Month: October 2003

Deep Thoughts

Just for the record, I would urge all 16 people who read this blog to read the testimony of Generals Clark, Hoar, Shalikashvili and McInerney before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 29, 2002. (And pay close attention to the hostility of the Republican Senators toward all the generals except the kool-aid drunk McInerney. Dumb is much too kind a phrase to describe them.)

You will see that General Clark gives a highly nuanced view of the situation in Iraq and that he objects quite strenuously to some language in the newly drafted resolution — with which Senator John Warner sandbags the generals by asking them for an opinion without giving them the benefit of seeing it before that moment.

It is fair to criticize candidates, and Clark is going to have to find his way through this kind of minefield, so I am not accusing anyone of unfair tactics. Indeed, criticism of Clark’s approach to Iraq is similar to the item that Kerry’s staff distributed about Dean’s “threat” to seniors. Dean explained that he was bluffing his Republican legislature in order to stop them from passing some bad legislation and it worked. Clark’s view (and many others’) on Iraq was that the congress needed to give Bush the tools to get the UN to make a similar bluff to Saddam.

Part of politics, war and diplomacy is playing devils advocate or bluffing your opponents. If you take a literalist approach you will find many odd statements by politicians as they attempt to finesse certain issues publicly. Politicians have to be able to deal with those accusations and frankly, Dean did it a lot better than Clark did yesterday.

But, the issue is pretty much the same. If you read this testimony, you will see that Clark accepted that dealing with Iraq in the near future was a done deal. He expressed reservations about that, but moved quickly on to the importance of multilateral rather than unilateral action, and he spoke at great length about the political risks both in Iraq and around the world of a badly planned post-war and the pre-emption policy in general.

If Joe Lieberman took this testimony as proof that Clark was unreservedly supporting the resolution, he was mistaken.

As I have written before, Clark made the rookie mistake of musing aloud to the NY Times and others about his hypothetical thought processes if he had been a Senator who was required to cast a vote. He allowed them to see him turning over a complex issue in complex terms, something they are incapable of conveying properly. Due to his belief that a resolution of some sort was required to get the UN on board, a very important goal in order to prevent Bush from setting the precedent of pre-emption, like may others, he found the issue challenging.

This was a big mistake. He should have simply said then — and yesterday — “I took the president at his word when he said he needed the Senate resolution to get UN backing to force Saddam to allow inspections and disarm. If I had known then that he was misleading the congress and the nation about his true intentions to go to war no matter what, I would not have voted for it.”

Unfortunately, Clark’s going to have to learn how to dumb himself down like that if he wants to be a politician in 2003 America. He needs to smile a lot and tell people about what it was like to claw his way back from being seriously wounded in Vietnam. He needs to humbly admit that it was a privilege to personally command the mighty NATO forces to save the Muslims of Kosovo — all without losing a single American life in combat. That is what sets him apart from the others. That’s his narrative.

His intellectual depth and integrity are (sadly) irrelevant (if not downright liabilities) except as they advance his personal story — the up from the bootstraps, self-made man stuff. He needs to talk as little as possible about policy prescriptions and concentrate on his vision for America. He needs to get over any modesty he has about being a hero and a born leader. He’s a politician now, which means that bragging and whoring his story is the job description.

Wesley Clark is now in the entertainment industry, just like everybody else in politics.

Narrative Politics

From The Guardian:

But the key to the election of Governor Arnie is a phenomenon which might be called narrative politics. American electoral campaigns have tended to be driven by the theory of “retail politics”: the candidate made as many speeches, shook the maximum number of hands, accrued the largest air-mile account as possible. Races were won by imprinting a face and a few simple policies through ceaseless repetition.

But, in recent American elections, the centrality of chapped hands and battered soles to a candidate’s chances has been balanced against the quicker, simpler power of narrative politics. The victor was likely to be not the man who put in most hours but the one who told the most extraordinary story about himself.

Hence George W Bush – a notoriously indolent campaigner – was able to match the more assiduous Gore because his candidacy was a better yarn: a son following his dad into the Oval Office, a drunk sorting himself out, a child taking revenge on the administration that beat his father.

Previously, the election of the wrestler Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota was an extreme example of narrative politics – voters bored with the process waking themselves up with an unlikely plot twist – but even Clinton can be seen as a beneficiary of this electoral mentality. In 1992, the entry into the White House of a womanising, draft-dodging poor Southern boy whose father had died before he was born was simply a better story to tell history than the re-election of the patrician George Bush senior.

A rough rule of narrative politics is that the candidate whose life story makes the best Hollywood movie will win the race. Which is why Schwarzenegger represents the greatest triumph of the theory to date. In the past, narrative politics has had to be combined with retail politics: Clinton, like Reagan before him, had spent years shaking hands and practising legislation.

Schwarzenegger, who had done the retail part unknowingly in multiplexes over decades, relied during his campaign entirely on his narrative: his pitch. Beginning with the neatness that a man who had made a film called Total Recall should be competing in a recall election, his run for governor was such a bold and ridiculous tale that you kept thinking it needed a script editor.

Even apart from his own compelling back story – body-building to nation-building – there was also the B-plot that his marriage to Maria Shriver (niece of JFK and Bobby) also made the race a strange and wonderful pay-off to one of America’s greatest political storylines: the Kennedys. The advantage of narrative politics is that weaknesses are reclassified as strengths. A politician who knows nothing about politics? What a premise. A leader who can barely speak an American sentence aloud? Such a gripping yarn. A candidate whose answer to the bankruptcy of California is to propose tax cuts? We sure want to stay and see how this turns out.

The paradox of narrative politics is that it is the very improbability of the campaign that gives it plausibility. In voting booths now – as always in cinemas – audiences will sacrifice coherence for surprise. This is democracy played by the rules of a Hollywood script conference and so, in this context, the coming of the machine governor ceases to be a surprise. Arnie may know nothing much about politics but he’s a proven genius at the business of getting Americans to swallow preposterous propositions and outcomes.

I know it’s difficult for us political junkies to view something we take very seriously in this way. But, I am convinced that it is a very important key to advancing our cause.

As a good friend of mine once said, “it’s all about who you want to watch on television for the next four years.” I used to think that was ridiculously cynical. But, with the ascension of Clinton, Bush and (mind-bogglingly) Schwarzenegger, I think it’s obvious that there is merit in this concept.

Recognizing the power of this type of politics does not require that we choose candidates who are as vapid and empty as Schwarzenegger and Bush are. It just means that we must pick candidates who also have the story and charisma that modern media requires and be prepared to tell that story to the American people.

The framing of the campaign and the arena in which it will be engaged is likely to be chosen by the Republicans purely because of their natural domination, as incumbents, of the free media, their Mighty Wurlitzer and the period between the primaries and the convention during which Democrats are going to be financially dead in the water. We will probably be fighting on their terms, even though we will win on ours.

Whoever gets the nomination must appeal strongly on this narrative level or we will lose to a 300 million dollar advertising campaign in which steely eyed George W. Bush, underestimated all his life, is sold as having risen to the occasion when the chips were down proving his courage and fortitude in the face of the greatest challenge any man of his generation has ever faced.

Even if his show is getting less and less believable, people are not likely to switch channels unless they are guaranteed something more satisfying.

FUBAR

Army investigators are leaning toward filing slap-on-the-wrist charges versus a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was investigated for espionage, a military source told the Daily News yesterday.

The “handful” of minor charges against Capt. Yousef Yee could be leveled by next week and are not expected to include the more serious allegations of spying, sedition or aiding the enemy, according to the source familiar with the probe.

“It’s very weak,” the military source said, saying the charges are likely to be related to dereliction of duty and disobeying a general order. “It’s nothing compared to espionage or anything like that.”

And, here I got the impression that Yee was this year’s little Johnnie Walker Lindh.

Yee’s arrest came six weeks after the arrest of Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, an Arabic translator at Gitmo. Al-Halabi was charged with 30 counts of spying for Syria and Qatar, and his case touched off a broad espionage investigation at Camp Delta

Syria and Qatar. At Gitmo. Where we’re holding the Al Qaeda and Taliban we captured in Afghanistan. Sure.

Is anybody getting the feeling that, with the exception of 9/11, every single thing connected with the WOT is complete bullshit?

Good News

I have to wonder why the news media are spending so much time covering the Kobe Bryant and Lacey Peterson cases without giving equal time to the many non-alleged rapist basketball players and happily married couples who’ve managed to work through their problems without resorting to violence? And, why is it that every time some crazy dude shoots up his office or an old man drives through a street market or an airplane crashes, the media rush to cover it without also showing footage of harmonious workplaces and good driving elderly and safe air travel? You’d almost think they believe that “dog bites man” stories aren’t newsworthy or something.

Thank goodness we’ve managed to shame them into fulfilling their duty with Iraq, at least. Now, for every story of car bombing and carnage, huge street protests, daily military casualties and political chaos, we are seeing two equally important stories about a first grader going to school or a pick-up soccer game between a GI and an Iraqi. Life goes on (even for weird foreigners!) in the middle of a hated, chaotic, foreign military occupation. Now, isn’t that good news?

The Reviews Are In

Charles Pierce:

I think I saw it Tuesday night. The deepest circle of Pundit Hell. It was on MSNBC. They were all on the beach, grooving on Arnold, their eyeballs moving in swoony arcs parabolic and anabolic at the very thought of the electoral pectorals then flexing across town. Chris Matthews was there, caught in an awful psychological conflict between the tattered threads of his vestigial conscience and the obviously painful nipple erections that this whole thing had been giving him for a month. Next to him was the lovely and batsh*t Peggy Noonan, less blonde than she was when she was fondling the feet of President Dutch, thoughtfully laying a finger upside her head while pondering how far a good Catholic girl would have to go to get from May Processionals to melting like the dew over a lubricious chucklehead who had not yet asked her if he could put his tongue in her more interesting Near Occasions of Sin.

Jesse:

I have no idea why, but I’m watching MSNBC. Chris Matthews is jumping on Jesse Ventura for saying that Arnold’s a Republican and is therefore pretty much in thrall, in a lot of ways to the party, and that Arnold took special interest money, neither of which is particularly offensive.

From Matthews’ reaction, you’d think that Ventura just dug up the corpse of Matthews’ grandmother and started dry-humping it on a channel that people actually watch.

The farmer:

Chris lurches rightward toward Peggy who sits quivering, pitter-patter, like a fledgling bird in a spring wind, excited with expectations which challenge her cognitive dissonance. His large marauding paws grope for her pert heaving breasts and she welcomes his advances, submits, two hungry searching tongues quarry each others hot breath in the glimmering lambent light of the theater of the absurd – fireworks explode, the surf crashes and roars through the piles and pillars beneath the Santa Monica pier. Arnold Schwarzenegger is declared the Governor of California. Somewhere in America a predator falls upon its prey.

What is it about Chris Matthews’ show that evokes images of bodice-ripping, drooling (and necrophiliac) ravishment?

Swoon Strategy

Matt Yglesias responds well to Michael Kinsley’s uncharacteristically obtuse piece on Wesley Clark.

For one thing, Kinsley seems to be contradicting himself here. Either Dean is “the one candidate who seems to be able to get people’s juices flowing” or else people are “in a swoon” over Clark. It can’t be both unless there’s some subtle swoon/juice distinction I’m missing out on. More fundamentally, though, Kinsley doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that some of us are attracted to Clark not just because we think he’d be a good candidate, but because we think he’d be a good president

I don’t have much to add except that I think it’s absurd to characterize support for Clark as a “snub” of Dean. I like Dean. I’ll vote for him unreservedly in the general if he wins. At this point, I happen to believe, for a variety of reasons that Clark is the better candidate (not the least of which is that he has, in my view, a certain kind of starpower that makes it easier for the Democrats to compete against a 300 million dollar advertising campaign.)

Is it a strange new concept in presidential primaries to pick the candidate you think can win or did I miss the memo instructing us that the guy who is in 2nd place in the national polls is automatically anointed because his fervent supporters feel entitled to it? Frankly, this entire argument feels like deja-vu all over again. The McCarthy kids vs. Bobby’s army. I really hope that doesn’t happen. It isn’t good for the party.

On a slightly different note, this article in the LA Times this morning makes for some interesting reading on the subject of early campaign shake-ups. Sometimes winning campaigns have some rough spots in the beginning and they manage to get beyond them and defy expectations — even bringing over a lot of people from the opposing party.

Schwarzenegger had kept his decision to enter the race a surprise even to his political strategists. Offstage at the “Tonight Show,” Gorton had stood with a press release in his pocket declaring that Schwarzenegger would not get in the race.

The surprise generated a huge media reaction, but it also got his campaign off to a flat-footed start.

[…]

Saturday, the day after his poor television showing, Schwarzenegger talked a reluctant Bob White, the former chief of staff to Gov. Pete Wilson, into running his campaign. Schwarzenegger had been chatting with White about politics for years, conversations that often involved the nature of government finance.

To make way for White, Schwarzenegger eased Gorton, a longtime Republican operative who had moved his family from San Diego to Los Angeles the previous year to help the candidate, into a more limited role as an advisor.

White immediately began hiring, tripling the staff in about a week, and he created a structure, with daily staff meetings at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The changes steadied the campaign but did not stop its woes. Campaign strategists largely kept Schwarzenegger under wraps, relying on proxies who hurt as much as they helped.

[…]

Two weeks in, the campaign’s polls were showing a decline from the day of his announcement. And time in the short race was running out. “Every day was like a week, and every week was like a month,” said Mark Bogetich, who did opposition research for Schwarzenegger.

The campaign lacked both a compelling theme and a field general. Over the middle two weeks of August, both problems would be addressed.

The theme came first. Over that first, gloomy weekend, the campaign’s ad-maker, Don Sipple, faxed Schwarzenegger a memo, without telling Gorton, which outlined a populist argument that would become the campaign’s centerpiece.

Schwarzenegger should portray himself as the “governor of the people,” as contrasted with Davis’ appeals to “special interests,” the memo said. Soon phrases from the memo began appearing regularly in Schwarzenegger’s remarks.

To resolve the field general issue, Sipple teamed up with White to recruit Mike Murphy, the Republican strategist who had successfully managed campaigns for governor for John Engler in Michigan and Jeb Bush in Florida as well as John McCain’s bid for the White House.

Inside baseball types would have said that in a very short campaign these problems would have been fatal. And a lot of us would be saying it was immoral or something to call in seasoned pros to advise an outsider politician. Seems they got through it ok.

Commander Codpiece Lays It On The Line

Via Altercation:

Studies in Misplaced Confidence:

The Bush Administration on finding Osama Bin Laden in Central Asia: “We’re going to hunt them down one at a time…it doesn’t matter where they hide, as we work with our friends we will find them and bring them to justice.”

— President George W. Bush, 11/22/02

The Bush Administration on finding Saddam Hussein in the Mideast: We are continuing the pursuit and it’s a matter of time before [Saddam] is found and brought to justice.”

— White House spokesman McClellan, 9/17/03

The Bush Administration on finding the leaker in the close confines of the White House: “ I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official. I don’t have any idea.”

— President George W. Bush, 10/7/03

Rush To Judgement

Calpundit wonders about the baseball Hall of Fame’s continued hostility to the admission of former Dodger owner Walter O’Malley. He notes O’Malley “won eight National League pennants and four World Series, was part of the original migration of the league west of the Mississippi, and built one of the beautiful ballparks in the country.” He also played a large role in breaking the color barrier in baseball as an owner in the team that hired Jackie Robinson.

Ostensibly he will never be voted into the Hall because of the still simmering anger over moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn to LA.

But really, isn’t it clear that now that the baseball Hall of Fame has assumed its rightful place as an adjunct of The Party, resistance to O’Malley’s admission is simply a rational response to the misplaced “social concern” of the 1947 Dodgers and the traditional fraternity of ultra-liberal sportswriters who were very desirious that a black player do well? The Hall may just agree with the correct sentiment that Jackie Robinson got a lot of credit for the performance of the Dodgers that he didn’t deserve and that while it’s impossible to remove the slacker from the Hall after all this time (the commie PC sportswriters do get uppitty) they can draw the line at admitting one of his do-gooder bosses.

Oh, and by the way, that’s not a racist statement. It’s just a very obvious observation by someone who isn’t afraid to see the truth about the delicate politically correct world of professional sports.

Anybody got some little blue babies? I’m jonesing, Big Time

Pumping Up the Deficit

Bob Sommerby rails eloquently about the total irresponsibility of the press corps in continuing to describe the California budget deficit as being 38 billion rather than the 8 billion it actually is. He quotes numerous Schwarzennegger aides and spokesmen using that figure as well.

The reason for this is quite clear. Governor Schwarzennegger is going to rescind the car tax and then “open the books” and “end the crazy deficit spending” by reducing the deficit from 38 billion to 12 billion.

I’m sure that a few lone Democrats will show up on television to argue the figures, but they will be interrupted and talked over with a flurry of competing numbers and angry denunciations of partisanship. The hosts will quickly move on to the subject of how Schwarzennegger’s superior leadership skills were able to bring California together.

Everybody knows that Davis was recalled because of the 38 billion dollar deficit and soon everyone will know that Arnold Schwarzennegger, in less than 3 months, was able to reduce it by more than two thirds.

Thank Gawd we got rid of Davis. Think how many more hospitals, libraries and police stations would have had to close if Schwarzennegger hadn’t stopped the crazy deficit spending.

Dumbass Media, Dumbass Politics

There is some awfully good writing in the blogosphere today. Here, Jeanne D’Arc shares a searing portrait of her own personal brush with an Arnold-pig and how it made her feel — the powerlessness and self-doubt that such actions provoke.

And, she points out yet another example of the extreme ignorance that permeates the media coverage of politics:

My angriest moment last night did not come with the announcement that a sexual predator was now in charge of my state, but earlier, when, on MSNBC, Laurence O’Donnell was making an interesting point about Gray Davis, which I think applies to all the Democrats progressives hate.

He noted that Davis took huge amounts of money from growers, but when an issue of enormous importance to farm workers came up last year — giving them the right to mandatory mediation, which they needed to get around the growers’ stalling — he sided with the workers. Ultimately, even the worst of the corporate Democrats has the glimmer of a soul, which can’t be claimed by the other side.

O’Donnell went on to point out that this time around it was Herr Schwarzenegger who got the growers’ money, but he was struggling to talk over Chris Matthews, who snapped, “Who gave him more?”

The farmworkers? Chris Matthews thinks Gray Davis sided with farmworkers because they gave him more money than growers? Well, don’t I feel silly. I’ve lived in an agricultural part of this state for more than twenty years, and I never knew that rich farmworkers were buying up our politicians. It must be all the money they save by living five or six men to one seedy motel room.

There were so many examples of dumbass commentary last night that any questions as to why the public voted for a groping, malicious, preening movie star were answered. Rank stupidity is a ratings grabber.