SavitzBlog

The incompetence of Bush and Cheney's detainee polices

2009-03-18T16:49:00.002-04:00

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been an invaluable voice for exposing the truth of our detainee policies for the last seven years. I am reminded of the famous quotation, "It's worse than a crime; it's a mistake." It would be one thing if Bush and Cheney ordered people to break laws and had actually protected our country in doing so, but we know that all this torture was pointless and unproductive, and damaged our reputation more than anything since Jim Crow. Similarly, it would be one thing if they did it in an ordered, competent way. But it was done seat-of-the-pants style, with little to no forethought or strategy.

Wilkerson elaborates, in a guest post at the Washington Note:

The first of these [aspects of the Gitmo debate largely overlooked by the media] is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the U.S. operations there. Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.

But wait, there's more:

Another unknown, a part of the fabric of the foregoing four, was the sheer incompetence involved in cataloging and maintaining the pertinent factors surrounding the detainees that might be relevant in any eventual legal proceedings, whether in an established court system or even in a kangaroo court that pretended to at least a few of the essentials, such as evidence.

Simply stated, even for those two dozen or so of the detainees who might well be hardcore terrorists, there was virtually no chain of custody, no disciplined handling of evidence, and no attention to the details that almost any court system would demand. Falling back on "sources and methods" and "intelligence secrets" became the Bush administration's modus operandi to camouflage this grievous failing.

Cheney has some nerve telling John King that Obama is making our country more vulnerable to terrorism after the incompetent shenanigans he pulled.

The AIG bonus debacle

2009-03-18T16:33:00.004-04:00

One can argue whether the $165 million in bonuses that AIG doled out to its senior executives the other day were justified, unjustified, or deserving of the "Nobel Prize for Evil," but two things are clear. First, the AIG brass was either stupid or greedy or both for failing to foresee the firestorm this action would incur. Second, as Jim Manzi points out:

Just as the GM restructuring "plan" was a clarifying illustration of why industrial policy rarely works very well, the current outrage over the AIG $165 million bonus payout illustrates why having the federal government run companies usually doesn't work very well either...

In the end, what I think this highlights is the need to get the government out of the business of managing risk capital as rapidly as is feasible.

The important question is: just how rapidly is that?

"How a tiny West African country became the world's first narco state"

2009-03-18T15:45:00.003-04:00

It can be easy for us in the United States to forget that, for much of the world, the threat of Islamist terrorism is only an afterthought; they have other concerns. Check out this article from the Guardian on how Columbian drug cartels have essentially taken over the West African country of Guinea-Bissau over the last three years. Money quote:

Among the destitute locals are scores of wealthy, gaudy Colombian drug barons in their immodest cars, flaunting their hi-tech luxury lifestyle, with beautiful women on their arms. Outside Bissau city are exclusive Hispanic-style haciendas with wide verandahs, turquoise swimming pools and gates patrolled by armed guards.

By day, Guinea-Bissau looks like the impoverished country it is. Most people cannot afford a bus fare, never mind a four-wheel drive. There is no mains electricity. Water supplies are restricted to the wealthy few, and landmark buildings such as the presidential palace remain wrecked nine years after the end of the war. But this wreck of a country is what the UN - which declared war last week on celebrity cocaine culture - calls the continent's 'first narco-state'. West Africa has become the hub of a flow of cocaine from South America into Europe, now that other routes have become tough for the traffickers.

A final word on Freeman, with an apology

2009-03-17T23:47:00.003-04:00

In retrospect, I was a bit harsh in my descriptions of Chas Freeman. I learned that the quote about Tiananmen Square was probably taken out of context (and I should have done a better job of checking this first), and his statement about Mao could be interpreted in a less damaging light. I still find him highly misinformed on the subject of Israel, and I think he has some troubling views on dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and China, but perhaps such views would not have had a significant effect on US foreign policy. On balance, I am glad he will not serve as chair of the National Intelligence Council, but I probably overstated the dangers of his getting the post.

The troubling aspect of this whole debate is not so much Freeman per se, but the character of the debate itself. Many Freeman critics went far beyond my heated language and started throwing around terms like "anti-Semite." While I disagree with Freeman strongly, I see no evidence that he hates Jews. Pro-Israel pundits should absolutely show more circumspection and judiciousness before making the most serious of accusations. And they should certainly not take quotes out of context to smear a candidate.

On the other hand, the pro-Freeman crowd displayed such a paranoid and aggressive attitude toward anyone who opposed Freeman that open dialogue on his nomination was impossible from the start. Few supporters of Freeman defended him on his merits or pointed out where his critics were misrepresenting his record. Instead, they immediately launched withering ad hominem attacks on the critics themselves--impugning their motives, their honesty, and even their loyalty to the United States above Israel. Pro-Israel pundits and politicians were branded as uniquely disloyal and subversive, and uniquely undeserving of any time on the soap box, among all other interest groups. Furthermore, almost every pundit who supported Freeman claimed that the opposing viewpoint was a "lobby"--that is, when five or ten journalists, one senator, and a handful or NGOs feel a certain way, they immediately constitute a lobby and must be secretly coordinating with each other. Now, AIPAC certainly is a lobby, but to use the term as an umbrella for anyone with pro-Israel views is to spin conspiracy theories.

I've written before that what we need here is less heat, more sobriety. I'll make a supplemental point: too often we descend into a sort of meta-discussion, where one or both sides of debate stop discussing the issue and start discussing the debate itself, usually claiming that their side is being victimized in some way. You'll notice that people like Walt and Mearshimer spend much less time proposing new policy ideas for the US in the Middle East than they do claiming that people like them are being victimized by a vast Israel Lobby. Such writers should spend less time complaining about the bullies, and more time expressing their own views on policy. The invincible Israel Lobby did not stop Walt and Mearshimer from securing a lucrative book deal and capturing more media coverage in the last three years than ever before in their lives.

That's the lesson: more policy discussion, less meta-discussion. Meta-discussion is merely a door to conspiracy theories, character assassination, and mudslinging. No one benefits, and no one ever wins the argument.

When has a debate over who is less American led to good public policy?

(Check out David Rothkopf's final post on the matter here. He was one of the few to straddle this debate from the start. You may also want to hear Freeman's side of the story, in his recent interview with Fareed Zakaria.)

From the annals of interesting translations

2009-03-17T16:29:00.004-04:00

Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard.
(Photo credit: IMDB.com)

According to IMDB.com, the Hungarian title of Die Hard is "Give your life expensive," Die Hard 2 is called "Your life is more expensive," Die Hard: With a Vengeance is called "The life is always expensive," and Live Free or Die Hard is called "Die Hard: Dearest Life." At least the translations didn't come out as a vulgar slang for female genitalia.

Ron Paul vs. Stephen Baldwin on marijuana legalization

2009-03-16T17:21:00.002-04:00

This wasn't exactly a fair fight...

Some hope for the banking industry?

2009-03-15T13:31:00.002-04:00

Warren Buffet is optimistic for our banking industry. He gave a three-hour appearance on CNBC this past Tuesday, and his central argument was summed up by a blogger at The New Yorker:

The key to understanding Buffett's less-than-apocalyptic take on the banks is the idea of the spread: the gap between the interest rate banks can charge for the loans they make and the interest rate they have to pay for the money they borrow -- from depositors or other lenders. When the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates, particularly when they slash them as aggressively as they have in the past year, spreads widen, so that every loan a bank issues becomes more profitable. And that's especially true today, because the risk aversion of investors and financial institutions has meant that the interest rates on loans have fallen less than they normally would have, given the steep decline in the fed funds rate.

Buffet argues that, given this profitable spread, and given the tiny amount of dividend payments that the banks are currently paying out, banks should be able to recapitalize themselves by hunkering down and waiting. Here's hoping he's right. The next few months may answer the question.

Is Western Civilizaiton on Israel's shoulders?

2009-03-13T17:17:00.003-04:00

Brendan O'Neill, writing in the American Conservative, has an interesting article criticizing the many people who reduce Israel to a pawn in a grand, and dangerously simplistic, war against militant Islam. Sone key points:

A new band of writers is continually infusing the squalid wars in the Middle East with a historic, end-of-days momentum. Where many of us recognize that the Israeli-Palestinian clash is a hangover from the national conflicts of the Cold War era, and one that has been exacerbated by the partitionist, divisive politics of the “peace process” instituted by Washington, the Israel-as-Enlightenment lobby sees it as a civilizational war in which Western values might be crushed by the enemies of progress...

It is of course true that Jews have contributed enormously to history, literature, and culture. Yet as Richard S. Levy argues in his book Anti-Semitism: A Historical Encyclopaedia of Prejudice and Persecution, simple philosemitism, like anti-Semitism, also treats the Jews as "radically different or exceptional." Only in this instance, they are looked upon as the saviors of mankind, the lone defenders of civilization rather than as society’s destroyers. Where anti-Semites project their frustrations with the world and their naked prejudices onto the Jews, and frequently onto Israel, too, the new philosemites project their desperation for political answers, for some clarity, for a return to Enlightenment values onto Israel and the Jews. Neither is a burden that the Jewish people can, or should, be expected to bear.

Although he downplays some of the threats to Israel (Hizballah is much stronger than he gives them credit for, and Iran could destroy Israel were it to get nukes), and he ignores the simpler moral arguments for supporting Israel, his central thesis is strong. From the simplistic perspective of the "War on Terror," all the world can be split into two camps (recall Bush's "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,"), all of the fighting is a simple one-dimensional war, and Israel is the tip of the Western spear. To someone who appreciates the nuances of international affairs and the complexities within the world of Islam, this is nonsense.

It also causes many to criticize Israel's policies either too little or too much. For those pro-Israel types who view the country as fighting on the side of angels, it becomes nearly impossible to criticize the state. To do so would destroy the illusion that, as O'Neill writes, Israel and the Jews are "radically different or exceptional" and "the saviors of mankind." It would be like poking the Greek Titan Atlas in the eye as he held the Firmament on his shoulders.

This Israel-as-savior view causes some other Westerners, on the other hand, to hold Israel to a much higher standard than any other country. These people view Israel through the lens of everything they think the West should be, and are often appalled when what they see doesn't match their ideals. This helps explain why some Westerners write of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, but they rarely accuse the US of committing war crimes when we do something like bomb a wedding party in Afghanistan, or inflict 75% civilian casualties in the 1999 Kosovo War. (To be fair, I must in large part cite Tom Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem for this idea.)

Not surprisingly, these two camps generally reflect the broader divide between those who focus on the evil of our enemies and those who focus on our faults at home. For a middle ground between these extremes in American thought, I recommend Peter Beinart's The Good Fight.

"Counterinsurgency" vs. the "War on Terror"

2009-03-10T16:10:00.004-04:00

Ganesh Sitaraman of Harvard Law School has written an excellent legal article on our approach to fighting global terrorism, emphasizing the need to craft our policies as a global counterinsurgency campaign rather than a "war on terror," or global counterterrorism campaign. I couldn't agree more. Although Sitaraman is not the first to push for this strategy, his is the first analysis I have read with such a robust legal foundation. Here's the summary:

Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military strategists, historians, soldiers, and policymakers have made counterinsurgency's principles and paradoxes second nature, and they now expect that counterinsurgency operations will be the likely wars of the future. Yet despite counterinsurgency's ubiquity in military and policy circles, legal scholars have almost completely ignored it. This Article evaluates the laws of war in light of modern counterinsurgency strategy. It shows that the laws of war are premised on a kill-capture strategic foundation that does not apply in counterinsurgency, which follows a win-the-population strategy. The result is that the laws of war are disconnected from military realities in multiple areas - from the use of non-lethal weapons to occupation law. It also argues that the war on terror legal debate has been myopic and misplaced. The shift from a kill-capture to win-the-population strategy not only expands the set of topics legal scholars interested in contemporary conflict must address but also requires incorporating the strategic foundations of counterinsurgency when considering familiar topics in the war on terror legal debates.

In addition to the central argument that we should shift from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency, Sitaraman makes a corollary that we should "disaggregate" our foreign policy--not try to lump all of our adversaries together, using a single approach for different problems. Interestingly, this leads him into a discussion of our detention polices, where he asserts that the Bush administration's approach of "globalizing detention"--treating suspects from disparate countries and backgrounds as essentially the same, by classifying them all as enemy combattants and sending them to Guantanmo--is incompatible with a foreign policy based on a waging a global counterinsurgency campaign. Money quote:

Disaggregation thus has two components: At the global level, it suggests de-linking conflict, grievances, and resources in order to contain insurgent operations to particular states or regions. Within each state or region, it suggests a robust counterinsurgency strategy of winning the population.

Disaggregation implies that the globalization of detention was and remains a misguided approach. In place of globalized detention, disaggregation suggests that detainees should be detained and tried in the state in which they are captured...[This policy] decentralizes the grievances from the global counterinsurgent state and limits their ability to link to the global insurgency. Shifting the emphasis to particular states allows for the insurgency to be treated at a local, rather than global, level.

In addition to preventing the spread of insurgent grievances, disaggregating detention forces nations to develop their own legal structures for detention, thereby strengthening the rule of law around the world. The best way for the U.S. to support counterinsurgency and state-building in Afghanistan is not to outsource Afghan detainees and legal problems to American prisons and courts, but instead to help Afghans develop their own detention and legal systems to confront their particular challenges.

This is great stuff, and I'd like to see more. As Sitaraman concludes,

It is not too late for legal scholars to join the fray and understand the relationship between counterinsurgency and the law. Counterinsurgency is the warfare of the age. Lawyers and legal scholars should not ignore it.

Try to at least get through the intro and conclusion.

A Little Light Reading

2009-03-10T16:03:00.002-04:00

The difference between the world inherited by Bush in 2000 and the scene that Obama faces today is astounding. With simultaneous crises in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Arfghanistan, and Pakistan, the new president certainly has a lot on his plate. Harvey Sicherman of the Foreign Policy Research Institute has a good overview of two of the hottest issues--Israel/Palestine and Afghanistan/Pakistan/India--and the beginnings of Obama administration policy toward each.

Think Tanks Around the World

2009-03-10T15:56:00.002-04:00

Here's an interesting review of the global phenomenon of think tanks, with a survey of the most influential ones around the world.

More on Chas Freeman's twisted morals

2009-03-09T16:17:00.008-04:00

I've written about Chas Freeman's troubling views on Israel, Saudi Arabia, and China, but the truth keeps getting stranger. Matt Welch (a libertarian) takes on some of Freeman's post-9/11 fawning over Saudi Arabia thusly:

It is possible to believe fervently that America should not exert its will onto the rest of the world, without crossing into a fantasy land wherein a country with no real press freedom, no elections, and no legal culture even allowing for anything resembling "introspection" is held up as an intellectual example from which the United States needs to learn. This is the definition of clientitis; it exhibits not a "startling propensity to speak truth to power" but rather a startling propensity to lob bouquets at dictators.

As much as I've written about Freeman's instinctive hostility toward Israel and deference toward the Saudis, his views on China are just as troubling. Freeman writes glowingly of China's role in the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but the real kicker is his soft spot for Mao. That's Mao Zedong. You know, the guy who killed more people than anyone in the history of humanity? That Mao. Read Freeman's measured words on that great, misunderstood soul:

Mao Zedong had a force and energy which none but men of equally great spiritual conviction could withstand. His animal appetites, we now know, matched his intellectual vigor. He was an object of adulation to his subjects and of mingled admiration and dread to his subordinates and intimates. While Mao lived, the brilliance of his personality illuminated the farthest corners of his country and inspired many would-be revolutionaries and romantics beyond it.

Few indeed loved Chairman Mao's style of governance, but all but a few of those who despised it most loved the People's Republic he had founded more and hated him less than they feared him.

Like Freeman's supporters, I too hope for a new approach to the Israel-Palestine question under the Obama Administration, but there are plenty of qualified individuals to lead the National Intelligence Council who don't display such a warped moral outlook as Chas Freeman. Even Human Rights Watch, no shill for Israel, agrees that Freeman's views are out of touch with America's mission abroad:

"A capacity to make moral distinctions may not be a prerequisite for being a good intelligence analyst," [HRW's Washington advocacy directory] Tom Malinowski said. "But for such a high-profile appointment, it would still be wise for President Obama to weigh the message sent by choosing someone who has so consistently defended and worked for the clenched fists the president so eloquently challenged in his inaugural address."

Chas Freeman doesn't know much about history

2009-03-09T12:30:00.004-04:00

Andrew Sullivan has been arguing that Chas Freeman merely displays healthy criticism of Israel. But when Freeman has shown such a glaring ignorance of history when it comes to Israeli-Arab relations (a subject in which he should be an expert), consistently condemning Israel for nonexistent faults and denying its virtues and accomplishments, I have to say that his behavior looks more like instinctive hostility than healthy or honest criticism.

I'll cite two examples of Freeman's troubling tendency to lie, or come very close to lying, on the subject of Israel. In 2006 Freeman presented the following analysis of the root causes of 9/11:

We have paid heavily and often in treasure for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago, we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home.

Now, basically everyone else who has studied this issue has come to the opposite conclusion: Israel is a tertiary issue for the Bin Ladens of the world, who care much more about America's support for hated secular Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia, of whom Freeman considers himself a "friend." Richard Clarke said the following, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg:

If you look at Al Qaeda's own writing and their public statements, Israel was not a major theme. What they say is pretty clear. They want to eliminate the presence of the 'far enemy'--us--from the Islamic world, because the far enemy props up the 'near enemy,' the moderate Arab states. If they increase the pain on us, they believe that they can topple the Arab regimes. If Israel didn't exist, they'd be doing the same thing.

This is the consensus view on Al Qaeda's ideology. Among serious scholars, Freeman's Israel-centric theory finds almost no support.

Second are Freeman's views on the nature of Arab-Israeli peace agreements. In defense of Freeman, Andrew Sullivan writes that Freeman doesn't "ignore peace treaties," as though this represents some baseline of historical honesty, but the statement by Freeman that Sullivan then admiringly quotes is not much better:

For almost forty years, Israel has had land beyond its previously established borders to trade for peace. It has been unable to make this exchange except when a deal was crafted for it by the United States, imposed on it by American pressure, and sustained at American taxpayer expense.

Never mind that such a statement only makes logical sense if you first assume Israel must be to blame for the existence of the Arab-Israeli conflict (because otherwise the statement could just as easily be a condemnation of the Arabs for their unwillingness to make peace without American hand-holding), the statement is not even true. Israel had made three famous peace agreements with its neighbors: with Egypt (1978-79), with the PLO (1993), and with Jordan (1994). In the first two cases, the US inserted itself into peace talks that were already going on, for the benefit of American prestige in the region. On the heels of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Henry Kissinger actually prevented Israel and Egypt from coming to an agreement until he could get there and "facilitate" it. In the lead up to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, Norway had a far more important role to play than the US did, mediating between the Israeli government and the PLO for years before America has any word of such contacts. (I suggest Ken Stein's Heroic Diplomacy on the Israel-Egypt talks and David Makovsky's Making Peace with the PLO on the Oslo Accords.)

This is the hostility toward Israel that Jeff Goldberg describes--Freeman's view of history is warped against Israel to the point that, although he doesn't deny the occurrence of famous events, he does twist those events until they are unrecognizable as the truth. Statements like "Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace" are worthy, perhaps, of an essayist or a moral philosopher. They are not the words of a man who should be America's chief intelligence analyst.

Israel's radiocative governing coalition

2009-03-09T01:28:00.004-04:00

Yossi Klein Halevi has some great analysis of Israel's political situation following last month's elections. Now is not the time for a weak and unstable governing coalition, but unfortunately it looks like that's exactly what Israel is going to get.

Bargaining with Russia

2009-03-09T01:13:00.003-04:00

Finally, we have a president who doesn't see hard-nosed international diplomacy as a form of moral relativism or surrender. Check out this article about a secret letter Obama wrote to the Russian government to help coax them into helping us out with Iran's nuclear program.

Even if this diplomatic initiative doesn't succeed in the short run, it's important that America show that the olive branch is really our preferred approach. That message got lost in all the blustering machismo of the Bush administration. I don't think our image would have improved much under a President John "We Are All Georgians" McCain, either.

"Nuance" is well on its way toward no longer being a dirty word.

The critics of Chas Freeman, and their critics

2009-03-05T15:50:00.006-05:00

Chas Freeman has been tapped to chair the National Intelligence Council, and his appointment has generated great concern over his financial background and his political leanings. To wit, Freeman served as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, heads the Saudi-funded think tank the Middle East Policy Council, sits on the board of a Chinese-government-owned oil company with major investments in Sudan and Iran, and has expressed sympathy for Chinese repression surrounding the Tienanmen Square Massacre. Such criticism has quickly ignited the argument over the power and influence of the "Israel lobby," which in this case seems to consist of five or ten (mostly Jewish) journalists. If the counter-critics spent a little more energy addressing the legitimate concerns of Freeman's critics, instead of attacking their motives, we might have a more productive conversation.

While the counter-critics talk about the intellectual dishonesty of those criticizing Freeman, they are in fact the ones making ad hominem attacks and ducking the true issue of whether Freeman is right for the post. Stephen Walt described the criticism of Freeman as a "despicable smear campaign" with "McCarthy-like overtones;" Matthew Yglesias called it a "politically motivated neocon hit job;" Robert Dreyfus says that it is a "thunderous, coordinated assault." (Coordinated? Really?) M.J. Rosenberg goes so far as to dismiss the arguments of one Jewish journalist because he has on "ethnic blinders." Instead of addressing the substance of the criticisms, these writers have instead attacked the honesty and motivations of the anti-Freeman critics themselves. Yglesias at least admits that, hey, these people may actually be right! For Yglesias, however, the truth of Freeman's critics is still less important than the fact that they are "persecuting Freeman in bad faith."

When pro-Israel writers make an argument, it's a "coordinated assault" and a "neocon hit job." Does that make Walt and his crew a nefarious pro-Saudi lobby? Walt claims that all his opponents are dishonest, conspiratorial, and divided in their loyalties, but that he is in fact the unvarnished voice of reason. He is free to write whatever he wants, but when his opponents do the same, they are trying to "smear people and stifle debate." And of course, anyone who agrees with him, no matter his financial connections to foreign dictatorships, must be incorruptible and unassailable as well. Anyone see a problem with this line of reasoning?

In addition to dismissing the Freeman critics out of hand with ad hominem attacks, people like Walt and Yglesias have been misrepresenting the legitimate criticism and knocking down straw-men in a further attempt to dodge the issue. They brand everyone who criticizes Freeman as applying an extremely narrow litmus test--in Walt's words, "thou shalt not criticize Israeli policy nor question America's 'special relationship' with Israel"--but this really is not the case. Israel is an issue, yes, but so are his support for the Saudis, his support for Chinese repression, and his potential financial complications. And there's a deeper point: if it's not okay for someone to come straight out of AIPAC (which, by the way, receives no funding from a foreign government) to head the NIC, then why is it okay for someone to come straight out of a Saudi-funded NGO to assume that post? We're looking for a temperate, even-handed analyst. That should exclude both people who mindlessly support Israel, and those who mindlessly oppose it. It should also exclude those who mindlessly support Saudi Arabia.

(To be fair, David Rothkopf addresses the issue honestly and still supports the Freeman pick, but he remains the exception. Jeffrey Goldberg's response to Rothkopf is here.)

It really doesn't matter what the deeper motivations of the critics are. The important question is: is what they are saying right? Given Freeman's past financial connections to, and expressions of affinity for, odious dictatorships, I'd have to say that they are. Attacking the critics for their motivations is just a way of ducking the real issue.

When the usual pro-Israel crowd rears its ugly head, Walt and his allies are apoplectic. It doesn't really matter what is actually being said, just who is saying it.

The Ballad of Turtle and Tomato

2009-03-04T21:03:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure how, but box turtles manage to be really darn cute sometimes.

Rush Limbaugh, cont.

2009-03-04T20:33:00.003-05:00

Ross Douthat puts Rush Limbaugh's status in perspective:

I don't think Limbaugh is a less serious voice for conservatism than Keith Olbermann is for liberalism. But that's because I don't think either of them should be taken all that seriously - because they're media personalities whose primary loyalty is to their image and their audience, and whose primary purpose is to provoke and get attention...

Just imagine, for a moment, how conservatives would react if four months after the worst defeat liberalism had suffered in a generation, an Olbermann (or a Moyers or a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher or whomever) showed up to deliver the keynote address at a liberal equivalent of CPAC, and during the course of his speech he blasted every Democrat who disagrees with him as a miserable sell-out, suggested that conservatives are fascists and conservatism a psychosis, lectured the crowd on the irrelevance of policy ideas to liberalism's political prospects, and insisted that the only blueprint liberals need to win elections is the one that Lyndon Johnson used to rout Barry Goldwater. And then further imagine that both before and after this speech, a series of left-of-center politicians ventured criticisms of Olbermann, only to beat a hasty and apologetic retreat as soon as he turned his fire on them. Conservatives would be chortling - and rightly so! Not because liberalism needs to purge or marginalize its Keith Olbermanns, or because impassioned liberal entertainers don't have a place in left-of-center discourse - but because when your political persuasion faces a leadership vacuum, you don't want to have it filled by someone who appeals to an impassioned but narrow range of voters, and whose central incentive is to maximize his own ratings.

Déjà vu from the Bush administration

2009-03-04T19:01:00.004-05:00

An Argentinian newspaper describes how then-Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales defended his "torture memos" in a conversation with Argentine Interior Minister Anibal Fernandez in 2007:

Fernandez said that Argentina's cooperation [in the war on terror] had a limit: he mentioned explicitly Gonzales' famous memos and explained to him the goverment's disagreement with their substance...Gonzales's amazing response was that those memos had not been conceived with public consumption in mind. [Partial translation here.]

Former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo defends his "torture memos" in an interview with the Orange County Register yesterday:

These memos I wrote were not for public consumption. They lack a certain polish, I think.

Album Pan of the Day

2009-03-04T13:37:00.003-05:00

This may be the best pan of a rock album I've ever read. From Robert Christgau's review of White Zombie's 1987 album Soul Crusher:

People consent to fascism because they think fascism will be more fun than this. They could be right.

Arguments against bank nationalization

2009-03-04T00:59:00.003-05:00

Tyler Cowen and William Isaac make cases against bank nationalization, each arguing, essentially, that the process will be too complicated and cost too much money. Cowen's solution? "Muddle through." It is often an underrated approach.

The financial crisis

2009-03-04T00:55:00.005-05:00

I highly recommend taking 10 minutes out of your day and watching this elegant educational video on the financial crisis. You'll probably learn a lot.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

If you'd like a bit more information on the numbers-side of the mess we're in, take a look here.

A "radical and lawless" presidency

2009-03-03T23:07:00.003-05:00

The more we learn about the Bush administration and how it combated terrorism, the clearer it becomes just how little that administration cared about the rule of law or the Constitution. First we learn that the CIA destroyed ninety-two interrogation tapes (for the record, that's about ninety more than we thought), then we learn that Bush claimed the right to suspend the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments at whim. Glenn Greenwald writes:

It's somewhat surreal to witness -- now that George Bush is out of office -- the avalanche of establishment media reports suddenly acknowledging today, rather explicitly, how radical and lawless his presidency was, as though we only learned of that this week with the release of these memos.

Andrew Sullivan sums up the state of affairs:

Just to recap: the last president believed that he had the inherent power to suspend both the First and the Fourth amendments, he had the power to seize anyone in the US or world, disappear and torture them, and ordered his legal goons to come up with patently absurd legal rationales for all of it. And much of official Washington carried on as normal - and those of us who actually stood up and opposed this were regarded as "hysterics".

I supported Obama in large part because he fully and forcefully repudiated this torture and lawlessness. I hope he remains true to his principles and makes a clean break from the past, because this is one of the rare instances where there is no room for compromise.

Limbaugh Full of Sound and Fury

2009-03-03T15:22:00.005-05:00

Back in September, I wrote that

McCain's pick of Palin for VP demonstrated just how much the rural, conservative Christian demographic has taken over the party, transforming the party into a massive vehicle for identity politics...The party will find itself again one day, but for now, it is following a downward path.

Rush Limbaugh's ascent by acclamation to the top of the Republican Party shows that the Republicans have not turned away from that path. Limbaugh represents the conservative, rural, religious populism that has helped turn his party into an angry, irrelevant rump of an opposition, and the Obama administration couldn't be happier to acknowledge him as its leader. It's a sad day when a party chooses an Oprah-like entertainer to lead them out of the political wilderness--sort of as though the Democrats of the 1980s and early 1990s had chosen to tie their fortunes to Jesse Jackson, rather than jumping on the centrist, and enormously successful, Clinton bandwagon. David Frum sees what is happening to his party and doesn't like it:

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

I take no pleasure in this self-destruction; we will better emerge from our current morass if we have a healthy opposition party that provides honest debate and principled criticism of Administration policies. Who in the Republican Party, other than Ron Paul, is providing that right now?

Cohen-Goldberg dust-up on Iran

2009-03-03T14:29:00.004-05:00

Roger Cohen of the NYT and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic have been engaged in a dust-up over Antisemitism and Iran, and a little more openness from each pundit would allow them to find some common group between them. A week ago, Cohen wrote about the relative stability and safety of Iran's Jewish community:

Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric. That may be because I'm a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran.

Goldberg responded by pointing out the disconnect in Muslim countries between personal behaviors and political outlooks:

It's very lovely and civilized -- Israelis could learn a thing or two about politeness from Muslims -- but it's irrelevant to their politics, or to their beliefs about what should happen to the Jewish state and its supporters.

Cohen's riposte largely ignores this point, and instead attacks the weaker arguments that "Iran=Nazi Germany" and "Iran=terrorism," though of course Goldberg never said anything of hte sort. But Goldberg refuses to grapple with one of Cohen's larger points as well: namely, that Persians differ greatly from Arabs in the political maturity and their attitudes toward Jews and Israel. Persians may not be a bunch of philo-Semites, but they probably do display less anti-Semitism than Arabs as a whole. If Cohen and Goldberg were a little less heated in their exchange, they would likely agree on this point, and I'm sure they would agree that, whatever the Iranian people think about Jews, their views are less extreme than those of their government.

Question of the day

2009-03-02T21:54:00.002-05:00

From WTTG-Fox in Washington DC:

How did top-secret blueprints for Marine One end up in Iran?

Yes, that is a good question. Turns out a defense contractor in Bethesday, MD, accidently leaked the information through improper use of a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. My question: why did a defense contractor have a P2P network connected to their most sensitive files?

Good news for the rule of law

2009-03-02T16:40:00.002-05:00

Suspected terrorist/enemy combatant/unlawful combatant Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been held in the Charleston, SC, naval brig for five years without charges, will finally receive his day in court. Last week the Justice Department indicted al-Marri, and he may be charged with multiple counts of material support for terrorism. This is an important step toward restoring some sanity to the post-9/11 American legal system. Shephard Smith put it quite succinctly on a recent FoxNews segment:

This case represents perhaps one of the two most egregious abuses of American law by the Bush administration--the other being the imprisonment and torture of US citizen Jose Padilla without charges. Like Padilla, al-Marri was held on US soil, which means that even the flimsy arguments the Bush administration made to defend their actions at Gitmo don't apply here. The Supreme Court should still hear the case, however, so that the damning decision in 2004 by a federal appeals court in Richmond, VA, supporting al-Marri's indefinite detention without charges, can finally be overturned. If the Supreme Court fails to hear the case, that decision will remain on the books, despite its obvious incompatibility with several other Supreme Court rulings, most notably that of Boumediene v. Bush. (See here for relevent discussion.)

Of course, because al-Marri was held on US soil, unlike the detainees at Gitmo, this case will not provide a direct precedent for how to deal with the Gitmo detainees when that facility is shut down. You can expect to see much more posturing and hand-wringing over their fate before anything happens to them.

Dwarfed Punk

2009-03-02T16:30:00.002-05:00

This is kind of amazing.

80's British Public Service Announcement

2009-02-25T03:34:00.005-05:00

In theory, burglary is hilarious! Until the burglar steals your candlesticks.

Check out more PSAs here.

100 dance songs, 100 dances

2009-02-24T20:09:00.001-05:00

This is a work of art.

BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

Check out my friend's blog

2009-02-24T18:18:00.003-05:00

My friend Michael Morgenstern, whose video I linked to a while back, has a new blog with his writing and films. Check out his work!

I am a Katrina Democrat

2009-02-23T17:10:00.008-05:00

I'd like to define a term, one which I was surprised did not come up in a Goggle search: Katrina Democrat. Specifically, these are the voters who broke with the Bush administration after the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina, a break that was cemented in place when Bush nominated the underqualified but fiercely loyal Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court just three weeks after Michael Brown resigned as head of FEMA.

Katrina broke even the thinnest thread of trust between me and the Bush administration. I had still voted for Bush after the Abu Ghraib scandal, because I had believed the explanation that it was an isolated incident perpetrated by "a few bad apples." Surely it wasn't the result of a reckless and widespread secret torture program that came all the way from the White House and had been in place for years by the time the Abu Ghraib story broke? Surely the President deserved some benefit of the doubt? Like a lot of people, I want to trust my public officials. I want to believe that people mean what they say, even when I think they're crazy. But after Katrina, no more. There was now almost no limit to what I would believe about the follies of the Bush presidency. There was no more benefit of the doubt.

I knew that Katrina was the last straw in my support for the Bush administration (and, by extension, for the Republicans, who supported him vocally on most issues); then recently I read the Vanity Fair article "An Oral History of the Bush White House," and I discovered that some inside the Bush administration knew just how I felt. From MSNBCs coverage of the story:

Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin."

Katrina Democrats are important not just for their place in the Bush saga, but for their significance to the 2008 election. Generally speaking, Katrina Democrats are the large number of swing voters who voted for Bush in 2004 but supported Obama in 2008. Bush's social conservatism, hawkishness, and possible lack of intelligence were known long before the 2004 election, but he still beat John Kerry convincingly. It took the widespread perception of incompetence to push that large group of swing voters into the Democratic camp. Importantly, it was this emphasis on competence in our presidential candidates that so hurt McCain and helped Obama--after eight years of Bush, we wanted desperately to feel we could trust our president not to be asleep at the wheel, regardless of where he was steering us. With the economy declining in the fall of 2008, that trust was even more crucial. Mitt Romney might have been able to convey such an image, but McCain, with his history of intemperate outbursts and his seemingly erratic, bumbling campaign, stood no chance against the preternaturally cool Obama and his almost flawlessly-run campaign. As James Fallows wrote back in September, Obama needed to demonstrate to us competence-hawks that we could trust him to be an able chief executive. As soon as he did so, the election was over. As much as the economy, the Iraq War, or Abu Grahib, it was incompetence--epitomized by the Katrina scandal--that sank Republican chances in 2008.

Bagram update--Obama prolongs legal limbo

2009-02-23T13:32:00.007-05:00

Several days ago I wrote about the uncertainty surrounding the US prison at Bagram, Afghanistan. In a possibly troubling move, the Obama administration has stated that it will continue the Bush policy of preventing detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan from challenging their detention in US courts. I say "possibly," because we don't yet know the ultimate fate of Bagram:

Jack Balkin, a Yale Law School professor, said it was too early to tell what the Obama administration would end up doing with the detainees at Bagram. He said some observers believed that the Obama team would end up making a major change in policy but simply needed more time to come up with it, while others believed that the administration had decided “to err on the side of doing things more like the Bush administration did, as opposed to really rethinking and reorienting everything” about the detention policies it inherited because it had too many other problems to deal with.

Ultimately, we will have to come up with a legal framework for how to treat our detainees in Bagram, who currently sit in legal limbo between criminals and POWs with the protections of neither. It is simply not in keeping with Western traditions to imprison people indefinitely and give them no legal recourse whatsoever, whether in one's own country or in a foreign land. That is called "disappearing" people, and it is wrong even if we don't torture them.

We need a couple things to establish a good legal framework for detainees at Bagram. First, we need a formal status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the Afghan government. Currently all we have is a vague, two-page "diplomatic note." Among other things, such an agreement will define the legal status of Afghans or others captured within that country, and it will define the role of the Afghan judicial system in dealing with such prisoners. As long as the US, a foreign government, has exclusive rights to hold those captured on Afghan soil, then Afghanistan doesn't really have a government.

Second, we need to establish exactly how long we may hold detainees at Bagram before either releasing them, handing them over to the Afghan government, or trying them in our courts. It's fine to deny someone legal recourse if that person is a POW and knows that, within a year or two or five, the war will end and they will be free. But for those held in Bagram, no such hope exists. It is essential that we introduce some normalcy and some sanity to our legal status in that country by limiting how long we can hold people without deciding what to do with them.

An SOFA might solve this problem by granting a period of preventive detainment to US forces before detainees are transferred or released. This would be a sort of middle ground between treating our prisoners there as criminals and as POWs, and it would be well defined.

Whatever we come up with, it has to be better than the current lawlessness that Obama has inherited from the Bush administration--a lawlessness that the Obama Justice Department has, at least for the time being, chosen not to remedy.

Bank nationalization--a dangerous business

2009-02-23T11:58:00.004-05:00

Many feel that the US is already moving too far in the direction of a command economy, but amazingly prescient economist Nouriel Roubini says that temporarily nationalizing many of our banks is actually the "market-friendly" solution. This article in the Wall Street Journal is an important read for anyone hoping to understand the growing discussion on bank nationalization.

Mr. Roubini tells me that bank nationalization "is something the partisans would have regarded as anathema a few weeks ago. But when I and others put it in the context of the Swedish approach [of the 1990s] -- i.e. you take banks over, you clean them up, and you sell them in rapid order to the private sector -- it's clear that it's temporary. No one's in favor of a permanent government takeover of the financial system."

There's another reason why the concept should appeal to (fiscal) conservatives, he explains. "The idea that government will fork out trillions of dollars to try to rescue financial institutions, and throw more money after bad dollars, is not appealing because then the fiscal cost is much larger. So rather than being seen as something Bolshevik, nationalization is seen as pragmatic. Paradoxically, the proposal is more market-friendly than the alternative of zombie banks."

In any case, Republicans must now temper their reactions, he says. "The kind of government interference in the economy that we saw in the last year of Bush was unprecedented. The central bank -- supposed to be the lender of the last resort -- became the lender of first and only resort! With our recapitalizing of financial institutions, and massive government intervention in the markets, we've already crossed a significant bridge."

As in any choice between pragmatism and principle, we must look beneath the surface for all the potential repercussions of our actions--pragmatism is always the right choice if we only consider obvious or short-term consequences. In this case, two concerns spring to mind. First, what kind of precedent will we set by nationalizing banks, and how much more likely will the government be to spring to that decision in the future? Second, will the federal government be able to extricate itself effectively and completely from the financial sector after the process is begun? Strict, and I mean strict, safeguards will have to be in place to ensure this happens, because governments don't usually like giving up control. A slightly more detailed blueprint of Roubini's plan is here.

This situation demonstrates why human institutions of any sort are so inherently fragile--we will always mess something up somehow, and when we do, the temptation will always be to abandon principle for pragmatism. Sometimes that will be the right choice, sometimes not, but it's not always possible to know in advance. During the Great Depression, many were claiming that the very idea of capitalism had failed, and it was time to look to the young and booming Soviet Union for guidance. I think we're glad we stayed the course in that debate.

Regarding bank nationalization, do we face a choice between nationalization and total economic and financial collapse? If so, then the risks of inaction clearly outweigh the risks of the new precedents we would set. If not, however, we may be better off suffering through some tough years but keeping out of this dangerous business. The success or failure of our banking industry over the next few months will likely answer this question for us. Roubini expects that nationalization will become unavoidable within about six months, and he seems to think we'll be able to do it effectively. We'll have to see if he's proven right yet again. Obama, on the other hand, remains skeptical:

Sweden...had a problem like this. They took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and, a couple years later, they were going again. So you'd think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here's the problem; Sweden had like five banks. [LAUGHS] We've got thousands of banks. You know, the scale of the U.S. economy and the capital markets are so vast and the problems in terms of managing and overseeing anything of that scale, I think, would -- our assessment was that it wouldn't make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country. And we want to retain a strong sense of private capital fulfilling the core investment needs of this country.

It's nice to know we have a conservative president for a change. If we do end up having to nationalize our banks temporarily, I'm happier knowing we have a president whose prudent instinct is to oppose it.

The Death of Print Journalism?

2009-02-23T11:09:00.004-05:00

In response to all the discussion a couple weeks ago about the decline of print journalism, sparked in part by a major (and very widely panned) article by Walter Isaacson in Time Magazine, you should check out this New Republic profile on Politico magazine, a publication that may be leading the way toward the future of journalism. I do expect paper journalism largely to disappear, though that doesn't mean that big newspapers won't continue to exist online. I think we'll continue to see a convergence of the blogosphere with major publications, as exemplified by Politico and the Atlantic, and those publications will compete for big-name bloggers the way the Red Sox and the Yankees compete for pitching. (The TNR article describes these commodities as "brand-name reporter-bloggers.") I think we may also see, for better or for worse, a blurring between news and opinion. I know I can learn just as much about the Middle East from a long article by Jeffrey Goldberg or Michael Totten as I can from the NYT or the WaPo, and I have a feeling millions of other consumers of online news feel the same way.

Unfortunately, I don't see any way to avoid the increasing fragmentation of American culture. Not only will we continue to get our news from different sources according to our political bent, we'll also get it according to our job and city. Politico could only function in Washington D.C., as its ad revenue comes mainly from lobbyists. I also don't see how we can avoid a decline in investigative journalism, especially that overseas. So far no one has come up with a business model that can pay for it all.

The Perils of EU Integration

2009-02-23T11:03:00.002-05:00

The mystery of Ireland's worst driver has been revealed.

Amazing underwater creatures

2009-02-18T16:11:00.005-05:00

Check out this video of a TED talk by David Gallo--very entertaining.

Peter Schiff argues against the stimulus on CNN

2009-02-18T15:43:00.003-05:00

Peter Schiff doesn't seem to convince the CNN anchor interviewing him, but his argument against the current stimulus bill shouldn't be discounted lightly. Schiff, after all, has become famous as the economist who came on all the news and talk shows a year ago and predicted almost every element of the financial crisis. Here's hoping he's being too hard on Keynsian economics.

"Oddly Specific Museums"

2009-02-17T04:12:00.002-05:00

Check out mental_floss for a funny and interesting collection of "oddly specific museums" dedicated to narrow slices of Americana. My favorite: the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.

Is Bagram the new Gitmo?

2009-02-13T16:07:00.006-05:00

With public debate fading over the plans to close the prison at Guantanamo, some are starting to shift their focus to another, potentially more troubling site: Bagram Prison, Afghanistan’s version of Abu Grahib and Gitmo rolled into one. Should Bagram be shut down as well? What is the legal status of the prisoners there? Is there such a thing as a true prisoner of war in Afghanistan?

At the heart of the discussion is how far the writ of habeas corpus extends. In simpler times, this question was easy to answer: the writ obtains in the realm of law enforcement, not of war. But this was back in the days when a bright line existed between war and law enforcement. The progression of modern warfare, combined with our reaction to 9/11, has blurred that line. Our soldiers now engage in open-ended, asymmetric fighting without a formal declaration of war, making it hard to determine whether those we capture should be treated as prisoners of war or criminals.

The Supreme Court struggled with this question in Boumediene v. Bush (2008). The arguments exposed how hard it may be to make such a judgment, especially for combat zones like Afghanistan:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: So to determine whether there's jurisdiction, in every case we have to go through a multifactor analysis to determine if the United States exercises not sovereignty, which you've rejected as the touchstone, but sufficient control over a particular military base?…And it is going to decide in some cases whether the control is sufficient and others whether it isn't? And that is a judgment we the Court would make, not the political branches who have to deal with the competing sovereignties in those situations?

Seth Waxman, counsel for the petitioners, explained:

A habeas court could simply say whether we do or don't technically have jurisdiction under battlefield circumstances or circumstances involving foreign detainees in a zone of occupation where active hostilities occur, it is inappropriate under the separation of powers for us to intervene.

Basically, there’s no hard and fast rule for determining when detainees should enjoy habeas rights. This case concerned men held at Gitmo, and Mr. Waxman said it was a “uniquely straightforward case” because of the complete, peacetime US control over that site. In essence, it is an extension of US territory where US law should apply. (Five of the nine justices agreed with him)

How then do we define Bagram? Is it a wartime prison camp, or is it, like Gitmo, simply an extra-legal American prison set up on foreign soil to avoid the scrutiny of our legal system? In active war zones, armies routinely set up temporary sites to house prisoners before a permanent solution is found for what to do with them. One could argue that all of Afghanistan qualifies as such, but Bagram has clearly been set up as a permanent prison to jail suspects indefinitely. Once we reach that point, we run into the same legal problems we have with Gitmo. The Bush administration’s position (as stated in the Boumediene oral arguments), that combatants may be “picked up on the battlefield, and they may be detained indefinitely without proving they committed a crime,” is simply not tenable.

As far as I can tell, we haven't yet figured out how to distinguish properly between war and law enforcement in an age of asymmetric warfare. The Bush administration failed miserably in addressing this complicated question--the only answer they came up with was "they get to see a lawyer when I say so." I expect Obama to have a smarter answer, but it's a troubling sign that we are still planning to almost double the size of the Bagram Prison.

The Benefits of an Ivy League Education

2009-02-10T07:51:00.004-05:00

The other day I visited Harvard, still in the midst of my long job search, and I tried to find a recruitment fair hosted by the CIA, which I had just heard about. I asked a group of three students walking into a building on Harvard Yard if they knew where I might find a campus event hosted by the CIA. Here's how the conversation proceeded:

Her: The what?
Me: The CIA.
Her: What's that?
Me: The Central Intelligence Agency.
Her: [Laughing.] Oh! I study art history, so... [She trails off.]

As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up.

A-Rod, steroids, and the nature of sports records

2009-02-10T04:40:00.008-05:00

Alex Rodriguez being interviewed by Peter Gammons.
(Photo Credit: ESPN.)

For those who haven't heard, Alex Rodriguez admitted to using steroids during the years 2001-2003, while on the Texas Rangers. Although the story is clearly a big deal, some pundits are misrepresenting the threat that this poses to baseball records. I think ESPN's Jayson Stark, for instance, goes a bit overboard with his headline, "A-Rod has destroyed game's history."

Stark and others often talk about baseball records as though they have some magical power to launch players into baseball heaven or to secure those players the undying praise of the less-educated masses of baseball fans. If this were really the case then it would be an act of cosmic injustice for a player to hold a record unfairly. But records don't hold that kind of power--they only have as much significance as we give them. Records are just numbers; they are not judgments, and they are not interpretations. Those tasks are left to human beings. To use Stark's example, if several years from now the 1- and 2-spots on the all-time homer list are held by A-Rod and Barry Bonds, both steroid-users, it will be annoying and sad, but it will not "destroy baseball's history." No one is forcing us to heap praise on people we think don't deserve it.

The same argument can be made about other asterisk-laden records, including the most famous of all, 61*. Sure Roger Maris in 1961 broke Babe Ruth's single-season home run record during a season that was 8 games longer than in Ruth's day, but so what? The sport changes. Nobody's claiming Maris was a better hitter. As long as fans remember the change in season length, then Ruth will still receive his just praise.

Naked statistics have only so much weight. The real tragedy of the A-Rod scandal is not that it makes record-keeping harder but that it damages the integrity of the game and the trust between players and fans. As for the numbers, I think we're smart enough to recognize an asterisk when we see one.

A Musical Suggestion

2009-02-09T15:56:00.004-05:00

Make a playlist of your life.

Let me elaborate. Many years ago I realized that from time to time, a song would become strongly associated with a particular memory; every time I would hear that song, I'd be immediately transported back to that one time when I was listening to it--on the beach, in the car, at a friend's house, wherever. Then a couple of years back I decided to compile all the songs into one iTunes playlist and arrange them chronologically according to memory. When I form a new song-memory association, I add the song to the list, but when I realize that an association has faded away, I remove the song. Right now I'm at 54 songs.

Try it, and then listen to the songs straight through. You will relive your life through music.

News for trivia-buffs

2009-01-30T02:52:00.008-05:00

The southern Greenland town of Qaqortoq.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia.)

You might remember that the largest-in-area country in Europe is not Spain, or France, or the Ukraine, but the unlikely Denmark, thanks to its possession of the huge island of Greenland. I've seen the question come up on Jeopardy. Well, trivia-buffs, you can only hold onto this choice factoid for a few more months--in June, Greenland will become an independent country. At that point, France will be the biggest country in the European Union.

Don't worry, though--the extinct piece of trivia will be replaced by a new one: with 0.026 people per square kilometer, Greenland will be far and away the least densely populated country on Earth: sixty-five times less dense than the next sparsest country, Mongolia.

Does finding this stuff cool make me a nerd?

Aharon Barak and the rule of law

2009-01-30T01:51:00.005-05:00

Aharon Barak, former President of the Supreme Court of Israel, wrote perhaps the most beautiful and concise plea for the preservation of our laws as we fight lawless enemies.

This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the rule of law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they strengthen its spirit and allow it to overcome its difficulties.

Goosebumps! It doesn't get much better than that. Will.i.am, are you available to make another music video?

Andy Griffith explains the rule of law in 63 seconds

2009-01-30T01:46:00.003-05:00

A clip from the Andy Griffith Show:

"The law can't use this kind of help, because whether a man is guilty or innocent, we have to find that out by due process of law." Amen.

Gitmo detainees: are they really mutant supermen?

2009-01-29T15:22:00.004-05:00

The latest political dance over the future of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, prompted by President (!) Obama's promise to close the military prison within the year, has exposed one of the most troubling intellectual currents to rise from the ashes of 9/11: the idea that present Islamist terrorists are qualitatively different from all other wrongdoers whom civilization has faced before. It was this view that led people like Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Bybee, Bush, and Rumsfeld to decide that the suspected terrorists we captured should be held in legal black holes (a feat made easier by holding them on foreign territory--e.g. Gitmo), denied access to legal representation or even the Red Cross, tortured, and thrown into tiny cells with no hope of ever being released or standing trial.

Recently Congressman Steve King (R-IA) made the following statement, further demonstrating this point of view:

Let’s just say that, that, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, is brought to the United States to be tried in a federal court in the United States, under a federal judge, and we know what some of those judges do, and on a technicality, such as, let’s just say he wasn’t read his Miranda rights. … He is released into the streets of America. Walks over and steps up into a US embassy and applies for asylum for fear that he can’t go back home cause he spilled the beans on al Qaeda. What happens then if another judge grants him asylum in the United States and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is on a path to citizenship.

Jon Stewart continued the though experiment on Monday's The Daily Show:

Then, let's say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed runs for Congress. He wins because he's an expert on terror. Then a couple years later a crazy governor makes him a Senator. Then as Senator he hypnotizes everyone and takes over the army. Now he has access to Area 51, and here's where it gets weird. He uses alien technology to seduce Scarlet Johansson and only Will Smith can stop him.

Let's stop treating these detainees as mutant supervillains who must be treated differently from every criminal who came before, and remember who we are. We are a Western democracy, and Western democracies have come up with two ways of classifying people we capture: as criminals, or as prisoners of war. We have always treated as criminals those who kill outside the legal context of war, but after 9/11 our leaders chose to throw centuries of legal tradition out the window and replace it with the kind of lawlessness we claim to oppose.

Look at our treatment of terrorists before 9/11--Ramzi Yousef and the other perpetrators of the 1993 WTC attacks, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and Eric Rudolph--all these people were treated as criminals, as murderers, and we tried them accordingly. All of them are in jail or dead, none of their trials exposed vital national security secrets, and none of them "is on a path to citizenship." (And if you want a hardened supercriminal, look no further than Rudolph--he survived off of acorns and salamanders in the Appalachian wilderness while authorities scoured the area all around him--for six years.) As Jon Stewart elaborates, we Americans are quite good at keeping prisoners imprisoned:

You know I'm hearing a lot of fear here, Congressman, Senators...I know you guys are freaking out. But you know what we in these Unites States do better than anyone? Imprison people...We're number one! But these detainees are the worst of the worst, the creme de la crud, they want to kill Americans. Yeah, unlike our current inmate population of jaywakers, creampuffs, and boyscouts, who only want to hug Americans. [Cut to images of McVeigh, Charles Manson, and a guy talking about eating someone's brain.] We can't handle these piddly punks from Guantanamo?! I'd put a good old-fashioned USA-born-and-raised brain-eater against any of those motherf***ers.

The idea that it just too durn dangerous to house these suspected terrorists anywhere on US soil is absurd. Not only is it absurd, it's an evasion. These detainees were not taken to Guantanamo Bay because it was a more secure facility than any of our military brigs; they were taken there so they would not receive the same legal and humanitarian attention as prisoners on US soil. Transporting them to American prisons now would bring them one step closer to American courts (no, military commissions don't count), and then we would have to come to terms with the lawlessness and torture we allowed to grow within our supposedly sound legal system. That is something that many Americans, especially Congressional Republicans, cannot do.

Some of these men deserve to rot; some of them are murderers, bombers, torturers, or beheaders. But we have dealt with such wicked men before, and our legal system is robust enough to confront the challenge of Al Qaeda now. The values and institutions that served us before will serve us again; we don't need to become like our enemies in order to fight them. As Louis Brandeis said, "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." Let us bring these people to our shores, try them fairly, discover what has been done in our name, be it just or unjust, and begin to unwind the trauma of 9/11.

Moral Equivalency Watch at The Economist

2009-01-12T16:25:00.005-05:00

Regarding the violence in Gaza, The Economist recently wrote:

At heart, this is a struggle of two peoples for the same patch of land. It is not the sort of dispute in which enemies push back and forth over a line until they grow tired. It is much less tractable than that, because it is also about the periodic claim of each side that the other is not a people at all—at least not a people deserving sovereign statehood in the Middle East.

While there is some truth to The Economist's statement that "at heart, [the Gaza conflict] is a struggle of two peoples for the same patch of land," the moral equivalence used to describe that conflict does not reflect reality. I myself have criticised Israel for taking far too long to conclude that the Palestinians were a people deserving of statehood, but it cannot be said that Israelis still maintain that delusion. Israelis by and large realized that the Palestinians deserved a state about twenty years ago, at the time of the First Intifada; the reverse cannot be said of the Palestinians, let alone Hamas. So when The Economist talks about "the periodic claim of each side that the other is not a people at all—at least not a people deserving sovereign statehood in the Middle East," they are accusing both sides of a wrongdoing committed, in truth, only by one.

Same-sex marriage video

2009-01-05T15:16:00.004-05:00

Here's a short video supporting same-sex marriage, from my friend Mike Morgenstern. Enjoy!

When is an organization "terrorist?"

2009-01-05T14:03:00.010-05:00

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has led me to revisit the issue of which organizations we label "terrorist." Many supporters of Israel point out, rightly, the double-standard of referring to Al Qaeda or the ETA as terrorist organizations but to Hamas and Islamic Jihad as militant organizations. An easier, more consistent, and more intellectually honest solution than applying the "terrorist" label to such Palestinian groups is not to use the word at all. We should stop using the word terrorist to refer to organizations, except in a legal-diplomatic context.

The tactics of an organization must be distinguished from its goals, and although the t-word logically describes the former, its usage is often connected to the latter. That is, one is less likely to label a group "terrorist" if one sympathizes somewhat with the group's cause. Thus the term terrorist has become less of a descriptor of tactics and more a label of condemnation, for us to apply or not apply according to our sympathies. Let's all agree that a group that targets civilians and whose members wear no military uniforms should be universally condemned as committing acts of terrorism. But let us also agree that a group should further be defined and judged by its mission, an attribute swept out of sight by the loaded term "terrorist." A separatist group in Sri Lanka, a religious cult in Japan, an anarchist in America, and a militant Shiite political party in southern Lebanon have little in common with each other; let our language reflect this.

Not only does the terrorist label make it difficult to distinguish between tactics and goals, it is also impossible to apply consistently because of the increasingly blurred line between governments and organizations like Hamas and Hizballah. It was easier to use the term "terrorist organization" when such groups were small, disconnected from government, and often revolutionary. When such groups move into the political mainstream, however, a difficult question is raised: do we continue to use the term, thus confusing the political nature of such groups, or do we stop using the term, thus implying less condemnation of their acts? Our government's decision to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard exemplifies this confusion. If Hamas is a terrorist organization because of its military wing, then logically the entire government of Iran is a terrorist organization because of the Revolutionary Guard. Where does this process end? Its the entire government of Russia a terrorist organization for its despicable targeting of civilians in Chechnya? Clearly, the term begins to lose meaning, and we return to the orginal problem--it gets used for the people we don't like.

Hamas is a terrorist organization, yes, but they also function as a political party and provide social services for residents of Gaza. Should we give them those labels as well? Conversely, should the US government be called a global military organization because it carries out military operations around the world? Better to avoid this linguistic jungle entirely by using plain and simple descriptions. In the case of Hamas, say exactly what they are (a Palestinian fundamentalist Islamic group) and what they do, and let readers make up their minds about how to condemn them. Apply the same rule to Al Qaeda: they are a militant Islamic fundamentalist group responsible for numeorous terrorist attacks around the world. No more t-word wars, no more acrimony. Problem solved.

Moral clarity

2009-01-05T13:50:00.004-05:00

I am reminded of the incisive words of John Derbyshire from 2004, who wrote:

Well, yes, to be sure, civilization has its dirty work to do. "He [Kipling] sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them"-G. Orwell. (He knew what he was talking about, having once worked as a policeman.) Still, it is an extreme kind of moral obtuseness that refuses to notice the difference between a people who strive to minimize noncombatant casualties and a people who do their best to maximize them. I note also that when Arabs are injured in an Arab terrorist attack against Jews, they are cared for in Israeli hospitals, to which they have been transported by Israeli ambulances. Imagine the converse, if it were possible: Jewish inhabitants of an Arab country, injured in a Jewish-terrorist attack on Arabs. They would be torn to pieces by ululating mobs of Arabs, and the pieces would be paraded triumphantly through streets crowded with laughing revelers, the whole thing broadcast on Al-Jazeera to general rejoicing around the Arab world.

There you have the difference between civilization and barbarism. If you can't see it, I can't help you: You are morally blind.

Such moral clarity of course does not justify all the acts of a liberal democracy, nor does it render them wise. Still, it is important to keep in mind.

Israel and the critics

2009-01-05T12:58:00.007-05:00

What does total war do to civilized people, Gideon Levy asks in Haaretz? Terrible things to be sure. But what does living under continual rocket and mortar attacks do to civilized people? As many as 30% of the residents of Sderot suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps more importantly, what does a democratic government do to its citizens when its takes no action to protect them, when its lets a foreign entity hold a percentage of them hostage, when it tells the residents of one of its poorer towns, you're not important enough for us to defend? The contract between a government and its citizens can ill-afford such behavior. As poisonous as it is to devalue the lives of foreigners, is it not more poisonous for a government to devalue the lives of its own citizens?

I've been reading Andrew Sullivan's posts on the Gaza conflict, and thought I have found some to be spot on, almost all of them have searched for a hidden strategy while missing this simpler justification--the attempt by a democratic government to fulfill its most basic pledge to its citizens. Hamas allowed a certain level of rocket and mortar fire into Israel all throughout the most recent "truce." How many of its citizens should Israel allow to be terrorized, wounded, or killed, before taking action? The idea that this conflict was unprovoked, or that it was a war of choice similar to America's invasion of Iraq, explicable only by resort to some sort of abstract grand strategy made irrelevant by common sense, is ludicrous. A government must act when its citizens cannot live safely on their own land, and that is exactly what Israel has done. Any attempt to degrade Hamas's ability to make war thus makes perfect sense.

Israel only has painful choices at this point, and must chart a middle course between the more dangerous extremes. As total as this war may seem, it still maintains limited goals: we don't see an Israeli government attempting to extinguish the Palestinian national movement as it did in Lebanon in the 1980s. We will not see a destruction of Palestinian society or an indefinite occupation of large swatches of the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, the idea that Israel has gone "pitch black over the abyss," as Levy writes, is absurd. Ninety-two civilians have died so far in the current assault, less than 25% of the total dead. Although tragic, that number represents an enormous attempt by Israel to avoid civilian casualties. Keeping such casualties below 25% in an air assault against targets who hide among civilians is almost unheard of. Compare this to NATO's 1999 bombardment of Serbia, when civilian casualties exceeded 75%.

The opposite extreme--doing nothing--is unsustainable as well. Doing nothing would only encourage more revanchism among Israelis and guarantee a more right-wing government in the near future. Analyses by Andrew Sullivan and other critics of Israel's actions have ignored this fact.

For my part, I tend to doubt whether the assault will extract any serious concessions form Hamas--they may simply possess an ideology unmovable but by the word of Allah himself. And like others, I fear the adverse outcomes of hoping for Fatah to swoop in to finally dislodge a weakened Hamas from Gaza--Israel might be hurting that cause by encouraging Palestinians to view Fatah as collaborators who helped with, or at least silently supported, the assault on Gaza. If withdrawing from Gaza doesn't work, loosening restrictions doesn't work, tigthening restrictions doesn't work, truces don't work, and all-out war doesn't work, the last option may be the the current one. In this context of bad and worse choices, what option does Israel have other than a limited military engagement that attempts to degrade Hamas's ability to make war while keeping civilian casualties as low as possible?

Unfortunately I see no likely political solution to this conflict, and consequently I hope it ends as soon as Israel determines it has achieved a significant military objectives, and with as little more loss of civilian life as possible. In the long run, the only plausible solution I see is a technological one--the Tacical High-Energy Laser currently under development by the US and Israel, which will hopefully be able to shoot down mortars and rockets, thus neutralizing the threat from Gaza and eliminating the need for more Israeli incursions. As fanciful as this may sound, it may be more likely than genuine political change in Gaza, whose residents and whose rulers, to paraphrase Abba Eban, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

News from DC

2009-01-05T12:39:00.003-05:00

It's taking a bit longer for me to get settled in my adoptive city than I would have hoped, which is responsible for my long drought of blogging. Hopefully that will change, and I'll let you know if it does. In the meantime, I have a few thoughts on the situation in Gaza and on the use of the word "terrorist."

Getting settled in Washington

2008-11-25T02:45:00.004-05:00

I made the drive down to Washington on Thursday night. I was thrilled to see my first snow of the season, but I was disappointed that it had to come while I was on the New Jersey Turnpike, the snow drifting down in hypnosis-inducing swirls in front of my headlights. After making it through Delaware and into Maryland, I discovered a modern wonder: gasoline for $1.80 a gallon, at a Flying J station off of I-95. Drive over to 39°37'32"N, 75°57'00"W in North East, Maryland, to witness it for yourself, but hurry! I heard gas prices are going to come back up soon.

I'm currently staying with family just outside the city, and I've been driving around a lot, running errands and looking at places to live. It's always interesting to drive around for the first time in a city you've already visited on innumerable occasions. The first reaction is: man I wish I had a GPS-navigator! Accidentally merging onto an expressway with no exits until you're 2 miles past your destination and then winding up on the wrong side of the Potomac because the odd sequence of no-turn signs prevents you from retracing your steps reinforces this desire. Eventually, though, the mishaps become less frequent and you start to get to know the city in a way you didn't before.

Here's to life after college; here's to feeling at home.

Major legal victory against terror-financing

2008-11-25T02:21:00.004-05:00

After more than a decade of investigations and one mistrial, a Dallas federal jury has found all the defendants in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing case guilty of funneling millions of dollars to the terrorist organization/political party/government Hamas. The HLF was the largest Islamic charity in America until the US government shut it down in December 2001 amidst accusations of connections to Hamas.

This is a major victory for the US legal system in combating terror-financing, especially coming after the disheartening mistrial of the same case in October 2007. It should serve as a building block as we construct a long-term strategy to combat terrorism legally, financially, politically, and militarily.

A real live Furby

2008-11-21T15:05:00.004-05:00

In other primate news, scientists have discovered what must have been the inspiration for the Furby. The primate is called the pygmy tarsier and was thought to have been extinct for decades. Read about it at Discover's blog.

(Photo credit: Discover Magazine)

Did hobbits exist?

2008-11-21T13:55:00.007-05:00

Did this...

(Photo credit: Daily Mail)

...give us the idea for these?

(Photo credit: Toymania and New Line Cinema)

In the past several years, scientists have discovered fossils in Indonesia that may belong to an extinct, diminutive race of hominids. Researchers have named the potential species Homo floresiensis, and the nickname "Hobbit" quickly took hold. The race may have lived as recently as 10,000 B.C., astonishingly recent compared to when all other non-human species of the genus Homo (such as Neanderthals) died out. By comparison, the general consensus is that Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago, and humans entered the Americas 14,500 years ago.

My friend Mark made a fascinating observation: this discovery may mean that hobbits, dwarves, and elves really existed. That's not to say that magical creatures once lived under rocks and trees, rather that an actual memory or tradition of a race of tiny people may have informed our current mythologies of those creatures. 10,000 B.C. is recent enough that it's conceivable that some traditions and memories from that time persist to this day, albeit in altered forms.

It's possible, of course, that our current mythologies have nothing to do with this race of hobbits. Perhaps Homo floresiensis lived in such a small range that word of their existence did not spread far. And perhaps this is all just a bunch of Jungian nonsense. Still, the idea that we might not have completely made up hobbits, elves, and dwarfs is an enchanting thought.

Democrats, the economy is in your hands

2008-11-21T13:31:00.006-05:00

An enlightening, if pessimistic, exchange on Bloggingheads between conservative David Frum and libertarian Brink Lindsey about the economy, the Democrats, and the Republicans:

From Reagan to Palin

2008-11-20T03:58:00.004-05:00

Compare the following exchanges. The first took place during a 1984 presidential debate between Reagan and Mondale:

Fred Barnes: Mr. President would you describe your religious beliefs, noting particularly whether you consider yourself a born-again christian, and explain how these beliefs affect your presidential decisions?

Reagan: Well, I was raised to have a faith and a belief and have been a member of a church since I was a small boy. In our particular church we did not use that term, "born-again," so I don't know whether I would fit that particular term. But I have, thanks to my mother (God rest her soul), the firmest possible belief and faith in God, and I believe as Lincoln once said that I would be the most stupid man in the world if I thought I could confront the duties of the office I hold if I could not turn to someone who is stronger and greater than all others. And I do resort to prayer.

At the same time however, I have not believed that prayer should be introduced into an election or be a part of a political campaign--or religion [be] a part of that campaign.

The second interview took place over the phone in October between James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, and Sarah Palin:

James Dobson: Well I wanna tell you that I'm one of those great fans too and I just want you to know that Shirley and I praying for you, for your safety, and for your health, and that God's perfect will will be done on Nov. 4. Shirley just had a prayer event--she's chairman of the National Day of Prayer--and we had 430 people here for the weekend. They prayed for the whole weekend. It was not a political event, but we were sure asking for God's intervention.

Palin: Well it is that intercession that is so needed and so greatly appreciated and I can feel it too, Dr. Dobson, I can feel the power of prayer and that strength that is provided through our prayer-warriors across this nation...it's our reminder to do the same, to put this all in God's hands, to seek his perfect will for this nation and to, of course, seek his wisdom and guidance in putting this nation back on the right track.

Subtlety and humility were lost somewhere along the way.

Randy Moss, the Patriots, and Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State

2008-11-20T00:23:00.003-05:00

I think Hillary Clinton is a great choice for Secretary of State, both substantively and politically. Clinton is clearly talented, tough, and wonkish, all qualities that would serve her (and America) well in the post of SecState. It also takes her out of the Senate where she could be a formidable challenger to Obama, thus making use of the "team of rivals" strategy made famous by Abe Lincoln (and Doris Kearns Goodwin). Bill Clinton's humanitarian foundation could have proven a stumbling block for Hillary, but since he has offered to step down from running it during his wife's term as Secretary, that problem has receded far into the background.

Two smart writers, Peter Beinart and Tom Friedman, have both written articles criticizing the move--Beinart from Clinton's perspective, and Friedman from Obama's. Beinart argues that Clinton should not take the post because it makes a poor springboard to the presidency in 2016. But does she want to run again in eight years? Clinton will be in her late sixties if she chooses to run for president in 2016, and I'm not sure she'll want to do it. Being SoS will give her a great amount of executive authority and prominence, much more than her current job or than serving on the Supreme Court, another possibility that has been floated around. From her perspective, this may be her last best hope for a major international platform.

Friedman makes an even less convincing argument that the team of rivals concept is ill-suited for the position of Secretary of State. He points out that a close relationship between the President and the Secretary is essential for foreign leaders to know the Secretary has the President's full support. Friedman writes, "My question is whether a President Obama and a Secretary of State Clinton, given all that has gone down between them and their staffs, can have that kind of relationship, particularly with Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead, and the possibility that she may run again for the presidency." But Friedman misses the basic wisdom of constructing a team of rivals: it's not that a President brings in enemies who will scheme against him; rather, he'll bring on board those who have rivaled him in the past but who are close enough in viewpoints that they can now share a common cause. We're not talking about Obama appointing Giuliani as Secretary of State.

I think it's fairly clear that Obama's and Clinton's foreign policy views are close enough that they could work together; the only stumbling block would be whether personal animosities might get in the way. Events should give us a clue on this front, however: if Obama offers the job to Clinton, it shows that he's willing to work with her; if she takes the job, it shows that she's willing to work with him. The only other possibility, to my mind, is that Clinton will take the job and then undermine Obama from within his own cabinet, and that would just be too nefarious for me to imagine her doing. Undermine him from the Senate? Maybe. But once she takes the job of SoS and joins his cabinet, it's a whole different story.

An analogy: Randy Moss joining the New England Patriots before last season. Here was a guy who had had attitude problems galore, so why would the no-personal-drama Patriots (the Obama campaign of the NFL) bring him on board? The answer was obvious to me before he played a single game: Moss took a pay cut to join the Pats, and anyone who takes a pay cut to join a team he plans on undermining has more serious emotional problems than any I was willing to ascribe to Moss. All the other Moss supporters and I were proven right--he has provided little drama and made an excellent addition to the offense.

Sometimes, you know a relationship will work out from the simple fact that the two parties choose it.

Random fact for the day

2008-11-19T13:04:00.003-05:00

Frank Zappa named his kids Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. I know it was the '60s and '70s, but still...

Rahm Emanuel

2008-11-10T22:51:00.005-05:00

A great pick for chief of staff. First, picking such a high-ranking and obviously qualified individual to run the Obama White House confirms Obama's supremely serious attitude toward governance. I don't expect to see any Michael Browns in the new administration. Second, picking the sharp-elbowed Emanuel suggests that Obama plans to govern largely from the center. With a Democratic House and Senate, Obama will face challenges convincing Pelosi and Reid to compromise with their Republican counterparts; if Obama wanted a chief of staff who could twist Democrats' arms, Emanuel was the perfect choice. Republicans who decry Emanuel's partisan nature are completely missing this point: Emanuel was picked for his ability to sit on Democrats, not Republicans.

Post-election thoughts

2008-11-10T17:30:00.007-05:00

I underestimated the momentum in Obama's favor--North Carolina, Florida, and Indiana (!) all went blue. It will be interesting to see if they remain consistently so in four and eight years. North Carolina and Florida I expect will continue to lean Democratic, for demographic reasons: the influx of college-educated whites into North Carolina, a group that voted overwhelmingly for Obama last week, helps the Democrats in that state; the huge surge in support for Democrats among Hispanics is not likely to disappear anytime soon, which bodes well for the Democrats in Florida. Both these demographic and political trends play out in the three interior West states that went Democratic--Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado--so I expect those states to retain much of their Democratic lean in the future. Indiana? Who knows. I remain amazed that Obama won that state. Perhaps my girlfriend is right that McCain's snubbing of Indiana-native David Letterman contributed to his loss there.

The results of the 2008 election demonstrate well the ruralization of the Republican party over the past decade. Despite Obama's convincing victory in the popular vote--53% to 46%--this increase in popular support for a Democratic candidate did not translate into great swaths of America going blue. Looking at the New York Times's interactive maps of county leaders in presidential elections from 1992 onward, it is clear the Republican party increasingly looks to rural America for support, while Democrats are cleaning up among the well-educated, the urban, the suburban, the Hispanic, and the African-American, and the young. I wonder which base of support has more staying power?

County leaders in the 2008 presidential election, courtesy of the NYT.

A few hours to go

2008-11-04T00:23:00.004-05:00

It's a few minutes after 1 AM, we now have under 17 hours until polls close in Virginia. Soon we'll see if all our hard work will have paid off. My predictions right now are an Obama victory (not going out on a limb there, I know) with 311 electoral votes. I predict 227 for McCain. Again, not going out on much of a limb, but I'm going on the current front page of pollster.com:

I give all the yellow toss-ups to McCain. Missouri and Indiana never seemed likely to me to go for Obama. North Dakota and Montana haven't been blue in a long time, and although they might flip this time, there's just not enough polling to predict that they will. Georgia was always a pipe dream for Obama, depending on massive, but not totally impossible, turnout among black voters. Florida and North Carolina have both shifted somewhat toward McCain during recent days, and the latter is an exact tie.

The Western states of New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada have long seemed to me Obama's best bet for a batch of electoral votes that Kerry and Gore failed to win. Virginia and Ohio I thought were slightly less likely for him, but Obama is polling strong in both states. In Ohio he's up 3.8%, and in Virginia the margin is 5.7%. Both states have edged slightly toward McCain, but I don't think they've shifted enough to overcome Obama's significant lead there.

I'll be watching Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com on the CBS election night coverage. Good for them for getting him--as far as I'm concerned, he'll be the most knowledgeable person on television on election night.

The nations of BBQ

2008-10-30T09:20:00.004-04:00

Put simply, for people in the South "barbeque" means a particular type and preparation of meat, not a cookout or a grill. But the real story, as we might suspect, is much more complicated. Sinister, even. Well, not sinister, but definitely complicated. Listen to these guys explain how BBQ is prepared in the different states of the South:

Interestingly enough, there's no mention of Virginia. I guess I'll find out what Virginia-style BBQ is all about when I go out to eat tomorrow. I'll let you know.

Funny shirts

2008-10-29T16:22:00.006-04:00

I'm a big fan of those funny T-shirt sites that have been sprouting up around in the internet. Can't say I've bought any of them, but those sites are some of the funniest material on the web. I laughed hard at this one, from BetterThanPants:

And of course who could forget this classic, from BustedTees:

Everyone loves a good random cultural reference!

The ebb of the Republican party--a long time coming

2008-10-28T01:58:00.003-04:00

I've written before of the decline of the Republican party and its descent into identity politics, where all all political parties go to hibernate. Andrew Sullivan (in the NYT Magazine) and Christopher Caldwell (in the Atlantic) wrote incisive articles on this topic...ten years ago. Sullivan wrote that the Republican party of the late 1990s was dominated by

a conservatism become puritanism, a conservatism that has long lost sight of the principles of privacy and restraint, modesty and constitutionalism, which used to be its hallmarks.

Caldwell made a similar point:

The Republicans are too conservative: their deference to their southern base is persuading much of the country that their vision is a sour and crabbed one. But they're too liberal, too, as their all-out retreat from shrinking the government indicates. At the same time, the Republicans have passed none of the reforms that ingratiated the party with the "radical middle." The Republicans' biggest problem is not their ideology but their lack of one. Stigmatized as rightists, behaving like leftists, and ultimately standing for nothing, they're in the worst of all possible worlds.

And a reader of Sullivan's looks at these articles in an interesting way: he points out that it was only the accidents of the Nader candidacy, the Florida recount, and 9/11 that postponed the Republican decline to the present day.

The American people knew this instinctively as early as 2000. Remember, the public -- the narrow plurality of the people -- voted for a continuation of the moderate "Eisenhower balanced-budget Republicanism" of the Clinton years. But for various factors -- Ralph Nader, Gore's poor campaigning, Florida hanging chads -- that's what the public would have gotten in 2000. Of course, 9/11 then grafted the "fear/security" component onto the Republican message. That essentially made a Bush re-election possible. It took the 2000 election and 9/11 to create a "fluke" administration -- disastrous as it has turned out to be. But the American people knew what the correct direction of the country should be in 2000. Just think of where the budget/debt alone could be...No wonder it's beginning to look like a landslide in the other direction. The will of the people can only be be withstood for so long.

What's wrong with this picture?

2008-10-27T02:58:00.004-04:00

Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), his daughter, and a third individual leave a federal courthouse after the Senator's corruption trial last week. From a CNN article:

One of these things is not in the same emotional state as the others.

Bush's legacy in the eyes of a British Tory

2008-10-27T02:55:00.003-04:00

Boris Johnson, the conservative mayor of London, succinctly describes Bush's legacy:

Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea. To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune. To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president.

The next president has quite a hole to climb out of, at home and abroad.

Nine days out

2008-10-27T02:44:00.004-04:00

Nine days left in the election. Engines are running on all cylinders, campaign offices are staying open until well after midnight, and emotions are running high. I know it's said that more alcohol is consumed on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day, but I wouldn't be surprised if the first Wednesday of November every four years has just as many hangovers.

I've been blessed to have come into the city of Fredericksburg with so many competent, intelligent, and fun campaign workers to surround me from day one; they've made all the difference.

One last thing: anyone who has never seen a field of soy in early fall is missing out. One doesn't drive past too many of them in Boston, but Virginia has them in plenty.

Hey, let's make opposition to terrorism a partisan issue!

2008-10-22T00:30:00.003-04:00

An alternate title for this post: the staggering dishonesty or, at best, irresponsibility and stupidity on the part of a small group of pro-Israel Jews.

You may have seen or heard of a documentary called Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. This evening I discovered that a group called the Clarion Fund (founded by the movie's co-writer and producer, Raphael Shore) has been distributing millions of free DVDs of Obsession to voters in states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida, using direct-mail and newspaper inserts. (No, it's not just a coincidence that those are all swing states.) Shore is an Orthodox Rabbi with connections to various pro-Israel and Orthodox Jewish groups (including one group that helped sponsor a trip I took to Israel a few years back).

So here we have it: a group of pro-Israel Jews (no problems so far) who are concerned about the threat of radical Islam (still good) and who have mysterious financial backings (starting to sound less good) have inserted themselves into the US presidential election with a campaign sure to be interpreted as partisan (um, not so good at all). All this at a time when rumors have been circulating about Obama being a Muslim. And the film's distributors claim that their mailings are not politically motivated.

There's the staggering dishonesty. Are we really to believe that a group of right-leaning activists would send out millions of DVDs about the threat of radical Islam to voters in swing states without ever entertaining the thought that this might help John McCain?

But if we give the distributors the benefit of the doubt, then they merely stand guilty of staggering irresponsibility and stupidity. The fact is, radical Islam is a threat. It poses the greatest threat to the fabric of our civilization of any force in the world, both through demographic change (in Europe) and through the toxic effects that terrorism has on the culture of free societies. That said, the film's distributors are turning what should be a bipartisan consensus into a partisan wedge issue. That these distributors could have failed to foresee any of this is almost beyond belief.

Apparently, turning opposition to radical Islam (and support for Israel) into a Republican-only issue, right before the likely election of a Democratic president, didn't strike them as unwise.

To be clear, I don't see any legal issues with what Shore and the Clarion Fund have done, and I refrain from judging the film itself. Furthermore, I am not accusing all pro-Israel Jews of this behavior. (After all, I count myself as one.) Rather, as an American genuinely concerned about the threat of radical Islam, I'm appalled at the counterproductive effects of this distribution campaign. Issues like this need more bipartisan support, not less, but it's pretty hard for Democrats to react positively to the film's subject matter when they see it as an underhanded Republican campaign tactic. I've personally seen the reaction of Virginia Democrats to this DVD, and I can tell you that the next time they hear about the threat of radical Islam, they'll think of dishonest propaganda and Republican politics. Congratulations on the fruits of your labor, Raphael Shore.

For further reporting see TPM, CNN, or the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, PA.

Another endorsement for Obama

2008-10-21T01:58:00.003-04:00

By now, I'm sure you've heard that Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama. While Powell's endorsement will prove more newsworthy, I believe Ken Adelman's endorsement of Obama to be more noteworthy, and more interesting.

Adelman has been one of the primary intellectual forces behind the rise of neoconservatism over the past 40 years, serving on the Committee on the Present Danger during the 1970s and on the Project for the New American Century during the last decade, both bastions of neoconservative foreign policy.

To illustrate, here's Wikipedia on the CPD:
"CPD provided thirty-three officials of the Reagan administration, including Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, Secretary of State George Shultz and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. Reagan himself was a member in 1979."

To illustrate further, PNAC was co-founded by Bill Kristol.

Adelman's endorsement represents a greater intellectual journey than Powell's does; whereas Powell has always favored a realist foreign policy, similar to Obama's current platform, Adelman has traditionally associated with Paul Wolfowitz, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, and Don Rumsfeld. For him to support a Democrat speaks volumes on the failure of Bush's foreign policy.

Debate reactions, Take 3

2008-10-15T23:11:00.007-04:00

For the most part, more of the same: both candidates attacked each other on the same familiar issues, with the notable addition of Bill Ayers to the list of debate topics. And once again, McCain's attacks usually didn't stick, according to CNN's dial tracker. The gap between male and female approval ratings, however, seemed greater during this debate than during the previous two. Again and again, Obama received soaring numbers from women and almost no approval from men, while McCain achieved the exact opposite. This pattern tended to peter out as the debate wore on, but it was quite striking for the first forty minutes or so.

Now, a word on the post-debate coverage. CNN pundits discussed at length whether each candidate was on offense or defense at various points. As is so often the case in political discussions, they were making a false dichotomy, or at least an irrelevant one. Who cares whether McCain or Obama was on offense or defense when discussing a certain point? Over the past several weeks, this has proven a meaningless distinction; what matters is which candidate makes the better arguments. If John McCain goes on offense and attacks Obama on a particular issue, putting Obama on the defensive, that dynamic only helps McCain if the viewers agree with his offensive. As we saw in the previous two debates, however, John McCain's offensives failed to resonate with viewers. For the third straight time, CNN's viewer dials went way down almost every time McCain attacked Obama. John McCain can be on offense all he wants, but that's only a good thing if voters agree with him.

Another factor may also be destroying any advantage McCain hopes to secure by going on offense: much of the time, he doesn't seem to believe his own words. Ideally, a candidate gains an extra bounce in his step when he goes on the offensive, and that tends to attract more support. If that candidate looks like he's in physical pain every time he rehashes a line of attack, however, (my girlfriend's words,) that potential advantage disappears. As Nate Silver writes,

At the end of the day, one of McCain's problems is that he simply doesn't own the negativity very well. During the John Lewis sequence, during the ACORN and Ayers stuff, he came across as uncomfortable, insincere, overcoached. In certain ways, his "straight talk" brand plays against him when it seems as though he has trouble believing his own talking points.

One last point: McCain claimed that ACORN is "destroying the fabric of democracy" in America. Exaggerating much?

UPDATE: This debate produced the most lopsided insta-polls of any of the three:
CNN: Obama 58, McCain 31;
CBS undecides: Obama 53, McCain 22;
MediaCurves independents: Obama 60, McCain 30.

The bailout, in comedic-sketch form

2008-10-10T02:01:00.005-04:00

You won't find a much better summary of the causes and effects of the bailout than this sketch from Saturday Night Live. I'm impressed that SNL doled out blame where it was due, even if that meant putting some on the Democrats.

(I apologize for the ad before the video, but the sketch is worth it.)

McCain's weapon: xenophobia, not racism

2008-10-08T16:00:00.004-04:00

In response to a comment, let me clarify: I think the McCain campaign is using xenophobia, not racism, as a weapon against Obama. Although a few attacks may have had a racial tint, most of them have painted Obama as an unknown, as a stranger, as a terrorist-sympathizer, and as un-American. John Derbyshire made an excellent point along these lines in June:

If the candidate was George Obama, or Barack Washington, he would be twice as acceptable to the voting public. Cast your eye back down the list of U.S. Presidents. "Exotic" is surely one of the last words they bring to mind, even a tad behind "black".

It's not that he's black per se; rather, his non-white skin color helps to solidify the message that he is fundamentally foreign, and not to be trusted. His life story, his mixed-race heritage, and his multiculturalism all contribute to the image the McCain campaign is trying to convey.

McCain and Palin: playing with fire

2008-10-08T14:03:00.003-04:00

In the past few days the McCain campaign has dived into negative territory we haven't seen in a long time: "who is Barack Obama?" "Palling around with terrorists." "How dishonorable." "He doesn't see American the way you and I do." One can hear the subtext loud and clear: Obama is the other. He's not like you and me. He can't be trusted. He's not a true American. All of this adds up to more than simple character assassination--it has become demonization. And demonization does not encourage us to disagree with a candidate; it encourages us to hate him.

The significance of this new negativity is not just what it implies for the ethical standards of the McCain campaign, but what it means for the kind of fire that McCain and Palin are now playing with. One can already see evidence of the hateful and violent undercurrents among McCain supporters; in the past few days, supporters at McCain and Palin rallies have yelled at Obama "Terrorist!" "Treason!" and "Kill him!"

An Israeli reader of Andrew Sullivan points out the ominous parallels between the demonization of Obama on the American right today and the demonization of Yitzhak Rabin on the Israeli right before his assassination. It's a chilling thought:

There's little doubt that the crescendo of demonization toward Rabin – including accusations of treason, flyers picturing Rabin as an SS officer – and the difficulty, in a society guaranteeing free speech, of 'civilizing' the public debate before it creates a fertile bed for actual violence, all helped create the context in which Rabin's murderer decided to take matters into his own hands.

McCain and Palin of course cannot be blamed directly for the hatred their audience members display at their campaign stops, but they do bear responsibility for the tenor of their campaign and for the emotional currents it encourages. Whether or not something actually happens to Obama, the use of xenophobia to fan hatred of their opponent is a tiger the McCain campaign would do well not to ride.

The joys of Yiddish

2008-10-08T13:51:00.003-04:00

Michael Weiss has an interesting article in Slate on the meaning of the prayer Kol Nidre, recited at sundown at the beginning of Yom Kippur (which is tonight). In it, he cites what must be the funniest curse I have ever heard, from Yiddish of course:

May all the teeth fall out of your head except one, and may that one turn brown and rot.

Funniest comment of the night

2008-10-08T02:49:00.003-04:00

From Will Wilkinson:

Gut read. Obama owned it. This election’s over unless he murders and eats the flesh of a child on live television.

Debate reactions

2008-10-08T02:20:00.006-04:00

A clear Obama victory. The substance of the debate was not that interesting--it was basically all covered in the first debate. More important was the difference in style and tone of the two candidates. Once again, Obama came across as calm, knowledgeable, and perhaps most importantly, empathetic on economic matters. McCain didn't exude any of these qualities. Rather, he seemed like an angry old man ranting against "kids these days." I agree with Nate Silver on what McCain needed to do tonight:

The pundit consensus -- of which I'd tend to partake -- is that McCain needs to be steady, empathetic, and stick mostly to positive messaging tonight, but also to draw real contrasts with Obama. It's not an easy task to balance those things, and so while the format might favor him, he'd seem to have the higher degree of difficulty tonight.

McCain just didn't accomplish these goals. In the past, he has often shown great empathy and emotional connection with voters in a town hall format. His problem tonight, though, was that he could not play the roles of kind uncle and attack dog simultaneously. Bill Clinton could probably pull off a balance like that. John McCain? Not so much.

On top of that, the town hall format probably proved an overall disadvantage for McCain. The format might have helped him to connect with the audience better than he did during the first debate, but the emphasis it placed on physicality put McCain at a distinct disadvantage. For obvious reasons, Obama has a better physical presence than McCain. My guess is that this outweighed any advantage that McCain might have been given.

One more point: like many others, I'm sure, I was hypnotized by the real-time opinion tracker at the bottom of the screen on CNN. What I saw was that, for the second debate in a row, McCain did not land his punches. No matter how he chose to attack Obama--on the surge, on taxes, on experience, on wisdom--the audience simply did not buy it.

Right now, the McCain campaign is failing to win over voters with any legitimate line of attack. Will they win them over instead by convincing them that Obama is a terrorist-sympathizer, a black radical, and a friend of slum lords? I doubt it; if the Clinton machine couldn't make it stick, what chance does McCain have?

Creepy Old Ads

2008-10-06T14:33:00.008-04:00

A fantastic collection of creepy old ads.

Fareed Zakaria echoes me (!)

2008-10-06T14:21:00.004-04:00

Fareed Zakaria makes a similar point mine about the need for pragmatic thinking, not dogmatism and labeling, regarding the financial crisis:

In a world of competitive capitalism, you need not big government or no government but smart government. We are not in a race to the bottom, on wages, regulations, or anything else. But we are competing against other countries to come up with the government policies that most effectively foster growth, innovation, and productivity. It's a time to figure out what works, not what ideological mantras to keep repeating. It's the age of Michael Bloomberg, not Margaret Thatcher.

Bill O'Reilly has serious emotional problems

2008-10-05T01:29:00.004-04:00

I'm sorry, but this clip is just beyond belief. I have met Barney Frank--he's not the most easy-going fellow. But he's Mother Teresa compared to Bill O'Reilly here. All I can think after watching this is: Jesus effing Christ. What the HELL is wrong with Bill O'Reilly?

Any further comments would be pointless. Watch and be amazed.

The purpose of sports

2008-10-04T01:32:00.003-04:00

After nights like tonight, sometimes I think the role of professional sports is to exercise the adrenal glands of millions like me, whose lives would otherwise be altogether too calm.

Go Red Sox.

My neighborhood

2008-10-03T22:16:00.006-04:00

Waking up to a neighborhood like this is one of the perks of the campaign.

If Palin were a man...

2008-10-03T00:33:00.012-04:00

Here's what I wanted to hear from the post-debate commentators: "Sarah Palin showed that she can deliver flash-card responses practiced ad nauseum before the debate, but she quite clearly did not show that she can think intelligently about the major issues facing this country, and she covered up her ignorance by ratcheting up her charm level to the maximum."

That would have been the truth. Carl Bernstein, whom I have quoted admiringly before, was one of the few to approach this level of candor, saying "She certainly had some winning aspects of her personality that came through, but she was so briefed it was hard to watch sometimes." The majority of the chattering class, however, just caved. If this were a man (Derek Zoolander comes to mind) the media would have laughed him off the national stage long ago. But she is not. I don't know if they fear being labeled as sexist, or if they have actually internalized different standards for men and women, but journalists simply will not treat her like an adult. Put plainly, they will not treat her like a man. There's no other word for that but sexism. They will not spotlight her ignorance and they will not point out her complete reliance on her small-town charm schtick to get out of answering any difficult questions.

Specific to tonight, I have not heard a single person (bloggers aside) point out that Palin's lack of any major gaffes did not at all demonstrate an ability to debate. What we watched was not a debate, but rather a stage performance with little to no interaction between the candidates and no true follow-up questions. In short, the format of this "debate" allowed Palin to rally off a series of canned responses to predictable questions, and to completely ignore any unwanted ones. On top of this easy format, moderator Gwen Ifill was completely spineless, failing to challenge either candidate even once on any topic.

So Palin didn't come across as a complete idiot the way she did during the Couric and Gibson interviews, and her performance has therefore been labeled a success. A friend of mine commented, "She didn't drool on herself, but..." Yes she succeeded, but in a competition with such a low threshold for success that it's outrageous for the talking heads to pretend she actually demonstrated a mastery of policy. Palin displayed no grasp of policy and no capacity for independent though or analysis, and yet she "succeeded" because the format of the debate did not require her to think. It required her to recite, and this we know she can do. (Even if she did have to consult her notes about every ten seconds.)

I'm not so much angry at the debate itself; I just want the media to call a spade a spade.

UPDATE: According to the first batch of polls, I'm not alone in my reaction to the debate. The CBS News poll gave Biden the victory by a margin of 46% to 21%. The CNN/Opinion Research poll shows Biden winning 51-36. In the same poll, 84% of respondents thought Palin exceeded expectations. As Sean Quinn of Fivethirtyeight.com writes, "She has beaten expectations -- the lowest expectations in history."

UPDATE 2: Here's Carl Bernstein's analysis on CNN:

A reflection on Rosh Hashanah, the Diaspora, and Israel

2008-10-01T15:45:00.004-04:00

My friend Dan Greenwald is spending several months at yeshiva (religious academy) in Israel and is maintaining a travel blog while there. His most recent post--a Rosh Hashanah reflection on the Jewish Diaspora, Israel, and Jewish history--I found particularly moving. Here's an excerpt:

A few hours after arriving in Israel I joined a friend for evening prayers at the tiny synagogue in a back room at the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem. We were the only two white guys in the room. I took a look around the room when I got up to those words: “Sound the great shofar for our freedom / create a miracle to gather our exiles / and gather us together from the four corners of the earth”. Four corners of the earth, indeed. What for 1,878 years was a fantasy beyond belief was now simply another evening in a dungy room with a Torah. And now I was begging for something that had already been done.

For the 6 million Jews living in Israel – a number whose own irony is not lost on us here – the words that come after flow far easier than they did for our ancestors. “Blessed are you, the Lord, who gathers in the dispersed of his people Israel.”

Not a bad thought to keep in mind as we enter the holiday season.

Take a minute and read the whole thing.

"Now we know why the McCain campaign is hiding Palin," Part 2

2008-09-29T23:23:00.003-04:00

She may be even more of an ignoramus than any of us dared to imagine. Look at this:

Of concern to McCain's campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin's interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.

The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

No Marbury v. Madison? No Dred Scott? No Brown v. Board?! Palin knows less about US history than a high schooler.

I can't wait to watch this clip when it's released. And then I can't wait to watch the SNL parody of it.

I'm blogging on Rosh Hashanah

2008-09-29T23:12:00.003-04:00

Yes, I know. But then, I don't keep kosher either. In any case, a shana tova umetukah to all of you! ("Good and sweet new year," to the less Mosaically-inclined.)

I've always seen the period of repentance bounded by the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as a sort of study hall for the soul--a time when you're forced to do something good for you that you might not otherwise bother to do. I remember last Yom Kippur, which I spent in Jerusalem, like it was yesterday. Real repentence is hard work; I'm not sure we could do it more than once a year.

Perhaps Obama did better than I thought

2008-09-29T22:54:00.005-04:00

My immediate reaction to the debate was that Obama won by a small margin. Public opinion polling suggests the margin wasn't so small after all. From the inimitable Nate Silver:

The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

The USA TODAY/Gallup poll gave Obama the victory by at least 12 percentage points (and suggested that Obama did just as well as McCain on the foreign policy portion of the debate).

James Fallows has an astute analysis of the context of the debate:

When the details of this encounter fade, as they soon will, I think the debate as a whole will be seen as of a piece with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Reagan-Carter in 1980, and Clinton-Bush in 1992.

In each of those cases, a fresh, new candidate (although chronologically older in Reagan's case) had been gathering momentum at a time of general dissatisfaction with the "four more years" option of sticking with the incumbent party. The question was whether the challenger could stand as an equal with the more experienced, tested, and familiar figure. In each of those cases, the challenger passed the test -- not necessarily by "winning" the debate, either on logical points or in immediate audience or polling reactions, but by subtly reassuring doubters on the basic issue of whether he was a plausible occupant of the White House and commander in chief.

I think that's how this debate will be seen.

With the bad news about the bailout plan's failure, it will be hard to isolate any but the most short-term of the debate's effects. But given that Obama polled so much better than McCain on the economics portion, and given that it was McCain's party that is primarily responsible for the bailout plan's defeat, we may see the effects of the debate and the effects of the economic downturn reinforce each other.

"Now we know why the McCain campaign is hiding Palin"

2008-09-28T11:35:00.004-04:00

Ed Schultz may be onto something here. Unless the McCain camp believes that Palin is a "delicate flower that will wilt at any moment" (Campbell Brown's words), this is the only explanation I can see that makes any sense:

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people
are more than concerned about Palin.

The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."

Debate Reax Round-up

2008-09-27T02:14:00.004-04:00

It's quite late. I'm not going to produce much original commentary right now, but below are the comments I found most convincing. The one point I'll mention now concerns CNN's real-time opinion tracker at the bottom of the screen: although McCain scored favorable ratings with many of his responses on foreign policy, his popularity consistently plummeted when he spoke of his superior experience or wisdom. If the CNN tracker is representative, that can't be a good sign for him.

Marc Ambinder:

No memorable moments. Fascinating body language. No major gaffes by either candidates. No major surprises...Thresholds are artificial, but both candidates seemed to meet them - although Obama's threshold was arguably higher. The press will probably conclude that McCain did not fundamentally change impressions tonight. And that Obama held his own.

Michael Graham:

Obama wins because he didn't lose. Sen. McCain was better, but not by enough.

Kevin Drum:

Overall, McCain was more lively than Obama, but if the point of the debate was for Obama to show that he could hold his own on national security, then count it a win for Obama. I wouldn't call him a big winner, but he certainly did at least as well as McCain, and that might have been all he needed.

Matthew Yglesias:

All things considered, it’s about a draw. McCain got a couple of good punches in and so did Obama. Insofar as the idea is supposed to be that McCain has a domineering advantage on national security he certainly didn’t prove that point. And for the candidate who’s losing, a tie amounts to a loss. He needs to find opportunities to gain ground on Obama and he doesn’t seem to me to have gotten much done.

What's next for McCain's campaign?

2008-09-27T01:52:00.003-04:00

Slate analyzes the craziness of the past several days and extrapolates.

What is going on with the McCain campaign?

2008-09-27T00:51:00.005-04:00

I have to say, the past several days of the McCain/Palin campaign have been surreal. Sometime I wonder if the people running the campaign are taking things seriously--do they realize this is a race for the presidency of the United States, and not a race for junior high yearbook editor? I'll just list a few things that leave me scratching my head and wondering, what on earth is going on at McCain headquarters?

1. Mon., Sept. 15: Tucker Bounds, McCain's chief spokesman, finally gave in and basically admitted that the McCain campaign is lying when they claim that Obama's tax plan will raise taxes on most Americans. His justification for the lie? Well, look at what Obama has done in the past, and ignore his current proposals! The Obama camp might as well claim that McCain is secretly planning to invade Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea, and then defend the falsehood by saying, "Look at all the wars McCain has supported in the past! We're probably right, even if we are technically lying."

Now, even after the McCain campaign has been called out repeatedly for lying about Obama's tax plan, spokeswoman Nicole Wallace again repeated the lie when interviewed on CNN after the debate. Just unbelievable.

2. Tues., Sept. 23: The treatment of the press during Palin's meetings with world leaders at the UN seemed like something out an episode of The Office it was so absurd. First, at her meeting with Hamid Karzai, the campaign shooes the press out of the room after 29 seconds, just enough time to hear Karzai tell Palin his son's name.
Wed., Sept. 24: After Palin met with the presidents of Ukraine and Georgia, a campaign aide thought it best for Palin not to answer a single question from the press, and ushered Palin out of the room. This after McCain himself opened the floor to questions.

3. Wed., Sept. 24: John McCain "suspends" his campaign to "deal" with the financial crisis and rushes to Washington, and threatens to cancel the first debate. Of course, to McCain, "suspending the campaign" is indistinguishable from "claiming that you're suspending the campaign;" his TV ads continued right on though the supposed suspension.

The whole thing was a transparent, cynical, desperate ploy. First, try to imagine the following scene: Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd are sitting together late one night earlier this week trying to formulate a bailout plan. The conversation reaches an impasse--the problem is just too dauntingly complex. Then Bernanke's eyes light up. "McCain will fix the problem!" Dodd exclaims, "My God, how did we forget to include Washington's foremost economics expert in our discussions?" Barney Frank pulls out a bottle of champagne, and Paulson leans back and laughs. "Our problems are solved."

McCain, by his own admission, does not know very much about economics. So what exactly does he think he is going to accomplish by inserting himself into the middle of these high level discussions? Obviously, nothing. There was never any expectation that he would have any substantive input, and he didn't. There was also never any intention of sticking to his promise to postpone the debate until a plan was reached. No plan has been reached, but the debate went forward as scheduled. Point: Obama.

4. Wed., Sept. 24: John McCain tells David Letterman at the last minute that he can't make his show because he's flying to Washington right away, but then Letterman catches him taping an interview with Katie Couric when he claimed he was en route to the capital. (It gets good around the 6:35 mark.) A memo for John McCain: if you're going to lie about why you have to break an appointment with someone, don't then walk right into the same building where the guy you just lied to works. And a second memo: if you have to lie to someone and you also have to walk into that person's building after lying to him, don't then go on camera to reveal your lie with live video evidence. Sheesh.

I'm starting to get the impression that the wheels are coming off the McCain campaign. Of course, they could pull things together and run smoothly from here on out, but I'm sort of hoping they don't. I've been enjoying the comedy.

UPDATE: Here's Mark Halperin's description of what is going on with the McCain campaign: "utter confusion."

Tired and busy

2008-09-27T00:40:00.005-04:00

The problem with working on political campaigns is that you can't sit back, relax, and say "what a week." It just doesn't have much significance when you work every weekend day as well. Rather than making it through the week and treating the weekend as a time to rest and relax, one has to treat coming home each night as a substitute "weekend," albeit one that only lasts a few hours. What I can say is: what an exhausting two days. Driving hundreds of miles through pouring rain, getting lost multiple times in a state I'd never driven in before last week, hefting heavy objects in and out of the car repeatedly--it all adds up. Luckily I'll have a bit of rejuvenation tomorrow when Obama and Biden come to town for a rally in Fredericksburg. Should be exciting.

Another problem with political campaigns: not much time to blog. I don't know how the big-name bloggers out there manage multiple posts every day of the week and maintain full-time jobs as well. I guess it helps if blogging is your job. How do I join the Atlantic blog team?

One last problem: how the heck am I going to pay proper attention to the Red Sox in the playoffs these coming weeks? Truly this job demands many sacrifices.

The possibility of a tie on Nov. 4

2008-09-22T16:42:00.003-04:00

Please don't let it come to this.

Michael Crowley: Could the Election Be Decided by.... Maine Moose Hunters?

A beautiful poem: "Wild Geese," by Mary Oliver

2008-09-22T16:22:00.003-04:00

My mom showed me this poem once, and it has stuck with me. This is for anyone who has ever struggled to find their place in the world and be at peace. (That includes most of us, right?)

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
Dream Work

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Financial Crisis

2008-09-22T14:27:00.003-04:00

At the American Scene, Jim Manzi has written a great summary of the current crisis, the proposed bailout, and their consequences.

For a great slideshow explanation of the mortgage crisis, click here. (And oh, the artwork!)

Andrew Sullivan is not impressed much by either presidential candidate's response to the crisis. I tend to agree. The truly honest candidate would echo Churchill's words to the besieged British people, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." A little honesty and a little short-term pain will be necessary to get through this crisis (and some long-term pain will be necessary for the next generation--mine--to get out from under the enormous tax burden looming when the baby boomers all retire and demand Social Security) but the pain will only be worse if we keep on ignoring our problems and pretending they'll go away with quick-fix solutions.

Party branding, Saussure's linguistic theory, and Frank Luntz

2008-09-21T13:31:00.006-04:00

A few more words on the subject of branding and language following my last post. The important thing to note here is that this is not a discussion of how to pull the wool over the voters' eyes by manipulating language. Rather, it is a discussion of how best to get one's ideas across. It's about communication, not deception.

A party's brand is the set of associations, both rational (policy-based) and irrational (emotionally-based), that the party holds in the public's view. In other words, how would John Q. Voter describe the party in ten words or fewer, given ten seconds or fewer to come up with a description? The language we use for different issues and policies goes a long way toward forming a party's brand. i.e.: If the Democratic party favors "big government," it has a bad brand; if it favors "smart regulation to avoid financial meltdowns," it has a good brand.

The basic argument about the disconnect between language used and information conveyed was formulated by the influential Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, in his seminal work Course in General Linguistics (1916). Saussure described the two fundamental elements of language as the signifier (the sound of a spoken word or the appearance of a written one) and the signified (the information absorbed from that word by the listener or reader). Saussure wrote that the relationship between these two elements, which he called a linguistic sign, changes over time and only depends on current consensus. "Boot" only means "sturdy footwear" if your audience understands it that way. In Britain, it could just as easily mean the trunk of a car.

Here we see that what matters is not the words that come out of your mouth, but the information that you communicate. If you think your language is accurate but it actually falls prey to listeners' prejudices and preconceptions, then you're not getting your point across. As Frank Luntz writes, "it's not what you say, it's what people hear."

"Big government" versus "small government": an outdated, counterproductive debate

2008-09-20T17:52:00.003-04:00

I had a conversation today about the financial crisis and what it means for party politics in America, and I can only hope my counterpart's views aren't widespread within American liberalism and Democratic politics. The worst messaging the Democrats could engage in right now is to claim that we need a return of big government.

Debating the current crises in terms of "big government" versus "small government," as my counterpart favored, misses the point. Everyone supports "small government" as a guiding principle for our country, even if they don't connect that principle to any specific policies. Liberalism is on the rise, yes, and the public is more willing to accept government intervention than they were a decade ago, but that doesn't mean that people like "big government." We've moved beyond that debate, and that is the legacy of liberalism's overreach in the 60s and 70s. Instead, we need to talk about just how much regulation we need in order to avoid the kind of negligence that ends up costing us even more money. (How does $700,000,000,000 sound?) The false dichotomy of big-versus-small government leaves no room for this honest, practical discussion of real policies. It's the economic equivalent of debating whether our foreign policy should be "strong" or "weak." (Or, as Rudy Giuliani would have it, whether we should be on "offense" or "defense" in the war on terror.)

Most of us believe that we need more regulation in the financial and capital markets. Like most economic problems, the string of recent issues (mortgages, consumer credit, investment banks) can be traced to a simple root: speculation. People and banks based their financial futures on money that turned out not to exist, and they got burned. Regulation and increased transparency can help avoid this. But don't call it big government--that's yesterday's battle, and it has already been lost.

A party's success is both an external and in internal matter; that is, the public's shifting views on policy help a party rise or fall, but branding is important too. If Democrats or liberals return to language like "big government," they'll be doing themselves and the public at large a disservice-- squandering the opportunity that has been given them and dumbing down the debate over the economy.

Bill Day for Congress!

2008-09-18T20:01:00.005-04:00

I've arrived in Fredericksburg, Virginia to help elect Bill Day to Congress, representing the 1st congressional district of Virginia. I met the candidate on Wednesday night after a long day of driving down the East Coast, and I just finished my first full day of campaign work. It has been great so far--lots of really talented people working down here to help elect Barack Obama, Mark Warner (for Senate), and Bill Day (House). The area in and around Fredericksburg is lovely: lots of green, not too humid (knock on wood), and pretty nice architecture. The campus of the University of Mary Washington, right in the middle of Fredericksburg, is quite pretty as well. My only regret is that I didn't come down here sooner.

I'll be working down here every day through Nov. 4, and then it's back home to Brookline for a bit. Hopefully it will be a happy drive home.