Month: December 2006

The Fall Of St John

by digby

Kos has posted an interesting item by Bob Novak, which, if true, would be good news:

1. The debate inside the Republican Party is whether the mid-term election defeat was solely the result of unhappiness over Iraq or constituted deeper concern with the drift of the GOP, under both presidential and Congressional leadership. Defeated Republicans who put all of the blame on Iraq are infuriated by White House denials of this argument. In any event, we find widespread agreement among Republicans that U.S. troops must be leaving Iraq at the end of 2007 to avoid catastrophe in 2008.

2. The decline in the polls of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as measured against Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), reflects more than declining Republican popularity nationally in the weeks after the election. It connotes public disenchantment with McCain’s aggressive advocacy of a “surge” of up to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq. Unless the additional troops show immediate benefits, President George W. Bush’s determination to put more boots on the ground is feared by Republicans as another political burden to bear.

I’m not sure what could stop Bush at this point if he is convinced by his top military advisors (Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich and Laura Ingraham) that an escalation is just what the doctor ordered. But it’s good to know that even Republicans are beginning to see that the McCain-Lieberman escalation plan is just the latest tinker-bell tactic.

Putting more troops over there is a ridiculous idea set forth by the same neoconservative fantasists who got us into this in the first place. And whether Bush does it or not, it’s an idea that St John McCain owns as his very own — he’s been urging escalation from the beginning and continues to agitate for it even when it’s obvious that it won’t work. He has stuck his neck way far out on this.

I just don’t see how he backs off now. If those Republicans Novak quotes are right and McCain is suffering in the polls because of his escalation plan then great. It just means that we won’t actually send in more troops and McCain will continue to be seen as the slightly insane warmongering weirdo he really is.

Win win.

*Also, the item about Republicans being furious with the White House about being told they are to blame for the election loss because they were not conservative enough is a very entertaining sideshow. Karl Rove treated the congress like a bunch of house boys for the last six years and they followed every twisted order with a smile. It’s some serious chutzpah for him to be whispering about how they didn’t “perform.” Haha.

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Pot, Meet The Kettle Of Darkness

by digby

I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying watching Bob Dole drone on about how civility is broken down in Washington since the good old days when he and Jer were on the campaign trail. This is the same Bob Dole who was known as “the Prince of Darkness” back in the day — the guy who was chosen for the GOP ticket in 1976 to pander to the rabid right and who said in the VP debate, “I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans-enough to fill the city of Detroit.”

Very civil.

And even though the man almost single handedly popularized that odious term “Democrat party” I had long had a semi-soft spot for the guy simply because he had a good sense of humor at times. Then he came along in 2004 and joined the despicable swift boat scum, dishonestly trashing John Kerry’s war record. The man has zero integrity, sorry.

So, I don’t want to hear anything from Bob Dole about civility. He’s as responsible as any politician in the country for the fact that our politics has turned gutter ugly. He was one of the most effective practitioners of that Republican black art in the modern era.

Shove your civility, Bob. You’re an asshole, always have been.

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The Preznit

by digby

I went to see Laughing Liberally last summer and had a grand time chortling with the tribe. I was particularly moved by the appearance of George W. Bush, who explained that he believed in God and his son, Jesus H. Christ.

I see now that LL has some videos available featuring the president being interviewed and interviewing various figures, most recently Charlie Rangel, who will join the president as he hosts LAUGHING LIBERALLY: 2006 – A YEAR-IN REVIEW on December 30th in NYC. You can see them all here and they are very inspiring — as interviews with George W. Bush always are.

Here is another video featuring our president which you will want to watch privately. (It is NOT work or kid safe —- unless you work in one of those nice video and “equipment” warehouses out in the San Fernando Valley and your kid doesn’t mind watching sorta-sexy stuff with a parent — ewwww.)

Update: Damn, the sexy-ish vid seems to have gone off-line and I can’t find it anywhere else. Too bad. It features George Dubya Bush literally screwing “the country.” Thanks to gioele in the comments — here it is, right on Youtube, where it belongs.

Sorry. Instead, here’s some sex advice from Democratic activists. It’s not bad…

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No Law Professor Left Behind

by digby

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers Guns and Money reads the wingnuts so you don’t have to and finds that they are just as idiotic as ever:

After pointing out that more Americans have died in the Iraq war than in 9/11, Althouse–quite remarkably at this late date–asks:

A key question — with an unknowable answer — is: How many Americans would have died in post-9/11 attacks if we had not chosen the path of fighting back?

Once again, I can’t help but blame the press for not making sure that anyone who says such a thing understands that they will be seen as a screaming moron. (Not that it would make much difference in this case.)

Lemieux answers correctly:

Well, the answer is indeed unknowable, but given that Iraq had no substantial connection to Anti-American terrorism and posed no security threat whatsoever to the United States, the overwhelmingly likely answer is “zero.” Whatever Iraq was, it wasn’t “fighting back” against the Islamic radicals who actually attacked New York.

I can only assume that it is some sort of racism that leads people like Althouse to basically conclude that all arabs are alike (or all “muslims” — but we know what they’re really talking about, don’t we?)

Even if you give this the very best face possible, you end up with the Kissingerian war criminal notion that it’s both useful and moral to “send a message” that we will “fight back” by invading a non-involved country and killing innocent people.

Either way, it may be the most absurd, illogical reasoning that’s ever been given for a war in this country — it certainly beats Vietnam, the Spanish-American war and the Mexican-American war for sheer absurdity. People actually believed that all America had to do was show its willingness to kill and its enemies would run screaming in fright and agree to never attack us again — as if it doesn’t matter who we killed or why.

It’s not all that surprising that a lot of silly people who write on the internet might believe this. The question for historians is going to be how schoolyard logic like this made its way into the highest reaches of the most powerful nation on earth.

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Gerald Ford

by digby

The first vote I ever cast was for Jerry Brown for governor. The first vote I ever cast for president was for Gerald Ford. (That was the last time I ever voted for a Republican, btw.)I have become a little bit more coherent since then.

I was not, at the time, a fan of Jimmy Carter; I thought he was sanctimonious. I was 20. (Little could I have imagined what was to come.) And I thought Ford had done the right thing by pardoning Nixon. Yes I really did.

I did not understand the zombie nature of Republicanism and had no way of knowing that unless you drive a metaphorical stake through the heart of GOP crooks and liars, they will be back, refreshed and and ready to screw up the country in almost exactly the same way, within just a few years. In those days, I couldn’t imagine that the Republicans would ever elect someone worse than Nixon. I thought we had gone back to “normal” where nice moderate guys like Jerry and Ike would keep the seat warm until the real leaders would return. Live and learn.

The thing I remember most about Ford, though, was his family. They were great — a bunch of handsome baby boomers frolicking on the lawn, rumored to have smoked pot in the white house, fresh and cool and so much less uptight than Nixon and the girls. As a young person of the same age, it was a powerful image that meant something to me.

And Betty remains my favorite first lady of all time. She was funny and human and normal. I’ll never forget watching her hosting a Bolshoi ballet on television when she was obviously under the influence of something or other. I thought to myself, this is a real woman of her time. And of course, she went on to be one of the first famous women to announce that she was fighting breast cancer and founded the Betty Ford clinic not long after. She has done a world of good for the recovery movement.

Ford was an old school GOP moderate, the kind that aren’t around anymore. But he bears some responsibility for what came after. After all, his administration spawned the two most twisted leaders of the Bush administration — Cheney and Rumsfeld. From what I know of Jerry Ford, he wouldn’t have been proud of that particular accomplishment. He was not given to megalomania and grandiose schemes.

He bound the nation’s wounds for a moment, but in doing so he created an infection that has festered for the last thirty years. His heart was in the right place, I think. But it was a mistake I hope this nation never makes again.

He was a decent man who had a good sense of humor. RIP.

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Converting The Heathens

by digby

People can say I’m being hysterical all they want, but I honestly feel that a woman’s right to choose is about to go the way of the death penalty as a fundamental liberal value. The party is dying to find a reason to throw in the towel. And people like this are helping them do it:

Party strategists and nonpartisan pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her 2-year-old consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Exit polls show that Ms. Vanderslice’s candidates did 10 percentage points or so better than Democrats nationally among those voters, who make up about a third of the electorate. As a group, Democrats did little better among those voters than Senator John Kerry’s campaign did in 2004.

[…]

Ms. Vanderslice’s success in 2006 is a sharp rebound from her first campaign, in 2004. She was hired, at age 29, to direct religious outreach for Mr. Kerry in his presidential campaign and was then quickly shoved aside, a casualty of a losing battle to persuade him to speak more openly about his Catholic faith, even if it meant taking on the potentially awkward subject of his support for abortion rights.

The midterm elections were a “proof point” for arguments that Ms. Vanderslice had made two years before, said Mike McCurry, a Democratic consultant and former spokesman for President Bill Clinton who worked with Ms. Vanderslice on the Kerry campaign. For the Democrats, Mr. McCurry said, Ms. Vanderslice and her company “were the only ones taking systematic, methodical steps to build a religious component in the practical campaign work.”

Ah yes, all the usual suspects. Mara Vanderslice, the Jim Wallis acolyte, is a little bit more open about her agenda sometimes, if not in the NY Times:

I also believe that the Democratic Party — we really need to engage in a more thoughtful debate on the abortion issue in this country. I can’t tell you how many times I had conversations with people of deep faith [who] said, “I support you [and] everything you are doing on every other issue except for this one.” It is such a painful and divisive issue in this country, and we have, therefore, avoided it, I think, to a large extent. I don’t think that does service for us. I believe that we need to work across our differences to find ways to reduce unwanted pregnancies. There are a million and a half abortions every year in this country, and no one can feel that’s a good place for us to be. But we need to support the programs that we know reduce the need for abortions. Abortion rates went down to their lowest levels in 25 years under President Clinton; abortion rates went up under President Reagan. We need to work together to support the programs that will help women choose life, and I think we need to be open to a new dialogue on this issue.

We need to support the programs that will help women choose life. She slipped that one right in there, didn’t she? It’s hardly a ringing endorsement of a woman’s right to own her own body. In fact, I don’t hear even one tiny acknowledgement in that argument that it’s important to defend the right to abortion. All I hear is smooth PR copy.

This kind of slick talk (and it is slick) reminds me of the anti-abortion groups who also claim they are just trying to “open a dialog.” Here’s Mary Kay Culp, preident of Kansans For Life on NOW a while back:

MARY KAY CULP: Well, he [Samuel Alito] looks like he’s a real careful– a real careful, thoughtful, analytical guy, and I like that. And– because I’m a little tired of this being portrayed as if he has an agenda, that all of a sudden, poof is going to happen if he gets on the court.

BRANCACCIO: Agenda being getting rid of Roe v. Wade?

MARY KAY CULP: Exactly. I don’t think that that’s going to happen. And if it does, all it means is that the issue comes back to the states.

BRANCACCIO: But, with all the work that you’ve been doing in Kansas for all these years, don’t you think that if it becomes a State’s matter that in Kansas like that (SNAP) you’ll get rid of abortion? Huh?

MARY KAY CULP: No. I don’t. Unh-uh. I don’t think that’ll happen in the states. But, what can happen is a real discussion. What can happen are committee hearings in your Senate and your House where witnesses are called– witnesses who have had abortions– witnesses on both side of the issue. And, it can be heard — the most frustrating thing about Roe is that it just slammed the door. When you try to get a State law passed even to regulate just a little bit, or partial birth abortion, anything, a legislator will tell you– “Well, you know– we can’t do that under Roe versus Wade anyway.”

[…]

BRANCACCIO: I don’t understand how Kansas wouldn’t– ban abortion quit quickly after that. What do you know about the state of that debate in your state…

MARY KAY CULP: It isn’t that. It’s just that I know how the political system works. Then you can have real discussion. Then every– both sides are gonna get aired, and if the media’s fair about it, both sides are gonna get aired. That– you know, that’s a question. But at least democracy will have a chance to work on it. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything either way.

In case anyone wonders what Mary Kay really thinks about the political process and the judiciary and the wonderful dialog we’re all going to have, check this out:

Hours after the outgoing attorney general of Kansas charged one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers with illegally aborting viable fetuses, a judge dismissed the charges, ruling Friday that the attorney general had overstepped his authority.

Atty. Gen. Phill Kline angrily vowed to get the charges reinstated.

“This is war,” said Mary Kay Culp, executive director of the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life.

The flurry of activity marks the latest twist in a long and bitter fight over abortion in Kansas.

That “reasonable” woman who appeared on NOW talking about “dialog” was the staunchest supporter of that creepy nutball Kline, who was uncermoniously booted from his job by the people of Kansas in November. She will say anything, as you can easily see by a simple Google search; her words are well tailored to each different audience. The woman is a political operative.

I believe that Ms Vanderslice is doing much the same thing, although she’s working within the Democratic party rather than as an outside activist:

Dr. Welton Gaddy, president of the liberal Interfaith Alliance, said her encouragement of such overt religiosity raised “red flags” about the traditional separation of church and state.

“I don’t want any politician prostituting the sanctity of religion,” Mr. Gaddy said, adding that nonbelievers also “have a right to feel they are represented at the highest levels of government.”

To Ms. Vanderslice, that attitude is her party’s problem. In an interview, she said she told candidates not to use the phrase “separation of church and state,” which does not appear in the Constitution’s clauses forbidding the establishment or protecting the exercise of religion.

“That language says to people that you don’t want there to be a role for religion in our public life,” Ms. Vanderslice said. “But 80 percent of the public is religious, and I think most people are eager for that kind of debate.”

What does she hope to accomplish with a “debate” about the separation of church and state? The only people who are upset by that phrase are the far right. Why should Democrats accomodate such a thing? It’s politically idiotic.

“God’s love was so much stronger than any of my doubts,” she said, acknowledging that like some other young evangelicals she still struggles with common evangelical ideas about abortion, homosexuality and the literal reading of Scripture.

[…]

She and Mr. Sapp, 30, a Presbyterian minister’s son and a fellow evangelical with a divinity degree from Duke, set out to test the rejected ideas. They organized workshops in which Democratic candidates practiced delivering short statements about their faith or their moral values. They urged Democrats to meet with even the most staunchly conservative evangelical pastors in their districts.

They persuaded candidates not to avoid controversial subjects like abortion, advising those who supported abortion rights to speak about reducing demand for the procedure.

And they cautioned against the approach of many liberal Christians, which is to argue that Jesus was interested only in social justice and not in sexual morality.

“The Gospel has both in it,” Mr. Sapp said. “You can’t act like caring about abortion and family issues makes you a judgmental fool.”

I really wish the Dems would stop bullshitting themselves for five minutes and deal with reality instead of this public relations and marketing nonsense. These people want the party to become socially conservative. As, apparently, do a whole bunch of other Democrats for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they hope to peel off some swing voters whom they have been persuaded would be more than willing to vote Democratic if the bitches and the fags would just STFU and get with the program. This nice young woman will show everybody how it’s done.

Fine. Let’s have that “debate” all these busybodies say they want to have. Let’s see some real figures that show that a whole bunch of swing voters are clamoring for more religion in politics and that the nation is hungering for two socially conservative political parties. But before we have it I wish that Democratic candidates would search their consciences and ask themselves if they really want to further empower religious fundamentalists who “struggle with abortion and gay rights and the literal interpretation of the Bible?” And if they reach way down and find that they don’t really care about any of that, maybe they could look at the polls and recognize that they are going against the majority in this country, including many of the religious who are not social conservatives and believe in that old fashioned American value: “live and let live.”

A good part of this so-called religious awakening is hype. Consider this, from the Barna group which tracks religious opinion and trends:

Major Christian Leaders Are Widely Unknown,
Even Among Christians

In today’s celebrity culture, even the most well-known ministers remain relatively obscure. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Rick Warren. Pastor of a megachurch in southern California and author of the bestselling book, The Purpose Driven Life, he has appeared on countless radio and television programs and on the cover of numerous magazines in the past several years. His book, with sales exceeding 25 million copies, is reportedly the biggest selling non-fiction book in U.S. history (with the exception, ironically, of the Bible). Yet, despite such accomplishments, Mr. Warren remains unknown to most adults in this country. Three of out every four adults (72%) say they have never heard of him, including two out of every three born again Christians (63%). Among those who recognize his name, he has an average favorable-to-unfavorable ratio of 2:1. (In contrast, several other individuals evaluated had ratios of better than 10:1.)

Another example is James Dobson, the Christian psychologist whose radio program regarding family matters reaches the largest audience of any religious personality. Almost six out of every ten adults (57%) said they had never heard of Dr. Dobson; in fact, nearly half of all born again Christians said they did not know who he was. Among those familiar with Dr. Dobson, 27% had a favorable impression and 8% had an unfavorable view. However, among evangelical Christians – the small but well-chronicled segment that is clearly Dr. Dobson’s core constituency – his rating was 69% favorable, 4% unfavorable, and 21% who had never heard of him. (The other 6% did not have an opinion of him.)

Meanwhile:

The survey showed that evangelical Christians have significantly different views about public figures than do other Americans, including non-evangelical born again Christians.

Compared to other people groups, evangelicals were better informed about and awarded higher favorability ratings to all five of the religious leaders tested, as well as to President Bush. When compared to born again Christians who were not evangelical, they held considerably more negative views of Ms. O’Donnell, Mr. Gibson, President Clinton and newscaster Katie Couric. They were also much less familiar with country singer Tim McGraw

The fact that evangelicals seem to be more conservative than everyone else in the country, including all the other Christians, may just mean that they are, you know, conservatives. Since they are also more likely to be southern and hold other views that are hostile to the party that represents the rest of the country, they just don’t seem like a good bet for the Democratic party. It’s just insane to try to appeal to the people least likely to support you!

The fact is that Americans are comfortable with religion and most feel that their leaders should believe in God. Bible verses and religious language are nice shorthand ways of conveying values and spiritualism. Many of the messages in the Bible are fully in keeping with liberal values and can be called up to support a politician’s positions without any controversy. Nobody is saying otherwise. But most people in this country are simply not as engaged in this deep theologically based political conversation as these hustlers would have us believe.

In fact, if the Democrats want to get involved in religion, I would suggest that they start looking at what the right is doing to the mainline and liberal churches in this country. It’s as bad as anything that’s happened in politics and it’s happening under the radar. If people like Ms Vanderslice would really like to help Christians in this country feel like they have a seat at the Democratic table, maybe she should spend a little less time cultivating the right wingers who already hate half the people in the Democratic party and concentrate a little of that energy in helping the liberal Christians who are struggling to survive the onslaught. I’d even help, and I’m not religious at all.

But Vanderslice and her friends aren’t actually liberals are they? They are missionaries going into the heart of darkness to convert the heathens.

Update: Frederick Clarkson, Steve Benen and Pastordan have more.

UpdateII: BTD at Talk Left does some interesting numbers crunching.

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China White

by digby

Supplies of highly potent Afghan heroin in the United States are growing so fast that the pure white powder is rapidly overtaking lower-quality Mexican heroin, prompting fears of increased addiction and overdoses.

Heroin-related deaths in Los Angeles County soared from 137 in 2002 to 239 in 2005, a jump of nearly 75% in three years, a period when other factors contributing to overdose deaths remained unchanged, experts said. The jump in deaths was especially prevalent among users older than 40, who lack the resilience to recover from an overdose of unexpectedly strong heroin, according to a study by the county’s Office of Health Assessment and Epidemiology.

“The rise of heroin from Afghanistan is our biggest rising threat in the fight against narcotics,” said Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. “We are seeing more seizures and more overdoses.”

According to a Drug Enforcement Administration report obtained by The Times, Afghanistan’s poppy fields have become the fastest-growing source of heroin in the United States. Its share of the U.S. market doubled from 7% in 2001, the year U.S. forces overthrew the Taliban, to 14% in 2004, the latest year studied. Another DEA report, released in October, said the 14% actually could be significantly higher.

Poppy production in Afghanistan jumped significantly after the 2001 U.S. invasion destabilized an already shaky economy, leading farmers to turn to the opium market to survive.

Not only is more heroin being produced from Afghan poppies coming into the United States, it is also the purest in the world, according to the DEA’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

Despite the agency’s own reports, a DEA spokesman denied that more heroin was reaching the United States from Afghanistan. “We are NOT seeing a nationwide spike in Afghanistan-based heroin,” Garrison K. Courtney wrote in an e-mail to The Times.

He said in an interview that the report that showed the growth of Afghanistan’s U.S. market share was one of many sources the agency used to evaluate drug trends. He refused to provide a copy of DEA reports that could provide an explanation.

The agency declined to give The Times the report on the doubling of Afghan heroin into the U.S. A copy was provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

[…]

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, warned world health authorities in October of the increase in Afghan heroin.

“This, in turn, is likely to prompt a substantial increase in the number of deaths by overdose, as addicts are not used to injecting doses containing such high concentrations of the drug,” he said.

[…]

The Department of Homeland Security also has found evidence of increasing Afghan heroin in this country. The agency reported skyrocketing numbers of seizures of heroin arriving at U.S. airports and seaports from India, not a significant heroin-producing country but a major transshipment point for Afghan drugs.

You know, I hate to be suspicious of such things, but it seems as if every time we get into one of these boondoggle wars, a whole bunch of hard drugs fine their way back to America. I can’t say for sure that it’s not a coincidence, but you really do have to wonder why it is that when anybody implies that the government might just be involved, they are hounded and discredited.

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What Did It?

by digby

Josh Marshall has asked a really fun question over at TPM cafe today: What caused the turnaround from Bush and the GOP being on top of the world and poised to rule for centuries in 2004 to where they sit today in 2006?

Most people cite Schiavo, Katrina and the attempt to gut social security, along with a bunch of other interesting moments in the decline of the house of Bush. (There are so many!)

I think all those things were huge, of course. But I actually think it was something a little more obscure. It happened just before the election in 2004 which was so personality driven (and masterfully produced by the Republicans) that people didn’t know quite what to make of it. The implications of this revelation took time for people to absorb — and when they did, they lost all faith in George W. Bush:

The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq’s illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.

Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq’s weapons programs, said Hussein’s ability to produce nuclear weapons had “progressively decayed” since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of “concerted efforts to restart the program.”

The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. While Hussein had long dreamed of developing an arsenal of biological agents, his stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Duelfer said Hussein hoped someday to resume a chemical weapons effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years.

Duelfer’s report, delivered yesterday to two congressional committees, represents the government’s most definitive accounting of Hussein’s weapons programs, the assumed strength of which the Bush administration presented as a central reason for the war. While previous reports have drawn similar conclusions, Duelfer’s assessment went beyond them in depth, detail and level of certainty.

“We were almost all wrong” on Iraq, Duelfer told a Senate panel yesterday.

That is one hell of a “mistake” and if it wasn’t a mistake it was even worse.

Those of us who followed events closely knew long before this report came out that there were no WMD. And on some level everyone else knew that something had gone wrong. I believe that when it really hit people that Bush had sold the war — repeatedly and in great detail — on something that wasn’t true, he was toast. It just took a while for it to sink in.

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Political Consumers

by digby

Anonymous Liberal pinch hitting over at Glenn Greenwald’s place has posted an interesting piece about truth in advertising. He points out that the laws are much more explicit and demanding of honesty in selling consumer goods than it is in politics.

If a company makes a claim which is even slightly misleading, it will quickly find itself up to its eyeballs in litigation, whether in the form of government enforcement actions, lawsuits by competitors, or consumer class actions (often all three). There are also any number of tort and quasi-contractual claims that aggrieved consumers can bring against the individuals and companies who deceived them.

As a result, companies take great care to ensure that their statements are truthful, and consumers can be reasonably confident that advertisers are not lying to them.

The same is not at all true in the realm of politics, where candidates and interest groups can pretty much say whatever they want and voters are generally left to fend for themselves. Lies and misleading claims are commonplace, if not the norm. The perverse result is that most Americans are far better informed (or at least far less misinformed) when they step into the mall than when they step into the voting booth.

Anonymous Liberal points out that all the consumer laws on the books are predicated on studies that show most people don’t have the ability to sort through a bunch of competing information and figure out what is true (or what works) and what doesn’t. We have found that citizens appreciate some rules and some guidance. He also notes that states tried to inject some truth in advertising laws into the political arena but ran afoul of the first amendment and have pretty much given up the effort, which he agrees is probably the right thing. After all, when it comes to political speech you have to have a very hands-off government policy, for obvious reasons.

But the system is supposed to have a mechanism for dealing with this — the press. It’s protected by the same amendment that protects the politicians and operates on an equal constitutional basis. If jouranlists were doing their job correctly they would function as the political consumer watchdogs and enforcers of truth in advertising.

The thing is, they think they are. They nitpick something ridiculous, like Al Gore’s joke that his grandmother sang him a certain lullabye while allowing a huge majority of the country to believe that there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11 — something which those of us who were paying close attention knew was untrue, by virtue of the administration’s cleverly misleading statements.

Anonymous Liberal notes:

I remember, for example, that in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the media made a habit of noting that most Americans supported the invasion. Rarely, however, did anyone mention the fact that nearly 70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 or the fact that the Bush administration had been going out of its way to foster that misperception.

That’s exactly right. And it wasn’t as if Bush was being particularly subtle about it:

Times have changed in America. Times have changed after September the 11th. It used to be we thought oceans would protect us. A lot of us growing up said, we don’t have to really worry about some of the conflicts overseas. We may be involved, we may not be involved, because we’re protected, we’re isolated from the harsh realities of some of the killings that were taking place on different continents, so we could pick and choose. We don’t have any choice in this new war, see. We learned that the enemy has taken the battlefield to our very own country. My most important job is to protect America. My most important job is to do everything we possibly can to protect innocent life from a group of killers.

That’s why I’ve started and stimulated a discussion on Iraq. I wanted the American people to know that there’s a new reality which we face, a reality that oceans no longer protect us. The reality that this person in Iraq has killed his own people with weapons of mass destruction, a reality that he has invaded countries. The reality that he has stiffed the United Nations for 11 years. Sixteen different resolutions have been passed calling on this man to disarm. Sixteen times he’s ignored world mandates. These are the realities we face and we must deal with it.

Clever and stupid all at the same time. It was clear to those who were paying close attention that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and that this was cunning rhetoric designed to give exactly the opposite impression. And yet the Bush administration repeatedly made speeches and statements like that above and suffered virtually no blowback in the media. In his press conferences, the white house press corps failed to properly follow up or make it clear that Bush was being clever when he made these connections and instead laughed and fawned as if they were at a movie star’s press junket.

It was their job to sort that rhetoric out, right as it happened, no matter how unpleasant it might have been. The failure to correct that misimpression (along with dozens of others) led many millions of Americans to support the invasion of Iraq who otherwise might not have. Had the press done its job, acted as the public’s “political consumer” advocate, and put pressure on the administration to explain its claims, the war would likely have happened anyway — they were determined to do it come hell or high water — but Bush would not have won re-election. They made it possible for someone who had lied blatantly to the people in some cases, misled them in others and started a war based upon what turned out to be a completely false premise to hang on long enough to win another term before people belatedly realized they had been taken to the cleaners. That’s quite an achievement. (I’m still waiting for the ethics panel on that subject to be convened — I wonder how that’s coming?)

Anonymous Liberal says he has some ideas as to how to incentivize honesty in politics and I’ll be looking forward to reading it. In the meantime, it’s important that we keep the pressure on the press to do the job that democracy requires it to do. They are getting very stroppy about it, but that’s too bad. When you screw up on this scale you are going to have to take some heat.

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The Reincarnation Of Ulysses S. Grant

by poputonian
Some things just have to be shared.

After posting yesterday from Henry Adams’s autobiography, published in 1906, I noticed the following sentence in the 1996 introduction by Edmund Morris:

The fact that we keep hearing Adams in them, and recognizing figures from our own time on every other page of The Education (see the uncanny portrait of President Reagan, alias President Grant, on p. 264) is proof of the universality of true art.

On page 264, Adams is telling about a dinner with journalist Adam Badeau, a follower of Grant. In this, I don’t think Reagan is the only modern figure getting nailed, and notice how in the same passage, Adams disproves Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. True literary genius. (Remember, too, that Adams is writing in third person.)

Badeau, who had come to Washington for a consulate which was slow to reach him, resorted more or less to whiskey for encouragement, and became irritable, besides being loquacious. He talked much about Grant, and showed a certain artistic feeling for analysis of character, as a true literary critic would naturally do. Loyal to Grant, and still more so to Mrs. Grant, who acted as his patroness, he said nothing, even when far gone, that was offensive about either, but he held that no one except himself and Rawlins understood the General. To him, Grant appeared as an intermittent energy, immensely powerful when awake, but passive and plastic in repose. He said that neither he nor the rest of the staff knew why Grant succeeded; they believed in him because of his success. For stretches of time, his mind seemed torpid. Rawlins and the others would systematically talk their ideas into it, for weeks, not directly, but by discussion among themselves, in his presence. In the end, he would announce the idea as his own, without seeming conscious of the discussion; and would give the orders to carry it out with all the energy that belonged to his nature. They could never measure his character or be sure when he would act. They could never follow a mental process in his thought. They were not sure that he did think.

In all this, Adams took deep interest, for although he was not, like Badeau, waiting for Mrs. Grant’s power of suggestion to act on the General’s mind in order to germinate in a consulate or a legation, his portrait gallery of great men was becoming large, and it amused him to add an authentic likeness of the greatest general the world had seen since Napoleon. Badeau’s analysis was rather delicate; infinitely superior to that of Sam Ward or Charles Nordhoff.

Badeau took Adams to the White House one evening and introduced him to the President and Mrs. Grant. First and last, he saw a dozen Presidents at the White House, and the most famous were by no means the most agreeable, but he found Grant the most curious object of study among them all. About no one did opinions differ so widely. Adams had no opinion, or occasion to make one. A single word with Grant satisfied him that, for his own good, the fewer words he risked, the better. Thus far in life he had met with but one man of the same intellectual or unintellectual type–Garibaldi. Of the two, Garibaldi seemed to him a trifle the more intellectual, but, in both, the intellect counted for nothing; only the energy counted. The type was pre-intellectual, archaic, and would have seemed so even to the cave-dwellers. Adam, according to legend, was such a man.

In time one came to recognize the type in other men, with differences and variations, as normal; men whose energies were the greater, the less they wasted on thought; men who sprang from the soil to power; apt to be distrustful of themselves and of others; shy; jealous; sometimes vindictive; more or less dull in outward appearance; always needing stimulants, but for whom action was the highest stimulant–the instinct of fight. Such men were forces of nature, energies of the prime, like the Pteraspis, but they made short work of scholars. They had commanded thousands of such and saw no more in them than in others. The fact was certain; it crushed argument and intellect at once.

Adams did not feel Grant as a hostile force; like Badeau he saw only an uncertain one. When in action he was superb and safe to follow; only when torpid he was dangerous. To deal with him one must stand near, like Rawlins, and practice more or less sympathetic habits. Simple-minded beyond the experience of Wall Street or State Street, he resorted, like most men of the same intellectual calibre, to commonplaces when at a loss for expression: “Let us have peace!” or, “The best way to treat a bad law is to execute it”; or a score of such reversible sentences generally to be gauged by their sententiousness; but sometimes he made one doubt his good faith; as when he seriously remarked to a particularly bright young woman that Venice would be a fine city if it were drained. In Mark Twain, this suggestion would have taken rank among his best witticisms; in Grant it was a measure of simplicity not singular. Robert E. Lee betrayed the same intellectual commonplace, in a Virginian form, not to the same degree, but quite distinctly enough for one who knew the American. What worried Adams was not the commonplace; it was, as usual, his own education. Grant fretted and irritated him, like the Terebratula, as a defiance of first principles. He had no right to exist. He should have been extinct for ages. The idea that, as society grew older, it grew one-sided, upset evolution, and made of education a fraud. That, two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called–and should actually and truly be–the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous. One must be as commonplace as Grant’s own commonplaces to maintain such an absurdity. The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.

I would say he nailed Reagan, who probably would have been too smart to put Iraq in competition with the general interests of America, but the narrative is too good for Bush, who, when coupled with Reagan, indeed seems to confirm that Darwinism is working in reverse.
UPDATE: For balance, see Barbara O’Brien’s excellent post about Grant.UPDATE II: darrelplant provides a link to Grant’s personal memoirs.UPDATE III: Dr. Attaturk weighs in.