Solomon Isaacs!

Movin' out

2005-06-13T23:15:00.000-04:00

I'm off to a new location, although I'll keep this around for a bit...probably no one chomping at the big to snare solomonisaacs.blogspot.com. Big hope for the new address, a return to frequency, an expansion of interests, mo' bells and whistles, who knows? Find it Here:

http://www.arbaker.typepad.com/

Tierney at it again

2005-05-15T01:33:00.000-04:00

John Tierney continued his spate of columns arguing for Social Security privatization Saturday. Having already perpetuated myths about Chile's dreadful tangle with privatization, this time he turned to spreading some common misconceptions about Social Security's trust funds. Tierney makes a common, if disingenous plea, privatization is the only way we can keep the trust funds from being spent...since no one can control Congress' spending urges, we should protect ourselves by putting the money where they can't get it--in personal accounts.

Poulenc blogging

2005-04-27T22:17:00.000-04:00

New favorite things...the short piano works of Francis Poulenc, specifically, this recording by Gabriel Tacchino. If you only know the choral pieces (as I did), the piano pieces are a wonderful distillation of everything that makes that work so distinctive: the humor, the range of colors and tones wrung from spare harmonies. But the piano pieces have something more--a deep, inviting warmth. This Poulenc, personal, ironic, passionate, should be enough to silence anyone who has acccused him of being cold and mechanistic. The recording itself (while I don't have anything to compare it to as yet) is quite fine as well. Tacchino has the sort of light, nimble touch that immediately puts a smile on your face, but when the time comes, he doesn't hesitate to to extract every last drop of knowing humanity out of these simple, yet worldly little essays.

You got me....

2005-04-25T23:54:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum asks the million dollar question today: why has Bush gone and blown all his political capital on the loser Social Security debate? Its a question that will linger long after this whole thing has blown over, and, indeed, would probably already be hailed as one of the great political swan dives of our time if the press, public, not to mention liberals didn't accord Bush a sort of super-human political infalliability.

But what has been the source of that perception of infalliability so far? Three things: a willingness to push a lowest common demoninator popular sentiment, no matter what the cost in lies and red ink; a right wing machine that only has its (tiny) centrist wing to lose; and a strong coalition of business interests willing to pony up the cash. Unfortunately for G2, the Social Security push is missing two of those things in a major way: its popularity with the public is simply not very resilient (something the pollsters really should have told him in December) and there are a slew more Republicans than just those stuck up Northeasterners that want nothing to do with gutting the program a large number of their constituents rely on.

But that still begs the question: why did he do it? At this point, my guess has got to be sheer unbridled ignorance of the situation. Someone pitched this to Bush, Rove, whoever, as an easy issue with broad appeal. They needed a big domestic issue for the second term because they didn't have anything left to stay relevant, and, as we have seen time and again in this White House, once a decision is made, backtracking on it becomes a form heresy.

So that's it? They didn't have anything better to do and privatization gained some traction? In part, I think it may be just that simple. The other component is the disconnect between the logic of the Washington think tank world, that has been training very smart people to like privatization for 20 plus years, and the rest of the country. The logic of privatization is, quite simply, very attractive to a large number of people in power because they have been learning it for a long time now. The effect of this groupthink, and how out of step it is with popular opinion is not necessarily obvious, but it should not be underestimated. This is the conservative movement catching up with itself, as expected.

Abortion trickery

2005-04-21T12:01:00.000-04:00

No good very bad Brooks today; and a nice post from Ed Kilgore with all the grisly details on the 10-car logic pile-up contained therein.

Of the many sleights of hand Brooks has developed to excuse the excesses of the Christian right, perhaps my personal favorite is the "Christian right as a justified abusive spouse" tack, on view here. Basically: all the bullying, Constitution bashing, intolerance, disregard for the rule of law and other bad behavior that comes out of the right is not pretty but, well, liberals left them no other choice, i.e., "I don't want to hurt you, but you just make me so mad!"

War of the culture persuasion

2005-04-15T23:43:00.000-04:00

Well, let me come out of hibernation for a moment to comment on the recent back and forth regarding whether Dems should "take on" the entertainment industry. Ed Kilgore and others favor this, while Matt Yglesias has been an outspoken opponent.

I agree with a little of both. I certainly don't want to see more Joe Lieberman posturing, as Matt fears--this is merely a small scale version of the Dems' general misconseption about the value of aping Republican positions and rhetoric. It will pay off for a few individual politicians, maybe, but it horrifies the base and it has no relationship to a larger liberal vision.

That said, there is another route for Democrats beyond empty moralizing and fundamentalist pandering. And one they already instinctively sympathize with. As many have pointed out, the "crap culture breeds teen sociopaths" canard doesn't actually resonate with people, becuase they know its not very true beyond some research that is inconclusive at best, impossible at worst.

So why are all these red staters up in arms against culture? What's the seed of truth in their anger beyond all the trumped up political hobbyhorses about homosexuality and promiscuity and talking sponges? It's the fact that mainstream culture is for the most part, actually, well, crap.

And PS, this is not news to liberals. The great swath of America that is the target of the culture warriors doesn't lie somewhere to the left of Rush Limbaugh and the 700 club, but squarely between those charlatans and your friends who haven't turned on the radio except to listen to NPR in the last decade.

I'm not saying there's any hope of an alliance between these two extremes that care deeply about the middle 80 percent, but that these struggles are, in some sense, the same. The only difference is that liberals are refusing to fight right now.

This isn't about stealing Pat Robertson's market share. It's about reclaiming the government-culture intersection that liberals used to care deeply about, but have been running scared from for decades now. It says that the culture that makes this a country worth living in shouldn't always have to submit to the whims of profit, and that the government is the right actor to take up the slack.

Now, this obviously isn't some magic key to winning elections in the near term, but its the long term work that needs to be done. Government has never divorced itself from culture, yet liberals, frightened by the costs of the 1990s culture wars, have decided they can get along without engaging in that debate. And it is part and parcel of the cut your losses til you have nothing left mentality that is so detrimental to liberalism today.

Alterman

2005-02-15T23:32:00.000-05:00

Jeez. It's been a long time, huh...well, to get started, Eric Alterman is on the warpath about a column by Cathy Young the other week that insinuated he was an anti-semite (of the self hating Jew sort). Good for him. The Boston Globe should be doing better, for humanity's sake. Here's the email I wrote to their Editorial page editor, Alterman has all the contact info listed, you should send something too...

From: "Alex Baker" Add Address to Address Book
To: n_king@globe.com
Cc: whatliberalmedia@aol.com
Date: 02/15/2005 11:24 PM
Subject: RE: Cathy Young column

Dear Mr. King,

I would like to add my voice to what I am sure is already a chorus
disapproving of Cathy Young's column "When Jews Wax Anri-Semitic". If the
Globe is to maintain its credibility, I think it must deem Young's column
outside the bounds of civil public discourse.

The label of anti-semitism is a serious and incendiary charge. Applying it
to figures with public reputations, academic, political or otherwise, is a
heavy business and should rightfully lead to serious damage to a public
figure's credibility and standing. So the notion that Eric Alterman, a
leading public intellectual, a prominent Jewish writer and speaker, a
major voice in debates over U.S. policy in the Middle East and towards
Israel, should have the label of anti-semitism attached to him is,
frankly, perverse.

Anyone is welcome to disagree with Alterman's views about Israel, about
the peace process, or about his refusal to condemn the incident with the
Muslim group and the Auschwitz memorial. But Young is not arguing with
Alterman. She doesn't like his views about foreign policy so she levels an
accusation meant to discredit and humiliate him in the hope that it does
the job instead. This is character assassination by insinuation, and if
our media institutions are to mean anything, it should be kept in the
tabloids and on the Internet where it belongs.

Publishing that column cheapened your newspaper's standards, cheapened the
seriousness of bigotry towards Jews, and cheapened the public discourse. I
do hope you can find a way to remedy the situation.

Regards,

Alex Baker
New York, NY

Mars, Bitches!!!

2005-02-03T01:52:00.000-05:00

I wonder if there are a lot of NASA employees who are really bummed tonight? I have to say, I would totally support the Mars initiative if he threw that in the speech. We should totally go to Mars. Bitches. Does Halliburton have interests in the space business?

Snark and quibbles

2005-02-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

1. I wish Bush and other conservatives for that matter would stop taking credit for any election in any formerly corrupt authoritarian state anywhere. I mean, unless they killed Arafat somehow. That said, the $350 million for Palestine is great...way to put money where the mouth is.

2. Does anyone think the flypaper and humanitarian rationales for the war are kind of at odds? I can understand different people supporting them at different times, but it doesn't seem like they should get to coexist in one speech, i.e. you can have a democracy, but we're going to fight a guerilla war of attrition with terrorists at the same time.

3. No big surprises on the Social Security stuff. Check out the background briefing from ealier today, and the CBPP analysis of it.

4. Oh man, Harry Reid is making me so bored...and we haven't even gotten to the robotress yet! Really makes you appreciate John Kerry's telegenic skills.

He's still talking. But I don't care. God's children vs. tax breaks? I read the text of this before and it sounded good.

5. Shit. It's worse with her. Those eyes are so piercing.

6. Is there any corollary for the government skipping out on treasury bonds it owes itself by changing the law?

7. There has been very little insight into the administration's internal thought process on Social Security, and I think that information gap is starting to show. Are people really thinking about this? Really? Or did he just make some decision, and everyone has been toeing the line.

8. Fuck this Linda Douglas woman on ABC. "These responses to Social Security I've been getting from the Democrats are very shrill." You're shrill. Asshole.

9. Peter Jennings splitting the private/personal account difference. Totally fucking weak. You know what you're doing, Peter Jennings, just use the goddamn word.

10. Off-loading price indexing on Tim Penny was soooo weak. Duh...who would think that Bush's own Social Security commission put that on the table 4 years ago? Oh no, it was all Tim Penny's idea. I don't know who the idiots that understand benefit indexation are, but Bush apparently thinks they are out there and ripe for the suckering.

The Jack Bauer Rules?

2005-01-31T16:15:00.000-05:00

I must say, the return of 24 (awesome) in tandem with some using 24-esque scenarios to absolve Alberto Gonzales of his torture-friendly legal opinions (awesomely scary) is a little surreal. It gives one a little window into just how deep the fictionalization of reality is for the armchair terror warriors--their appeal bears little resemblance to the complicated, nuanced and often mundane thing we call reality. Instead, they truly believe that global terrorism somehow rockets 'reality' off its moorings and makes the action movie, and the action movie's morals, come ass-kickingly alive.

That said, the distinction between the hypothetical "terrorist in NYC who knows where the nuke is" and liberalizing U.S. code to allow or at least weasel around torture needs to be addressed head on. Dry proof about the low efficacy of torture in obtaining reliable information, the mushy question of proportional losses in our soft power from torture scandals, and predictions of retaliation against American troops all seem to fade away in the face of the "Jack Bauer" hypothesis. In the end we have to be realistic about what "laws" and "standards" really are. They don't represent our ultimate moral choice in every instance. Life is messy. Some considerations trump others that did not trump the last time. That is ok. Jack Bauer doesn't need to be thrown in jail cuz he tortured away the imminent nuclear holocaust.

Laws on the other hand? They're not really for the Jack Bauers and historical singularities. They are for Joe Schmo who doesn't have any better ideas than torture. For states that have something to prove even if they have no idea how to go about proving it. That is who you want anti-torture laws for. Our laws don't provide for every possibility--that's why we insist on a subjective human element mediating between the law and punishments. But laws do set standards, and they make clear which principles are not to be trifled with lightly.

That's what we call math

2005-01-30T22:12:00.000-05:00

Gregg Easterbrook's stupidity is on the radar today with his NYT review of the Jared Diamond book and bewilderment from Brad Delong and Crooked Timber. One of these strings ended in an old post from Easterblogg in which he goes on an incredulous tirade about how scientists can go on about "mushy" alternate dimensions but not allow for the "spiritual plane". If I'm not mistaken, it has something to do with "math." If these people are just sitting around making shit up and leaving out God, then I will be the first to cry foul. But I have a feeling that's not the case. My god, that man is such an idiot.

(Dead) weight

2005-01-21T01:12:00.000-05:00

I don't want to seem overly enthusiastic about this, but El Bush's Social Security thing is having trouble, no? Botttom Line: old people vote. They like Social Security cuz' it means they won't be completely broke. Just cuz Bush's communications team decided to leak some stories about how the third rail is dead doesn't mean it is.

The administration has decided to be very sneakretive about the details of the PLAN, yes, because there's an inauguration on, but also cuz they don't want to say, and frankly, they run their ship on brute loyalty not "convincing." as the pansies say.

Coronation indeed

2005-01-20T11:38:00.000-05:00

Wonkette has all you need to weather the madness. Watching this stuff really makes you step back and marvel at the fact that this man will be president for EIGHT YEARS.

Also, that sucks they hijacked Susan Graham. Opera singers should not abet Republicanism. And when did our country get sooooo lame? The pre-ceremony muzak was excruciating.

Inconsequential thoughts about DNC chair

2005-01-18T01:49:00.000-05:00

Not that it matters, but my money would be on Dean for DNC chair. My reasons are several-fold:

1. Dean is never going to run for national office again, unfortunately, but he has a valuable varsity-level perspective on Demcoratic politics that A) should not be wasted and B) didn't really get to shine during the primaries. He really has a very centrist message, but its a centrist message that's about being a really centrist, not a compromising wuss. Look--there's no viable Democratic party existing halfway between the mush we have now and the GOP so get over it. We need to build something new here that has nothing to do with the splitting the difference. That's not something you "figger out one election season", its something that appears after years of work.

2. Democrats did good things in the last election, and it will be a mighty shame to let them slip into oblivion. All of the talk since the election, if not explicitly backbiting, has nonetheless been an exercise in willful memory loss, and an attempt to pretend none of the last year, or any of the people connected with it, ever happened. Why? Because isolating and ostracizing the losers is a natural reaction. But this is the fundamental flaw of Democratic politics: thinking that your bet on the wrong horse means its all the horses fault, and has nothing to do with the 200 pound jockey or the foot deep mud. There's no reason to throw Dean overboard. I'm glad he wasn't the nominee, probably, but he represented many of the lasting lessons of this campaign season, and selectively forgetting those lessons will only end in more treading of water. Let's praise what works for us, what gets us a following and what gets us excited. There can be some middle ground between throwing all our chips in one basket and denying the basket every existed.

3. The rest of these people are same old, same old. Probably a part b to the last reason, but can anyone tell me why we should stand behind a no-name insider when everyone is complaining the Democratic party sucks because it is a cabal of no-name insiders with no connection to the human beings they are trying to mobilize? Let's remember that the vast, vast, majority of the country will never know who the chairman of the Democratic National Committee is, so why worry if your choice has some "baggage" attached? We have to stop making these decisions with the Republican attack machine in mind (don't you remember what they wrote about the screaming thing? we can't give them more bait!!!) and start thinking about what the people who are really interested in the party want to see. Hint: it's not Tim Roemer.

This whole business about handicapping the race is kind of silly of course, as the job is really a glorified schmoozer and sometime cable TV head, but its what we've got right now, so why shouldn't we make a choice that has some excitement and continuity attached to it? Dean is a great speaker, a man with some heft and power attached to him, and is good talking to people. He shows that the Democratic party is serious about leadership and wants to make popular choices. I'm glad Tim Roemer, Simon Rosenberg, and the rest are providing the behind the scenes backbone for the party, and nothing could be more important. But the Dems need to prove they can make leaders right now, and you don't do that by electing a smarter Terry McAuliffe. When people see that, they see some guy in a suit doing his job, but mostly responsible for people much richer than you whom you will never meet. Dean will simply not come off like that because he already has a public persona to draw on. That's the singular face of the Democratic party for the next four years. Let's make it a memorable one.

Kos 'scandal'

2005-01-15T19:29:00.000-05:00

I don't usually discuss Hugh Hewitt here, partly because reading him takes me to a dark place that I should probably keep to myself, partly because its just too exhausting. But his petty hackery trying to make an equivalency out of the Armstrong Williams really deserves a nod for sheer hutzpah. As the Republican party's least personality-saddled online water-carrier, he knows that any negative story about his people need not be disproven, but only neutralized by any shred of trumped up equivalent story for liberals. What an asshole.

Frankly, I think the whole debate over disclosure and ethics rules for bloggers is being way overblown. Look--responsible bloggers who respect their readers and whatever tiny place they occupy in public discourse will find it in their interest to disclose whatever conflicts of interest they have. But these are still private enterprises and they don't have anywhere near the same limitations that media institutions have. As anyone who reads the site knows, Markos Zuniga is a paid political consultant. He is a severely partisan Democrat who makes no secret that his professional and non-professional time is devoted to electing Democrats. A journalist could never maintain that lifestyle, and that's why, hello, he isn't a journalist. He runs a damn Web site for political insiders and hangers on. He has no public education mission, and he controls no media real estate larger than the amount of bandwidth he is willing to personally purchase. It works out because his readers understand he's a pro (and it's a big reason why they read) but they keep coming back because there's a certain amount of trust that he's a pro with his own nuanced ideas. I mean, what's the danger here? That he's going to start hyping a Democratic candidate for pay when he somehow doesn't mean it?

Personally, I don't really have much of a problem with the whole Thune/Daschle thing either. Sure it comes off as a bit sleazier since it is a smaller operation, but again, these are private enterprises, and they are allowed to get paid to say stuff and not disclose who is paying them. The consequences are brutal, of course, but that's the only insurance you can ask for. A) Political campaigns will always try to find ways to shape media coverage outside of direct journalist contact, and B) what are you doing to do about it? It's the internet for christ's sakes. He says politics is his job...if you think he starts sounding like a hack, or want a disinterested perspective on the news, then go read the New York Times.

Armostrong Williams, on the other hand, is A) vouched for by a number of major corporate news institutions with a reputation, billion dollar operations, and huge distribution networks to protect. He makes his living as a disinterested 'journalist' who is paid solely for the distribution of his opinions. He has an integrity to look after that truly is harmed by improrieties. If Kos announces he is getting out of the consultant business to be a full time journlist pundit and keeps the web site, then we'll have valid conflict of interest questions. As long as he is an admitted pro, then you read at your own risk and have only him to complain to.

PS to Hewitt. This, my friend, is why the media is important despite your inane crowing about old media and its downfall. To protect us from your precious blogs.

Post's folly

2005-01-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

I think Josh Marshall has the best take down of the Post's real stupid Social Security editorial yesterday, which has some theoretical value: what does an editorial about Social Security look like that feigns complete ignorance of the actual choices being presented in the debate it presumes to write about? A year of reading this crap is going to get old real fast.

PS

2005-01-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

Margaret Juntwait is kind of annoying on the Saturday Met broadcasts. But, obviously, she is a lot better than nothing.

Ray of hope

2005-01-04T23:37:00.000-05:00

Kilgore soothes my troubles and calmly takes apart David Brooks' dumbass column from this morning. Gracias.

Sometimes I get kind of down thinking that Brooks gets to write this crap with impunity for the next four years, and I question if there's a point to even reading it, much less arguing with it. But things like this remind me that discussing in detail why he is a blot on our national debate can be a worthwhile even gratifying exercise.

It's a plan

2005-01-04T10:57:00.000-05:00

The major newspaper coverage of the Social Security debate has really been quite good, I think, despite some abiding misconceptions. Plus, editorial pages are almost unanimously opposed. If the Social Security battle is the second coming of the Iraq war propaganda machine, it certainly is off to a much shakier start. The truth is that A) the absurdity of focusing on the Social Security question now is pretty obvious if you stop to think about it out for a few minutes, as these reporters now have, and B) the Bush administration has no credibility whatsoever to try to take on such a harebrained scheme as mass liquidation of the system.

But ultimately that may not really matter. Reading columns like this piece of idiocy demonstrate that the Social Security reform campaign will be mostly waged by preying on the ignorance of the American people. Straight to the source.

More like this

2005-01-03T22:55:00.000-05:00

Here's hoping Brad DeLong braves David Brooks columns more often, i.e., this fine takedown of the bizarro tsunami column the other day. As far as I'm concerned, this is one of those columns where Brooks started out knowing exactly the pathetic little hit he wanted to score on behalf of the administration, but for the life of him couldn't figure out how to pad it with 740 words. So he just wrote some shit that doesn't make sense and tagged it on at the end:

It's certainly wrong to turn this into yet another petty political spat, as many tried, disgustingly, to do...

Yikes

2005-01-03T13:47:00.000-05:00

There must be fire code violations in having this many assholes in a room at once.

The last wave

2005-01-02T23:33:00.000-05:00

If you have any desire to learn about the life of Brahms, let me highly recommend Jan Swafford's recent bio. This is a fascinating and extremely well-written piece of history...Swafford combines detailed storytelling with accessible musical analysis and a unique and compelling perspective on the context of Brahms life...in art, history, politics and the mechanics of culture. It is remarkable to think about how much the world changed in Brahms lifetime--at his birth, the 'rediscovery' of Bach was still in its infancy. At his death in 1896, Mahler had already penned his second symphony and Schoenberg was already writing. As Swafford eloquently describes, Brahms at this point was not so much a 'throwback' (his voice and genius were too distinct for that) but representative of a sort of historical road not taken--what history and art might have been had the passions and upheavals of the 20th century not broken so violently with the past.

Brahms, like most great artists, was a master of synthesis, of creating new meaning and unique beauty by pulling together disparate strains of thought, technique and history. That quality in his art perhaps explains his popularity during his own lifetime, when liberal 19th century Europe in a sense embodied this outlook on life. Unfortunately for Brahms' immediate legacy, and perhaps the Western world at large, this sort of hero was not what the 20th century had in mind. Instead of the synthesizer, the mediator, the modest individual, the 20th century would praise the artistic hero which Wagner championed during Brahms' own lifetime: the 'absolute' artist, uncompromising, transformative, contemptuous of all pre-existing codes and morality--a religion unto himself.

The tragedy of the book is that Brahms later years bore witness to the crumbling of his social and artistic world. Swafford records Brahms' response to the proto-fascism and virulent antisemitism which was beginning to flower in his last years as dumbfounded. While Brahms could not have known the depths to which Europe would ultimately sink, Swafford suggests he dreaded the future for the sort of art and culture he championed and exemplified.

Stop the madness

2004-12-31T01:36:00.000-05:00

Ed Kilgore brings up how Democrats can fight the culture war here. As I mentioned several weeks ago, the war against television should be an easy one for liberals...hell, that's why we're single-handedly keeping PBS in business. Why is it so hard for liberals to speak out on this issue? We support government funding of the arts and like-minded sophisticated culture, so why don't we feel the government has a right to talk about primetime TV? After all, liberal vision was the force behind the fairness doctrine, PBS, and other schemes to make television a tool for enlightenment. For my money, refusal to talk about things like television betrays a grander failure of vision among liberals today. Liberals don't keep quiet about television because they believe criticizing reality TV dreck is like censorship. They do it because television is "too mainstream" an arena for change, and thus seen as a "somewhere down the road" project. And there you have it, the mindset keeping good liberals down. An organizing principle for society that considers some public spheres off-limits is a principle bound for permanent minority status.

Strong medicine

2004-12-31T01:03:00.000-05:00

Kilgore lays the cards on the table for Democrats and national security. It's not very pleasant, but everyone concerned should read this post to get on the same page about WHAT JUST HAPPENED.

Sick

2004-12-30T13:11:00.000-05:00

Good Frank Rich here. Try the last paragraph in the piece:

Washington's next celebration will be the inauguration. Roosevelt decreed that the usual gaiety be set aside at his wartime inaugural in January 1945. There will be no such restraint in the $40 million, four-day extravaganza planned this time, with its top ticket package priced at $250,000. The official theme of the show is "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service." That's no guarantee that the troops in Iraq will get armor, but Washington will, at least, give home-front military personnel free admission to one of the nine inaugural balls and let them eat cake.

More Beinart

2004-12-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

Check out Eric Alterman's response here. He isn't quite throwing his hat in the ring as to an alternative organizing principle for liberal foreign policy, but its a good show nevertheless. Of note is this paragraph:

Can Beinart point to any evidence that the US government possesses the knowledge, authority or cultural sensitivity necessary to perform this historically unprecedented operation? Does Beinart really believe that the Arab masses are yearning to be freed in order to catch the last episode of Desperate Housewives? Such naïve hubris about America's ability to remake other cultures to our liking at the point of a gun is what underlay the decisions that cost us 58,000 lives in Vietnam and wrought death and destruction across Southeast Asia for more than a decade. In the persons of Paul Wolfowitz and other alleged "idealists" in the Bush Administration, it has reared its ugly head again, and produced tragic results. Now Beinart wants to run the same damned movie with liberal credits at the end. Are American liberals really cursed to make this same mistake over and over like one of Pavlov's poodles?

One issue the Beinart debate has revealed is that liberal hawks seriously need to get their house in order before they can start leading the Democratic party at large. This issue--the neoconservatives' Muslim domino theory, we'll call it--is perhaps the biggest sticking point. No matter how swift our critiques of Bushian warmaking, this angle is an enduring vulnerability for liberal hawks, who have had a tough time articulating why Iraq is not Rwanda or Kosovo. The key to that distinction--a fundamental appreciation for the limits of military force and the practical reasons why it is a last resort--is still perceived as a less worthy rationale than the neocons ironclad "Bad Man? Send Marines" logic.

As Alterman points out, however, that distinction is intrinsic to the liberal approach to foreign policy, and key to drawing a line between the smart things about the cold war and the pointless, shameful things:

In fact, just as the liberal realists of the 1950s whom Beinart so admires opposed the excesses of conservative US foreign policy--including CIA-sponsored coups in Iran and Guatemala--so too did liberal realists argue in 2001 that the US government was not availing itself of the best approaches to fighting Al Qaeda. New Yorker reporter Nicholas Lemann surveyed a group of them and came away with a remarkably consistent--and painfully prescient--set of analyses. "Military power is not necessary to wiping out Al Qaeda," Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School at Harvard told Lemann. "It's a crude instrument, and it almost always has effects you can't anticipate.... This is ultimately a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the world. When your village just got leveled by an American mistake, the conclusions you draw will be rather different from what we'd want them to be." Stephen Van Evera of MIT concurred: "A broad war on terror was a tremendous mistake.... you make enemies of the people you need against Al Qaeda."

Of course, this is not to say that all liberal politicians acted according to such principles during the war, but simply that these were the guiding norms of the liberal as opposed to the conservative approaches.

Kerry certainly talked about military action as a 'last resort', but the appeal came off as isolationist and chiding rather than wise. Until liberals can be confident in their arguments about why stupid and senseless use of the military only weakens us, and point to the smarter alternative, the jury on will still be out on a liberal foreign policy.

Is there or isn't there?

2004-12-21T01:11:00.000-05:00

An interesting debate today between Garance Franke Ruta, Kevin Drum, and Ezra Klein about whether the "there's no damn crisis" approach to the debate, as advocated by Matt Yglesias, Josh Marshall and others, is just asking for it. Whether Republicans will be able to twist that position, which, on the merits, is right on, into an example of Democrats not 'getting' it and being hopelessly behind the times.

There are a lot of liberals who are upset that Democrats ever waffled on the 'crisis' issue, and see this as a sort of original sin of the privatization debate. A primordial concession to fake out GOP economics that has henceforth given them free reign to control the debate with whatever fantasy they currently favor.

While i more than agree with the truth of the no crisis position, it does smack a bit of other battles Democrats have lost while defending their princples to the death. Yet most of the other options, as Josh Marshall has eloquently pointed out, involve playing the same old tired game of losing baseball with a Republican majority. It gets Democrats absolutely nothing, and, in this case, destroys a one of Democrats' seminal achievements.

The key, it seems, is the ability to keep a couple of targeted messages in the air at the same time. With the fake GOP policy wonks, you push the 'no crisis' line like there's no tomorrow, refusing to cede any of the various diversionary 'policy' debates they are already cooking up. To the public, you tone down the no-crisis attitude and focus on, like Garance suggests, a vision of the private account system riddled with many of the same broad, blunt, negatives that Clinton health care had.

The Republicans do this to us all the time. Democrats in Washington think they are engaged in the debate, debunking tons of absurd arguments while all the while, the Republicans have been really focusing on a public opinion battle that has nothing to do with winning those details.

Unacceptable

2004-12-20T02:46:00.000-05:00

Read Jonathan Cohn's story in the Times magazine Sunday and get mad. This is not supposed to happen in the most civilized, richest country on earth. And a big "fuck you" to all those people spending their time on Social Security privatization right now and ignoring the threat to our common humanity and dignity that the out of control U.S. health care system poses. Shame!

Strategy for the Social Security fight

2004-12-16T01:49:00.000-05:00

BTW, Josh Marshall this morning was a must read on the strategy Democrats must adopt to counter the Bush privatization push. His strongest point is that Democrats MUST NOT think they can fight this by arguing sideshow points like Wall Street profits and transition cost plans. As I said earlier, Democrats cannot have this debate with the conservative "intellectuals". They have to have it with Bush and the other guys that really have the power. And they have to have it on its real terms: destroy Social Security or not. We must be categorically deflect the charges of 'scare mongering' that are sure to come and, in a very reasonable and calm voice, tell the American people that Bush does, indeed, want to take away your Social Security. Pretending he's doing otherwise isn't going to somehow blunt the Republicans' plans.

Forgive the (very) bad analogy, but Democrats are basically operating on an appeasement strategy with Republicans today. Now, as then, it doesn't work. Dems have nothing to lose and everything to gain by ending the cycle of appeasement and taking back the ball on the debates we are clear about, like Social Security. The problem with Democrats, after all, isn't so much that they don't know what they think, but that it is qualified and diluted in a hundred little ways so that only people who follow these things for a living can really make them out anymore.

That certainly doesn't mean there is some definitive liberalsim out there yet to be discovered, but it does mean liberals must stop thinking about their mission as "what parts of the ostensible GOP agenda are we comfortable with?" This is a very facile sort of math that always leaves liberals on the losing end. (And, incidentally, oen of the main reasons the DLC gets such a bum rap they don't deserve.)

That said...

2004-12-15T23:15:00.000-05:00

Even though I disagree with Beinart, I think it is extremely important that he has provoked this conversation. For one, it is an idea that has been batted around a lot, and for many, was regrettably a "road not taken" during the Kerry campaign. For a lot the people in the Democratic universe who actually give a damn about national security, this is a very serious question, and that in and of itself makes it worth hashing out. Democrats can agree that Bush is doing stuff wrong on foreign policy, but they can't fully articulate their own vision yet. Stealing Republican thunder and making the War on Terror the defining goal of our politics is certainly one option of the table, and we should talk about it.

1947 revisited

2004-12-14T22:58:00.000-05:00

Posts from Mark Schmitt and Josh Marshall about Peter Beinart's much discussed TNR piece remind me that I intended to comment on it way back when.

The Islamofascism as the new Cold War/World War II canard has certainly been one of the most cringeworthy rhetorical devices of the last 3 years. It is aggravating on one level because it smacks of people that went to good schools trying to emotionally manipulate a country that only understands those events in debased and oversimplified Hollywood versions (The War on Terror is like Saving Private Ryan? That movie was hardcore...) On a more serious level, it completely obscures the real threat at hand. Even if most of the people in charge deploy it cynically, it creates a sort of vicious circle of historical posturing and policy choices informed more by political than legitimate considerations.

To hope, as Beinart seems to, that liberals will ever do anything but scoff at this shoddy history and shoddier approach to policy is just plain misguided. The numbers simply don't add up to a "defining global struggle of our generation". And if the goal is to define the authentic principles of a new Democratic party, loyalty oaths to an overblown false analogy are not the place to start.

But Beinart isn't really after a good policy that the Democrats should claim for themselves. He's after emotional resonance for Democrats. And you can't really blame him: the journey towards a Democratic party defined by an active unifying vision and narrative is a long way from over, and the years in between are going to be confusing and frustrating. He is also trying to offer Democrats an emotional narrative to counter the one that has enraptured so many conservatives over the last few years.

But the factors that have made 9/11 a neverending political and emotional bonanza for conservative politics have a lot less to do with taking a stand against Islamofascism and a lot more to do with principles and currents of national and in many quarters ethnic chauvinism that are diametrically opposed to liberals core values. To think we could appropriate the power of the 9/11 worldview and capture its power for ourselves is to misunderstand why that phenomenon works for so many people.

The act that Beinart eventually settles on to define those who take up his suggestion, the swift renunciation of anyone who opposes military adventurism (i.e. Michael Moore, Moveon, etc.) is supposed to be the equivalent of the ADA's renunciation of communism and Soviet influence in the late 40s. But, as both Marshall and Schmitt point out, this gets liberal anti-communism, and the virulent anti-Bush left, totally wrong. Besides actual communists and communism, the factions Schlesinger and co. opposed were people still clinging to myths and misinformation about the Soviet Union left over from a generation before. More importantly, many of the intellectual strains supporting the Democratic party and broader goals of economic justics at midcentury were intertwined with socialist politics and analysis.

Postwar liberals had the foresight to understand how the world was shaping up after the war: troubled but free nations against a really, really fucked up totatlitarian empire, and the tenacity to make their fellow liberals face up to the future coming down the pike. But the most convincing thing about the choice posed by the ADA and like-minded liberals was simple: it was a real, all encompassing threat.

Had Michael Moore and Moveon existed in 1947, they would have been branded the "anti-anti-communists". Voices standing up for the costs that demagoguery and political opportunism were inflicting on American values, and, sure enough, using comparable outrage and overblow rhetoric to fight the demagogues of the right.

What made postwar liberalism unique is that these were secondary concerns. The ADA certainly would have sympathized with Michael Moore and company. But more to the point, they would understand that Moore et al are hardly the main event. They are duking out a fight that is ultimately peripheral to the creation of a consensus liberal vision.

Implying as Beinart does, that they are the fellow travelers in our mist is to completely discount the real ideological battle at hand after World War II, and completely overestimate the ideological battle at hand in 2004 with medieval Islamist fanaticism.

Wow

2004-12-14T02:13:00.000-05:00

I have apparently offended the karma gods by whining about how stupid David Brooks sounded talking about how Iraqis should behave for the last few years. How else to explain the unholy punishments of reading his last two columns? As you may remember, Saturday's outing was about how "people who don't like Social Security privatization have an irrational hatred and paranoia about 'markets'". Today's uses the Potemkin economic "conference" the WH is organizing for Wednesday as fodder for a classic Brooks special: disguising the well-worn jabs at Democrats with this charade of being a 'self-deprecating' conservative. "Hehe, just some even handed ribbing" he says as he drives his (admittedly lame) shiv deeper. It's only bothersome in the sense that his unfunny, completely unserious garbage is considered A) mainstream B) fit for the NY Times and C) readable.

But, as always, the liberal bashing isn't really the point. He's always figuring out some way to carry the administration's water, to varying degrees of subtlety. In this case, the plan is to write a knowing column about policy wonks and their nerdiness, and how the white house conference will be super full of that stuff, thereby sneakily adding legitimacy to a farce which actually involves very few real policy wonks. See this LA Times story. Looks like the tone is going to be less nerdy panel discussion, more Fortune 500 executive meet and greet.

Democrats just don't understand markets

2004-12-11T14:56:00.000-05:00

Brooks today: "Before we get lost in the policy details, let's be clear about what this Social Security reform debate is really about. It's about the market. People who instinctively trust the markets support the Bush reform ideas, and people who are suspicious oppose them."

Oh good. I was worried that we might have to let the facts interfere with making policy regarding the government's finances for the next 75 years. But Brooks has the right answer: fuck 'em. This is about lovin' on "the markets".

Read the whole thing. How this man can get away writing an entire column about the mother of all complicated public policy issues, not explain a single legitimate statistic, and reduce the question to an issue of "tone" is beyond me.

Kerik out

2004-12-11T14:30:00.000-05:00

Well this is an interesting turn. Kerik really was a crappy choice, so it is to the administration's credit that they axed him early. It will be interesting to see if anything more leaks out about how this went down behind the scenes. Have they backtracked on the notion that every bright idea about how to milk 9/11 doesn't need to be pursued? Are Rovian voices in the administration less important now that reelection isn't a paramount goal? Did someone say: "I get the symbolism, but really now, this is a nasty assignment and there's no reason to provoke more headaches in this arena"? Either way, let's hope G2 part two looks more like this...

More Liberalism is...

2004-12-09T01:27:00.000-05:00

In the recent hysteria over how liberals have lost their ability to connect with America's moral center, conversation about what constitutes an ethical culture has been regrettably stifled. Ethics are, in fact, central to the liberal vision of society, and required for its proper function. Applied liberal ethics can be broken down into three different sectors:

Institutional Ethics. The liberal society is highly contingent upon robust institutions, and upon ethical codes which govern those instititions and the individuals who work in them in the place of the heavy hand of government intervention. Liberal ethics constrain firms from violating standards of competition and consumers' trust, nonprofits from abusing their mandate to exercise the greatest good for the individuals they serve, and governments themselves from imposing undue leverage on the governed.

Community Ethics. Despite the myth of rugged individualism, communitarian responsibility is central to the American ethos. Vital commitments to one's community both reduce the need for government and ensure the strength of democracy. Furthermore, the community ethic ultimately enables liberal government by justifying redistributive measures and taxation.

Individual Ethics. The most obvious ethical responsibility of the individual in liberal society is adherence to the rule of law. But that is hardly the extent of indivudal ethics. Liberalism requires the embrace of a number of personal ethical stances if it is to work. Fairness, Equality, Tolerance, Justice, and Reason at the individual level constitute a basic code from which liberal society grows. And while religious doctrine may sometimes be at odds with these ethics, it is folly to assume that these qualities are not fundamentally tied to faith. As liberals, we recognize that the ethical dialogue between secular government and faith has a deep common ground which must be emphasized in the face of intermittent friction.

Beyond

2004-12-08T01:40:00.000-05:00

Definitely read the back and forth between Andrew Samwick, Max Sawicky, and others about Social Security. It has been a very enlightening dry run of some of the debates that will rear their ugly heads come January. It also goes to show that liberals are not going to win the fight to preserve the system if they focus on beating back the arguments of "responsbile" privatization supporters. These people are fun to argue with because they are not private account demagogues, but their musings about when a deficit is a deficit and why it really does make sense to think about how Social Security finances will behave during the last days of earth (it's not pretty, that's for sure) will only serve to distract from the real fight.

The real fight is with the Bush administration and people who want to destroy any government responsibility for older poor people. They think the government should have nothing to do with the pension business and they treat this is an article of faith more holy than everything except cutting taxes. So, my apologies now to the open-minded thoughtful conservative leaning economists who really do want a nice debate and who might give up on the private account thing if it really didn't add up. You have almost nothing in common with the motives and politics that will bring about Social Security reform under George W. Bush. We can't have this conversation with you because your political bedfellows don't want to negotiate or think critically about long term liabilities. They want to mess the system up because they think it is immoral.

As liberals, we must argue that A) you don't screw with a government program as successful, efficient and enduring as Social Security lightly; B) government must have a role in ensuring that old people are not destitute and that this is a very different question than encouraging saving opportunities; and C) social insurance is a vital part of American life. It has been 70 years since the New Deal proved how we could create a humane society through mutual trust, broad compromise, and common goals, and coalitions like that come about only once a century.

Liberals don't seem to fully believe privatization is a real threat yet, probably because the math doesn't work. But make no mistake, Bush is deadly serious about making history with this. Liberals need to talk about why we believe in the promise of the program, and why it is fundamentally American in a way that private accounts are not.

Democrats just don't understand babies

2004-12-07T18:38:00.000-05:00

Or so Brooks would like you to think. Nothing new/interesting/sensible here, but let's just note that all those cynical, brittle, pretentious, child hating spinsters on the coasts are keeping the precious Red children from begging in the streets. You know, with the tax dollars left over after we've bought our cocaine and porno, of course.

Liberalism is...

2004-12-06T21:31:00.000-05:00

Pardon the intermittent randomness over the next few weeks, but I'll be using this space to test out ideas for another project, one thinking how to define the big questions that the unapologetic liberal should be asking in America today. While I hope to draw on and think about theories of liberalism so defined, the main event here is liberalism the American political tradition, rather than any family of philosophies. That said, thoughts on liberalism and government:

Liberals cherish a basic faith that government can serve as a vital force in society. Government, executed properly, is capable of transformative power, and of acting as a necessary counterweight to the excesses and human costs of capitalism. Regarding process, liberals believe that government is best conducted with reason, transparency, and wisdom. Liberals seek a reasonable balance between government as the means to mediate between competing interests and government as an evolving experiment in how best to organize those sections of society and the economy unaccounted for by the free market. Thus, while liberals support the purest democratic expression in elected office, we have always argued for a civil service based on merit rather than patronage and cronyism. An entrenched "interest" class is a terrible cancer on democracy that, if not completely eradicable, should be marginalized as far as possible. This phenomenon not only undermines democratic practice, but perverts capitalism and prevents the proper functioning of the market.

Liberals, despite their enthusiasm for government's possibilities are always aware and honest about government's limitations, that we must not be wedded to programs and principles that do not work. Over the past 30 years, as the 'starve the beast' school of governing has taken hold of the conservative imagination, liberals have been forced to choose between defending programs they would like to fix and doing away with those programs entirely. Thus, a liberal agenda must concern itself with retaking the debate about government, and instilling sensible and humane principles of governance in the nation at large.

Sweet mother of God

2004-12-06T20:50:00.000-05:00

This is beyond fucked up. TAPPED records this exchange between the majority leader of the UNITED STATES SENATE and George Stephanapolous:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, let me switch to another subject. There was a bit of an uproar in Washington this week about this issue of these abstinence programs that are funded by the Federal government, the funding has doubled over the last four years but there was a report by the minority staff at the House Government Affairs Committee that showed that 11 of 13 of these programs are giving out false information. I want to show some of the claims they identified in the curricula. One of them was, one of the programs taught that "The actual ability of condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS, even if the product is intact, is not definitively known." Another, "The popular claim that condoms help prevent the spread of STDs is not supported by the data." A third suggested that tears and sweat could transmit HIV and AIDS. Now, you're a doctor. Do you believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?

FRIST: I don't know. I can tell you ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You don't know?

FRIST: I can tell you things like, like ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, wait, let me stop you, you don't know that, you believe that tears and sweat might be able to transmit AIDS?

FRIST: Yeah, no, I can tell you that HIV is not very transmissible as an element like, compared to smallpox, compared to the flu. It is not, but the first slide, because I think it's dangerous to show that and then sort of walk away.

...

[after talking about other issues pertaining to the programs]

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me just, I wanted to move to another subject, let me just clear this up, though. Do you or do you not believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?

FRIST: It would be very hard. It would be very hard for tears and sweat, I mean, you can get virus in tears and sweat but in terms of the degree of infecting somebody, it would be very hard.

Confirmed!

2004-12-05T18:31:00.000-05:00

The Medium Lobster concurs about the Kerik nomination as only the Medium Lobster can.

New HS capo

2004-12-04T13:18:00.001-05:00

Benjamin Wallace Wells has the lowdown on why Bernard Kerik is a pretty weak choice for Homeland Security secretary. The DHS bureaucracy is still in its infancy, and some of the largest functions (immigration especially) are in considerable disarray. We need someone that has an unholy amount of bureaucratic foresight, plus the ability to keep morale high for the tens of thousands department employees, for whom any initial reorganization buzz has most definitely worn off.

As Wells points out, there's no evidence that Kerik is the kind of virtuoso manager required, or even a successful one, for that matter. What he does have, of course, is the ability to keep 9/11 fresh in everyone's mind. Even though they won the election , they still have to act like its three years ago, when perception of strength and emotional tie-ins seemed appropriate to "keep the country moving forward". It's like a bad sequel, where only a few of the original cast came back, and secondary characters you didn't really care about in the first one are now in leading roles. The whole thing just reeks of lameness.

Nope, still not WWII

2004-12-03T01:40:00.000-05:00

More to say on this Beinart article and Kevin Drum's response soon...

Dang Easterbrook

2004-12-01T15:02:00.000-05:00

Via Kevin Drum, this Greg Easterbrook column is dumb. There's a perfectly reasonable part about how we shouldn't let the ginormous size of the U.S. military disquise the fact that there are needed and expensive capital improvements still to be made. Fine. The rest is nonsense.

More Debt

2004-11-29T23:24:00.000-05:00

I was quoted in this Star-Tribune article today...part of a series that looks pretty good.

New York shall rise again!

2004-11-21T01:09:00.000-05:00

Greg Djerejian, the very smart and throughly conservative author of the Belgravia Dispatch plays the "let's pretend Tina Brown's WaPo columns represent what New York City is thinking about these days" game. I don't usually like posting my comments to other places here, but...whatever. Here's my rant, see his comments section too, which has a number of very interesting regulars:

I find this whole "REAL New Yorkers don't really hate Bush, its just the media elite that happens to live there who only hate him because of their vacuousness and socialism" kind of offensinve. I know its hard to deal with the idea that the people who actually suffered the brunt of the attack are so opposed to Bush, but it's just a fact. No splitting hairs, no pretending that commuters are the REAL New Yorkers, none of it. Why do conservatives have to treat every victim of 9/11 who dislikes Bush (i.e., people who live below 14th street and a number of 9/11 widows) as crazy or deluded? If you can't deal with that contradiction then maybe you should listen to it. But don't smear them or pretend they don't exist. No one is saying that victimhood means you get control over the response, but it aint nothing.

The fact is, New Yorkers, even god forbid, ones that live in Manhattan (who, surprise, are sometimes shallow and neurotic) have good reasons for disliking Bush, i.e., the fact that he has a pretty blatant disdain for for cities and people who live in them. We in New York have watched the last couple years as this administration has tried to convince every podunk town in the nation that al Qaeda is coming for them, then showered them with money and hazmat suits to prove it, when New Yorkers and everyone with a brain in their heads knows pretty dang well that we will always be ground zero. Not to mention that everything about Bush and his administration is hostile to our way of life, our gay friends, the government programs we believe in, all while our tax dollars go to subsidize his supporters out in the great mooching Red hinterland.

So go ahead and decide that you don't really care what New York City thinks of how we should deal with terrorism, that's majority rule after all. But don't tell us we don't know about terrorism, or insinuate that the attacks have made us too fragile to think clearly or, especially, that we have nothing to protect here, because we're all vacuous socialites and poor ghetto dwellers. All those teeming masses of subway riders who are so tough and driven? They may not be as much of a twit as Tina Brown, (god help us) but I can assure you a good majority of them are pretty upset about four more years of the buffoonish red stater.

Philistine!

2004-11-20T01:21:00.000-05:00

This Jonathan Chait column in the LA Times makes me just a little too angry to write anything sensible about it, so go read it for yourself.

Random gripe

2004-11-19T17:11:00.000-05:00

To all the people who talk ominously about how the Social Security trust is just a bunch of IOUs, i.e. U.S. Treasury bonds, in the hopes of fooling people into thinking we have to screw with Social Security to avoid paying it all back: if the U.S. government defaults on 2 trillion worth of debt, our problems are going to be a lot freaking bigger than angry old people. I don't know if anyone can imagine a world where investors don't trust the U.S. government's debt. But I think everyone can agree it is decidedly on the wrong side of the apocalypse. Considering how close to the edge we're playing the global financial system's confidence at the moment, it's probably not even something we should joke about. So stop it.

They don't need your help

2004-11-15T14:20:00.000-05:00

Um, what was up with Brooks on Saturday? Why exactly does he think the administration needs his help to do its dirty work cleaning out all of those disloyal yet oh-so-accurate analysts at the CIA who broke with Iraq policy? I mean, I think we could have all predicted that Bush would go this route after he was reelected and no one would care whether it looked like an admission of guilt (which it obviously is), but DB, what could you possibly get out of it? After you read Brooks, go read Josh Marshall on the CIA purge. Brooks' bleating about mean disloyal analysts looks even more petty in light of the real-world catastrophes that politicizing the intelligence community have caused over the past four years.

Electoral map of many colors

2004-11-14T23:17:00.000-05:00

Daily Kos mentions something interesting I remember seeing a while ago: this feature in CommonWealth magazine about the 10 regions of U.S. politics, as put together by Robert David Sullivan. It's a far more informative approach than trying to stuff the country into idiotic red, blue and sorta purple boxes.

While I'm at it, let me follow up on yesterday's post. I don't want to lend too much credence to the idea that Democrats need to "get in" on the culture war and learn how to ape Republican outrage. The long term Democratic party will never really shift the scales that way, although we may get a Bill Clinton once in a while who sounds good enough on it.

My point is that liberals need to stop pretending they have no dog in the culture war. Liberals have very strong opinions about culture, in fact, and just about every indication we have says voters want to hear politicians opinions about culture. But for a variety of bad reasons--shell schock from the GOP's monopolization of culture war language, a too narrow view of how to go about waging civil rights battles, buying into the diversity vs. morality zero sum game, etc.--we have deprioritized these ideas in favor of correct but hopelessly dry economic and policy arguments. In doing this, we have lost the ability to craft a world view that voters can relate to.

So take the previous post as simply one way that liberals should start thinking outside the box and opening up conversation about our broader agenda, not as some quick fix that can score us a few more points among moderates in '08.

An improbable alliance

2004-11-13T14:18:00.000-05:00

Via New Donkey, check out Brad Carson's article in The New Republic if you're able. Carson, who lost a Senate seat to spectacular nutcase Tom Coburn last Tuesday, argues:

"But it was not until that September Sunday in Sallisaw, one of the most Democratic towns in Oklahoma, that I first understood that the seemingly innocuous phrase "vote righteously" was the slogan not of a few politicized churches, but the cri de coeur of millions--millions who fervently believe that their most deeply held values are under assault and who further see this assault as at least tolerated by the Democratic Party, if not actually led by it."

Carson says that abortion and gay marriage are only the most organized prongs in the grand culture war that so many Americans feel they are a part of. The real phenomenon, what Thomas Frank calls the 'backlash' as discussed below, is a conviction shared by millions that cannot be denied or attributed to some insidious 'false consciousness'.

Many have argued just the opposite. That Frank doesn't get the truth of the Kulturkampf, that he argues it is a grand diversion which tricks people of dwindling incomes into voting for the Republican economic policies that further immiserate them. I agree that Frank harms his case a bit when he overplays this contradiction to highlight the perversity of the corporate laissez faire/down home culture warrior alliance. But focusing on that misstep ignores the truth of his essential point: that the culture war is about fundamental economic and cultural shifts, namely, the triumph of corporate capitalism. He argues that Republicans have been effective in diverting this phenomenon in political terms, creating a 'liberal elite' bogeyman and skillfully chaining it to the ankle of the Democratic party. But the problem is bigger than a tactical miscalculation on the part of Democrats, it is our collective inability to address the consequences of today's economic system. Although he questions the political implications, Frank thinks the sentiment is real, and justified.

The funny thing is, looking at the backlash in this light, i.e., getting fed up with the vulgarity, crassness and stupidity perpetrated by corporate-profit driven entertainment, I actually find a lot to relate to. How often do you yearn for the time when turning on your TV didn't make you feel like the human race was doomed? I mean, isn't this essentially the same complaint you hear from all those liberal elitists curled up in their PBS, NPR and foreign film media bubbles?

Liberals' sensitivity to free speech rights and censorship, while admirable, often puts us in the funny position of defending the vacuous low brow culture we spend the rest of our day decrying and hiding from. What's more, stokers of the culture war have handily reinforced that outcry by waging their fiercest battles over legitimate art and public funding for it. And when conservatives do set their sights on popular entertainment, we mutter something about how those people must be prudes, half heartedly invoke the first amendment on behalf of the multinational corporation, and accuse those politicians of pandering to the culture fascists. But I'll be damned if you'll find any of the same libs with that abhorrent rap CD in their stereos or in front of their TVs when that soul-deadening reality TV show premieres. They'll be unwittingly communing with their heartland friends, bemoaning to what depths society has sunk.

Who knows how far this will really get us. A good portion of the country thinks liberals are not just abetters of this cultural decay but the actual perpetrators, so it is, needless to say, an uphill climb. But at the least, let's stop this charade of silencing ourselves about cultural trends we find despicable. Let's continue to defend artistic freedom as vigorously as ever, but let's stop giving quarter to the profit-driven rot we find distasteful. Let's call out by name the corporate hegemony that coarsens society, makes teenagers into idiots, and drowns out art and progressive culture.

Liberals are very good at talking to each other about these things: in the foundations we create, the artistic communities we support, and the liberal educations we cherish. But we've grown lazy in supporting these things politically, preferring to resign ourselves to the decline of cultural values as somehow an inevitable march of stupidity and crassness. We have internalized the conservative rap that opening society and increasing tolerance go hand in hand with vulgarity, moral ambiguity and lowest common denominator culture.

Part of this is the bunker mentality we have about civil rights politics. Conservatives have engineered an either-or mindfuck where they ask "Do you want to save culture or protect women's rights?" And we're so focused on holding the line against any incursions on the gains of the 60s that along the way, we've forgotten that the values of economic justice, tolerance and minority rights can only take root when liberal society is running on all cylinders. And that liberal society is dying. If we don't fight for it, none of these things are possible.

But I digress. Now for a couple of caveats:

1) Understanding that liberals have a lot in common with red-state rejection of corporate culture doesn't change the fact that a lot of these people think gayness=moral decay. While an offensive on this front must involve the argument that gay people and their families share the same values as all Americans, and deserve respect and tolerance etc., a lot of these people are just plain old bigots, their minds will not be changed and it will take a generation or two until they die off.

2) This move won't work if there is the least hint of condescension in it. The reason I think this has a good chance of working is that liberals really do feel this way, but for the reasons listed above, they are reluctant to voice it. This is a battle about OUR culture being preyed upon by corporations appealing to the worst in society. It's about solidarity.

3) On that note, if we think that winning the battle for the cultural soul of America is just about spreading around the art made in the cities, we are deeply misguided. A robust free culture, what the corporations are destroying, isn't about getting some artists together or putting up some shows in the boonies. It is a long term commitment to forging a society where the lowest common denominator can't take root, much less become the norm.

4) Needless to say, education is central to this. Liberals need to start talking about education as more than a way to increase your bottom line (which we don't believe anyhow). We need to talk about healthy schools and open universities as transformative forces in society. As institutions that create citizens who reject cultural decline, who want to be engaged in society, who work to better their communities and their nation.

Long story short: liberals hate the direction culture is heading in as much as conservatives. We have no illusions about why its happening: corporate control over information and entertainment has gone wildly out of control, and corporations make bad culture. Let's stop acquiescing to the conservative line that gay people, or working women, or university professors did it, and recognize that a lot of people are really just talking about the dreck they find on TV every night. Just because we're not going to actually censor things doesn't mean we can't rail against it and talk about how to build a nation that rejects that 'culture'. I for one, would find that very satisfying.

Now what's on PBS tonight?

Still in Kansas?

2004-11-11T21:47:00.000-05:00

Excuse the paucity of posting lately. Like everyone, I have been thinking in about 102 directions over the past week and a half, and would like to see how things percolate before setting them in the proverbial stone.

Here's a place to start, however. I had the pleasure of finally reading Tom Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? the weekend before the election, and have been struggling to finish the post in light of everything that's been said since.

It's really a spectacular book, and it's unfortunate that most of the reviews last summer, and the mentions in election post-mortems now, have been so off the mark. The CW version of the book's argument (which gained renewed credence during 'moral values' exit poll wild goose chase) goes like this: Frank is saying Republicans use social wedge issues to confuse and divide the voters that should be voting Democratic on account of their economic interests. Democrats in turn, must reclaim the mantle of populist economics they have relinquished in recent years, and only then shall they win.

But Kansas isn't really a political advice book, and trying to scrunch it into that box misses the more subtle and convincing argument. Frank's real focus is describing the cultural language of modern conservatism, the implications of that discourse on electoral politics, and how political professionals make use of it for their own ends.

Instrumental in getting the reader to think in these terms is the set piece that provides the book its title, namely, the myriad forms of radical populism that gripped Kansas in the late nineteenth century. In that era, anti-capitlist sentiment, directed at the eastern 'money-power', produced a brand of antsy, volatile, and most of all, creative, politics that informed several generations of extremist tendencies. What Frank sees today is a phenomenon of similar magnitude--a new cultural epistemology with the same kind of power to inspire and anger.

This phenomenon is a lot bigger than preferences over a few election cycles. As Frank makes clear, it is closely linked with economic and cultural dislocations produced by a late-stage corporate capitalism increasingly left to its own devices. Rather than the liberal elites of conservative Kansans' nightmares, it is the increasing hegemony of corporate power and corporate media culture that drives the psychic and economic exclusion heartland conservatives react to. Picking up on that raw anger, the Repuiblican party and related activist groups have shown considerable skill in turning this against both GOP moderates and Democrats.

All this is to say: the issue isn't really abortion or gay marriage, per se. It's much bigger and more multifaceted, and it has to do with how people perceive politics and the state of American society, not just a couple narrow 'wedge' issues, although they certainly play into the grander narrative.

One of the things Kansas has been criticized for is an arrogance about what voters interest "should" be (economic interests) as opposed to what they seem to be (the lives of gay people they will never meet). But I think Frank understands A) this is not a one-to-one equation and B) this contradiction means that politics has failed to adequately address fundamental economic shifts taking place. And smart people who understand where the momentum is now are getting mighty rich off of that shortsightedness.

Ultimately, I would have liked to hear Frank give a more explicit reading of how conservative economic and social interests play off each other and coexist within the same agenda. Kansas is more adept at describing these different strands now, and drawing conclusions about them, than describing how they got intertwined in the first place. The missing story, which Frank does touch on to some extent, is probably in the evolving relationship between corporations, politicians and intellectuals in the Republican party. Careful to play to the script written by the grassroots, the low tax crusaders have been able to insinuate themselves into the anti-liberal elite platform. And, as Frank notes, the willingness of the grassroots to tow this line has kept wealthy Republicans otherwise moderate on social issues within the larger coalition, thus ensuring its success.

Frank dwells on the economic suicide of heartland conservatives for a reason though--he thinks this might turn out to be the critical fissure in the Republican coalition. Might.

In short, Frank's book shouldn't be read for its advice to Democrats. But if you want to start thinking about the shape of American conservatism today, why it survives, why it appeals to people, and why it seems so impervious to petty concerns like consistency and reason, this is the place to get out of the box.

Candidate-driven politics

2004-11-11T01:11:00.000-05:00

Wise post from Ezra Klein here.

New AG

2004-11-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

The Attorney General of the United States writes memos about how to weasel out of anti-torture provisions. I don't care if you're prepared to view torture as a necessary evil. It's what fascist dictatorships do. This is definitely a point against the whole beacon of democracy thing. Sick.

UPDATE: Well, besides the whole ambiguity about torture thing, Gonzales does seem to be a step up from Ashcroft on social issues, which will be nice.

This is not a cigar

2004-11-10T13:03:00.000-05:00

Check out John Ashcroft's resignation letter. Total fantasy land.

Deadbeat states

2004-11-04T18:57:00.000-05:00

Atrios compiles the list. Thisbit of conservative hypocrisy never fails to gall me. Republicans spend much of their time firing up their base about the shameful economic values of the blue states: the liberal elites' love of taxation and putting all decisions in the hands of the government feeds sclerotic welfare states that must be kept away from the federal government. While the whole time our blue state tax dollars are supporting all the poor souls in their low wage corporate utopias because we still cling to this silly belief that people shouldn't be allowed to starve and die in the streets of the richest nation in the world. Grrrr.

Sobering up

2004-11-03T23:18:00.000-05:00

Paul Waldman has a good post here about how the Democratic message was never really competitive with the Republicans':

I said it over and over during the campaign, but it bears repeating one more time: every man, woman and child in America could tell you the one thing Bush wanted you to know about him and about Kerry: he's strong, Kerry is weak. If there's a single American who could tell you the one thing Kerry wanted you to know about him and about Bush, I haven't encountered him or her. I certainly have no idea what it was.

I think Democrats did some valuable thinking during this campaign. They learned how to argue with each other in a way that appreciated common goals, and understood the need for unifying themes and compromise. But let's not confuse that with winning. The next step for Democrats is figuring out how to create and hash that message in the off-season, so that it is shiny and ready for a smooth deployment when the campaigns roll around.

This will, of course, be far more difficult for us than it is for Republicans, who don't really care about consensus or the substance of what they're saying. Democrats will never get to that point, it's just not in our nature. But we can get much more savvy about the process.

Democrats need to understand that simplicity of message is not a cop out. It is both the only viable option in today's media architecture, and more importantly, the only path to making huge numbers of voters feel the sort of familiarity with your candidate that actually changes minds and ways of thinking, instead of just provoking and adding layers of complexity.

Imagine, for instance, if the Kerry campaign had decided that, for the entire life of the campaign, they would hammer the message that George Bush is incompetent at making choices. Ads would highlight the absurdity of trying to create jobs with tax cuts, and giveaways to corporate cronies. Kerry would have had a few choice anecdotes about misjudgements in Iraq to trot out ad nauseum, and surrogates could flood the talk show with scandalous examples of Bush administration fuck-ups, including a bunch of petty ones that sting but don't really matter. Is it kind of crude? Sure. But it is also easy to extrapolate more nuanced ideas from that frame, and Kerry could have done that when talking to other Democrats and people who need more meat on their candidate. Ultimately, the trick is making George Bush synonymous with dumbass. It's dismissive and obnoxious, but it has a grain of truth for people leaning towards Bush, and it's broad enough to capture a wide range of arguments.

Just an after the fact example, but Democrats need to get comfortable and skilled at creating these sorts of media strategies.

To the sea!

2004-11-03T16:53:00.000-05:00

Honestly, I do hope we get over this as fast as possible, but until say, Friday PM, let's enjoy some of the scorched earth from Cliff Schecter, Tbogg, Alterman and Pierce, Sawicky, more to come...

R.I.P. Reality, Nov 3, 2003

2004-11-03T03:10:00.000-05:00

My first instinct is to say fuck it. You people can have the stupid country if that's how you want it. Just try a little harder to keep the terrorists from away from New York, and I won't care how fucking miserable your godforsaken life in Nebraska becomes.

My second instinct is to say every Democrat needs to devote his or her life for the next four years to DESTROYING these people. Not persuading others of their venality and falsehoods, but DESTROYING them with everything we can possibly muster, no matter how debased or cheap. The new political calculus has no room for virtue.

My third instinct is a tad more reflective, and in that I am helped by this William Saletan piece from earlier. It makes me realize that the next Democratic party has a long way to go, and a lot to realize still about how to talk to 280 million people these days. It also makes me acknowledge that if the country isn't a mess after another four years of this, then I really need to rethink my views on the universe. But I'm pretty sure it will be a mess, and so we should start thinking now about what we can learn from this experience. We all saw what happened to the Democratic party this year. Obviously, it had its issues, but we can't let them convince us we didn't see it, as they will mercilessly attempt to do over the coming years.

Patience, my friends, patience.

Final thoughts

2004-11-02T19:07:00.000-05:00

No posting today, as I've been slowly killing myself with the day's news, but I'd like to put in a word before the ball drops.

The exercise of democracy we've seen so far today has been truly inspiring. Take a moment to read Joshua Bearman for a sense of the revolutionary change in attitude towards voting that many people, especiaqlly the traditionally disenfranchised, have been feeling today. As a colleague said earlier, the GOP's biggest mistake this year might have been accidentally making voting a civil rights issue again. That's a reason for all Americans to feel proud. That said, we should recognize that the Republican strategy all along has been to take this from people. With the most brittle cyncism and lack of conscience, the GOP has been trying to derail the vote anywhere they can. What's more, they've been doing it for the past 4 years. If you want to know why today has been such a nightmare, and why the Help America Vote Act seems to have been passed for naught, a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of local and federal level Republican insterests. While that should by no means exonerate the Democrats who have also stifled progress for their own ends, it has been clear that in the nation at large, and here in New York, Republicans have done what they could to keep election reform from succeeding.

The future is now

2004-11-01T16:35:00.000-05:00

Check out MyDD's electoral vote calculator, which has added an "uncalled" category (yellow). Is this a wierd thing this year, or in 2008 will we be factoring in "uncalled" electoral votes along with red and blue ones into our Monday evening calculations? It could be come routine, I suppose.

Home stretch

2004-11-01T11:55:00.000-05:00

Some items of interest:

A very thoughtful post that pulls no punches about the broader foreign policy choice confronting us tomorrow, from Juan Cole.

Kevin Drum sounds the death knell for the conservative movement, regardless of how you slice tomorrow's results.

Kos did a new roundup of dirty tricks last night.

And things appear to be degenerating fast in Michigan.

Bin Laden tape

2004-10-29T22:20:00.000-04:00

Josh Marshall thinks the public's response to the new video will be markedly different than it would have been just a year ago: "Things have changed."

I'm inclined to go with him here, albeit cautiously. The number of Americans who believe the badness of Iraq has anything to do with the badness of Osama bin Laden has been decreasing ever since the initial Iraq buzz wore off (I believe 60-70 percent of Americans believed Saddam was direclty involved in 9/11 in early 2002 compared to 20-30 percent now. See Pew for the numbers). Moreover, if there's one thing John Kerry has done well in this campaign, it has been differentiating the Iraq war from getting Osama bin Laden. Either way, Americans today are less inclined to believe that the bin Laden threat has anything to do with what we've been focusing on recently than they were.

By deliberately obscuring the issue for the past three years, the Bush administration has ensured that a videotape like today's isn't an automatic point in the President's favor.

P.S. I just watched the Wall Street Journal editorial roundtable thing on PBS. The real problem for the 2004 election in their view? The lawyers. Why is PBS running this garbage??? I guess you have to credit them for coming up with this line first, which we are sure to see first thing on Novemver 3rd: "Why are these liberal trial lawyers holding up Bush's reelection?" Holy Shit. Tucker Carlson is now on. This man is such a freaking idiot. Or as Jon Stewart said, a DICK!!! Why, PBS, why?

Outrage round-up

2004-10-29T18:33:00.000-04:00

Raw Story has scans of the new Bush PA flyer...

The GOP black vote suppression effort not involving an abuse of election law has begun in Milwaukee...

Ed Kilgore visualizes the confrontation I myself have pondered over the past week:

"I don't know exactly who the "volunteers" are who are planning to flood African-American polling places in Ohio to gum up the works and mess with the minds and ballots of voters. But given the rather limited number of black Republicans available, I have a clear mental image of some pasty-faced, bow-tie clad Federalist Society dweeb from Case-Western Law School showing up at an inner-city Cleveland precinct spouting 1953 case law at angry voters who know how often this sort of crap was pulled on African-Americans in the Deep South."

Indeed, as a colleague noted today, the GOP's big strategic error in this election may very well turn out to be that they have made voting a clear cut civil rights battle again. No one was supposed to really find out about the suppression schemes until it was too late, you realize. And granted it still hasn't gotten quite the coverage it deserves, and the GOP could end up spinning the national media if these schemes become the focus of a post-election battle. But for now, one thing is for sure: for black people going to the polls in Cleveland next Tuesday, the stakes are bitterly clear.

Um...

2004-10-29T18:14:00.000-04:00

Bin laden gets the "My Pet Goat" thing wrong in the video, inadvertently betraying his familiarity with people who actually have goats. From the Times transcript:

"It never occurred to us that he, the commander in chief of the country, would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone, because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important. "

Pigs in flight

2004-10-28T13:39:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan's Kerry endorsement is a good read. I would call this the base argument that liberals are asking all thinking conservatives who really care about the future of the country to accept come Tuesday, and he articulates it quite well. Essentially, "We know how excited you were to be on the right side of 9/11, and how great moral clarity felt, and how nice it was to feel like you were the only person in the world who understood the nature of evil. But come on guys, he's really fucking things up and you know it."

Or in the more charitable formulation, "Bush's skills have served us well framing the last 4 years of war, and thank god he was president on 9/11, but he doesn't have the flexibility, nuance, and credibility we'll need to succeed in the next four years."

I like it because it sounds like it would make sense to a conservative that has at least a tenuous grasp on reality. But then again, I can't begin to comprehend how Sullivan can write something as sensible as this and square it with the amount of shameless pro-Bush hackery he has frequently engaged in for the past several years. So take my understanding of what people are capable of with a grain of salt.

Election armageddon

2004-10-28T01:21:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note about how deeply disappointing the coverage of the GOP's shameless efforts to suppress votes is. Not to say the papers haven't been doing a fine job of picking up the election stories in general, but ultimately, the stories are falling into a predictable he said/she said rhythm. I.e., Republicans are trying to suppress the vote but they say they are doing it simply because Democrats are engaging in fraud. Reporters need to attach at least one significant and verifiable incident of registration fraud to be allowed to print these rebuttals without serious skepticism. As others have noted, the GOP is making a calculated bid to pre-empt challenges to a stalemate or a close Bush loss, ensuring that the meme is primed for deployment on November 3rd. But buying into this means that the media is watering down a veritabe explosion in GOP affiliated voter suppression schemes, most of which are hardly hidden. If they are still playing this game when the recounts begin, it is going to be a very, very, long November.

Debt

2004-10-25T21:39:00.000-04:00

Me in the Washington Post on Sunday...

Infuriating spin grudge match...go!

2004-10-25T14:51:00.000-04:00

In one corner, the effort to downplay the importance and destructive power of the 350 tons of high explosives we failed to secure, i.e., this stooge on CNN. Or this Cornerite on how these explosives are just a drop in the bucket in the arsenal Iraqis control now,

In the other, we have an attempt to spin the missing explosive story as a late entry in the "why we invaded Iraq" game.

Since they seem to be a little behind the curve, it should be an especially good match.

"Liberal" where is thy sting?

2004-10-22T13:32:00.000-04:00

A great piece by Peter Beinart today. He asks why Bush's last ditch strategy, i.e. calling Kerry a liberal whenever possible, isn't working very well, and hasn't been for a while:

The mystifying thing about this change of course is that, while character attacks have worked well for the GOP in recent years--both against Al Gore in 2000 and against Kerry this year--the liberal charge has not. Poppy used the L word effectively against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and, as late as 1994, it helped slay New York Governor Mario Cuomo, whom George Pataki dubbed "too liberal for too long." But, by 1996, the magic had run out. Bob Dole hurled the charge at Bill Clinton to little avail. And, as Jonathan Cohn has noted ("Fade to Black," November 13, 2000), Pataki's consultant, Arthur Finkelstein, played the liberal card against three Democratic Senate candidates that year--Robert Torricelli in New Jersey, Paul Wellstone in Minnesota, and Jack Reed in Rhode Island. After losing all three races, Finkelstein admitted that the epithet had lost its sting.

Beinart goes on to say that "liberal" as the term was employed in the 80s, has lost its power because A) on the domestic front, it is nearly meaningless after 8 years of Clintonism and B) enough people are ambivalent about Bush's national security policies to be interested in an alternative.

As regards A, Beinart says, the kernel at the heart of the liberal epithet was always about one thing: implying that Democrats were going to give your money to poor black people. That was the GOP's dominant trump card in the 80s, and while it was hot, they were able to parlay it into a whole arsenal of sticks with which to beat Democrats: crime, the federal budget, family politics, and the list goes on. But that was 20 plus years ago. And both parties bear little resemblance to their 1982 keywords, even as GOP strategists try their damndest to make it so.

Absurdity for everyone

2004-10-21T19:21:00.000-04:00

Required reading today for those still interested in keeping up with some of the stunning departures from reality that have come to characterize the last, pathetic leg this race is standing on.

Chait on the parallel Social Security universe mentioned below (with some nice bonus vindication for everyone who can't stomach The Note anymore); and Frank Rich with what should be the last word about Mary Cheney but, thanks to the shills we have for reporters these days, probably won't be.

Desperation

2004-10-20T01:40:00.000-04:00

The Social Security privatization mini-scandal is a fine complement to the Mary Cheney canard that the Bush campaign (or more precisely its shameless surrogates, see Goldberg, Jonah) has, remarkably, dragged into a 6th day almost solely by sheer force of will.

Now Bush is taking up the "scaring seniors" line in response to a speech Kerry made about Bush's intentions to privatize Social Security in a second term. It's almost the textbook case of the current GOP spinning one of their unpopular positions into an 'attack' simply because the opposition is correct, and vocal, about its unpopularity.

It's pretty obvious that Social Security privatization is not going to happen anytime soon because A) despite years of work by very smart people, no one has figured out how to make the damn thing work without blowing a multi-trillion dollar hole in the budget and B) because there are enough Republicans in Congress who are smart enough to have nothing to do with a harebrained privatization scheme nearly guaranteed to lose them votes.

But you know what? George Bush and his "economic team" should still be punished for it. Because they have poisoned the debate about Social Security in a way that will take years to repair, and becuase they know it won't get anywhere. That's why they do it. Because even though they don't give a shit, they have to look like they have an agenda for big social insurance programs. The end result is that they get a free pass out of a politically difficult debate while wasting everyone's time and stalling progress while the situation gets worse.

And another thing. If Bush really wanted to go forward with this privatization account, he would have thought about that before he fucked the federal budget for eternity. Back in 2000, a Republican administration would have enjoyed a far more attractive hand in implementing private accounts, considering the surpluses as far as the eye could see. But now this administration's incompetence has made things tough all over. Private accounts are an absurd pipe dream, while the future deficits he's created are going to make repaying the trust fund in the 2030s that much more painful. Can we please get rid of these guys?

More Brooks

2004-10-19T10:01:00.000-04:00

Sam Rosenfeld is similarly appalled at Brooks today. I know the Times is willing to give op-ed columnists a long time to hit their groove, but my god, they can't really continue to publish this man for the next decade or more, can they?

Venting

2004-10-19T01:49:00.000-04:00

David Brooks makes me want to throw my computer out the window. If John Kerry commits one heinously fascist act in his administration, let it be to strip this man of his space on the Times op-ed page and send him far, far away from civilized discouse. Hackwise, he has obviously acheived every height one could possibly imagine, so what else is their left to do? Seriously. He sucks.

Fille Cheney

2004-10-16T13:15:00.000-04:00

Mickey Kaus and Glenn Reynolds agree that Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney being a lesbian was a cheap attempt to "swing the votes of homophobes." Are they kidding? The voters in this election who intend to cast their votes based on homophobia aren't voting for John Kerry, period. And undecided homophobes of the presidential debate watching variety aren't sitting at home rethinking a Bush vote so they can keep his vice president's lesbian daughter as far away from the White House as possible. To suggest Kerry would engage in such a "strategy" is just absurd. That's on the level with some of the depths of Gore sneakiness fantasized about in 2000.

Kerry mentioned her because he wanted to point out the administration's hypocrisy on gay issues. Despite Bush's bleating about tolerance and pathetic attempt to spin the FMA as having nothing against gay people, anyone with half a brain in their head knows that people who don't like gay people vote for Bush. Not all Bush voters are homphobes, far from it, but everyone who makes their political decisions based on homophobia is in the Bush camp. By mentioning her, Kerry quietly pointed out that this kind of intolerance is outside the mainstream and untenable, exhibit A being the vice president's proud, out daughter.

Lost in all of this is a more important point: Kerry pushed the envelope of discourse on gay rights in that answer.

Bush's answer boiled down to, "I know most of you don't want to talk and think about this, but at the same time you think some of the people who vote for me are social issues fascists. Let's just sweep it under the rug with some cliche about live and let live, shall we?"

Kerry, on the other hand, revealed a little taste of what the future holds for gay rights as a mainstream social issue, and gay constituencies as a run-of-the-mill presence at the political table. Gays got the same treatment from Kerry on Wednesday that all interest groups get: awkward sympathy from an old straight white man. That's a good thing.

In a decade or so, when the culture war hysteria has been pushed back to the fringe, when the legal crisis over gay families has settled down, and when marriage or domestic partner benefits are nearly universal, that is what gay politics will look like. A craggy old straight white man will be running for president, and he will reach out for gay votes by trying to empathize with the unique hardships involved in being part of that group, and describe the specific policies he will support targeted to those needs.

The power that religious fundamentalists wield over politics right now is temporary. It is a fragile coalition to begin with, and it is contingent on a relatively small number of people that should be turned out of office fairly soon. Once that is out of the way, the progress on gay rights will be determined by whether we have politicians that are willing to take moderate-hat Bush's "Let's not worry about it unless someone forces the issue" stance, or politicians ready to proactively pander to gays like they do everyone else.

For now, our fine leaders, along with their helpmates Mickey and Glenn, are still stuck in 1995, trying to exploit yesterday's closet politics to make people think Kerry crossed some line. If you think he somehow violated her or her family's privacy you are still living in a past where gay people who aren't visibly flaming are assumed to want the full measure of discretion over when they are recognized as gay: "Sure he's comfortable with it, I just don't know if he wants to be gay at work" and that sort of thing. It treats openly gay people as if they must value their ability to 'pass', and it is tired bullshit.

Thoughtful conservatives who think they appreciate gay tolerance (unlike those nasty fundamentalists) need to shut up about this and quick. Did Kerry use her to prove a point? Yes. Can you say anything about it? No. Because that is Kerry's point, dumbasses. If you say something about it, you are admitting you find it uncouth and impolite to mention someone's gayness on national TV, which implies you think there is something delicate and questionable about it. There is simply no way around this. You just have to sit there and accept it as if he mentioned she was an inspiring working woman. Want to do something about it? Then stop covering for people who are trying to cheapen your fellow citizens' civil rights.

You're fired

2004-10-16T02:59:00.000-04:00

John Kerry did well to note Snow's deployment of the household survey claptrap. So far, we have been spared this coming out of Bush's mouth, but it has always been on the tip of his tongue. "Hell, if you don't like my fake policies for creating jobs, what if job loss never happened at all? Then where would you be? Nyah."

When the Secreatry of the Freaking Treasury denies the economic consensus that has been approved and attested to by no less than the single most important figure in your policy shenanigans (Alan Greenspan's remarks last July) then you don't get to push that line in public. The fact that they are doing just that is a measure of how depraved the merger of political operation and policymaking have grown in the Bush administration.

Why you should

2004-10-16T02:26:00.000-04:00

It has been interesting to watch, in the later days of this campaign, the extent to which Kerry handwringing has all but disappeared. This has always been the central gamble of the campaign--would affection for Kerry ever live up to the purity of Bush-hatred, but ultimetly, it seems not to matter.

Part of this is certainly due to a well run Kerry campaign. Has it been perfect? Hell no. But they have kept their heads above water, avoided any nuclear embarassments, and weathered some pretty considerable shit-storms with resiliance.

But beyond that, I think that voters have dropped their substantive questions about Kerry. The negatives on Bush have transcended regular partisan divisions and, in the ill-fated words of Michael Dukakis, come to rest on 'comeptence'. Even fairweather Democratic voters are not demanding a viable plan from Kerry for how he is going to neatly settle this whole Iraq mess. They just know he not going to carry Bush's baggage.

That is an important and encouraging turning point in the race, because it means that among many voters, Bush has exhausted his post 9-11 carte blanche. In the intervening three years, American voters feel that they have grown savvy about the issues involved in terrorism, and that a hunker down and say yes mentality isn't necessary anymore.

Once more with feeling

2004-10-16T02:00:00.000-04:00

Matthew Yglesias very patiently explains, again, why precision strikes in densely populated urban areas is an oxymoron. It's not being negative about the war, it's just a fact. And it's one we have to take into account if our stated mission is to win their hearts and minds. If you're one of those people who thinks we should just fucking blow them up, then I still find you morally consistent. But if you've ever talked about spreading democracy, breaking the back of Middle Eastern tyranny, or heart/mind winning, you have to deal with the fact that prolonged periods of violence are very problematic to your mission.

Debate Odds and Ends

2004-10-15T15:16:00.000-04:00

Two good things in Slate today. First, Saletan points out something that should have made every thinking American throw something at their TV: Bush's utter refusal to grapple with Kerry's "truth standard" line--that an American president must present credible evidence to the country and the world before going to war. He didn't try to pretend that the evidence was there or that it wasn't his fault, which would be its own can of worms, but agreeable on principle. He told the world, and the country, to go screw itself for asking for evidence. I know its hardball and the global test line was getting mileage and he wanted to punch it some more, but this is serious business, and he keeps saying it.

Two, Timothy Noah takes Bush to task for his Massachusetts-bashing. The lies and cynicism that allow a President of the United States to get away with trashing a state of the Union like this (imagine if Kerry started slamming Wyoming for using too much federal money) just goes to prove the strong geographic aspect of the sort of argument the argument Tom Frank is making in What's the Matter With Kansas? Namely, the skill of the GOP and the conservative movement at large in creating the mythical liberal beast that is the country's real problem. The long-form version of Bush's Massachusetts-slam goes "You know how they think. Condescendingly. You know what they like. Big government. And you know where they live. Massachusetts!"

The media, for their part, are so snowed by conservative claptrap that no one even thinks to ask whether it's out of line, or at least deeply and viciously divisive, to use an entire, diverse state full of people of many different political persuasions as a euphemism for what's wrong with the country. It's absurd, isn't it?

What up with Bush?

2004-10-14T21:59:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of revived talk lately about just why exactly Bush is so much less articluate than he was only a decade ago. But the usual theories: that he is deliberately trying to sound dumb, that his cocoon of yes men has dulled his senses, and of course, mild cognitive dysfunction, just don't seem to add up.

I've watched this Frontline thing on Bush and Kerry twice now (I have no cable) and I'll agree that the difference really is remarkable. In nearly all the footage of Bush prior to the 2000 race, he comes off as smart, articulate, and aware, albeit in a cocky, self-assured way. He spins descriptions of policy with ease, flair and confidence, and while you might call him glib you certainly would not call him stupid or dense.

So what has changed since those early days? From all accounts, Bush is still just as charming and smooth in person, so why has his public persona veered so far off course? I think the trouble lies in the evolution of the unique political machine that surrounds him.

Perhaps Bush's greatest political asset has been a political operation tighter than perhaps any seen before in national politics. As guided by Rove, Karen Hughes, and others, the Bush team has an ability to maintain an absurdly high level of message discipline. Discipline (combined with cojones and a cowed press corps) that enables them to craft the most uncomfortable realities into a favorable narrative.

Bush understands the power of this strategy in a way that few other people did at the time. The trouble is, that sort of message discipline is incompatible with the kind of personality you see in his earlier appearances, as well as an increasingly hostile national audience. So while he understands the immense payoff to be had from chaining himself to the larger media strategy, an understanding that requires both shrewd patience and self-control, it doesn't leave him with a lot to talk about in extamporaneous situations, and makes him somewhat uncomfortable reading from a prepared text (although his genius speechwriters make up for this to some extent).

His public persona has far more constraints on it than Clinton's, constraints he most certainly appreciates the full value of, but he has never quite figured out how to make the actual being of that person work seamlessly.

Smart war

2004-10-14T15:23:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum weighs in on Kerry and Bush's different conceptual frames for combating terrorism, as exemplified by his "I don't think about Osama" remark. I think this goes hand in hand with my comments the other day about the how this is a choice between the sort of indulgent globe-bestriding approach to terrorism of the Bush administration and a quieter, more mature and realistic approach Kerry talked about in the NY Times piece.

The question left over, of course, is how much the rhetoric enabled by this misguided theory of terrorism informs the policy. The political payoff of getting to call the war against al-Qaeda World War III, the Cold War, and World War II all wrapped up in one is considerable, but it forces you to introduce all the necessary props, i.e., conventional wars.

Fin

2004-10-13T22:33:00.000-04:00

This time around was kind of a snore...its really remarkable how shallow and uninteresting shared dialogue about domestic policy has become in the past four years. With the gloves off, liberals and conservatives can both accuse each other of representing a degenerate polar opposite, but put two of them in the same room with some political stakes present, and you just get a parade of eye-glazing numbers. Although granted, its nice to be on the side using numbers which actually represent things happening in the world. I'm indisposed at the moment, but more thoughts tomorrow...

Sensitivism

2004-10-12T22:47:00.000-04:00

I suppose I'll throw my two cents in regarding the Matt Bai piece, since the nuisance line appears to have legs. As others (here, here) have noted, this is pretty right on, and actually quite encouraging regarding Kerry's potential.

As Mickey Kaus has noted in his kinder moments, the world needs a break from the Bush administration's War on Terror. Four years of confused semi-hysteria, one big stupid war, and a few hundred million enraged Muslims were perhaps inevitable to some extent. But it is time for us to embrace a mature approach to terror that is not afraid to let the political narrative be subsumed by a quiet execution.

Just in case we need one more reminder, "terrorism" is essentially meaningless. Weak peoples who have a little of the crazy on their side will always choose to confront big slow-moving states with vicious targeted acts of violence. This is an inevitable effect of having states, after all. But September 11 opened the door for America to right its policy on a host of pressing concerns we have ignored for too long: A) the violent byproducts of weak states and the global black market, and B) the unique economic, political and social crises afflicting the Muslim world.

Come on people. It was a very satisfying ride, but we all know that complex global problems and nonstate fugitive groups aren't going to be addressed by "breaking the back of tyranny" or "short-circuiting history" or "steadfast resolve". These are labor intensive, delicate projects. And while violence must of course be an option when needed, the unpredictable, catastrophic consequences of large scale violence are antithetical to the kind of hard, thoughtful work we need to do.

At it again

2004-10-12T10:27:00.000-04:00

If bullshit could kill...David Brooks this morning hammers out a masterpiece from one of his favorite column templates: reduce two positions to the most banal generalizations possible, spin into a false dichotomy that makes them appear to be a fundamental clash of ideas, then make the one accorded to Bush sound a bit more appealing:

Put this way, the argument we are having about international relations is the same argument we are having about domestic affairs, just on a larger scale. It's a conflict between two value systems. One is based on a presumption of a world in which individuals and nations should be self-reliant and free to develop their own capacities - forming voluntary associations when they want - without being overly coerced by national or global elites. The other is based on the presumption of a crowded world, which emphasizes that no individual or nation can go off and do as it pleases, but should work instead within governing institutions that establish norms and provide security.

Brooks employs the same tactics that Heritage Foundation 'academics' have been using for years: subverting the layman's opinion by positing your fringe beliefs as equal competition for the established consensus. What a hack.

Round deux

2004-10-09T01:26:00.000-04:00

Well, it seems the conventional wisdom is a "draw" regarding tonight's debate. Which is right where the Bush people want it. These are smart people, they know that unless Kerry becomes schizophrenic overnight there's no "winning" these debates. The issues Bush has to run on are just too murky/utterly fabricated. They spun the first debate as "Kerry is the defacto winner because Bush lost" and I'm sure they'll spin this one as "Bush is the defacto winner because he did better than last time."

I was actually quite surprised this time around. I thought Kerry held his ground in the first debate, but I sure as hell didn't like watching it. This time, I thought Kerry was performing quite dramatically ahead of Bush. His responses were disticntly more eloquent and coherent than the President's, and he kept the President on the defensive a clear majority of the time. While some will certainly voice complaints about his constant "I have a plan" intro, I thought it distanced him from Bush everytime he said it. In a good way.

The negative on this debate ought to be that Bush was performing at the peak of his capacity and it still didn't hold up. The President was obviously engaged and animated tonight, no one would deny him that. And yet, time and again, he failed to go beyond the tired old soundbytes and make a case for his second term. Interested people of course have known this to be the case for the past year, but its time the regular voted started asking similar questions.

Down a notch

2004-10-07T17:23:00.000-04:00

Well, it appears we have gone from "weapons" to "weapons programs" to "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities" to "intentions to begin weapons of mass destruction program-related activities." Keep 'em coming, guys.

Just once

2004-10-06T15:04:00.000-04:00

I would like to see Kerry or Edwards explain why the $87 billion thing is crap. I think Pandagon mentioned awhile ago: at the least can't they bring up the fact that Bush was planning to veto it?

Their seeming reluctance to take this on seems a little too bizarre, so maybe someone has good reason to think they shouldn't be arguing about it. Maybe the strategy gods will find it a petty quibble and up their value-less nitpicker quotient. At the same time, Bushco continues to use it to justify just about every charge they can think of against Kerry, like some kind of free pass which permits the speaker to insinuate whatever they want about Kerry regardless of logic or taste or proof. Kerry could say something like: "I've heard you distort my vote on that bill for a year now and I'm not going to take it anymore. Myself and many of my colleagues felt that now that we were in a war we should be prudent about our finances, and knew that well-off Americans would want to join us in that small sacrifice. This is the first war in history during which taxes have actually gone down, and you can see the result in our half trillion dollar deficit. But the President doesn't understand what real sacrifice is, and thought he could get this war for free. He threatened to veto that same funding for troops to save his tax cuts, to choose breaks for the wealthy over body armor for our soldiers, and he bullied Congress into thinking likewise."

Veeps in the ring

2004-10-05T21:49:00.000-04:00

The difference between Bush and Cheney is that Bush doesn't read the papers, and thus doesn't have a grasp of the total reality of the conservative spin universe. Every time Bush sputtered last week, there was a carefully cultivated logic out there that could have filled that gap. But Bush just doesn't have those things at his fingertips.

I remember the 2000 VP debate between Cheney and Lieberman as being a very mature, quite sensible affair. Cheney had to prove he was an adult to counterbalance Bush, and he did it. This time ain't quite so civilized. It's interesting though, every time Cheney pulls out one of the really low blows distorting Kerry's senate votes his mouth kind of curls up. He'll do it, of course, but he still can't quite hide that the knows its bullshit.

Wow, Cheney really made the attendance thing burn. He sounded like a principle taking the popular kid to task. I don't know what it means that that really appealed to me.

Debate roundup

2004-10-01T01:40:00.000-04:00

I've had this discouraging thought before, and tonight's exercises only reinforced it. Namely, that this election has to pit followers against people who consider themselves endowed with even half a brain. Not to say that only the enlightened can be liberal, but simply that if you're not voting for Bush, you have, at some point, decided not to drink the intellectual Kool-aid which is his sole selling point.

***I do think Kerry held his own, contrary to my expectations. That's mostly due to Bush though. His ability to (A) "make shit up" has dwindled it seems, in the last four years, and (B) his stump speech about liberty n' democracy n' not liking terrorism a lot doesn't fare very well when he has to deliver it piecemeal in debate format. In fact, you could watch it disintegrate in real time, as Bush got weaker and weaker as he got further away from his opening remark.

***Josh Marshall notes Bush's ability to succinctly dispatch his opponent's argument with a deft turn of phrase or simplification of argument:

Where he was strong were those few times in which he mobilized what I think is one of his true strengths: an ability to keep his ears open to turns of phrase which can be used against his opponent, ones that allow him to cast himself as a no-nonsense tough-guy and his opponent as either feckless or weak. To me, it's an ear for the cadence of a rancid populism. But that's a subjective view. The relevant point is that it is a strength.

I like to call this the "That is totally gay" rebuttal, and Bush certainly tried to use it to full effect tonight. Trouble was, not all of the time but certainly some of it, that the comeback didn't work. The complete dearth of substance in some of his responses actually resonated in contrast to Kerry's concise, significant arguments. And I think I say that as someone who has a good appreciation for when Bush is really on and really entertaining. Tonight, I found myself fairly bored and anxious during his time.

***I think/hope its fair to say the "less appealing" honor went to Bush (although this is highly contingent on the spin of the next couple days). As others have said, Kerry was able to maintain an initiative by repeatedly forcing Bush to defend his actions with regard to 1) why Iraq isn't going well, 2) how he's actually making America safer. and 3) what he's doing on other terrorism fronts, most importantly the nonproliferation issue. It's hard to gauge who won these exchanges, since Bush was impeccable about responding on message, and obviously that sells, but the important point was that Kerry maintained the upper hand. In contrast, the upper hand Bush was fighting for was Kerry's inconsistency on the war, and that's just not very interesting or engaging anymore. Could it be the Bush campaign has overplayed its most precious hand? Do they have a nefarious Plan B for October that we haven't seen yet?

That's it for now...

On being a liberal

2004-09-28T23:01:00.000-04:00

Tavis Smiley had the Heritage Foundation's Tim Kane on this morning, the dulcet voiced hack infamous for his specious op-eds about how the whole unemployment "thing" is really just due to a misunderstanding about federal survey numbers, which have somehow managed to slip by the editors of almost every major newspaper. Listening to Kane's facile and decptive logic ("But we do have a solution to structural unemployment among black males, it's called economic growth and you get it through supply side economics...") it struck me how truly uninterested are the current crop of conservatives in actually addressing the business of running the government. The conservative movement is so dependent on several intoxicating discursive frames, that little room is left for the sort of self-examination and "courage to choose the best solution" invaluable to real government reform.

Which got me thinking about an important but forgotten aspect of the liberal appellation debate: the importance of a strong liberal tradition in creating better government. The conservative ascendancy of the past three decades has been remarkably successful at diverting and stifling real debate about the purpose and character of government. They pit the overwhelming popularity of most government programs against a PR campaign of smearing anything with the word government attached (except the military) and reap the benefits.

But the ensuing gridlock has shown its cracks in recent years. Bowing to political pressures, Bush has all but abandoned "starve the feds" rhetoric (regardless of his backers' true intent). The increasingly frequent omission of true believer anti-government rhetoric in American politics points to a time when we can again have substantive debates about how government should be shaped.

Bill Clinton was able to achieve this to an extent, but he had to reframe the entire debate in the terms palatable to conservatives. That his triangulation was (briefly) successful only goes to show that the country is yearning for such a debate.

By virtue of its goals, the anti-government 'movement' doesn't have much interest in stemming the tide of venality and favoritism which has come into sharp relief in the past four years of government. But Americans have repeatedly demonstrated that they appreciate smart, accountable government. When they are convinced that government is reasonable, efficient, and responsive, they will rally to more inspiring visions of what they might accomplish through it.

In this sense, George W. Bush has done a favor for liberalism. He has thrown into sharp contrast how government operates without taking liberal principles seriously, leaving us to hope for a time when they are.

My thoughts exactly

2004-09-28T13:25:00.000-04:00

Fafblog on no-good stupid lousy swing voters and the politics that cater to them.

Not the revolution, per se

2004-09-27T01:07:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum has a thoughtful extended post about Billmon's column in the LA Times today that is worth a read. Billmon takes a pretty straight "if it hasn't already, the blogosphere is due for some big time selling out". Kevin, in response, says, yes, yes, and so?

I think there are a few major reasons why we shouldn't fear the corruption and decline of the blogosphere quite so soon, many of which closely overlap with Kevin's.

1) What do you mean by "blog" anyhow? Just because the top bloggers have now enetered a realm where their popularity might bring them into the orbit of unwelcome influence doesn't mean regular people can't blog anymore. In fact, it only means more people will become aware of the format and try it. To suggest that one category of discouse we call "blog" is on its way out is to overestimate the medium, which is really very simple.

2) Certain blogs are popular not because they're blogs. The reason that a handful of blogs have achieved the dangerous popularity which Billmon describes is not some maturation of the blogosphere. Rather, it is a quite natural outgrowth of the Internetization of news junkie-ism. The reason why certain blogs are attaining mainstream cred is because they fill a niche in the Internet news universe.

Regular newspapers, while still the center of that universe because they are the ones that can actually supply new information from, um, the real world, move too slowly for the million or so people that keep an Internet explorer window open all day, trying to get a constant fix of news and debate. Their op-ed columns only appear once every 24 hours, and there's no guarantee they will follow the story you're interested in, especially when you're checking back 3 hours after the initial news story was posted. Cable news made a valiant try, but ultimately it was just too stupid, shallow and boring to satisfy an over-educated audience. So, this is the space that the top punditry blogs fill, and it has a lot more to do with making a faster more efficient op-ed column than it does with any high minded blogoshpere ideals.

3) Blog cachet is next to impossible to replicate. We should know, we've been watching as newspapers and other media big and small have tried to replicate the blog as a way of drawing people to their sites. Still, the only successful blogs are ones that do have their own reputation or unique pull. Name me the vacuous coroprate blog that has made it big at the expense of good taste. The audience for blogs is by definition the neurotic news junkie population, and these people are not in the game for whatever's on. Thus, the danger that blogs will be bought and turned towards corporate ends is still great. But I have trouble seeing how a corporate master could degrade and defang the content of these blogs too much before they lose their appeal and the news junkies head elsewhere.

As Kevin concludes, the greatest danger to big-time bloggers is from themselves. They will have to maintain diligence that their own opinions don't succumb to increased pressures. And thankfully, journalism has well worn ethical standards with which to approach these questions. In a medium that turns utterly on how distinctive the writer's personality is, bloggers will confront those debates with a leg up.

Sure...

2004-09-26T01:08:00.000-04:00

I spent some time at Andrew Sullivan tonight, and have decided to address the curious world of Bush loving gay Republicans that, while it appears to exist almost exclusively on his blog and in feature stories about the gay Republicans, is nonetheless compelling.

Long story short, I am all for gays agreeing with Republican principles. If you are gay and hate welfare, or what cash in the form of tax cuts, or hate terrorists pathologically with no qualifying statements, more power to you. That is your right. But what people wrestling with this issue have to realize is, that Republican party's hatred for gay people is not a principle that can be steadily amended.

It is an instance of political pandering that will not disappear until major schims in the current Republican coalition occur. The GOP's position on gay people is categorically different than their regular positions. I have no doubt that G2, Karl Rove, etc. don't really give a shit about whether gay people can get married or not. But the way the current GOP domination is run, political concerns de facto trump substantive concerns, and that means, inevitably, a very hardline stance about hating gay people and using that hatred in the most exploitative and manipulative way possible. They don't wanna do it, but...

Log Cabin Republicans, Andrew Sullivan, and the rest of them have to understand this, and probably do. And they probably think that they can go on separating out the gay piece of themselves from the "Oh man do I love G2" side of themselves. Unfortunately, the GOPs gay-bashing is going to be around a lot longer than they think.

Short of another terrorist attack, the administration's focus on the 'war on terror' to the exclusion of all else is on the way out. Regardless of whether Kerry wins or not. If not, politics dictates that Bush is going to have to sweep Iraq under the rug right quick. But where domestic issues are concerned, all he has is left are the extreme wedge issues, and, if the fundies win this election for him, expect that he will be far more amenable to their wins in a second term.

Nice

2004-09-23T13:18:00.000-04:00

Jessica Mathews gets it blindingly right in her Post op-ed today. Losing the "hearts and minds" battle isn't important because it undermines our long-term ability to change the face of the region, blah blah blah. It's important because everyday more Iraqis think we are a cruel invader who needs to be violently destroyed. How long Bush will continue living in the fantasy that he can play "with us or against us" with angry, armed, unemployed Baghdad slumdwellers who haven't had reliable power for a year and are more than a little inclined to assume the very worst about the US?

While I agree with Matthew Yglesias that Kerry is very likely to get his ass kicked in the debates, this is one point he can win. If Bush starts to do happy-talk about Iraq, Kerry must be tough and uncompromising about what a distortion this is. As I've said before, Bush is pushing the envelope of Americans' tolerance for altruism towards other countries. When Bush tries to confuse the issue and downplay the costs, Kerry needs to be clear about exactly what has been lost in Iraq, AND make sure he separates that from the broader War on Terror. Say it over and over: 200 billion, 1000 soldiers, no WMDs, no connection to Osama bin Laden, world hates us. If that litany doesn't eventually trump Bush's "The gift of liberty is a gift that keeps on giving!" argument, nothing can.

Makes you think

2004-09-22T02:10:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of reasons to read Adam Gopnik's piece about World War I from an August New Yorker (I think the link is dead, but Nexis it if you can). For one, it is a very useful discussion of the popular reads one should pick up on the subject. I've read Guns of August and the Keegan book, and with god as my witness, the new Froomkin book and others mentioned therein will be read shortly.

But this passage stands out:

History does not offer lessons; its unique constellations of contingencies never repeat. But life does offer the same points, over and over again. A lesson is many-edged; a point has only one, but that one sharp. And the point we might still take from the First World War is the old one that wars are always, in Lincoln's perfectly chosen word, astounding. They produce results that we can hardly imagine when they start. It is not that wars are always wrong. It is that wars are always wars, good for destroying things that must be destroyed, as in 1864 or 1944, but useless for doing anything more, and no good at all for doing cultural work: saving the national honor, proving that we're not a second-rate power, avenging old humiliations, demonstrating resolve, or any of the rest of the empty vocabulary of self-improvement through mutual slaughter.

How strange then, at the beginning of the 21st century, that we should be conned by a new incarnation of this sentiment (albeit on a mercifully far smaller scale). That our leaders should be able to convince us once again that war, the violent intolerable deaths of our fellow human beings should be good for anything except avoiding an unconcionable alternative we have no choice to ignore. If you dig deep down in the Iraq war's true belivers, this is the sentiment you will find. It is remarkable the pull it has on us, even now, after perhaps the most personal violent act committed on the American people. But it is there...that deep abiding faith that new violence can cleanse and disrupt the brutal systems of the past.

Look into their rhetoric and you'll find it. "Something had to be done about the cycle of authoritarianism in the Middle East." "Nothing short of a war could have brought democracy to the Iraqis." "Dictators won't change unless someone is willing to use force against them."

News of today

2004-09-22T01:46:00.000-04:00

David Brooks is a freaking idiot. Read this, and then go read the last few days of posts at Juan Cole's site. If you have half a brain you have to know that this is not a regular war anymore. We 'won' in Iraq. No doubt. Good job us. Brooks criticizing Kerry's Iraq policy because it is not a path to "victory" is fucking ridiculous because there is no "victory" here. There is painful unattractive compromise and then there is utter disaster. That's what happens when you take a country with one power structure that controls violence in one way and blow that wide open so that everyone thinks they have the leeway to use violence to achieve their ends. It may be 'better' in the long run, and in this case, I am still in the camp that thinks it most likely will.

But for the love of god let's not pretend that somehow if we fight hard enough everything will be peachy. A 'decisive victory' for the U.S. in this situation can ONLY be bought with countless civilian deaths. That's what happens when you turn cities into open warfare zones. And considering the nature of the Middle East we are dealing with right now, countless civilian deaths does not, in fact mean epiphanies of love for the U.S. Sacrificing your grandmother to gunship attack doesn't make most people appreciate the price of freedom, after all.

God help us we don't achieve a 'decisive victory' in Iraq. I would gladly settle for one of those middling uncertain 'let's check back in 5 years' victories, thank you very much.

UPDATE: Ok. You MUST read Cole's latest post here.

Back on the horse

2004-09-20T01:29:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been so long. I guess I've been feeling a bit of campaign fatigue. I'm happy to read about it and talk about it, but spending the energy to actually write about it is harder.

This isn't exactly going as planned, is it? While I wouldn't say the Republicans are trouncing yet, they have executed their game plan skillfully. The goal for the GOP has never been a decisive victory in this election, and they have tailored their campaign to that understanding. The best case scenario for Bush, after all, is a sort of confused ambivalence on the part of the voters. Can't let reality in, that's for sure. On the other hand, making stuff up is getting harder.

So the GOP strategists, cynical realists that they are, have settled on their gamble, and, no doubt, it has a fair chance of working. They understand how to push the right media buttons capable of transforming a story in their negative column into a draw--how to concoct and deploy sordid morsels for the press' baser instincts to feed upon, all the while maintaining their virtue, or at least well-timed invisibility. That formula may not win them unmitigated triumph, but it blurs all the edges enough so that, provided it still exists, their slight inherent advantage will be decisive.

The Democrats have figured none of this out. With six weeks to go until the election, all their sympathizers can think to haggle about is whether the Kerry camp is going to find its message or not. Democrats by and large still believe that the message sweet spot is out there somewhere, and, if we can only hit it in time, the swing voters will see the light and come running in droves to our side. They still see the media leviathan as a scalpel, rather than a bludgeon, as the Republicans do.

In part, its a David vs. Goliath mentality. The right's ability to manufacture stories and support is viewed as so insidious and monolithic, that the only weapon capable of stopping it must be the truth. It looks small in comparison, but launched in just the right place, and just the right time, and it will bring the whole thing crashing down. Republicans on the other hand, see the beast for what it is. Lumbering, ineffective, and least dangerous when stunned.

So what does this suggest for the campaign? There was a time not too long ago, we must remember, when the media was souring on Bush. Newspapers were doing a whole lot of real reporting on big issues that, inevitably, turned out poorly for him, and consequently, his negatives were skyrocketing. If the Democrats can't figure out a way to drown the right wing's distraction tactics in negative stories about Bush, then there will be little hope. Mind you, these don't have to all be on message for the Kerry campaign. Let Kerry do what he does. But figure out how to get the media hooked on bad Bush stories. In a world where this was done more effectively, one would not have seen the travesty of this past week, where confusion over documents that proved nothing we didn't already know, and that, by the way, were negative for the president regardless of their authenticity, took precedence over the dramatic deterioration of the situation in Iraq.

I'll give him this one

2004-09-08T22:33:00.000-04:00

I really hate Bill Maher. I've never seen his cable show since I don't have HBO, and, as I said, I hate him, but his regular show drove me insane. And that was before the idiot guests you wanted to reach into the TV set and throttle came on. However, I have to tip my hat to this little rant, courtesy of Atrios. Maher says:

But by the looks of your convention, you'd think that the worst thing that ever happened to us was the best thing that ever happened to you. You just can't keep celebrating the deadliest attack ever as if it's your personal rendezvous with greatness. You don't see old men who were shot down during World War II jumping out of a plane every year. I mean, other than your dad...So I say, if you absolutely must win an election on the backs of dead people, do it like they do in Chicago, and have them actually vote for you.

This really goes to the essence of what I'll call the "9/11 lovers". These people aren't really interested in stopping terrorism, or taking a practical approach to domestic security, or other boring, unsexy, difficult things like that. The object of their love is their own narrative of the attacks. The emotional catharsis they felt watching the tragedy unfold and the closeness they felt to their countrymen. The shining feeling of moral certitude they found by declaring their unique and eloquent opposition to terrorism and cruelty. The delicious twinge of courage and decisiveness which twitches in their breast as they announce their bright line in the sand, and their willingness to sacrifice as many lives and dollars as necessary for the cause.

The lovers are jealous of their love, as all lovers must be. One must be a true believer or not at all. In this way, facts and practical realities come to seem less troubling. The primary object, you see, is the perpetuation of that love. Wrapped in their ecstasy, the lovers feel comfortable dismissing these challenges with any old rationalization that will make the problem go away quickly, and return their gaze to the love object.

How can so many people fetishize such a tragic, awful problem? Because it doesn't cost them anything of course. If the 9/11 lovers seem to be awfully carefree for war partisans, its because they don't really have much to worry about. Even New Yorkers, who should actually be worried (unlike most of the people supporting Bush), can't claim a fraction of the justified fear a resident of Tel Aviv today or a Londoner of the 40s felt. As far as material hardship goes, the symbol of this war will be tax cuts and checks in the mail, not ration cards. And, while certainly sobering over one's morning coffee, very few Americans can claim direct sacrifice from the war's casualties.

This is war in the abstract (until you actually get there, of course). Nowhere is that more clear than in the frequent and shameful comparisons to World War II. In summoning that war of truly universal, devastating price, the 9/11 lovers stake their claim to the story of sacrifice, of courage, of history they so desperately covet, yet are denied. It was probably bound to happen, seeing as how we just came off a decade characterized by restless comfort, topped off by a lot of feelings of inadequacy in the face of Greatest Generation tributes.

I don't necessarily blame all of the 9/11 lovers, some of whom you can't help but marvel at their earnestness (until you start thinking about all the death and lost opportunities, that is). But less forgiveable are the operatives of the Bush operation, who know exactly what they are dealing with, and have raised to an art the craft of exploiting this sugar-coated war. These people have been given unlimited freedom and audacity to mold the country and the world into a reasonable facsimile of the 9/11 lovers' fantasy in order to consolidate their political might.

Perhaps

2004-09-04T11:34:00.000-04:00

There's a slim possibility that David Brooks may not be the debased shill I often accuse him of being. On the contrary, what if Brooks is the ultimate Charlie Brown to the Bush administration's Lucy with the football? Hoping, just one last time, that G2 will take a real stab at running the kind of sensible, compassionate, cutting edge conservative revolution of Brooks' fantasies.

For instance, today he transforms the domestic agenda portion of Bush's speech from the same tired list of proposals he trots out every year into a bold new vision of "government as a positive tool" (gasp). I have no doubt that Brooks realizes that Bush and team have had the patience for exactly one piece of big compromise driven legislation (NCLB) so far, and that otherwise they have been content to fake it (Medicare) or just blindly push a starve the government agenda (when they are not selling it off piece by piece, that is). Even if he believes the Cato math on all of these things (which leaves a lot to be desired), he has to know they are going way more time, energy, and compromise than Bush can muster.

And yet there he is, all wide eyed and trusting, not quite grasping that a) the other major intellectual current in his party (which arguably has a lot more pull than his blue state appeal garners) wants to DESTROY the federal government by any means necessary; and b) everyone of these proposals would be sacrificed to tax cuts. Brooks even mentions the latter problem, but thinks it is still up for debate.

Meh

2004-09-03T17:18:00.000-04:00

I thought Bush's speech was surprisingly lackluster, compared to the bold new visions of the next four years we were promised. In fact, the only idea we haven't heard before (i.e. idea that actually had a policy direction attached to it) was the "let small firms buy health coverage at the discount of large firms"--a proposal so piddling and ineffective I have no doubt it will never see daylight again. But it kinda sounded real, didn't it?

They seemed unwilling to really commit to the 'ownership society' thing, maybe becuase they already scrapped it once and are bummed they couldn't come up with anything new, or maybe becuase they never resigned themselves to the fact they couldn't use the "compassionate conservative" formulation again. I see them getting frustrated like so: "I mean, we made people forget about the WMDs rationale for the war, why can't we make them believe we never used compassionate conservative before? That was sooo good!" Although in their defense, I will admit that the ownership society thing is a lot harder to explain, and would involve a lot more effort and math to pretend to implement it. Perhaps they tire of keeping up the appearances of potemkin domestic agendas?

Zell's lies

2004-09-02T13:10:00.000-04:00

Many smart people who will otherwise think Miller's speech last night was scary and overblown may nonetheless be curious about his accusations regarding all the weapon systems Kerry has "tried to cut" in his Senate career. For the record, Fred Kaplan had the final word on this back in February, for anyone that cares to look.

Yet another reason why Bush needs to lose this election.

Defense policy at the "which planes should we buy" level is a pretty complicated thing. It is just about everything a honest member of Congress can do to try to inject some legitimate oversight into that secrecy, inertia, and pork-chasing that defines defense planning. One level, deploying crude attacks that confuse someone's voting record on complicated issues is just politics, but on another level, it just goes to show how unserious these people are about having a real debate on how our military needs to change to fight terrorism.