Centerfield

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish introduced me to the blogosphere about one year ago. I don’t know how I stumbled upon it, but I soon added it to my Favorites. Although I agree with the general theme of Brian Keegan’s post below regarding partisan entrenchment on Iraq, I think that Sullivan has been a noteworthy exception. He was obviously bullish on going to war in the first place, but he has acknowledged that substantial obstacles exist, and failure – which would be a disaster for the country -- is a real possibility.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at the NRO has begged Sullivan to get it over with and come out for Kerry now. Her attitude reinforces Brian’s point. And from what I can tell, her argument is that everyone who has an opinion today should close their minds and all information that we receive in the next 7 months should be processed through the prism of our unshakeable personal ideologies.

Today Sullivan states what he sees as the strongest arguments for and against Kerry on the war issue.

“The strongest argument for Kerry is that we have already gained as much as we can for the time being with hard power and war; he won't pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan; he won't be able to duck a serious response to another terror attack; but he might help ease some of the hatred of the United States that this president has - undeservedly, in my view, but still undeniably - ratcheted to unseen levels. The strongest argument against him is that he will not take the war seriously enough to allow law enforcement to play its vital but complementary part, and would prematurely pull out of Iraq. I'm waiting to hear more from him and his advisers. Yeah: don't rush me. It's March. Is this a rationalization for considering Kerry? Or a reason? I blog. You decide.”

I can’t decide yet.

NADER'S MOTIVATION

In the New York Times today is a story about Ralph Nader's reasons for running.

"No, he says, he is neither a nut nor a narcissist. Yes, he agrees with his sharpest Democratic critics that defeating President Bush is essential. In the end, he believes, out-of-power Democrats will rally around John Kerry, and Mr. Nader will take votes from disaffected Republicans and independents."

Can Nader possibly believe that, particularly in light of the polling data?

"And Mr. Nader's argument that he can draw more support from Mr. Bush than from Mr. Kerry has yet to be proved. A New York Times/CBS News poll earlier this month found that when voters were asked to choose between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, 46 percent chose the president and 43 percent Mr. Kerry. When Mr. Nader was added to the mix, Mr. Bush's support stayed at 46 percent, Mr. Kerry's dropped to 38 percent and Mr. Nader drew 7 percent. More than half of Nader supporters preferred Mr. Kerry in a two-way race."

Nader cannot really believe that disaffected Republicans are going to vote for him. Comic Jon Stewart sums it up: "Conservatives for Nader. . . Not a large group. About the same size as 'Retarded Death Row Texans for Bush.'"

So that leaves me with two questions:

1. Are there moderate independents who will vote Nader? I seriously doubt that there are more than a few.

2. Is there a possibility that Nader actually helps Kerry by opening a "second front" against Bush? I doubt that too.

In the end, I think that Nader's decision to run was based on a calculated judgment that his candidacy would limit Kerry's ability to move to the middle. On the other hand, Nader may simply be an egomaniac, as many suggest. After all, he compares himself to an "abolitionist in North or South Carolina in the 1830's."

Far From the Certainty Found on the Fringes

It's pretty confounding to me as a centrist and independent that partisan opinions, whether they come from either the left or right, are so often characterized by such certainty. Frankly, I envy it. How wonderful it must be, I think, to have no doubt. Or, just maybe, how terrible it must be to be afraid to voice any doubts, because they might provide solace or fuel to the opposition.

Striving to stay far from these fringes, or to visit but not stay too long, I find that I really don't have a definite idea at all of how things are going in Iraq, and in the war on terrorism. What I find on my visits is this: a neat schism between the anti-war left and the pro-war right. Because they've already made up their mind about the merits of the war. All that is necessary is to search for "evidence" that supports one's position.

Things are going great! Starting from blogger king Instapundit and following links downstream, I find anecdotes of happy news. Soldiers buying toys and getting hugs. Grateful Iraqis extolling our virtues. I find statements asserting that "we are winning this war" and jokes discrediting any suggestion of "quagmire."

Things are going terrible! One multiple occasions in the past month I have run across statements from the left suggesting that our actions have helped terrorism grow. I find anecdotes of unhappy news. Bombs explode. Soldiers are attacked, and attack innocents. Iraqis express their hatred. I find statements asserting that "this war is both wrong and unwinnable." And so on.

Click through and read on, because I have some interesting sources worth reading.

Of course, none of this is news here at the CC. While the fringes become more sure of the eventual outcome (regardless of the merits of the course), we perhaps do not. I find myself very curious to have better and more comprehensive sources that might do a better job of helping me figure out the complex nature of what's going on. Some sources I view as providing either hope or despair, but not especially to be relied upon, especially anecdotes. In the last few weeks, here are the stories that I have felt comfortable in hanging my hat on, as having not much partisan tone, and concerned with a genuine exploration of current conditions in Iraq.

Closest to "Things are going great." This recent ABC poll gave me hope. It represents a decidely mixed view, but it suggests that in the opinion of Iraqis, recent progress has been made, and that there is some reason for hope.

Closest to "It's a Nightmare Unfolding." This Nir Rosen article from Reason fueled my long-held worries that Iraq's future may hold civil war and an eventual theocracy. Its in-depth, written by a journalist living in Iraq, tells stories from a variety of sources, has a good under the covers feeling, and it's from Reason, which I feel usually does a good job of trying to present things the way preferred by people who want to make up their own mind.

Though Shi'ite and Sunni leaders hastened to mouth professions of unity following the attacks in Karbala and Kadhimiya, they hate each other. Sunni and Shi'ite newspapers have grown more brazen in their attacks against each other. The only things they agree on are the need for an Islamic government (though they disagree on what it will look like) and their insistence that the Jews and Americans are to blame for all their woes. The Sunnis are scared, they fear the impending Shi'ite takeover of Iraq if anything resembling a democratic election takes place. Sunnis view Shi'ites the way white South Africans viewed blacks, and now feel disenfranchised, seeing the barbaric heathens threatening to rule their country. Many Sunnis cling to the fiction that they are in fact the majority, and the Shi'ites are all Iranians. Shi'ites don't fear the Sunnis, they just dislike them. Shi'ites hate the Kurds now, blaming them for attempting to divide the country with their calls for federalism and autonomy. Arab Shi'ites have already started supporting Turkmen in the north, who are often Shi'ite as well, in their bloody clashes with Kurds.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Closest to "We have to succeed, but we might not." This Steven Vincent article from Reason presents all the uncertainty I feel in conjunction with my sense that failure would be an unacceptable tragedy. Vincent felt compelled to visit Iraq because he felt like me, I don't really know what's going on. His view is best represented by the following:

I don’t mean to overstate the problems facing the U.S. in Iraq. Still, it bothers me to see supporters of the war assume that events are going better than the "biased," "liberal" media depict them. That may be true sometimes, but not always. Iraq is too complicated for such simple analysis -- a fact I admit I had not sufficiently considered when I stood up to endorse the war. Now, when I’m asked if the U.S. can succeed, I can only join others in answering: "We must. The prospect of failure in Iraq is too catastrophic to conceive." It’s not a policy so much as a statement of faith: that the center will hold, that democracy and freedom will triumph, that tyrants cannot long escape accountability and justice. But if it seems foolish, as it does to increasing numbers of people, to risk American lives and treasure on such an abstract concept, there are others who are risking their lives on something even less substantial: American public opinion.

Again, read the whole thing if have the time. And try not to let your hopes and fears drive you towards unwarranted certainty. Surely our future and Iraq's depend in large part on a realistic assessment of the challenges we face.

BLAME GAME

Michael Totten hits the nail on the head. He writes, in part--

"The US government had a weak response to Al Qaeda before 911. The US government. Not Clinton. Not Bush. The entire government.

The media and the left just adore Richard Clarke because he beats up on Bush and praises Clinton. (Oh, and he grandstands about regime-change in Iraq, even though that has nothing whatever to do with pre-911 failures.) Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds is cheering David Frum and hoping Condoleeza Rice will channel him in her testimony because he's beating up on Clinton and not Bush.

And bringing Florida and Senate confirmations into it, which also have nothing whatever to do with terrorism and national security.

Is no one embarrassed by the transparent partisanship of this entire charade?
The farther we get from 911 the less people seem to care about terrorism and the more they like to use it as a stick to beat up the other guy. I can't see how this can possibly be good for the country. The transatlantic alliance is coming apart, and so is any shred of a bipartisan alliance here at home. It has become a partisan point-scoring farce."

That is perfectly said. Partisan bickering over the failure of the government to respond more aggressively to al-Qaeda between 1993 and September 2001 is completely unhelpful, and painful to watch. Bush deserves to be judged on his response to 9/11, including the Iraq war, and Kerry deserves to be judged on his votes on the Iraq war. However, I wish that the debate would focus primarily on the future and the candidates' specific, respective approaches to prosecuting the war on terrorism and fostering success in Iraq.

GOP's Favorite Lefty

There's a highly ironic article in the Village Voice by George Smith, about how year-old piece entitled Richard Clarke's Legacy Of Miscalculation, recently dug up by Drudge, made him an instant hero among Republicans, and an anathema to Democrats, none of whom had ever heard of him before.

Turns out Smith is a lefty, criticizing Clarke for being a police state fascist. He's chagrined to now be getting valentines from people he despises, and hate mail from people he agrees with.

Gephardt for VP?

Kevin Drum has a few choice words about the rumor going around in Democratic circles that Dick Gephardt is to be the VP on Kerry's ticket. And he's right on target:

Democrats are simply sticking their heads in the sand if they don't believe that this entire campaign is going to be about national security first last and always, regardless of whether or not that's what they wish it were about. What Kerry needs is a veep who gives him the maximum possible national security oomph.

John McCain? Wes Clark? William Perry? Beats me, but national security chops should be the only thing that matters. Eyes on the prize.

I would modify Kevin's short list a tad. The VP should be either an elder statesman on foreign policy or a military man with strong diplomatic credentials. Ether illustrates a seriousness about leading a nation at a time of war. My list:

• Anthony Zinni
  
• John McCain
  
• Chuck Hagel
  
• Dick Lugar
  
• Sam Nunn

Three of these names are transformational -- leading Republicans who would join an utterly new kind of bipartisan, national unity ticket.

One, Anthony Zinni, is outside the box, and would lead to puzzling first reactions, but would also probably wear pretty well. He has an unusual combination of qualities that would ultimately shine through -- solid, sharp, balanced leadership, great communication skills, and more of a "regular guy" demeanor than we get from politicians these days. Also, an intriguingly mixed political pedigree -- he's probably a Republican, having voted for Bush in 2000, being close friends with Powell, and naming Hagel and Lugar as his top foreign policy influences. Yet he's a longstanding vocal opponent of the Iraq war -- making him more palatable to the Democratic base than guys like McCain or Hagel.

Zinni is the moderate Republican internationalist we could get onto the Democratic ticket, if only Kerry were willing to take a modest step outside the box.

It won't surprise me to find that Kevin is right -- that Kerry went for the safe, conventional choice.

Bush is Back too.

A poll CNN is reporting on suggests that Kerry has fallen off now that the dem nom fight is over, and Bush is back up:

Despite a week of negative headlines about how his administration handled the threat of terrorism before September 11, 2001, President Bush's political position against Sen. John Kerry has strengthened, according to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

The poll results -- gathered between Friday and Sunday -- suggest that the Bush campaign's attempts to paint Kerry as a tax-raising liberal who flip-flops on the issues has affected the race more than recent charges that the Bush administration didn't put enough focus on the threat of terrorism before 9/11.

It would of course be a mistake to assertively attribute this uptick to any one thing, (as CNN tries to) and we don't yet know if it's a trend. But a few points: Kerry isn't getting the same press coverage he got when running for the dem nom. Bush has a huge money advantage, and he's been spending heavily in battleground states. It's far from a given that the public as a whole is accepting the Clarke spin of pre-9/11 terrorism policies.

Hopefully some polls are being done now to figure out how people are reading this farce. I was very surprised at how large the disconnect is between the national media reports and the overall tone of the blogosphere. I am not one to buy into the liberal media bias hypothesis, but the media definitely does have a bias that controversy brings ratings. And they have been plumping this as a controversy and leaving aside any sort of even-handed critical thinking. Their coverage seems to me to be based on being very happy to cover the game of competing partisan thesis-antithesis, and deliberately eschewing any sort of attempt at synthesis. The blogosphere has echoed the lead of pro-Bush blogger-king Instapundit's furiously defensive efforts at protecting Bush and discrediting Clarke. I've found some usually good blogs to have turned into partisan batting practice. However, they do now seem to finally be coming around to the point that "of course the Bush admin has not been perfect, but let's focus on what we can learn to improve current policies."

Sully's Back

Andrew Sullivan has been back from vacation, blogging, and with an article in the Times Of London, discussing, of course, Clarke.

Clarke's apology was a reminder that no one else has apologized. The president could have gone on television to take some responsibility for such a tragedy occurring on his watch; he could subsequently have looked the American people in the eye and explained his error on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and why he still believes he was right to make the decision he did. He could even now concede some errors in this war. Errors are inevitable. The mark of character is not refusing to recognize them, but acknowledging them and taking responsibility. But this administration has done precious little of it: on the deficit, on WMDs, on its continually flawed predictions of job growth. If the Bushies spent more time doing that, taking some responsibility for their sometimes forgivable failures rather than launching attacks on people like Dick Clarke and Paul O'Neill, they might be doing a little better than they are right now in the polls. People with something to hide lash out. And the more the Bushies lash out, the less people trust them.

Exactly. It's not Bush's mistakes that bother me, but the fact that he doesn't acknowledge them or appear to learn from them. War is a tough thing. Some of Churchill's mistakes were doozies. I have an independent mind, and simply cannot twist with the party line when it starts to distance itself from reality.

Not Blowing Over

So much for the pundits who dismissed Richard Clarke's charges as a one-week story. In week two, he's the cover story of Newsweek. It's not entirely complimentary, but it supports one of his key assertions

A senior administration official showed NEWSWEEK a copy of Clarke's PowerPoint briefing delivered to Rice and her new team in January 2001. It offered proposals to "deter, defeat, and respond vigorously" to Al Qaeda. Rice instructed Clarke to come up with ideas to "eliminate" Al Qaeda, said this official. The command came from Bush, who was now getting briefed every morning by the director of the CIA, George Tenet. At a meeting attended by Rice and Tenet in May, Bush declared, "I'm tired of swatting at flies. I want a strategy. I want to go on the offense."

It took months for the deputies (the No. 2 officials at State, Defense, etc.) to grind away at a new plan, and when it was finally presented to the principals—Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the 9/11 attacks—it looked pretty much like Clarke's old plan. White House officials protest that the new plan was more thoroughgoing; that it called, for instance, for a new strategy to transform Pakistan from protector of Al Qaeda to a platform for attacking the terrorists in their lairs in Afghanistan. But everyone agrees that the plan would have taken three to five years to accomplish.

It's hard to grasp the notion that the Bush Administration may actually have been weaker on terror than Clinton. After all, they are the hawks, arent't they? What Clarke has been saying, and we're getting evidence to back it up, is that while the Administration certainly intends to be tougher than Clinton, they shifted the focus to rogue states, and de-emphasized non-governmental organizations like Al Qaeda.

Did I Miss Something?

From CNN:

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- The Massachusetts Legislature adopted a new version of a state constitutional amendment Monday that would ban gay marriage and legalize civil unions, eliminating consideration of any other proposed changes.

The vote came at the opening of the third round of a constitutional convention on the contentious issue, as competing cries of "Jesus Christ" and "Equal Rights" shook the Statehouse outside the legislative chamber.

I must have been napping. When did "Jesus Christ" and "Equal Rights" become adversaries?

Meet John Avlon, Centrist Author

We just heard by email from John Avlon, author of the recent book Independent Nation. John is also a columnist for The New York Sun, former speech writer for Rudy Giuliani, and worked on Clinton's campaign in 1996.

John has his own website now -- Independent Nation -- and he's asked about linking from his site to our forum at the Centrist Coalition. We may very well be working out something where are discussions are linked to one another.

I was just looking at some of John's newspaper articles, linked from his site, and it's clear he's one of our strongest centrist authors. He wrote a piece on John McCain just a few weeks ago that I think is pretty remarkable.

The Nature of Terror

Fareed Zakaria has some thoughts both on the hot issues arising from the 9/11 commission and the broader question of the kind of threat we face. I won't offer a blurb because you have to read the whole thing to get the picture. Check it out.

Moderate Republicans on the Presidential Race

I've argued against the sentiment expressed by some of our centrist bloggers to the effect that the Democratic party is more natural home for centrists today than Republicans, and that moderates should focus on defeating Bush and/or supporting Kerry in 2004.

I don't see Kerry as very different from the usual product of primaries in either party -- namely, he has a largely liberal record, and on the critical issue of foreign policy, he has a somewhat troubling mixed record. This is a guy who voted against the first Gulf War in 1991, and whose first forays into foreign policy as a young Senator involved working for the nuclear freeze movement. He also strikes me as overly motivated by politics, as his attempts to have it both ways on the Iraq war suggest.

I suspect this is one more case when both parties are giving us candidates who really shouldn't be president.

There is another side to this argument, though, and it's discussed in a new Salon article that I found via Ara Rubyan's excellent blog E Pluribus Unum. Apparently, there are some leading moderate Republicans who want Kerry to win in 2004:

[T]here's little doubt that behind the scenes, some moderate Republicans are rooting for the other side. If Bush wins, one aide to a moderate Republican says privately, "that would be the worst possible situation."

That's because some Republicans say that a Bush loss may be their last chance to take their party back. "If Bush were defeated by Kerry, it would certainly call into question the Republican leadership, people like Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert," says Victor Fasciani [a 40-year-old asset manager and lifelong Republican]. "That axis of the party may lose its weight and its power. The Powell and Giuliani wing of the party would certainly gain some prominence and may, during the next four years of a Kerry administration, perhaps even gain control of the party and increase the tent."

I think this sentiment, honestly, has more to do with frustration in the middle than any distinct desire for a Kerry presidency. There are quite a few responsible, respected, informed, and balanced leaders we could choose from, and I don't think Kerry has a strong claim to membership in that club. I just think we fail, with regularity, to nominate one of them.

My very last word on the Aspirin factory and Richard Clarke--Really!

I've gotten a lot of response on the aspirin factory thing and Richard Clarke's veracity. Some people think Clarke is "credible," as in believable. Some cite his long record of honesty and integrity as a public servant, his "reputation."

And both Clarke and Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen swore under oath before the 9/11 Commission that Al-Shifa was a chemical weapons factory, owned by Osama Bin Laden, producing WMD's for Saddam. So what should we believe? Following are the facts about Al-Shifa.

Skip it if you just want to believe what fits your preconceptions and politics.

It was stated in another blog that William Cohen testified as follows about Al-Shifa. The blogger said that Cohen's testimony confirmed Clarke's so they found Clarke more credible because of it. My take is the opposite, because I actually did some research on the whole affair. Someone asked me for comment. here's the blog extract on Cohen:

I'm listening to William Cohen's testimony before the 9/11 Commission right now on C-Span. He was asked what "actionable intelligence" really means, and I think he hit the answer out of the park and, at the same time, made a tight case against the oft-mocked attack on al-Shifa after the Embassy bombings in Africa. Cohen said this is a good example of what I considered "actionable intelligence":

1. Intelligence showed that the plant was constructed under conditions of extraordinary secrecy and security. It was protected during construction by surface-to-air missiles
2. The Military Industrial Corporation was building the plant. That was an entity that got substantial funding from bin Laden.
3. It was known that bin Laden was trying to get chemical weapons. funded
4. The plant's owner traveled to Baghdad to meet with the founder of Iraq's VX program.
5. The soil near the plant contained emta (sp.)--a precursor of VX that did not occur in nature and had no purpose other than to produce VX.

Here's MY take:

The problem: the post-bombing facts don't back up the conclusion (that it was, or had ever been, a chemical weapons factory). Clinton received the intel cited, a circumstantial case and a pretty thin one. He was assured it was actually rock solid. He acted--and it's been a case of bureaucratic cover-the-butt ever since, as Cohen and Clark's testimony shows. Point by point:

Don't know. We have not been given the specific hard intel referred to (and why not?) we're just supposed to take their word for it.

Bin Laden was a stock holder in MIC. So were many of the Bin laden clan, the bulk of whom were on the outs with OBL. At no time did OBL or the clan have a controlling interest, or any executive control of the company. MIC built the plant. MIC built military installations. MIC also built schools, malls, industrial plants, oil pipelines, etc. We don't bomb them. I once owned a small amount of stock in Worldcom. Does this make me responsible for their actions? A non-starter, this one.

So what? This proves precisly nothing about that particular plant. ZILCH. Under the same reasoning, Osama Bin Laden is justification for bombing your local Feed and Grain. Hey, they got chemicals there!

A Sudanese drug manufacturer travelled to the
country next door to visit with the man responsible for drug and chemical import/export? Allah forbid there could be any possible rational explanation for that other than a covert plot to manufacture WMD's for Saddam! See #1.

The only hard evidence referred to at all,
really. What we're talking about here is one soil sample reportedly gathered by one CIA "asset" at night, tested once, that no one has been able to get a repeat test on. What we don't have is [a] the asset's ID, any evidence of his/her reliability, motivations, prior performance, etc.; [b] any "chain of evidence" for the sample that shows where it came from and how it was handled and tested, or [c] the sample itself, available for re-testing. See #1.

...the court granted the motion to dismiss on the ground that the Takings Clause "does not extend to the destruction of property designated by the President as enemy war-making property, and that the court may not look behind the President's discharge of his Constitutional duties as Commander in Chief, including his declaration of what constitutes an enemy
target and his determination to use military force to destroy that
target".

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

"After this, therefore, because of this."

Fructose Sweetener Linked to Obesity Rise

If there's any one logical fallacy that pervasively permeates the public mind in regard to science, economics, politics, or almost anything else, it's the post hoc fallacy. This is the idea that just because Event B occurred after Event A, Event A is a proximate cause of Event B.

And there in the morning news was a case in point, a new study that could be used to claim that special interest groups bullying subsidies out of Congress is responsible for the American obesity epidemic, simply by "doubling up" the post hoc fallacy.

The reason fructose came into such massive use was that cane sugar was simply getting too expensive, due to price controls and import quotas imposed by Congress to support American sugar growers. So food and drink manufacturers switched to fructose as a sweetener, because it was cheaper.

And now a group has tied the rise in the use of fructose to the obesity epidemic. So, under post hoc, we can say that political shenanigans led to fructose use which in turn led to wide-spread (snicker) obesity. We'd be utterly wrong, of course but the reasoning is appealing and it seems like an obvious and logical conclusion. But had cane sugar never been switched for fructose, we'd still be getting fatter, because we eat more than we used to, and get less exercise. And there's a nice example of the post hoc fallacy in action....

Politics indeed led to the rise in the use of fructose, but extending it to the rise in obesity is fallacious. Sadly much of what passes for politics and economics in public discussion follows this pattern.

A Moderate Republican Is Hard To Find

It has seemed to me that Centerfield leans slightly toward the Democrats, despite my attempts to recruit moderate Republicans along with centrist Democrats. A Salon article may provide some clues.

"If I am talking anecdotally to moderate Republicans, it's very hard to find one who is going to vote for Bush, very difficult," says John Zogby, president and CEO of the polling firm Zogby International. "On the other hand, strangely enough it's not showing up in our polling." In fact, Zogby's latest polls show 87 percent of Republicans backing Bush. "I'm just watching and waiting and saying to myself maybe there's something going on here, because I'm hearing it," he says.

So if moderates are disenchanted, why isn't that showing up in the polls? In part, it's because moderate Republicans as a whole are a rapidly diminishing species in most of the country. According to Zogby, 80 percent of Republicans self-identify as conservative. Asked about the role of moderates in the party, Rick Shaftan, a conservative Republican pollster in New Jersey, says: "It's not that many individuals you're talking about in terms of votes."

What percentage of Democrats self-identify as liberals? Less than 80%, I expect. So if we limit ourselves to people who self-identify as moderates or centrists, that may tend to give us a Democratic cast.

It would seem a contradiction in terms to recruit conservative Republicans to a centrist blog. Two things occur to me:

1. The comments are open to everyone (except spammers). We value intellectual sparring with liberals and conservatives.

2. Moderation is an aspect of tone as well as policy. Isn't it possible to be a moderate conservative or moderate liberal? And if you are one, perhaps you are a closet centrist. If so, you're welcome to join us.

Heil Flag?

How about this little bit of history on the pledge of allegiance? Boy you just can't make up good stuff like this, can ya?

Kerry's Fallibility

I made a comment on a post by Scott Rosenberg that I will reproduce below.

Scott praises Richard Clarke's apology for his failures as counter-terrorism czar, and takes other members of the Bush Administration to task for never having done so.

I agree that apologizing for ones errors raises credibility. David Brooks says that the Administration will never admit to a mistake in public, but will quietly make course corrections when necessary. The former is certainly true; the latter is harder to prove.

Hawks who are not personally invested in Bush's return to office can recognize a fellow member of the species in Clarke. Many have lost confidence in Bush. But we remain skeptical of Kerry.

Here's something that would help. Just as Bush ought to cop to errors, so should Kerry. To me, the thing that makes me queasiest about Kerry is his vote against the 1991 Gulf War. Here is his 1991 speech.

If Kerry would admit to being wrong back then, and having learned a thing or two, I would have MORE confidence in him. If he sticks to infallibility, I may just pull the covers over my head on election day.

Preventing An October Surprise

With Discount Blogger calling me a leftist, I feel a need to emphasize my continued hawkishess. For instance, while I've gone wobby on Iraq in hindsight, under the influence of the Clark(e) twins (Wesley and Richard), I agree with Thomas Friendman's interpretation of the Spanish elections

Yes, yes, I know all the fine print. People say that the reason the ruling conservative party lost to the Socialists in Spain was because the conservatives tried to mislead the Spanish people by suggesting that the bombings were the work of Basque separatists, not Al Qaeda sympathizers unhappy with Spain's role in Iraq. And therefore, in voting for the Socialists, who were running on a pledge to withdraw Spanish forces from Iraq, the Spanish people were voting for truth in government — not to appease the Islamists by voting in the party that would pull out of Iraq.

Maybe that's true. Personally, I believe it's naïve to think that truth-in-government was the only thing motivating anguished Spanish swing voters after the bombings, and that there was not a twitch of appeasement in the air. But here's what I know for sure: Al Qaeda doesn't do exit polling. Al Qaeda does big picture.

If Mr. Zapatero goes through with his troop withdrawal from Iraq, Islamist terrorists will attribute it to the Madrid bombing. This big picture will absolutely encourage them to try this tactic, perfected in Israel and now imported to Spain, in other European or U.S. elections — to tilt the vote one way or another.

Now, how should we apply Friedman's wisdom to the US elections?

1. While Bush's campaign machine throws mud and slime at those who oppose it, this is not an adequate reason to vote him out of office. It's just politics as it is practiced in the 21st century.

2. One of Bush's strongest points for re-election is that there has not been another Al Qaeda attack on US soil since September 11. Fair enough. But what if there is an attack, say in October? Should we throw him out, or would that be appeasement? It sounds like Bush wins either way.

In order to be elected, John Kerry must prevent this dilemma from ever occuring. While he cannot himself prevent an Al Qaeda attack, he must present himself as being as tough or tougher on terrorism as George Bush. Kerry must do this not as Howard Dean did, by simply telling people he's tough, but by presenting policies that convince people he's tough.

For instance, one policy I favor which might burnish Kerry's credentials as being tough on terror, is a National ID card. Civil libertarians go nuts over this --mostly those on the left, but also some on the right. I think that a liberal like Kerry might be better able to get this through than President Bush, who doesn't seem interested in it anyway. A liberal would also be the best person to implement this, with built-in safeguards like measures to track file accesses.

That probably won't fly, but there must be other signals from Kerry that he will be very tough on terror. If he can convince not just the American people but Al Qaeda of this, the latter will have less incentive to pull off a pre-election surprise. The goal should be to get Al Qaeda to share Ralph Nader's view that as bad as Bush is, Kerry is no better.

Econ 000.2 What is "FAIR?"

So, as noted below, I was reading this story that stuck in my craw(and I'll give a link later if I can track it down, but I can encapsulate.) I'm going to blockquote my summary for better layout, and use blockquotes from time to time to call extra attention to certain things:

According to the Boston Globe, it seems that our state university had instituted a new fee to be used to pay increased administration costs for overseeing international students. Unsurprisingly (to me anyway), the fee is charged only to international students. Naturally, international students were refusing to pay the fee, and were quoted variously about the unfairness and discriminatory nature of such a fee. In their view, it would be much more "FAIR" to pay for these extra costs by charging a fee to ALL students.

Note that the feeling of the new policy being unfair was diminished not a whit by any recognition that administering the education of international students might cost more money than that for domestic students. Now there are lots of ways different people are going to want to go with this story, including complaining about naive young liberal students, and yelling about stupid commies, and defending the virtue of international students against heartless selfish econocrats. But what I really want to hone in on is the very idea of fairness. What is "fair," really?

I can't help but notice that the idea of fairness is one that children latch onto with great moral righteousness from a very young age. And I'm suggesting here that this might be a clue for us, although to what exactly, I can't yet say.

I think that a problem with partisan rhetoric on economic policies (although not JUST econ policies) is that where partisans are involved, discussion seldom if ever rises above the level of "that's not fair" and "this discriminates against group x." Isn't this sort of pointless? Isn't it in the nature of any tweak to the government's economic policy that any given change is probably beneficial to one group at the expense of another group? The money goes out of one pocket and into another. The group that benefits thinks things have been made more fair, and the group that suffers thinks it's been made less fair.

And I realize that this may not be perfectly true, and that it may be more true in some cases than in others.

All I really want to suggest is that it's true often enough that we try to talk about economic policies at a level that's a TINY bit higher, in terms of which groups benefit and which ones suffer by a given policy change, and why it's superior in a given instance to expect some group to bear a greater burden in order to lessen another group's burden.

And I'm begging that we not detour into an argument about the merits of the idea that tax cuts create a rising tide that raises all boats. It may be true and thus somehow a valid ccounterexample. I'm not trying to suggest that economics is composed solely of zero-sum games and fixed pies, only that when they are, fairness gets dodgy. One more fairness story:

A few weeks back the Globe (them again) had a front-page above the fold Sunday story about how a new program proposed by our Republican governor discriminated against students from poorer towns (and thus minorities too, I believe they implied...). Why? Because the program granted scholarships to students solely on the basis of their performance on a state test. And white kids from rich towns score higher.

Now I'd be the VERY first to admit that the merits of a state's overall scholarship policy are worthy of discussion, and that programs that target low-income/disadvantaged students are absolutely worthwhile. But that's WAY different from GOP GOVERNOR SCREWS POOR KIDS AND BLACKS, ya know? And again, what is FAIR? Is it somehow fairer to expect a middle class white kid from a household with income of 70k to score, say 50 points higher on a test than a black kid from a family with a household income of 30k ? Is it really "discriminatory bias" to awards scholarships via a simple program of "excel on this test, get a scholarship?"

So I submit that when cries of unfairness and discrimination arise, especially in economic policy, at the very least, our centrist BS detectors automatically turn on, and we ask "whose ox is being gored?" and "whose ox is being fattened?"

Econ 000.1

It dawned upon Tully and I, among others, that there might be some merit to the idea of generating some resources for us to draw upon in understanding some basic ideas in economics. The supposition is that it might allow us to even better avoid claims that are just more partisan rhetoric or evento recast them in a less partisan light. At least for the time being, we're not focusing too much on being systematic or comprehensive. We'll just start up and see what emerges. (Part of this will of course involve not reinventing the wheel, so we're looking for good links ourselves, and would love additional suggestions. Fair warning though, anyone that comes up with any good ideas might be asked to post them to the wiki that Rick established.)

Go ahead and set some balls to rolling by posting ideas about places to start if you want. Or even just URLs with a word or two of what it is and why you like it. In the meantime I'm going to get things started anyway in my next post, by picking a spot that interests me, fairly at random. As usual, it stated with something I read that stuck in my craw.

Where do you fit?

I really enjoyed Michael Totten's Tech Central Station essay Are the Jacksonians Sated?
Totten discusses four archetypes of American foreign policy, based on the policies of Jackson, Wilson, Hamilton, and Jefferson.

Jeffersonians are principled pacifists. Hamiltonians seek a stable and orderly world made secure for the global economy. Wilsonians build international institutions that promote freedom and human rights. They also fight for a world that's safe for democracy. And finally there are Jacksonians, who are isolationist in peace time and ruthless in war time.

Read the whole thing. It's food for thought. The categories are imprecise of course, but there seems to be some real truth gotten at. (There's also lengthy discussion over at michaeltotten.com.)

I think I'm more of a hard wilsonian than a jacksonian, myself. But I find a lot of appeal in the way jacksonians are described, and with the point that the other groups need the jacksonians to get what they want.

How About A UN without Dictatorships?

Read this Reason article by Jonathan Rauch on the possibilities for a democratic caucus within the UN.

It's always steamed me that we get one vote and Libya does too. (Yeah, we're on the security council, but that's not much solace.) One important point Rauch makes is that while allowing non-democracies into the UN was pretty much unavoidable back in the days when democracy was pretty scarce, a "UN for democracies only" is now an increasingly sustainable idea. Read the whole thing.

Was Clinton Weak on Terror?

Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice discusses a theme emerging to the effect that the Clinton administration was basically weak on terror. He links to a column by Duke University professor Peter Feaver that suggests Clinton was weak and hesitant, while the Bush team stronger and more eager to use military force.

I might agree with the basic conclusion that we should have initiated a major military operation in Afghanistan to directly confront al Qaida -- which was, at the time, engaging in serial acts of terror against us on foreign soil.

I question, though, the clarity of all these blanket judgments on Clinton's policy.

Isn't it true, for instance, that in 1998, aroud the time of the embassy bombings in Africa, we were more concerned about the nuclear crisis between Pakistan and India? I can recall people "in the know" offering the gravest of assessments of that crisis -- suggesting that nuclear war was likely. Without benefit of hindsight, could we really justify launching a war on Pakistan's other border?

I would also point out that some statements seem to skip past the fact the Clinton did attack al Qaida militarily. His use of 79 cruise missiles is described as "hitting a bunch of empty tents" -- but is that accurate? I seem to recall reports that we missed bin Laden by a matter of hours. And if bin Laden had been there, surely his followers were.

Finally, what would a genuine, realistic comparison between Clinton's and Bush's policies look like? Some suggest Clinton elevated anti-terrorism to a new prominence, and actually prevented some al Qaida attacks. It's clear the Bush people downgraded the position of anti-terror czar from cabinet to sub-cabinet level.

This is an interesting factual question. Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and other administration officials say they had a new, more robust approach to terrorism pre-9/11. Richard Clark says the Bush team was simply less interested in terrorism than his previous boss, Clinton.

And Professor Feaver says it's all in the mindset -- Bush was militaristic, Clinton weak. Who's right?

Under God

The words "under God" in the pledge do not violate the First Amendment. I regard the use of the word "God" with no further specificity to be a philosophical statement.

Jehovah's Witnesses object not to the "under God" but to the concept of pledging allegiance itself. The word "justice" is pretty uncontroversial, but -- don't laugh -- there must be some parents who do not believe in "liberty" because they believe in Christian reconstructionism or Sharia. Just because some people do not believe in God does not make a generic use of the word an establishment of religion.

Clarke, WMD's, and the Aspirin Factory

I make no claims about the veracity of the following, other than it appeared as noted, when noted, where noted. I offer no opinion on it whatsoever, other than I think it gives us a good point of discussion as to why it is dangerous to buy the party lines of noisy activists with overt agendas, especially as it involves ALL of the recent hot topics of Richard Clarke, WMD's, intelligence failures, the White House, Iraq, Al Qaeda, and "unilateral action." And why it is folly to believe everything you read online or in the news.

As we all remember, on August 20, 1998 President Clinton unilaterally ordered the cruise-missile bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant on the outskirts of Khartoum, Sudan. At the same time, on the President's orders, cruise missiles were launched against terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, camps composed mostly of empty tents. A few months later, Richard Clarke spoke to the Washington Post in defense of the administration.

Clarke did provide new information in defense of Clinton's decision to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, in retaliation for bin Laden's role in the Aug. 7 embassy bombings. While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile attack that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is "sure" that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.

Given the evidence presented to the White House before the airstrike, Clarke said, the president "would have been derelict in his duties if he didn't blow up the facility."

Clarke said the U.S. does not believe that bin Laden has been able to acquire chemical agents, biological toxins or nuclear weapons. If evidence of such an acquisition existed, he said, "we would be in the process of doing something."

(Excerpted from "Embassy Attacks Thwarted, U.S. Says; Official Cites Gains Against Bin Laden; Clinton Seeks $10 Billion to Fight Terrorism," Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, A02, January 23, 1999.)

And the follow-up on the whole story: Bill Clinton Bombs an Aspirin Factory

Legalize Intervention

I usually consider British leftist George Monbiot to be an idiot, but his latest column arguing for an international legal framework for intervention is worth reading.

To accept that force can sometimes be a just means of relieving the suffering of an oppressed people is to hand a ready-made excuse to every powerful nation that fancies an empire. To deny it is to tell some of the world's most persecuted peoples that they must be left to rot.

It seems to me that there is no instant or reliable answer to this dilemma. But one thing is clear: that the current framework of international law is incapable of resolving it for us. Even if other nations wished to act selflessly on behalf of the oppressed by attacking a despotic state, the charter of the United Nations forbids it. What this means is that any government can then claim it has a moral duty to ignore the law. In attempting to prevent unjustified acts of aggression, in other words, the charter's lack of discrimination may have encouraged them.

Surely then we need a new UN charter, not just to save the oppressed from the likes of Saddam Hussein, but also to save both humanitarianism and world peace from the likes of George Bush. We need a charter that permits armed intervention for humanitarian purposes, but only when a series of rigorous tests have been met, and only when an overwhelming majority of all the world's states have approved it. We need a charter that forbids nations with an obvious interest in the outcome from participating.

Set aside the jab at President Bush. Monbiot is, surprisingly, rejecting the traditional leftist argument that intervention in small countries by the big powers is always bad. The movement against "imperialism" and for decolonization has been steady in the postwar period. But now we see that some of these independent states have failed, and there ought to be a mechanism for putting them into receivership.

Kerry Reaping What He Sowed?

Remember the whole "foreign leaders want me to win" flap? Well it looks like this quote has come back to haunt him in the form of an opportunistic left-leaning foreign leader, and Kerry has had to run away.

Check it out.

I find this very amusing because Kerry opened the door by bringing it up. And now the Bushies are going to haunt leftist government web sites looking for praise of John Kerry. The end result will be that, as long as Kerry is unwilling to name the names of the foreign leaders he was referring to, the Bushies are going to suggest who he was talking about. It won't even matter how vociferously Kerry tries to distance himself. The point will remain that "far lefties prefer Bush." Petard hoisting in progress.

Welfare Reform: Still A Success

Welfare reform seemed like a success during the dot com boom. But would it fall apart once a recession hit? No, it turns out. Those who left the welfare rolls have not returned

Mark H. Greenberg, a lawyer at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a research and advocacy group, said, "One of the great mysteries of social policy in the last few years is why welfare caseloads have stayed essentially flat or declined in much of the country, despite the economic downturn."

In past recessions, newly hired welfare recipients and other low-skilled workers were among the first to lose their jobs. But that was apparently not the case with the most recent recession.

In fact, many of those who left welfare have moved into service positions, precisely the kind of jobs which cannot be outsourced. It's computer programmers like me who have been hit hard. In fact, now that I'm unemployed, I have more time to blog. Indeed, it's possible that the disproportionate impact of outsourcing on techies has led to more negative view of overall economic conditions that if more of the unemployed were former welfare recipients.

Our Role As Referee

It's predictable which sides liberals and conservatives will rally to. But as centrists, we don't always know which side we will support, because we need to assess the facts first. I hope that gives our views a little more weight.

In the case of the Spanish bombings, it seems to me that most centrists aligned with the conservative narrative that the Spanish electorate sent a message to Al Qaeda that Europeans can be cowed by terrorism.

In the case of Richard Clarke, it's looking bad for the conservatives.

The Conservative blog, Powerline, calls Clark a Clintonite and a fraud.

But liberal blog Billmon says that Clarke has served many Democrat and Republican Presidents.

The fact that Clarke was retained by the Bush Administration would seem to argue against the notion that he is a Democratic partisan. Billmon further reports

Clarke was (is?) also close to Steven Emerson, a former CNN reporter turned terrorism "expert," who in the years leading up to 9/11 made a cottage industry out of his "American jihad" investigations, which at times came dangerously close to labeling all Arab-Americans as members of a terrorist Fifth Column. Emerson, in turn, has ties to the Likud Party, the Project for a New American Century, right-wing security extremists like Frank Gaffney and James Woolsey, etc.

Now, I take a more positive with of Steve Emerson than Billmon does. I consider him one of the few people, along with Daniel Pipes, who were voices in the wilderness warning us of the danger of Islamic mega-terrorism. But the point is the same. If it's true that Clarke and Emerson are tight, then its a slam-dunk that he's not a squishy Clintonite, and is in fact what he claims to be, a crusty fellow alarmed by screw-ups which endanger our security.

I think I've spotted a spinning Powerline.

Update:
Here's Richard Clarke praising Steve Emerson

“I think of Steve as sort of the Paul Revere of terrorism,” says former National Security Council counterterrorism director Richard Clarke. Clarke, who is now President George W. Bush’s top cyber-security adviser, credits Emerson with repeatedly warning of Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States. He adds that he would attend Emerson’s speeches whenever possible because “we’d always learn things we weren’t hearing from the FBI or CIA, things which almost always proved to be true.”

and here's Steve Emerson's agent citing that piece. Sounds like a mutual admiration society.

Update2:

The Washington Post reports

Clarke's disputes with the White House are notable in part because his muscular national security views allied him often over the years with most of the leading figures advising Bush on terrorism and Iraq. As an assistant secretary of state in 1991, Clarke worked closely with Wolfowitz and then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney to marshal the 32-nation coalition that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Clarke sided with Wolfowitz -- against Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- in a losing argument to extend that war long enough to destroy Iraq's Republican Guard. Later, Clarke was principal author of the hawkish U.S. plan to rid Iraq of its nonconventional weapons under threat of further military force.

Strong on Terror?

I just watched the Richard Clarke interview on 60 Minutes. There's a whole lot to consider, there. I guess, for one thing, it really underscores the theme that among the president's most powerful advisors were a group of real "Iraqophiles" -- e.g., folks who saw just about everything, pre- and post-9/11, as a reason to attack Iraq. There was a real obsession there, if guys like Clarke are to be believed.

Also, if the conversation Clarke recounts with the president is true, the president himself was caught up in that obsession. 60 Minutes says they have two sources besides Clarke who confirm that conversation.

Josh Marshall has a lot more about this, including the quote I'm referring to above.

Lesley on Anti-Semitism

Lesley of Plum Crazy offers an intriguing discussion of anti-Semitism. She deals with it both in very personal terms and logical and conceptual ones. Quite a combination. Check it out.

The Balance Sheet

Mark Kleiman's blog seems to be having a problem with its permalinks, but this entry is too good to miss, so I'll quote it in full.

Today's New York Times reports that the fall of the Baathist regime in Iraq has given heart to dissidents in Syria. That's exactly the sort of thing the architects of the Iraq invasion were hoping for. Like the end of the Iraqi tryranny, it has to be, on any reasonable accounting of the costs and benefits of going to war, an entry on the credit side.

I wish that those who criticize the war were more willing than they seem to be to acknowledge its benefits, as I wish that those who still think it was a good idea were more willing to acknowledge both that the fear of a major Iraqi WMD program was central to the argument for war as it was actually made at the time and that it has proven in retrospect to have been seriously overestimated.

What the anti-war and pro-war sides have in common is an almost total unwillingness to acknowledge what seemed obvious to me: this was a hard problem, with no obivous right answer. No [matter] which side you were (or are) on, there are patriotic, humanitarian folks who know more than you do about the problem who disagree with you. If that were better understood, there might be a little less vitriol in the conversation.

Mark is a proud liberal, but he shares with centerfielders the notion that reasonable people may differ. A key notion is that there are costs and benefits to any action. So many ideologues only see one side of the balance sheet.

Doggett vs. DeLay redistricting

I've let an argument over old stuff distract me from a fun bit of localblogging: the first half of a possible victory over Tom DeLay.

Lloyd Doggett, US House Rep (D) Austin won a primary victory that DeLay didn't think would happen (numbers here). The new redistricting scheme was supposed to keep him out of office.

Lloyd Doggett was one of those targeted for removal by Tom DeLay. Now, Doggett certainly wasn't the only (D) targeted, but DeLay went over a certain kind of cliff to get him. Other, more moderate and reasonable plans, that didn't include gitting Doggett, were advanced. If DeLay had lived with them, it's quite possible that the GOP could've passed the plan without annoying Texas centrists and setting aside a Texas Senate rule that makes it almost impossible to pass things without a 2/3 majority. Not to mention pissing off a ton of obviously unreasonably redistricted Texan voters.

As a Democrat, I'm also pleased by another fact: the memory of the redistricting outrage isn't fading, and it's not just remembered by Austin.

I believe that the Texas Republicans will pay the price in November for not showing restraint when Tom DeLay came to tempt them. Of course, some Republicans did show restraint, notably Bill Ratliff, who, to his honor, even decided not to run again because of this issue, but obviously, not enough to stop it. They will lose their alliance with Texas centrists that has held since Bush was elected Governor here. Ever since Bush came to power, the Texas GOP has largely given the adult governance that you hope for from Republicans. It even held for two years after Bush left, enough for Perry to be confirmed in his governorship. Now it may well be over.If it is, I'll be sure to hoist a cold one to Tom!

Much as I've found moveon.org vexing since 2000, they've been a great help throughout this by providing money for the out-of-state legislators blocking a quorum, for lawsuits, for Doggett to run a big campaign keeping redistricting front and center in his district. They've also provided some exposure, though that's mostly come by itself. 'preciate it!

Watching a movie on local politics at SXSW reminded me to finish this posting, which I've been nursing for a week. I recommend the movie, Last Man Standing, which nicely captures Texas politics. Maybe what's best about it is how it captures Texas retail politics. Y'all can see it at 10:00 PM on July 20, on POV on most PBS stations. Of course, I may be biased - my wife cast a vote in the Texas Legislature race shown, and I've spent plenty of time there myself. The Lege seat mentioned was chosen because it was LBJ's old seat (not only has it moved a bit, but it's gone from being decidedly rural to edges of Austin suburban).

Sullivan & McCain, Centrists

Andrew Sullivan is sounding like the centrist I always figured he was, while McCain seems to have crumpled up the memo from Bush-Cheney.

Here's a question worth asking: whatever John Kerry's record, could he afford in office to be weak on terror? Wouldn't he be obliged to continue Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and even, as he has already promised, actually increase troop levels in those countries? I don't think it's out of the question. John McCain knows Kerry and says he doesn't believe he'd be "weak on defense." Sometimes, a Democrat has to be tougher than a Republican in this area - if only to credentialize himself. I can certainly conceive of Richard Holbrooke being a tougher secretary of state than Colin Powell. I'm not yet convinced and want to hear much more from Kerry. But I'm persuadable. Four more years of religious-right social policy and Nixonian fiscal policy is not something I really want to support.

Jobs and the Economy -- Just How Bad Off Are We?

I read a post over at Insults Unpunished today that connected with an interesting article at Economist.com that suggests [a]nxiety is turning to paranoia about jobs. Take a deep breath: most Americans have rarely had it better. The salient points:

Too strong? Not really. As The Economist has recently argued—though in the face of many angry readers—the jobs lost are mainly a cyclical affair, not a structural one. They must also be set against the 24m new jobs created during the 1990s. Certainly, the slow pace of job-creation today is without precedent, but so were the conditions that conspired to slow a booming economy at the beginning of the decade. A stockmarket bubble burst, and rampant business investment slumped. Then, when the economy was down, terrorist attacks were followed by a spate of scandals that undermined public trust in the way companies were run. These acted as powerful headwinds and, in the face of them, the last recession was remarkably mild. By the same token, the recovery is mild, too. Still, in the next year or so, today's high productivity growth will start to translate into more jobs. Whether that is in time for Mr Bush is another matter.

...

Waiting for the job recovery might be a good time to take a broader measure of the material well-being of Americans. Their condition is widely held to be perilous. The economy, it is said, is being “hollowed out” by international competition and the connivance of business and political elites, creating “two Americas”, one rich, one poor. Median income of American households, commentators often say, has been stagnant, though census figures give a rise of one-fifth since 1980. Lou Dobbs, on CNN's “Lou Dobbs Tonight”, is just one media fabulist who makes his living by claiming that, as America is being “exported”, so the well-being of middle Americans is in a parlous state.

It is a good story, but false on many levels. For a start, this slow growth in median income overlaps with a scale of immigration into America outpacing all immigration in the rest of the world put together. Many immigrants have come precisely to take up the lowest-paid jobs. As a result, in the 20 years to 1999 some 5m immigrant households were added to those defined as below the poverty level. Yet among native-born Americans, poverty rates have declined steadily since the 1960s. In the case of black families, median incomes have recently been rising at twice the pace for the country as a whole.

Strip out immigrants, and the picture of stagnant median incomes vanishes. Indeed, for the nine-tenths of the population that is native-born, middle-income trends continue their improvement of the 1950s and 1960s. For these people, inequality is not rising, but falling. Gregg Easterbrook cheekily points out in his excellent recent book, “The Progress Paradox” (Random House), that if left-leaning Americans seriously want better statistics about middle-income gains, then they should simply close their borders.

There's much more, of course, and it's well worth reading. The democrats want to make the state of the economy a big issue, but from where I sit, I just don't see much to make an issue of.

Being Able To Back It Up

I posted this on BOPnews, but since the topic came up in the comment thread on the previous post, I'll cross-post it here.

The White House is having fun with John Kerry's statement

The news, the coverage in other countries, the news in other places. I've met more leaders who can't go out and say it all publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, you gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that.

Republicans are suggesting that Kerry is a liar, because he is not able to mention the names of those who spoke to him in confidence. This is the same tactic used against Wesley Clark when he mentioned scuttlebut that had been conveyed to him in confidence.

Of course, the White House don't really doubt that European leaders would prefer another President than Bush. But they have Kerry in a box, because Kerry would be the loser even if he were to produce the names. The American people don't want foreign leaders influencing our elections, any more than other electorates would respond to the preferences of the President of the United States.

It's not a great time to be associated with Europeans in the public mind when the chief of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, is quoted saying "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists." Even if he cannot name names, Kerry would be wise to distance himself from Prodi immediately (and buy up photos, if any exist, of Kerry and Prodi in the same shot). If I were the GOP, I would be writing up the storyboards right now on an ad which stamped that quote on Kerry's forehead.

The chief lesson I take from this is, in a pressure situation, never to say anything that cannot be backed up with the written record. Anything off the record is useless. Anything conveyed orally can be denied by the other party in the conversation. Be able to back it up, or don't say it at all.

Note: I just heard Dick Holbrooke, a Kerry foreign policy advisor and my choice for the next Secretary of State, speaking on CNN. Holbrooke was solid with regard to staying the course in the war on terror, and concerned about the message sent out by the events in Spain. If Kerry is listening to Holbrooke, I have no problem supporting him

When Is the Terrorist Census?

I sure hope that terrorist census gets done soon. I really need it. But I guess I'm in the minority. I really don't know how many islamic terrorists there are, where they are, and how much of a threat they are. The premature triumphalists of the right seem sure we've thinned their ranks and got them on the run, and the naysayers of the left seem equally certain that the Iraqi invasion has swelled their ranks and made the world less safe.

So I'm eagerly awaiting the data.

In the interim, I guess both sides will have to continue to fill the vacuum left by the paucity of actual data with their preconcieved notions. Keep searching out those anecdotes that are "evidence' of that which you are already certain.

Yup. I'm feeling sour today. Can you tell? I'm just a sour centerfielder. Your world confuses and frightens me.

Centrists and Moderates NOT Welcome!

John Fund has an excellent article on the polarization of the Democrats and Republicans in today's online Wall Street Journal. I think that Fund has his causes and effects mixed up--his lead sentence is:

"Both major political parties are increasingly squeezing out moderates, in part because the country is so polarized, and also because each party's primary electorate is becoming smaller and more ideological."

He then goes on to show how the parties themselves are creating that polarization and insisting on ideological purity. But it's an excellent article nonetheless, and one any self-proclaimed centrist should read before throwing in with either party.

Moderate Voice on Spain Bombings

Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice has several posts on yesterday's bombings in Spain, including a roundup of various reactions. Joe has a good bit of insight into all this due to having worked in Spain for some time. He covered Spain as a Special Correspondent to The Christian Science Monitor.

Here are his threads:

Spain's 9/11 -- Is it ETA or other Terrorists?
Alleged Al Qaeda "Letter" Taking Credit for Madrid Bombing Says the U.S. is Next
More Developments and Thoughts on Spanish Bombing

Centrist Wiki

Announcing a new feature, the Centrist Coalition Wiki.

Many of you may never heard of a wiki; I only learned about them a few months ago, when I was looking for an online platform to host the text of my novel, Smart Genes.

Wikis are a cool online platform that allows anyone to edit the page by simply clicking on a button. That might seem dangerous, except that wikis also have version control--all versions are stored in a database, and if some numbskull vandalizes a page, it's easy to restore it.

The purpose of the wiki is to organize our ideas by topic. Currently, we have this weblog, where posts are organized chronologically. We also have the Centrist Forum, where posts are organized by discussion thread. A wiki is a place where we can gather up the threads and organize our ideas coherently by subject.

The best known wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia built from reader contributions. In fact, I'd used Wikipedia as a reference without knowing what a wiki was. But if you examine the Wikpedia entry for centrism, you'll see there is indeed an "Edit This Page" link that allows you to edit the entry.

I'll take responsibility for managing the Centrist Coalition Wiki, but I hope all of you, our bloggers and commenters, our regular readers, and even first-time visitors will contribute to the List Of Topics. The easiest way to start is to find some blog posts and forum discussions that cover a topic, and cut and paste them into a wiki page. Then, reorganize them into a coherent entry.

The writing style in the wiki should be authoritative rather than personal, eschewing the word "I" The exception is the List of Contributors, where anyone may create a personal page. On your personal page, you can sound off, tell us your vision of centrism, and even promote your own web site. You don't even have to be a centrist, as long as you are a contributor. Pages that look like spam will be removed, however.

Here are instructions on How To Edit A Page and How To Add A Page. If something weird happens, it may not be your fault. I've already seen a couple of database errors myself. If you accidentally mess up a page and don't know how to restore it, drop me an email at ccwiki@smartgenes.com.

Balance In Talk Radio

The Moderate Voice has a good post covering the debut of liberal talk radio. I'm looking forward to hearing Al Franken. I think he's a riot, even if I generally don't agree with him in substance. One of the gags in Lies And The Lying Liars... is a chart showing how President Reagan cut the military budget--as compared to President Lincoln, in the line item for horse procurement.

I consider my views closer to that of Al Franken's nemesis, Bill O'Reilly. While many liberals may not realize it, O'Reilly is considerably more centrist than Rush Limbaugh. O'Reilly is often rude and obnoxious, but his actual views are probably closer to Joe Lieberman than George W. Bush.

In any case, talk radio could certainly use some liberal voices to balance the conservative views that dominate the radio waves, even in liberal metropolitan areas such as my own in Boston.

Let Us Praise Centrist Republicans

The President's plan to ignore ballooning deficits has been frustrated by the Senate, thanks to four centrist Republicans

By a 51 to 48 vote, senators approved an amendment to the annual spending-and-tax blueprint for 2005 that would require any tax cuts to be offset by equal spending cuts or tax increases over the next five years. That barrier could only be waived by 60 votes in the 100-vote Senate.

...snip...

four Republicans -- Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, John McCain (Ariz.), and Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) -- voted with the Democrats -- all but Zell Miller (Ga.) -- to push it through.

Republicans were under heavy pressure to stick with the President's plan, considered the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. Clearly, there is a lot of discomfort among Republicans about ballooning deficits, but most folded under pressure.

I don't necessarily credit the Democrats with fiscal responsibility here. Most were voting politically as well, in opposition to the President. I'm not sure what to make of Zell Miller. He seems to be Republican in all but name at this point.

Saddam, Terrorism, and Nuclear Threats

I'm moving a shindy from comments to a new posting, because it was a tad off-topic, and getting long. Two posters said that Saddam and Al'Qaeda hated the very sight of each other and had absolutely nothing to do with each other, that before the war, Saddam was forever stabilized in terms of nuclear development, and that the U.S. invasion had made Al'Qaeda worse in Iraq. They said some other things, too, but maybe we'd best stick to these for now.

I don't understand why they didn't see that I'm always right, but some people are just blind. :-)

Al'Qaeda / Saddam Links: Fortunately, somebody's already put together a handy list of list of evidence, ready-made for this debate. I'll throw in the New Yorker article that first convinced me of the Al'Qaeda / Saddam link. Note well that this article links Ansar Al-Islam to Al'Qaeda as well as substantiating Saddam's financial support and other links.

I'll even start the other side by pointing to a contrary link, and mentioning that both Saddam and Uday said there was no link. Oh, and that some CIA analysts don't believe in the link, and some CIA analysts do. Guess we'll just have to weigh the evidence available to us in open sources, eh?

War Hurt Al'Qaeda In Iraq: The aforementioned Ansar al-Islam used to have its own piece of turf in Kurdistan. When the Coalition took control over N. Iraq, Ansar got sharply attacked and kicked out, even though they controlled no oil atall. They are now on the run, admittedly still able to strike back at the Coalition to a limited and falling degree. Now they're so well-off that some of their leaders got taken just yesterday. Al'Qaeda certainly is in Iraq and operating there. BUT - unlike in prewar Iraq, they have to keep their heads way down or get them chopped off. And no gummint subsidies. A telling fact is that 90%+ of attacks are thought to have been conducted primarily by the Ba'athists (though there is evidence of collusion). Now, although there is evidence of higher recruitment outside Iraq, inside Iraq I see no evidence of this.

Saddam Not Forever Stabilized: Remember international politics before 9/11/01? They were moving toward letting Saddam out of the food-for-oil box and vastly reducing the scope of sanctions. One has to wonder how long even a limited sanctions regime would have lasted. There's no doubt that Saddam Hussein wanted nuclear weapons, could only afford a very limited program during the sanctions regime, and intended to pursue them at full strength once sanctions were lifted. Now, as we have seen both here and in WWII, in a dictatorship, the risks of these things are somewhat mitigated by corruption and disgust, but the threat was still real.

Too Good A Thing to Let Happen

Yahoo is reporting that John McCain has said he'd consider being John Kerry's running mate:

Republican Sen. John McCain allowed a glimmer of hope Wednesday for Democrats fantasizing about a bipartisan dream team to defeat President Bush.

McCain said he would consider the unorthodox step of running for vice president on the Democratic ticket — in the unlikely event he received such an offer from the presidential candidate.

"John Kerry (news - web sites) is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years," McCain said Wednesday when pressed to squelch speculation about a Kerry-McCain ticket. "Obviously I would entertain it."

But McCain emphasized how unlikely the whole idea was.

I would vote for this ticket. It would be like the Red Sox getting Curt Schilling. Who would be ARod for Bush? Powell?

Social Software

This started out as a comment on Adina Levin's blog, but it got long enough that I thought I would also post it here. Adina is reacting to Clay Shirky's thesis that the Dean campaign stalled because it's supporters spent too much time online and not enough out in the hustings. I don't think that is the problem with "social software." The problem, as I see it, is that it encourages the echo chamber effect, making it too easy for like minds to get together and tune out dissonance.

Having participated in the Clark campaign, including the online effort, I think there are stages in the evolution of an online community:

1. People who've felt like voices in the wilderness find others who share similar views. There is joy in finding each other.

2. They start a community that is inclusive, because they recall being excluded.

3. Later arrivals at the community don't have the same sense of exclusion/inclusion. They expect people to be on the same page.

4. Dissent becomes harder to voice, and those who are not 100% with the program spend less time in the community. The community voice narrows to a hard core.

5. The community becomes vulnerable to the echo chamber effect. They only allow positive feedback (and use a lot of exclamation points!!!)

6. The community's assessment of the situation becomes "ungrounded," departing significantly from reality.

7. Bad information leads to bad choices and defeat.

8. The bubble bursts, and the community returns to ground. It may retrench or it may dissolve.

What, No Centrist?

Donald Hagen has produced an amusing political beliefs assessment test, to help distinguish between conservatives, liberals, libertarians, and communists. Unfortunately, there is no centrist category. Still, it's worth a look. Here is a sample.

Cloning human beings...

CONS: must be outlawed. The only person who should be creating human beings is God.

LIBL: must be outlawed. The only permissible nontraditional ways to produce offspring are in vitro fertilization, hiring a surrogate mother, and wife swapping.

LBRT: is a perfectly acceptable method of reproduction, and is a wonderful source of identical twins.

COMM: may one day produce the perfect comrade.

Sandals

The Moderate Voice has a nice post on the flip-flops of both candidates. Check it out.

Swing Voters Prefer Bush Policies Overseas, Kerry At Home

I received an email from the Centrist Policy Network which highlights this Pew study of swing voters.

A majority of swing voters (55%) approve of President Bush's job performance and most take a favorable view personally of both candidates (75% favorable for Kerry, 70% for Bush). They also have a generally positive opinion of both political parties (64% Republican/61% Democrat).

When it comes to the issues, swing voters tend to side with Kerry's supporters in their economic perceptions and attitudes, but they agree with Bush's supporters on Iraq and the war on terrorism.

I track with this, strongly favoring Kerry on domestic policy, while weakly favoring Bush on foreign policy, with the net being pro-Kerry

How Far Apart Are Bush And Kerry?

Daniel Drezner's blog is hosting a discussion of Northwestern University political scientist Jeffrey A. Jenkins essay on how far the two party's candidates are from the center line

As it turns out, Bush is positioned near the dividing line between the center-right and right quartiles of the party. So, while clearly right of center, he is not part of the most conservative segment of the party, anchored historically by the likes of Sens. Phil Gramm and Jesse Helms.

He is considerably more conservative than Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford, somewhat more conservative than Richard Nixon, slightly more conservative than his father, George H.W. Bush, but less conservative than Reagan....

I'll buy that. But I'm skeptical of the conclusions about the likely Democratic nominee

In fact, only Lyndon Johnson appears more conservative than Kerry; Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton appear slightly more liberal; and John F. Kennedy, to whom Kerry is often compared, appears considerably more liberal than the Massachusetts senator trying to follow in his footsteps....

Conservatives and The Passion of the Christ

I wondered a couple days ago in one of our comments sections whether American conservatives -- so strong in their support of Israel -- would echo some of the concerns being raised about Mel Gibson's movie.

Here's a couple examples: Gabriel Schoenfield in the National Review Online and Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. And here's a paragraph from the Krauthammer piece:

Gibson's personal interpretation is spectacularly vicious. Three of the Gospels have but a one-line reference to Jesus's scourging. The fourth has no reference at all. In Gibson's movie this becomes 10 minutes of the most unremitting sadism in the history of film. Why 10? Why not five? Why not two? Why not zero, as in Luke? Gibson chose 10.

In none of the Gospels does the high priest Caiaphas stand there with his cruel, impassive fellow priests witnessing the scourging. In Gibson's movie they do. When it comes to the Jews, Gibson deviates from the Gospels -- glorying in his artistic vision -- time and again. He bends, he stretches, he makes stuff up. And these deviations point overwhelmingly in a single direction -- to the villainy and culpability of the Jews.

Kerry's Unilateralism

I'm relieved to hear that John Kerry is a unilateralist

"People will know I'm tough and I'm prepared to do what is necessary to defend the United States of America, and that includes the unilateral deployment of troops if necessary," said Mr. Kerry, who has rarely used the word "unilateral" in the campaign except to describe how Mr. Bush has alienated allies. "But my standard is very different from George Bush's."

Multilateralism is to be preferred, but other nations cannot be given a veto over American security. I'm glad to see that John Kerry understands that.

Welsey Clark too promoted multilateralism, but in the case of the Kosovo War, he admitted that the NATO action was was technically illegal under international law, as it had not been approved by the UN. Still, he argued that it was important to pursue for reasons of human rights, and that American military deployments should not be subject to a veto by the Russians, who supported Slobodan Milosevic.

This puts Kerry in the right ballpark on national defense. Now, it's a matter of evaluating whether Kerry or Bush has better judgement when it comes to foreign policy.

VP Sweepstakes

Greg Wythe has the most complete list of the possible VP contenders I've seen, along with a nice, thorough analysis. Check it out.

And, along those lines, isn't Greg pretty much the most complete and thoughtful commentator on most issues?

UPDATE: I just read the roundup of opinion on this over on American Prospect, and one among the long list of suggestions makes a lot of sense to me. I would observe, first, that while national security is supposed to be Kerry's strong suit, it's likely the Bush team will focus their attention there -- both in terms of attacking Kerry and highlighting their own credentials.

Something tells me if Kerry really boosted the national security profile of his team, he would be in a really solid position in terms of countering Bush in his strongest area of focus (and perhaps changing a few impressions of Kerry in the process). Along those lines, a suggestion from Matt Yglesias makes a lot of sense -- pick former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki. I'll let Yglesias make the case for you:

"Admittedly, this is a bit outside the box, but it's hard to think of a better figure to emphasize John Kerry's contention that there was a right way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable and Bush chose the wrong way than former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki. In an episode that's gotten less coverage than it should have, Gen. Shinseki testified before congress that stabilizing Iraq would require over 100,000 troops for a long period of time. For this, he was mocked by Bush's political appointees and ultimately forced into early retirement from the service. A Shinseki nomination would re-enforce Kerry's military credentials while underlining the Bush administration's systematic incompetence and preference for ideology and dishonest over facts and expert opinion."

Freedom, Fear, and Centrism

Rick pointed out, rightly, I think, that we are maybe a bit skewed just the tiniest bit to the left. Thus, today I'm doing a pro-Bush effort.

Lileks reminded me of an impressive Bush State-Of-The-Union quote:

Freedom and fear are at war.

You know, that isn't just the battle cry of