a memo about how it is, in fact, legal to break all kinds of laws -- specifically laws that seek to entrench a few hundred years' worth of conventional wisdom about the moral and political unacceptability of torturing people. What do you do? Fire the guy? See if you can recommend that he get counseling? Not if you're George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, if you're those guys you adopt the legal reasoning and move on to the torturing. Except eventually it becomes clear that the torture's gotten out of hand -- it's happening to innocent people, it's spreading throughout the U.S. detention and interrogation system, it's producing all kinds of possibly spurious information, etc., so naturally you respond by classifying the whole thing and pretending that it would imperil national security for everyone to know what a bunch of sickos you are. It really makes the stomach churn. Helter SkelterI'm still not sure I fully understand why Mike Gravel was allowed onto nationally televised political debates, but I do like this video: It seems that he's a Libertarian now. It's odd that Gravel, who's a joke and clearly not a libertarian, is running on this ticket whereas Ron Paul isn't. I'm not a Paul fan, but his set of ideas seem like a pretty good basis for a third party candidacy. Resistance is FutileAre Barack Obama's graphic design principles spreading? A lot of political candidates could learn a thing or two from Obama's design, but of course the trouble with copying other people's cool design principles is that part of good design is looking original. It'd be bad to see progressive candidates everywhere adopting a homogenized Obama-esque scheme. He Got it For CheapMore hooker scandals: "The co-founder and former CEO of the liberal-progressive Democracy Radio and husband of U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow was caught in February by a Troy police sting aimed at catching prostitutes, according to a police report." In striking contrast to Elliot Spitzer, however, the John in this case is alleged to have paid a 20 year-old prostitute just $150. Houses are cheap in Michigan, too. Governor ClintonDana Goldstein and Jonathan Alter suggest that if David Patterson continues to flail, Hillary Clinton could make a run in 2010 to become governor of New York. Like Dana, I think she'd do a pretty good job in that role, and I also think I wouldn't mind having Andrew Cuomo's dreams trampled on. What's more, New York has had successes with such Clintons as Governor DeWitt Clinton in the past. That saying, being a U.S. Senator with a safe seat is a pretty good job and actually provides an excellent platform from which for Clinton to muck around in the thorny details of policy and political negotiations. What's more, unlike most Senators, she has a celebrity status that grants her instant ability to draw attention to whatever issue she wants to draw attention to. So I'm not really sure why she would want a new gig unless she thought it put her on a clear path to the White House. America Hearts Diversity
Amidst last year's substantive panic over immigration was a large political panic, and it continues to be the case that anti-immigrant obsessives insist that the public at large shares their views. And yet, as this and other charts from John Sides shows, the United States remains an outlier among developed countries in lacking strong commitments to the goal of creating a culturally or religiously homogenous country. Wednesday Zimbabwe BloggingI have paid approximately no attention to the election in Zimbabwe, but I have to agree with Dave Weigel that this is no way to rig an election: President Robert Mugabe's party has lost its majority in parliament, the Zimbabwe Election Commission says. It says Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has taken 94 of the 207 contested seats, while opposition parties have won 105. One seat has gone to an independent. Matthew Weaver is running a Zimbabwe blog for the Guardian. Timothy Burke often has interesting things to say about Zimbabwe, and I've found the information in his March 28 post to be useful background. Going forward, part of the issue here, as it often is, is that Mugabe and other members of his regime will be much more willing to give up power if they think they'll be able to retire in peace. These kind of situations then pose a dilemma between the desire to find a peaceful and constructive solution to the conflict at hand, and the sense that there needs to be accountability for the crimes of the past. Kick the CanPeter Feaver, the too-clever-by-half former White House politics of Iraq honcho, has an enlightening piece in Commentary where he explains that the purpose of the surge was to create political space in the United States to ensure that George W. Bush could pass off a large U.S. troop deployment in Iraq to the next administration. As Justin Logan says, this has a nice heads I win, tales you lose quality to it: If, by the grace of God, some subsequent U.S. president can manage to extricate us from the Iraqi quagmire without a total meltdown, the Bushies will clap each other on the back, declaring themselves visionaries. If, on the other hand, Iraq flames out entirely on the watch of a subsequent administration, the Bushies can play the Dolschtoss card and explain how The Surge Was Working and would have continued working were it not for the fecklessness of the Obama/Clinton/McCain administration. The idea that there are, as we speak, brave young men and women risking their lives for the sake of the vanity of the fools who launched this war is more than a little maddening. But that's how it is. The A.J. FactorClass, aptitude, and college admissions all explained in one neat blog post built around a Sopranos reference. They Hate Us, They Really Hate UsIn his recent op-ed column, one argument Max Boot made is that we should stay in Iraq out of deference to the Iraqi people's wishes: "An early American departure is the last thing that most Iraqis or their elected representatives want. (In a recent ABC/BBC poll only 38 percent of Iraqis said that coalition forces should leave at once.)" This is a pretty selective reading of the poll's results. It's true that only 38 percent said that coalition forces should leave at once. It's also true that only 36 percent of Iraqis say that the surge of forces has improved security in areas where the surge forces have been sent (53 percent say they've made things worse), only 30 percent percent say the surge has made things better in the non-surge areas (49 percent say they've made things worse), and that only four percent say that they have "a great deal of confidence" in American troops. Sixteen percent say they have "quite a lot" of confidence, 33 percent have "not very much" confidence and 46 percent have "no confidence" in our soldiers. 41 percent of Iraqis say they "strongly oppose" the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq and 31 percent "somewhat oppose" their presence. And yet, despite all this, John McCain thinks we can stay there peacefully for 100 or 10,000 years and Max Boot wants us to believe that Iraqis are eager for us to stay the course. But there's just no evidence of it. Iraqis are, naturally, concerned about the consequences of an American departure. But we also decisively lost the confidence and support of the Iraqi population years ago. Under the circumstances, it's nearly impossible for us to play a constructive role. Illusions of MeritI was thinking to myself the other day that, paradoxically, one of the more pernicious aspects of pseudo-meritocracy in America is that even if you're given a lot of advantages in life it still is genuinely difficult to acquire certain kinds of highly sought-after positions. This is well-expressed by Keith Gessen in this essay on college admissions: Even worse than the temporary psychological distortion is, as Lemann argued in “The Big Test,” the permanent sense of entitlement the admissions game provides. Winners can plausibly claim they participated in a brutal competition (even if many potential competitors were never told about it). So we owe no one anything. Many of the people I went to school with became doctors, public advocates, television writers who bring laughter to the American people. But most of them became, like my friend who believed that getting into Harvard was the hardest thing in life, investment bankers. I found that essay via Kathy G. who wisely remarks that "a distressingly large number of people in our society seem to believe that going to college is proof that they're "smarter" than their non-college-educated fellow citizens, and therefore more deserving of respect, status, and the comforts of middle-class life" despite the fact that "In the U.S., low income is likely to be a huge barrier to going to college, even among the highest scoring students." More broadly, the merit illusion stems from the well-documented fact that people don't have a great intuitive grasp of statistics or large numbers. If your family connections boost your odds of getting into Harvard from one percent to five percent, you'll perceive that as having triumphed against the odds on merit rather than using family connections to quintuple your chances. And then once you're in it is, again, a genuinely difficult, competitive process to get a job at an investment bank. And climbing to the top of the i-banking world is, again, a genuinely difficult and competitive process. It's difficult, however, for people to keep in their heads the idea that, yes, you may have displayed considerable merit to get where you are but also you've taken advantage of a lot of undeserved privileges of birth. Similarly, if you wind up needing to compete on merit against a few hundred other people for a couple dozen highly desirable slots, the question of what happened to all those other people who got excluded from consideration for non-merit reasons sort of falls out of sight. Are We Dumbing?Clive Crook writes about "the dumbing of America": For the first time in decades, and probably ever, workers retiring from the US labor force will be better-educated on average (according to one measure anyway) than their much younger counterparts. Some 12 per cent of 60-64 year olds have a master's degree or better; less than 10 per cent of 30-34 year olds do. More generally, the decades-long rise in the educational quality of the labor force is coming to an end. This is important, because that rise has been one of the principal forces driving American economic growth. I'm not 100 percent sure this represents genuine "dumbing" since my guess would be that substantially more people are simply delaying acquisition of advanced degrees than was the case 30 years ago. Still, as Clive says even flat levels of educational attainment represent a pretty disturbing trend. On the one hand, it threatens America's future economic growth. On the other hand, the fact that the wage premium that accrues to college graduates keeps going up but the proportion of people going to college doesn't is a contributing factor to growing inequality. Ryan Avent calls for "investments in education, particularly those that improve affordability." That's important, of course, but it's also crucial to improve college preparation. Kids from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to be lagging far behind by the time they graduate from high school in a way that makes it difficult for any changes to higher education to help people catch up. The Agony of DefeatI'm on the road in Morgantown, West Virginia so I missed Gilbert Arenas' dramatic return in tonight's loss to the Bucks. Gilbert played well -- 17 points on reasonably efficient shooting in 20 minutes -- but precisely as one might have feared, the Wizards' Gil-free improved defense seems to have gone missing. April 3, 2008Is Ukraine Ready?Sameer Lalwani, blogging live from the NATO summit in Bucharest, raises another set of questions about the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine -- is it really a good candidate state? He cites some insights from Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves: Ilves went on to explain that countries attempting to wield the threat of internal upheavel, civil war or political collapse to leverage entrance into NATO would likely fall short or undermine their own case for membership. "Don't say you're owed anything" he argued. Rather, prospective countries needed to make the case on their own merits -- that they are on par with other admits and have made domestic reforms that warrant entrance. Overall, he argued that entrance needed to be sought for the sake of the country, for the citizens of the nation. Ukraine, as Sameer notes, is suffering from various sorts of ills that make it questionable at the moment as to whether or not bringing it into the alliance would be any kind of real asset. Meanwhile, we have President Bush arguing that NATO is not an anti-Russian alliance but Ukraine needs to be a member so it can fight Russia (or else perhaps robots) so there continues to be some underlying confusion among proponents of further expansion as to what they want to do. It's worth noting, however, that John McCain is a real outlier in terms of anti-Russian sentiments and seems to take the view that the proper role of the President is to go out of his way to cast all U.S. action in as an aggressively Russophobic light as possible, so things could get much worse. The Revolution Will Not Be TelevisedBut it seems that the Second Coming will be: In order to prepare for the imminent Second Coming—which Robertson believes will occur on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem according to biblical prophecy—he acquired METV (Middle East Television), a station then based in southern Lebanon that could broadcast into Israel. Straub was given marching orders to be ready to televise Christ’s return. CBN executives drew up a detailed plan to broadcast the event to every nation and in all languages. Straub wrote: “We even discussed how Jesus’ radiance might be too bright for the cameras and how we would have to make adjustments for that problem. Can you imagine telling Jesus, ‘Hey, Lord, please tone down your luminosity; we’re having a problem with contrast. You’re causing the picture to flare.’” Good thing that as long as the Republicans are in charge we don't need to worry about any nutty pastors getting political influence. Surge No FurtherCheck out Spencer Ackerman on how the Battle of Basra reveals the limits of what the surge has or can accomplish. More KagansThings like Joe Klein's treasonous call for fewer Kagans and more knowledge is the sort of irresponsible hysteria we've come to expect from the anti-American Left. As everyone knows, the main problem in Iraq (aside from MSM efforts to only report bad news in the hopes of encouraging attacks on our troops) has been in insufficient number of Kagans. If we could replace the entire military presence in Iraq with an Army of Kagans in a 20 Kagans for every 1,000 Iraqis ratio, then our problems would rapidly be solved. We need, in short, more Kagans, not fewer. And as much ignorance as possible which, of course, additional Kagans could also supply. The only thing standing between us and victory is the need to develop better cloning technology. OMG -- Democrats Attacking McCain!The 3AM conceit is nonsensical in this context, but good for Hillary Clinton, breaking stride with the general tenor of the Democratic campaign and going after John McCain: I will say, however, that I'd rather see Democrats attack McCain early on national security. McCain is very unpersuasive on economics, this is the weak point of his reputation with the national press corps, and Democrats have a lot of ex ante credibility on the issue. It's on security stuff where McCain has a glowing, but utterly undeserved, reputation that desperately needs some tarnishing. Still -- good for Clinton! CountercyclicalJon Chait finds Burger King CEO John Chidsey explaining why the bad economy is good for him -- "People who cannot afford to go to Applebee's, cannot afford to go to Chili's, we are the beneficiaries of that squeeze." I suppose the economy's really bad when takeout fast food joints start feeling the pain. Reliable Replacement WarheadSounds like a good idea, right? After all, it's got "reliable" right there in the name and who doesn't like reliability? The only problem is that developing a new nuclear weapon is incredibly counterproductive to all our important non-proliferation goals. Naturally, as Brian Beutler explains, the Bush administration just can't quit the idea. Tomorrow's Headlines TodayI wish John Nagl well in his quest to get the United States military to increase its commitment to having American soldiers serve as advisors to foreign militaries. Capacity-building in partnership with other states is likely to be just as important as traditional "blowing stuff up and killing people" (the cool kids call it "kinetic") operations in the future. But I also hope he has success because I can then start writing somewhat skeptical posts that involve "Train in Vain" references. For example, Nagl writes that "Based on American experiences in Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador and now in Iraq and Afghanistan, an advisory strategy can help the Iraqi Army and security forces beat Al Qaeda and protect their country." This has something of an assume a can opener air about it, but more to the point with regard to Iraq it's missing a big part of the picture, namely politics, motives, and goals. The U.S. military hasn't quite gotten around to crushing al-Qaeda yet, and it's not because our soldiers aren't trained. And of course what well-trained Iraqi security forces do is going to have a lot to do with what their leaders want them to do. As of last week, it seemed like what their leaders wanted them to do was to engage in internecine fighting with Shiite militias belonging to rival political parties. Training, in short, is all well and good, but its advocates sometime talk as if governance problems abroad are purely technical issues that will somehow melt away in the force of really excellent training. History and common sense tell us otherwise. The Republic of Vietnam government, for example, had legitimacy problems that well-meaning foreigners couldn't solve -- part of the problem, after all, was a sense that it was a tool of foreigners whereas its adversaries were authentically Vietnamese. More KagansKimberly Kagan out to prove that you can never have enough Kagans: "The U.S. should encourage the Iraqi government to defeat Iran's proxies and agents, and should provide the requisite assistance." As Marc Lynch observes defeating Iran's friends in Iraq would require the leading figures in Iraq's government to defeat themselves somehow. Of course the best way to have curtailed Iranian influence in Iraq would have been to not invade the country. But at this point, an Iraq where Iran has substantial influence is essentially inevitable and we may as well try to reconcile ourselves to that fact and figure out ways to deal with it. Alternatively, we got adopt the Joe Lieberman strategy and start fighting made-up organizations like "al-Qaeda in Iran." Sounds fun! The League of Extraordinary Thoughtlessness
I think the idea of creating a "democracies only" international organization has some promise. But I think the idea of creating, as John McCain has proposed, a League of Democracies that would purport to have the authority to authorize Iraq-style non-defensive wars when the U.N. Security Council declines to do so is a terrible idea. But beyond the merits of the idea, there's another problem as Matt Welch points out: [R]egardless of whatever Rauch, Welch or McCain might think about a 21st century League of Nations, the main point is that there is no way in hell anything remotely like this is happening any time in the next decade. After eight years of a cranky, go-it-alone White House that won re-election in part by bashing limp-wristed Euro-weenies, the chances of another interventionist Republican winning enough good faith among grumbly allies to create a brand spanking new America-defined Club of Winners are something approaching zero. Quite so. McCain's habit of putting this at the center of his foreign policy agenda reveals not just poor strategic thinking on the underlying merits of the concept, but an extraordinary detachment from the realities of the contemporary world. The idea that Canada and France and Brazil and India and South Korea are all just chomping at the bit to join a new McCain-initiated, America-led war club is ludicrous and anyone who thought about it for five minutes could see that. The Possible and the Actual
I think Reihan Salam makes the interesting point here that in many ways Hillary Clinton's coalition of working class whites and Latinos is actually more novel than Barack Obama's "McGovern coalition" of bien pensant white liberals and black people. That said, this seems off-base to me: Can we imagine, say, a right-of-center Mexican American candidate effectively arguing that some form of moderate immigration restriction will prove beneficial to Mexican Americans? Yes. Now of course we can "imagine" that in some sense. And, indeed, the evidence suggests that a very large proportion of the people whose interests are actually harmed by large levels of immigration are recent immigrants or the children of recent immigrants. But this just underscores the extent to which anti-immigration sentiment is not, in practice, driven by a rational response to economic problems. The evidence suggests that high levels of immigration do indeed have a deleterious effect on the wages of Americans who lack a high-school diploma. But the locus of anti-immigration political mobilization isn't among America's dropout community, it's among middle class people who live in areas that are newly experiencing large levels of immigration. It is, in other words, primarily driven by cultural anxieties. And so far as that goes, that's fine. But though, as Reihan says, highly assimilated persons with some Spanish-speaking ancestors (like me!) aren't going to be amenable to la Raza ideology, we also aren't going to be amenable to a politics of centered around cultural panic over Spanish language signs. Meanwhile, it's worth saying that whatever the short-range politics of the immigration issue, there's some good reason to believe that if restrictionists do succeed in substantially reducing the flow of immigrants, the main long-term impact would be a renaissance of redistributionist politics. Photo by Flickr user melanzane1013 used under a Creative Commons license Questions for PetraeusDavid Corn rounds up some expert opinion on the questions David Petraeus ought to be asked in his congressional testimony next week. It's good stuff. I would add, though, that the whole idea of having a huge political circus centered around testimony from the theater commander is pretty bad. There's no genuine informational content to this sort of thing, and it's not really appropriate for someone in Petraeus' job to be serving as a press spokesman for administration policy. The White House should send someone with a political appointment to defend their policy on the Hill, this isn't the role of career military professionals. New Media and the Election PanelIf you happen to be in Morgantown, West Virginia tonight (and why wouldn't you be?), you should come check out the star-studded panel discussion I'll be appearing on tonight -- Matt Yglesias! Ross Douthat! Terry Samuel! Abbi Taton! Ana Marie Cox! Philip de Velis! Mike Tomasky! It'll be a not-to-be-missed discussion of new media and the election. The Dating Game
Lots of talk on the blogs about Richard Florida's map of where the single people are and its finding that there's a surplus of single men in most west coast cities, and a surplus of single women (though less uniformly) in most northeastern and midwestern cities. Whenever I see discussion of this kind of thing, it always strikes me that it's necessary to remind people that this kind of data is probably too crude to have implications for what "singles" life is like in one place or another. The issue is that dating in the real world tends to be pretty circumscribed by socioeconomic characteristics. Insofar as a large number of men from Mexico may have migrated to Southern California to work in construction while leaving their wives behind in the old country, a young Smith grad isn't all that likely to start up a relationship with them if she moves to San Diego. Miami's excess of single women may be driven by widows, since women tend to live longer than men, and in some cities the gender balance is going to be skewed by the heavy incarceration rates of underclass men. None of this, however, has much of anything to do with the dating prospects of Florida's "creative class" professionals. 100 YearsIt seems to me that John McCain's campaign doth protest far too much when they whine about being portrayed as the ticket that wants the war in Iraq to last for 100 years. Of course John McCain would prefer the war to magically end ASAP and then move into his vision for 100 years of peaceful occupation. But as Joe Klein says that vision "betrays a fairly acute lack of knowledge about both Iraq and Islam." Meanwhile, McCain has made it clear that he believes the war in Iraq ought to continue indefinitely. He would prefer that the fighting end sooner rather than later, but he has no intention of bringing it to an end nor does he see any limit in terms of time spent or resources expended beyond which it would make sense to end the war. Since McCain can't serve in office for any more than eight years, he clearly can't commit the country to 100 years of continued fighting in Iraq. A McCain administration would mean not 100 more years of war in Iraq, but 8 more years followed by a new President taking office. But if McCain lived forever and stayed in office forever, the war would continue forever -- he doesn't want it to continue forever, but he does regard all realistic means of ending it as unacceptable. That means endless war. Defending BushIt's rare that I have the opportunity, but here goes -- Mark Krikorian's got an anti-Bush screed up on the Corner that doesn't even involve immigration: Croatia and Albania are going to join NATO. So now an attack on Albania will be an act of war against the United States. Can someone explain to me how this is in our national interest? I have three sons myself, and I can't spare any of them to die defending one pissant Balkan dump against another pissant Balkan dump. The obvious starting point of analysis here is that the odds of any American troops dying in a war for the defense of Albania are vanishingly small. And that's the point. Albania is a small and weak country that one could imagine some neighbor maybe trying to push around with military force. But nobody's going to want to take on NATO over some beef with Albania. Meanwhile, over the longer term the goal would be to bring the entire Balkans into a common security architecture that could help ensure the peace among all of them. Recall that NATO's great achievement in the 1940s and 50s wasn't just that it helped face down the Soviets. That was important, of course, but in many ways equally important was that it allowed the various countries of Western Europe to rebuild their militaries without those militaries appearing threatening to other European countries. Fun TimesHere's a game for the immigrant-hater in your family, complete with crude and offensive stereotypes. If You Don't Build It, They Will Take Another RouteWhat happened when Washington, DC built a new baseball stadium without "adequate" parking for all the fans to drive their cares to the game? Well, baseball fans decided to When you mandate vast acres of un-priced or underpriced parking, that leads to lots of driving. But the space used up by all that parking is still a real resource -- nothing comes "for free." When you don't make those mandates, the world doesn't end and people don't just spend eternity driving in circles looking for spaces. Instead, a combination of market-priced parking and alternatives to driving can meet people's needs. Heritage
It seems that April is Confederate Heritage month. Why one would want to celebrate a heritage of violent rebellion against a democratically elected government in order to perpetuate a system of chattel slavery is a bit hard for me to say. When I was growing up in New York City, for example, I don't remember any mass campaigns to celebrate the 1863 draft riots as the city's finest hour. The states of the Old Confederacy are hardly unique in that elements of their historical heritage involve discreditable treatment of African-Americans. But they do seem unusual in their insistence on celebrating these historical episodes and in insisting that portraying them in a positive light is integral to a proper understanding of their local identity. Even odder, as best I can tell these days (it was different in the past) most of the folks who like to wave the Confederate flag are perfectly genuine when they get offended that others see them as waving a banner of violent white supremacist ideology. But if that's not the ideology you mean to associate with, then why not drop the flag and adopt some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways? April 4, 2008The TrackThey asked us last night to offer election predictions, which I was hesitant to do because I'm always wrong. That said, I can see about a million ways in which Barack Obama is vulnerable and a million ways advantages John McCain has. But on another level, it's just really difficult for me to imagine the incumbent party holding onto power in the face of an unpopular war and a bad economy. Count the fact that 81 percent of voters think the country is on the wrong track as further evidence along those lines. Given the prevailing mood, it seems obvious that the average voter is going to want to vote for a candidate who can credibly promise that he'll pursue substantially different policies from those of George W. Bush. But McCain has promised to follow Bush on Iraq, promised to follow Bush on taxes, promised to follow Bush on housing issues, and shows no sign whatsoever of even understanding why people are frustrated with Bush. So how's he going to win? The Era of Big GovernmentMore poll stuff: More broadly, 43 percent of those surveyed said they would prefer a larger government that provided more services, which is tied for the highest such number since The Times and CBS News began asking the question in 1991. But an identical 43 percent said they wanted a smaller government that provided fewer services. So the numbers are tied, but focus on the trend. Americans are notoriously hostile to big government in the abstract but tend in practice to favor expanded government services when you get down to specific examples. Parity on the abstract question is huge, and the change over time is striking. But of course you can be riding high in 1991 and then the mood shifts by 1993. Immigration and RedistributionWhy is it that, as I said yesterday, restricting the flow of immigrants would give a boost to redistributionist politics? Here's the issue. Suppose I propose a measure that would reduce the well-being of the highest-income third of Americans but increase the well-being of the lowest-income third of Americans. Well, I'm going to have trouble getting anywhere with this proposal because the top third have way more political influence than the bottom third. There are a whole series of reasons why the top third's influence is greater -- money in politics, higher turnout on election day, more social capital, etc. -- but one reason is that many people at the bottom of the income spectrum are immigrants who can't vote. Right now, in other words, the median voter's income is substantially higher than the median person's income. If we totally cut off immigration, that would still be the case, but over time the gap would get smaller so a political agenda centered around bolstering the incomes of low-income people would grow more viable. That's not, I think, an adequate reason to favor cutting-off immigration but it is one reason why savvy conservatives might have some doubts about the wisdom of the restrictionist agenda. Weird Iraq Fact of the DayDid you know that many Badr Brigade members are actually drawing pensions from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps? Good things our troops are fighting, dying, and killing to help them consolidate their control over Iraq. The Bob Barr EraLooks like former congressman Bob Barr is going to get in the race as a Libertarian. I think it's safe to say that he won't be elected president. That said, I think there will probably be a bunch of voters who don't much like the McCain Perpetual War agenda but who also think that at the end of the day Barack Obama's a liberal and they're not not. In theory, at least, there's room for a sort of John Anderson figure and you could see Barr playing that role. The Snitchin' CandidateEverything about this John McCain ad is bizarre, from the headless, anonymous rock star to the wisps of smoke to the fact that it goes out of its way to mention that McCain's middle name is "Sidney" to the fact that the core of the ad is an anecdote about how McCain learned the importance of ratting out your friends at a tony boarding school. But let's just focus on McCain's impressive consistency. His example of baseball greatness is Ted Williams. A great player, to be sure. But also the only major star named after Teddy Roosevelt, and a guy with a much more impressive military record than your other major athletes. Basically, all McCain cares about is martial glory, even when he's ostensibly talking about baseball. Anyways, don't candidates who attended fancy prep schools normally try to downplay that sort of thing? Everyone in America, after all, went to school and almost all of them are going to remember that they didn't go to a school with an "honor code." Dual TrackAnother thought on the trouble for John McCain posed by polls showing 80+ percent of people thinking the country's on the wrong track is that, of course, McCain desperately needs the support of the 15-25 percent of dead-enders who think Bush is a good president. And it's just very difficult to assemble a political coalition that's deeply divided on an issue like that. It's a bit like John Kerry trying to put together a coalition where most of his voters were against the Iraq War, without actually running an anti-war campaign. In other words, even if McCain does come up with a better way of separating himself from Bush than selling himself as the candidate of Ted Williams and an anonymous rock star, there's still bound to be an irreducibly pro-Bush element at the very heart of his political coalition. The Security MessageDemocracy Corps says the following message sells well: We cannot afford more of the reckless, extreme national security policies of the Bush years that lost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq. But John McCain was Bush's biggest supporter on Iraq and says he is willing to keep our troops there for 100 years. I would strengthen America's security by bringing home our troops from Iraq during 2009, doing what we need to win in Afghanistan, rebuilding our alliances, and pursuing a new alternative energy policy, including alternative sources, to reduce our dependence on oil from dangerous regimes. Reckless, extreme, I like it. They also say that a "priorities message" focused on the idea that we're wasting money and so forth in Iraq and need to take care of problems at home does pretty well, but that the security message has much more resonance especially among independents. I like it. An awful lot of John McCain's national security "cred" is pure bluff, people understand that an honorable military record plus lunatic ideas about foreign policy doesn't equal security for America. GeeksKevin Drum was stunned into incredulity by this snippet of interview with Karl Rove: What's the biggest misconception about your role in the Bush White House? I don't know about Rove in particular, but I've been consistently surprised since moving to DC of the extent to which the true policy geeks and the utterly cynical political operatives often really are the same people. These are the folks who while away their days ginning up dozens of bite-sized policy initiatives and selling them around to politicians. They're the ones who give you your targeted tax credits, and they're also the ones who are helping lobbyists sneak little tidbits in here and there. Hard-core ideologues often don't care that much about the details, because geeking out over the details means you're talking about incremental change. But very practical people trying to win elections or do favors for key interest groups need to care about the details. As a result, to be an effective cynic, you really sort of need to be a geek. "Academics"It seems quite plausible to conjecture that a majority of academics in America are for Barack Obama, but does Michael Barone really expect people to believe that academics comprise the bulk of Obama's supporters? If that's right, then how does Barone explain Obama's lead in the polls? Unless I'm mistaken, academics are a pretty small slice of the overall American demographic pie. It's all pretty bizarre. Everyone tells me that once upon a time Barone was a valuable source of information about American politics. Close in Mississippi?The idea that Mississippi would be a leans McCain state rather than a solid McCain state in the event of Barack Obama being the Democratic nominee seems to me to be based on an ambiguity in the idea of leaning. I imagine that with Obama as the nominee, you'll see him get an incredible performance from Mississippi's black population, and because that population is so large the result would probably be tighter than the 60-40 split that John Kerry got. So maybe it'll "lean" McCain and wind up as only a 55-45 state or something. But there's just no way that Obama will ever win Mississippi. The southern states with larger black populations just have more racially polarized voting. At the end of the day, most Mississippians are white, they're not going to let Obama win the state, and you can take that to the bank. Small City Urbanism
I sometimes get the sense that people think the urbanist agenda is all about trying to turn the entire United States into Manhattan, or else that there's no appreciation of the fact that there's a middle ground between never driving a car and driving many dozens of miles every day. But a place like Morgantown -- a small city with a cute historic downtown adjacent to a college campus -- is a great example of the applications of urbanist thinking to other kinds of places. Basically, out here most grownup people are going to rely on cars for a lot of things. But still, the downtown area is very walkable. And it includes some apartment buildings with ground floor retail. So maybe we could turn some of the existing open-air parking facilities into additional apartment buildings with ground floor retail. That would mean more people would live downtown and at least some of their excursions would take place on foot. And then parking downtown would be somewhat costlier, so some proportion of trips that initiate close to downtown might become bike rides or long walks or car pool ventures rather than one person in a car. Meanwhile, the Waterfront Place Hotel is a bit outside downtown, but it's very much within walking distance. Except the hotel's entrance has been constructed in a highly anti-urbanist manner that both obscures the fact that it's actually close to downtown and also makes it inconvenient to walk for non-distance reasons. Ideally, the whole project would have been undertaken with a different mentality, but something as simple as building a sidewalk that alongside the hotel's driveway would go a long way to improving things. At any rate, to make a long story short, America is full of small cities that won't -- and shouldn't -- ever transform into giant metropolises where everyone gets around on subways. But these are the kind of places where better planning and land use policies would help the cities in question maximize their assets and increase the sustainability of the enterprise without radically altering the character of the place or the lifestyle of the people who live there. Small town America, after all, long predates the era of universal car ownership. Photo by Flickr user Timmenzies used under a Creative Commons license McCain's Lobbyist PalsHere's a cool interactive graphic from Media Matters highlighting John McCain's extensive ties to corporate lobbyists. What they fail to mention is that since everyone knows McCain is a reformer, he deserves a free pass on everything related to his relationships with lobbyists. After all, what matters is sticking with pre-set narratives, not offering new information. The Beltway BubbleAs the national economy runs into serious trouble, it seems that the Washington region is experiencing only a relatively small slowdown in our local job situation. On some level -- good for us! But still, it's striking how much of a disconnect there is not just between the perceptions of Beltway folks and realities in the country, but actual reality in the DC area and the rest of the country. The general media and political climate would probably be quite different if the places where politicos live were feeling a bit more of the pain. Abandoned BuildingsAs seen on The Wire or perhaps in an economically depressed urban neighborhood near you, one of the most problematic aspects of urban blight concerns abandoned buildings -- structures who nobody owns because nobody wants to pay the taxes on them. They fall into disrepair, make the block look ugly, become havens for dubious activities or vermin, and it's all generally a bad scene. And it now seems that some banks have decided they'd rather abandoned foreclosed properties in high-foreclosure areas rather than take on ownership (and tax obligations) of a property they won't be able to sell. One would expect to see the most of this sort of thing these days not in big cities, but in the sprawling exurban boomtowns where most of the truly excessive property building seems to have happened. It's more evidence, in other words, for the Christopher Leinberger new suburban slum thesis. Getting the Band Back TogetherAccording to Marc Ambinder, Mitt Romney is organizing a campaign reunion where he'll try to urge his financial backers to give cash to John McCain. Marc also reports that the Beach Boys are involved. No word on whether they'll be doing a rendition of "Bomb Iran." The Blogging Panel Will Be BloggedBy John Cole. One thing that occurred to me after my visit to WVU is that I, like most DC writers, have repeated the idea that there's "unprecedented interest in this election" so many times that I've forgotten that there actually is unprecedented interest in this election and a lot more people -- especially young people and students -- are doing things like showing up at panel discussions to learn more about the campaign than I remember from the 2004 or 2000 cycles. MLK's RadicalismKai Wright has an excellent piece on the forgotten radicalism of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- always a point worth making in a day and age when conservatives would like you to think they would have been standing right beside King when he marched on Washington. That said, to some extent I think the creation of the King Myth and the displacement of the more authentic radical King is a good thing. A country doesn't get official national hero types without mythologizing and sanitizing them to a large extent, and it's a good thing, at the end of the day, that King has moved into national hero status. That said, check out King preaching on Vietnam: That's some strong medicine. The Biedrins FactorDoes anyone out there who's seen more Golden State games this season then I have no why Andris Biedrins only plays 26.6 minutes per game. It seems to me that if I had a good young big man on my roster and no backup center, that I'd give him some more burn than that. After all, the Warriors score more points while giving up fewer points when Biedrins is playing and that whole "better offense and better defense" thing is usually what you're looking for in a player. The Best Years of My LifeHolly Yeager's article on John McCain's lousy oratorical skills is spot-on, but watching this sleep-inducing clip, I'm focusing on something else: "Memory often accords our high school years the distinction of being among the happiest of our lives." Does it? I thought people usually hated high school. Am I wrong? Predictions are Hard, Especially About the FutureVia Tyler Cowen, some 1968 predictions about life in 2008. Some predictions are pretty good, but as Tyler observes there was a marked tendency of mid-century prognosticators who lived through the rise of the car and the jet to predict ever-increasing gains in transportation technology: The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. [...] Private cars are banned inside most city cores. Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public from one location to another. [...] Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air, make the trip between modemixer and central city in 10 to 15 minutes. A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents. For less well-heeled travelers there are SST and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers at speeds up to 4,000 mph. Short trips— between cities less than 1,000 mi. apart—are handled by slower jumbo jets. This is, needless to say, all wrong. Our cars are nicer in many respects than the cars of 40 years ago but in general getting around is slower because traffic is much worse and our rail infrastructure is pathetic. Jet travel has become cheaper and more widespread, but the basic technology hasn't really improved (indeed, it's regressed since the end of the Concorde) and the quality of the air travel experience has declined. I sometimes wonder about this with regard to computers. We live in a time of astounding advances in information technology, so the general assumption is that these advances will continue (until, of course, the computers become self-aware and rebel) apace. But people a few decades ago lived in a time of astounding advances in transportation technology, and generally assumed that those advances would continue forever. The Rove Biography TourSome provocative indications that Karl Rove may be the architect of the McCain biography tour. Perhaps time will prove me wrong, but this seems like a Rovian too clever by half gambit along the lines of the "let's spend the end of the campaign in California!" move that would have cost Bush the White House had Teresa LePore designed the Palm Beach County ballots differently. Today we're so far from Election Day that probably nothing McCain does really matters, but the current strategy just stands no chance of prevailing in the face of a sour, anti-Republican mood in the country. It's weird, and it just re-enforces the reality that McCain doesn't have any ideas about how to fix the country's problems beyond a sense that he deserves to be President. My First ReviewSomewhat ironically, what I believe to be the first Heads in the Sand review is a James Kirchick piece in the City Journal. Not surprisingly, he's unconvinced by my arguments! I don't think it would make sense to respond in great detail, but one issue he raises does point to an issue worth elucidating: He echoes Osama bin Laden when he argues that Islamist anger against the West is a justified response to foreign powers that “occupy Muslim land.” This is a bold assertion, and yet Yglesias doesn’t care to explore why Iran and Syria—countries where foreign soldiers haven’t set foot for decades—continue to be the two most active state sponsors of international terrorism. I'm not quite sure why he's playing dumb here, but the crux of the disagreement is that I think the appropriate response to 9/11 is for the United States to engage the various instruments of American power against al-Qaeda. Iran and Syria have their own reasons of state for providing support to Hezbollah, thus earning the designation "the two most active state sponsors of international terrorism." But in terms of al-Qaeda this is all neither here nor there -- both Syria and Iran have, at various times, indicated an interest in collaborating with the United States against al-Qaeda. Kirchick, following the prevailing conventional wisdom on the right, thinks we should eschew a narrow, focused, and efficacious assault on al-Qaeda in favor of a vaguely defined "war on terror" that includes sundry Muslims Behaving Badly including Saddam Hussein, the Assads, the Iranian, Hamas, Hezbollah, and whoever else you like. Which is fine if you think the past several years worth of blundering around have been a good idea and you're eager to see the United States follow John McCain's lead and start thrashing harder. But I don't think this constitutes a reasonable response to 9/11 or a sensible means of dealing with al-Qaeda. What's more, I think most of the hawks know that it doesn't make sense to most people, which is why they insist on using a lot of terminological funny business to obscure the move away from al-Qaeda and toward a wide variety of not-really-related other adversaries. Teaching and Prestige
One big problem with trying to turn primary and secondary teaching into a "prestige" profession is that there are just so damn many teachers -- over 3.2 million in public schools plus about 470,000 additional ones in private schools. That's a lot of people -- several percent worth of the country's total labor force. Teaching is already a somewhat prestigious profession that only educated people can do, and given the sheer numbers of people involved, it's unlikely to be feasible to transform it into something radically more prestigious or "elite" than it currently is. But good teachers matter! So what's to be done? Well, we should definitely work on changing elements of our current system that tend to leave the kids who are most in need without access to the best teachers available. And we also need to reform the certification process so that the qualifications needed to become a teacher are more in line with evidence about what's actually needed to teach effectively. But we also need systems and curricula that can work when implemented by what amounts to a mass labor force of teachers. It's misleading to look at smallish programs like Teach for America and then start dreaming of what things might be like if that experience could be universalized -- it just can't be. Photo by Flickr user iboy daniel used under a Creative Commons license Surprised by the HornetsJ.A. Adande correctly notes that "Coach of the Year often is a way to cover up bad predictions" and this will likely redound to the benefit of New Orleans coach Byron Scott since the team is doing better than expected. It's worth asking, though, if anything especially surprising happened. When you get right down to it -- not really. They didn't make any offseason moves that turned out much better than expected, they haven't seen a rookie turn out to be a great contributor, and they haven't seen an unheralded guy emerge into greatness. Chris Paul was a great player last season and he's even better this season, but that's really what you expect from a young player. The main difference, it seems to me, is this -- thus far Paul has missed two games over the course of the season, whereas last year he missed 18. David West has missed six games this season, whereas last season he missed 30. Tyson Chandler has missed three games, but last season he missed nine. It's hard to win the games when your best players don't play, especially when you're a team with a bad bench. Have those players available more, and the team does better. New Orleans' success wasn't widely predicted (though there were exceptions) since they didn't do so well last year, don't have a distinguished pedigree, and didn't do anything interesting in the off-season. But their success has mostly amounted to everyone doing what they did last year but being injured less. April 5, 2008The Congressional DivideWhat, if anything, characterizes the split between the members of congress backing Clinton and those backing Obama? I think Mark Schmitt has it about right: With the elected officials who are superdelegates now split evenly between Obama and Clinton, it seems that there are now two congressional parties, defined not by ideology but by attitude: On one side, older liberals like Ted Kennedy joined with those elected more recently who have the combativeness necessary in the Bush years; on the other side, a middle-generation elected and brought up under the assumptions of the '80s and '90, very roughly speaking. Perhaps not too surprisingly, Clinton seems to be strongest among people who saw their major political ascent occur during the period of her husband's presidency. Among both the newer cohort of Democrats, and the old-school folks who were in town long before Bill Clinton, she has less appeal. As Mark says, one interesting thing about this divide is that though it's very heated at the moment, there's relatively little substance to it and therefore good reason to think the congressional party will be reasonably unified irrespective of the election results. That's a real contrast to a period when you had much deeper and more meaningful intra-party ideological divides. Holding PatternThe situation in Zimbabwe seems to be stuck in neutral, with ZANU-PF leadership seemingly stalling and looking for a way to hold on to power. One would hope that, at this point, some good might come of the controversial "engagement" approach taken by South Africa and others where African heads of state might indicate to Mugabe that a further crackdown at this point would be unacceptable. Super!Given the District of Columbia's large African-American population and the high educational attainment among DC whites, it's no surprise that Barack Obama won a crushing victory in the DC primaries, but she's doing well with our superdelegates. Time for Someone to GoI got an email from the Change to Win union federation yesterday saying "Mark Penn Has to Go." And Ezra Klein titled a post "Time for Mark Penn to Go." The issue is Penn's meeting with Colombian government officials to help push a trade agreement through congress at the very time when his boss, Hillary Clinton, is trying to portray herself as a trade skeptic. The mighty Ambinder remarked that "One of the toughest tasks for a political journalist these days is to try and find someone in Clinton world who is willing to defend Mr. Penn or his sense of political optics." Well, I would think it's easy enough to find someone -- Hillary Clinton who's stuck with Penn through thick and thin. And in some ways, I admire her for it. She knows perfectly well that a great many influential people in left-of-center circles don't like Penn, including many people in her inner circle. But she sincerely believes, and has believed for years, that Penn's advice about political strategies is immensely valuable. That's why he was an important strategist in the later years of the Clinton administration, that's why he was the chief architect of her Senate campaign, and that's why he's been one of the main architects of her Presidential bid. There's no sense in acting like he's some guy who for some crazy reason seems to keep popping up near Hillary Clinton -- they're not identical, but close association with Penn and Penn's approach is part of who she is. So if it's time for anyone to go, I think it's time for her to go. And, of course, I do think it's time for her to go. And Penn probably realizes that at this point nothing he does or doesn't do is going to put her in the White House so he might as well start transitioning back to his real job. Hence meeting with the Colombians. Fear the ReturnIn response to the bad jobs news, John McCain promises to continue George W. Bush's policies and warns that "Democrats will continue to advance their anti-growth agenda." But of course it's easy to recall, and very easy to show with a graph that job performance was much, much, much better when the Democrats were in charge. The period of job growth under Bush was slower growth than the Clinton-era growth period. And on top of that, the Clinton years were years of basically uninterrupted job growth, whereas the Bush administration has seen two separate employment downturns. Under the circumstances, the case for continuing with Bush's policies seems like a bad idea -- indeed, as John McCain argued back in 2001, Bush's policies were a bad idea in the first place. But now McCain loves those policies and wants to continue them because, basically, all he cares about is acquiring power so he can start more wars and he's decided that the Tax Cut Gospel is his best chance. The Poverty of Cabinet AppointmentsI think we should be doing more to ameliorate poverty in America, but I don't really think appointing a cabinet-level poverty-fighting guy would accomplish much to that end. The country badly needs sensible energy policies, but merely having a Department of Energy doesn't accomplish that, any more than the Department of Transportation's existence necessitates sound transportation policy. To fight poverty effectively, you need effective poverty-fighting policies -- the precise details of the org chart don't really matter, it's not the kind of thing where the ins-and-outs of the chain of command are going to have a huge impact. If a new cabinet member is the symbolic manifestation of a substantive policy shift, then great. But if it's a symbolic substitute for really changing anything, then who needs it. Cabinet status isn't a magic powder that solves problems on its own. No Dementia for MeVia Jacob Levy, I learn that "Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests." Excellent. I drink a lot of coffee. The Colbert BumpLooks like there's a statistically significant increase in campaign donations associated with a Democratic member of congress appearing on The Colbert Report. Republicans, however, don't accomplish anything by going on the show. Correcting John McCainJohn McCain's latest big foreign policy speech was, bizarrely, reported as him positioning himself as more moderate than George W. Bush. Talking to rightwing radio, though, McCain is singing a different tune, emphasizing that "no one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have." He goes on to explain that "there are many national security issues that I have strongly supported the president and steadfastly so." In some respects, though, McCain has been a less-than-steadfast supporter of Bush. He, for example, spent most of 1999 and 2000 criticizing Bush for being unwilling to adopt a doctrine of rogue state rollback. Back in 2002 while Bush was unwilling to publicly argue for invading Iraq, McCain was doing it. And while Bush was full of talk about disarmament, McCain was clear from the start that he would settle only for regime change. McCain spent a lot of time criticizing Bush for not sending enough Americans over to Iraq to be killed, and has also been known to criticize Bush for insufficient saber-rattling directed at such countries as Iran, Syria, and Russia. So, really, it's not fair to say that McCain is just like Bush -- he's been a much more consistent proponent of the worst policies associated with the Bush administration. Good QuestionBarack Obama has a good question: Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also wants a quick end to the war. On Friday, he said: ""We still don't have a good answer to the question posed by Sen. (John) Warner the last time Gen. Petraeus appeared: How has this effort in Iraq made us safer and how do we expect it will make us safer in the long run?" Matt Stoller observes, however, that Democrats are hardly on the same page over this and many are moving with worse framing. At the end of the day, however, though the tactical ins-and-outs of the surge are interesting in an academic sense, they're only really relevant if you agree to ignore the strategic issues that Obama is raising. |
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