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.

What is truth anymore?

2005-02-28T19:27:00.000-06:00

Kevin Drum has some solid thoughts on Ron Brownstein's excellent column today.

The point in Brownstein's column (not an original point by any means - I've made it many times before - just recently, for instance) is that we're losing focus on what matters in Washington. What matters is making people's lives better. Obviously, people are going to disagree on how this should happen so debates and disagreements are naturally going to happen.

But politics, as we should all remember, is the "art of the possible" and is only a means to an end (making people's lives better) not an end in itself. Politics is not the "art of winning" or the "art of smashing your opponent into submission because it makes you feel good." Brownstein (and Drum) correctly notes that this is one of the big problems in Washington right now. (Why is it such a problem? That's a question for another post.)

The important question, I think, is whether and how much the right and left are similar in their tactics. From the perspective I hold, that of someone with great sympathy for the left but motivated even more by the desire to see something - anything! - done about many of the pressing problems facing this country, it seems to me that the two sides are more alike than Drum wants to admit. The difference is of scale and repulsiveness not of kind.

I am horribly offended by many of the things that the seldom-right wing in this country does. I hardly need to start listing them. They have degraded our political discourse to the point that it hardly qualifies as discourse anymore and turns me off from paying attention. They have fabricated stories and manipulated the context of politics so that it appears as if they are doing the right things. And the list goes on and on. They are radicalizing themselves and it will come back to bite them someday (because an enemy can be an ally someday - will somebody buy USA Next a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince or Guiccardini's Maxims and Reflections?)

But Democrats have responded by radicalizing themselves as well. I can hardly read the doctrinaire liberal blogs like Kos or Atrios because any step away from orthodoxy is soundly punished. They are representative of a broader trend (like the attempt to ditch Joe Lieberman - but is it justified?) that dictates a party line and expects others to follow it.

The dirty kind of politics practiced by USA Next is one step along a continuum that starts with losing sight of the ends of politics, moves through distortion, and ends who knows where. The Democrats - and they need to realize this - are on the same continuum. They just haven't gotten to the degraded stage that USA Next represents - yet.

But perhaps it has to be this way. Perhaps politics tends toward degradation. But I don't want to think that is true. I think there is a path here that leads to a better politics that re-captures what politics is truly about. But I don't see either party going along that path, especially not when the new chair of one of the party shoots of his mouth about the other. I want the Democrats to succeed and I want them to succeed by re-focusing the debate on new ideas, not on responding to whatever gets thrown at them, which is how they've been spending so much of their time lately.

(Could we just talk about all the free publicity USA Next is getting? Brownstein may be right that this will set the cause back but let's remember, "I don't care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right." A week ago, who knew what USA Next was?)

Cognitive Dissonance

2005-02-28T19:08:00.000-06:00

What's great about reading a wide variety of political views throughout the blogosphere is, first, coming across posts about an event that people went to that was not widely reported and, second, seeing how widely the interpretation of that event can vary. For instance, the DNC reports on Howard Dean's trip to Kansas, while GOP Bloggers takes the chance to associate Dean with an agenda that is not his own and remind everyone of a quotation taken out of context.

On the broader issue at hand, I'm glad to see that Dean is storming around the country, even if his mouth is moving a bit faster than his brain. Someone (several someones, in fact, as many someones as possible) needs to be out there spreading the good word and letting people know what Democrat's actually think, as opposed to what radical GOPers make people think what Democrats think.

Of course, a lot more is needed than speeches. I'm going to enjoy watching the discussions as the party tries to come to grips with what it thinks to be true.

Tracking Dissimulation

2005-02-27T14:36:00.000-06:00

An excellent post over at Left2Right tracks how, in the "crosstalk" of talking heads on cable news, minor, laughably-wrong, points become the dominant strand of discussion and the point that everyone takes away from watching.

So the question is, are there thousands of Ward Churchill's on college campuses? (My view might be biased as I am currently taking a class with Jean Elshtain, the antithesis of Ward Churchill, who will come down on anyone like a ton of bricks - quite justifiably and reasonably, I might add - who engages in apologetics for terrorism.)

Well, it depends on how you define "Ward Churchill," I guess. If by "Ward Churchill" you mean people who were given tenure even though they shouldn't have gotten it, who publish articles that are hardly academic, and who shoot of their mouth to get attention, then I'd say no. (Although there may be plenty of people who bear the last character trait just listed.)

On the other hand, if you define "Ward Churchill" as representative of a certain set of political beliefs, as Joe Scarborough was clearly trying to do, then the answer is probably yes. Two problems with this: I don't think you can conflate the "liberalism" of Ward Churchill and the liberalism that predominates on college campuses and second, I'm not sure that predominant liberalism is a huge problem on campus.

You know there's an election coming up when...

2005-02-27T10:52:00.000-06:00

In his continued effort to cover up the disaster that has been his tenure in office, his drunken-driving conviction, and more, Gordon Campbell is throwing money to everyone and anyone. Ah, the wonders of a majority government and knowledge of the election date!

Still on the march

2005-02-27T10:43:00.000-06:00

While reading the news that Egypt will soon have elections, I was reminded of a bit from the man to whom the current president is oft compared, Woodrow Wilson: "Democracy is, of course, wrongly conceived when treated as merely a body of doctrine. It is a stage of development. It is not created by aspirations or by new faith; it is built up by slow habit."

So, in the midst of the expected crowing from the conservatives out there and the slightly more nuanced commentary as well, let us not forget the importance, once again, of remembering that democracy is a way of life that pervades an entire society, not solely a form of government marked by occasional elections.

The news from Egypt makes me glad. Yet it is but the first of many long steps on a path that many countries need to trod.

If everyone is beautiful...

2005-02-26T10:54:00.000-06:00

This article from Slate reminded me of an observation I had last weekend while channel-surfing in a hotel room and noting that all the female anchors looked almost exactly the same - same hairstyle, same cut clothing, etc: If everyone is beautiful, is anyone really beautiful?

A DINO?

2005-02-26T10:42:00.000-06:00

So is Joe Lieberman a DINO (Democrat in name only)? These people certainly think so. (Thanks to Matthew Yglesias.)

Obviously, they have some legitimate complaints with Leiberman's record. But does this justify throwing him out of the caucus? I think not. Political parties are supposed to be broad "tents" (and they are broader in the United States than any other democratic country in the world, given that we only have two parties whereas most other countries have well more than two) that capture a wide range of opinions and policy prescriptions.

I actually quite like this broadness because it allows for a variety of different ideas to be put forth. Politics should thrive on diversity and heterodoxy and one of the reason our current politics suffers so much is that this is not recognized. I've got legitimate complaints with Joe Lieberman (and also with Barbara Boxer) but I respect his position in the party and glad that he is around.

At a time of such increased polarization, what we need are some people who are actually willing to talk (and, more importantly, listen) to people on the other side. I know that sometimes the other side seems far to wacked-out to justify listening to but it's the only way that anything is going to get done.

Plus, who gets to define what a Democrat is and thus who a Democrat in name only is? If we're going to get into the business of defining orthodoxy, then we're going down the wrong path.

(Finally, Joe Lieberman is actually kind of funny. He was on The Daily Show on inauguration day and I was shocked at how funny he was. Maybe it's just because I had low expectations.)

A Dying Breed

2005-02-25T11:05:00.000-06:00

Arlen Specter may have his failings but it's hard not to like him. Here he is, a moderate Republican senator in an era of intense partisanship trying to get things done, rather than focusing on his narrowly ideological agenda.

I think he's wrong that the blame is equal on both sides. The number of judges the Democrats have let through is much greater than the relatively small number they have blocked and, for the most part, they have blocked only nominees whose records provide solid reasons for doing so.

Nonetheless, I think that he is right that the stakes are so high that the debate has turned from one of confirming judges based on record to one of saving face and that is no good.

And Charles Schumer's response to Specter's comments seems classless to me.

There are any number of reasons to have problems with Specter - he's a king of pork-barrel spending, he's stayed around perhaps a little too long, and it's sometimes not clear where he stands - but I, for one, am glad he is in the Senate.

Experience and politics

2005-02-25T10:47:00.000-06:00

Wizbang has an interesting post about how Hillary Clinton has done nothing that distinguishes her and makes here eligible for consideration for the presidency. He broadens this post to include more Democrats:

So, where are the Democratic leaders who have actually DONE anything? Who have a record of achievements and successes that demonstrate that they can actually get things done? Or is it what I've always suspected -- they are so blinded by style, they can't see the utter lack of substance?

Let me first note that it is impossible to read this post without thinking about the current president. Is it possible that Republicans were so blinded by alleged charisma and familial connections in 2000 that they couldn't see the utter lack of substance?

More importantly, though, I'm not sure what value experience is in the political realm. When I vote, I'm looking for people who have shown that they think clearly and deeply about important issues, have a certain basic set of convictions that I share, and are reasonably knowledgeable about the problems and issues confronting the United States.

And I think that voters share this view. In Al Gore, the electorate had one of the most experienced and best candidates for president in this century (with the possible exception of George H.W. Bush and Herbert Hoover) and they turned him down (well, they really didn't, but you know what I mean).

Oscar Wilde (I think) once said something to the effect of, "Politics is the one profession where experience is counted as a hindrance and not a help." Kerry - although he allegedly did nothing in the Senate - found himself being attacked on the basis of his record and experience.

What ultimately matters, I think, in our elections is what kind of person the candidate is not what they've done in the past. This explains, to a "t", the success of President Bush. We can debate whether this is a good thing or not, but I think it is an accurate characterization of the nature of politics, especially presidential elections, in the United States.

Still Bashing AARP

2005-02-24T08:42:00.000-06:00

In the ongoing kerfluffle over USA Next's thrashing of AARP, I want to ask one set of questions in addition to those I've already asked:

Why? What's the point? Who are you planning to reach out to?

It seems to me that if USA Next's strategy is to thrash AARP by associating them with a specific agenda that is seen as out-of-the-mainstream, they should be picking other topics besides the Iraq war and same-sex marriage. I have little proof here but I'd imagine that the same kind of people support the president's privatization plan as are opposed to gay marriage and support the war. So if USA Next's goal is to preach to the choir and deepen the level of support among people who are already sympathetic to the president and his radical agenda, then they're probably doing the right thing.

But if they want to attract additional support, then they should not be thrashing AARP on the basis of issues that those who don't support privatization don't find all the objectionable.

Perversely, the best way to attract additional support might be to point out that AARP supported the prescription drug bill.

The queasiness of the Cato Institute over the USA Next campaign is important in this regard. They legitimately want to reach out to new supporters because they I believe they have the right ideas. USA Next's goal is thrash opponents on the most specious of all grounds because they won't toe the party line. Cato legitimately believes they have the right ideas. I think their ideas are wrong but I respect their attempts to make this a debate of ideas.

But then again, and this seems to be the case from a recent appearance on Inside Politics, maybe their goal is just to get attention.

(Incidentally, if, as appears to be the case, this is the work of Karl Rove, can we say something about his homophobia? From the Ann Richards thrashing in 1994 to the AARP thrashing now, it seems like sexual orientation is crucial to this guy's psyche. There's some great psychoanalysis that could be done here, I bet.)

UPDATE: Further to the "what were they thinking category?": POGGE (Peace, Order, and Good Government, Eh? - a truly fantastic name for a blog) discusses the ways in which this campaign is blowing up in the face of USA Next. Nothing like preparing for a public relations push and ad campaign by stealing images and then opening yourself to all kinds of questions about your funding and membership.

It's amazing what an assassination can do

2005-02-23T13:48:00.000-06:00

All of a sudden, following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon and its oppression by Syria are in everyone's consciousness. The president mentions it in his speeches, signs joint declarations with Jacques Chirac, and so on. Conservative blogs (like Powerline) start beating the drums in support of the oppressed.

A couple of observations:

First, while I'm not unconvinced that Syria's hands are clean, I feel like a lot more work needs to be done before I'm convinced it is them with the dirty hands. I have this feeling that I imagine a lot of Spaniards had after 3/11 when the government tried to blame the attack on the ETA.

Second, can we just point out the obvious that politics is reactive, not proactive. Does anyone think that had Hariri been killed last week the president would have been issuing declarations?

Third, does the assassination really change anything? The president said something like Lebanon's long period of unfreedom and unprosperity must come to an end and he hearkened back to some alleged halcyon days in there. If anything, this just shows how out of touch he is with the situation in Lebanon. The long period of disaster was, I think, the civil war (that lasted for thirty years!), not the last fifteen years, which, as a result of the hard work of Hariri, were reasonably prosperous and secure, though they may have taken place under the eye of the Syrian army. I don't want Syria in Lebanon any more than the next guy but I am certainly not convinced that the Syrian presence for the last fifteen years has been as disastrous as it is being made out to be. The ideal would have been to have no Syrian involvement but and the results could have been better, but it's not like Lebanon has been suffering for the last fifteen years, at least compared to the thirty preceeding those fifteen.

Fourth, this situation points to the utility of the doctrine put forth by the president in his inaugural. Advancing freedom is a cause no can rightly oppose (I certainly don't). The administration can define a situation as unfree anytime they see something they don't like or someone opposes them since they see the United States as the paragon of freedom and virtue. So by definition any government opposed to the United States must be unfree. Thus do strategic and political ends become subsumed under moralistic and virtuous ones. Since it's clear, by appealing to pragmatism, that the United States can't act everywhere liberty is suppressed (Togo, anyone?), the Bush administration has a ready-made doctrine that they can apply selectively to almost any situation.

Thus, Hariri is killed, the United States has an ax to grind with Syria (and an incentive to distract the public eye from their blunders in regard to North Korea), the doctrine is applied, the news cycle changes, and the administration looks like it can do no wrong.

Genius, I tell you. Genius.

Private Accounts I can support

2005-02-23T13:34:00.000-06:00

GOP Bloggers has a brief post about Paul O'Neil's plan to create personal accounts at birth for each person and add money every year. They conclude that they could at least be open to the possibility of studying the idea.

This is certainly something I've written about before and is the kind of idea that I would support. It is broadly similar to plans proposed by both Gene Sperling and David Brooks.

Here's the really important question, though: are these accounts additional Social Security or are they designed to replace Social Security? I'm in favor of the former course because it retains the insurance aspect of Social Security and is consistent with the Federal Thrift Savings Plan, which the president touted in his State of the Union as analogous to his private accounts plan.

We can lower the costs of Social Security by implementing means-testing for benefits and lowering taxes as a result of the savings but still retain Social Security as a baseline that insures that no person shall be allowed a standard of living below a specified amount.

Obviously, implementing these sorts of private accounts would have a tremendous cost but I wouldn't be surprised if, over the long term, it was cheaper than that being proposed by the Bush administration. It would have the added benefit of actually solving the problem

(What's funny is that when I commented in a comment thread at GOP Bloggers a while back and proposed a similar idea I was immediately dismissed as a "socialist.")

God's Politics

2005-02-23T13:20:00.000-06:00

While surfing around Amazon today, I read up on God's Politics, the new bestseller by Jim Wallis. I read his previous The Soul of Politics quite a few summers ago and found it fascinating. I haven't read the new one yet, although I'm sure it is as important as the other.

What I found really fascinating were the books listed under the "Customers who bought this book also bought." They are all written by liberals or are books sympathetic to liberal ideas. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this but I wonder if the success of this book isn't being driven by people desperate to find something they can agree with when it comes to faith and politics and not by people genuinely interested in broadening their horizons (the two are not mutually exclusive, I admit).

What this points to more broadly is how in our society we don't actively seek out opposing viewpoints. Rather, we seek justification for our pre-existing views so that we can rationalize our support of them. Rare is the instance when someone approaches a topic with which they disagree with a truly open mind. This is how we have ended up with the completely destructive asinine politics we have now.

I don't know that this makes much sense, except to note that the significance of being on a best-seller list might be highly over-rated and that we have a long way to go to putting this country on the right track.

Getting the Swift Vet Treatment

2005-02-21T20:00:00.000-06:00

AARP is getting nailed (or is about to be nailed) by the same folks who did the media for the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth (is it possible to read, write, or say that without bursting out laughing? The name is so delightfully ironic). Kevin Drum (and Ezra Klein) has some potent thoughts.

Reading stories like these (or earlier comments from people like Stephen Moore) make me want to ask two questions. The first is a general question that applies to most aspects of political life and the second is one that I want these sorts of conservative organizations to ask themselves.

First, isn't there something wrong that people with money can have such an effect on a political system that is allegedly designed to give all people equal influence?

Second, and I truly and deeply implore conservatives to ask yourself this, if it takes so much effort, so much money, and so much deception to clear the way for you to pass your agenda, isn't it possible (or, at the very least, within the realm of possibility) that it is your agenda that is the problem and not AARP (or John Kerry or whatever or whomever you choose to demonize next)? Perhaps you are just a teensy bit radical for the mainstream of American public opinion?

Funny, also, how USA Next had little problem with AARP when both were foursquare behind the prescription drug plan.

Note to the NHL

2005-02-21T19:46:00.000-06:00

Note to the NHL (now that you've cancelled your season - yes, my prediction was wrong): take a lesson from the Manitoba Moose.

In order to have a viable major hockey league on this continent, the NHL needs to recognize at least the following points:

First, the product needs to be entertaining. People - besides die-hard fans - need to want to watch the game.

Second, it needs to be cheaper so that more people can enjoy it.

If they can look past their pocketbooks for long enough to stop seeing this as a business and remember that fundamentally it is a game, they'll be in a lot better shape.

Away

2005-02-17T09:21:00.000-06:00

I have unexpectedly been called out of town and will be away from a computer for a little while and unable to share my thoughts with you for at least a few days.

This may turn into a longer hiatus as I re-examine my ideas and thoughts about blogging and re-commit myself to school work as the term nears its conclusion.

Down to the wire

2005-02-16T08:28:00.000-06:00

The NHL negotiations (remember those? I didn't think so) are coming down to the wire, which is making them a great set of negotiations for a reasonably impartial observer such as myself because the horse race aspect is great with such a tight deadline. I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction.

The deal will be closed in the next few hours and a shortened season, to which almost no one, occupied as they are by following the minor hockey teams they've picked up during the lockout, will pay attention, will ensue. In the long run, the several million dollar gap that is now separating the two sides (now that the philosophical differences have been apparently bridged) is not enough to allow for the even greater revenue loss that will follow the loss of an entire season (and playoffs - the playoffs are huge, which is why all resumption plans call for a full playoff slate, which strikes me as more than a little silly).

If this happens, I doubt that Bob Goodenow's tenure will last much longer, caving as he did at the last minute. (Although to be fair to him, the NHL gave some significant ground as well.)

I guess we'll have an answer on this by the end of the day, or perhaps by this afternoon so we'll be able to see if my magic 8 ball is on the money today.

What I've always found fascinating and frustrating about negotiations is the extent to which they become personalized and the relationships between the two sides are reduced to single people and neither side can give in for fear of losing face. I know little about the nature of these specific negotiations, although it is my impression that it has been the personal relationship between Bettman and Goodenow that is stalling these negotiations, at least in part. "Saving face" is such a huge imperative in our culture (and many others) that if we took account of it more often we might find ourselves in these kind of situations less often.

Although, contra the previous paragraph, the two sides did have several meetings without either Bettman or Goodenow present and they got nowhere. What do I know? About the NHL, not much.

UPDATE: It's over. Kaput. Finished. Down the drain. But did anyone hear the hockey stick falling in the forest?

My favorite line from Bettman's statement:

"This is a sad, regrettable day that all of us wish could have been avoided," he said.

Forgetting to note, of course, that this all might have been avoided had other people been in the positions of authority.

Michael Farber thinks both Bettman and Goodenow should resign. Couldn't hurt.

Take heart, though: hockey, which is actually quite a fascinating and enjoyable game both to watch and to play, is not dead. It's the NHL that's dead and that has the business problem right now. Minor league hockey is still keeping many people satisfied and it's a bad sign for the NHL that I think very few fans will care all that much about this cancellation.

New Academy Award?

2005-02-16T08:22:00.000-06:00

Stunt co-ordinators deserve their own category for Academy Award consideration, so say the people interviewed in an article in the New York Times today. This seems to make sense to me: in a day and age when people go to movies to see things blown up, action and adventure that could never happen in our own bland lives, and when movies are consistently given poor reviews in the acting and writing departments and yet still gross huge sums of money, it seems only right to reward them with an award. After all, the Oscars are already so long, what's another award going to do to the length of the show?

Problems with this, though, are that it might be difficult to determine, in this day and age, what constitutes a stunt and what a computer-assisted performance, but I'm sure we could get around it. Plus, I was always under the impression that movie studios were reluctant to acknowledge the existence of stunt people, except in the swiftly-rolling credits at the end of a movie, because they wanted to keep the focus on the actors. Then again, as this post is aptly demonstrating, I know next to nothing about movie-making.

While we're at it, lest we forget the lesson of Dustin Hoffman's character in Wag the Dog, producers need their own award too.

Managing federalism

2005-02-15T14:20:00.000-06:00

Federal forms of government give politicians yet another easy target when they're looking to pass the blame: the other level of government. Thus, the federal leader can claim that the regional leaders are obstructing progress and the regional leaders can claim that the federal leader is "keepin' 'em down" so to speak. (Indeed, this is how Ralph Klein has made his mark on politics and keeps getting himself re-elected.) Inspired by the recent example of Danny Millions in Newfoundland, who actually seems to be getting something for all his complaining (besides further popular support), the Ontario government is having a go at the feds. This is interesting for a variety of reasons, especially since the Ontario government has perhaps the fewest reasons for complaint (at least compared to Newfoundland). But here's the real question, raised so nicely by Kevin Brennan:

What I want to know, though, is how the McGuinty government got so bereft of ideas that they have to resort politically to running against Ottawa less than two years into their mandate?

Do they really have nothing else to go on? Although they did come to power mostly because of electorate exhaustion with the Conservatives, Dalton is a smart guy and you'd think he could pull something out of his hat.

Two reasons for his behavior, I think. First, he doesn't want to be seen as a Liberal lapdog, so to speak, and wants to assert a little independence from Ottawa so that when the good ship S.S. Martin goes down in the next election cycle, he can't be tarred with that brush.

Second, he's seen the example of Danny Millions and wants some of the limelight for himself, especially as the Conservatives get organized and get their new leader into the legislature.

What's really interesting, though, is the lesson this provides for the United States. When the federal government finally realizes it's going to have to do something about the burgeoning cost of health care and cut back there, the chorus of complaints from governors is going to overwhelm anything that we're seeing in Canada right now.

The implications of Chairman Dean

2005-02-15T09:09:00.000-06:00

So Howard Dean is officially on-board as the chairman of the DNC. He told the staff that he's ready to "rock and roll" in his first meeting with them and seems to have quite an ambitious agenda. So what does this mean for the Democratic Party?

I didn't support Dean in the primaries, mostly because I didn't know what he would do if he became president. The only message that I got from him was that if he had been president in 2003, we wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq. On that note, then, it's good to hear that he's ready to let the Congressional leadership make policy decisions.

What really intrigues me about Dean is his energy and his passion. Paul Krugman today writes that Dean is among the "fighting moderates" who will stand up to the Republicans. There's a lot to be disappointed about if you're a Democrat but what Dean does, regardless of whether he shoots of his mouth, is rile people up and get them energized. The challenge he faces is turning that energy into action. He's already proven that he can attract money but what he needs to do is create a group of people who care so passionately about the issues that they are ready and willing to sacrifice time (not just money) to get things done. This, I think, accounts for much of the success of the Republicans in the past few years. Republican voters have a visceral, emotional connection to their party. Democrats do not.

So provided Dr. Dean stays focused on building the party - and that does seem to be what he keeps saying - I'm glad to have him on board as chairman of the DNC. It'll be interesting to see how it works out.

Gettin' heated

2005-02-15T08:54:00.000-06:00

Since Canada is a parliamentary system, the debate over the same-sex marriage bill is heating up in a way that I doubt we would see in the United States. The not-so-lovable redneck Jason Kenney (how this man ascends to positions of leadership in his party is beyond me) had a "Western yahoo" moment, as one of my professors once called it, arguing, in fact, that gay people could get married...just not to people of the same sex as they are. Libby Davies responds by calling him idiotic and absurd, which, while true, was probably not the best thing to be saying at this moment in time.

The one comment I do agree with, although not in the context in which the speaker is saying it, is this:

"This is an issue where I think we have got to get beyond ..... one side accusing the other of homophobia and the other side saying the other side is going to burn in hell," said Brian Pallister, a Conservative MP from Manitoba who supports the vetting. "I mean, we have got to talk about this sensitively, and that is what we are doing within our caucus."

I have a presumption towards being skeptical of anything the Conservative Party does, especially when they attach the word "sensitively" to it but this comment pretty accurately captures what needs to happen right now. It'll be interesting to see how the debate develops as time goes on.

Show someone you care... "criticize developments"

2005-02-14T09:14:00.000-06:00

The people of Togo continue to stand for their liberty, after it was unconstitutionally taken away. Now they've undertaken a general strike. And what is our president doing, he who just recently said, "when you stand for freedom, we stand with you"? Well, the government is criticizing developments, but that seems to be about it.

I've criticized the president before (twice, in fact) for not living up to the principles he's laid out just a few short weeks ago. And I want to be clear that I am not urging the president to invade Togo (or Nepal, for that matter). But it seems to me that there is a range of actions between what the government of the United States is doing right now (which I think is totally inadequate) and military action and the government is not availing themselves of any of these potential actions.

I've noted before that there are, of course, a tremendous number of reasons that explain why the United States isn't do much of anything in Togo and I'm realistic that if anything is going to get done, it'll get done by West African leaders. Still, I keep harping on this issue to point out the intellectual inconsistency inherent in the president's approach. His words about liberty and freedom are warm and fuzzy but as they're not translating into action around the world, they strike me instead as a very thin post hoc (and ad hoc, for that matter) justification for the mis-adventure in Iraq.

All I ask for is a little consistency. I know that's probably too much to ask for but still, it's worth a shot.

Still Standing for Freedom...

2005-02-13T08:11:00.000-06:00

I noted the other day that the Bush administration is missing a great chance to put its inaugural doctrine into effect, in Togo and Nepal. Two articles today underscore how easy it would be to match action to speech.

Manjushree Thapa tells us in the New York Times writes an editorial that is, I think, quite congruent with the ideas that the Bush administration is enunciating: the irrepressible drive for freedom, the benefits of freedom (in fact, the author perhaps spends too little time discussing the negative effects of the democratic experiment in Nepal over the last fifteen years), etc., etc. And then comes the point that should be waking up the president (if he read the papers):

But we are concerned about the international response to the coup. More than 60 percent of Nepal's national budget comes from foreign grants and loans. If liberal democratic nations - the United States, Britain and the other European countries - would halt their aid (even just the money going to the military), it might make it impossible for the king to sustain absolute power. It is a supreme act of bad faith on the part of the king to ask taxpayers around the world to foot the bill for his autocratic reign.

I don't know who the author is or by what right she makes this claim but it's at least worth investigating, don't you think? What have we heard from the administration in the last two weeks besides the usual platitudes about regrettable action?

In Togo, meanwhile, West African leaders are taking action to the unconstitutional installation last week of the president's son. I think this is great. The more African leaders can stand up and support democratic principles on their own, the better off the world will be. What I would love to see from the president is a statement to the effect that the United States supports these talks and demands nothing less than a successful, democratic outcome.

If you read through the State Department's press releases for the month of February, you'll see press releases that addresses the situation in both of these countries. I want the president (or at least the Secretary of State) to address these issues because the president has a tremendous bully pulpit that has a huge effect even if he does nothing more than mention an issue. His words, I am convinced, would have an effect on these situations and show that he stands behind his inaugural address. Neither of these situations requires military action. A little diplomatic attention with the vocal backing of the president would go a long way.

I know that there are plenty of issues at play here that make these situations more complicated. The president can't be expected to speak out on anything or he'd lose the power of the bully pulpit. Still, as I noted before, there's so much that is unclear about what this inaugural doctrine means. I know I shouldn't be seeking clarity from an administration known for its obfuscation. Still, these situations only deepen my confusion and disappointment with this administration and its twisted use of words and language for its own partisan and ideological ends.

(On a somewhat related note, the review in the New York Times of Natan Sharansky's book that formed the basis for much of the inaugural address does a nice job of pointing up some of the contradictions and difficulties inherent in such beliefs.)

(UPDATE: On the plus side, Secretary Rice is apparently talking about Zimbabwe. That might be a step in the right direction.)

Ministerial Responsibility

2005-02-12T10:50:00.000-06:00

A basic tenet of the parliamentary form of government is ministerial responsibility, which means that a cabinet minister is responsible for all that happens in his or her portfolio, even if he didn't know that it had happened. Saying, "I didn't know that it had happened" when a scandal is revealed in one's department is not acceptable. Resignation is generally the preferred course of action. It is impossible for a minister to know everything that happens for which he is responsible because of the vast size of contemporary government departments but the basic tenet still remains, or at least, still should remain.

In Canada, during the tenure of Jean Chretien, ministerial responsibility took a bit of a hit as he was more than willing to accept the "I didn't know about it" defense from his ministers, mostly because he wanted to keep his friends and supporters in cabinet.

In the all the kerfluffle this week Chretien's and current Prime Minister Paul Martin's testimony to the Gomery commission investigating the sponsorship scandal, I've been amazed at how easily the two, especially Martin, used the "I didn't know" defense. For instance:

"No," the Prime Minister answered, during a morning of testimony that had Mr. Martin replying: "no" "nil", "never" and "not that I'm aware of" to many questions surrounding the sponsorship program and national unity fund. He said he did not hear the word "sponsorship" or realize there were major problems within the program until media reports began to surface on the topic in 2001.

He was the finance minister at the time which means he was in theory responsible for all the money that was spent. I realize this was a small amount of money in the overall context of government spending but I still don't see his excuses as a legitimate defense.

I guess the obvious question to ask, though, is, Isn't ministerial responsible a dumb and unreasonable expectation? I'd say no and I'd like to see it stay around, rather than being continually undercut as people refuse to take responsibility from mistakes, mostly because once we go down this slippery slope, I don't see where we stop or how we hold cabinet ministers accountable.

Never too early

2005-02-11T15:56:00.000-06:00

Hard as it is to believe, people are wasting resources determining who's ahead in the race for president in 2008. (Thanks Patrick Ruffini) The results are interesting enough but only really reflect the value of name recognition at this point in the process. If people know who you are, they're more likely to want to vote for you. I would certainly not take these numbers as proof that Hillary Clinton has the presidency locked up in 2008.

Nuclear Weapons in North Korea

2005-02-11T10:10:00.000-06:00

Nicholas Kristof is a seer. On the day after he writes a column, reminding us of the poor job that the present administration has done in relations with North Korea, the North Koreans unashamedly announce that they have nuclear weapons. So the question is this: what is the best course of action?

Before I get to that, it's been interesting to read others' reaction to the revelation. WaveFlux says that any recovery of the situation is beyond hope, which strikes me as a little pessismistic. Left of Center welcomes us to the new cold war. Fester's Place is more sanguine about the whole issue. Kevin Drum doesn't think it makes much of a practical difference at all. GOP Bloggers just notes the "negative" implications for regional stability and tries to find humor in the situation. In general, the responses have been diverse as it is difficult to come to grips formally with what we seem to have known unofficially for a long time.

In reality, though, I think the solution here is straightforward. The Bush administration, and others in the region, seem intent on sanctions, which I think would be a bad idea. Here's why. The immediate short-term goal in this situation should be to prevent proliferation. It looks like North Korea is selling fissile materials to Libya. That's not good and needs to stop. But why is North Korea doing this? Is it because they're intrinsically evil people who are off their rockers? That might be the case, but I'm going to assume that it's not. North Korea's economy is in terrible shape right now and they need hard currency. What do they have that they can sell? Why nuclear weapons, of course. If we look at this from a rational actor perspective, which I think is legitimate, the North Koreans are selling their knowledge because they have to so that they can provide for their own existence. If we were to implement sanctions right now it is doubtful that a)they would have any effect on the leadership and b)push the country further towards selling weapons since it would be one of their only avenues for getting the hard cash they need to stay afloat. When a country has nuclear weapons, the one thing you should not do is threaten its existence (unless it also threatens your very existence, a la the doctrine of mutual assured destruction) because then it will fear that it has nothing to lose and will lash out accordingly. But a rational actor with only a few nuclear weapons will not use those weapons because he would essentially be ending his very existence.

But, I could be wrong. Kim Jong Il could be a crazed man who is determined to end his own life and the existence of his regime either by selling the weapons to terrorists or by using them on Seoul. But I doubt it. I think he likes being "Dear Leader" and sees the nuclear weapons as a way to preserve that status.

The good kind of private accounts

2005-02-10T08:23:00.000-06:00

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to David Brooks for writing something genuinely useful and contributory to the Social Security debate. Here's the nub of his idea:

The personal accounts I'm thinking of would be inspired by a proposal called KidSave, which was floating around in the late 1990's. KidSave was championed by Bob Kerrey when he was a Democratic senator from Nebraska, but in its different iterations it attracted support from a range of Democrats (Lieberman, Moynihan and Breaux) and Republicans (Gregg, Grassley and Santorum).

Under one version of KidSave, the government would open tax-deferred savings accounts for each American child, making a $1,000 deposit at birth, and $500 deposits in each of the next five years. That money could be invested in a limited number of mutual funds, but it couldn't be withdrawn until retirement.

Over decades, it would grow and grow, thanks to the wonders of compound interest, so that by the time workers retired, they would each have a substantial nest egg, over $100,000, waiting for them.

(Let's note for the record that it is these kind of private accounts - sorry, Mr. Brooks, they really are private - that people like Senator Moynihan supported and that constitute the basis of the Federal Thrift Savings Plan, accounts on top of the guaranteed benefit of Social Security.)

While I didn't explicitly state it in the terms Brooks uses, it is this sort of idea that I was getting at in my own proposals to address Social Security. If we're really interested in creating wealth, let's start harnassing the power of the market for everyone equally. In fact, let me go further than Brooks and alter his plan slightly.

The idea of a KidSave account is great (it needs a better name, though) but they are needed at a different point in life. When each child is born put X dollars in it each year and add Y dollars on the child's birthday every year. Then when the child graduates from high school, the child has access to this money to pay for college, university, or further education that costs money. That'll go a ways towards making access to post-secondary education more equitable.

When the child (no longer a child, really, but you get the point) graduates from college or starts working full time (determining when to start this part of the program is difficult), the government should automatically start an IRA for him or her with Z dollars in it. Part of the problem that has been identified with retirement savings plans is that not enough people take advantage of them (too much choice = no choice). So if we create such an account for every person than we should be able to go some way towards overcoming that obstacle. The government could continue to make a small payment into the account each year (or match the individual's contributions up to a certain dollar figure) but it would mostly be the individual's responsibility to add to that account and save, which he or she would be encouraged to do through tax incentives such as are currently in place.

Throughout all of this, Social Security remains an insurance policy for the disabled and those who haven't saved enough for retirement. I've already gone on record as supporting means-testing for Social Security and if we did that than people whose mandated IRAs (needs a better name as well) did well than they'd receive less from Social Security. These mandated IRAs, of course, would only be a part of the entire retirement savings scheme, on top of 401(k)s, pensions, and in addition to Social Security.

Obvious problem:

-cost, but then that's always an immediate problem;

-how much choice would individuals get in their choice of what to invest their money in in the IRAs? The president's private accounts proposal narrows that choice down fairly tightly and more choice may not be the best thing, but I'm still philosophically predispositioned to support greater choice, as in the current IRA system (but then again it may be all that choice that is in part preventing people from starting IRAs in the first place);

-opposition from narrow-minded people who would decry this as socialism (true, many Nordic countries have similar programs in place);

-and on and on.

Nonetheless, it is clear to me that there is plenty of territory here for compromise between those who want to create an "ownership" society and those who want to ensure secure retirements for seniors. But no one seems to want to reach out and occupy that territory.

(I doubt that the president would be accepting of this proposal and it's interesting to consider why. Paul Krugman lays out how the president and his associates is really intent on dismantling the New Deal and the welfare state. I think there's a lot of truth to this and I think it reveals how deeply governed by ideology the president is. He's already admitted that his plan won't solve the "crisis" he's created for Social Security but he's pressing onward anyway. Why? Because he wants to dismantle Social Security because he's so ideologically opposed to it. And that's problematic. Not only because it reveals the roots of his policy and because Social Security currently does a lot of good, but because it prevents him from being open to legitimate ideas like these ones that advance his ostensible goal of an "ownership" society. The man is a radical conservative dressed in a moderate's clothing. When will we realize this?)

What a Lark

2005-02-09T18:00:00.000-06:00

Isn't this just delightful? Just hilarious, really. A satirical letter from Donald Rumsfeld urging a fictitious liberal complainer to care for a detained combatant.

Here's the key overlooked issue - by invading Afghanistan, the United States government undertook a certain set of obligations (moral, legal, etc.) that it needs to fulfill and which it is currently not fulfilling at Guantanamo Bay. The responsibility in this instance is placed squarely on the government of the United States and its military not its citizens. Citizens should be doing their job and holding their government to the responsibilities the government undertook and which remain the responsibility of the government, as a separate entity from the body of citizens.

Abrogation of responsibility is a common theme among the Republican party as currently constituted (we're no longer responsible for insuring a minimal retirement for seniors or for ensuring that future generations will be able to operate a debt-free budget, etc.) and this cheap satirical shot only confirms this trend. It's a sad state in which to find the party that has for so long been the moderator of the occasionally wild, but always well-intentioned, impulses of the Democratic party.

"When you stand for freedom, we stand with you."

2005-02-09T14:11:00.000-06:00

The Bush administration takes it first pass on the chance to implement the policies of the inaugural. Togo's citizens don't like the way that the torch was passed from father to son over the weekend and they're trying to make their voices heard. Does anybody care to do much beyond criticize the behavior? (Criticizing is easy. I can do it. And will do it. "Togo, you should have followed the constitutional provisions for succession.") The UN is threatening sanctions and neighboring African governments are - and this is a hopeful sign for Africa - making noise. But what high-level action has the U.S. taken? Thus far, nada.

Now I know all the objections. It's just a minor country in the middle of nowhere that has no strategic value to the United States and Americans would never stand for intervention. I think this is just my point. I'd be fine with this situation if the president had added a little nuance to his inaugural (it would have detracted from the sweeping rhetoric, mind you) and made it clear that we will deal with countries of strategic value first (this is Charles Krauthammer's view).

Even if he hadn't said this, there are numerous ways that we can address this situation short of military intervention (and this lesson applies around the world, please note, administration folks, especially in Iran) but we still only hear silence from the administration. Why aren't we pressing for sanctions at the UN (oh right, it would detract the media's glare from the roll-out of the president's new fiction best-seller, I mean, budget proposal)?

On the first chance the president had to put his new doctrine into effect, he's taken a pass and we've missed a great chance to stand up and assert our true moral leadership in the world. Instead we continue to look like a bunch of hypocrites.

On a related note, perhaps democracy isn't all that good after. That's what the people of Nepal seem to be saying (at least to the New York Times). They're ready to give the king a chance to put down the Maoist rebellion without a bunch of "feckless" democrats around to get in his way. What the Nepalese lesson points to is the importance of consolidating democracy. As I've said many times before, elections do not a democracy make. Democracies need to be nurtured and supported over the years and this is what we failed to do in Nepal (no doubt, because it is in China's backyard) with the result that we are now in a situation where non-democracy is a better choice than democracy. That's never good because it undercuts the rationale behind spreading liberty around the world.

My general point is that there is so much intellectual confusion in this "spreading liberty" policy that is really frustrating. It's not that I'm excepting a fully-formed theory free of contradictions from the president but I wouldn't mind a little more consistency and qualification so that we can understand what the implications are.

An Idea for Cost Projections

2005-02-09T14:01:00.000-06:00

This has already been discussed by many other posters (like Kevin Drum) but I just want to add my three cents.

The prescription drug bill that is a terrible piece of public policy is now going to cost much more than it was billed, at least twice as much. The reason for this change is that the projection period has changed from the ten-year period beginning in 2004 to the ten-year period beginning in 2006, which is when the bill actually takes effect. As others have pointed out, the administration is currently engaged in exactly the same sort of sleight-of-hand with Social Security, projecting the costs for the next ten years of a program that won't be around for all of those ten years. This is why they need the radical privatization program to start in 2009.

So here's an idea: in order to make sure that we're making policy decisions on the basis of sound financial information and projections, let's make a general rule that all cost projections should cover the first ten-year period of the program's implementation and not the ten-year period beginning today. This way we could have a legitimate disucussion of the merits of the proposed policies, rather than descending into bickering about cost projections.

Of course, we couldn't have that. Then the true cost of the administration's outlandish policies and the real nature of their radical agenda would become clear and they wouldn't be able to remake government in favor of their friends. God forbid.

Working hard

2005-02-09T13:55:00.000-06:00

This bit of dialogue at one of the president's events last weekend is really priceless. Here is a woman working three jobs and supporting a family by herself. And this doesn't give the president reason for pause at all? It doesn't make him question the direction this country is going? (It reminds me of how he cites statistics showing how African-Americans live shorter lives than non-African-Americans but this doesn't make him want to work to lengthen that lifespan. It just makes him want to privatize Social Security.)

Surely, though, as I've written before, in this most rich and productive country of all time, we can find ways to work less and not more.

Finally, if the Democrats want to fight for these people - and they need to - they need to do a much better job of making this case. It's a hard case to make, I'll grant you since few opinion-makers care about the plight of the poor but it's a makeable case nonetheless.

Redistricting hits the predictable snags and gets surprising support

2005-02-08T13:12:00.000-06:00

The governor of California's support for redistricting is drawing the predictable complaints from legislators more intent on keeping their seats than doing the people's business. My favorite bit:

Dreier, who said he has spoken to Schwarzenegger several times about the issue, questioned the need for immediate action, saying, "We in the U.S. Congress are doing the people's business very effectively."

The congressman added: "I'm sympathetic that we haven't had competitive races, but that's nothing new."

He apparently can say this without the faintest trace of irony. "Very effectively," eh? What about a failure to pass a budget in the last several fiscal years, a refusal to bring to a vote any measure not approved by a "majority of the majority," the hold-up of intelligence reform because of one representative, etc., etc.? Plus, effectiveness might be the wrong measure. Shouldn't the quality of legislation or lives improved be the measure. And, if you're so sympathetic to the creation of a House of Lords in Washington, why aren't you doing anything about it?

Redistricting doesn't seem to be gaining that much steam among the people in California, which is disappointing, although it's not really fair to take a measure yet as the governor hasn't fully turned his million megawatt spotlight on the issue, as he is sure to do if it gets on the ballot. Fortunately, however, the issue seems to be gaining steam across the country, although in a disjointed and unco-ordinated way. (Universal Acid has some good thoughts here.)

A couple of observations:

-As I've noted before, redistricting is an issue of such great importance that it needs to happen, even if it means that some states will lose from it if they are the only state that implements it. This needs to happen to strengthen the polity.

-Again I'm repeating myself, but I wish this didn't have to go to a ballot measure, as it almost assuredly will. However, on this particular issue since legislators can hardly separate their own self-interest on the matter, it's acceptable to "take it to the people," especially since it's not a money question or a legislation question (although it is the latter in the technical sense). It's a question about the fundamentals of our form of government and those sorts of questions can be taken directly to the people, I think, despite my great reluctance to embrace direct democracy measures.

-Finally, the disjointed nature of the cross-country movement is probably alright. True public policy innovation begins at the state level and, as much as I'd like to see redistricting on both a state and federal level nation-wide, it might be more effective to do it on a state-by-state basis to show the benefits, provided, of course, these states can overcome the collective action problem and have somebody act first and take the temporary hit that will result from being the leader.

The rise of "Deanism"

2005-02-07T10:48:00.000-06:00

It seems like Nicholas Kristof's column got the most attention from the Saturday New York Times op-ed page (including from me), the more interesting column, I think, was David Brooks' about the rise of "Deanism."

Since the 1960's there has been a breakdown in the machinery that allowed Americans to work together across class and other divisions. The educated class has come to dominate, and the issues of interest to that class overshadow issues of interest to the less educated and less well off.

But the two major parties were affected unequally. The Republican coalition still contains some cross-class associations, like the N.R.A. and the evangelical churches, which connect corporate elites to the middle classes. The Democratic coalition has fewer organizations like that. Its elite - the urban and university-town elite - has less contact with the less educated. ...

Over the past two years, what we might loosely call the university-town elite has come to dominate the Democratic Party not just intellectually, but financially as well. ...

They tend to be to the left of the country, especially on social and security issues. They may not agree with Michael Moore on everything, but many enjoyed "Fahrenheit 9/11." Perhaps they are among the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos and other blogs that savage Democrats who violate party orthodoxy. ...

Howard Dean may not be as liberal as he appeared in the primaries, but in 1,001 ways - from his secularism to his stridency - he embodies the newly dominant educated class, which is large, self-contained and assertive.

(Just a note: I had the idea the other day that newspapers should publish their columns anonymously because a lot of Democrats, who should read this, will likely be dismissive of it prima facie because of its author. Instead they'll content themselves to read those authors they already agree with.)

As someone who was raised in a liberal college-town, I think there's a lot of truth in this column.(Ezra Klein doesn't think so.) Two important points, I think. First, is the point about class. Democrats can be a little too homogeneous and not genuinely connected to the lower class they claim to want to serve. I'm deliberately over-stating the point but it has a grain of truth, I think. Second, is the point about homogeneity more generally. I know so many people who refuse to move to "red states," make friends with Republicans (mostly because they stereotype them as Southern rednecks), and will generally not open their minds to what is being proposed by the other side (the point about liberal blogs savaging those with heterodox views is particularly true), which is sad for a political philosophy that claims to be open to anything.

But I guess the largest point is this: what's wrong with college-town liberalism? Even though it may be homogeneous group of people cut off from the rest of the world, it's the right way to do things, right? A general concern for others, an interest in increasing standards of living, and improving lives seem to me to be good things. The political point that is implicit in the column is that Democrats need to change their ways. I say they need to continue to show the rest of the country how right they are and lead this country to a better place. (For more on this, see PZ Meyers)

Deficit Double-Talk

2005-02-07T10:35:00.000-06:00

Despite this administration's reputation for "plain speaking" and truth-telling ("you may not agree with what I say but at least you know where I stand"), it's amazing the convolutions members of the administration are engaged in to make their radical agenda appealing to a general public that has no taste for what they want to do. I've already noted how by starting the Social Security privatization program in 2009, it allows them to claim a lower cost figure over the next ten years. The vice president was forced to admit to the truth yesterday (on Fox News nonetheless! I was shocked when I saw that).

Kevin Drum has been doing great work keeping track of all the recent "newspeak" coming out of the White House lately (here and here, for instance). Part of this is just in the nature of politics so I'm less inclined to be critical of this if I was confident that people were sufficiently well-informed to detect the hypocrisy of the "Strengthening Communities" program or the "Cleae Skies" program and that the administration was enforcing its dictates so much and making its commentators fall into line.

But what really gets me is all the double talk on the budget. The LA Times does a great job of summing up how the budget plan really will not curtail the deficit at all because it omits so many costs (like Iraq, for instance). What we're going to see today in the budget proposal is a work of fiction that claims to be keeping the budget down but really won't. It gives conservatives a chance to cut back on some of their least favorite programs, doing great damage to the country in the process, without actually having to face up to the truth of the matter. On the plus side, the Washington Post writes about the increasing noise coming from the deficit hawks. It's about time that part of the Republican caucus stood up for itself.

Also, say what you will about Bill Clinton, but if you read Bob Woodward's The Agenda, it becomes quite clear that he wanted to avoid any sort of accounting gimmicks as he moved to a balanced budget early in his term.

Farming Subsidies

2005-02-06T09:36:00.000-06:00

The New York Times tells us that the president's budget will probably reduce farm subsidies. I'm generally in agreement with Steven Taylor on this one - it's a good thing to reduce the amount of subsidies we give our farmers but it's doubtful if the cuts will make it through the political process.

Let me add two caveats, however:

First, I'm not in favor of cutting farmers loose if they can't make it by themselves. What I want to avoid is a situation in which people are living in poverty because of market forces beyond their control and despite all of their hard work. So cutting farm subsidies doesn't mean not keeping an eye on farmers to make sure they're still doing alright.

Second, what really has to be done to change the agriculture system in this country (and world) is for developed countries (the United States in particular) to reduce or eliminate the tariffs and other barriers to trade currently placed on agricultural imports from developing countries. The American economy produces a lot of goods, farm products being one of many. Developing economies produce far fewer goods and if they are to have any chance of developing further, they need markets to sell their good. We have the markets for those goods but we currently make those markets hard to reach with unreasonably high tariffs. Those tariffs, of course, are designed to protect the domestic industry but if we're cutting loose the farmers already we might as well ditch the tariffs as well.

I'm all for free trade and the free market (while maintaining government oversight to ensure the losers don't lose too much) but what we have right now is a market and a trade system that is not free. That needs to change so that wealth-generating effects of trade can be felt more broadly.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein cleverly juxtaposes two quotations, one showing the president's support for subsidies and the other showing his opposition. It seems like every criticism that was leveled against John Kerry about his acting only out of political expediency (or, gasp!, changing his opinion when facts changed) can also be leveled at our "principled" president as well.

Also, the Agitator takes similar shots at the president. Reminds me of the decision about the steel subsidies.

Mind-boggling statistics

2005-02-05T16:04:00.000-06:00

File this under the continual listing of mind-boggling statistics: spam leads to a $22 billion loss per year. Also:

The average spam messages per day is 18.5 and the average time spent per day deleting them is 2.8 minutes.

The Progress and Freedom Foundation (thanks for the link by the way) seems shocked that fourteen per cent of recipients actually read the junk e-mails. As I've noted before, spam can have a certain undeniable poetic quality and for that reason some of it is worth reading. I don't know if I'd count as part of the fourteen per cent since I hardly read all of my spam (and have never taken advantage of any of the numerous offers) but I do read some of it.

Plans, plans, plans

2005-02-05T13:37:00.000-06:00

I've written before about how the Democrats need to be able to point to an alternative proposal for Social Security than that which the president has proposed (however vague his proposals may be). Nicholas Kristof takes up this point in his column today. Kevin Drum replies by noting, quite rightly:

Kristof knows perfectly well that Democrats have plenty of modest, sensible, nondramatic plans that would eliminate Social Security's future problems. Republicans, however, have no interest in hearing about them. That's what Kristof ought to be exercised about.

While I think that Drum's point is very well taken and quite right, it doesn't lessen the need for the Democrats to formulate and put forth a proposal on Social Security and private accounts. (I, along with many others, have had some ideas on how exactly this should look.) Here's why:

First, the president is defining the debate and the Democrats need to be able to respond to that debate whether they like it or not.

Second, the president is giving a huge opening to the Democrats by saying he will work with anyone who has an idea. When the Democrats put forth a coherent, logical, and workable plan, it'll show just how radically conservative this president is and how in tune with the public the Democrats are.

Third, it makes sense to do something to increase the national rate of savings (which the president's plan does not do). From a public policy perspective, there's a chance to do something good here by encouraging people to save.

Fourth, it will allow all Democrats to speak with one voice by repeatedly pointing to one constructive policy idea.

Fifth, there's a bias in this country towards change over status quo and the Democrats can't be seen to be defending the status quo.

Of course, the tragedy remains that the president, despite his claims, is unlikely to remove the wax from his ears and listen to the Democrats. (The DCCC has a good post about this.) It's also unlikely that the Democrats will be able to get much attention for their plan so it'll have little effect.

But...it'll be a start.

The virtues of the "free" market

2005-02-04T10:31:00.000-06:00

One of the articles of faith of the Republican Party and, increasingly, of the vast majority of people in this country is that the free market is the most efficient way of distributing goods and services and setting prices. This is the logic behind deregulation and privatization and even the Social Security overhaul The goal of government should be to harness the power of the free market to increase returns to Americans.

But the free market is not without its dangers. The latest tapes from Enron reveal how carefully they were fixing the market to extract the biggest gains from electricity consumers.

The tapes provide new details of market manipulation during the California energy crisis that produced blackouts and billions of dollars of surcharges to homes and businesses on the West Coast in 2000 and 2001.

In one January 2001 telephone tape of an Enron trader the public utility identified as Bill Williams and a Las Vegas energy official identified only as Rich, an agreement was made to shut down a power plant providing energy to California. The shutdown was set for an afternoon of peak energy demand.

"This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing," Mr. Williams says on the tape. "We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down." After agreeing to take the plant down, the Nevada official questioned the reason. "O.K., so we're just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing?" Rich asks. "And that's cool?" ...

The next day, Jan. 17, 2001, as the plant was taken out of service, the State of California called a power emergency, and rolling blackouts hit up to a half-million consumers, according to daily logs of the western power grid.

Officials with the Snohomish County Public Utility District in Washington State, which released the tapes, said they believed Enron officials had taken similar measures with other power plants. This tape, they said, was proof of what was going on. ...

Previous tapes released by the district last summer showed Enron officials joking about how they were "stealing" more than a $1 million a day from California and fleecing "Grandma Millie" while bringing Enron record profits.

Other tapes released on Thursday showed Enron executives discussing their fear of going to jail for manipulating power markets in Canada and the United States. And memos showed that Enron practiced as early as 1998 to create artificial shortages and run up prices and extend the market manipulation to Canada. ...

In cooperating with federal officials, West Coast traders have told how they devised schemes named "Death Star" and "Get Shorty" to make billions of dollars out of California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation.

Here's the nub of the problem: the goal of a company like Enron is to make a profit, the bigger the better; indeed, this is the premise of the free market. The goal of a government-run utility is to serve consumers. This is a profound difference and leads to behavior like that revealed by these tapes in which Enron cares more about making money even if that means rolling blackouts.

The point is this: free markets might be a route to greater efficiency but how often are those markets actually free? When we give a company so much market power that they are able to have so much leverage, we have reverted to a system that is essentially equivalent to that in which the government provides the power. The crucial difference is that the two market actors (the private firm and the public utility) have extraordinarily different goals (profit vs. service) which results in completely avoidable situations like the rolling blackouts in California.

(It also, incidentally, results in my predictions being messed up. Back in the late '90s Gray Davis was my dark-horse candidate for president in 2004. Then the blackouts hit and I figured he was done. Turns out it was Enron, not his own incompetence, that screwed up my prediction.)

UPDATE: Kevin Drum comments nicely on the revelation of the tapes.

Standing on principle

2005-02-04T10:23:00.000-06:00

The president's plan to overhaul Social Security in line with his radically conservative vision clearly reflects his commitment to principled policy decisions regardless of electoral considerations. That's why he's touching the "third rail" of American politics right?

But just a minute. As Matthew Yglesias points out the plan proposed the other night won't come into existence until 2009, when the president is safely enconsed in Crawford, living on his government pension. When it all hits the fan, it'll be the Republican members of Congress who had their arms twisted this year to pass it that will pay the political price.

Further, the New York Times notes this morning that by starting the plan in 2009, the White House is able to claim that it is borrowing less money over the next ten years (the length of their predictions) since the plan will be in effect for only a portion of the next ten years. Of course, the amount of money to be borrowed remains the same, regardless of which ten year periods it is spread over, but playing with the numbers this way allows the White House to make the issue seem a little more palatable.

If the president has to jump through all these hoops just to get his plan to a minimum level of acceptability, perhaps it tells us something about the overall nature and quality of the enterprise?

Getting theoretical...

2005-02-03T08:23:00.000-06:00

I've been spending a lot of my time lately thinking about the international system, given as I am currently a student in an international relations program and taking a class with the brilliant John Mearsheimer, one of the great IR thinkers of our day. (Really, he is. Just sit in his class for a few minutes and be awed by the performance he puts on.)

I mention this because Matthew Yglesias is dipping his toes in the icy waters of IR theory with his forays into Waltz's A Theory of International Politics. (Good for him; it's like reading cement.) Between his post and the one comment that I see there right now, they do a good job of speaking about Waltz's argument, although I'd add that Waltz has been writing lately how we just have to wait for the world to re-balance after the end of the cold war and that he is still right even though all events are pointing in the opposite direction.

But the really important question is whether or not the United States counts as the sole pole in the world or if we are in a multipolar world. We need to draw a distinction between terms that are often conflated: empire, unipolarity, and hegemony.

An empire is what Rome had: a congomleration of different "states" (although they weren't called that then) that they ruled over by virtue of their military might. The United States is not looking to become a permanent empire right now.

Unipolarity implies that there is one great power in the international system. Great powers are defined (and this definition is admittedly open to criticism) as those states which can put up a fight against other great power with a good chance of winning (I know that's a circular definition.) Considerations of size, population, and wealth all figure in the equation. By this logic, I think that we are currently in a multipolar world as the nuclear capabilities of Britain, France, China, and Russia all make them formidable foes with the ability to torch the United States in the very unlikely event that we got into a military confrontation.

Hegemony is the least clear concept of the three for me but I generally take a hegemon to be a state that can exert its will and is relatively unconstrained in the international system in what it chooses to do. By this logic, the United States is a hegemon in a multipolar system. This is not a contradictory concept as there can definitely be hegemons in multipolar systems, a la Germany in World War I or II.

I'll have more to write later, like why I think that balancing has already occurred, but these definitional questions are important because they structure how we think about the international system which structures how we act. Also, could we finally put to the rest the idea that a realist theory of international relations does not mean a Machiavellian realism? The latter is more in line with a realpolitik way of thinking. The former is simply the belief that certain preconditions of the international relations system drive the actions of state regardless of domestic attributes.

Nothing wrong with a little heckling

2005-02-03T07:58:00.000-06:00

One of the most intriguing aspects of last night's State of the Union was when a large part of the audience started chanting "No, no, no" when the president mentioned that Social Security would be bankrupt in 2042. (I can only assume that this was the Democratic section of the audience but since I was listening on the radio, I can't confirm.) Predictably, this has sparked some complaints from the seldom-right wing, like my friends over at GOP Bloggers, who think that it was "childish." The Sundries Shack is shocked at this.

I was glad to see the Democrats do what they did. This sort of behavior would not be foreign to any country in this world with a parliamentary democracy. To really see childish behavior I refer my Republican friends to a question period session in the Canadian House of Commons, in which members call each other names, invoke pass mis-deeds (up to and including a member having failed law school much earlier in his life), and generally show very little respect for one another. (In fact, in the Canadian House of Commons, and I believe this is true in England as well, the rows of seats face each other and are two sword lengths apart so that members can't fight each other.)

Of course, none of this justifies this behavior. It just makes it less remarkable than it is being made out to be. What does justify this behavior, however, is the president's tangential relationship with the truth. Jedediah Purdy, in his book For Common Things, writes of how when politicians speak untruths as if they were true (and he uses examples from the Clinton administration so I'm not picking on the Republicans here), they degrade discourse and perpetuate a sense of detachment from politics that harms our polity. This is exactly what the president is doing when he cites statistics about Social Security without a) saying that they are the conservative estimates that will probably turn out to be incorrect and b) blatantly misinterpreting what the numbers say and mean. For a lot of his speech last night, the president was describing a reality that doesn't exist. This just happened to be the most egregious example of it and Democrats need to say, "this president has no clothes" which they did with their chanting last night. Let's ground our discourse in reality here and move on from there. If it takes "childish" chanting to respond to childish distortions of fact then so be it.

(I, of course, am getting ready to hear that it is me who has no contact with reality.)

State of the Union - things I liked

2005-02-02T22:19:00.000-06:00

The State of the Union will obviously be pervading the political discourse for at least a few more hours before everyone picks up and moves on to something more enticing. Equally as obviously, it provoked more than a few thought. In the spirit of constructiveness that will improve our country let me devote this post to that which I liked about the speech.

First, the emphasis (or at least mention) of the need for Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The problem I've been having with the inaugural themes is not that those themes are not being applied everywhere (we can't expect that nor should we want it) but that the opposite of those policies (i.e. actively supporting and propping up repressive governments) is currently being pursued. (Ezra Klein takes this former route and critizes the State of the Union on the grounds of Uzbekistan, Russia, etc. It's a fair point and I'd love to see democracy everywhere, but neither do I want to see the massive instability that would create.) So good on the president for noting that. Equally good (perhaps even better) was the emphasis on non-violent change in those countries by gradually opening the political process. One of the frustrations I've had with the recent discussions about Iran is that it is clear that there is a much better developed civil society in Iran than there was in Iraq pre-invasion. That civil society gives Americans a way to bring about change short of full-scale invasion.

Second, the expansion of DNA testing is hard to oppose. Even better is the training (or whatever it actually was) for defense counsels. Both of these will ideally make our criminal justice be able to dispense actual justice.

Third, I really liked the comments about urban African-American men. As someone who lives as a Caucasian face in a sea of non-Caucasian faces (I freely chose and welcome this situation), it's easy to see how my life differs substantially from that of others simply because of the color of my skin. I work with young African-American children in an after-school program and already I can see the significant disadvantages they face in their lives at the age of 7 or 8. My experience is less when it comes to older men but I still sense a deep frustration and hopelessness on the part of many in this category. This is no easy task the president has set for himself (or, actually, his wife) but that does not lessen its importance and I hope he pays it the attention it deserves. (But wait... Maybe I shouldn't be so supportive on this point. The Center for American Progress has some facts on the matter in their live-blog response to the speech. Their facts, of course, deal directly with gangs and I'm more interested - and think the president talked more broadly - about general race relations and giving hope to a generation of African-American men. If you get a chance, read through all the posts from American Progress. Great reads.)

Obviously, there are many things I didn't like but those will wait for another time, if at all. These issues, at least, are ones on which I can stand four-square behind the president.

Nude Juicebars?

2005-02-02T22:10:00.000-06:00

Seems like Salem, South Dakota is a bit more racy than you might expect. They have a nude juicebar, much to the dismay of many residents and South Dakotan state legislators. As Political Animal correctly notes, the name of the opposition organization, Citizens Against Nude Juice Bars and Pornography, makes reading the entire article worth it.

What I find funniest about these sorts of situations is the conversations and holes that opponents find themselves in when they start trying to legislate certain amounts of clothing.

Now the county is drawing up a new ordinance that would require his dancers to wear pasties and G-strings. And a state senator plans to push for a similar state law.

"At this point, it's harassment," Rieger says. "They're really picking on me."

McCook County State's Attorney Roger Gerlach says the proposed ordinance is not an attempt to put him out of business: "As long as they have some opaque clothing over the crucial parts of the human body, they can dance all they want."

This just creates problems of reduction and definition. (On a broadly similar note, it's like the Congressman who wants to outlaw certain words on television and so has to write them down in his law, making it one of the most profane pieces of writing out there.) Dealing in general terms is a whole lot easier than getting specific, especially for a bunch of social conservatives who oppose this on moral grounds and would probably rather not acknowledge the existence of pieces of clothing that offend them. (That may be a rash generalization; if so, I apologize.)

All of this kind of reminds me of the part in Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country when he stumbles into a store that sells both pet supplies and pornography.

Michael Scheuer

2005-02-02T08:04:00.000-06:00

I had the opportunity to hear "Mr. Anonymous," Michael Scheuer, speak yesterday. He's written two books, Imperial Hubris and Through our Enemies' Eyes about how we're mucking up the war on terror, based on his experience as the chief Osama bin Laden CIA guy, a position he resigned under duress recently.

First, the less than good parts. He's quite parochial and honestly admits that he's being so public about the unmitigated failures of our policies towards terror because he's concerned about American safety and is prepared to let Muslims battle it out among themselves so long as they're not fighting us. Also, he thinks we really need to step up our war strategy and start taking casualties because this is a war and the only way that we can prevent it from becoming endless war is to deal with the problems right now. He has no visions of world peace.

These points notwithstanding, I was tremendously impressed. Clearly, it was difficult to take what he had to say because it was so relentlessly bad news. The most important point he made, I think, is that bin Laden and al Qaeda are turning into "-isms" so that even if we kill and eliminate the person and the organization they will continue to do damage because of the inspiration that bin Laden is to the Arab world.

The true value of what Scheuer is doing is he is "humanizing" the enemy. We have a tendency to dismiss bin Laden out of hand as a nihilist and a madman. What Scheuer does is show that he is neither of these things. He's a superb communicator and politician with a coherent message and program that attracts widespread support (or at least sympathy or at least not antipathy) in the Arab world and among Muslims more generally. We may not like that message or his tactics (I certainly think that his tactics make him less than human) but we shouldn't dismiss their importance as motivating tools. The first rule of war, I thought, was to "know your enemy" but we've really neglected that in favor of soundbite politics that reduces bin Laden to a caricature. Scheuer helps us understand what and who it is that we are facing and it's not a pretty picture.

Scheuer mentioned several times that he was not courageous or a hero ("My dad was in the first wave at Iwo Jima. That's courage. This Scheuer - not courageous at all.") but by at least having the courage of his convictions to say what he believes even though he doesn't think he's having or going to have much of an effect qualifies him I think at least as mildly courageous, at least by the standards of this day and age when all we hear from our authority figures is mindless pap.

What really struck me about Scheuer, however, was how "normal" he seems. I tend to see authors and other leaders as "famous" people who clearly can't be like me. But Scheuer is just a guy, who believes deeply that we're going off the rails and wants to help out. (I imagine Richard Clarke is the same way.) He looked entirely uncomfortable in his suit and tie, nervously rushed through his talk, and couldn't seem to get comfortable standing for two hours in front of a room full of people. I don't fault him for this - public speaking is not easy. Rather, it lends him legitimacy I think and gives me greater respect for him.

So... I didn't like all the implications of what he had to say and his policy prescriptions, when not hazy, were difficult to swallow, but his message - that we need to rethink how we're fighting the war on terror because our current policies just aren't working - is an important one and needs to be heard more broadly.

Where we are now on Iraq

2005-02-01T08:22:00.000-06:00

The combination of both George Will and E.J. Dionne expresses where I stand on the situation in Iraq right now:

-what a great delight to see people voting like that;

-don't withdraw yet because the job isn't even close to being over;

-democracy needs election but requires so much more than just that;

-we've still got a difficult row to hoe.

Score (yet another) one for the writings of the "mainstream media."

As Jon Stewart would say...

2005-02-01T08:18:00.000-06:00

...your daily moment of Zen. Just reflect on some of the sublime absurdity that characterizes our life today:

"I'm here to support Michael and to let the world know we stand by his side," said Janet Manbrik, a 27-year-old nurse from Sweden. "This is a conspiracy from the district attorney's side. I know details that don't fit." ...

"I wouldn't leave my kids alone with him, but I know he's innocent," said Margaret Buapim, 32, a social worker, standing in front of the courthouse this morning. "He's a decent man; I just know it." ...

The news media, as is now the norm in celebrity trials, was the main spectacle on Monday morning, numbering about 500 print and broadcast reporters.

One foreign television crew was doing its broadcast of the Iraqi elections from the courthouse parking lot. A reporter said, "Everything in this case is special; everything is different."

When is a coup a coup?

2005-02-01T08:09:00.000-06:00

In one of the most forgotten areas of conflict in the world (which is strange because it's in the same general "neighborhood" as some other areas of conflict that get plenty of attention), the king of Nepal has fired the prime minister. We are told that this is not a coup. This strikes me as the obvious point, however. If you're king, how can you seize the government if you're already in charge (even if you are only a constitutional monarch)? The more important question, however, is how to get to peace in Nepal. It seems like a pretty intractable Maoist uprising: at the very least they haven't been crushed yet, which means that even if they have no hope of ever actually winning, they'll be able to prolong the fighting interminably in a low-intensity sort of war that will occasionally flare up in a battle here and there that will get a short mention in the paper before returning to general anonymity for us in this hemisphere but destroying the lives of the people actually living in Nepal, a la Chiapas, Columbia, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of Congo, etc., etc.

So how to get to peace in Nepal? Obviously, I don't know that but it does seem odd that a prime minister who was hired to negotiate a peace settlement is now being fired. Does this mean we should question the king's devotion to peace or the competency of the prime minister? Unhelpfully, the Globe and Mail doesn't help us out with that information.

I have a feeling that this is a conflict we're going to be hearing about in twenty or thirty years, a la Sudan or Sri Lanka, as both sides wind it down out of sheer exhaustion. And that is wholly unfortunate and tragic.

Plan, where's the plan?

2005-01-31T08:52:00.000-06:00

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are delivering a "prebuttal" speech today. This is, I think, a good idea. Of course, it'll probably get minimal coverage but at least it shows that they're trying. However, this worries me:

In her comments, Ms. Pelosi says the Bush administration's claim that the Social Security program faces a crisis follows a White House pattern of exaggerating problems to enforce preconceived solutions.

"We can solve this long-term challenge without dismantling the system, and without allowing this administration's false declaration of a crisis to justify a privatization plan that is unnecessary, unaffordable and unwise," the text said.

Obviously, I think this is true. But I hope that in the actual speech she spends more time on how to solve the problem rather than just complaining about the president's plan. The Democrats need to be seen as the responsible change forces in this debate and complaining is not going to get it done. I've already written about how important it is to have a plan of their own and I hope that once they articulate such a plan, which is supposed to happen after the State of the Union, they focus on it and demonstrate how it is better public policy than the radical plan advanced by the Republicans.

Complaining is good and pointing out obvious distortions of fact is even better, but being constructive is best. The Democrats are the party of solid public policy that improves people's lives. They need to make sure they don't forget that.

Why are the Republicans so intent on deforming Social Security?

2005-01-31T08:46:00.001-06:00

The Republicans intersect in radically overhauling Social Security clearly can't be motivated by the fact that their plan is good public policy or that it will have positive long-term impacts. So why are they so intent on doing it? Daniel Gross has the answer: they're still trying to get back at FDR, that dastardly commie whose ideas on combating the Great Depression actually did something other than make the situation worse than it was.

Isn't it quaint to see people motivated by revenge?...even if they are revenging a perceived slight that's 70 years old.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum's analysis of what motivates the president's policy decisions is great but I think he needs to include the revenge factor.

Motivated by hate

2005-01-31T08:28:00.000-06:00

I have never supported Howard Dean and wasn't very impressed by his presidential campaign at any point during the primary season. Now he's gone and said that he "hates Republicans and everything they stand for" in his race for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

(Incidentally, GOP Bloggers rightly criticizes Dean - although not very seriously - for this remark but the source they cite is some hack news source which clearly derives its existence from summarizing the favorable parts of the news for Republicans. This is where criticism of the "mainstream media" gets you: reading news sanitized for your protection from a source that censors anything that you might disagree with. Read around Newsmax; do you really think that they have reporters in all the places that they report stories from? That's why, despite all the criticism it receives, the "MSM" is vital to our personal information-gathering process. Sites like these just filter that content for people who can't handle the whole truth.)

Hate is a powerful motivating force but I think it's the wrong force to be motivated by in this situation. It would have been fine for me if Dean had just said that he hated what Republicans stood for but he extended that to include Republicans themselves. Notwithstanding the fact that I consider several Republicans close friends of mine, this is the wrong attitude to take into the political arena. It precludes compromise and debate and instead perpetuates the supremely ideological, win-at-all-costs mentality that is destroying our political system and has landed us in the less than desirable situation we find ourselves in now.

(All that being said, I made it over to the blog on Democracy for America and was impressed by this post, particularly the comments about making the Democratic Party the party of reform. Because of the disastrous term in office these Republicans have been having, there's a lot that needs changing out there but somehow the Republicans are the ones who are presenting themselves as the party of change when the Democrats should be grabbing that mantle with little contest. On these grounds alone, would I like to see Dean become chair. However, I sense that he would be less successful in the first goal listed in this post, namely garnering widespread agreement on some basic principles for all Democrats to agree upon.)

Other disappointments contained in this article:

When Roemer suggests the party should not be dominated by abortion-rights groups, he is met with hisses. When Frost urges Democrats to embrace faith, a heckler shouts: "So atheists need not apply?"

Glad to see that the Democratic party faithful are so open to change, new approaches, and new ideas. It's hard to have sympathy with the Democrats when you read things like this.

UPDATE: Hate is not a family value, Eugene Volokh tells us. I hope he's wrong that and that it doesn't become a democratic value. With Dean as chair, I think the value Democrats are going to be promoting is speech without time for reflection. That might be dangerous for Democrats and it's guaranteed to be entertaining for all.

The enduring relevance of the Classics

2005-01-30T09:08:00.000-06:00

There's a really interesting article in the New York Times about land re-distribution in Venezuela. Land re-distribution, as the article makes clear, is something that has been tried in several developing countries so far with varying degrees of success. It's always fascinating to read articles like this because so many of us in the developed world are so far removed from the land in our techno-bubbles that we can hardly understand how land can be so important that it becomes such a powerful issue as to elect people to government and motivate people to attack and kill others. So, the first point is that this is a valuable reminder that so much of the world does not live like we do. We are the exceptions but we act like our behavior is the norm. (But if it was the norm, the earth couldn't support all of us. If everyone had a standard of living equal to the average in the United States, we would need four earths to support all of us. File that in the mind-boggling statistics category.)

The second point, though, is how land as a political issue is nothing new. During the late Roman Republic, demagogues made their political careers out of land redistribution, people like Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Publius Clodius Pulcher, and, most famously, Gaius Julius Caesar. The problem then, and the problem now, as this article sort of indicates and the broader experience of modern land redistribution makes clear, is that these demagogues get caught in a bind. They anger the people they are taking the land from, who also happen to be the rich people who financially support the state but if they don't move fast enough (or don't give the perception of people moving fast enough) then they lose the political support, which, in a democracy, is key to their political (and sometimes literal) survival. Hugo Chavez has already gotten the boot once in Venezuela from the upper-class but he survived that and is now facing the challenge of showing these squatters that he's moving quickly enough. It's interesting to watch him balance these competing extremes, proving once again the enduring relevance of the Classics. Everything we struggled with, they struggled with first (and often wrote about it more eloquently than we can).

Thank goodness I was wrong

2005-01-30T08:54:00.000-06:00

Well, early indications from Iraq make it seem like the election went pretty well, certainly far better than the news in the last week made it seem like. It seems like turnout was high, even in Sunni-dominated areas. People still died, like every other tragic day in Iraq, but certainly far fewer than I expected.

But the real measure of success will be how things play out in the coming weeks and months. An election does not a democracy make. It may be a necessary but it is not a sufficient condition for democracy. Ezra Klein is right about the implications of this election and Matthew Yglesias gives credit for the success to the extraordinary security measures, which clearly can't be maintained every day.

We've already had so many "turning points" in this occupation that I'm less than convinced that this is truly a turning point. I'm sure that there will be a lot of crowing from the seldom-right wing about today. I'm glad that things went so well but today certainly will not fundamentally reshape my opinions about our occupation in Iraq. I need a consistent trajectory of events pointing towards success and this may be part of it but I have yet to see it.

Nonetheless, let's at least revel in the fact that people voted in Iraq today.

Debt relief works (?)

2005-01-29T10:44:00.000-06:00

Stephanie Nolen strikes again, with another excellent piece in the Globe and Mail about the effect of debt relief. (One of the great frustrations I have with American newspapers is that they don't have a reporter in Africa with the same skills as Nolen, who just brings the situation alive and puts the reader right in the middle of action in a way that I have yet to see elsewhere. Her article on the inimitable Stephen Lewis remains one of the great pieces of writing I have read in a newspaper.) The gist of the article is that much of the debt paid by countries today dates back many years and that freeing the debt allows for governments to put money where it's needed and that this money is actually having a pretty dramatic effect. (Read the whole thing, though, that's just the very abbreviated version.)

I've always been a bit agnostic on debt relief ("it's just not fair" is the only reason I can come up with, which is entirely insufficient since being fair is not always equal to being just, John Rawls notwithstanding) but this kind of news pushes me towards being more in favor of it. I guess the key is that the money that is saved actually be spent on social services and not go into leaders' private accounts. If we can avoid that kind of problem (and I'm sure that we can with a little bit of effort), then gradual, phased-in debt relief makes a lot of sense to me.

Sartorial Miscue

2005-01-29T10:37:00.000-06:00

This article about the vice president's dress at the Auschwitz ceremony the other day is priceless. (Thanks to Matthew Yglesias for the link.) The article is worth reading just to see the picture of the vice president, looking so uncomfortably out of place.

However, having had both more than my fair share of experience in cold weather and with dressing wrong for many occasions, I have a lot of sympathy for the vice president. When it's cold out, the most important factor is staying warm. Sure, he probably should have known to dress a bit better since he gets to wear essentially the same style of outfit every day, but mistakes happen. I'd far rather criticize the vice president for his disastrous Iraq policy or his cronyistic (is that a word) energy policy or any number of other things than what he chooses to wear. If the Democrats (or anyone for that matter) makes political hay out of this, I'll be really disappointed. (Take a Shower Hippy agrees with me on this one.)

Purpose of blogging

2005-01-29T10:12:00.000-06:00

In the little over two months that I've been venting my thoughts into this virtual space on the web, I've had plenty of thoughts about the power of the Internet, the purpose and value of blogging, and whether blogs are all that they are cracked up to be. But I've stuck with it, posting much more than I ever thought I would and occasionally letting it consume my entire morning.

Ezra Klein has an excellent post on the purpose and value of blogs, which I commend to your attention. I generally agree with the tenor of his criticisms and I echo his disappointment on the path that blogs have taken. But I want to underline two things that I don't think he pays sufficient attention to. First, there's the potential for blogs to be that medium that allows for purposeful and constructive debate. I don't think that blogs are the solipsistic, echo-producing tools that they are right now by their nature but because they are reflecting the strands of political discourse dominant in our society, i.e. intensely partisan with a win-at-all-costs mentality that never allows for self-examination. (Get Your Blog Up has some good thoughts on this matter as well.) Second, blogs are a great tool for personal development. Many of us tend to be referring to political blogs when we talk about blogs but there are a lot of other types of blogs out there, which are sometimes quite interesting to read. Even if they are not interesting to read, blogs (and I mean all kinds of blogs by that) remain an excellent way (potentially) for people to learn how to express themselves better and develop their arguments. Even if only a dozen people a day bother to stop by this blog and even fewer manage to read what I write, I still remain committed to the idea of blogging because I enjoy writing and I enjoy the challenge of expressing my thoughts and ideas in what I hope are compelling posts. (I know that I have varying degrees of success on this front.)

I also like Jon Henke's contribution to the conversation, especially about ideological uniformity of blogroll (ahem, check out mine) and reading blogs you disagree with (that is the premise of this blog).

So, do blogs have problems? Absolutely. Are they perfect? Nope, not even close. But are they valuable nonetheless? I think so, yes.

Iraq - conditions / elections

2005-01-28T08:09:00.000-06:00

In the continuing coverage of Iraq, it's getting increasingly difficult to figure out what exactly things are like over there and how the elections are going to turn out. I know that on the second matter, I should probably just be patient and wait and see what happens on Sunday and after. But it's still important to figure out what's going on and what life is like.

So there are at least two issues in all of this. First of all, how successful is the reconstruction, which really means, what is life like for the average Iraqi (leaving aside the problem of defining "average Iraqi")? Second, how is the insurgency going to affect the elections?

I've written before about the difficulty of knowing what exactly the conditions are like in Iraq (one and two). I would only add to that discussion two things. First, GOP Bloggers (my ironically favorite blog), in a show of their "open-mindedness" tells us that we really can get some balanced news about Iraq and get a clear picture of what's going on. Second, I think the important point is that "Iraq" is an undifferentiated term. There are 18 (I think) provinces and we are told that life in 14 of them is not half bad ("half bad," though, still is not good). Still, that doesn't excuse the situation in the other 4 or the fact that things could be a lot better overall if the people planning and leading this invasion had some small shreds of foresight or competency in planning the occupation.

On the second matter of elections, I remain decidely pessimistic about Sunday, not because I want to see anyone fail but because that's what the news I see is telling me. The New York Times has two interesting side-by-side articles about the dangers of campaigning in Mosul and the machine politics of Basra. Two further comments. First, the election, even if it is held freely and fairly in 14 provinces might, ipso facto, make the situation worse by excluding Sunnis (who live predominantly in those provinces we might expect to have lower turnout rates because of the violence) from the government and perpetuating sectarian strife. Second, Matthew Yglesias asks the important question, Even if the election goes well as a procedural matter, what good will it do? I don't see how snapping one's fingers and saying "we've had an election, therefore we have a democracy" will accomplish what we want to accomplish. We've been told many times that we've reached a turning point (extra-judicial execution of the sons of Hussein, capture of Saddam Hussein, transfer of sovereignty, etc.) that it's hard to imagine that this upcoming turning point will be any different.

I don't want to be pessimistic. I want these elections to make a difference. But it's hard to see how that will happen.

Good news for a change

2005-01-27T09:23:00.000-06:00

The Indonesian government is opening talks with the rebels in Aceh. It looks like the tsunami provided a powerful impetus (all the international coverage of the region probably helped as well) to move away from the status quo. I say anytime two sides move to stop shooting at each other it's a good thing. Too bad 150,000 people had to die in a natural disaster for it to happen.

What does a democracy require?

2005-01-27T09:04:00.000-06:00

I found this to be the most fascinating exchange from the president's news conference yesterday:

Q Mr. President, Senator Ted Kennedy recently repeated his characterization of Iraq as a "quagmire" and has called it your Vietnam. And the questioning of Alberto Gonzales and Condi Rice in the Senate has been largely used by Democrats to criticize your entire Iraq program, especially what you're trying to do postwar. I wonder if you have any response to those criticisms. And what kind of an effect do you think these statements have on the morale of our troops and on the confidence of the Iraqi people that what you're trying to do over there is going to succeed?

THE PRESIDENT: I think the Iraqi people are wondering whether or not this nation has the will necessary to stand with them as a democracy evolves... We believe that people ought to be allowed to express themselves, and we believe that people ought to decide the fates of their governments.

And so I -- the notion that somehow we're not making progress I just don't subscribe to. I mean, we're having elections....

Democracy is being defined very narrowly by the president and his administration by the hallmarks of a successful democracy - elections, government, etc. This is fine and those institutions certainly are important but what's more important is to recognize that democracy is properly seen as a way of life in which people are able to come together and mutually decide their own future, which means we need participation by everyone. Of course, not everyone is going to agree on the future course so there needs to be room for continued opposition as well. The president seems to think that this most quintessential of democratic perogatives - expressing dissent - by the Democrats is a sign of weakness in national security. He would rather have everyone toe his line. But then we no longer have a democracy.

Of course, the point about elections remains. What do elections really tell us if people are too intimidated to vote. The fact that elections are being held does not alone really tell us anything about the democratic progress being made in Iraq. In order to make that judgment we need to know more about the way of life in Iraq, the quality of life in Iraq, and how people are interacting with one another.

Iraqi Elections

2005-01-26T08:12:00.000-06:00

It's hard to keep track of the all the depressing news coming out of Iraq about the upcoming elections. Let me see if I've got this straight:

-Insurgents are threatening to kill anyone who votes.

-Even people who can vote outside of Iraq are not registering as much as was anticipated.

-The election itself seems to be pro forma. The Shiites are already acting like they have won and people are already talking as if they have won. But that's alright because they're promising "no turbans" in government. The LA Times has gone so far as to suggest guaranteeing a set number of seats to the Sunnis so they don't feel left out.

-Some candidates are so afraid they are campaigning anonymously. (At least, we know that those candidates aren't in the campaign for the ego boost of hearing people chant their name.)

And the depressing list goes on. Now I'm sure that there are parts of Iraq where the situation is better but if 50% turnout is being seen as a good sign, we're not in very good shape.

I just don't understand what the purpose of having an election in these situations is. If we're in a position where we need to circumvent the electoral process to include Sunnis since the electoral process can't seem to do a good enough job of it, what's the point of having an election. It's hard to escape the conclusion that this process is being driven ahead by President Bush, who's intent on showing progress, where there is none to show.

I hate to make predictions but I can't see this going anywhere. I think even more people are going to die on Sunday. I think that the Shiites will win. I think that the Sunnis will feel left out. And I think that we will be told that this is an "historic moment" for the Middle East and that "freedom is on the march." I only wish it were true.

UPDATE: I want to make clear that I want to see these elections succeed. I don't want more people - either Iraqis or Americans - die. I want my friends who are in Iraq right now to be home. I don't care who gets credit for "saving" Iraq. I just want things to be a lot better. I just wanted to point out that there's a lot of news about this election that is depressing and we're doing ourselves an intellectual disservice if we pretend otherwise.

Bush reaches out to Democrats

2005-01-26T08:08:00.000-06:00

It seems like the only Democrats the president will reach out to pass his radically conservative agenda are dead ones.

As he pushes ahead with his proposal to remake Social Security by adding private investment accounts, President Bush has so far failed to attract any prominent Democratic supporters.

At least, no prominent Democrats who are still alive.

Instead, Mr. Bush is taking cover under the reputation of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who died nearly two years ago. Mr. Moynihan served as co-chairman of the commission Mr. Bush established in 2001 to recommend ways of establishing personal accounts, a fact the president and his aides mention almost every time they discuss the issue publicly.

As the article correctly notes Senator/Ambassador/Professor Moynihan had a "nuanced" position on Social Security and believed a few different things at a few different times, as befits one of the most remarkable, intelligent, and thoughtful public statesmen and civil servants of the twentieth century. It's alright to change your mind as facts change and the situation evolves. Seems like when John Kerry did this he was accused of being a "flip-flopper." When Moynihan does it, he's a friend of the president.

Bloggers Beware

2005-01-26T08:03:00.000-06:00

Apple is suing a blogger.

Apple is suing Nick Ciarelli, 19, or Nick "dePlume" as he is known on his website, thinksecret.com, for revealing details of Apple products before they are launched. Mr Ciarelli, a Mac fan who started his website at 13, regularly publishes "scoops" on Apple products.

One of the amazing features of technology is that progress is so (relatively) fast because it's an auto-catalytic process. This is difficult for our society which generally prefers incremental change in bite-size proportions. So this lawsuit will be another interesting instance in which society tries to figure out how to live with and manage technological growth.

Is a blogger or a journalist or is he not a journalist? Does he deserve the same protections? I'm leaning towards thinking that he is and does but I haven't convinced myself yet.

When is an account "private" and when is it "personal"?

2005-01-25T20:39:00.000-06:00

Ezra Klein has a fascinating link to an Air America conversation in which the guest tells us that the press cannot use the phrase "private accounts" because it biases the viewer/reader/listener. It's obvious that language is powerful and I'm glad we've come to that realization in this country. The Washington Post commented on this a few days back.

Would someone please explain to me what the difference between a "private" account and a "personal" account is? Aside from different poll numbers and different support levels, that is.

The point that Klein makes about Jon Stewart being the only person who would do a story pointing out these verbal gymnastics is right on, especially since it seems like the rest of the media is moving away from the dreaded "private" term.

This is funny.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias adds some thoughts and an interesting strategy for Democrats.

To be flamboyant or not to be flamboyant

2005-01-25T15:04:00.000-06:00

Bradford Plumer thinks the Democrats should have gone farther in their legislative agenda for the upcoming session. (Thanks to Kevin Drum for the link.)

But I wonder why they didn't just shoot for the moon.

No, really! The Democrats, after all, have no hope of getting any of these things passed over the next four years.... The Democrats don't need to craft bills that hew closely to political reality.... The goal of an opposition agenda isn't to get stuff passed through Congress; the goal is to define what the opposition party stands for.

I'm a bit ambivalent on this. I really want to agree and I think that the Democrats need to present a clear alternative of their own (especially on Social Security), with their own ideas and own research, rather than reacting to whatever the issue du jour from the Republicans is. They should be pointing the direction to what the future could be if the Republicans weren't in power. But at the same time, the opposition party needs to have some credibility that it can be a legitimate governing party if given the shot. So it can't open itself too far to ideas that will never be enacted because it will be accused of having no contact with reality and therefore have no right to be in government.

First things first, though, they need to get media attention for their plan so that Americans will know that they actually have some really good ideas and don't exist just to complain about being left out in the House or filibuster in the Senate. I've seen little such coverage so far. So if they need to be radical to get attention than being radical is justified solely on that basis.

Culture of Life

2005-01-25T08:23:00.000-06:00

Speaking to abortion opponents yesterday, the President seemed encouraged by progress towards a "culture of life."

Bush said that although outlawing abortion remains a distant goal, it is one that seems to be moving slowly into view. "The America of our dreams, where every child is welcomed . . . in life and protected in law, may still be some ways away," Bush said. "But even from the far side of the river . . . we can see its glimmerings."

Sure, every child may be welcomed but heaven help you when you get older, especially if you're African-American, when the president will have problem agreeing to your execution. From my side of the river, the glimmerings I see are the fading rays of gun control legislation that is being repealed or allowed to expire, further increasing the number of violent deaths in this country led by a president who apparently puts so much emphasis on guarding the lives of the unborn that he can't be bothered to help out those who are actually living.

Sometimes you just have to ask yourself

2005-01-25T08:05:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you just have to ask yourself, what were they thinking. Democratic activists have been accused of slashing the tires of some Republicans' cars. I don't see how this accomplishes anything productive and it just tarnishes other Democratic supporters and makes them look petty, vindictive, and mean-spirited. Of course, this behavior has long been a part of politics; this story reminds me of Canadian provincial leadership conventions in which opponents would cancel their opponents bus reservations which were going to be used to transport supporters to the polls. When winning becomes your goal and not making the country better, you know you've gone down the wrong path.

At the rate I'm condemning the actions of extreme Democratic activists, I'm well on my way to becoming a conservative. It's not often that I agree with GOP Bloggers. Today, however, I do.

In other news, (also in the "what were they thinking category?") Terry McAuliffe is making political hay out of Bill Thomas' assertion that Social Security payments could be tied to specific personal characteristics like race or sex. I've seen only a small selection of the text from GOP Bloggers, so I can't claim that I've got the entire context but this seems to me to be the equivalent of the attacks on Larry Summers last week. A person puts forth a suggestion for a possible direction that future legislation (or research in Summers case) might take, immediately has his words twisted out of context so that it is claimed he believes something he never said, and people get to advance their case at his expense.

"Blue State" Super Bowl

2005-01-24T11:35:00.000-06:00

Not surprisingly, the most dominant football team in the NFL these days made the Super Bowl. I'm referring, of course, to my home state Patriots, who, I can assure you, will easily triumph two weeks hence.

One strand of thought I've noted in the yet young discussion of the Super Bowl is that it is an "all blue state" Super Bowl and that this is, thus, cause for great celebration among lefties because it shows how Democrats have taken a Republican activity away from them. (Matthew Yglesias and Kevin Drum are notable examples, although I am sure there are others.)

A few observations to this absolutely inane line of reasoning:

First, the star of the "blue state" Red Sox, Curt Schilling, immediately after the World Series victory was out stumping for President Bush. For the umpteenth time, states are not monolithic. Just because CNN and others want to reduce and categorize everything, doesn't mean that these categories actually reflect reality.

Second, isn't Pennsylvania, in reality, a "purple state"?

Third, how is it that sports teams are meant to reflect the state where they are located when their players come from all over? Football players happen to be professionals who are placed where they are for purely business reasons.

Fourth, the Super Bowl is the most significant secular holiday in this country. People watch it regardless of political affiliation and it's a uniting and integrating event. Attempts to claim divisive political gain, however tongue-in-cheek they are meant to be smacks of desperation.

Fifth, when did football become a red state activity? Is it because of the physical nature of the game? That is stereotyping of the worst kind. I am a huge football fan (as, incidentally, is our cerebral soon-to-be Secretary of State, Ms. Rice) because of the huge amount of skill involved in the game and my fascination with watching 22 players move in a co-ordinated way during every play.

Sixth, what about all those non-voters out there? We've been reducing our states to "red" or "blue" states without regard for the many people who don't vote (two of five in the last election). Where do they figure in the picture? What if they are football fans? How do they feel about the Super Bowl matchup?

The conclusion is that, yet again, the red state/blue state division is the cause of needless discussion (like this post) and does not accurately reflect the make-up of the United States.

A Dangerous Strategy?

2005-01-24T08:04:00.000-06:00

It's been shoved down my throat over at the increasingly comic GOP Bloggers that Clinton, when he was president, said Social Security might be in crisis and that therefore, I'm being a slimy partisan hack for opposing the notion of a crisis right now because the titular leader of a party I don't belong to and never have said one sentence in a speech seven years ago.

Two things:

First, as the late, great John Maynard Keynes said, "When the facts change, I change my mind." Certainly reasonable debate and exchange must depend on an openness to listening to the ideas and concerns of others and being open to the possibility that one's ideas might no longer mesh with reality? (This argument, incidentally, if widely accepted and well made could have saved John Kerry a lot of trouble.) I think the sign of a mature mind is the willingness to be open to changing one's mind. So even if I had agreed with what Clinton said those many years ago, surely it's acceptable for me to change my mind over time, is it not? But I sense this argument will not wash for many.

So second, I'd direct your attention to the Washington Post's investigation of the context of those quotations. I've been meaning to look into this context for a little while but hadn't had the chance so I'm glad to see the Post did it for me. In any event, a few key quotations:

"This fiscal crisis in Social Security affects every generation," Clinton said in the speech.

But neither Mankiw nor Bolten cited another passage from the same address: "Before we spend a penny on new programs or tax cuts, we should save Social Security first. I think it should be the driving principle . . . Do not have a tax cut. Do not have a spending program that deals with that surplus. Save Social Security first."

What I think this demonstrates is that had President Bush truly been driven by a desire to "save" Social Security (rather than implement a radically conservative and ideologically-driven partisan agenda as he is now), he wouldn't have implemented all those irresponsible tax cuts to appease his base of wealthy donors. Social Security currently takes in more money than it pays out and had Bush not spent that money already, the system might be in even stronger shape than it is right now.

The "Save Social Security First" mantra is one that I remember well. But Bush didn't do that. He gave away the money that could have been used to shore up Social Security and is only now turning his attention to Social Security now that he doesn't ever have to worry about re-election. (Which, to be fair, is better than Clinton ever did.)

So, the obvious point, context is key.

One Source, Two Source, Red Source, Blue Source

2005-01-23T16:48:00.000-06:00

A little while ago, I had some thoughts on how well we can know what the situation is like in Iraq. There was a letter from a soldier decrying the negative coverage and there were reports from journalists about how they could hardly do anything but stay confined to the Green Zone. Now, it turns out that there are veterans of Iraq organizing against the war. While they have concerns about the entire conduct and nature of the war, this at least shows that, in addition to there being at least one soldier who believes that the war is going well, there are soldiers who do believe that the war is not going so well.

So what's the conclusion to draw from this? I'd say that it reminds us of the importance to search for as much information as possible from as many sources as possible and attempt to draw a complete picture from that. Seems like more than a few of us in this country could do to be reminded of the importance of an open mind.

The Inaugural Address

2005-01-23T13:16:00.000-06:00

In the commentary on the president's inaugural address, my favorite theme has been: did he really mean it? Are we now going truly to stand up against all those tyrannies in the world? Are are we going to continue to be allied with many of them? Kevin Drum posts some thoughts on this matter.

Even accepting that rhetorical BS is a politician's stock in trade, this is inexplicable. What's the point in giving a speech like this if you're going to spend the next week telling everyone to ignore it? This is political buffoonery of a high degree.

I agree that politicians perhaps tend to engage in a little more blatant speculation (which is the only thing I assume Drum is referring to when he uses the term "BS") than the rest of us. But I don't think the address was "buffoonery." I think that it was savvy attempt to reframe all of the issues that the president has been dealing with (with varying degrees of success) over the past four years. What the address did was draw Afghanistan, Iraq, nuclear states, tyrannies, Social Security and the "ownership society," terrorism, and so much more into one allegedly coherent narrative of liberty and freedom, which, of course, in principle, no one opposes. It is odd that people in the administration are now trying to "walk it back" but my take on the speech is that it was more backward looking than forward looking, even while being ostensibly about the future direction of this country. Still, it'll be interesting to see how much farther the administration feels it has to extricate itself from this hole some people think it now finds itself in.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias is less than impressed by the inaugural and raises many similar issues.

High quality discourse

2005-01-22T22:12:00.000-06:00

I've been most pre-occupied lately and have had little chance to think and reflect. But, if you're looking for a good read, check out this comment thread and this one from GOP Blogging for some examples of the high-quality debate practiced by our friends on the right. Examples like this remind me of the Cass Sunstein's thoughts on the "Daily We" effect of the Internet. I take little (i.e. no) offense at the name-calling. In fact, I find it not only amusing but downright inspiring that what takes me five seconds to write sets them into such a tizzy.

Two other observations:

1. Note the way in which the blinders of ideology never come off at all. If an idea is opposed to the narrow, radical, privatization and deregulation super alia rhetoric, then some minds are unable to process the thought and respond with essentially incoherent statements that have little productive value.

2. The fact that ad hominem attacks still seem accepted as legitimate never ceases to amaze me. Didn't we move past this in third grade?

UPDATE: This is just disappointing: Daily Kos denigrates (profanely) the GOP Blogging web site to which GOP Blogging responds in kind. I guess I was mistaken when I thought that the blogosphere could be a forum for reasoned and quality debate. I know that I am probably looking in the wrong places for this but the only conclusion that I can come to is that all the blogosphere does is perpetuate the echo chambers each party already has more than enough of. Maybe at some point when we start engaging each other, something decent will happen. In the meantime, I'm going to continue to get typecast by those GOP Blogging types as of a kind with Daily Kos and, quite frankly, I don't like that thought at all.

Beyond the pale

2005-01-21T15:34:00.000-06:00

I think I've made it clear over the course of many posts that I have many significant disagreements with the president and his administration on a number of vital issues. Still, there should be no place in our society for this kind of behavior:

One man wearing anti-Bush buttons screamed, "Scum," into the ear of an elderly woman, a Bush supporter. The man walking behind her punched him in the face. Some of the Bush supporters laughed off the taunting; others looked terrified.

I don't see how screaming at someone accomplishes anything productive or constructive. (The same goes for the punching.) Nor do I see how ad hominem attacks accomplish anything beside needlessly antagonizing those with whom one disagrees. Emotions are a great motivator to action and they've certainly helped me in a lot of instances but they need to be carefully restrained. In this very unfortunate and condemnable instance they were not. I hope that this example was the exception to behavior yesterday rather than the rule.

What kind of foreign policy does the president like?

2005-01-21T15:23:00.000-06:00

There's a lot of talk in academic circles about what kind of foreign policy President Bush prefers. Is he a realist? Are neo-conservatives realists? Kevin Drum enters this debate, noting:

Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Whatever else you can say about George Bush, he hasn't done squat to move either of these countries into the ranks of democracy. He treats the theocrats in Saudi Arabia with kid gloves because they can jack up oil prices if they ever get pissed off at us, and he treats the military dictatorship in Pakistan with kid gloves because they provide a bit of help now and then while pretending to hunt down Osama bin Laden.

There are good reasons for acting this way. Lots of presidents have acted this way. But Bush hasn't rejected realism, he's fervently embraced it while telling his speechwriters to say the opposite.

Part of the problem is that the president is trying to combine a lot of different strands of international relations thought into one coherent foreign policy. (I think most of my frustration with the president's foreign policy is this combination and his inability to combine these strands with any degree of skill or coherency.) On the one hand, he and his administration are clearly interested in and accepting of the realpolitik aspects of international relations, e.g. in relations with Pakistan or Uzbekistan. But at the same time they claim to have this belief in the transcendent power of liberty, although they are using realpolitik means to achieve that end.

One strand of coherency uniting the Bush administration foreign policy is a belief in the power of states to shape foreign relations. Kevin Drum is wrong in saying that the president has "fervently embraced" realism because realists, from an international relations theoretical perspective, argue that the structure of the international system drives states to behave in certain ways. The president and his advisers clearly think that they can act as they please and shape the future to their own making. Thus, a belief in the transcendent power of democracy in the Middle East is consistent with this view because it sees international relations as primarily about state-level action and attributes.

Still, that's not enough to convince me that the foreign policy has enough coherency that it's the right thing to be doing. There's enough confusion over terms and levels of action that it's difficult to make sense of all that is going on, but we can at least have some clarity with our terminology.

UPDATE: Bradford Plumer raises a similar debate and makes the argument better than I did.

Shifting focus to the wrong place

2005-01-21T08:24:00.000-06:00

Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party of Party, showing shades of Rick Santorum, said that if the Canadian government legalizes same-sex marriage, polygamy will logically be next.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper warned Thursday that if same-sex legislation becomes law, the Liberals won't be able to prevent fundamentalist groups from requesting extreme types of marriages such as polygamy.

I must admit that I don't see the political benefit of these remarks. First of all, he made them in Quebec at a speech on agriculture. The Conservative Party needs to do all that it can to make inroads in Quebec and saying something like this that is, I am sure, so at odds with what many Quebekers believe strikes me as the wrong thing to do.

Also, what's the point? It's clear that there is no connection between the two and that the government won't allow polygamy. So his remarks are ridiculous and immediately dismissed as such. It gets him attention and might solidfy his base, which he doesn't need to do. He needs to be reaching out to Canadians and these sort of remarks will put him further and further out of the mainstream.

News Flash: Bush Administration Member Admits Regret

2005-01-20T09:40:00.000-06:00

Richard Armitage, someone who has been neglected by the media during the first Bush administration (but perhaps that's only in comparison to his more (in)famous counterpart at Defense, Paul Wolfowitz), gave an interesting interview to the The Australian, in which he noted:

And Armitage's disappointments? Not a lugubrious person, Armitage doesn't nominate disappointments spontaneously. But he'll answer a question honestly: "I'm disappointed that Iraq hasn't turned out better. And that we weren't able to move forward more meaningfully in the Middle East peace process."

Then, after a minute's pause, he adds a third regret: "The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot."

(Thanks to Tim Dunlop via Kevin Drum for the link.)

I suppose the fact that he had to be coaxed into saying this takes away from the moment, but still, this is earth-shatteringly honest for this administration and reflects a brief moment in which their words match the reality.

The most important part of this comment is the part about exporting fear and anger. I couldn't agree more. There's still time to save Iraq (I hope) and the Middle East peace process but the United States will always have to live with the stain of a period of its history when it showed the world its ugly side: "you're either with us or against us," "wanted: dead or alive," Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo Bay, etc. Intensity in the pursuit of one's goals is certainly acceptable but the means we have used to accomplish our ends have sometimes been beyond the pale. I'm glad to see this being noted, even if it is only in an Australian newspaper.

Language Use

2005-01-20T08:14:00.000-06:00

The political genius that is Ken Mehlman was just confirmed as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Democrats should be very scared. Note, in particular, these comments of his from yesterday:

"We can deepen the GOP by identifying and turning out Americans who vote for president but who often miss off-year elections and agree with our work on behalf of a culture of life, our promoting marriage, and a belief in our Second Amendment heritage" to oppose gun control, Mehlman told delegates at the downtown hotel.

"Culture of life"? That's why you support the death penalty and cut social programs that are the only thing standing between many Americans and the indignity of poverty and a disastrous life. If you want to talk about abortion, at least come right out and say it.

"Promoting marriage"? That's why you've worked to ensure that deadbeat dads have to pay their child support and have sought to lower the divorce rate in this country. If you want to talk about homosexuals and how you don't like them, at least come right out and say it.

"Second Amendment heritage"? This is why you twist and turn the Second Amendment to your political purposes, using only the second half of the sentence to make it appear as if the Founding Fathers had no intention of regulating arms at all. I'm glad to see you revere the Constitution and its heritage so much that you only use those bits which appeal to you. If you want to talk about guns, at least come right out and say it.

But of course he won't come right out and say it because he is a master of language use and using language in the way that he does here allows him to conceal his radical, out-of-the-mainstream agenda and make it more palatable to wider swathes of people. This is excellent political rhetoric. I just wish he wasn't a Republican.