The Palin Doctrine

Sarah Palin's ignorance of foreign policy is remarkable not just in itself, but also for the way, along with her candidacy, it continues to expose the naked hypocrisy that characterizes so much of what the Republican party has allowed itself to become.

If you've watched the single interview the McCain team has dared to let her give in the two weeks since she was nominated, you've seen the following exchange:

Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?
Palin: In what respect, Charlie?
Gibson: What do you interpret it to be?
Palin: His worldview?

Palin has been justifiably slammed for not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is, and the unprincipled right has rallied to her defense by claiming there's so much ambiguity in the Bush Doctrine, so many versions, so many interpretations and elements and addenda and visions and revisions, that obviously Palin was just giving a careful, thoughtful response. It's all bullshit, of course, and Glenn Greenwald has a great series of videos and transcripts of the people who just before being blinded by the impenetrable opaqueness of the Bush Doctrine all agreed on exactly what it meant.

(By the way, what could be said about a doctrine so ambiguous that even its cheerleaders profess not to understand what it means? You'd think a latent sense of personal dignity would prevent Republicans from advancing excuses as lame as their latest, but you would be mistaken.)

Now, admittedly, doctrines are simply policies. But if you call it a policy, it won't get named after you or your political heroes (who would remember The Monroe Policy?), so self-important presidents and their sycophantic cheerleaders in the press like to puff ordinary policies up into heroically grand Doctrines. Okay, fine. But this is what makes Palin's interview the more appalling: it's clear that not only does she not know what the Bush Doctrine is, she doesn't know what a presidential doctrine is, period.

Think about it. Yes, if it were true that Palin were an expert on the Bush Doctrine who was just giving a careful, nuanced response, she would have asked something like, "Which aspect, Charlie?" (with a few specifics thrown in to alleviate any suspicions that she's a foreign policy neophyte, alleviating such ridiculous suspicions being one of the key objectives of the interview). But even if she didn't know diddly about the Bush Doctrine, a nodding acquaintance with the concept of presidential concepts generally would have steered her away from her non-sequitur of a fishing expedition. After all, no one with even a clue about what a presidential doctrine is would respond to a question like Gibson's with a query about the worldview of the president in question.

Imagine this exchange:

Gibson: Do you agree with the Monroe Doctrine?
Palin: In what respect, Charlie?
Gibson: What do you interpret it to be?
Palin: His worldview?

Right, Palin's question makes no sense there, either. Nor would it have made sense had Gibson asked her about the Carter Doctrine, the Reagan Doctrine, or about whether she thought it was silly and self-important for presidents to have "doctrines" named after them in the first place. It wouldn't have made sense because Palin doesn't know anything about the entire subject.

So maybe instead of being tutored by Joe Lieberman and company, Palin should be watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail:



Of course, none of this will matter to the people who are packaging Palin as a foreign policy expert because Alaska is near Russia, and it won't matter to the people who want to believe in the "Sarah is Experienced" myth. We used to call this kind of attitude willful ignorance. I think we can now just call it the Palin Doctrine.

P.S. I've received several emails from people complaining about my use of the word "bullshit" because they find it offensive. I understand your point and appreciate the feedback, but I think on this issue reasonable people can differ. It's true there are many other words that also describe the McCain/Palin campaign: lies, deception, distortion, dishonesty, untruth, etc., but nothing quite captures the heart of their campaign like bullshit, so I'll go on using the term. And while I commend these commenters for caring enough to share their thoughts with me, I can't help but wonder: have you expressed some outrage too at the purveyors of the bullshit, and not just at the people who are reporting it?

Obama Eats Special Needs Children!

James Taranto has an article in today's Wall Street Journal in which he professes outrage at anyone who would suggest John McCain picked Sarah Palin because she was walked the pro-life walk (as, indeed, she has). The article is worth a read: Taranto distorts the meaning of some of the quotes he uses in a way that's reminiscent of the recent McCain camp excrescences on lipstick and sex education, then whips himself into a fit of righteous indignity:

This is worse than tasteless or even unhinged. It is depraved. It represents an inversion of any reasonable conception of right and wrong, including liberal conceptions.

Holy hyperbole, Batman! But is it really so outlandish and offensive to suggest that McCain picked Palin because of her pro-life credentials?

This is a candidate who has barely set foot outside the country, who has never met a foreign leader, who had never evinced even a rudimentary understanding of or even interest in foreign policy. Her national security credentials are so lacking that her supporters have had to resort to novel theories about the sources of her expertise, such as that she is a national security expert because Alaska is near Russia, or that she has learned foreign policy "by osmosis" because Russian missiles would pass over Alaska on their way to the continental United States. Even McCain can't come up with a coherent defense of his candidate's foreign policy or national security credentials (although he does manage to come up with two #1 issues facing America. For John McCain, nothing is impossible). Watch this painful video and see.



And here's Governor Palin's first interview since being nominated, where, after two weeks of cramming on national security issues, she doesn't even know what The Bush Doctrine is.



(If you're a principled conservative, if you care about national security, how can you accept this? Seriously.)

The humiliating attempts of Palin's supporters notwithstanding, it's simply impossible to believe that McCain chose Palin for her national security credentials. We know he didn't pick her for that.

How about executive experience? The McCain team has tried to focus more on this one because the national security case is so laughable. And it's true that Palin has been a mayor and is now a governor, so she is not entirely lacking in executive experience. But even if you believe that being mayor of a town of 9000 and serving for a year and half as governor of a state of 600,000 is adequate experience to prepare you to be President of the United States, can you really argue it's enough to outweigh the total lack of foreign policy or national security credibility? If McCain wanted meaningful executive experience -- especially the kind that would outweigh the foreign policy deficit -- he had an almost limitless list of candidates who have far more executive experience than Palin.

So we know McCain didn't pick Palin for her national security acumen, which is nonexistent, or for her executive experience, which is slight. And those seem like two pretty key categories to check off for a potential Commander-in-Chief.

So... why did he pick her?

As I've argued before, there are two reasons: (i) to attract disaffected Hillary supporters and women for whom gender is a key consideration in a candidate; and (ii) to fire up the base. Palin's gender was calculated to achieve objective #1. Objective #2 is achieved by Palin's pro-life stance, the integrity of which is proven by her decision to bear a Down's Syndrome child (to her credit -- on this, she seems no hypocrite. Pork barrel spending and reform, not so much).

So of course McCain chose Palin in large part because of her decision to have her Down's Syndrome baby. Her decision served the substantive objective of firing up the base, and even better, today Republicans are able to use the baby, as Taranto does, to inject another dose of bullshit into the news cycle and make sure everyone is talking about the baby, rather than about Governor Palin's utter lack of qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief. The strategy is: "We'll talk about the baby by saying it's outrageous and offensive to talk about the baby."

So get ready for the next wave of McCain accusations, calculated to dominate two or three more days of news and drown out McCain's and Palin's dreadful recent performances. It'll go something like this: "Obama Slimes Trig Palin and Other Special Needs Children!" And rather than press this obvious -- and winning -- point, that of course McCain picked her because of the baby, she's substantively embarrassingly unqualified, Democrats will apologize, as indeed they already, reflexively, are.

Republicans are very good at this game. Democrats, it seems, just aren't. Some thoughts on why in another post.

McCain's Honor

What's that quote, sometimes attributed to Twain, other times to Churchill? "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Well, it looks like the truth is belatedly catching up to McCain and Palin on their nonstop "she stopped the bridge to nowhere, she sold the plane on eBay, she fired the governor's mansion cook" attempts to create a hockey mom, reformer, just-folks persona that rests on a tissue of lies.

No, she didn't kill the bridge to nowhere; no, she didn't return the money for the bridge -- she kept it; no, she didn't sell the plane on eBay, and took a loss when she sold it otherwise; no, she didn't fire the governor mansion cook, just let him go during the summer, when she wasn't there anyway; no, she didn't put Wasilla's fiscal house in order, she increased the town's debt; no, she didn't oppose earmarks, she took in more earmark money per capita than any other governor in the United States.

It'll be interesting to see whether the facts carry the day. So often, people will just go on believing what they want to. What's that other Churchill line? "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."

Here are a few links to the facts:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh090808.shtml

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/215092.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3DZZNZFxeI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfLDjmKfigw





Many more articles and links on Talking Points Memo.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

-- Barry

Suicide by Palin

On November 5, when the votes are in and Obama has won, pundits will look back and see what all the bizarreness and hysteria are occluding now: John McCain lost the election when he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.

McCain's strategists hoped choosing Palin would accomplish two objectives: bring in more women, and fire up the theocrat base. The first objective will fail. The second will succeed, but only in a "the operation was a success but the patient died" sense.

Objective 1: bring in more women. The number of women who would vote for someone with Palin's views on reproductive rights (let alone her scant experience) -- that is, who, as The Daily Show put it, who would put gynecology over ideology -- is small. To suggest otherwise, as the McCain campaign implicitly has in making its pick, presupposes that there are significant numbers of women who are even more gullible than men. There aren't.



Also, the few women who might vote for McCain only because his running mate is female have to be balanced against the voters McCain will have lost by his choice. Among the lost will be voters (many of them women) appalled by the cynicism of the move, by Palin's obvious lack of readiness for the job, and by the recklessness McCain has demonstrated in his failure to vet his pick.

Objective 2: fire up the Christianist base. From what I've read in the news and judging from some of the mail I've been receiving, I think this objective will probably be achieved. But again, you have to balance the gains you make in firing up the base against the potential voters you drive to Obama by adopting this strategy. The rally-the-base strategy worked in the last two elections. After eight years of disastrous Republican incompetence, the base won't be enough. You need the independents, too -- that is, the very voters who are thoughtful enough to correctly evaluate a choice like this for what it really is.

If this is all so obvious, you might ask, why did McCain's team adopt a strategy that's sure to fail?

Two reasons, I would say: inertia, and the fear of looking stupid.

When I was competing in wrestling and judo, I learned that you have to be careful about relying too much on a particular money move (there are exceptions, like Japanese Olympic judo heavyweight Gold Medalist Yasuhiro Yamashita, but even there Yamashita had three money moves, each of which complemented the other two, and countering one would by design set you up for one of the others. Plus, Yamashita was abnormally talented. But I digress). If you get known for a signature move, your opponents will work hard to figure out a way to counter it. Then, when you go up against such an opponent and your money move doesn't work, it takes a while for your brain to accept that the surefire thing isn't working anymore and you have to do something else. Eventually, you'll catch on, but there's resistance, and in the meantime you'll probably lose the match.

Now, multiply that resistance across an entire entrenched bureaucracy, and you start to get an idea of how hard it is for an organization to abandon techniques that have worked in the past, even when all the signs indicate that the current contest is different.

Compounding the inertia factor is the fear of looking stupid. I think fear of looking stupid is one of the most powerful motivators in human behavior. It explains why people are willing to do conventional things even in the face of plentiful evidence that the thing in question is a mistake. Because if you buy gold at $1000 an ounce and it tanks, you can always hide behind the fig leaf of, "Well gosh, everyone was doing it! So sure it was a mistake, but at least it wasn't a stupid one!" Whereas if you fail doing something original or otherwise daring, you'll be open to charges of, "What were you thinking? No one's ever done that -- why didn't you do what's tried and trued? What are you, stupid?"

Fear of looking stupid has two components. The first, described above, is largely unconscious and emotional. The second is conscious and calculated. If you're a McCain or RNC staffer and you know the tried-and-true approach is going to fail this time, what are your incentives for trying to adapt? You're apt to lose against the higher-ups, anyway, who are gripped by inertia. And even if you prevail organizationally but your daring new strategy doesn't win the election (highly probable, given the fundamentals of this race), people will hit you with the, "What are you, stupid?" charge, which will damage your career prospects. Whereas, if you lose the election doing what's always worked before, you won't look stupid, you can blame the brutal 2008 election fundamentals, and you'll have a job working for the Republican nominee in 2012.

So the Republicans have by reflex adopted a fire-up-the-theocrat-base; spiced it up with an attempt to lure women sufficiently gullible or gender-obsessed to vote against their ideological and common sense interests; and undergirded it with the usual tribalist, culture war appeals we saw in most of the Republican convention speeches. I almost can't blame them -- not just because, after all, the bullshit has worked before, but because the Democrats are still so inept in combating it. At least the Dems can rely on outsiders like The New Yorker.

For me, probably the most fascinating aspect of McCain's pick (aside from watching Republican heads explode as they try to defend it) has been watching the way the glandular right has fallen in love with her. In fact, I received an email from a guy the other day who proclaimed, "I love Sarah Palin!" I wrote back that it must be love at first sight. And these are the same people who accuse the left of surrendering their judgment on Obama, of falling in love, of believing Obama is The One, blah blah blah...



Let's assume too that Sarah Palin, because of her looks, her religious views, her personality, or whatever, seems like your kind of person and you really, really like her, or even love her. I don't understand how you get from there to "and therefore she should be next-in-line for the presidency." In what other field do people make decisions this way? "...and therefore she should operate on my child." "...and therefore he should run a billion-dollar company." "...and therefore she should repair my car."

"and therefore she should be next-in-line for the presidency." And the people saying it call themselves "conservative!" It amazes me.

The good news is, she won't be.

Rebranding McCain

Apologies to all for being away so long. If you haven't heard, back in May, my family and I made a sudden decision to move to Tokyo for the year, which led to a distracting three months of preparations. We've been here now for two weeks, are mostly settled in, and are loving life in this overwhelming, crazy, wonderful city.

I've been meaning to offer some thoughts on where John McCain is most vulnerable to being rebranded, but I think that exercise might have been rendered academic now that McCain has chosen to commit Suicide By Palin. Still, branding and politics are two subjects that interest me mightily, and their intersection even more so. So here are a few observations.

I've finally finished watching the major speeches from the Democratic convention. I think the Dems mostly did a good job. Like Glenn Greenwald, I would have liked to see more about the current administration's radicalism and contempt for the Constitution. I also would have liked to see a more subtle and systematic attempt to rebrand McCain.

For me, a brand is the emotional connection a consumer feels with a product or service (for some earlier thoughts on the subject with regard to Clinton and Obama, check out Brand, Market Adoption, and President Obama). Brand is what the product stands for; it's why a consumer wants to be associated with the product.

What's McCain's brand? I think you can sum it up in a few phrases. War hero. National security expert. Straight-talking maverick. (Bear in mind that for the moment we're talking about brand, and not the extent to which the brand is supported or contradicted by the underlying product). Given that McCain's marketing team wants consumers to buy their product for the presidency, I'd call McCain's brand strong and appropriate to the task at hand. The challenge for the Democrats, therefore, is to change the brand. The question is, how.

Once a brand is established in the consumer's mind, it's difficult to change it in the absence of a change in the underlying product. Some brands can be extended in certain directions; the trick lies in knowing which brands can be extended and in what ways. As a general matter, you can't turn a brand into something entirely new. You have to build on, and subtly shift, something you already have. Even a relatively logical change -- and one supported by the product's name -- like Amazon's shift from online bookseller to online general merchandise shopping mall, was difficult and took a lot of time and effort.

So the Democrats would be ill-advised to try to take on McCain's brand head-on. What they need to do instead is to work with the brand as it currently exists in consumers' minds and then subtly reshape it. Republicans are generally good at this game. Look at what they've tried to do in rebranding Obama as a "celebrity." Obama's brand involves a rare kind of political charisma, and rather than deny that charisma, the Republican marketing machine has tried to shift the way consumers look at it. The pitch isn't, "He's not charismatic," which no one would accept; it's "Sure, he's charismatic -- he's a celebrity,after all, like Paris Hilton, who BTW isn't qualified to be president" (although I have to say, Paris is a lot more articulate than McCain, and marketing-savvy, too).

I think the way to rebrand McCain is first to not argue about the current brand. People who believe McCain is a national security expert because he can keep a straight face while uttering helium-filled platitudes like "I'll follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell" and "I'll be Hamas's worst nightmare" and "We are all Georgians now," while ignoring his belief that even in retrospect invading Iraq was a good idea, along with his proven inability, for example, to distinguish Shia from Sunni, or locate the borders of Pakistan or Iraq, or know that Czechoslovakia hasn't been a country since 1992, won't be persuaded by the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Similarly, people who believe McCain is a straight-talking maverick despite his reversals on Iraq, torture, abortion, tax cuts, offshore drilling, the religious right -- in fact, can you come up with a topic on which McCain has been consistent? -- are already letting the brand blind them to the facts, so pointing out the facts will be of limited utility. Nor is there any reason to hope that people who believe being shot down and held as a POW in itself qualifies a candidate to be Commander-in-Chief and insulates that candidate from questions about his qualifications are amenable to an alteration in their underlying worldview.

(On the convincibility continuum, people who continue to believe McCain is serious about national security -- that he puts "Country First" -- even in the face of his pick for vice president, are near clinical. The Wall Street Journal's attempts to justify the choice were particularly entertaining. They praised it as "a daring pick because Mrs. Palin has never faced national scrutiny and hasn't had to deal with foreign policy." Hasn't had to deal with it! Meaning, she might be an absolute expert on the subject; she just hasn't had the opportunity to demonstrate her awesome abilities. It's like calling a used car "pre-owned" -- sure it was owned, but maybe it wasn't ever driven? And this was great, too: "We suspect her record of fighting the status quo was uppermost in John McCain's decision." The woman part? Total accident! Fox and Cindy McCain have argued for Palin's foreign policy credibility because "Alaska is close to Russia," and no, I am not making this up. And here's a hilarious parody of right-wing attempts to justify this unjustifiable choice.).

What the Democrats need to do is accept all the premises of McCain's brand -- but then to ask, "What happened? McCain was all those things, and we loved him for it. But he's changed. He's not the man he once was."

Notice how small is the disagreement inherent in this pitch. It doesn't deny adherents to McCain's brand their fundamental belief; instead, it accepts and agrees with that belief. It's therefore able to get past defenses and open up a small question, a question which comes across as fair and reasonable given the overall broad agreement on which the question rests. "What happened to him?"

The only Democrat I saw do anything like this at the convention was John Kerry, who repeatedly contrasted Senator McCain and Candidate McCain. The contrast was useful, but I think it could have been more effective. It needed to be hammered home by more speakers, and consistently employed in service of the question: "What happened to John McCain?"

Once McCain brand loyalists accept that something has changed, they can start to see him more for what he really is (or, if you think I'm being too partisan, they can see him in the way the Democrats want him to be seen rather than in the way he wants to be seen). The emotional distance for such changed perceptions is short. It's not, "I was all wrong about McCain;" it's, "I was right about McCain... but he's changed." And that small shift would be enough. What matters for an election (or for the success of any product) isn't what the brand was; what matters is what the brand is on the day people are making up their minds about buying it.

"He's not the man he once was" is also obvious code for, "At 72 -- and 76, if he serves a full term -- McCain is too old." Democrats will be called on their use of this code. This would be desirable. It would be a backdoor way of creating nonstop coverage of McCain's age, in the guise of "Are Democrats playing the age card?":

Television Pseudo-Journalist: "You said, 'What's happened to John McCain? He's not the man he was.' Isn't this code for 'McCain is too old?'"

Democratic Spokesman: "No, it's not. Whether a man who would be 76 if he serves one full term is too old for the job is for the American people to decide. It's a comment instead on what happened to a once-principled politician. After all, John McCain was against torture before he was for it, he was against tax cuts for the rich before he was for them, he called theocrats 'agents of intolerance' before embracing them, etc. John McCain has made more misstatements, leveled more outright falsehoods, and changed his positions on more issues in less time than any politician in recent memory, and the American people have a right to know why. Is he just pandering? What does he really believe? What could we expect of him if he were to become president?"

In the midst of this kind of coverage, McCain's ongoing misstatements would have a framework in which they could be understood: "He's a national security expert, so if he's making mistakes on such fundamental points, it can only mean that he's slipping. Can we risk putting someone of such declining capacity in the White House?"

No, we can't.

I'm not a Democrat, and I'm not otherwise comfortable with the notion of the Democrats gaining a simultaneous lock on Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency. But if they're going to become a serious party again, the Republicans need a near-death experience. If you care about the party -- and about the country -- help provide that experience in November.

Safety First; The Constitution Second

If you're a regular reader of HOTM, you know where I stand on the recently enacted FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants the government broad new domestic eavesdropping powers and immunizes telecoms from previous felonies (wouldn't it be great if retroactive immunity from felonies were available to all of us? Tragically, you and I don't donate enough to politicians to qualify. But we can always hope).

Reading the transcript of the signing ceremony, I was struck by some of President Bush's rhetoric. The president said, "The bill I sign today will help us meet our most solemn responsibility: to stop new attacks and to protect our people." And he reiterated: "Protecting America from another attack is the most important responsibility of the federal government -- the most solemn obligation that a President undertakes."

What's odd about these statements is that they're at odds with the Constitution itself. Article 2, Section 1 provides, "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, [the President] shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'" Apparently, the framers thought the one thing so in need of protection that they required it to be called out explicitly in an oath is the Constitution. They didn't see fit to have the president swear an oath to defend the country, the currency, or anything else -- just the Constitution. For someone who purports to be a "judicial conservative", Bush's reordering of Constitutional priorities are odd.

True, Article 4, Section 4 provides, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence." But there's nothing in the language of the Constitution providing that any of these responsibilities is "most solemn" or "most important." Those priorities are external inventions, and certainly not in keeping with a notion that we ought to interpret the Constitution based on its own clear language.

So we're left with a question: why would a president who purports to be a judicial conservative claim his most solemn obligation is to prevent attacks on the nation, when the Constitution itself clearly provides otherwise? If the president's reordering of priorities is correct, does it not follow that he might be impelled to protect America at the cost of the Constitution? Do we really want to empower any president, Democrat or Republican, with such a convenient rationalization?

The right is fond of pointing out that freedom isn't free. And certainly it isn't: likely it can only exist and be preserved in the presence of certain dangers (then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld himself pointed out that "Freedom is untidy.") Many of these dangers could be eliminated by a totalitarian government, just as we could dramatically reduce crime by eliminating Due Process and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Would the trade-off be worth it?

What concerns me most is that President Bush's stated priorities -- Safety First, the Constitution Second -- might accurately reflect the current priorities of a significant number of Americans. If our culture comes to prize safety above all else, we'll gradually cash in our freedoms attempting to buy our safety. If that's really the way we've come to view the world, maybe McCain advisor Phil Graham had a point when he recently described Americans as "whiners" and victims."

Liberty is our precious inheritance. We can marshal it wisely, or we can place it in blind trust, where, predictably, it will be lost.

Obama Caves on Warrantless Surveillance and Telecom Amnesty

As an Obama supporter, I have to say the Senator massively disappointed me today with his craven capitulation on warrantless surveillance and amnesty for law-breaking telecoms. His vote was a betrayal of numerous campaign promises. I had thought more of him and feel naive now for having believed him earlier.

If you value the Fourth Amendment more than Senator Obama seems to, here's a link to Strange Bedfellows, a new organization dedicated to preventing unchecked government power and preserving the Fourth Amendment. I've already signed up.

John McCain: The Communist Choice?

Hmmm... earlier today, John McCain's former North Vietnamese communist jailer went on the record with his support for McCain, saying he considers McCain an "old friend" and asserting that he would vote for McCain for president if he could. Isn't McCain's communist support something we should consider in determining his fitness for office? Might not his communist support be evidence that he's some kind of fifth columnist?

Obviously (I hope obviously) the title of this piece and the argument above are intended to be ridiculous. But by the bizarre inferences the right has trotted out about Hamas and Obama, my title and argument are entirely coherent. If I'm correct in thinking McCain's communist support isn't going to be a major play on Fox news, it's reasonable to ask why.

Of course, we know why: Fox's purpose isn't journalism; it's support of a political party. Fair enough. But for people with integrity, questioning these inconsistencies is a useful way to expose bias -- not just in others, but in ourselves. So if you're someone who believed a purportedly kind word from a Hamas member was damning to Obama, you should ask yourself why a similar comment by a Vietnamese communist about McCain would be irrelevant.

And if you loathe what President Bush has done to the Fourth Amendment with his illegal, warrantless surveillance program, ask how you can give Obama a pass for breaking previous campaign promises and capitulating to Republican efforts to legalize warrantless surveillance and offer amnesty to telecoms that have previously broken the law. Do you adhere to party, or to principle? Questions like these are a decent way to start finding out.

This is Conviction?

Today's Wall Street Journal features an op-ed by AEI resident scholar Michael Ledeen called Iran and the Problem of Evil. The op-ed contains one severe logical fallacy and one weird omission, each unfortunately representative of much of the current state of thought and argument on the right.

First, the logical fallacy. Ledeen lays out his premises thusly: (1), right up until World War II, the west was in denial about the obvious threat of fascism; (2) today, "The world is simmering in the familiar rhetoric and actions of movements and regimes – from Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the Iranian Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahhabis – who swear to destroy us and others like us" (and later he mentions Syria, Egypt, and "European and American mosques," as well); and (3) we are in denial about the nature of these movements and regimes as we were about the nature of the Nazis. Then finally, two thirds into the article, Ledeen arrives at his thesis statement:

This is not merely a philosophical issue, for to accept the threat to us means – short of a policy of national suicide – acting against it. As it did in the 20th century, it means war.

Even if one accepts Ledeen's premises, how does it logically follow that the only way to deal with the movements and regimes he mentions is by going to war with them? Does the United States really have no other policy tools at its disposal? National suicide or war and nothing else? Holy artificial either/or constructs, Batman!

I've written before about this kind of binary thinking -- once in the context of rightist thinking about "The Terrorists;" another time, in the context of rightist arguments for torture. But the notion that the only way of dealing with a country like Iran, with its basket-case economy and GDP about the size of Finland's, is to go to war with Iran as we once did against Germany, dramatically expands the size and opacity of the blinders the right insists on wearing when it ventures to look out at the world.

But the logical gap in Ledeen's argument is so vast that even he can't avoid it. Because -- and here is the weird omission -- he never actually comes out and says what he means. Here's his concluding paragraph:

Then, as now, the initiative lies with the enemies of the West. Even today, when we are engaged on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little apparent recognition that we are under attack by a familiar sort of enemy, and great reluctance to act accordingly. This time, ignorance cannot be claimed as an excuse. If we are defeated, it will be because of failure of will, not lack of understanding. As, indeed, was almost the case with our near-defeat in the 1940s.

Huh? Why argue that al Qaeda, Egypt, Hezbollah, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and European and American mosques are like the Nazis, that as with the Nazis, we have to accept that the existence of these movements and regimes forces us to choose between suicide and war... and then shy away from what obviously, logically (if you can call it that) comes next: a call for a declaration of war?

I don't mean the question rhetorically. Is Ledeen afraid of being called a warmonger? Does he recognize what he's actually agitating for, and at the last moment shy away from it? Is he carried away by his rhetoric and blind to its actual implications?

I've said before that if you want to argue for torture, argue for it -- but don't hide from your own argument by using doublespeak like "aggressive interrogation" or "enhanced interrogation" or whatever. Call it what it is and explain why it's necessary. Similarly, if you think America needs to go to war with much of the Islamic world as we once went to war with the Nazis and fascists, have the clarity (and guts) to make your argument forthrightly. Otherwise, we're faced with the sad spectacle of a man who thinks he's issuing a courageous call but who in fact lacks the courage of his ostensible convictions.

Hillary's Exit

With some reluctance, I offer a few thoughts on Hillary's defeat, particularly on the notion that she deserves to be, and that Obama should make her, the Democratic vice presidential candidate.

I'm reluctant because Hillary as vice presidential candidate and as vice president is such a self-evidently bad idea that sensible people know it simply will not happen. So I find myself in the slightly weird position of discussing something that in my mind is being discussed only because it's being discussed, like Paris Hilton being famous for being famous.

Okay. Let's first dispense with the idea that Clinton "deserves" the vice presidency. This is ridiculous for so many reasons, not the least of which is that the same Clinton backers who argued (when it was convenient to do so) that superdelegates should be free to follow nothing other than the dictates of their consciences in selecting a presidential candidate now argue that the presidential candidate must surrender that very same freedom when selecting his running mate. I suppose this kind of inconsistency is to be expected from supporters whose approach to politics is flexible enough for them to agree one day that Florida and Michigan would be excluded from the election, and later to find such an exclusion is a moral outrage worthy of a Zimbabwean stolen election on the next; flexible enough, indeed, for them to agree at the beginning of the race that the winner would be determined by delegates won, only to find popular vote counts more significant when the previously agreed-upon rules proved a loss for their candidate. But still.

The irony is, the notion that Hillary deserves the vice presidency is insulting to Hillary. From the beginning, she had a choice: run a relatively positive campaign -- the kind, say, that Mike Huckabee ran on the Republican side, or that John Edwards ran in 2004, or the kind that Edwards, Dodd, and Richardson ran this time -- to position herself as a sensible choice for VP. Instead, Hillary chose to run and all or nothing campaign, doing everything she could do destroy Obama -- including practically urging voters who wouldn't back her to at least back McCain. If her strategy had succeeded, she would have been the Democratic nominee today. But the risk was that if her strategy failed, she would have made herself unsuitable for the #2 slot. As indeed she has: McCain is already using video of Hillary saying, "I've passed the commander-in-chief threshold, Senator McCain has passed the commander-in-chief threshold, Senator Obama has a speech he made in 2002" in his latest campaign ads (although it's encouraging to watch McCain adopt the exact same campaign tactics that have just proven fruitless for the Clintons). Regardless of what you think of her strategy, at least we can respect Clinton enough to acknowledge that she was aware of the consequences of her approach and selected it knowingly. To suggest at this point instead that she should be awarded a prize she deliberately forfeited is to treat an autonomous adult as a spoiled child.

Equally ridiculous, and insulting to Hillary, is the notion that Obama should help her retire her $30 million campaign debt, which includes $11 million the Clintons personally lent to the campaign. The Clintons, their donors, and their lenders all made adult, autonomous, conscious decisions to invest in her campaign the way they did. Why should outsiders have to bail them out? Bear in mind that the Clintons' personal fortune is estimated at about $60 million. Am I the only one who wonders why a politician who professes to care so deeply about the disenfranchised, the invisible, the little people whose votes for her are the same as prayers, is now going to happily stick all those little people with the bill for what since February has been little more than a vanity project? The predictable reply: you're right, it's not fair, but it has to be done to assuage Hillary and get her fundraisers onside. Fair enough, but then let's call this exercise what it really is: extortion.

Look, Hillary could have campaigned in such a way that her proposal to Obama would have been, "Make me your vice president because I'll help you." Instead, her proposal is, "Make me your vice president or I'll hurt you." Even if her implicit threat were credible, Obama would have no choice but to refuse her, lest the next Republican campaign narrative would become (and not without merit), "If he can't handle Hillary, how's he going to handle Ahmadinejad?"

More ironic still is the moniker people attach to the idea of an Obama/Hillary team: they like to call it a "unity ticket." Remember, for the last five months, Hillary has been analyzed mostly through the prism of the Democratic primary. Under these circumstances, it's easy to forget her astonishingly high general election negatives. When a candidate has negatives as high as Hillary's, the only thing she'd be unifying is the Republican party.

Hillary supporters will argue nonetheless that she offers benefits: she can deliver older white women and rural whites, demographics Obama has had trouble attracting. Let's assume this is true. The next question is, is there another candidate who can deliver a similar benefit without simultaneously galvanizing Republicans, alienating independents, undercutting Obama's core message of change, and making Obama look weak by virtue of selecting her?

Pretty hard to believe the answer to that one is no.

Many of her supporters are angry right now. Wouldn't putting Hillary on the ticket mollify them? Maybe... but again, the question is, can the same objective be achieved at lower cost?

The general election is five months away. That's a long time for anger and bitterness to dissipate and for rationality to prevail. Rationality in this case meaning Obama's 100% positive rating from Planned Parenthood, his endorsement by NARAL, his overall policy positions being close to Hillary's. Contrasted with McCain's recent speechifying on conservative judicial appointments (much of it obscured by the dramatic coverage of the Democratic primary) and his record on judicial nominations. Women who are angry today will have to face a question in November: do they want to support, whether by commission or omission, the overturning of Roe v Wade? Do they want their daughters to lose control of their reproductive rights?

The only question at this point is how Obama will finesse Hillary's implicit threats and detach her from her supporters. I don't think any of this is terribly difficult.

First, praise Clinton lavishly. This has been ongoing.

Second, make it known that Clinton is on the shortlist (though in fact, for all the reasons above, she will not be seriously considered). Promise to vet her just as the other candidates will and should be vetted. Leak problems discovered with the opaque and disreputable sources of the Clintons' wealth and the Clinton Foundation's fundraising, with rumors of Bill's behavior, with Hillary's seeming inability to control Bill on the campaign trail, and with Bill's refusal to allow adequate scrutiny of his finances (think of this as the "Blame Bill" strategy).

Third, note that given Hillary's stated passions, indeed, her most recent political raison d'etre, it would be a waste of her talents to take a job that has been famously compared to a bucket of warm piss. She could make a much more important contribution spearheading healthcare reform. How could she turn down such an opportunity? She's explicitly said she's not particularly interested in the vice presidency and that she wants healthcare for every American. Sure, this is all a bluff, but Obama is now in a good position to call.

And fourth, after easing Hillary aside, relentlessly hammer home what McCain means for the Supreme Court and women's rights.

For a long time, Hillary's overall approach has been to threaten punishment if she doesn't get what she wants. This is why she has been so eager to whip her supporters into an unjustified rage, why she encouraged the notion that whites wouldn't vote for Obama, and most of all why she refused to concede on Tuesday even after Obama had achieved a numerical lock on the nomination. The last threat in her arsenal is the threat to disrupt the convention in August and prevent the Democrats from focusing on the general for another two critical months. But with the primaries over and no more excuses for superdelegates not to decide, I think she's realized that any further threats of punishment would force the party to move en masse to crush and humiliate her. Thus her announcement that on Saturday she will indeed acknowledge reality and belatedly concede.

That concession will not cause, but rather instead merely accelerate the inevitable end of the Clintons. Obama will continue to finesse Hillary in all the ways described above. He'll select an appropriate vice president. He'll beat McCain, a remarkably weak, pandering, flip-flopping candidate, in the fall. At which point, the Clintons will have lost all their power to punish.

So it's ridiculous, as well as insulting to Hillary, to suggest that she "deserves" it. Substantively, she makes no sense. Outside the lunatic fringe that always exists and is never ultimately relevant, her supporters will come around in the fall. So now: can we please stop talking about Hillary? The Clinton era is over.

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.