Doubly Sure

Farewell

2005-05-15T20:08:00.000-05:00

So I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, but not about blogging, which is why I'm convinced that this will be my last post here for the foreseeable future. A couple of reasons for this.

First, I intended this as a small vanity project for my year in Chicago. Now that my year in Chicago is coming to a close, it's only fitting that the blog do so as well.

Second, I'm not convinced this is the medium I'm most comfortable writing in. I like writing, it's true, and I like sharing thoughts with others but I'm also turned off the hierarchy and obstrepsousness of the blogging world. I'm not willing to do what it takes to write a blog of which I can be proud, by the standards of the blogosphere.

Third, I'll echo David Greenberg: perhaps I'm just not cut out for blogging. I'll maintain the perspective of reader and not of participant.

Fourth, and this is the most significant reason and will sound weirdest of all, I just can't tell what's real anymore. I'm struggling with establishing what is real. I know this is strange and I can't articulate it as well as I would like but I can't figure out the connection of the political events I might blog about to my life and, conversely, why no one blogs about things that really have some importance, like relationships, jobs, serious ideas, and so forth.

Fifth, there's all kinds of practical reasons. I'm leaving behind regular access to the Internet for the foreseeable future, I've got a job that will leave with me little spare time I want to spend on this, etc., etc.

Farewell.

Martin's speech

2005-04-22T10:22:00.000-05:00

I didn't get a chance to see Paul Martin's speech live last night but reading the text is revealing. One passage grabbed my eye:

Let me speak plainly: what happened with the sponsorship file occurred on the watch of a Liberal government. Those who were in power are to be held responsible. And that includes me.

I was the Minister of Finance. Knowing what I've learned this past year, I am sorry that we weren't more vigilant - that I wasn't more vigilant. Public money was misdirected and misused. That's unacceptable. And that is why I apologized to the Canadian people a year ago.

This is amazing! In a day and age when politicians and the rest of society evade responsibility for any and every thing that has gone wrong, here we have an elected head of government, taking responsibility for a tremendously damaging political disaster.

Of course, it can be said that he's doing this as political cover and hoping that by taking responsibility he'll be able to stay in power but the fact that someone said that something so terrible was, in part, his fault, is amazing.

Now if only the American intelligence community and the Republican party were listening and could take this message.

Oil Markets

2005-04-21T08:37:00.000-05:00

I'm not any kind of economist or anything but reading about the president's logic behind his renewed push for passage of the energy bill raises some very obvious questions. (I realize that the word logic may be charitable.)

President Bush said yesterday that his national energy policy would not lower gasoline prices anytime soon, but called on Congress to pass it by August to begin weaning the nation from imported oil and transitioning to alternative sources of power and fuel.

First, the only alternative sources of fuel I see in this bill are more non-renewable supplies that at some point are going to be depleted, decreasing supply and raising the price.

But let's talk about the logic of reducing dependence on imported oil. First of all, I see this as shorthand for "Middle East oil" and, in fact, the U.S. gets very little oil from the Middle East. Most comes from Canada, Venezuela, or domestic sources.

But it doesn't matter where the U.S. gets its oil because its a world market. Supply is calculated on a global basis so even if the U.S. increases production, which the president is urging, it won't necessarily do anything to the supply of oil if there's still such huge demand that is overwhelming the supply capacity on a worldwide scale.

The only way that increasing domestic production would help the U.S. is if the government set a price for domestic oil lower than the world market price and given the ideological leanings of the current administration I imagine that this is an unlikely prospect. (Nor, maybe, is it a good prospect: ask the Canadians about their National Energy Program of the 1970s and early 1980s.)

What's causing high oil prices right now is excessive demand on a global level, particularly because of increased Chinese demand. It is my understanding that even if the supply of oil increases, the demand still really will not be met. So increasing domestic supply is not going to do anything to lower prices because oil prices are determined on a worldwide scale.

Karl Rove Indicts the Media

2005-04-20T08:56:00.000-05:00

So Karl Rove thinks the media isn't doing its job right. I'd tend to agree in the broadest possible terms. But there's one comment that is worthy of further scrutiny.

Rove argued that the press pays too much attention to polls and "horse-race" politics, and covers governing as if it were a campaign.

Could this not also be because Rove and his client treat governing as if it were a campaign. The "60 Stops in 60 Days" tour is a campaigning approach to governing. The president saw that he was getting nowhere in Congress - where the governing happens - so turned this debate into a campaign directly to the people. The fact that this campaigning is failing shouldn't obscure the fact that it is still a campaign-style approach to the business of governance.

When the president starts having more cabinet meetings and fewer exclusive rallies, I'll be a little more sympathetic to this part of Rove's argument.

Christopher Shays

2005-04-14T08:39:00.000-05:00

Christopher Shay's recent comments on Tom Delay and the cold shoulder he is receiving from his fellow partisans is indicative of something very important that we're seeing less and less of in Washington: centrist moderates.

Guys (and gals) like Shays are people who are actually looking to get things done and can wheel and deal in the center where reasonable and rational legislation that actually advances the public good in this country gets made.

And yet it is exactly these moderates who get targeted by the other party looking to pick up seats because their consituents are presumably more likely to support the other party as they are already comfortable with someone so centrist. Shays was targeted in the last election, Lincoln Chafee is being targeted this cycle, and the list goes on.

But it is exactly these people who bring the most good to the Congress. Charles Stenholm was one such moderate and now he got redistricted out of office. And don't you think the Republicans are wishing they hadn't done that? He was a compelling - Democratic - voice for Social Security overhaul and his support could have started a trend toward bipartisan legislation. But the Republicans instead said that they'd rather have a one-seat larger majority than having Stenholm in the House when he could vote against them at times.

Because there are so many safe seats, the radicals and the non-mainstream folk (Nancy Pelosi, Tom Delay) are the ones with the safest seats and the leadership roles while the people who are actually representative of the American people are most likely to lose their seats.

Isn't that backwards?

Memo

2005-04-11T08:22:00.000-05:00

A great little piece in the Washington Post, showing how Mel Martinez takes after his president. Not surprising, given that he served in the "take no responsibility" cabinet of the president. In its entirety:

It's hard to find good help these days.

"It is with profound disappointment and regret that I learned today that a senior member of my staff was unilaterally responsible for this document. It was not approved by me or any other member of my staff, nor were we aware of its existence until very recently."

-- Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), April 6, 2005, blaming his staff for a controversial memo about politicizing the Terri Schiavo case.

"It was something that was put out by someone in the office and immediately withdrawn, as we saw what had happened. [It was] absolutely not my words and never would be my words."

-- Martinez, Sept. 28, 2004, blaming his staff for a news release calling federal agents "armed thugs" for seizing Elian Gonzalez.

"Words were used that were not mine, and were not of my choosing. Those words were spoken by others."

-- Martinez, Aug. 27, 2004, blaming his staff for a flier saying his opponent was catering to the "radical homosexual lobby."

Two questions.

First, is anyone responsible for anything anymore? Or, when something goes wrong do we just blame whoever happens to be closet?

Second, was the lawyer who wrote the Schiavo memo fired because he wrote the memo or because the memo was wrong in its analysis?

Third, can someone be "unilaterally" responsible for something? Try "solely."

(OK, that was three sets of questions. I'm not a math major you know.)

Un-Buh-Leave-A-Bull

2005-04-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

This defies the imagination. Radical conservatives are having joint bash-the-judiciary sessions.

Now it's one thing to express displeasure with a court's decision. I've disagreed with what courts have written and done in the past. Disagreement is in the nature of politics and a basic part of being human.

But it's an entirely other thing to decide that judges need to be offed, so to speak, to ensure that the political system functions always in your favor. Some of the more outrageous remarks.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

...

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

...

The Schlafly session's moderator, Richard Lessner of the American Conservative Union, opened the discussion by decrying a "radical secularist relativist judiciary." It turned more harsh from there.

...

"If about 40 of them get impeached, suddenly a lot of these guys would be retiring," he said.

Vieira, a constitutional lawyer who wrote "How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary," escalated the charges, saying a Politburo of "five people on the Supreme Court" has a "revolutionary agenda" rooted in foreign law and situational ethics. Vieira, his eyeglasses strapped to his head with black elastic, decried the "primordial illogic" of the courts.

Invoking Stalin, Vieira delivered the "no man, no problem" line twice for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have; this is a problem of personnel," he said. "We are in this mess because we have the wrong people as judges."

(Sorry that's so long. But there was so much that was outrageous.)

Leaving aside the "decent respect for the opinions of mankind" clause on which this country declared its independence and the fact that while it's apparently not alright to be a "Marxist" judge, it's alright to quote the most murderous communist in favor of execution and the fact that if the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to you perhaps it means you're wrong and not the American public, let's ponder for a moment what this says about our political system.

I want to take you back to the waning days of the Roman Republic. The last 100 years were marked by on-going civil strife and war, as competing generals and politicians disregarded the rules of the system that had sustained Rome for 400 years and rewrote the rules to benefit their own end, which was, to seize power. The point at which the Republic began its decline was when politicians stopped respecting the framework of government that had for so long structured political competition.

This is exactly what is happening now. Radical conservatives are so intent on getting their way, that they are willing to disregard the entire basis of the political system that has sustained this country for so long. It is said about the Constitution that "it was written by geniuses so that idiots could operate it" (or something like that) but what these radicals want to do is, essentially, re-write the basic nature of our political system to achieve their own ends.

I can handle losing. I understand that it may be the case that a majority of people in the United States don't agree with my leftish views on matters. That's fine. But what I can't handle is having the winners re-structure the system in their favor so as to ensure their dominance. The rules of the game need to stay the same (or, we all need to agree to change certain rules) so we all have a chance of coming out ahead at some point.

But the Republican rule - especially since 2000 - has been marked by a disrespect for the basic tenets of our political structure. Obviously, this list is a long one, but consider the three hour Medicare drug vote, the recount in Florida, the recall of Grey Davis, attempts for the "nuclear" option, the Terri Schiavo bill, and so on. In every case, members of the radical seldom-right tried to twist and distort the system in their favor.

And that is when things begin to fall apart.

UPDATE: Good stuff from old friends at The Debate Link and Kevin Drum on the same topic.

Electing a pope

2005-04-08T11:41:00.000-05:00

I really enjoyed reading this post from Wizbang this morning, about the selection of the next pope.

On the first point, it must be remembered that the Pontiff is also a political figure. Vatican City is an independent nation, and and the Pope is the head of state. And the political influence of the nation of Vatican City is far in excess of its apparent power through population, economics, or military power. And as such, who the Cardinals choose as the next Pope is a supremely political matter.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with politics. While I've always loved Dave Barry's definition of "politics" ("From the Latin 'poli,' meaning 'many,' and 'tics,' meaning 'small, biting insects'"), it's simply the art of people getting along. Everything is, in some sense or another, "political." It's only when the "politics" take precedence over the actual getting-along part that it becomes a problem.

This is, of course, the obvious point but it's worth reminding people of its importance. Politics is simply how people get along and interact with one another and how we manage the relationships that are a result of living in society. It's a process marked by conflict, disagreement, and discord. So any group decision is, in this sense, "political."

On the larger question of whether "electing" a pope is a good idea, two thoughts spring to mind. First, check out Acts 1:15-26 for the story of the election of Matthias as an Apostle to replace Judas. Here, the Apostles were guided by prayer and the Holy Spirit. This is closely related to the second point which is that I think the cardinals think that the next pope has already been chosen by God and that their task, when they enter the conclave, is to discern that will through prayer and with the help of the Holy Spirit.

When you think about it, this isn't such a bad way to make a decision. I'm a stage in my life where I'm making some significant decisions about my future and I've found prayer to be invaluable in this process. Discerning God's will is not easy. For those of us who believe in God, this is a Biblically sound and valuable way of making decisions. To that end, I wish the cardinals luck as they seek to discern God's will for their church.

As if you needed any more proof...

2005-04-08T08:34:00.000-05:00

As if you needed any more proof that the media is biased towards conflict, read this story about why Jimmy Carter is not part of the official delegation for the pope's funeral.

Essentially, it's a non-story. People who've actually talked to the decision-makers on both sides agree that no snub was intended and no snub was perceived. Carter apparently felt the delegation was fine without his presence. So, there's no story here.

But that doesn't stop the Washington Post from going on at great length, quoting friends of both men to defend their positions, even though these friends haven't even talked to the decision-makers and are essentially spouting with little or no evidence. I don't know why they didn't call me up and interview me about this. I've got something important to say and it seems like I know as much about the particulars of this case as most of the people quoted in the story do.

There is a bit of news here: Jimmy Carter is not at the funeral. But that doesn't require such a huge story, with little or no factual basis. I know there's a huge demand out there for stories about the pope and I've really liked reading a lot of them but this, I think, takes it a bit too far.

The Dean Campaign

2005-04-07T08:37:00.000-05:00

Even though the 2004 presidential election is well over and the Democratic primary process is well behind us (even if the one you pay attention to is on The West Wing), now is the time that we start getting the carefully reasoned and nuanced analysis of what took place. To that end, there's a great summary of Dean campaign supporters in the Washington Post.

As you'd expect, supporters thought Iraq was a mistake, the president is doing a terrible job, and favor same-sex marriage. But the more important findings are those about the characteristics of the supporters.

In a party that includes substantial numbers of blacks and Hispanics, the Dean Democrats are overwhelmingly white -- 92 percent, according to the survey -- and constitute what could be described as part of the American elite. More than half (54 percent) hold post-graduate degrees and a quarter have graduated from college. Almost one in three (29 percent) have household incomes of more than $100,000 annually.

One in three of the Dean activists said they never attend church, and 27 percent said they seldom do so. Those rates of religious participation are far lower than that of Democrats generally. More than half of all Democrats say they attend church at least once a month.

I don't think any of this is particularly surprising. To my mind, the Dean campaign was made up of aging baby boomers, who suddenly "got religion" (read, "got political") during the first term of George Bush and decided they had to do something about it. So they did. They donated $2,000 a piece to the campaign and went to meetings in the evenings at which they could complain and vent about the president and resolve to do something about it.

To a certain degree, there's cause for worry in these results about the future of the Democratic Party. These kind of people are not typical of the American public. As sad as it is to say, wealthy, white, educated people are not the typical American person (they should be, but that's another story) and this new activist base of the Democratic Party is totally out of touch with the reality that is early 21st-century America - paycheck-to-paycheck living, latent racism, vast income inequality, a poor educational system, decreasing opportunity at all levels of life, etc., etc.

I've been blessed with the privilege of living in a lot of different places for my relatively young age. I grew up in a liberal college town that was full of Dean supporters and, now that I've moved away, I can see what a bubble my hometown is. Dean supporters are living in their own little bubbles, wanting to change the world (for which I give them much credit) but unable or unwilling to see the country for what it really is.

Of course, politics is about the assertion of different identities and I welcome the energy of these folks into the political process. But for the political process to be successful, you need to be aware of the other identities that are being asserted and take those into account in your actions. And while this new Dean camp may pay lip service to that idea, I worry that they'll just barge into the political process like God's chosen ones, determined to change this country. In the process, they will only damage the Democratic Party because they are so out of touch with what this country is truly like.

And that is cause for concern.

The Legacy of the Pope

2005-04-04T08:57:00.000-05:00

One issue that has really been discussed a lot in the wake of the pope's death is his role in the undoing of the Warsaw Pact countries. I agree. I don't remember much of the period myself but the historical record appears to show that he had more than a little to do with that process. Charles Krauthammer claims him as his own:

John Paul II's first great mission was to reclaim his native Eastern Europe for civilization. It began with his visit to Poland in 1979, symbolizing and embodying a spiritual humanism that was the antithesis of the soulless materialism and decay of late Marxist-Leninism. As millions gathered to hear him and worship with him, they began to feel their own power and to find the institutional structure -- the vibrant Polish church -- around which to mobilize.

Americans hardly need any excuse to trumpet their victory over Communism and the pope's death is giving them a chance to do so.

But John Paul II's legacy is more complicated than this. One topic I have hardly seen touched on is his condemnation of the excesses of capitalism - in particular, the wealth gaps - and the "materialism" that Krauthammer perversely attributes to communism. The pope didn't have only kind words for the victors in the Cold War. And we're forgetting that very important part of his legacy as we pat ourselves on the back yet again for defeating the Communists.

Every student's dream

2005-04-02T10:24:00.000-06:00

What's the deal with David Brooks? The more he writes, the more I agree with him. (And this is not even to mention his raising of some very important and overlooked issues a few weeks ago.)

(Today's column is an undergraduate's dream. Some term paper or thesis forms the basis for a New York Times column. If you need any more ideas, Mr. Brooks, I've got papers coming out of my ears that you might be interested in.)

The nub of the column is at the end:

I'll believe the intelligence community has really changed when I see analysts being sent to training academies where they study Thucydides, Tolstoy and Churchill to get a broad understanding of the full range of human behavior. I'll believe the system has been reformed when policy makers are presented with competing reports, signed by individual thinkers, and are no longer presented with anonymous, bureaucratically homogenized, bulleted points that pretend to be the product of scientific consensus.

I'll believe it's been reformed when there's a big sign in front of C.I.A. headquarters that reads: Individuals think better than groups.

What this is really about is how we educate members of our society. This is perhaps the most fundamental question in the Western canon, dating at least to Plato, and is one that is being given pretty short shrift these days. Our academies are becoming relentlessly professionalized. There are, of course, many indications of this from the prominence of the "publish or perish" route to tenure to the increasing enrollment in professional school programs as the only way to get a "good" job. As a student at the University of Chicago, I can tell you that this professionalization of academia is alive and well and is leeching the joy and wonder out of learning.

One of my undergraduate majors was Classics and I often got questions about why I was studying something so "worthless." My answer that I really enjoyed learning the languages ("dead" languages at that!) never seemed to cut it. Now I'm in a situation where anything but an "A" grade (or an "A-") is seen as the end of the world because it will ruin your life chances. No one seems to want to remind themselves that the purpose of education is and the reason we are in school is to learn. Grades may be one way of measuring that achievement but they are certainly not the only way and I like to think that I'm more interested with how much I felt I learned than the professor is.

Getting back to David Brooks, the dominance of a social scientific method in the intelligence community it is not surprising at all. Our schools are teaching their students a way to endure the system, graduate, and get on to the business of making money. So when these people end up in the intelligence community, they apply that method and we can now see the result.

Death

2005-04-02T10:13:00.000-06:00

With all the death or impending death that has lately been in the news, Matthew Yglesias gets all confused as to what Christian teachings are about death. He seems to be hearing that death should be embraced but if that's the case why don't Christians just "off" themselves and get to heaven quicker.

Here's my take on the matter. We're here on earth for a reason and that reason is to God's work (e.g. Is. 6:1-9; Gen. 12:3). This is a crucial part of the Christian faith whether you believe in salvation by grace or by works. The way in which we live our life is important. It's not a thing to be wasted or uselessly cast aside.

However, we can take hope in the eternal life that is sure to come following our earthly death (e.g. any of Paul's letters). There's a great song in the African-American tradition "Well Done Servant" which essentially says that when the singer dies he wants God to say "well done servant" about the singer's life.

Death is not to be rushed but neither is it to be feared. There's hope even in death because although a person may look dead (and, indeed, their mortal life has ended), they have been raised to new and eternal life.

At least, that's how I see it.

Leaving Lakoff Behind

2005-04-01T19:10:00.000-06:00

Ezra Klein thinks the Democrats should be wary before embracing George Lakoff because he's so bad at framing issues. (He take particular issue with the "Strong Father" frame, which is sparking discussion even now at the Rockridge Institute - it's interesting how gender issues continue to pervade everything.) I haven't read his book so I can't comment on how good or bad he is at framing issues but I want to agree for another reason: there's nothing original about Lakoff at all!

Anyone who has read any of the reasonably scholarly literature on social movements will have come across the material about framing that dominates that literature (e.g. Tarrow, McAdam and Snow, etc., etc.). It's really fascinating to read and there's even material about what makes a frame effective, how frames work, and so on. I'd strongly urge that Democrats read some of this material before turning to a quickie book (which, admittedly, I have not read) that claims to solve all their problems for them. Believe it or not, academics occasionally produce useful material and this might be some of it.

More importantly, it's not like commentators on politics have been ignorant of the importance of frames. For instance, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and company do a magnificent job in The Press Effect of laying out how the Bush campaign used frames during the Florida recount to secure the election for the president. I'm sure there's more that, while not using explicit language of "frames," touches on the same issues.

I hope it is not surprising to anyone that the way in which we talk about issues is vitally important. If it takes a guy like Lakoff to bring this to everyone's attention, then I suppose we should be thankful for that. But come on. If this is the first time that Democrats are realizing the power of political discourse then maybe the party is in worse shape than I thought.

A measure of how far we've fallen

2005-04-01T10:54:00.000-06:00

It's a measure of how we've fallen that it is now considered "good news" that the United States is planning on abstaining from a vote in the Security Council to refer war crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.

These are crimes that have been declared by the American government to be genocide, a loaded term deliberately used to put pressure on the Sudanese government. (Compare that in 1994, Clinton administration officials were explicitly told not to use the term because of the consequences it would entail.) And the American government holds up one way of working toward their resolution for purely political reasons based in its fear and distaste of - gasp! - people working together in international institutions.

So, yes, it is "good news" that the war crimes will be referred to the ICC. But this shouldn't be a remarkable step at all; it should be a logical first step in resolving cases like these. The fact that we see it as so remarkable is confirmation of the degradation of the American administration's foreign policy.

God's Politics

2005-04-01T10:41:00.000-06:00

Whenever I read a book on the non-fiction bestseller list, I am forced to ask myself the question, "Do Americans really think this book is so good?" I've been reading Jim Wallis's latest God's Politics and surprised at how poorly written and truly awful it is. This is a book that never should have made it past an editor's desk without much greater revision and, yet, somehow I bought it, along with hundreds of thousands of other Americans and am reading it.

Let me be clear that I admire Jim Wallis. His The Soul of Politics was a good book (although it's been a while since I read it) and his columns in Sojourner's are generally a good read. And God's Politics has the potential to be a great book about some really important issues. The problem with God's Politics is that it is filled with factual errors (both large and small), repeats itself over and over again, has no narrative coherence, and is generally disappointing. It so clearly strikes me as a book that was rushed to the press to capitalize on the post-election malaise of the Democrats and the debate over "moral values."

I've read about a third of it and am questioning whether to continue with it or it. I think I shall but only reluctantly and with pen in hand, ready to make the corrections and emendations that his editors never did.

Really "that time of year"

2005-03-07T08:43:00.000-06:00

See, when I said a few days ago that it was "that time of year" and that I needed a break to finish all my work for the term, I clearly wasn't listening to myself. But it is now officially "that time of year" - today begins the last week of the term - and I can't deny it any longer. Add to the mix the fact that I am sick and the chances of posting in the next little while are slim to none.

Rara Avis

2005-03-06T11:51:00.000-06:00

I never been a big fan of Hillary Clinton - I don't not like her and I think she's done a lot of great things in her life but there's never been anything about her that has really galvanized me one way or the other (although I expect this to change in the run-up to 2008; for her own sake, it had better). But after reading this about her, I'm feeling a lot more warm and fuzzy feelings towards her.

A favorite part:

But perhaps nothing demonstrates her improved standing with the opposition as much as the close ties she has forged with many leading Republican officials in the state, who say that they have been pleasantly surprised by what they describe as the nuts-and-bolts pragmatism of her style.

And another:

Another Republican, Representative Peter T. King of Nassau County, struck a similar note in recent interview. He described Mrs. Clinton as a celebrity senator who is willing to take a subordinate role on an issue she cares about, rather than allowing her involvement to become a distraction.

For instance, Mr. King recalled an occasion when Mrs. Clinton suggested that he find another senator to be a co-sponsor of legislation that would benefit New York, because she figured that her presence on the bill would fire up the opposition. "There are very few politicians in public life who have the composure to step back, knowing that they will win in the end," he said.

Imagine that: a politician who actually wants to get something productive done that benefits actual people! The fact that this behavior by Senator Clinton is considered so remarkable indicates, I think, just how degraded our political system is.

But New York Republicans are not of a kind with Republicans elsewhere in the country.

And, the most delightful part:

"But I think that too many Republicans who criticize Hillary Clinton sound like Michael Moore criticizing George Bush."

It's about time someone pointed out the equivalency of the so-far-out-of-the-mainstream-it's-laughable folks on both sides who try to paint themselves as reasonable and moderate. While you folks are bloviating, those of us who actually want to make this country a bit better will be tuning you out and trying to get good things done.

Counting down the days

2005-03-05T14:32:00.000-06:00

The Democratic National Committee is counting down the days until the Social Security push is "dead." (I, for one, will believe that it is dead when George Bush is no longer president.) They encourage us not to let up on the pressure and then conclude:

We're beating them back, but this is no time to let up. Let's make sure that it's totally clear by Grassley's deadline that the American people won't stand for the dismantling of Social Security.

This is true and I'm glad that it's happening, but I want to know what comes next. The American people may not stand for the dismantling of Social Security but I think they will stand for the strengthening of Social Security. In this respect, Ezra Klein is probably right: how do Democrats turn this into an issue from which they can derive support? Just because people oppose the Republicans doesn't mean the support will naturally flow to the Democrats.

The Democrats need to be seen as the protectors of Social Security and the strenghteners of the Social Security legacy. Right now, they can easily be seen as the anti-action, head-in-the-sand, do-nothing party. I don't think that they are but I can easily see how others think that this is true.

Non sequitur: What's so remarkable about this debate is that there are so few actual plans out there on the table.

You know you're in a tight spot when...

2005-03-05T08:55:00.000-06:00

Paul Martin apparently devoted his Liberal convention address to insisting that he has done something in his term in office. Is it not indicative of a problem in your leadership that you have remind people of what you've done and insist that it amounts to a significant set of accomplishments?

Faith and academia

2005-03-04T15:08:00.000-06:00

As always, a very interesting post at Left2Right about the relationship between secularism, universities, and the left. I already posted some (mostly incoherent) comments about the effects of not integrating faith and academia so I want to focus on some other issues here.

I absolutely agree with the first part of the post:

I doubt that many on the secular left could speak intelligently about the difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals, describe the heterogeneity of evangelicals, appreciate the extent to which the left is populated by those who proceed from a religious perspective, and, especially important, I doubt that most of the secular left understands the character of the religious arguments within and between religious traditions that have political ramifications. Without understanding the arguments, secular leftists cannot participate in effective ways.

But does the mis-understanding cut both ways? To what extent does the "religious right" (an undifferentiated term, I know) understand the "secular left." (And the "religious left" as well? I consider myself a part of this "religious left" and feel that my views are not given any credence by either the "religious right" or the "secular left.")

I have tacked on my bulletin board a brief clipping in which William Stuntz, a Harvard law professor and evangelical Protestant says:

"Most of my Christian friends have no clue what goes on in faculty clubs. And my colleagues in faculty offices cannot imagine what happens in those evangelical churches on Sunday morning. In both cases the truth is surprisingly attractive. And surprisingly similar: churches and universities are the two twenty-first century American enterprises that care most about ideas, about language, and about understanding the world we live in."

I'll certainly agree with the first half about a lack of understanding but I'll retain a small bit of skepticism about the second.

I attend the University of Chicago - although not as an undergraduate - and so can comment that the university provides avenues for students to explore these sorts of questions. Indeed, I am writing this post while taking a break from writing a paper for my class on the just war tradition, a class in which I have been forced to think deeply about the sorts of moral and ethical questions which rarely arise in other classes. But the option for this sort of class is not well advertised and students must seek out themselves.

John Mearsheimer, of the Chicago faculty, believes that the university does not teach morality because it is not its job. (See his "Aims of Education" - and the responses it provoked - in Philosophy and Literature 22.1 [1998].) He thinks that universities should be teaching students how to think critically. I agree.

But I think that teaching about morality and engaging students in thought about morality is one of the best ways to broaden our horizons and make us think critically. These are issues that matter deeply to students and that shape our foundational beliefs. It is on these issues that we can be expected to think most critically and most deeply.

To go back to the example of the just war class - since that paper is weighing heavily on my mind - I have found that the experience of taking this class has forced me to re-consider how I think about war and the terms in which I define the debate. It's ludicrous to deny the importance of religious scholars to the just war tradition, which has been an important tradition in the history of thought and of warfare. It's a tradition that can be seen in a largely secular manner, true, but not without losing a significant rationale and foundation of the tradition.

Any good debate needs a variety of voices and positions and by excluding explicitly religious voices, we exclude reasonable, thoughtful arguments that broaden our understanding of the world around us and force us to think critically.

Two questions

2005-03-04T13:42:00.000-06:00

Given the events in the Middle East, I hope the Bush administration is seriously asking itself two important questions.

First, how can we "lock in" these trends towards democracy? In twenty-five years are we going to be looking back on the first few months of 2005 as an aberration in a history of oppression in the Middle East? Or are we going to see these first few months as the start of a sea change that brought about entrenched liberal democracies that guaranteed rights and demanded obligations of its citizens?

I sincerely hope that it is the latter but it's important to emphasize, as many already have, that democracy is not some sort of default position. If Syrian troops pull out of Lebanon, which they almost certainly will, we could easily see a reversion to civil war and chaos and not the relatively stable and secure society of the last fifteen years.

In Egypt, are these limited reforms the start of something bigger or just a political move to appease internal and external constituencies? In Saudi Arabia, can we move beyond local elections and include a broader swath of people in the electorate? There's no doubt that we're seeing hopeful signs. The question is how can we turn this hope into reality.

Further, the link between economic development and democracy is well-established. That, I think, might be the best way to "lock in" these trends. How do we increase economic development and broaden the distribution of wealth in the Middle East?

Second, how can we (and should we) work to expand these trends? In the last week alone, there have been contested elections in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and unrest in Azerbaijan, setting up similar conditions as obtained in Ukraine in the fall. The U.S. hasn't done the kind of work in any of these places that it did in the many years preceding the "Orange Revolution." Is this something we should be doing and should we be doing it so close to Russia's turf?

Also, west African leaders did some good in Togo in the last few weeks but how can we ensure that the next leader doesn't just become another dictator? What do we do when the king of Nepal acts unconstitutionally? Should the United States be involved in these situations?

While I'm excited by what I'm reading in the news, I'm worried that we're going down a path we haven't thought much about and fumbling our way through dramatic transitions such as these is never a good way of doing things.

That time of year...

2005-03-03T15:35:00.000-06:00

It's getting to be "that time of year" at the good ol' University of Chicago. Blogging will be at a minimum until I have a chance to lift my head up from the morass of term papers that surround me.

Puzzling over David Brooks

2005-03-02T08:30:00.000-06:00

I'm still trying to make sense of David Brooks; column yesterday.

First of all, what motivated him to write this column? It seems so odd given the usual tenor of pieces on this page.

But the last three paragraphs are what really make me think.

I'm not saying that people with separate accounts have marriages that are less healthy than anybody else's. I'm saying we should pause before this becomes the social norm. Private property is the basis for our market democracy. But private property in the home is an altogether trickier proposition.

For one thing, separate accounts can easily turn into secret accounts. A person's status and resources inside the home shouldn't be based on how much he or she is making outside it. A union based on love can easily turn into a merger based on self-interest, where the main criterion for continuing becomes: Am I getting a good return on my investment, psychic or otherwise?

The larger, far more important point is that in a society as individualistic as ours, it's especially important to protect and nurture the countervailing institutions. It's so easy for the powerful force of individualism to wash over and transform institutions - like family, religion and the military - that are supposed to be based on self-sacrifice, loyalty and love.

I think this is mostly right. We live in a very individualistic society that glorifies self-advancement and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps and denigrates those who are in poverty as if it were their own fault. Everyone is responsible for their own actions, goes the logic, with no consideration of extenuating circumstances.

But let's talk about a certain kind of private accounts: the kind that are being proposed right now that would radically re-shape Social Security. These private accounts are every bit as dangerous to our society as private checking accounts are.

One aspect of the debate that has not been joined yet by Democrats (although to be fair, there are so many ways to criticize the president's plan that they might be busy) is that it would destroy the inter-generational compact that is at the heart of Social Security. Not only would the president's plan make Social Security insecure it would also make it unsocial.

When you pay your Social Security taxes, think of this: this money that has been deducted from my pay check is now going to support my grandparents, parents, the old couple down the street, etc., who, without my hard work, might be living in poverty. That is what is at the heart of Social Security.

The "ownership" society is also an individualistic society, in which each of us is encouraged to make our way independent of the other, confident in our own skills and attributes. This is great: I'm all for personal responsibility. But we also need to recognize that sometimes - no matter how hard people try - it is impossible to succeed on our own and that we need help. It's just the way things are. That's why we have programs like Social Security to ensure that those people who can't make it own their own can make it with a little help from everyone else.

Is Brooks getting ready to renounce private accounts? That seems to be the logic of his column.

UPDATE: Thomas Geoghegan, writing in Slate, makes a similar point: I don't want to manage my own account; I've got too much to do already. My favorite part:

It galls me that a president who has never had to dig is handing us a shovel. Look at all the freedom that George W. Bush had because Bill DeWitt Jr. and Mercer Reynolds handled all his investments. Early on, they told him, "You just worry about coming up with funny nicknames, and you will never have to worry about money." And he came into the White House with his brow unlined.

Social Security is our little taste of this freedom. The world adds and adds. Social Security subtracts. It simplifies life. Social Security is "Social" and "Secure" instead of "Individual" and "At Risk." That's what is so maddening to people on the right, the Ayn Randers, the libertarians. ...

It's not so bad when privatization flops in places like Chile or the United Kingdom. At least in those countries there is a strong social bond. In Chile, the government has stepped in to make sure people get a little. In the Bush era, we're too atomized to do anything like that. In the United Kingdom, people have more time and freedom, since they don't have to think about their health care. They have single payer. Everything is free. In the United States, even when it's free, we have paperwork. As another friend says, "It's a full-time job for a lot of people to manage their health bills." Now we have to manage our Social Security, too?

When will this become part of the debate?

What next?

2005-03-01T08:43:00.000-06:00

The president's Social Security roll-out is not going quite as well as expected. Two months in and opposition remains quite high. The plan seems to be for a six-week push. (The Treasury Department has even started a Social Security (Dis-)Information Center - funny, I thought that the White House was already occupying this role quite admirably.) So the question is, what next?

For the Republicans, it's clear that this six-week push needs to be successful. The more challenging question is what the Democrats should do.

There's an opening here, I think, for the Democrats to look like geniuses. They could say something like, "We've been saying all along that there's a problem in Social Security that needs to be fixed. The president's radical plan won't fix it, but here's a plan that will" and then go ahead and have something like private accounts in addition to the current Social Security benefit. This would show how they truly are open to all good ideas and willing to work across the aisle. I'm confident something like this could be passed (if it was allowed to come up for a vote in the House).

Then the president is put in a position of being forced to reject a bill that solves the problem he identified (although identifying that problem was really on so that he could push a plan that has little connection to the problem) or accept a bill that actually does some good.

The trouble with all of this is that Democrats might lose control of the agenda and the president could claim credit for saving Social Security.

So here's the dilemma facing Democrats: on the one hand, I think it's crucial that they look like they are doing something that makes people's lives better in rational ways with good public policy; on the other hand, however, they can't lose control of the agenda and allow the president a way out of the whole that he has dug for himself.

So if I were the Democrats, I'd let this six-week stretch play itself out, while maintaining the united front they have thus far demonstrated, and then try to salvage a plan after that so that they continue to be the guarantors of Social Security for generations to come.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum says that Bill Frist's comments means that Social Security legislation is dead. He says say no to compromise, as does Paul Krugman. Perhaps, in theory, the idea of the Democrats being able to pull off legislation and look like winners is a good one but has little chance of ever happening. If that's true, then the "just say no" strategy might be best.