Those Crazy Conservative Activists Again

Yesterday's California Supreme Court ruling, relying on the California state constitution to find unconstitutional the exclusion of gays from the California institution of marriage, is already being (predictably) misunderstood and mischaracterized. For an excellent summary of the opinion and a debunking of the fallacious attacks against it, check out Glenn Greenwald.

Probably the most common charge being leveled against the California court is that its judges were "activist," and thwarted the will of the people, or usurped the role of the legislature, or both. I find these vague charges of judicial activism tiresome: they're raised only when courts reach outcomes the people howling "Activists!" don't like. And the "Activist!" charges ignore the excruciatingly obvious, fundamental fact that when a court in a democracy interprets a constitution, the court is *supposed to* overturn laws enacted by the people or their representatives if those laws violate the constitution. The will of the people, or the laws of the legislature, prevail in a democracy subject to the constitution. So if you don't want "activist" judges overturning popular laws, you might as well get rid of the constitution itself, which is designed and intended precisely to place limits on how the people and the legislature can express their wills.

If the point above doesn't make sense to you, think of how the Supreme Court Justices in Brown v Board of Education overturned the "separate but equal" segregated educational framework that had been enacted with popular backing by the duly elected representatives of so many southern states. If you want to argue that courts shouldn't as a matter of principal overturn laws they find violative of their constitutions, you should be prepared to argue that the Brown court, too, exceeded its authority.

In fact, anyone who wants to argue that gay marriage should be left to individual states (and remember, the California ruling was by a state court, pursuant to a state constitution, and binding only in California), you should be prepared to argue too that Brown was wrongly decided -- that "separate but equal" education did not violate the Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws and should have been a matter for individual states to decide for themselves. I don't see how you can rationally argue that "separate but equal" education was unconstitutional and was rightly struck down by a court as such, but that "separate but equal" marriage (or no gay marriage at all) is constitutional and should be left to states to decide.

You might have surmised by now that I'm not impressed by the notion that gays should be able to form "civil unions" equivalent in all ways but name to marriage (this was key to the California court's finding -- that there is, after all, a great deal in a name). I'd be equally impressed by the notion that blacks should be permitted to attend institutions of higher education as long as the institutions they were permitted to attend were not called "colleges" or "universities."

Here's a little thought experiment to clarify things. Today's Wall Street Journal has an entirely predictable editorial, "Gay Marriage Returns," lamenting the California court's ruling. Let's see how the editorial reads if we replace references to "gay marriage" throughout with references to "black-white intermarriage," instead. If you can distinguish the rights of blacks and whites to marry each other from the rights of gays to marry each other, I'd like to hear the argument (and note that the California court cited Perez v Sharp, where in 1948 the California court struck down black-white marriage bans on 14th Amendment equal protection grounds).

Just when the news was filling with stories about a Republican Party gasping for air, along comes the California Supreme Court's 4-3 decision yesterday legislating black-white intermarriage. The GOP certainly hasn't done anything to deserve such luck...

California's Supreme Court is not the law of the land, but its 4-3 ruling, titled "In re Marriage Cases" for six consolidated appeals, explicitly told both the state's voters and its elected legislature to get lost. Back in 2000, California voters by 61% approved a proposition asserting that the state could only recognize a "marriage" between a white man and a white woman or a black man and black woman...

While the popular spin on these black-white intermarriage rulings holds that this is an all-or-nothing war between Democrats and Republicans, nothing could be further from the truth. Absent an occasional burst of judicial fiat such as this, the American people have been conducting an admirable exercise in democratic discovery about black-white intermarriage.

While 27 states have passed constitutional amendments banning black-white intermarriage, reflecting what opinion polls show to be overwhelming public sentiment, most Americans do not want the U.S. Constitution amended to prohibit black-white intermarriage. Back in 2004, some 52% of Bush voters favored black-white unions stopping short of a "marriage" designation. This was also Mr. Bush's position.

In other words, the American people, rather than simply shunning the desire of some blacks and whites to marry each other, are clearly willing to take up the matter and work it through their legislatures. California's legislature has passed bills twice to authorize black-white intermarriage; both were vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. If California can find a Governor willing to sign off, so be it. It is preposterous, though, to let four judges decide this for a state of more than 36 million diverse individuals.

Most of all, the black community wants social acceptance. It should look to what flowed from Roe v. Wade: unending bitterness. A wiser course in 21st-century America is to trust the democratic process.

If you don't think denying gays access to marriage denies them equal protection of the laws, you must also think such a denial would be constitutional with regard to blacks or other minorities. Do you?

Ultimately, opponents of gay marriage seek to legislate based not on logic, but on the peculiarities of their own preferences. They're guided not by the consistent application of law, but by the fickle idiosyncrasies of their own taste. Rather than reaching outcomes through the application of principle, they seek to conjure principles to support outcomes at which they have already comfortably arrived. And, with the usual unintended irony, they then accuse their opponents of "judicial activism." If it weren't so sad, it would be hilarious.

Confused, Spineless Democrats

I read an op-ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal called "Obama and the Values Question Mark" by a guy named Douglas E. Schoen. It's an advice piece, and Schoen advises Obama to do nothing but play defense. Attacked for not always wearing a lapel pin? Wear a lapel pin. Attacked about Reverend Wright? Continue to explain, explain, explain (Schoen actually suggests that "Obama does not have to apologize for his own faith and membership in Trinity Unity Church of Christ"... whew, that's a relief). Attacked for not being sufficiently "law and order"? "Obama must also demonstrate concretely that he is sympathetic to the victims of crime... that he understands American concerns about law and order." You get the idea. Schoen comes a step or two short of advising Obama to just fall to his knees and cry out, "We are not worthy!"

I read the article with equal parts disgust and admiration: disgust at the notion that Obama needs to explain his "values" when a divorced adulterer like John McCain apparently does not; admiration at the tactics of the writer, who in the guise of friendly advice to Obama is in fact reinforcing the insidious meme that there's some legitimacy behind the issues on which Schoen purports to want to advise. Boy, I thought, you have to give it to the right: they understand how communication works.

And then I came to a description of Schoen's background: in 1996, he was the campaign manager for Clinton/Gore in Tennessee and Kentucky. And I thought, "Holy shit, this guy is a *Democrat*!"

Look, if Schoen is working for McCain, his op-ed makes perfect sense. But if he actually thought his op-ed would help Obama... well, if this is the way Democrats with actual campaign experience are going to play it, the party is in serious trouble. Op-eds whose real impact is to legitimize right-wing talking points? Urging the candidate only to play "yes I am patriotic, no I'm not soft on crime, yes I do share your values, really, I do, please please please believe me" defense? By common sense alone you know that Schoen's purported course would be a disaster for Obama. But you don't need to rely on common sense: you can also see how well the Schoen model worked for Michael Dukakis and John Kerry.

If Obama were to glue a lapel pin to himself at this point, all it would do is prove that he'll buckle under a load of rightwing bullshit. And since the true purpose of all rightwing wedge attacks is to demonstrate that the Democratic candidate is spineless, weak, a sissy, a pansy, a loser, etc., more than anything else Schoen is advising Obama to show that he can be pushed around and prove the right's point thereby. At the risk of tremendous understatement: this is not good advice.

If he really wanted to help, Schoen should have advised Obama to counterattack. Values? Let's talk about how John McCain cheated on his wife, abandoned his family, and married a much younger heiress. Lapel pins? If John McCain were really patriotic, he would back Jim Webb's GI Bill and actually support our veterans. Jeremiah Wright? Why has McCain deliberately sought the support and endorsements of religious fanatics like John Hagee and Rod Parsley? Hamas supports Obama? You're swallowing enemy propaganda -- McCain wants another hundred years in Iraq, which the 2006 NIE called a bonanza of terrorist recruitment, so it's obvious who Hamas is really rooting for. Etc.

Ignoring rightwing freakshow attacks allows them to fester. Denying them legitimizes them and demonstrates weakness. Counterattacking turns the premises of the attacks around and puts the attackers on defense, while simultaneously demonstrating strength.

If Democrats haven't figured these fundamentals out by now, they're hopeless. Assuming Schoen isn't in fact working for McCain, his op-ed is not cause for encouragement.

Hamas Manipulates Republicans; Republicans Manipulate You

On Friday, I called John McCain the Manchurian Candidate because he and other Republicans are trying to tie Obama to Hamas even though Hamas and other Isamacist groups in fact support McCain. On cue, in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Gabriel Schonenfeld, senior editor of Commentary, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal called "Our Enemies and the Election." Schonenfeld makes the usual "Hamas says they like Obama" accusations. Then he goes on to claim that Hugo Chavez, the Iranian mullahs, and Kim Jung Il don't like McCain, and that this suggests "there is a growing pro-Obama/anti-McCain axis" among America's enemies.

It's hard to know what to make of the many Republicans who spout this nonsense. Are they really so stupid that they take terrorist statements at face value? Or are they deliberately using what is obviously enemy misinformation to deceive and manipulate American voters? Or is the explanation that they're so awed by their own playacting image of toughness that they're blind to what a substantive boon they've become to America's enemies?

Look, Venezuela's economy, and Hugo Chavez's power, is almost entirely dependent on the price of oil. Ditto Iran and the mullahs. President Bush has presided over an increase in the price of oil from about $23 a barrel in 2001 to an all-time high of $126 a barrel now. You don't think Chavez and the mullahs, who owe their continued power -- indeed, their continued survival -- to the price of oil don't thank President Bush every day for what he's done for them? John McCain (and Hillary Clinton, it should be noted) advocates the suspension of the federal gasoline tax, which would increase consumption and drive the price of oil even higher. Obama argues against this windfall wealth transfer from America to Chavez, the Mullahs, and their ilk. And people like Schonenfeld think Chavez and the mullahs are rooting for *Obama*?

If there's one thing that characterizes the modern Republican party (besides secret lawmaking, warrantless surveillance, advocacy of torture, and abrogation of the Fourth Amendment), it's an obsession with appearances and a corresponding blindness to facts. McCain vows to be "Hama's worst nightmare," and for the Schonenfelds of the world, this swaggering boast (which would consist of what, exactly?) trumps -- indeed, eclipses -- McCain's actual promise to fund oil powers like Chavez and the mullahs with additional U.S. billions. In other contexts, we would call this mentality "magical thinking."

Whether they're stupid, lying, or in denial, the self-interested purveyors of Hamas propaganda desperately need a turn out of power to have a shot at returning to principle, to reality, even to sanity. If you're a principled Republican, and you care about the party and your country, do the right thing in November: vote Democratic.

McCain the Manchurian Candidate

John McCain was at it again today, suggesting that Americans shouldn't vote for Obama because a Hamas spokesman spoke well of McCain's opponent. As a McCain fundraising email put it recently:

Barack Obama's foreign policy plans have even won him praise from Hamas leaders. Ahmed Yousef, chief political adviser to the Hamas Prime Minister said, "We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election. He has a vision to change America."

We need change in America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas, surrenders in Iraq and will hold unconditional talks with Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

Yes, McCain is being rightly condemned for trying to smear Obama by suggesting he's tied to a terrorist organization. What's been ignored, though, is something much worse: whether out of cynicism, stupidity, or moral obtuseness, John McCain claims to believe that Americans should base their political decisions on the opinions of terrorists. What difference does it make whether McCain says, "We should do what they don't want" or "We should do what they want?" Either way, he proposes that Americans surrender our own judgment in favor of that of Hamas. If McCain were a Democrat, Republicans would be calling him The Manchurian Candidate.

It would be easier to dismiss as crass cynicism McCain's repeated attempts to enlist Hamas's assistance if McCain's brand of "What would Osama do?" weren't so widespread in today's Republican party. Michelle Malkin wants to know which terrorists support which Democratic candidate (Translation: "Don't make up your own mind; ask the FALN!"). GOP Congressman Steve King objects to Obama's candidacy because, he claims, "The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror" (Translation: "What more do you need to decide other than what I think would make AQ happy!") King goes on to argue that Obama's "middle name does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that" (Translation: "It's not up to us to decide whether something matters. That's up to Osama bin Laden!") (And by the way, any time someone builds his whole argument on a cliche like "dancing in the streets," he's either exceptionally unimaginative or he's bullshitting you. Or both).

Perhaps worst of all are the people who argue that we need to torture because al Qaeda does even worse things (sorry, aggressively question, or harshly interrogate... and not suspects, if they're in custody it means they're actually terrorists... sheesh, if you really think we should torture prisoners, why not just come on out and make an argument in favor? Why all the flim-flam and doubletalk? What are torture proponents so afraid of? But I digress...). Maybe we could call this the "We're Good Because Al Qaeda is Worse" defense? Or the "Al Qaeda Gave Us Permission" defense?

Look, is the theory that we don't torture only because our enemies don't? Or should it be that we don't torture because we're Americans? As an American, I'd rather develop my own moral code, rather than basing it on what, say, al Qaeda does or doesn't do. But as you can tell from the recent statements of McCain and other Republican politicians and commentators, the notion that Americans should make own own political, tactical, and moral decisions without reference to how terrorists behave or what they claim to believe has become an alien notion.

The really hilarious part of all this is that the same Republicans who think terrorists are so diabolically clever that they can blink code to each other even after three years in captivity believe these same diabolically clever terrorists are unable to grasp the most rudimentary elements of reverse psychology. I mean, what if... going out on a limb here... the code blinkers were just sophisticated enough to figure out the Republican mindset, and run a psyops campaign accordingly? Something like:

Terrorist #1: Did you catch the latest US National Intelligence Estimate? It says the war in Iraq is breeding more terrorists. You think the infidels are catching on to us?

Terrorist #2: Nah, they're not that smart. Look at how Osama was able to provoke them into this massive terrorist-creating enterprise in the first place. More terrorists than ever, America trillions of dollar in debt, the US military nearly broken, Afghanistan falling back into our hands, North Korea going nuclear while American was distracted, the dollar collapsing, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo... the Iraq war is the best thing that ever happened to us.

Terrorist #1: So you think they might elect McCain this year? He says it would be fine with him to keep the infidel armies in Iraq for 100 years. That would be great for us.

Terrorist #2: Sadly, I don't think it looks good for McCain. Polls show 76% of Americans want a candidate different from Bush.

Terrorist #1: So what can we do?

Terrorist #2: Well, Republicans aren't very good at thinking for themselves. They say they torture because we torture. And whatever we say we like, they say they want the opposite.

Terrorist #1: So...

Terrorist #2: Exactly. Get that Hamas guy to say we like Obama. McCain will pick it up and run with it, and use it to get other dim Americans to vote against Obama. Then we can have that third Bush term, and Americans will be in Iraq for 100 years. Our ranks will continually swell.

Terrorist #1: Allahu Akhbar!

Nah, terrorists could never come up with something like that. And when Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners to join Operation Chaos and vote for Hillary, it means he really supports her, too.

So who's really the party of Hamas and al Qaeda? Who are the real terrorist tools?

Journalists and Bullshit

In a New York Times column Wednesday, David Brooks nicely (albeit unintentionally) summed up much of what's wrong with the mainstream media. In the course of awarding George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson an "A" for Tuesday night's execrable debate moderation, Brooks argued, "The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities."

Huh?

Brooks' confident assertion is odd first on a grammatical level. Is Brooks arguing that "The journalist’s job is: (1) to make politicians uncomfortable; and (2) to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities"? Or is he saying that "The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable by exploring evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities"?

Regardless, on a substantive level, Brooks clearly believes the primary mission of journalists is to make politicians uncomfortable. If this bizarre assertion is true, I assume Brooks was disappointed that Gibson and Stephanopoulos failed to ask the candidates about their sexual experiences and bathroom habits. After all, those subjects would have made the candidates absolutely squirm. Brooks could have raised his A rating to an A+.

(James Fallows suggests that it would be simpler to just put the candidates on Fear Factor and have them eat pails full of maggots. And really, if we're to take Brooks' argument seriously, why not?)

But if Brooks doesn't think candidates should be grilled about their sexual experiences and bathroom habits (and if he doesn't think they ought to be contestants on Fear Factor), he must not really believe the journalist's job is to make politicians uncomfortable. Discomfort might be a side-effect, but it couldn't be the primary mission.

Maybe, then, Brooks sentence was just inexpertly constructed, and what he really meant to say was that "The journalist’s job is to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities, regardless of whether doing so makes politicians uncomfortable." This is the most charitable interpretation to which Brooks' argument is susceptible, but even if this is what Brooks meant -- and the balance of his column indicates it isn't -- his formulation is still at best incomplete because it excludes any mention of relevance -- of any responsibility to prioritize, to assign weight to issues that matter.

Actually, elsewhere Brooks does include some implicit notion of relevance. He claims, "We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall."

When someone issues a subjectless, overgeneralized, evidence-free argument such as "Issue X will be important," there's a good chance you're being bullshitted (or that the writer is bullshitting himself). Pause as you read Brooks' column and ask yourself the question Brooks never bothers to ask (or try to answer) himself: "Important to whom?" Who is Brooks speaking for here, besides himself? How did Brooks, how does anyone claiming to be a journalist, determine what's "important?" When someone who writes for the Times claims something is important, is the columnist's pronouncement itself expected to make it so?

Maybe that's it. But it's been my experience that when someone tries to persuade you more by his position or title or resume than by the merits of his argument, you are being bullshitted.

Scroll through the transcript of the debate. The moderators don't even mention the word "Iraq" until the halfway point. At about two thirds, Stephanopoulos, in an act of monumental blindness to irony, introduces the first question about the economy by saying, "Let me turn to the economy. That is the number one issue on Americans' minds right now."

Yes, by all means, let's start the debate with a question about why the candidates won't run together, then move on to how well Obama knows someone who was part of the Weather Underground when Obama was eight years old, and then ask about whether Obama is elitist, and whether Obama thinks his former pastor is patriotic, and whether voters think Clinton is trustworthy because of her story about coming under fire in Tuzla, and why Obama doesn't routinely wear a flag lapel pin, and then back to the Weather Underground, and then, finally, after an hour wallowing in such excrescence, we can talk about Iraq and even, eventually, the economy, which the moderators claim are the really important issues and were presumably just saving for later after they got all that other stuff out of the way. Makes sense to me.

I've thought about it, and the only way I can make sense of Brooks' notion of what's "important" is to understand the debate this way:

"Senator Obama, America is mired in a war in Iraq that has so far cost over 4000 American lives and about three trillion dollars. Can you explain how your position on lapel pins will end the war?"

"Senator Clinton, America is now either in or on the verge of a recession. Can you tell us how your inaccurate description of coming under fire in Tuzla will restore America's economic strength?"

"Senator Obama, during the Bush administration North Korea became a nuclear power. Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden remains at large, faces a growing Islamic insurgency that could lead to the country's nuclear weapons falling into jihadists' hands. Can you tell us how accusations that you are elitist (whatever that means) will affect your ability to prevent further nuclear proliferation and resulting danger to America?"

In his op-ed column today, Brooks actually lamented Obama's bowling scores (!) as something that will cause voters to "wonder if he's one of them." So let's include another question to make it all make sense:

"Senator Obama, the current administration has arrogated to itself tyrannical powers of torture, suspended habeus corpus, and suspended the fourth amendment. Congress is supine, the mainstream media an active enabler. In the face of this unprecedented threat to the Constitution, can you tell us what it means that you're not a good bowler?"

Brooks argues that Obama's debate responses on taxes and the war in Iraq would put him in an untenable position as president. Maybe yes, maybe no... but wouldn't it have been useful to use the debate to publicly grill the candidate on precisely these points? The moderators didn't, and they didn't because they don't really care about a candidate's policies on taxes and war (nor, despite his protestations, does Brooks -- otherwise he would actually write about such matters instead of just mentioning them in a column devoted to bowling skills and the like). If they cared, they wouldn't have chosen to use their time asking about lapel pins and the rest instead.

Brooks claims that Hillary has "ground Obama down." Actually, polls in Pennsylvania and nationally indicate the opposite, once again raising the question of the basis of Brooks' opinion, which, again, he doesn't provide. Nor does he offer any recognition, let alone a mea culpa, of his own roll in any such grinding.

Here's the best part. The same guy who in two columns in two days suggests that Obama is out of touch for calling people "bitter" concludes by saying, "Welcome to 2008. Everybody's miserable."

Yes, that's right. When Obama says some people are bitter, he's out of touch. When Brooks says everybody's miserable, he's got his finger right on the national pulse.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the solipistic, self-important, supremely irony-blind... mainstream media. Remember, whatever happens, it isn't their fault.

P.S. For much, much more on how the media works (or, more accurately, doesn't work), including an amazingly accurate prediction of the garbage Stephanopoulos and Gibson served up in Tuesday's debate, read Glenn Greenwald's new book, Great American Hypocrites. It's an indispensable guide to politics and the media, and a gripping read, as well.

Great American Hypocrites

I just finished reading my advance copy of Glenn Greenwald's outstanding book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics. It's the best book I've read on how the media works since Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

In some ways, I think Glenn's book is a more important read for conservatives than it is for liberals -- at least for conservatives, like yours truly, who put principle before party. If you want to understand how politics and the media work today, how the Republican party has betrayed the principles it purports to defend, and how opinion is manipulated by appeals to fear, prejudice, and other irrational emotions, Great American Hypocrites is indispensable.

Glenn discusses the book on his blog here. It's available for online ordering today and will be released on April 15. Give it a try -- you won't be able to put it down, and you'll never read the paper or watch the news the same way after.

-- Barry

Duplicity, Delusion, and Cognitive Dissonance

Checking out the news this evening from Amsterdam, I couldn't help but chuckle at Bill Clinton's latest explanation of Hillary's path to victory:

Right now, among all the primary states, believe it or not, Hillary's only 16 votes behind in pledged delegates, and she's gonna wind up with the lead in the popular vote in the primary states. She's gonna wind up with the lead in the delegates [from the primary states. It's the caucuses that have been killing us.

I thought, well, sure, if the caucus states aren't working out for you, by all means, let's just ignore them! Why should you have to account for inconvenient contrary facts when you're trying to paint a sunny picture of success?

Turning to CNN, I learned "Baghdad on Lockdown as Rockets, Bombs Fly."

Baghdad was on virtual lockdown Friday as a tough new curfew ordered everyone off the streets of the Iraqi capital and five other cities until 5 p.m. Sunday.

That restriction didn't stop someone from firing rockets and mortar rounds into the capital's heavily fortified International Zone, commonly known as the Green Zone. One slammed into the office of one of Iraq's vice presidents, Tareq al-Hashemi, killing two guards.

And then I read President Bush's speech from Dayton, Ohio, in which he did an avoidance and distortion dance that would have made the Clintons proud, explaining why not just in spite, but because of renewed violence, "normalcy is returning back to Iraq."

Finally, I read Peggy Noonan's take on what at this point is going on in Hillary Clinton's mind:

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)

Substitute "President Bush" for "Mrs. Clinton" in the paragraph above and "victory in Iraq" for "nomination" and you'll see that Noonan's only mistake was to call Hillary's cognitive dissonance the worst case in the history of modern politics. In fact, I would argue that despite her game attempts, she's been outdone on the cognitive dissonance front by the president.

The difference is that very soon, reality will end the Clintons' cognitive dissonance, and at little cost to the nation. President Bush, on the other hand, has successfully maneuvered Iraq into the lap of his successor, and will now be able to indulge his own cognitive dissonance permanently, at great cost to the nation indeed.

But because Bush's successor will inherit the president's disasters, the psychologies of Bush the president and Clinton the candidate must be considered together. After all, do you trust someone whose campaign narrative is as duplicitous and delusional as Hillary Clinton's to morph suddenly into a clear-eyed realist when it comes to ending the war in Iraq, a war which she herself voted to authorize? Maybe this is what Hillary means when she argues you'd be better off with McCain.

Increased Iraq Violence = Success

No, you didn't read the title wrong -- Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell really did say that the new fighting in Basra, in which US-backed government forces are battling Shiite militias, "looks as though it is a by-product of the success of the surge."

I suppose the description isn't surprising. After all, President Bush himself (or a speechwriter similarly unafflicted by a sense of irony) has the dubious distinction of having coined the term "catastrophic success" to describe the invasion of Iraq.

Presumably, were there no new fighting in Basra, the Pentagon would acknowledge the reduced violence was a sign of failure (insert facetious emoticon here). But of course, the Pentagon has previously claimed the opposite -- that reduced Shiite violence was a sign of success. In fact, "surge" supporters have so frequently trumpeted the success of the strategy precisely on reduced violence grounds that it's not even worth offering a link -- just Google "surge is working."

So here's the problem. If reduced violence = success and increased violence = success, then anything that happens in Iraq is success. If all this success meant we were going to leave Iraq, the doublespeak might have a silver lining. But of course it's intended to have the opposite effect. William Saletan pointed this out all the way back in 2004 in Slate.

What would happen to a CEO who told her board of directors that increased sales and decreased sales were both signs of success? To a doctor who assured a patient that both improving and worsening symptoms were signs of a return to health? To a stockbroker who counseled a client that he was getting richer whether his portfolio was up or down? And yet this is precisely the argument war proponents repeatedly make.

The irony is, a refusal to articulate actual and logical metrics by which success and failure can be measured is a certain prescription for... well, for failure. The double irony is that when the inevitable failure occurs, the people who caused and supported it will blame everyone but themselves.

Three Questions for Obama

Two days ago, Senator Clinton's campaign team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein was flummoxed by a simple question from Slate's John Dickerson: "What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" It was a fair question, especially given Hillary's attempts to brand herself as the "I'm tested, I'm ready" candidate, and her claims in the now notorious "red phone ad" to be "tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world." (Here's Obama's response ad).

I just watched four new ads Senator Obama is airing in Texas in advance of Tuesday's primary. One of them in particular caught my attention. In it, Obama says "we need to... take on special interests that block reform." I know from Obama's speeches and points he's made in debates that taking on lobbyists and special interests is a theme of his. In the spirit of Dickerson's excellent question to the Clinton campaign, I'd like to see Obama asked:

1. Can you specifically identify which special interests you'll take on as president?
2. (If #1 doesn't get an explicit response) Can you specifically identify groups or interests that you would categorize as "special interests"?
3. (If #2 doesn't get an explicit response) Would you categorize teachers unions as special interests? Farmers? Senior citizens? Unions?

My guess is, Obama would name "corporations" as a special interest and go no further (I say this because the only species of lobbyist specifically named in the ethics section of Obama's website is lobbyist corporatus, and the reference to "special interest influence" on the page is vague). The answer would be unsatisfying. As a special interest boogeyman, corporations are convenient: vague enough to invoke without any specific company feeling unduly threatened; ominous-sounding enough to create the sense that taking them on would be bold; sufficiently disparate in fact to create the illusion that action against some segment of the class constitutes action against the whole. If Obama hopes to persuade voters that he's serious about fighting special interests -- and about telling voters what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear, a claim he also makes in the Texas ad and elsewhere -- he really ought to name some of the special interests he plans to take on.

Of course, it's entirely possible I'm missing something here, and if anyone knows of specific instances of Senator Clinton being tested by a foreign policy crisis, or of Senator Obama promising to take on, or at least naming, a specific special interest, I'd be grateful for the information.

Hillary Has Worshipers, Too

Recently I received an email from a friend and Hillary Clinton supporter. This post is based on my response.

Dear [],

Thanks for forwarding the Robin Morgan piece. I'd already seen it. I understand it reflects a certain sentiment, one I find so at odds with rational consideration that I'm surprised you don't recognize it as a species of the "cult mania" etc. you deplore when it attaches to a candidate other than Hillary.

The Clintons have lost me. Utterly. Yes, they were subjected to outrageous attacks by the right-wing machine. And now, like the children of abusive parents, they are abusers themselves. Perhaps understandably, people who rose to protect them when they were victims have trouble seeing that the victims are now victimizers.

The distortions and demagoguery I could dismiss with no more than disgust. Their maneuvering on Florida and Michigan, though, is unforgivable. And all, in the end, for what? When the Clintons have lost the primary election, in no small measure because of the viciousness and venality of their tactics, will they then understand they have come to embody the worst of their enemies' caricatures? That they have become what they profess to abhor?

Certainly Obama has shortcomings (BTW, here's an excellent piece -- the most thorough and balanced I've yet seen -- in the current New Republic on the candidates' positions on Iraq), and yes, people are wildly enthusiastic about him anyway. The question is, why? Could it be that as the campaign goes on, Obama is generating increasing excitement in direct proportion to increasing horror at the thought of the Clintons back in the White House? If so, it's possible Obamania is at least as much attributable to Obama's strengths as to Hillary's weaknesses.

Or the whole thing could be a patriarchal conspiracy to prevent The Woman Who Deserves To Be President from becoming the living fulfillment of feminist aspirations, as Morgan suggests. For if we start with the premise that Hillary is unarguably, substantively magnificent, for what reasons could one oppose her other than her gender? I deplore this viewpoint but I do understand it. After all, someone who in her heart supports Hillary only because Hillary is a woman will naturally conclude that someone else could oppose Hillary only for precisely the same reason.

Speaking of substance: have you seen this op-ed, "The Clintons' Terror Pardons," from the February 12 Wall Street Journal? I checked Hillary's website and haven't found a response. I would like to know her side of this important (and seemingly damning) story. And for someone who has criticized Obama for his "present" votes in the Illinois Senate, how could she fail to show up last week for any of the Senate's votes approving warrantless surveillance and offering amnesty to telecoms that illegally spied on Americans? Obama missed the final and I'm disappointed in him for that. But Hillary missed them all.

There's also the question of electability. Polls show a McCain/Hillary race to be about a tie, and a McCain/Obama race to be an Obama blowout. I can't understand being so attached to one primary candidate that I would vote for that candidate even at substantial risk of losing the general election.

One day -- and soon, I hope -- America will have a woman president. That will be an amazing, inspirational milestone, and not just for America, but for the world. Whoever she is, I hope she'll run a more deserving campaign than the Clintons have.

Best,
Barry

Update

There really ought to be a "where you stand depends on where you sit" award. Whose campaign do you think this is from?

“Winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election. If it were, every nominee would win because every nominee wins Democratic primaries.”

If you guessed it was Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's pollster and chief strategist, you were right...

Update 2

This is one of the most hilarious -- and damning -- posts I've ever read on the Clinton campaign. Even if you're a Hillary supporter, you might enjoy it.

Tough Smart, Tough Stupid

Glenn Greenwald, who along with George Carlin would get my vote for Living National Treasure if America offered such a designation, has a terrific post today on Unclaimed Territory: "Conceding John McCain's 'Toughness' On National Security."

Greenwald discusses the dangerous fallacy of buying into your opponent's premise: in McCain's case, the premise that national security and militarism are the same thing; that victory against Islamic extremists is best served by an endless occupation of Iraq. When McCain claims that he's strong on defense, I hope the Democrats will have a response moderately more clever than "We're strong, too!" Hint to Democrats: here, "more clever" means something along the lines of, "Strong? We've lost 4000 men and women in Iraq, we've already blown a half trillion dollars on a war the Republicans promised would cost fifty, we've given al-Qaeda an ongoing recruiting bonanza, and you want to keep at it for another hundred or even ten thousand years... and you call that 'strong'? That's not strong. It's stupid. We need leadership that's strong and smart."

Theoretically, either Clinton or Obama could properly frame the debate by attacking Republican premises, but in practice Clinton's attempts would be less effective. After all, she voted for the Authorization of Use of Military Force in Iraq, and has been trying to defend her vote ever since. Her strategy, therefore, will be to agree with McCain's premises regarding how much of national strength has to do with war (if you doubt this, watch the video clip in Greenwald's post). Obama, who opposed the war by noting, "I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars," will be much better positioned to reject McCain's premise that continued war is the same as continued strength.

Again, the key to winning the debate is to convincingly reject the premise of the other side's argument. Obama failed to do this against Hillary in the South Carolina debate (instead of denying that he'd said anything nice about Republicans, he should have said, "What's your point? We're not allowed to say a single nice thing about the other major American political party?"). He'll have plenty of opportunities to rectify that oversight in the general election, in which the Republicans will call every Democratic proposal for a more sensible allocation of resources in the fight against radical Islam "retreat" and "defeat" and "surrender." (For a sneak preview of Republican talking points, see Mitt Romney's concession speech, in which he declares defeat and surrenders while accusing the Democrats of doing the same).

In fact, I'd like to see Democrats widen their campaign against Republican premises by questioning the antiquated Republican mantle of conservativism. The party of George Bush is many things, but conservative is not one of them. You can't legitimately claim that a president who has done what Bush has done to America's finances, whose foreign policy is so radically millenarian that it includes "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," and whose philosophy and practice of governing can most kindly be called authoritarian, is a conservative. And when did conservatism come to mean, "We're from the government, and we're here to protect you?"

The Republicans have used a traditional conservative wrapping to package a product that is anything but. Exposing the disparity shouldn't be all that difficult. As part of this campaign, Democrats might want to enlist the aid of actual conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

Whether the Democrats can succeed in exposing Republican fictions is largely a question of Democratic communication skills (I'm not sure this is cause for optimism). After all, the public seems to be tired or increasingly immune to demagoguery. Look what happened to Clinton in South Carolina after her campaign of distortions there. And look what happened to Rudy Giuliani, whose chief legacy as a candidate is to have functioned as the canary in the Republican coal mine. The most fear-mongering candidate of the party whose current brand slogan might be summed up as "Be Afraid" flamed out spectacularly (think "fear-mongering" is too strong a description? Take a look at this campaign video, and its hilarious parody).

Hawkishness is a means, not an end. And like any other means, it can be used stupidly, or well. If the Democrats don't understand and articulate this, they stand a good chance of blowing another election. Doing so would cost them the presidency, and the Republicans the opportunity and impetus to return to conservative principles. The biggest loser on both counts, of course, would be America.

Unintentional, Self-Created, Blissfully Unaware Irony Prize

Mitt Romney's concession speech was remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which is that Romney attacked Democrats for wanting to "declare defeat" and "surrender" during his own defeat and surrender speech! Where do these people come from? Are they cynical? Or are they so blinded by self-righteousness that they can't recognize irony even when they're the ones creating it?

Just a few highlights from Romney's unintentional self-nomination for a sadly nonexistent Unintentional, Self-Created, Blissfully Unaware Irony prize:

And that is why we must rise to the occasion, as we have always done before, to confront the challenges ahead. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the attack on the American culture... The threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960’s welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven’t given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug—we have got to fight it like the poison it is!

Translation: Whatever is wrong today, it was caused by liberals in the 1960s (see also, below: It's Bill Clinton's Fault We're Losing in Iraq). Things like privatizing a war, handouts to Halliburton? They don't count as government largesse. And privatizing social security would not be government largesse to Wall Street (see also, below: Only Liberals Can Overspend). The only people who shouldn't have to pay income tax are people rich enough to contribute to a Republican campaign. When I say "individual responsibility," I'm talking only about liberals. "Conservatives" shouldn't have to accept individual responsibility for anything because everything bad is the liberals' fault.

The attack on our culture is not our sole challenge. We face economic competition unlike anything we have ever known before. China and Asia are emerging from centuries of poverty. Their people are plentiful, innovative, and ambitious. If we do not change course, Asia or China will pass us by as the economic superpower, just as we passed England and France during the last century. The prosperity and security of our children and grandchildren depend on us.

Translation: America used to richer because China and Asia used to be poorer. The prosperity and security of our children and grandchildren depend on continued poverty in China and Asia.

And our economy is also burdened by the inexorable ramping of government spending. Don’t focus on the pork alone—even though it is indeed irritating and shameful. Look at the entitlements. `They make up 60% of federal spending today. By the end of the next President’s second term, they will total 70%. Any conservative plan for the future has to include entitlement reform that solves the problem, not just acknowledges it.

Translation: Ignore the fact that the current "conservative" administration has spent America into a $1.4 trillion deficit. Out of control spending is a liberal phenomenon. Only liberals can spend too much, so if we've been spending too much, liberals must be to blame. See also: Only Bad, Totalitarian American Enemies Can Torture.

It’s high time to lower taxes, including corporate taxes, to take a weed-whacker to government regulations, to reform entitlements, and to stand up to the increasingly voracious appetite of the unions in our government!

Translation: Okay, maybe we have been spending too much under the current, "conservative" administration... but that's the unions' fault!

And finally, let’s consider the greatest challenge facing America—and facing the entire civilized world: the threat of violent, radical Jihad. In one wing of the world of Islam, there is a conviction that all governments should be destroyed and replaced by a religious caliphate. These Jihadists will battle any form of democracy—to them, democracy is blasphemous for it says that citizens, not God shape the law. They find the idea of human equality to be offensive. They hate everything we believe about freedom just as we hate everything they believe about radical Jihad.

Translation: Forget what I just said a minute about the most fundamental challenge to America being an internal cultural threat. Seriously, that was, what, ten whole paragraphs ago? And I didn't really mean it, I was only pandering. Or even if I meant it, ten paragraphs is a long time to change your mind. I mean, listen to some of the positions I've taken on homosexuality and marriage! And all that health care reform when I was governor of Massachusetts, which I realized when I had someone write this speech for me was just a bunch of ridiculous entitlements forced on me by liberal unions, so not my individual responsibility. But I digress...

To battle this threat, we have sent the most courageous and brave soldiers in the world. But their numbers have been depleted by the Clinton years when troops were reduced by 500,000, when 80 ships were retired from the Navy, and when our human intelligence was slashed by 25%. We were told that we were getting a peace dividend. We got the dividend, but we didn’t get the peace. In the face of evil in radical Jihad and given the inevitable military ambitions of China, we must act to rebuild our military might. Raise military spending to 4% of our GDP, purchase the most modern armament, re-shape our fighting forces for the asymmetric demands we now face, and give the veterans the care they deserve!

Translation: Bill Clinton lost the war in Iraq, damn it! Bill Clinton! And maybe liberal unions, too. They're usually to blame for something, even though they're never willing to take individual responsibility for it.

Soon, the face of liberalism in America will have a new name. Whether it is Barack or Hillary, the result would be the same if they were to win the Presidency. The opponents of American culture would push the throttle, devising new justifications for judges to depart from the constitution. Economic neophytes would layer heavier and heavier burdens on employers and families, slowing our economy and opening the way for foreign competition to further erode our lead.

Translation: maybe I was right the first time, when I said the greatest threat to America comes from within. Okay, I'm switching back to my original position. For now.

Even though we face an uphill fight, I know that many in this room are fully behind my campaign.” You are with me all the way to the convention. Fight on, just like Ronald Reagan did in 1976. But there is an important difference from 1976: today… we are a nation at war.

Translation: If we weren't at war, I wouldn't declare defeat and surrender. I know that sounds a little counterintuitive, but bear with me...

And Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror. They would retreat and declare defeat. And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child’s play. About this, I have no doubt.

Translation: To prevent Barack and Hillary from retreating and declaring defeat, I will retreat and declare defeat. Because they've said they will retreat and declare defeat! Okay, I can't tell you exactly where or when they said that... but I have no doubt because I know it's true because I'm a Conservative Person of Faith and I don't have to back up veiled accusations of treason against liberals, who anyway as I've argued above (the position I switched back to) are traitors.

I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

Translation: When I declare defeat and surrender, it's merely tactical. When liberals want to reallocate resources in the war on terror, it's a pathetic white flag. I mean, it was the same when I was at Bain Capital. I never fired anyone at a company I acquired; I was only rightsizing those people. I'm a good guy, and good guys by definition can't do bad things. Ask George Bush, he understands this.

This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.

Translation: My reasons for surrendering are good reasons and you must accept them because I am a Conservative Man of Faith and when a Conservative Man of Faith surrenders it's not really a surrender, but a Noble Self-Sacrifice for the Greater Good, even nobler than the self-sacrifice I made by being a missionary in Paris instead of serving in Vietnam, even nobler than the self-sacrifice my five sons have made by campaigning for me instead of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan (what? You want them to enlist now that I'm surrendering and they can't self-sacrifice by campaigning for me anymore? Uh... uh... let me get back to you on that, okay?). But wait a minute, I just realized, I'm not really even really surrendering! I only said I'm "standing aside." It couldn't have been a surrender, because only liberals do that, and I'm a Conservative Man of Faith.

Read the speech in its entirety. You'll find it singularly bereft of the notion of individual responsibility except as a slogan used to blame others for their lack of it. Memo to the Republican party: the first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging you have one.

Despite the speech's tremendous unintentional irony, Romney leaves the race less an ironic figure than a tragic one. Here's a guy with intelligence (albeit often well-concealed in his speeches); executive experience in politics and business; and (again, despite some of his ridiculous speechifying asides) demonstrated economic fluency, who lacked the confidence to run on any of it, preferring instead plasticity and pandering, right to the bitter end. He reminds me of no one so much as Hillary Clinton, another otherwise capable candidate whose lack of confidence in her own strengths has led to a sad pattern of pandering followed by attacks on her opponent, whose substantive record by its very existence calls hers into question. Romney and Hillary... even in Romney's tragedy, there is irony.

The Wrong Candidate, and the Right One

Here's an excellent article called "The Wrong Experience," by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, that I think nicely articulates many of the reasons Obama is the right candidate and Hillary, the wrong one. Money quote:

"This is the problem with Hillary Clinton. She is highly intelligent, has real experience and is an attractive candidate. But she is terrified to act on her beliefs. In fact, she seems so conditioned by what she sees as political constraints that one can barely tell where her beliefs begin and where those constraints end."

Based on crossover voting behavior by Republicans and on Obama's appeal to independents, and on how badly fractured the Republicans are over a McCain candidacy, Obama is obviously the stronger candidate in the general election. In fact, the only force that could unite Republicans around their candidate would be the prospect of a Clinton co-presidency. Under these circumstances, if the Democrats nominate Hillary, it will be difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Democrats don't really want the presidency, or the responsibility that comes with the position. This would be understandable, albeit lamentable... after all, I can't think of anything the Democratic congress has achieved in the year its been in power.

Democrats should understand that a vote for Hillary in the primary is a vote for McCain in the general. That's not necessarily a bad thing (anyone who can tip an already unbalanced entertainer like Ann Coulter into actual hysteria at the prospect of his presidency can't be that bad). But it's not as good as a vote for Obama in the primary and in the general.

Clinton Nostalgia vs Clinton Fatigue

The dynamic of the Democratic primaries (and of the general election, should Clinton become the Democratic nominee) has a lot to do with the tension between two opposing forces: Clinton nostalgia, and Clinton fatigue. Voters who long for the good old days of Bill's presidency tend to support Hillary. Voters who are glad the Clinton White House is over tend to support someone else. The question is, which force is stronger? I think the answer here is: fatigue.

Part of what makes nostalgia such a fine feeling is that often the past seems more pleasant in memory than it was in reality. Ordinarily, the reality of the past can't gainsay the pleasures of nostalgia because the past is, by definition, gone. But this is not the case in the election at hand.

The Clintons have injected Bill into the race to such an extent that a derogatory (yet not inaccurate) word I haven't much seen since 1996 -- Billary -- is back in vogue. I noticed it in Colbert King's column in yesterday's Washington Post (Billary's Adventures in Primaryland), then again this morning in Frank Rich's column from the New York Times (The Billary Road to Republican Victory).

In fact, the Clintons have played the Bill card so aggressively that judging from Hillary's news conference following her defeat in South Carolina, you would think Bill is the candidate and Hillary his spokesperson:

"Clinton was asked if she thought Sen. Barack Obama is the Jesse Jackson of 2008. She did not answer the question, and instead spoke about what she views as the great things President Clinton has done in his life. 'Bill Clinton is somebody who brought out country together. He understands what it takes to repair the breaches and hopefully mend the divides that have stalked us for so long and his record speaks to that.'

"Clinton continued, 'I think Americans from every community know what his life's work has been and they really know his heart.'

"When questioning turned back to President Clinton, the Senator said 'his life's work has been about bringing people together.'"

What the Clintons have done, therefore, is to make the past live again. And the sharp reality of the resurrected past seems to be eclipsing the fuzzy nostalgia that preceded it. In South Carolina exit polls, "Roughly 6 in 10 South Carolina Democratic primary voters said Bill Clinton's campaigning was important in how they ultimately decided to vote, and of those voters, 48 percent went for Barack Obama while only 37 percent went for Hillary Clinton. Fourteen percent of those voters voted for John Edwards."

In other words, about 62% of South Carolina Democratic voters who were affected by Bill's role voted against Hillary. And there's more:

"Meanwhile, the exit polls also indicate Obama easily beat Clinton among those voters who decided in the last three days — when news reports heavily covered the former president's heightened criticisms of Obama. Twenty percent of South Carolina Democrats made their decision in the last three days and 51 percent of them chose Obama, while only 21 percent picked Clinton.

"Bill Clinton's presence on the trail was 'very important' to roughly a quarter of those surveyed. Among those voters, Hillary Clinton edged out Barack Obama, 46 to 42 percent."

For me, that feels like Clinton fatigue eclipsing Clinton nostalgia.

If I'm right in believing the unwelcome reality of the past will trump the nostalgia of the present, then the longer Hillary and Bill are in the limelight, the more Hillary's candidacy will falter. Even if she manages to survive her growing weakness throughout the primary and become the Democratic nominee, Clinton fatigue will continue to worsen, and the Democrats would be sending an increasingly debilitated candidate into the general election. I hope the Democrats will be smarter than that. Nostalgia is a weak foundation for a campaign. Not just because campaigns are and ought to be about the future, but because when reality intrudes upon nostalgia, it tends to ruin the reverie.

P.S. I've received quite a few messages asking if I'm a Democrat. The answer is no -- I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and have voted for candidates from both parties. More than anything else, I would describe myself as a libertarian, which means I probably won't ever have a comfortable home in either party. Regardless, I think the Republicans have so lost sight of their principles (small government, realistic foreign policy, fiscal responsibility, respect for individual privacy) that they need an intervention. If the Republicans lose badly, I hope they'll take advantage of the experience to get their act together. Which would be good for them, and good for the country. That's why in this election I've been more invested in the Democrats fielding a strong candidate than in who the Republicans might nominate.

The Low Dollar Border Fence

It's clear to me from listening to snippets of the Republican debates that the Bush administration is taking heat for America's broken borders. But I don't think the president is receiving adequate credit for what he's doing to combat illegal immigration. After all, won't a plummeting dollar discourage illegal immigration? If I were thinking about sneaking into America to earn dollars that I could send home to my family, at this point I might consider a country in the Euro zone, instead.

If the Bush administration can continue to drive down the value of the dollar, it's possible they won't just discourage new illegal immigration -- they might even encourage illegals who are already here to go somewhere else, where they could be paid in a sounder currency.

Of course I'm being slightly facetious and I'm no economist, but I imagine there must be some correlation between the strength of a country's currency and its attractiveness to immigrants, legal and illegal, who hope to send money to family back home. If anyone knows more about this correlation and could send me a link or two, I'd be grateful.

Boxing, Judo, and Politics

Last night I watched some snippets from the South Carolina Democratic debate. As an Obama supporter, I came away frustrated. Hillary* offered up many of the same distortions she and Bill have been feeding into the news cycle over the past week. Obama seemed to think the debate was a good venue to set the record straight with some vigorous counterpunching. He was mistaken both about the strategy and the tactics. The response to a slime campaign like the Clintons' isn't boxing; it's judo. And the goal isn't to set the record straight; it's to change the terms of the debate itself.

Here's the gist of one exchange:

Obama: You and Bill are distorting my statements.
Hillary: The fact is, you said you really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last fifteen years.** And we can give you the exact quote.*** The Republicans had bad ideas.
Obama: I didn't say nice things about Reagan.
Hillary: I didn't say you did. I said you said nice things about the Republicans.
Obama: I said nice things about Reagan's style, but I fought against his substance while you were a corporate lawyer for Wal-Mart. And you praise Reagan in a book about to be published.
Hillary: I never accused you of saying nice things about Reagan by name.
Obama: Your husband did.
Hillary: You said the Republicans had good ideas.
Obama: I didn't say they were good ones.

Get the idea? Jab. Parry. Straight right. All people come away with is that a lot of punches were thrown. Probably Hillary stretched the truth in some places, probably Obama did in others (a pretty accurate assessment, I would argue, even if Hillary is worse). But this is a communications victory for Hillary because, as the one running the negative campaign, her objective is to suggest that at least some of her distortions are true while at least some of Obama's truths are distortions. A game of tit for tat suits her purposes.

Obviously, Obama shouldn't play Hillary's game. Here's the game I wish he would play:

Obama: You and Bill are distorting my statements.
Hillary: The fact is, you said you really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last fifteen years. And we can give you the exact quote. The Republicans had bad ideas.
Obama: Wait a minute, Hillary. Sure I said some complimentary things, mostly about Reagan's leadership style, but also about some aspects of the Republican party he led. Are you saying it's impermissible to say something nice about Republicans?
Hillary: Well...
Obama: No, really. This is bizarre. All week long, you and Bill have been attacking me for saying something mildly complimentary about another political party. Is there nothing worthwhile about the Republican party? Not a single nice thing we're allowed to say? They represent about half the country... you can't think of a single nice thing to say about half the country? What are you talking about? Half the country is all bad?
Hillary: You said you liked the Republican's ideas. That's a fact. I can back it up with a quote.
Obama: Hillary, I challenge you. Right here, tonight. Say something nice about the Republican party, which represents half the voters in our country. Don't be afraid. For once in your life, drop the triangulation and the doublespeak and the negativity and say one positive thing about the other side. I know you can do it.

Here, the best Hillary could reach for would be a joke -- something like, "Well, they could start a great white-males-only country club." Then, when the laughter died down, Obama could conclude this way:

Obama: Good for you, Hillary. You've proven it's okay to find something positive from time to time, even in the opposition. And now I challenge you to run your campaign that way. Drop the juvenile nonsense about "Obama said something nice about the other party!" and the other distortions and demagoguery and try campaigning on all that experience you claim to have. Even if it's not enough for you to win, you'll elevate the debate and do the country a service.

Yes, I have the full benefit of hindsight and no debate pressure in which to think this up. But the specific execution is less important than an understanding of the objective. And the objective is not to stand fast and slug it out, but to step away from the attack so that it's revealed for the foolishness it is and force your off-balanced opponent to respond now on your terms, not on hers. Obama tried this a little, but more in the way of counteraccusations (you were a fat cat lawyer!) than of an actual change in the foundation of the argument.

Hint: "You did it, too!" is a counter-argument. The question, "Are you saying..." is the prelude to a possible debate-changer. Obama needs to figure this out before Hillary drags him down to her level. At her level, she wins the nomination. And the Republicans win the election.


*Occasionally I've been criticized for referring to Hillary by her first name. I do so only as a matter of shorthand, to distinguish her from Bill. As Bill becomes increasingly prominent in Hillary's campaign, the shorthand becomes increasingly convenient. If there were another candidate with the last name Obama, I'd be calling Obama Barack.

**Here's what Obama actually said:

"I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I mean, I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the 60's and the 70's and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating and he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, people wanted clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamic and entrepreneurship that had been missing, alright? I think Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times.

"I think we're in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren't working. We're bogged down in the same arguments that we've been having, and they're not useful. And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out. I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you've heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they're being debated among the Presidential candidates and it's all tax cuts. Well, you know, we've done that, we tried it. That's not really going to solve our energy problems, for example. So, some of it's the times. And some of it's, I think, there's maybe a generation element to this, partly. In the sense that there's a, I didn't did come of age in the battles of the 60's. I'm not as invested in them."

***Hint: when a politician tells you he can give you the exact quote, he is lying both about the quote and about what he claims it will support. The claim is intended to sound confident when spoken and the politician knows no one will follow up on it later. Even if anyone does, the politician will offer up something tangential, and by then the news cycle will have moved on. Also note how many times Hillary says she wants to "be clear" or "be very explicit" or "clarify the record" about something. When a politician talks that way, do you sense clarity on the way? Or obfuscation?

You Betcha

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell acknowledges in an interview in the January 21 New Yorker that to him, being waterboarded would be torture. But he won't opine about whether waterboarding is torture legally speaking because "If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it."

Engaging in it? What about the people who *ordered* it? The US is a party to the Geneva Conventions and to the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment of Punishment. Both prohibit torture; both, by virtue of Article VI of the Constitution, are the Law of the Land in the United States.

A violation of a treaty obligation is therefore a violation of US law. A conviction for violating of US law -- aka, "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" -- is grounds for removal from office pursuant to the Constitution's Article II, Section 4. That is:

ordering waterboarding = ordering torture = high crime = impeachment offense

Still wondering why the CIA destroyed the torture tapes?

Two interesting pieces from the front page of today's Wall Street Journal. First, "A CIA official apparently acted against superiors' wishes when he ordered the destruction of interrogation tapes, said Rep. Hoekstra after a closed hearing in which the agency's acting counsel testified." Second, "The White House said it reused backup email computer tapes before October 2003, possibly erasing messages pertaining to the Iraq war and the CIA-leak case."

Right now, the White House has two imperatives: (1) sever links between the White House and waterboarding to create deniability (the narrative then becomes, yes, waterboarding happened; no, we did not authorize or order it); (2) obscure any evidence that the White House has directed a coverup (the narrative then becomes, anyone who destroyed evidence related to waterboarded did so on his own initiative, or else the evidence was lost accidentally).

My guess is that the "lost" emails included information on who in the White House specifically ordered or authorized that prisoners be waterboarded. Expect additional such "accidents."

Unsurprisingly, McConnell insisted in his interview that "We don't torture" and instead use "special methods" of interrogation. Equally unsurprisingly, the "special methods" have worked:

"Have we gotten meaningful information? You betcha. Tons! Does it save lives? Tons! We've gotten incredible information."

Let me ask you something about this speech pattern. If it came from a salesman, especially one on commission, would you trust him? Would you believe in what he was selling?

Update: A great post on the CIA's destruction of its interrogation tapes, on why it ordered that such taping cease, and on how to address such problems going forward. More on my website discussion board.

Rove, McCarthy, Clinton

This morning, Bill Clinton claimed to have a "list of 80 attacks on Hillary that are quite personal by Senator Obama and his campaign going back six months that I've pulled."

I read this and wondered, "Why does this sound familiar?" And then I remembered: "Right, there was that other guy, although his list was longer, coming in at 205... what was his name again? Joe McCarthy, that's right."

I can't find Clinton's list, despite searching for it online, so I gather he hasn't gotten around to producing it yet. I doubt he ever will; after all, Joe McCarthy never released his. If Clinton is forced to release the list he claims to have compiled (I imagine advisors are feverishly putting one together as we speak), I expect that at best we'll find the former president has trouble distinguishing between a political criticism and a personal attack.

Doe Bill expect to be called on this? Yes. Does he care? No. His objective is to use the vestiges of his bully pulpit to get the "list of 80 personal attacks" into the news cycle and use it to chip away at the moral high ground Obama rightly occupies. The next step will be to resist calls for him to produce the list, thereby keeping the meme "80 personal attacks" in the news cycle and cementing it in people's minds. After that, Clinton will release highlights. After that, additional points, which will produce discussion about what's personal and what's political. And finally, when the smoke clears, people are supposed to remember, "Well, Obama's not such a prince... after all, there were those 80 personal attacks..."

I don't mean to suggest the Clintons are running exclusively on a McCarthyism playbook. They're also tapping Karl Rove, who in the 2004 election mastered the audacious technique of directly attacking your opponent's strength. Who would have thought that Bush, who hid in the Texas National Air Guard during Vietnam, could have successfully attacked for his service Kerry, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran! But Bush did, and succeeding in sowing what's known in the software industry as FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. I doubt many voters could remember or ever even knew the details of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (the name itself is a masterpiece of marketing) campaign; what they remembered was something vague, along the lines of, "Sure, Kerry was in Vietnam... but weren't there questions about his war record?"

And so, with Karl Rove as inspiration, the Clintons are now attacking Obama for is supposed inconsistency on the war in Iraq. Bill calls Obama's consistent stance on the war a "fairy tale." Hillary echoes the claim on Tim Russert's show. For the actual facts, though -- to understand just how superior to Hillary's has been Obama's record and judgment on Iraq -- you need print.

So this is how the Clintons hope to neutralize Obama's entirely justifiable claim to have demonstrated better judgment than the current "candidate of experience" on one of the most important foreign policy calls in US history. They use their celebrity status to make all kinds of claims on video that will go un-rebutted in real time, either because the interviewer is ill-informed or timid or an ally or some combination. Only later will the facts emerge, and then only in print. Which will have the bigger impact: the Clinton's ongoing televised repetitions of a lie? Or the print rebuttals? Again, when the smoke clears, even if people remember that Hillary voted for the war in Iraq while then-Illinois state senator Obama was speaking out against it, they'll also have some vague sense that Obama must have done something wrong, too... even if they can't quite remember what it was. "Sure, Hillary was wrong on Iraq... but so was he, wasn't he?"

What did Churchill say? "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Lies are faster, and the Clintons are using them to try to win a race.

What should Obama do about it? My sense is that he should continue to stick to the high road. A significant part of Obama's appeal is his call for an end to partisan rancor. I think his stature will grow if he continues not just to talk that talk, but to walk that walk, especially in the face of so many provocations from the Clintons. Yes, continue to set the record straight, but don't be drawn into the mud. Keep playing to your strengths, keep playing your positive game, not the Clinton's desperately negative one. Not only will such a positive campaign lead to an Obama victory, it'll make that victory even more worthwhile for everyone -- even for the Clintons, because they're American citizens, too, and for any of their would-be imitators.

Update: Another instance of the Clintons' obfuscation efforts regarding Hillary's war vote. Nice to see the New York Times pointing out the distortions.

Brand, Market Adoption, and President Obama

Watching the results from Iowa come in on Thursday, and listening to Obama's victory speech and Hillary Clinton's concession speech after, I realized why Obama is only going to get stronger and Clinton only weaker. It comes down to two business concepts: brand, and market adoption.

Simply put, a brand is the emotional connection a consumer feels to a product or service. It's what the product or service stands for in the consumer's mind. What does Apple stand for? Virgin? Marlboro? Harley Davidson? Generally speaking, if you can easily and simply answer the question of what a company stands for, you're talking about a strong brand. If you can't, the brand is weak.

Part of what makes a brand powerful is internal consistency -- that is, consistency between the elements of the message, and between the message and the underlying product. Inconsistency, that is, dissonance, weakens a brand. In other words, for a brand to have power, its various elements must organically cohere. Volvo stands for safety. How would Volvo fare if the company attempted to include in its brand the idea of speed, handling, and thrills? Not well, because thrills and safety don't easily fit together in the consumer's mind. Reliability, on the other hand, is something that does cohere with safety, and therefore, conceptually, Volvo would have little trouble expanding its brand to make it mean reliability along with safety. But because Volvos are not, in fact, reliable, the extension wouldn't work -- there would be a disconnect between the brand and the underlying product.

Now let's talk candidates. What is Obama's brand? In a word, change. Change is a perfect brand for a young, charismatic, black candidate relatively new to national politics. That is, the brand is perfectly consistent with the product. Not only is there no dissonance; between the man and the message, there is perfect resonance.

Let's stay for a moment with an analysis of the connection between the brand and the product. Then we'll discuss the connection between the brand and the market.

Okay, Clinton: Clinton's brand is, in a word, experience. Certainly not a bad brand to have, generally speaking, but how well-suited in this case is the brand to the product?

I think the answer is: somewhat well-suited. Clinton has been a US senator for seven years, and no one would argue experience like that isn't relevant to the top job. What about her time as First Lady? Brand-wise, I would call that a mixed bag. Some consumers will find it relevant, others less so (the most balanced analysis I've read on the subject, by the way, is by Slate's Michael Kinsley, here). Regardless, compared to a candidate like, say, George Bush Senior, whose 1992 "experience" brand was informed by a previous term as president, eight years as vice president, ambassador to the U.N., Director of Central Intelligence, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Ambassador to China, Clinton's attempt to brand herself as the experienced candidate is relatively unsupported -- certainly not as well supported as Obama's claim to be the candidate of change.

So Clinton's brand is less resonant with the the underlying product than is Obama's, meaning Obama's brand is the more powerful, other things being equal. But other things aren't equal, and experience isn't always the better brand to run on even when the claim to it is strong (note that George Bush Sr. the candidate of experience, was defeated by the young, inexperienced Bill Clinton in 1992). There's also the question of the suitability of "experience" and "change" as brands in the current market. And here, even if Clinton were the very embodiment of experience, she has the wrong brand for 2008.

"Experience" connotes establishment, status quo, the past -- not concepts likely to be favored in a market that has seen five years of catastrophic war in Iraq; the epic incompetence of the response to Katrina; a plummeting dollar; a nine trillion dollar national debt; etc. "Experience" suggests you might be part of the problems people now want fixed. By contrast, all the associations of "change" as embodied by Obama -- freshness, excitement, the new, the future -- suggest the product in question, rather than being part of the problems of the past, will instead be the agent for solving them.

Clinton has realized her "experience" brand is not nearly as well suited for the current market as Obama's "change" brand, and has therefore been attempting to make "change" a part of her brand, as well. You can see the results in her final pre-caucus Iowa television commercial. Note how many times she talks about how she'll be "ready on day one" -- to make "a new beginning." The message (which Bill Clinton has been broadcasting, as well), is that only the candidate with experience can bring about change. Logically, there's nothing wrong with this argument. But brands aren't driven by logic. They're driven by emotion, by unconscious associations, and the implicit question in the mind of voters ("if she's so experienced, why is she only getting around to changing things now?") cannot be satisfactorily answered by logic. In other words, "experience" and "change" are not elements that cohere under a unified, powerful brand. (For a hilarious take on the ultimate in Clinton rebranding, click here.)

(Clinton's refusal to apologize for her vote authorizing the war in Iraq is similar. As a matter of logic, she can argue that she has nothing to apologize for even though if she could do it over she would vote differently because based on what she knew at the time, it was the right decision. The logic of her argument, however, doesn't satisfy the nagging, unconscious, simple question: if you made a mistake, shouldn't you apologize?)

Remember that all the national problems enumerated above arose under the stewardship of a president whose father was president eight years before him. A nepotistic succession -- the antithesis of change -- produced disastrous results. Of course the current market is more hungry for change than it is for experience (and of course the market will be leery of anything that smells of further nepotism or dynasty). Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton = more of the same problems. Barrack Obama? Now that sounds different.

A last point about brands, and then we'll move on to a discussion of market adoption. Remember: for a pitch to be maximally effective, it has to be stated indirectly -- in other words, hidden. With this principle in mind, will Clinton's recent attempts to incorporate "change" into her brand work? "Hillary has always been a change agent" doesn't feel terribly persuasive. By contrast, Obama strikes me as much more subtle about responding to the "no experience" charge. I expect that both substantively and by a firmer grasp of principles of effective communication, Obama will over time put to rest doubts about the depth of his experience. Clinton will have a much more difficult time persuading people that she's not a representative of the status quo -- substantively; because of how directly she makes her claims of change; most stubbornly, because status quo is an inherent association of her brand. Most fundamentally, because at this point in their lives and in this campaign, the candidates' brands are well established, and brands can be changed only slowly, if at all.

Okay, let's talk about market adoption. Quite a few years back, I read an eye-opening book called "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers" by Geoffrey Moore. Moore's argument is that a new, untested product, which Moore calls "discontinuous," will be taken up by the market in five stages: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Only when a product is being adopted by the late majority and laggards can it be said to have "crossed the chasm" to the mass market (in the book business, this is usually called "breaking out"). The point is, later segments of the market refuse to adopt the new product until they see that earlier segments have adopted it. You can only reach the late adopters, who won't initially trust you, by proving yourself with the early adopters first.

Let's apply this theory to Obama. He's young, fresh, and although in fact possessed of a significant amount of relevant experience, not running primarily on an experience brand. Most importantly for purposes of crossing the chasm, of course, he is black. And just as many technology consumers won't buy a new product until they see other people are buying it already, there are many voters who are reluctant to vote for a black candidate because they don't believe he can win.

The key word is "reluctant." Certainly there are some voters who won't believe a black candidate can actually be president until they have witnessed one with his hand on the bible at a south lawn swearing-in ceremony (and maybe not even then). But all other late adopters can and will have their doubts assuaged by witnessing the candidate's success. The leading curve of these late adopters will have been persuaded of Obama's electability by his resounding victory in Iowa. Others will continue to believe Iowa was a meaningless one-off... until they see him win in New Hampshire. And South Carolina. Etc. The point is, for a new, discontinuous "product" like Obama, the mass market can only be converted by the action of early adopters like the voters in Iowa. What this means is that, more than for any other candidate, every time Obama wins, it makes him dramatically stronger. By the time he wins the Democratic nomination, only lunatic-fringe laggards would still refuse to vote for him on electability grounds, and in any market, lunatic fringe laggards are ultimately irrelevant to a product's success. Which, among other reasons, including his brand, is why I believe Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States. Why I hope for that outcome -- and I do -- will be the subject of another post.

P.S. Forgive me for not responding as often as before to comments here. I also post these pieces on my discussion board, and have been spending more time there. It's a fun forum with a lot of interesting people talking about writing, the Rain books, politics, single malt whisky, and anything else that strikes people's fancy, and we do a monthly chat on writing, too, so if you have a chance, stop by and say hello. It would be good to see you.