Centerfield

Evolving Plans in Iraq

A very distressing analysis from Josh Marshall regarding the political situation in Iraq and the likely sequence of events.

The obvious point, I suppose, is that announcing our intention to draw down forces and transfer sovereignty sends a certain signal -- and lessens our immediate power as factions start to realize our presence is temporary and to develop their own power bases. We have much less of an ability to influence events.

A similar mistake was made in the Kosovo war during the Clinton years. Top administration officials stated publicly that we would not launch a ground war. We might have come to that conclusion privately -- that it was best to avoid a ground war. Announcing it publicly, however, placed some obvious limits on our options and might have encouraged the Serbs to think they could ultimately win if they held out long enough.

So why did the administration conclude so publicly a few weeks ago -- in the midst of our worst military casualties -- that we would begin to draw down forces within the next year?

To consider the consequences, look at Josh's analysis and the new Washington Post piece he cites.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner says there's "no coherent narrative" about the future of Iraq, and he points to an article by George Packer in last week's New Yorker as the best detailed analysis on the current situation.

Enjoy Your Thanksgiving Fast

No, that's not a typo. The citizens of Camberwell, a fictional town situated somewhat to the left of Lake Wobegon, are fasting on Thanksgiving.

Here in Camberwell, we like to think of our town as New England's most progressive community. In other towns, Thanksgiving is a day of feasting in which Americans gorge themselves till they're about to burst. But in Camberwell, the new thing is to fast on Thanksgiving.

This particular absurdity is something I made up out of whole cloth as part of my Camberwell Tales series. After the fact, I searched Google to see if anyone might actually fast on Thanksgiving, and I found out that Oxfam sponsors a pre-Thanksgiving Fast which occurs one week before the big day. At least that makes room for the feast.

Enjoy your turkey (or tofurkey)!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's a few Thanksgiving thoughts from David Broder this morning.

For The Medicare Bill

I actually like the Medicare bill. Of course, I didn't actually read the bill - it's quite possible that the details make the reality alot worse. But I approve of what the bill is trying to do.

Increasing Medicare imbalance makes me unhappy. But it seems politically unavoidable. Both Democrats and Republicans have promised it. This bill is the best bang for the buck that we could hope for, limiting the increased liability level and containing costs via means-testing and privatization.

A Medicare prescription drug benefit is a good thing. I believe in the safety net, and this improves it in an important way. It substantially reduces drug liability for poor and lower-middle-class Medicare recipients. I am disappointed in fellow Democrats for thinking this is bad. We're afraid that there'll be no need for Democrats if we let Republicans be the nice guys.

Getting controversial, I also like the privatization experiment. I believe strongly in competition, which has a big potential role to play. Competition has reduced prices and improved features and reliability for millions of products and services over millenia. Competition for Medicare services - even of a relatively low scale - could do much to contain this aspect of drug costs and improve service, even if only a small fraction go to the competition. That happens alot with monopoly services subjected to competition, such as telephones and schools.

Limited school choice has improved inner-city education. Inner-city schools have finally improved as the school choice and charter school movements gathered steam. Increased funding did little. School choice opponents said choice would make things worse, because schools that students didn't attend would lose money. But it didn't work that way. Hopefully it will be the same with Medicare drug coverage.

I even like forbidding Medicare to negotiate low drug rates is good. The US is the only large, free drug market left; if we want innovation to continue, we have to fork over. Drug inflation continues because we are getting better and better drugs. If you just want aspirin, you can pay aspirin prices for it. If you want an antidepressant that doesn't have really nasty side-effects, you can pay more for that. If you want Viagra, you can pay even more. If we stop paying more for those drugs, we'll stop getting them. I'm not alone in this opinion.

Some particularly annoying quotes:

The Republicans, by contrast, have abandoned traditional conservativism to gain political advantage (with the elderly, for instance), Joe Klein, Time. True! But politics is the art of exchanging service for votes. It's just as true of Democratic politicians when they call for prescription drug benefits. This doesn't keep it from being a good idea.

"Private Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) get to pick what drugs are covered under the plan, with no transparency, methodology or public accountability. " Consumers' Union. For consumer purposes, multiple private plans is much more accountable than Medicare, since one can change plans if they suck, unlike Medicare, which you can only sue or complain to your Congresscritter about.

There have also been numerous grumbles about all the money drug companies will make from this. Well, yes, drug companies will make more money from selling drugs to low-income Medicare recipients whom otherwise couldn't afford them. Sounds like good stuff to me!

Posted by Jon Kay at 03:17 AM | Comments (6)

Josh Marshall: Attack Bush from the Right

I shared a few thoughts a couple days ago in the comments thread for this post. My wife and I had watched a few of the JFK specials that were on last week, and I noted some obvious strategic parallels between JFK's 1960 campaign and the upcoming 2004 contest.

JFK faced an opponent with strong anti-communist credentials, and he also carried the burden of being young and relatively less experienced. He was running during one of the more dangerous periods of the Cold War.

He handled all these concerns by talking tough on communism, attempting to run to the right of Nixon -- accusing the previous administration (which Nixon had been part of) of being too soft and unprepared for the communist threat.

This, I suggested, was an obvious path for a Democrat in 2004. Relentless tough talk on al Qaida and the terrorist threat to assure Americans that you're serious about terrorism and determined to take tough steps to protect our country. This is the first presidential contest since 9/11, and it's almost certain Americans will choose someone they perceive to be tough and committed in the war on terror.

Such a candidate doesn't have to be someone who supported the Iraq war. It does have to be someone who supports the war now -- because now that we're in it, we're fighting actual terrorists, and we're trying to deny them a base of support that might emerge if Iraq devolves into a festering mess.

They should talk about doing what it takes to win the war, and they should talk endlessly about the specific steps they will take to confront al Qaida and defeat them.

Josh Marshall makes virtually the same point in his latest column in The Hill. His analysis is fuller and more nuanced. He talks about the ad the RNC just ran touting Bush, and sees it correctly as a "hanging curveball" that a Democrat could take and hit out of the park -- if only he were willing to run to the right of Bush on foreign policy:

Democrats are reacting to the RNC ad with a mixture of outrage and poorly concealed fear. They shouldn’t be, because this is a line of attack that a strong, wily Democratic opponent could parry and turn to his advantage. This new line from the president also shows why — in a certain sense — an effective Democratic contender next year will want to — indeed, will have to — run to the president’s right on the all-important issue of terrorism.

Check out the rest of it. Interesting.

Red Meat vs. the Vision Thing

Al From and Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council just published an open letter to the candidates. It's long and a bit complex, but the insights are spot-on.

Here's a piece:

The other recurrent delusion holding Democrats back this year is the notion that if we just offer enough red meat, a stampede of Democratic voters will emerge from an undisclosed secure location and carry us to victory. President Clinton put to rest the false choice between energizing the base and persuading swing voters by winning twice.

So far, the Democratic race has been a shouting match to prove who can't stand Bush the most. It turns out none of you wants to keep him in office! Together, you have successfully reassured primary voters that if elected president, you won't pass big tax cuts for the rich, appoint right-wing judges, work hard to alienate our allies, or keep John Ashcroft as attorney general. Like most Democrats, we don't like Bush either. But we don't think this election will turn on whether voters can pick you out of a lineup based on how loudly you say "miserable failure."

Every election is, in part, a referendum on the incumbent. But this is not a recall election. Americans may have growing doubts about the president's performance, but not enough are ready to join Democrats in blaming Bush for all the country's problems.

Moreover, even if 2004 were a recall election, it's not enough to win the vote on Recall Question 1. You have to give people a reason to vote for you on Recall Question 2. If you go too far trying to make everyone hate Bush, you may only succeed in making them dislike you.

What both parties too often forget is that the only way to succeed in politics over the long haul is to embrace a modern, coherent political philosophy that works. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had Progressivism, Franklin Roosevelt the New Deal, Bill Clinton "Opportunity, Responsibility, and Community." In the end, Americans will only think we have a vision if we actually offer them one.

Boring, but Important

Drezner concedes that the Medicare bill is a boring topic. More important than just about anything we're discussing. But deadly dull.

He nevertheless manages to share a few words on it.

And here are some thoughts from a couple of the more balanced, informed bloggers:

Ara Rubyan of E Pluribus Unum.

DonQ of Flyover Notes.

Heather of Ruminations also shared some thoughts with us via email, which I would be happy to post with her permission.

UPDATE: Heather graciously grants permission. Click below for more.

I am concerned about some of the things I am reading about the new drug bill. I'm not sure I understand exactly how it's going to effectively benefit patients. From what I am reading in WaPo, Daily Dish, ReasonOnline, and Flyover Notes, I have reason to be concerned.

I'd be interested in reading your take on this issue. One of the reasons for my concern is a recent personal lesson we learned about the markup that pharmacies take with even generic drugs. My husband currently takes two medications -- one for blood pressure and one for Type II Diabetes, both in generic form. Our drugstore of choice for our prescriptions has been Drugstore.com -- even with the shipping, they have been less expensive than most of our local pharmacies. Then I received an interesting email from a friend about the kind of markup that most companies take. The email intimated that the only pharmacy that didn't seem to do that was Costco's pharmacy. So we went online and checked. The price difference was at least 50%!! He can get BOTH medications from Costco's online pharmacy for less than he paid for ONE of the medications at Drugstore.com! (Needless to say, we switched pharmacies.)

Now I realize that the big drug companies need to recoup the cost of developing new drugs. That's why they get to hold the patent on a particular drug for a certain length of time before it goes generic. But it's beginning to look like the high cost of prescription drugs goes beyond the development of those drugs. Rather than coming up with costly plans to pay for the bloated price of drugs, maybe Congress should be looking at plans that would make drugs more reasonably priced. The only ones who would be upset then are the "drug pushers."

Oh. I forgot. Those "drug pushers" help support the politicians.

Blogging The Numbers

Which candidates do bloggers post about most? Just because a candidate is spoken about does not mean the campaign is succeeding. But in the absence of gaffes or scandals, mention of a candidates name is one measure of interest in the campaign.

I've been added to the team at The Blogging Of The President:2004 and have written an entry which I'll summarize here. I've written a script to query the Feedster search engine for posts over the last week which mention the Democratic presidential contenders. Feedster is a search engine which uses indexes and searches RSS feeds produced by blogs and news services. The summary data includes items which appeared in blogs, and in major online media such as nytimes.com. Inspection of the source data suggests to me that the majority of posts are from blogs rather than major media, but I have not yet been able to quantify this. While Feedster does not comprehensively index every blog and online new source, there is no indication that its data sources are skewed in a way which would favor any particular candidate.

Here are the results:

To my mind, the most surprising results are that items mentioning John Kerry are running second to Howard Dean. The Kerry campaign is not thought to have a strong network of grassroots support among bloggers. If mentions of Kerry are being driven by news items, it could reflect reports about a shakeup in his campaign, or more favorably to him, his second place position in polls in New Hampshire. Gephardt seems to be the underperformer, in that his blogging numbers do not reflect his strength in Iowa. Perhaps blogging is more prevalent on the coasts than in the heartland.

The full entry over at Bopnews has a breakout of the data by day and some further details about methodology.

Carter deserves more credit for end of USSR

I write this post to straighten out the memory of Jimmy Carter's Presidency. I believe he shares equal responsibility for the fall of the Soviet Union with Reagan, and gets far too little credit for what he did.

Conservatives like to give 80% of the credit for the fall of the Soviet Union to Reagan, 19% to Bush I, 1% to the Russian people, and none to any other president. Carter was a useless wimp.

The truth is, Carter did at least as much as Reagan, and we have to give most of the credit to the Russian people, whom by their actions preferred freedom to empire. In fact, in my opinion, Carter was better at war than peace. The end of the Cold War is one of the great episodes in US history, while the Nobel-blessed Egyptian/Israeli peace has proved to be a bit of a devil's bargain. Certainly, I feel that now, his kowtowing to dictators in the name of peace is sad to watch.

My source for *most* of this post is "From the Shadows," by Robert Gates, CIA DCI under Reagan and Bush (now, alas, Texas Aggie-in-Chief). He wrote that Carter has gotten a raw deal from history, in large part because Carter's boldest moves were covert.

According to Brzezinsky in an article in Journal Nouvel it was he, with Carter's approval, who began policies of supporting the Afghan rebels in a big way that would attract Soviet attention before the Soviet invasion, thus triggering Soviet fears and possibly the Soviet invasion six months later to support their puppet.

This put the Soviets into an even worse situation than Vietnam, because their lack of automatic democratic reform made it much harder for them to move on. It was a huge, Vietnam-style defeat for the Soviets, that caused them to have even more questions about the usefulness of their military for anything, and since their empire was based on old-fashioned conquest, all of a sudden the whole thing seemed threatened to them.

Gates noted that the Soviets were reluctant to invade Poland in respose to Solidarity. That was a year or so into their Afghan experience. Were they afraid that the ol' Army of Repression would misfire?

A big secondary reason for credit is the focus on human rights. Although Ford started it by negotiating the Helsinki Treaty, which included human rights guarantees, and which the Soviet bloc signed, it was Carter who went to town on human rights. He spoke loudly about human rights at every opportunity. He funded, encouraged, and continues to encourage, human rights groups both here in the US and in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europs and in dictatorships across the globe. This put fear in Soviet leaders and hope in their citizens, because they knew the leaders' ill deeds were now counted. Such groups in Warsaw Pact countries were leaders in the the rebellions that toppled the Soviet domination, and are now leaders of their own countries.

It was Carter who made human rights a fundamental part of US policy. Ungrateful conservatives now wisely use human rights language all the time now to frame resistance to dictators.

So what was Reagan's contribution? There is no question that SDI did alot to help, because, as Gates put it, among those who believed it would work were not just Reagan's advisers, but the Soviet Politburo as well. Even before a single dollar was spent! I don't think Carter would have initiated SDI - he was pretty conservative on technology.

And, let's face it - Reagan got lucky on his timing. Does anybody believe that Reagan did more to face down the USSR than Truman, Ike, and JFK? But the slow rot was only half done back then.

After reading Gates' book, I don't see where the vast arms buildup helped much. AN arms buildup was needed, of course, and Gates rightly pointed out that one was already going on well before the election. The "hollow military" thing was probably already addressing itself after Ford made the Army all-volunteer. But Gates says the Soviets were mostly spending beyond their means in the Third World. Carter had already engaged the Soviets in the Third World, mostly via covert assistance. Reagan did exactly the same thing - the big difference is that his CIA director was didn't respect Congress, and so everything Reagan did "covertly" leaked.

Again, of course it is the Russian people whom we mostly have to thank for the end of the USSR. They preferred freedom to empire. They worked harder and took took risks far greater than we did to weaken and topple the USSR that they had built. They saw where the future was and acted when the chance arose. And they chose not to reenslave the SSRs, much less the Warsaw Pact nations.

Blogging Of The President

Christopher Lydon, a veteran of public radio in Boston, has put together a weblog called Blogging Of The President:2004. BOP is a unique combination of text and audio. If you go there today, you'll find links to an interview Chris just conducted with Joe Trippi of the Dean campaign. The audio is on MP3 files you can listen to with RealPlayer.

Chris is my guiding star as far as "buzz." I first heard the word "blog" on a Chris Lydon broadcast. I first heard "Harry Potter" and "Viagra" mentioned on his show as well. BOP will be a great place to get a behind the scenes peek at the campaigns.

Apathetics Unite!

In the American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias describes centrist voters as "people who basically don't care," at least when it comes to gay rights.

But the key point is that the crucial middle ground -- which, taken together with those who favor gay rights, forms a majority, however slim -- is held not by gay bashers but by people who basically don't care.

It is in this middle ground that elections are won or lost, which is why the political dynamics of gay rights may pose more problems for Republicans than for Democrats. It is very unlikely that politically committed homophobes were being tricked into supporting liberal candidates for office based on the Democratic Party's refusal to embrace same-sex marriages. It's long been clear which of the two parties is the more gay-friendly one. The groups that stoke the fires of anti-gay sentiment are all aligned with the Republicans, and Democratic candidates everywhere are frequently tarred with alleged opposition to "family values" no matter what they say or do on the issues.

Indeed, the political genius of current Republican strategy has been to signal the GOP's agreement with the conservative base's anti-gay agenda without actually doing much of anything about it. Action, after all, would alienate Republican leaders from the American center, which may not be eager to embrace gays and lesbians but isn't necessarily interested in seeing them bashed in the political arena, either. The median American voter thinks -- quite rightly -- that gay marriages will have no real impact on his or her life, and hardly thinks that the government should make them a top priority in a time when the country is facing pressing problems of joblessness, war and terrorism.

That may be a bit optimistic. My sense is that the semantics make a difference. The average person doesn't care what contractual financial arrangements gay couples make with each other. But for many, the word "marriage" brings up religious issues. I think the major Democratic candidates are wise to stop at supporting civil unions for the present election cycle. At the same time, the Republicans run the risk of looking mean-spirited if they run too hard against this.

Democratic presidential candidates

We're about sixty to ninety days from having the first few primaries sort out who goes home first. For what it's worth, here are my observations:

BRAUN: 'Thank you for taking time out of your not-very-busy schedule to make sure women's issues are not ignored.' Should run for office in Illinois. (Also, we know who the first woman president is likely to be.)

CLARK: Probably one of the last two standing in ninety days.

DEAN: Probably one of the last two standing in ninety days.

EDWARDS: If there's a dark horse to emerge, it will be Edwards.

GEPHARDT: I simply don't think so. (Pure gut feeling on my part.)

KERRY: He seems determined to waste more time and effort before realizing he's getting nowhere. Will probably give up after New Hampshire.

KUCINICH: Great effort. Made some good points. His time is best spent working for his constituents.

LIEBERMAN: Coasting along on name recognition only. As soon as people pay some attention, he is quickly forgotten.

SHARPTON: 'Thank you for your interest in being the first African-American president. But, no, thank you.' (I personally think this man is most likely to have that distinction.)

I think it bodes well for the democratic nominee's chances that the two front-runners (Clark and Dean) both have good grass-roots organizations.

If there's ever going to be another year when the convention makes the final call, 2004 could be it. But, I don't think that will happen. The non-elected 'super-delegates' won't let it go that far.

(also posted to CivicDialogues)

A Step Forward? 2 Steps Back?

My state's Supreme Court's recent decision to grant gays etc. the right to marry has been the topic of much discussion. Notably, democrats running for President don't seem too eager to hoot, and when you read the results of this Pew Center poll, you see why.

I grew up in Boston's burbs and commuted to UMass-Boston. So I had the pretty unique almost-daily experience of leaving my hometown as a pretty liberal guy and arriving in class as a conservative. I've worked and socialized with gays and lesbians long enough that I have a very hard time fathoming the opposition to granting them equal rights. I care only about the content of their charcter, and how they use their private parts just does not seem to me to be something that reflects on that character.

But I am deeply concerned that this small step forward today will be followed by several steps back, if not a kick down the stairs. See Eugene Volokh's savvy take on this. The 2nd half of the 20th century saw many interest groups seeking to change social policy through the courts, and now at the dawn of the 21st century, opposition groups have turned it into a real chess game.

Libertarian Stampede Underway Yet?

Both the Dynamist and Jacob Levy over at The Volokh Conspiracy are sounding the Red Howie alarm over Howard Dean's suggestion that it might be worthwhile to investigate re-regulating some industries that have been rocked by scandals in recent years, characterizing this as a "massive re-regulation campaign."

A predictable response, to be sure. I expect Radley Balko and other free traders to get their panties twisted into a full bind over this with lightning speed. They are probably plotting their righteous fiskings even as I speak. We could probably turn it into a drinking game, take a swig every time they say "jobs" or "centralized control" or invoke the specter of the 70's.

I'm sure to the really rabid free traders it seems like the regulation pendulum has barely swung awy from over-regulation, or maybe that it hasn't swung at all. And free traders make a TON of really valid points about the costs of regulation and the merits of free markets. These are certainly people worth listening to. Except when their response to things like Enron, energy price gouging in California, insider trading across wall street, and bogus stock rating by analysts under the thumb of their firms investment banking division is a shrug or a rationalization.

My point is not to slam free traders. Far from it. My point is that the nature of regulation of industries who have proven themselves prone to exploiting consumers when left to their own devices is a subject worth having a discussion about. And the free traders better have more than blithe platitudes for the class of American workers who went to college and slaved over post-grad tech training only to have their jobs exported to India.

Get Out Yer Crayons

Back40, a poster on the Hannity-Colmes thread below, has come up with a challenging assertion that he's been unwilling to expand upon so far. His claim is that the political spectrum represented by the span from, say, Rush Limbaugh to Al Franken represents only a narrow slice near the center of the spectrum. So for him, I'm asking that he expound on this, hopefully with examples.

But for the rest of us, how about getting out your crayons and drawing us some sort of map of the political world. We've already visited the idea of a few 2-axis models, use one of those, or whatever makes sense to you.

Pointless exercise? Maybe. But a lesson from a good college professor has stuck with me, lo, these more years than I'd care to admit. It was a class that surveyed a variety of approaches to personality. My professor stresses to me her viewpoint that she didn't think it was all that important whether anyone one of the theorists was RIGHT per se, but rather that you learned most when you approached the models as ways to bootstrap yourself in and gain some insight.

So address back40's contention, or elaborate on it, but give us some sort of model that gives us a little insight.

Centrist Perspectives on Health Care

Heather of Ruminations has some personal thoughts to share on the health care crisis, as well as articles and information from several sources.

I'd also like to point you in the direction of two centrist analyses of health care policy.

First, the summary of health care recommendations by the Committee for Economic Development.

And second, the detailed analysis from Centrists.org.

The CED plan is somewhat broader, proposing changes on the part of businesses and individuals as well as government. You could consider it a more conservative solution -- less focused on the role of government.

Anti-Zionism, not Anti-Semitism

There has been alot of discussion of the severity of anti-semitism here and abroad. Well, I don't believe there is much actual anti-semitism out there. Instead, I see an absolutely horrid anti-zionism, just as bad as the anti-semitism which is so feared.

There are, of course, two real and important moral horrors going on here. Both are/were horrible, and neither justifies the other. The first was the ethnic cleansing associated with the creation of Israel. This continues in a real sense, as we see Israel today using many of the same tactics as the United States used to ethnically cleanse American Indians from most of North America. The second is even more of a current event, as it is growing worse rather than better - using the first event to justify killing as many Jews as possible.

The idea behind the first is zionism, the second anti-zionism. Note that the fatal version of anti-zionism is just as bad as anti-semitism. Terrorism and murder are evil, no matter what whether the justification is Hitler-style anti-semitism or new anti-zionism.

Violent anti-zionism has all too many converts in today's world, extending, alas, far beyond the Middle East. Here in Western democracies, we must identify this murderous and evil idea for what it is and resist it appropriately.

On the other side, the Israeli meme that the creation of Israel was a moral act and there is nothing wrong with the settlements is also evil, if in a less immediate way. Of course, ethnic cleansing wasn't on anybody's List Of Evil Things back in 1948, or the UN resolution would never have passed. But there has to be a realization by the State of Israel that this was evil, and they must stop the settlements right now.

For war to end long-term, both sides must see they are wrong. Either one letting up would be a help to the other; Arafat is kept in by Sharon; Sharon is kept in by Arafat.

UPDATE: I didn't explain what ethnic cleansing cleansing tactics Israel is engaging in. Oopsie! Ron C brought this up in comments.

One strategy the US used to keep the American Indian frontiers receding in the 19th century was a pattern of, er, advancing settlement-and- conflict. People would found settlements in Indian territory and defend them. When settlements were attacked, state militias and even the US Army would respond. Effectively, territorial and sovereignty boundaries moved with the advancing line of settlement. Eventually, the boundaries made it to the Pacific.

Israeli settlements are encouraged economically by the government, defended by the Israeli Army, and they are slowly creeping forward indefinitely. Note that to do this (especially for a democracy), you have to feel that the country you are encroaching on and its people are somehow inferior and undeserving of equal treatment.

Communitarian Update

The Communitarian Update has a number of interesting items, including this question

Recently President Bush called for a change in the sixty-year old American policy of supporting autocrats in the Middle East to instead supporting democratization in that region and elsewhere. Whatever his motives, can this be done? Should the West favor such a change even if it means in the short run there may be Taliban-like governments elected in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan among other places? Furthermore, is it the business of the United States to determine what kind of governments other nations ought to have? To read the speech, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8260-2003Nov6.html.

My answer is that while we should generally favor gradual democratization, we should not consider it a panacea. As other commentators have noted, with the prospect of Islamist governments coming to power in democratic elections, there is a danger of "one man, one vote, one time." Recall the Weimar Republic in Germany. The most destructive war in history came in the wake of the failed democratization of Imperial Germany.

HANNITY AND colmes

Alan Colmes, liberal foil for Sean Hannity on Fox, is considered a pushover, partly because he doesn't think the other side is always wrong.

He often goes out of his way to demonstrate respect for conservative guests on his show, and one of his book's chapters is titled "Where Right is Right," a nod to the other side of the political spectrum that it's hard to picture, say, Laura Ingraham or Michael Moore making. Some of the chapter is simply an attack on members of the far left, such as those who favor slavery reparations or maintain that Bush is not really president. In other parts of the chapter, though, Colmes strays toward the center, supporting free trade and tougher control of borders -- even going so far as to cite conservative pundit Michelle Malkin as someone who has done "good work" on the borders issue.

The right-shift on FOX is such that center-left is the balancer for hard-right.

What Makes a Hypocrite?

Well, Rush Limbaugh returned to the airwaves with what initially struck me as a slithery defense against critics’ claims of hypocrisy. I checked RushLimbaugh.com for the transcript and it was there, but the quote I heard on the radio( from another talk show host that was miffed about Limbaugh's parsing) didn't show up.

So I'll paraphrase. He says that despite what his critics claim, that he’s not a hypocrite because he was right that taking drugs is bad and destructive behavior. So he wasn't wrong. He was right all along, and hence not a hypocrite.

Now I was all ready to pile on until I read the def'n of hypocrisy, which says that hypocrisy is the feigning of beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess. So what's the deal? Leaving aside Limbaugh, let's consider it in the abstract. If you truly believe that say, drugs, or whatever is wrong, but can't resist them, are you a hypocrite, or just weak?Inarguably, someone who says over and over that drugs are evil and destructive, but doesn't really believe that, and uses them liberally, well sure, that person is a hypocrite. But if you truly believe in and aspire to a moral standard, but can't meet that standard, are you also hypocrite, or are you just a bad role model?

And yeah, you can PARSE the def'n and focus on the pretense of a virtue you don't possess, but I'm not interested in hanging Rush Limbaugh high. What I find interesting is that it seems to me that the public espousal of a moral standard one don't really believe in is a higher crime tha the public espousal of a standard one truly DOES believe in even though one can't meet that standard.

So if one classifies both cases as hypocrisy, then what seems to me to be an important distinction is lost. The funny part in all this is that Limbaugh's defense is, well, Clintonesque.

What If It Went Down Like This?

Maybe that Tom Clancy novel I’m reading is a bad influence. But I had a discussion with a co-worker related to Andrew Sullivan’s "fisking" of Wesley Clark, and we came to an agreement on what might well have REALLY gone down in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. So I’m wondering what anyone else thinks about this...

Our feeling is that, very soon after 9/11, the Bush admin quickly decided on their response. An invasion of Afghanistan was a foregone conclusion, with the goal of the ouster of the Taliban and the destruction of as much of Al Quaeda as possible. Here's what I said to him after reading the Sullivan article which strives to make Clark look as bad a spossible

"Yeah, it seems apparent that, having been weaned on the US Army, Clark is a master of talking out of both sides of his mouth, and has been unprepared for just how much more difficult it is to get away with this when everyone is watching all the time."

"That said, 2 points:"

"Clark still makes a good case in a variety of similar essays that the benefits of a multilateral approach are worth the sacrifice of some autonomy."

"The author, Andrew Sullivan, is a well-known pro-war zealot and reflexive defender of the Bush administration. That's probably why he quickly jumps on Clark for being "Ross Perot crazy" for suggesting that the Pentagon/admin had discussed a plan to go on a rampage of toppling ME regimes. IMO, there's little doubt that the topic was broached, how seriously no one knows. But here's the part of Sullivan's description of Clark that I don't think is crazy at all:"

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Clark said, he visited the Pentagon, where an old colleague, a three-star general, confided to him that the civilian authorities running the Pentagon--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team--planned to use the September 11th attacks as a pretext for going to war against Iraq. "They made the decision to attack Iraq sometime soon after 9/11," Clark said. "So, rather than searching for a solution to a problem, they had the solution, and their difficulty was to make it appear as though it were in response to a problem."

"Now I'd quarrel with the use of the word "pretext" since it suggests invalid reasoning. But I have almost no doubt that this decision was made pretty promptly after 9/11 and that turning away from it was never a serious possibility. The whole UN thing was mostly done as an obligatory going through the motions. War in Iraq could only have been averted if Hussein stepped down, which no one viewed as a real possibility.

In shorthand, what I think really happened is that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 Bush met with a small circle of advisors, and the gist of the conclusions arrived at were as follows: OK, Afghanistan is a foregone conclusion. The Taliban are done, dead men walking. But that's not enough. We need to make a serious example of someone. Saddam Hussein is the very obvious (and indeed only sensible)choice.

Anyone who is defending the adminstration is loath to admit anything close to this for obvious PR reasons, but that's how I think it went down.

And to be frank, if I were the President, I might well have done the same thing. So as I've thought about it more and more, it has troubled me less and less. But for Sullivan to call Clark crazy for suggesting it just reveals his reflexive biases as a Bush apologist on the war. I don't think less of Clark at ALL for saying it, instead I think less of Sullivan.

Do you disagree with the idea that the decision to invade Iraq got very firm very fast after 9/11, and that nothing less than Hussein stepping down could have averted it?

My co-worker was in absolute agreement. Now of course, I have no inside knowledge, but the scenario I describe seems pretty plausible, and, like I said, I have to admit I may well have chosen such a path. Thoughts, anyone?

A Plea to Stay the Course

Tacitus is one of the most thoughtful and principled conservative bloggers. He has some serious, sobering thoughts regarding our rapidly changing strategy in Iraq and the announced plans to draw down troops and transfer sovereignty.

Here's one paragraph:

Are you fearful of a "quagmire" (whatever that might be) in Iraq? Take heart -- the occupation will be over by June 2004. Are you steadfast in your desire to see us win in Iraq? Take heart -- the fight will continue. For a short while, the Administration gets it both ways. But it can't go on. The day may well come when a newly-sovereign Iraqi government will order us out. Or they will adopt the cruel garb of theocracy. Or they will succumb to civil war. Or they will control Baghdad as Karzai controls Kabul. Or they will resort to Ba'athist-style secular repression as a means of holding the country together. And what then? Will it all have been worth it then? Will we look back and wish we'd grasped the nettle firmly as honor and common sense demanded back in the hard fall days of 2003?

So much for setting a trend

This must be making the GOP a bit nervous. In the South even!

The New Swing Voters?

An article in the Washington Monthly asks if soldiers will become the new swing voters

the consensus view seems to be that the military as a whole votes Republican by a margin of slightly less than 2-to-1, with enlisted men and women Republican by 3-to-2, and Republicans outnumbering Democrats among officers by 8-to-1. (Thankfully for Democratic partisans, there are 15 times as many enlisted men as officers). Scholars know even less about how the military has voted in the past. But they have established a broad narrative of the demographics and shifting historical cultures of the military that helps explain its evolution as a political entity.

My feeling after reading the article is, probably not. The Vietnam War didn't turn Wesley Clark into a Democrat (that took 30 more years) and the Iraq War probably won't turn many soldiers into Democrats either.

More Moore?

It's egregiously impolitic of me to refer to the just-slapped Roy as Mullah Moore, especially while trying to play centerfield. But from the beginning of this story, I was unable to turn my mind from the connections so easily made from muslim clerics seeking to enshrine sh'aria as the highest law on the one hand, to a Judge so willing to declare that the law must acknowledge God on the other hand. Read any of Judge Moore's words and he's quite clear that he wants us all to acknowldege God as the first authority, and the law as subservient. I can't stress too strongly how much I don't wanna go there.

More than one person I have talked to has suggested that this is a media-trumped story of little interest. I could not disagree more. The unscientific Fox news online poll today was running 4 to 1 in favor of MM. Evangelical Christians and Catholics are migrating to the GOP, and I'd be pretty surprised if anyone would disagree that it's because of their reliable support for Christian values and concurrent lack of concern for separation of church and state. NBC news tonight reported polls showing a pretty strong 75-80% of Americans in favor of "god" on money and in the pledge of allegiance, and prayer in school. Not that this dovetails quite nicely with the roughly 76% of Americans that are Christian (which only goes up to about 77% if you say Judeo-Christian, something I was surprised to find out when I went looking.) Coincidence?

So I'd submit that ala Dylan, you don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.

And none of this is by way of insulting people who believe in God, because I'm one of them, even if I might not think He's as powerful as many others do. I'm continually baffled by those who think this is about whether or not the content of the 10 Commandments is good stuff.

Far from it. I just don't want the government in bed with organized religion. I look at history and I see how wise this doctrine is, how it has enabled our country to grow wise, diverse, and willing to mind our own business when our neighbor's doing his thing doesn't infringe on us doing our thing. And I look at the record of governments where religion was dominantly involved, and I see a long losing streak as regards treating women and every stripe of imaginable minority (racial, religious, economic, social) with minimal respect.

I'm not here to praise Mullah Moore, and I'm not dumb enough to hope I'm here to bury him. A regional folk-hero has taken his first bow on the national stage. And don't lose sight of the fact that he was taken down in Alabama for floutiong the rule of law, not for violating separation.

San Francisco By The Fjord

After the rush of posts yesterday, it's been a quiet day here in Centerfield. I'm forced to travel overseas and visit Norweigian blogger Bjørn Stærk who makes a number of interesting observations about America's political divide.

So what does it tell us that anti-liberal and anti-conservative books are read by millions of politically interested Americans? It tells us simply that American political culture is polarized. And we along with it. It's easy to compare the political mood in Norway and the US and conclude that Norway is peaceful and rational, and the US high-pitched and irrational. There are no Norwegian equivalents to Moore and Coulter. Our political books are rather dull. But change the perspective a bit and you see why the comparison is false. We haven't copied US polarization, we've become part of it. Norway is one big extension of the American left-wing. We read Michael Moore, we love his movies. We snipe at the American right in the same way - with the same words - as the American far left does. We have adopted their worldview, their rhetoric, their thinkers. Norway's not polarized, the West is, and we're in the San Francisco camp.

I seem to be a sucker for these left-wing places. My vacation this summer was to San Francisco, and Yosemite. My wife and I are thinking of going to Europe next summer, and Scandinavia is one of our possible destinations. Is it more fun to go on vacation to a left-wing community? Often yes. But some may fall under the rubric of "a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there."

A Conservative Says 'We're Not Losing'

Conservatives are catching up with liberals in terms of media power,according to an article in the City Journal

The Left’s near monopoly over the institutions of opinion and information—which long allowed liberal opinion makers to sweep aside ideas and beliefs they disagreed with, as if they were beneath argument—is skidding to a startlingly swift halt. The transformation has gone far beyond the rise of conservative talk radio, that, ever since Rush Limbaugh’s debut 15 years ago, has chipped away at the power of the New York Times, the networks, and the rest of the elite media to set the terms of the nation’s political and cultural debate. Almost overnight, three huge changes in communications have injected conservative ideas right into the heart of that debate. Though commentators have noted each of these changes separately, they haven’t sufficiently grasped how, taken together, they add up to a revolution: no longer can the Left keep conservative views out of the mainstream or dismiss them with bromide instead of argument.

Sick of talking about bias yet?

"Twas Instapundit that turned me onto the non-RedSoxian Derek Lowe's smackdown of a NYTimes editorial on drug development. His main, and what should be a well-taken point is this:

I find it irritating to be harangued by the New York Times about a subject you've clearly made little attempt to understand.

The whole thing , which is not especially long, is very much worth reading simply on its merits. But since we've been quibbling about bias, it brought up a point for me. First off, it's pretty surely an example of a reporter relying on default liberal biases about ruthless unfeeling greedy corporations. [yeah DJ, it happens (-: ]

But the part that interests me is the "failure of understanding" part. In a long boring weekend post below I talked about how our minds grow these elaborate mental architectures of interconnected ideas that can become resistant to alteration. Call these our reflexive biases. Well it occurs to me that the less well one understands some phenomenon, the more likely one is to rely on the interpretive lens of reflexive bias to explain it.

So it's not hard to imagine that whoever composed this unattributed NYT editorial found that a few isolated facts fit quite easily into their elaborate premade script, thus making further inquiry seem quite unnecessary.

And hey, by no means to excuse it. Sloppy stuff that got a well-sereved fisking. Hardened bias is the enemy of insight.

This was a bad screw-up

It's looking as though Clark would have had union endorsements if they had remained active in Iowa. According to Daily Kos.

I'm sure I would have had no idea that Iowa was so important to union support. I don't fault Clark for not knowing, but the campaign honchos should have!

Grrrr!

bias

i must respectfully disagree with mr. keegan's take on whether there's liberal media bias. there's an interesting op ed today in the journal (to which i, unfortunately, cannot provide a link) demonstrating that both the times and the post not so subtly editorialize by identifying conservative senators with derogatory tag lines, liberal senators with positive or neutral tag lines. the notion that the market (joe six pack in surburban MD reading the post) wants such editorializing tag lines is preposterous. there's two things going on here: first, we all know the joy of getting in a (not so) subtle dig at those you don't like (e.g., jesse helms -- really, who could resist mocking him and his philistine views). second, this bias is largely invisible to liberals because (a) they're
swimming in it and (b) it comports with their world view. by swimming in it i mean that no one can plausibly claim that the media or, another example, academia (particularly high level) are not unbelievably liberal when compared with the general population. e.g., every study done shows that both fields are dominated by self-identified democrats. to assume that the skewed (compared to the general population) demographics of either does not influence what is reported, taught, etc., is ludicrous in light of most people's experience of both fields being overwhelmingly liberal. nor does it make any sense to assert that a market composed almost equally of democrats and republicans nonetheless wants their media presented through a democratic filter or their kids taught predominantly by democrats. i understand how liberals might wish it were so, and i understand that it plays into liberal's notion that they hold their views because of access to more or better information and education (apparently it just doesn't take in some with access to the same info and education). but it doesn't square with the facts or most people's everyday experience.

update: sullivan has an email o' the day that makes many of the same points.

abstention

along with the very good article by sullivan already mentioned in these pages, kristoff today also comments on the deterioration of political debate in the united states. to my mind, the articles point out the inherent silliness of being partisan right or left (center, anyone?). but i also think they make a good case for abstention. i've actually always thought that americans don't vote much because we believe in the laws of large numbers and sampling (if half the population votes, you know how the other half would have voted (unless it's florida)), but at least some significant number of people must also be sufficiently turned off by the current rancor to be unwilling to participate. i mean, really, with the hypocrisy of both dems and repubs, can you pull either lever without any qualms? and, if so, is it only because you've villified the other side and conveniently ignored all that's awry with your chosen party? because if you're just doing the math (e.g., clinton's a scumbag, but he votes my way more often than the other guy, so i'll keep him, thanks; or, bush is a meathead but he's my meathead, so i'll keep him, thanks), you've got justification but no real reason to be stridently partisan.

Sullivan On A Bi-Polar Nation

Thanks to Heather for pointing out Andrew Sullivan Sunday Times article called Bi-Polar Nation in which he discusses issues close to our heart.

I was searching around for a metaphor for what life is actually like as a politically interested person in the U.S. right now, and I'm not sure I've come up with anything that accurately conveys it. The term "polarization" seems a little too anti-septic. "Bi-polar" suggests serial ups and downs, whereas America's divisions are deep and simultaneous. The "red-blue" split - between blue coastal elites and red Middle America - has become an almost meaningless cliche; and it misses the fact that there are plenty of blue-style voters in red America and vice-versa. Evoking the deep divides of the Vietnam war is also rhetorical over-kill. We're not there yet. At the same time, the gulf between liberals and conservatives, broadly speaking, or between Bush-supporters and Bush-haters, between young and old, between South and North, has rarely been as profound or as bitter than now.

In many respects, it is the divisions of the Vietnam War reasserting themselves. An article from a Minnesota paper found via Mitch Berg illustrates this well:

Research shows that people's experiences between the ages of 17 and 24 color their values and attitudes for the rest of their days. America's boomers experienced affluence, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War. The busters knew financial insecurity, family breakup, the end of the Cold War. It's Bob Dylan vs. Kurt Cobain, Ed Sullivan vs. MTV, the Kennedys vs. Ronald Reagan.

The result is a 50-something cohort that tends to be optimistic, communitarian and politically liberal, vs. 30-somethings who are skeptical, individualistic and conservative at the polls, if you can get them there.

The World War II generation which was the parent of the Baby Boomers is passing from the scene, but the generation after the Baby Boomers (Gen X) are also politically separted from them (this is a generalization, of course).

Will today's 17-24 year olds be unifiers or polarizers?

Sensible Take on Media Bias

I've got a conservative co-worker that I've gone back and forth with on the alleged extent of "liberal media bias." I've spent a lotta breath on repeatedly suggesting to him him that the behavior of the media whether liberal or conservative is most always more than adequately accounted for by the media's own bias for getting good ratings and pleasing its audience.

I finally found someone who agrees with me, Tyler Cowen in his tech central station column, Media Bias Comes from Viewers Like You.

  Why do the major media sometimes slant to the left, and other times slant to the right? The answer is simple: viewers want them to. We look to the media for entertainment, drama, and titillation before objectivity. Journalists, to get ahead, must produce marketable stories with some kind of emotional slant, which typically will have broader political implications. The result: it looks like media bias when in fact journalists, operating in a highly competitive environment, are simply doing their best to attract an audience.

I'd go farther than Cowen and say that it's a phenomenon worthy of concern that news is now "entertainment first." But the more people who see that the media's overriding bias is titillation and pandering and not some political agenda, the better, so I'm glad the idea is getting some voice.

More tolerance for things you like AND things ya don't

I couldn't resist giving a counterpoint to Rick's position below (in the comments section of the gun rights entry) in which he described allowing private gun ownership as at best "bad policy enshrined." So now I can't resist when Loren Lomaskey at Reason provides a better rationale that I did for things like letting others own guns even if you don't like them:

The answer proffered by John Locke, and by his successors in the liberal tradition, is that the individual is morally prior to the state and that people have rights to life, liberty, and property that must be respected. Majorities enjoy a prerogative to rule because collective decisions must be taken from time to time, but that prerogative is limited by individuals’ rights.

Lomaskey's piece is a book review of William Galston's Liberal Pluralism, but it starts with a well written take on an idea we have touched on, how to "dictate democracy," as I put it poorly the other day:

What was needed to make rule by the people effective was the addition of mechanisms to restrain those people from overreaching and destructively turning on themselves. However, if the restraining agent was something external to the governed, then the regime would be rule of but not by the people. So the democratic conundrum devolved into the question of how a polity not controlled by another could control itself.

Lots of good thinking to be found if you read the whole thing.

Is it just me?

...or is Instapundit's melody more of a one-note reflexively prowar opera every day? Outside of the odd note of concern on liberties infringed, it's got a steady beat. He seems to be going out of his way, like when he eviscerates a bunch of hapless academics for having the temerity to use the unpatriotic h-word, hegemony, among other things. America's political influence IS predominant, that's just the way it is, and it goes quite a ways in explaining the behavior of our erstwhile European allies, even if you might view that behavior as childish.

Yuh know, I'm pretty pro-stay the course, and I'd probably end up disagreeing with the bunch he's highlighting, but he's going over the edge by adopting the most negative interpretation possible. And I have a hard time quarreling with the use of the word hegemony. I also don't know why he's ranting about the suggestion that 9/11 called for reconceiving foreign policy, which is conventional wisdom on both sides of the skirmish line.

And on re-reading, maybe these guys deserve a smack, but I'm tiring of this, and I wouldn't mind if Glenn would take it down a notch. Isn't there the tiniest possibility that such a conference could provide a nugget or two of insight? Then again, in Glenn's world, if you say "zionist," then you're automatically an anti-semite, so the answer must be "no."

A Blow to Free Speech or For Decency?

Cathy Young is on point, and as usual showing both sides in her Reason column on the recent dust-up over the Reagan docudrama.

The money point:

As often happens, double standards come into play. Conservative pundits such as Bill O'Reilly of Fox News decried the boycott organized by gay rights groups against Dr. Laura Schlessinger's television show as a threat to free speech. Now they are praising the action against CBS as a legitimate expression of popular anger. Most of the liberals who are appalled by the cancellation of "The Reagans" probably supported the boycott of Dr. Laura's advertisers. It all depends on whose ox is being gored. But then, what else is new?

The whole thing is worth reading. As Cathy Young almost always is. Anyone tempted to dismiss Reason as libertarians run amok would do well to give her a chance.

Why Clark has such leadership potential

First, you should read my post here.

But to jump right to my point: I think an understanding of Lakoff's family-based moralities helps to explain Clark's ability to frame an issue so well: his life experience gives him an intuitive grasp of how each morality makes sense -- partly because he's just damn smart and observant and all that other stuff on his military evaluations!

I'm sure that Clark's worldview is that of the left, Lakoff's nurturant parent morality. But his lifetime of training and service in the military have given him the ability to understand the complementary worldview...strong parent morality in Lakoff's terminology...at least well enough to express a given issue in terms that come from one worldview and show how it is also a value in the other...AND what relative priority a value should be given relative to other values.

I apologize to everyone who reads all this several times and still has no earthly idea what I'm talking about. But I think I've had an insight and it really excites me to see the tremendous potential that a Clark presidency could hold!

Tell me what you think.

McCain Stands Strong

John McCain again takes a strong stance on Iraq in his Sunday column in the Washington Post. He has something to say to both sides of the political aisle.

First, the president:

Prematurely placing the burden of security on Iraqis is not the answer. It is irresponsible to suggest that it is up to Iraqis to win this war. In doing so, we shirk the responsibility that we willingly incurred when we assumed the burden of liberating and transforming their country, for their sake and our own. If the U.S. military, the world's best fighting force, cannot defeat the Iraqi insurgents, how do we expect Iraqi militiamen with only weeks of training to do any better?

President Bush speaks frequently of the need to take the offensive in the war on terror, but in Iraq we too often appear to be playing defense. The truth is that we do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives. In early September, the U.S. commanding officer in Iraq, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, admitted that his forces could not handle any new eruption of conflict in Iraq. "If a militia or an internal conflict of some nature were to erupt," he said, ". . . that would be a challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for."

Since then, attacks on American forces have doubled, to more than 30 a day, and their increasing sophistication has made them more lethal.

Yet the number of American forces in Iraq has not increased. Our overall troop level in Iraq does not reflect a careful assessment of what it takes to achieve victory. It reflects the number of American forces who were in Iraq when the war ended -- minus the Marines who were sent home. Simply put, there does not appear to be a strategy behind our current force levels in Iraq other than to preserve the illusion that we have sufficient forces in place to meet our objectives.

And now the Democrats:

With the exception of Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, who are committed to victory in Iraq, it is unclear what the other Democratic presidential candidates would do differently to ensure an American victory -- or how they would handle the consequences of the early American withdrawal some advocate. Howard Dean has expressed ambiguity about the justness of our cause in Iraq. I hope he will learn that partisan anger is no substitute for moral clarity.

The truth is that we have too much politics going on and not enough statesmanship. The president wants to draw down troops on a schedule that looks remarkably well timed for the 2004 election.

The Democrats didn't support reconstruction funds (with the exception of Gephardt and Lieberman), and talk mainly of one policy change in Iraq (internationalization) rather than the multiple policies it will take to succeed.

When both parties play politics with war, we're in trouble.

Centrist Views on Gun Control

Heather of Ruminations has done some research and thinking on the sticky issue of gun control. She considers the issue from a constitutional point of view, as well as a practical one, and has some ideas for balancing individual rights with public safety.

Check out the whole piece. Here's her conclusion:

Speaking as a Centrist, based on what I have read and researched, I would advocate the following policies with regard to gun control and the right to bear arms:

1. The fundamental right to keep and bear arms is protected under the Second Amendment and should not be infringed upon. Current laws that impose licensing requirements, including background checks and education in the use of firearms, do not infringe on that right, but rather point out the importance of responsible gun ownership.

2. Gun control laws that impose penalties for the use of firearms during the commission of a crime, or any form of violence, are necessary to protect the health and welfare of our communities. Current gun control laws, properly enforced (as in "Project Exile"), are sufficient protection.

3. The one exclusion to the individual right to bear arms should be any weapon of a higher caliber than semi-automatic. There is only one use for these weapons, and that is waging war. I realize that there are gun collectors who have "historical" weapons of war in their collections. Such weapons, since they are only for the purpose of display (or should be), should be rendered inoperable (preferably permanently).

Independents Lean Against Bush

The Associated Press reports:

Independent voters are leaning against the re-election of President Bush amid doubts about his handling of the economy and Iraq, a poll released Saturday indicates.

A majority of independents, 53 percent, said they oppose Bush's re-election, while 40 percent favor it, according to the Newsweek poll. Republicans favor his re-election by an 86-10 margin, while Democrats oppose it by the same amount.

I'm pleased to see my own position is indeed right in the center. I would like to see Bush replaced, and have a candidate I want to replace him. If my preferred candidate does not gain the Democratic nomination, it is possible that Bush will get my vote. I dislike Bush, but perhaps I'll dislike the Democratic nominee more.

( cross-posted with Independents For Clark )

War For Oil

We're not in Iraq to steal their oil, but we wouldn't be in Iraq if the Persian Gulf region was devoid of oil. The need to secure the oil supply is a major driver of military budgets. I believe there is a good economic argument for incorporating this "externality" into the price of oil through an oil tax.

But instead, it turns out that the federal tax code is subsidizing the sale of heavy, gas-guzzling vehicles!

The "SUV loophole" once seemed to be just a quirk in the tax code -- deplored by environmental activists but ignored by most everyone else. Now it is shaping up to be a marketing bonanza for financial planners, accountants, and auto dealers eager to snap up commissions and spur sales of heavy vehicles, ranging from workhorse Ford F-250 pickup trucks to elite Hummer H2s, BMW X5s, and Mercedes-Benz ML55s.

"It's really been an eye-opener for people," Reynolds said. "And it's been fun, I've got to tell you."

A similar tax break, in fact, is longstanding, although more limited. Since 1997, anyone deemed to be a small-business owner for tax purposes could write off some amount of equipment purchases each year -- up to $18,000 worth that first year, up to $25,000 in 2003. Since 1984, the Internal Revenue Service, thinking more about Chevy Silverado pickups than Cadillac Escalades, has considered vehicles over 6,000 pounds to be deductible business equipment.

Reconstructing Reconstruction

I believe that the Iraqi democratization will probably succeed.

Somewhere, I have a fascinating book titled "Democracy at the point of a gun," which has lots of numbers, but of course I can't find it now that I want to refer to it. So I'll have to resort to my, er, honeyed tones, heh :-(

If the Iraqi reconstruction fails, it will not be for the reasons that that Pipes gives.

> He bluntly dismisses the promise of a democratic Iraq -- "impossible,
> a fantasy" -- citing obstacles similar to Russia's. "Democracy
> requires, among other things, individualism -- the breakdown of old
> clannish, tribal organizations, the individual standing face-to-face
> with the state. You don't have that in the Middle East. Iraq is
> tribally run."

Pipes, IMHO, is looking for excuses why the wogs can't do democracy. This is rather more ahistorical than is his usual wont. Russian democracy failed because it was successfully hacked at an early, buggy stage by Marxists. There is nothing tribal about Marxists or their path to power (in fact, I am at a loss to see where Russia was tribal in the 20thC).

> What about the constitution soon to be written in Baghdad? Pipes
> laughs. "Stalin had a wonderful constitution, the most perfect
> constitution in the world. There's a lot of naivet in that. I should
> think we'd be satisfied with some kind of stability, preventing
> Saddam Hussein from coming back. It's fantastic that we haven't
> caught this man. He sits there somewhere."

Stalin's constitution was backed by Stalin. The Japanese and German constitutions are backed by us, as will be the Iraqi constitution. Just watch, at least a division will be there for decades, as a threat to many parties.

This is just too easy. Pipes just wants STABILITY - his word! Can't let those wogs get uppity. Or the Middle East problem to be solved by anything short of all-out warfare. The paranoid fool.

People have been coming up with excuses why the newly conquered provinces can't make it as democratic ever since the Spanish-American War. Of course, sometimes they've been right, but usually in a context of limited American support for democratization (like central America).

And re Rick's comments about weakness of Wilsonian politics, I will just add that there is a difference between Wilson and now, fortunately.

As an engineer, I tend to think of post-WWI as being the alpha test of Wilsonian politics. Wilson went everywhere and said that the League of Nations would end war, and so nobody anticipated that allied war with aggressors would be needed to stop them. Germany was left with mountains of debt and short-term occupying troops. These big bugs got fixed post-WWII and conflict has, overall, been slowly declining ever since. I don't expect conflict to vanish, just to keep getting rarer and kill smaller percentages of peoples.

And even Wilson got the last laugh after the Cold War. All the Balkan
states he democratized are democratic again! Democracy is much rarer
in the former-SSRs, where Wilson couldn't help; Communism's heavy hand
made the memory of freedom ever so much more precious. I'm sure it's
like that in Iraq, too; the period of tyranny was about the same, I think.

Reconstruction Grants Controvery Illumines Different Kinds Of Democrats

(a post that I meant to post a few days ago, but got too busy during proofreading)

The reconstruction grants controversy has caused me many unhappy and mixed feelings. Among other things, it's given my primary vote to Lieberman.

I have read and been told, over and over and over, since well before I was able to understand the matter, about why the Marshall Plan was Right and Versailles and reparations (and reconstruction loans from America to Europe): No WWIII, and a healthy and happy Germany today. It was a broad shock to me when most Democratic congresscritters forgot about that or chose not to think about it (if it showed up in my education, I'm sure it showed up more in theirs, since it was, on average, more recent history to them).

Different Democratic subgroups behaved amazingly differently on this issue. Here are some reactions I noticed:

The party as a whole: All Democrats. A quick search fails to find partisan polling numbers, but since most people were against it, and legislators said that people they talked to seemed against it (not always a good indicator), I am going to guess that most Democrats were against it as well.

Leaders: Politicos recently in power. These were famously mostly against grants.

Democrats posting to the Net: There was a broad consensus (95%+), from Calpundit and Yglesias, all the way to Kos, including commenters, that it would be a bad mistake to not offer major, huge reconstruction grants. I'm not sure what to make of the disparity between (1) and (3), and am curious to hear suggestions what that is. Is it a geek thing, or just that most people don't obssess about Iraq? Or something else?

But beyond that to the leadership. I have a theory about this. For many of us Democrats, Internetted or no, the Bush Administration is just something to regret. But for our leaders, well, they want Bush' job, and in many cases miss power. This is mostly good, IMHO - this mechanism keeps the pendulum of political power ticking between parties. But it means that it's *poisonal* to them. Bush is truly a threat to them, by definition. That makes it very hard to think honestly about situations involving the Administration. If true, this highlights the achievement of Bush, Clinton, Lieberman, and other thoughtful moderates in mostly respecting ground truth. So it seems like the leadership of whichever party is out of power will be seeing moonbeams. This may be more of a Presidential advantage than the actual powers of the office.

The next natural question to me is whether there is anything to be done about it....

Posted by Jon Kay at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

Who's Cheering Now?

Imagine this: the home team fights back from a 28-10 deficit to trail by 4 points, and the defense stops the high-powered visiting team’s offense and gets the good guys the ball back with just enough time. The home team fights down the field inch by inch, tooth and nail, and finally surges across the goal line for the winning TD as time runs out.

And the crowd....? ...erupts in applause? Nope. At first the crowd is strangely silent, and then the boos, hisses, and catcalls begin. Never happen, right?

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."--Geore W. Bush, 11/06/03

Among my age group (I’m 39), I was one of many liberals who COMPLAINED when our country routinely and blithely relied on alliances of convenience and backed away from promoting the growth of democracy. I hated it when some evil tinpot dictator ran roughshod over his country’s hapless populace while America quietly looked the other way and our merchants traded beads.

So why aren’t more people standing and cheering? Touchdown!

Hat tip to Michael Totten, who has a post on this and a good comment strand.

Let’s leave aside a whole host of ways we can go with this, especially including the merits of Bush’s policy and the extent to which the U.S. might continue to routinely and blithely rely on alliances of convenience. Let’s also leave aside clever repartee continuing or challenging the football analogy I used as a teaser, as well as the evidence for and against the possibility that America will succeed in democratizing Iraq.

What I want to focus on is this:

How does it come to pass that some guy can run for President with a firm policy of standing against the folly of "nation-building," and then come to launch perhaps the most ambitious effort ever at shepherding a foreign nation to the green pastures of democracy?

The politically and philosophically-minded (PPMs) like to talk about principles. And at any given snapshot moment in time, you can feed in your joe or your jane, and the PPMs will be able to spit out what joe or jane’s principles are likely to be, pretty reliably. You know where they’re going to stand.

Joe Businessman? Smaller government. Lower taxes. Less regulation.

Jane Senior Citizen? Low property taxes. Social security solvency.

Jane Mom and Joe Dad? High-quality education. Affordable healthcare.

I could go on, but my point is made, at least if you leave aside whether or not these things are exactly principles. (Let’s!)

Now I’m going to try to tie this back to the Bush about face. I submit that Bush felt so sure about the folly of nation building that nothing less world-changing than 9/11 could have brought about this swing in viewpoint. Sure, you say. Obvious, you say. Well, the reason I bring it up is because I want to talk about principles and their relationship to self-interest. As we all recognize, 9/11 threatened virtually every American’s visceral sense of self-interest (survival). And I’m suggesting that self-interest operates at a higher level than principle. Maybe our principles are sometimes just our self-interests clothed in an intellectually righteous masquerade ball costume.

Or maybe it’s just a coincidence that the longer you pay taxes, the more you think they’re too high. Or that parents seem to care more about education than the childless. Or that senior citizens consider social security and medicaid vital programs. And so on.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Far from it. I’m pretty comfortable with the idea that self-interest, enlightened and otherwise, makes the world go round. I’ve gone on for pretty long already, and if you’re still reading, you’ve got to wonder whether this has any connection to centrism. I’m trying to get there.

If you’re a centrist then I’m betting the idea of enlightened self-interest always struck a sensible chord, it rung pretty true. Maybe you’re exhausted by what you see as the obvious rigid biases of the wingnuts of both far right and the far left. But then, hey, everyone has biases, right?

Well, I’m suggesting that centrists might want to commit to some sort of bias awareness and management program, or that they might already do it. I’m talking about metacognition, thinking about your thinking.

We all operate with biases, default positions of thought. And as intelligent people grow, mature, and experience, we all make connections and weave intricate mental tapestries of connection between a vast array of concepts, ideas, principles, what have you. And we test ideas and hypotheses, and we keep score. And our elaborate architecture solidifies. The ever-growing detail makes adjustments to well-established foundations at best inconvenient and at worst impossible. A certain rigidity of thought, a resistance to change, may be inevitable.

And if you look within, you’ll find that the ideas you hold most dear, the assumptions you are most apt to make, the conclusions you feel most free to draw, are related to the most elaborate and solidly reinforced part of the mental architecture. You might have started with a default bias and a hypothesis that you used to test that bias over and over. But you’ve been keeping score on that hypothesis for so long that the feedback loop to the default bias has fused that bias solid.

And the worse that condition gets, the more it will take something that shatters your world and truly threatens your visceral sense of self-interest to fracture the sheer mass of the many connected ideas that made up your vast ossified mental construct. [Such as 9/11]

So like they say, a liberal is a conservative that hasn’t been mugged yet. And maybe a conservative is a liberal whose white collar tech job hasn’t been outsourced to India yet. And maybe a college liberal is a conservative who hasn’t noticed yet just how much a 3rd of a salary is until that 30k salary doesn’t leave quite enough take-home payto cover rent and new car payments. And maybe a college conservative is a liberal who hasn’t gotten married and had a child with Down’s syndrome and a heart defect yet.

Ideally, you wouldn’t have to get mugged or laid off to see the light. So for centrists, I’m talking about a minimal committment to just a touch of suppleness of mind. Keep those default biases. By all means. They are based on experience, and they include important insight. But take those biases, the viewpoints you are very sure about, and ask yourself if there’s anything that could happen, any evidence that could come to light that would make you question the accuracy of your viewpoint.

If you are certain that the only right way to balance the budget is by cutting spending, what evidence would make you re-think? If you’re sure privatizing social security would destroy the implied social contract in America, what would make you re-consider? If you’re sure that invading Iraq was all about controlling oil, what would give you pause? If you’re sure that life begins at conception, is there any possible evidence that might make you think there's any possibility that it happens any later?

Hopefully I picked a few questions that address each side of the aisle. I'm not taking positions here. Ask yourself questions like this about your surest beliefs. It's OK if the answer is no, but be aware that if the answer is no, then these beliefs are probably based on some form of faith, not reason. Because in my opinion, a belief not founded in reason is usually not especially accessible by reason.

And I want to stress I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with faith, and I hope that what I write in this spot doesn’t offend persons of faith. FWIW, I am one of you, even though my faith in God is a LOT different than yours.

Because, in a gargantuan irony, I actually take it on faith that faith is not accessible by reason. Nothing like ending with a conundrum.

Civic Pride or Self Service?

Remember when you could count on businessmen to want the government to butt out and let free enterprise set us free? Here are some local businessmen who have gotten religion and seen the light. At least to hear their lawyer tell it. All they care about is the best interests of the town.

NORTH ATTLEBORO -- The owners of South of the Mall Wine and Liquors are planning to move their store well north of the mall.

Selectmen voted 3-1 to allow owner Susan Coady to move the store from Cumberland Avenue to the Ocean Fresh Plaza and change its name to Molly O'Shea's Wine and Spirits. The store will become a tenant in the storefront that has temporarily housed Blockbuster video while its new building is being constructed. The plan to move to Ocean Fresh Plaza drew opposition from three liquor stores already in the downtown area.

"If that license moves that far north, there will be four liquor licenses within a two-mile radius," said Elliot Brais, an attorney representing City Spirits North. "It's in the town's best interest to have a liquor store on the south side of town."

Selectman Mark Fisher responded that the location is a business decision, and not up to the board. "If we started making decisions based on geographical location, then it would have to apply to food establishments as well," he said. "So, if Wendy's wants to build next to another fast food restaurant, we would have to say, ‘sorry, you'll have to build at the other end of town.’"

Fisher said the only geographical consideration should be for safety concerns.

Do lawyers have to take "Saying Things with a Straight Face 101" as a core requirement? Story written by AMY DEMELIA of Attleboro, MA's Sun Chronicle, by the way.

Posted by Brian Keegan at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)

Matrix laugh

Hat tip to Instapundit, like he needs it, for the heads up on a hysterical review of the 3rd installment of the Matrix trilogy by Lileks over at the Bleat. The politically related part of Lileks' review is the latter portion of bleat, which is a complete evisceration of a particularly suspect review of the Matrix that makes lame and incoherent symbolic connections between the the Matrix and self-serving left wingnut politics.

He starts out with a subtle tone:

...his politics have the sophistication of a preschool crayon drawing, and his self-confidence in his insights is matched only by his inability to see how fatuous his work often sounds.

Read it all. I laughed and laughed.

Attack Dog Self-Muzzles

Perhaps being on the receiving end of harsh media coverage has something to do with British historian Paul Johnson's change of heart.

Historian and former Daily Mail firebrand Paul Johnson has turned on the newspaper, admitting the tirades they wanted him to write were "bad for the country" and "bad for society".

In what must rank as one of the most dramatic u-turns in newspaper history, Johnson - who notoriously described Channel 4 head Michael Grade as Britain's "pornographer in chief" and earned a reputation as one of Britain's most outspokenly rightwing commentators - said he now refused to write for the newspaper.

"I've stopped writing for the Daily Mail. They were most anxious for me to carry on, always ringing me up, but I came to the conclusion that that kind of journalism was bad for the country, bad for society, bad for the newspaper," Johnson told the Daily Telegraph today.

Pop-Quiz for the Blogosphere

John McCain came out and strongly criticized the administration yesterday on Iraq policy. Of course, all the leading Democrats have done the same.

McCain used strong language. It's the kind of thing that gets attention on both sides of the aisle -- prominent Republican breaking publicly with the administration.

It's also a curious kind of test.

McCain's perspective is that we are basically undercommitted in Iraq. Among other things, he thinks we need to commit more forces. We should send more troops, and stop talking about drawing down our forces over the coming months (which has become official policy now).

This message isn't palatable to either side of the aisle.

The views of leading Democrats pivot almost exclusively on bringing in the U.N. and internationalizing the conflict. They don't contemplate greater U.S. troop commitments as part of our overall Iraq strategy.

Republicans talk about two things: (1) how great things really are over there -- underneath all the negative media, and (2) how strong and wise and wonderful a leader we have in Bush.

It's a kind of single-minded internationalism, on the one side, versus loyalty on the other.

So here's the challenge. Find someone on the left -- politician or blogger -- who comments favorably on McCain's remarks and contemplates, with apparent open mind, the question of whether we should send more forces as part of our overall strategy.

Conversely, find someone on the right who thinks McCain is right and Bush badly misguided in his Iraq policy.

I haven't checked, and have no idea how this will turn out. I'll do a quick little search in Feedster for the most recent blog posts that mention McCain. More to come.

UPDATE:

Oliver Willis passes with flying colors. McCain's statement wasn't specifically addressed anywhere else in the blogosphere, so far as I could tell.

So that's one point for liberals, and an apparent no-show from conservatives.

Among politicians, it's obvious that Joe Lieberman passes, per his statements in an interview after the Rock the Vote debate.

Biden and Lugar also pass. And I just read a transcript of Wesley Clark's speech today outlining his Iraq strategy. One of the four elements of it mentions transforming the military occupation into a NATO operation and bringing in troops from other NATO countries. I suppose this gives him a checkmark in the "more troops" column.

UPDATE #2:

We have another entry from conservative blogger Sean Hackbarth of The American Mind. I'm going to call it a largely negative assessment of McCain's remarks.

So, to sum up, that's a +1 for liberals and -1 for conservatives. The liberals are building a lead.

UPDATE #3:

There's one more entry on McCain's comments from Ara Rubyan of E Pluribus Unum. I looked thorugh a lot of Ara's posts from the past few months to try to get a fix on his political orientation, and I can't feel comfortable, honestly, calling him either a liberal or conservative. He strongly supported the war, but has been pretty critical of the administration lately.

More importantly, Ara is remarkably informed, rational, and level-headed in his remarks. He's the kind of guy we'd like to claim as a centrist. Check out his blog.

Unpatriotic

Heretofore, I have defended the Patriot Act against those who claim it goes too far. But here is an example where the Justice Department is overreaching

The investigation of strip club owner Michael Galardi and numerous politicians appears to be the first time federal authorities have used the Patriot Act in a public corruption probe. Government officials said Tuesday they knew of no other instances in which federal agents investigating allegations such as racketeering and bribery of politicians have employed the act. "I don't know that it's been used in a public corruption case before this," said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department.

I certainly thought the Patriot Act was to be used to fight terrorism, but

Corallo insisted lawmakers were fully aware the Patriot Act had far-reaching implications beyond fighting terrorism when the legislation was adopted in October 2001.

"I think probably a lot of members (of Congress) were only interested in the anti-terrorism measures," Corallo said. "But when the Judiciary Committee sat down, both Republicans and Democrats, they obviously discussed the applications, that certain provisions could be used in regular criminal investigations."

Federal authorities confirmed Monday the FBI used the Patriot Act to get financial information in its probe of Galardi and his dealings with current and former politicians in Southern Nevada.

Clearly, in the month following 9/11, we were focusing on how to avoid terrorism and not on how the government might abuse this act. The above case is, however, an abuse of the public trust. Use of the Patriot Act for domestic cases unconnected to terrorism will undermine it in the long run and lead to public noncompliance that could aid real terrorists.

Kids best interests pitted against parents' free speech rights

Just a quick note that Eugene Volokh is ALL OVER a truly fascinating story that pits a parent's rights to free speech and religious belief against a family court's duty to act in the best interests of children in custody matters. It's SO good that it's one of those "thank god for the B-sphere" accounts that answers so many of the questions you would have been left wondering about if it were just a connect-the-dots newspaper article. Instead, it's long enough, detailed enough, and written by someneone who's been following the general issue for some time and is happy to help you learn something. Now go check it out!

Time out for fun?

How about a fun little diversion for people who like politics? I ran across a site last night called The Political Compass. It offers a quiz where you answer questions on politics, economics, social policy, etc, and then places you on a 2 axis coordinate grid. It's not perfect, it needs an idiotarian axis too, but it's pretty interesting.

And hey, nothing wrong with a little lesson. In William's post below on polarizing, I commented that polarization can be an artifact of method. Well, notice that the questions are virtually all items that ask for responses on a 4-item scale: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. Pollsters NEED differentiation when they do polls, or they don't get data that "shows" anything. And this political typography is designed to lift and separate. There IS no center.

UPDATE: The link has been fixed.

Polarization Proceeds Apace

A Pew survey shows what we've all noticed: the feeling of national unity that followed 9/11 has entirely dissipated, and polarization is reaching records levels.

With parity between the parties, the country is now as evenly split as it was in the closely contested 2000 election. And yet the survey found the country intensely polarized, with the unity achieved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks having dissipated almost completely.

The schism is evident on matters of national security, attitudes toward business and attitudes toward maintaining a social safety net.

"Political polarization is now as great as it was prior to the 1994 midterm elections that ended four decades of Democratic control in Congress," Mr. Kohut said. "But now, unlike then, Republicans and Democrats have become more intense in their political beliefs."

While polarization is certainly the prevailing trend, we here at the Centrist Coalition are trying to start a a small counter-trend.

An Iraqi Paramilitary?

Our strategy in Iraq is obviously evolving rapidly.

Both sides in the political debate claim to have an interest in staying in Iraq and seeing the mission through to success. That being the case, I wonder if it's possible for us to have a constructive discussion on strategies -- not just carping at one another, but productive give-and-take regarding the elements of an effective policy.

This new prospect of an Iraqi paramilitary is a good idea, but also one that carries significant risks. Which is why I was happy to read the following regarding Paul Bremer's attitude about the whole thing:

Bremer would approve, the senior official said, if the members were carefully screened by the Interior Ministry and by the occupation authority, and received police training, not military instruction. In addition, the official said, Bremer would require that command-and-control issues with U.S. forces be resolved and that the force could not grow beyond more than a few thousand members.

Political party security organs and other militias could not join the force en masse, but members could join as individuals, the official said. "We're not going to have a process whereby militias are institutionalized here," the senior official said. If that happens, he said, "we will not have a unified Iraq at the end of the day."

Setting up this force, the official said, "will have to done very carefully."

UPDATE: Biden, Lugar, and McCain are all now saying we need to send more troops to Iraq. McCain is speaking out publicly against any plans for a troop drawdown:

"Let there be no doubt: victory can be our only exit strategy. We are winning in Iraq, but we sow the seeds of our own failure by contemplating a premature military drawdown."

elephants

the costs of iraq have no effe