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.

Liars: Expert and Inexpert

Lately I've been struck by the attempts of Barack Obama's opponents to frighten voters by falsely suggesting Obama is Muslim, and by emerging details of how the CIA went about destroying its torture tapes.* Perhaps unsurprisingly, Obama's opponents' efforts, while disgusting, are calculated to be effective, while the CIA's cover-up, also substantively reprehensible, was woefully inept.

For a pitch to be maximally effective, it has to be stated indirectly -- in other words, hidden. Think about those Cialis ads. They don't directly trumpet, "Cialis will give you a four-hour hard-on!" Instead, they insidiously *warn* customers that in the rare event of a priapism -- an erection that sticks around for over four hours -- you should call your doctor. ("Call my doctor?" a friend of mine commented. "I'm calling everybody!") The customer concludes for himself: if this stuff is capable of causing that kind of tumescence, surely it'll give me at least the boost I need. And is persuaded thereby. The Hollywood variation, by the way, is here.

So it would be crude -- and ineffective -- for Obama's opponents to come right out and claim, "Be afraid -- this guy is a closet Muslim!" Instead, they know to obscure the real message inside an ostensible one. That's why former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey couched his "Obama is a Muslim" message in the guise of praise: "I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There's a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal." Nice! Were any fence sitters persuaded by this? "Hmmm, I hadn't thought about the benefits of Obama's remote Muslim connections." Or is it more likely that people who weren't aware of of any of this concluded, "What? This guy's middle name is *Hussein*? Holy fifth columnist, Batman!" With a master's flourish, Kerrey followed up with an apology, which kept his original words and their insidious meaning in the news cycle. Which is exactly what Kerrey knew would happen, and exactly what he intended.

When Clinton aides forwarded hoax emails similarly preying on the Muslim theme, they said they were doing so just to show how dirty politics was getting. Ah, chutzpah. And when the Clinton campaign fired the offending aides, the firings were designed both to disassociate Senator Clinton from the sleaze and to keep the "Obama is a Muslim" meme in the news cycle.

Top honors for effective use of this type of rhetorical head fake go to Daniel Pipes, who expressed his confidence this way: "'If I were a Muslim I would let you know,' Barack Obama has said, and I believe him... He is not now a Muslim."

Is a suspicious voter reassured by Pipes' confidence? Or does the voter say, "Wait a minute, not *now* a Muslim? You mean he *used to* be one?" Which is exactly what Pipe wanted.

Maybe all the discussion about Obama being Muslim is an honest accident. But to believe that, you'd have to believe that all the people engaging in it, including former and sitting Senators, who know a thing or two about public relations, know less about it than I do. And I'm no expert.

Well, at least when it comes to effective deceit, we should be able to count on the CIA, right? After all, deceit is the name of the intelligence game. If you're in the business of deniably toppling third world dictators and the like, surely you could invent an effective cover for destroying a few internal tapes. Heck, "cover for action" is one of the most fundamental elements of tradecraft, taught to every spy who's ever graduated from the Farm.

Uh, no. Read this New York Times account of how the CIA came to and carried out the decision to destroy the Abu Zubaydah torture tapes (and note how hard the NYT tries not to use the word "torture," preferring terms like "coercive interrogation"). The Agency's efforts were so inept that even though Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel; David S. Addington, legal adviser for Vice President Dick Cheney; and John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council all met with Agency officials to discuss the tapes, no one at the Agency seems able to use the White House's involvement (and possible direction) for political cover. When it comes to cover-ups, it seems, intelligence personnel are no match for politicians.

I can't help wondering, at a purely tactical level, why the Agency didn't just implement some new general regulation regarding, say, the "orderly disposal" (better an oblique nominal construction than a direct verb like "destroy") of "records no longer current," something like that. Get the White House to sign off on the bland new directive. Allow a decent interval to elapse. Dispose of some innocuous records, then the incriminating tapes, then some additional items. Then, when the whole thing comes to light, put on your most innocent and perplexed face and say, "Destroy the tapes? Let me check... oh, they were just subject to orderly disposal pursuant to regulation number whatever, along with hundreds of other items. It was just routine. And anyway, the White House signed off on the whole thing." Conceal the murder in a massacre... how hard is that? Apparently, too hard for the CIA.

Well, at least the Agency isn't totally oblivious to public relations issues... according to the article, the CIA no longer calls its interrogators "interrogators," preferring to call them "debriefers," instead.

Happy new year.

*Sorry, make that "enhanced interrogation," for as President Bush has assured us, "This government does not torture people." Although, given that Vice President Cheney has similarly assured us that the office of the Vice President is not part of the executive branch, I can't help but wonder what the president means when he says "this government," and even what he means by "people." It's enough to make you miss what the meaning of is is.

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.

Vince Flynn, Left-Winger?

The Friday Washington Times has an interesting interview with Vince Flynn, whose new novel featuring CIA operator Mitch Rapp just hit #1 on the NYT list.

I've met Vince and like him, and enjoy Mitch Rapp, too, but I have to admit that while reading the interview, I was struck by some of the fallacies in Vince's arguments, including an underlying set of assumptions that used to be associated with left-wing thinking, but that have now been adopted by the right.

[Torture is] far more effective than liberals would have you believe... What do you think we should have done? Given them [terrorists] a lawyer, three square meals a day and let planes get hijacked?

Leaving aside for the moment the question of effectiveness, note the either/or thinking by which Vince reaches his conclusion. Either we torture, or planes get hijacked. Is this true? Do we really have no anti-terror tools at our disposal but torture? If it is true, how did we get to the point where our options are so dire -- and so limited?

The binary assumption is common in modern rightist arguments. Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists. Either we stay the course in Iraq or we cut and run. Either we bomb Iran or accept their mideast hegemony. In a certain worldview, there are never more than two possibilities.

When I worked for the government, I was taught to make policy proposals in threes: two crazy, one merely unpalatable. For example, we can either nuke Iran, convert to Islam, or tighten up sanctions. The idea is to rhetorically limit the possibilities so the policy maker believes he has no choice. It's like a magician forcing a card.

The question, then, is why do intelligent people present their arguments in such a deliberately distorted fashion? My only answer is that, like the person recommending policy choices above, they do so because they want to reach a certain conclusion, in this case that torture is desirable. The emotional urge is understandable -- we took a hard hit on 9/11 and it's natural that we want to lash out in response. But if we want our policies to be effective, don't they need to be driven more by logic and rational thinking than emotional urges? And when did the right become the slave of naked emotion?

I think it [torture] should be done in the rarest of situations. Anybody who says torture doesn't work hasn't studied the history of torture.

I can't be sure, never having been tortured and never having tortured anyone, but I don't know anyone reasonable who argues that torture doesn't ever work. The problem here is again a kind of limited focus, because whether something sometimes works is only a small part of analyzing whether the thing in question is desirable overall. Maybe a drug works sometimes, but that's no argument for failing to consider its side effects -- or those occasions where the drug catastrophically fails.

I'll stipulate that in certain instances, you could get useful intel via torture. We still have to balance that possible benefit against all the real costs: an avalanche of false information obscuring the real intel; the creation of new, highly motivated terrorist cadres; tremendous damage to US soft power; psychic damage to our own people; the brutalization of our culture.

You could argue that the benefits of torture outweigh those costs. What you can't do is argue in favor of torture as though those costs don't exist.

The tendency to argue because of possible benefits while ignoring real costs has become a right wing emblem. When the subject is Iraq, the right's arguments are limited to the benefits of having overthrown a brutal dictator. Omitted from the analysis is a discussion of what we have paid to achieve that end: over 4000 dead servicemen and women and far more maimed, blinded, and traumatized; over half a trillion dollars so far, and possibly more than double that in years to come; massive military and economic opportunity costs; etc.

Here is a simple equation: value = benefit minus cost. It used to be liberals who argued for the value of an enterprise only by reference to its benefits, and conservatives who insisted also on an accounting of cost. No longer.

Torture, or aggressive interrogation, is only as good as the interrogators. Take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for instance. He got waterboarded and he sang like a canary... he ended up naming operatives and giving up a treasure trove of financial secrets as well as plans for future attacks.

Another thing I learned in the government was that an assessment of the soundness of intelligence has to include an understanding of the motivations of the asset providing it. When the same government sources advocating torture assure me it works, it brings out my inner skeptic (again, odd that cynicism used to be a right wing characteristic, naivete a hallmark of the left). I've also learned, from George Orwell and personal experience, to be skeptical when assurances take the form of cliches like "sang like a canary." Cliches are typically substitutes for thought.

But maybe KSM did provide useful intel after being tortured. We still have to measure the value of what was obtained in that individual instance against the costs of torture overall. True, Vince argues that torture "should be done in the rarest of situations." But as Abu Ghraib has demonstrated, torture, once accepted "in the rarest of situations," has a tendency to metastasize, and anyone who argues that torture should be, say, safe legal and rare, has to include metastasis as one of the potential costs to consider.

[KSM being waterboarded] was not Uday and Qusai Hussein at work. This was done with clinical precision, not brute force. There are multiple interrogators, lie detectors, doctors and a group of analysts in the next room...

This one throws me. Is the argument that medieval, Inquisition torture is bad, but modern, scientific torture is good? I can't imagine Vince would want to articulate such a principle, but that seems to be what he's saying.

I know Amnesty International would disagree with me, but every American needs to ask themselves, "If you could turn back the clock one week [before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks] would you want Zacarias Moussaoui to have been interrogated by waterboarding?"

I've heard this kind of argument before. It's a subspecies of the "we only have two choices" approach -- again, waterboard or face another 9/11. But the subspecies has an interesting twist: note that it is by definition a fantasy. You actually have to go back in time, where you can have knowledge of the future, to make it work. Unless the people who promote this argument propose building a time machine, I don't understand its relevance. We can't travel backward in time. We don't have knowledge delivered from the future. It's the here and now in which the benefits and costs of torture need to be discussed.

[Americans] are not opposed to torturing men like Sheikh Mohammed, but they don't want to run around and talk about it in public.

This is a strangely emotional argument -- strange because, again, emotional appeals used to be a hallmark of the left, critical thinking the pride of the right. Of course anyone who lived through 9/11 would like KSM, OBL, and many others to suffer and die horribly. That's natural -- as natural as feeling the same way about rapists and murderers. But we've made a decision as a society to grant due process to rapists and murderers, which means not torturing them however much we'd like to. If you want to argue for torturing rapists and murderers, you have to argue that the benefits of the torture outweigh the costs of abandoning Constitutional due process. Similarly, if you want to argue that we should torture War on Terror prisoners, you have to argue the benefits will outweigh the costs. Either way, the existence of a righteous urge to do violence is not an argument for the rightness of violence. "If it feels good, do it" is a formerly left-wing mantra, now heartily embraced by the right.

Look at Hollywood. They all detest President Bush because their friends will think they are smarter by hating him. They wear it as a badge of honor . They try to prove to people they are smart and compassionate and enlightened, so people will like them.

Coming from a novelist capable of imagining the kinds of twists and turns that bedevil Mitch Rapp, the "there are no reasons someone could detest President Bush except for some internal psychological drama or the impoverishment of a certain social milieu" argument seems doubly odd, and I'm struck again by the self-imposed limitations of the current view from the right.

Americans would love to watch a great movie where Mitch Rapp is meting out punishment to these crazy zealots...

Agreed! And I would probably be first in line. But the kind of emotional gratification that drives great movie making shouldn't be confused with the fundamentals of effective policy making. Story is built on emotion and drama. Policy is built on logic and facts.

Mitch Rapp has taken on a cult following, but Hollywood doesn't get it for the same reasons they don't understand talk radio, Wal-Mart or NASCAR.

I don't know... if Hollywood could greenlight "Saw IV" (I love the roman numeral; it makes it seem so important), I think they could stoop to talk radio level just fine.

[I'm backing] Rudy [Giuliani]. He's a bit of a moderate and can unite the country and get the country focused on the war against terrorists.

Hmmm... Giuliani is endorsed by Pat Robertson, who claimed American homosexuals brought 9/11 down upon us; his chief foreign policy adviser believes we're already in World War IV and "prays" the US will bomb Iran; he has promised to appoint judges like Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas; and he has argued that we are in a "real war" with Iran and should not rule out a preemptive nuclear strike on Tehran.

If Giuliani is a moderate, who's an extremist?

[Giuliani] symbolizes the gravity of the situation, and I don't think the guy will back off for a moment having witnessed September 11.

When did the right become so dazzled by symbols that a candidate's symbolic value became a reason to offer him your vote?

I don't think Guiliani will waiver. If he gets ahold of Osama bin Laden, he will throw everything he can at the guy.

Everything? Is that a good thing?

Unwavering symbols throwing everything we have at the enemy... it's an emotional image, I'll admit. But where's the rational beef? When did the right's thinking become so... touchy-feely?

Obviously, I don't agree with Vince, but I give him credit for not resorting to euphemisms like enhanced or aggressive or alternative interrogation. I just hope that he, and other torture proponents, will better distinguish between the cost-free, satisfying torture we see in novels and movies, and torture in the real world, where it carries real costs. That's the kind of hard-headed distinction we used to be able to count on from the right. I eagerly await its return.

The Future of the Book Biz

Sorry for the radio silence -- the new manuscript is due in January and for the moment it's hard to keep up with HOTM. If you're curious, I do have a three-part series on the future of the book biz at M.J. Rose's Buzz, Balls & Hype. Enjoy and see you soon.

-- Barry

More on Torture

The subject of torture is much in the news again: the New York Times reports on a series of secret Justice Department opinions; The Economist runs a weekly article on the balance of security and civil liberties; Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal responds to The Economist; and former President Carter unequivocally claims the US tortures prisoners (no "detainees are subjected to enhanced/alternative/aggressive/harsh interrogation techniques" passive voice doublespeak for Carter).

Let's see if we can get to the heart of the matter.

Bret Stephens devoted a fair amount of his column's space to trying to define torture, discussing needles under fingernails, blows to the head, stress positions, hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation, and deprivation of food and water, plus combinations thereof.

(BTW, most of the commentary on blows to the head during interrogation describes the blows as "slaps." My sense is that the word slap is chosen deliberately because slaps seem relatively insignificant (see also Vice President Cheney describing waterboarding as "a dunking"). I respectfully submit that anyone who argues a slap is no big deal either is being disingenuous, or has never been slapped by someone who knows what he's doing.)

I've argued before that opinions about what constitutes torture will never be entirely objective. Maybe the way to avoid, or at least ameliorate the subjectivity inherent in the topic is to avoid trying to define the practice altogether. I think focusing too much on a definition won't, in the end, be any more productive than attempts to define terrorism. I also think the focus on a definition is misleading. A better focus would emerge if we try to answer the following question:

How do we reasonably expect American prisoners of war to be treated by the enemy? Whatever the answer, that's the way we ought to be treating enemy POWs.

Why? Two reasons. First is the classic one: we want to encourage the enemy to reciprocate. Second, the more fundamental one: how we treat enemies is a critical part of how we view ourselves.

The reciprocity argument is marginal when the enemy is al Qaeda. Still, it's worth noting that there must be reasons beyond reciprocity that we don't want to torture prisoners. Otherwise, presumably we would be comfortable beheading captured jihadists and videotaping the beheadings, too, simply because that's what the other side does. Which is another way of saying that no matter what the other side does, there is a code of behavior we will abide by purely because of who we are. And I can't think of any better way to arrive at that code than by reference to the treatment we reasonably expect to be extended to American POWs. Anything else would be hypocritical at best.

If you agree with me, you'll have a hard time countenancing blows to the head, stress positions, hypothermia, and all the rest -- unless you think it's okay for American POWs to be treated this way, too.

But torture saves lives, proponents say. And that's what counts.

Well, it's not the only thing that counts, is it? If saving lives is the only value at stake, what meaning is there is phrases like "live free or die," "give me liberty or give me death," and "death before dishonor"?

Regardless, I'm not convinced of the benefits of torture -- and even if I were, I'd also want to inquire into its costs. By way of analogy: in our criminal justice system, we incarcerate people only upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That's an exceptionally high standard, and without question permits countless criminals to go free -- many of them, doubtless, to commit other crimes, including murder. If we relaxed the standard, we would put more murderers behind bars, and in doing so we would certainly save lives. But we don't -- apparently because we recognize that the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt has inherent value, even at the cost of lives.

If you wanted to relax the burden of proof in criminal law, you'd have to argue that whatever benefits we derive from the standard as a society are outweighed by the crimes committed by criminals who the standard keeps out of prison. Similarly, if you think Americans should treat prisoners other than the way we expect American POWs to be treated, you'd have to argue that the benefits of such a course would exceed the cost of our hypocrisy. Whether or not what they call for amounts to "torture," I don't think proponents have adequately made this case.

Getting Closer to War with Iran

I've written before about the chances for war between the US and Iran. Seymour Hersh lays out the latest in the October 8 New Yorker.

Consider a few items. First, the January 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which provides in part:

Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States...

Next, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, passed on September 27, which designates Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organization.

Third, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have both testified that Iran is arming Iraqis against the United States (President Bush has made similar points, of course, but his credibility on such matters isn't high, which is why the White House has gone to such lengths to build up and rely upon the credibility of General Petraeus).

Add it all up, and you can see what's coming. The White House, claiming inherent authority under the Constitution, plus statutory authority pursuant to the Jan 2002 AUMF and Kyl-Lieberman, launches limited air strikes inside Iran against what it claims are terrorist targets. Iran hits back. America's blood gets up, and the White House now has the political capital to widen its campaign against Iran. Congressional Democrats, already caving in to Republican pressure on such nonsense as a bill suggesting that every single member of the US armed forces is possessed of unassailable honor and integrity and on Kyl-Lieberman itself, do nothing -- or perhaps pass a few new enabling resolutions. The situation worsens in Iraq, and the White House expands its rhetorical campaign against Iran, arguing that success in Iran has become the key to success in Iraq (and perhaps in Afghanistan, as well). The worse things become overall, the more important it becomes to escalate (sound familiar, albeit strange? It's the history of the political-military dynamic in Iraq). The war with Iran, ostensibly initiated to protect our troops in Iraq, is now about the destruction of Iran's nuclear program. Because Iran really has such a program, the ostensible purpose of the war with Iraq -- WMDs -- is, in a byzantine way, fulfilled.

How can you tell the war is going to happen? First, ask who wants it to happen. Then ask who could stop it.

Who wants it to happen? President Bush and Vice President Cheney, as described here.

Who could stop it? Congressional Democrats? Based on their supine record since taking both Congress and the Senate, I think not.

Congressional Republicans? Maybe, because they have the most to lose, electorally speaking. But do they? The Republicans are already going to be hammered in '08... so why not play double or nothing, shake up the state of play and see what happens? When you look at it this way, you realize that Congressional Republicans might look at gambling on another war as worth a roll of the dice.

Who's left? Possibly the US military itself, strangely enough. But by starting small and claiming strikes inside Iran are only in support of US forces in Iraq, the White House could bypass and ultimately co-opt military objections, too.

It's hard to imagine a war with Iran will go well, given the Bush administration's demonstrated incompetence in waging the two currently on its plate. If things go badly, I wonder what sort of societal backlash we'll see domestically. Supporters of the White House, the war in Iraq, and a new war in Iran will need to find a reason for our failures. What will they seize on?

Get ready.