Month: July 2008

The Reverse Clark

by dday

John McCain’s campaign had to distance himself significantly from Phil Gramm this week, even suggesting that they’re no longer on speaking terms.

GERSH: Is Senator Gramm still giving advice to Senator McCain?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: No.

GERSH: No.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: At — I haven’t spoken to Senator Gramm since the comments took place, and I’m not expecting to.

This is despite the fact that among conservative movement types, Gramm’s comments are seen as largely correct. Some are defending them on technical grounds, claiming that the country hasn’t technically slipped into recession based on a narrow set of economic growth statistics that are not completely connected to middle class Americans’ lives. Others, like George Will, simply agree that Americans “are the crybabies of the western world.” They believe this and have always believed it. It’s part of their core “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” DNA, unless you’re a corporation drowning in subsidies and welfare payments, that is.

Traditional media outlets have finally picked up on the fact that the Gramm comments and McCain’s cluelessness on Social Security and health care led to a pathetically bad week, despite it being the week where the campaign message would be reset and more tightly focused. And hardcore conservatives are seeing McCain’s “gaffes” resulting from their core beliefs, and his distancing from them as a repudiation of economic conservatism. They don’t trust him already and this makes it worse.

Of course, Gramm helped shape McCain’s policies, and on the overwhelming majority of domestic issues McCain is exactly in line with the President. In fact, today a surrogate couldn’t name one difference between McCain and Bush on economic policy. But a significant segment of the conservative base sees Gramm as fundamentally correct and brave, and they see his ouster as a betrayal. This Weekly Standard piece from before the Gramm comments show that conservatives just don’t trust the guy.

This is McCain being McCain. He clearly believes that bipartisanship is among the highest virtues of political life. But it also reflects the campaign’s strategic attempt to position McCain as a centrist in order to win the votes of independents and even some Democrats.

There are risks to this strategy and the enthusiasm gap is chief among them. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month found that nearly half of the liberals surveyed are enthusiastic about supporting Barack Obama, while only 13 percent of conservatives are enthusiastic about McCain. More generally, 91 percent of self-identified Obama supporters are “enthusiastic” about their candidate; 54 percent say they are “very enthusiastic.” Seventy-three percent of such McCain supporters say they are “enthusiastic” about his candidacy, but only 17 percent say they are “very enthusiastic.” […]

It is not surprising that conservatives are not warming to a candidate who likes to talk about climate change and government subsidies for displaced workers. But this coldness is increasingly alarming to some McCain backers. They believe that all of McCain’s efforts to win over Democrats and independents can only pay off if he is able to get conservatives to turn out to vote for him in November.

Just so we’re aware that this “move to the center” thing cuts both ways.

.

When Centrism Is Good

by digby

As people who read this blog know, I’ve been disappointed, considering his great gift for rhetoric, that Barack hasn’t taken a more creative approach to appealing to the middle (the reasons for which he might need to do that, I’ve also written about at length.) So one might expect me to be apoplectic about this article in today’s LA Times which says that the election will be fought on “centrist” terms because both Obama and McCain have moved to the center. My first reaction to that was sour, I’ll admit. Years of listening to the Republicans pound their chests, wearing the word “conservative” like they were the 1928 Yankees, has been pretty hard to take. We’d all like to see the progressive label be applied and used with similar pride. But that isn’t the way these things work. You usually have to reposition the issue agenda to a safe middle position first before people can feel comfortable adopting the whole identity. (Success goes a long way toward doing that.)

It’s good for us when positions that have been considered left wing ideas are characterized as centrist. It signals that the public, or at least those Very Important Gasbags who write the political narrative in the country, have decided that on some issues, anyway, what was once considered left wing heresy is now mainstream. (And conversely what was once considered mainstream is now relegated to the right wing.) In this list (which, granted, is quite pathetic in terms of substance) the LA Times is signaling that it believes that non-proliferation, global warming, stem cell research and comprehensive immigration reform are safe middle of the road positions. Even on the war, they seem to be admitting that 100 years in Iraq and the whole “victory” concept is an extreme right wing position.

The bad news, of course, is that spying on Americans without a warrant is also considered a reasonable mainstream position as are faith based solutions to social problems (and I grant I may be in a minority here in finding that problematic) expanding the death penalty and NAFTA. Very depressing. And the list doesn’t include anything on the economy, energy, the broader war on terror or health care, which will be hugely important in this election so this only goes so far. But then, the Democrats need some issues to contrast with McCain, and three out of four of those would certainly seem to lean our way.

Only four years ago it was considered completely mainstream, centrist thinking to oppose stem cell research, reject nuclear proliferation schemes, and deny global warming. These things were at best, considered debatable. Now, they are nice centrist issues we can all agree upon. La! The great consensus has been achieved! David Broder and Cokie Roberts can take a vacation from their vigil protecting the country from the radical left wing extremists who insist that killing the planet with nuclear war and climate change isn’t a good idea.

I realize that these are baby steps, and it avoids many of the big issues on which the pundits still insist that Democrats are extreme, but these are areas where Barack can very comfortably emphasize his “centrist” bonafides without having to repudiate his base of followers. I would guess there are many more that will fall into this category, perhaps even health care (although it is in grave danger of being derailed by “fiscal responsibility.”) I hope he begins to emphasize those common sense positions and create a new paradigm, replete with its own dog whistles and subtext. I think that’s where the independent voter riches lie.

As Perlstein has often described it, turning the country around politically is like turning an aircraft carrier. It’s hard to stop the forward momentum and it’s even harder to turn the weighty thing all the way around. But I think we may have stopped the forward momentum. Finally. And now we have to turn this sucker.

.

What Catholics Are (Ideally, And Sometimes Really) About

by tristero

[UPDATE: As they say, good deeds do not long remain unpunished. You try to say something nice and conciliatory and you end up with egg on your face.

I was led astray. My original source misidentified Reverend Louis Braxton as Catholic and I had no reason to disbelieve him. But Braxton is Episcopalian. Rather than try to come up with something to salvage my main point here, which would rightly be seen as stupid and dishonest, I’ll just say I made a mistake; I should have used a different example to illustrate my respect for Catholics (which continues despite Donohue’s concerted effort to besmirch them).

In any event, Reverend Braxton’s behavior is exemplary and laudatory in the ways I describe below. About that I am not mistaken.

David Ehrenstein and others in comments may be right, that religion has nothing to do with Braxton’s fine character. Fair enough, you don’t have to believe in God to behave decently. Nor, of course, does being religious mean you will behave like William Donohue.

Apologies to all readers for the mistake.]

Via pastordan, comes this moving story of Catholic behavior at its best. Here’s a link to the original article. Some excerpts:

Four punks spewing hateful language at a transgender woman outside a shelter for gay and transgender young people in Queens beat up a priest who attempted to thwart their tirade, police said…

..the boys came back armed with metal poles, empty paint cans, belts and a miter saw. “Father was trying to make peace with them, but then one of them hit him in the back of the head with a paint can,” Carver said. “He fell to the ground, and they kept hitting him.”

The other residents fended off the attackers, and when the teens finally fled, they ran past Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officers, who nabbed them and charged all four with assault as a hate crime, gang assault, weapon possession and harassment…

[Reverend Louis Braxton, the beaten priest], who shrugged off the attack after being treated for cuts and bruises at Mount Sinai Hospital of Queens, said men are often threatened by transgender women. “I think that young men see these striking girls, and they’re attracted,” he said. “And when they find out they are male, they don’t know how to handle it and act out in rage.”

Transgendered men and women are among the most despised groups out there. Even among gays and lesbians, with whom transgender activists often politically align, they inspire as much unease as they do tolerance. Father Braxton’s defense was heroic in and of itself. His comments are, in a sense, equally heroic, and deeply moving.

He refused to make himself the center of the story. Just as important, he refused to turn this story into a cynical “teaching moment” on the abject state of young transwomen. Instead, he focused on the kids who attacked the woman and him. Astonishingly, he reacted not with anger, but with empathy and compassion, trying to make sense of their rage and hatred.

You don’t have to be a serious Catholic, of course, to react this way. But this kind of response – constructive empathy towards those who hate and unreasoningly attack – seems deeply characteristic of the finest of Catholicism’s ethical stances. Father Braxton’s behavior reminds me, in a small way, of the time Pope John Paul met with his thwarted assassin, who broke down and wept as they prayed together, an extraordinarily beautiful story.

As I was finishing this post, I noticed something else about Father Braxton’s statement. He said, “I think that young men see these striking girls, and they’re attracted” before focusing on the confusion and anger the attackers felt. Literally as an aside, he pays the young victim of the attack, Alessandra-Michelle Carver, a charming compliment: she’s no helpless victim but a strikingly attractive girl. And he pays this compliment without shortchanging her reality: he goes on to acknowledge the complexity of Alessandra-Michelle’s gender identity – the beautiful girl is “male” – rather than finesse or hide it.

When I think of what I admire about the Catholic ethos, this is what I have in mind. This deeply-felt loving care for others, demonstrated both in attitudes and deeds, may not be unique to Catholics, but it is a striking feature of so much Catholic charity. Sure, anyone can think of numerous counter-examples of clergy and laity behaving very badly – their attitude towards reproductive rights and women as clergy, the dreadful scandals – but along with those, it is only right to bring up the image of a priest who’s been hit over the head with a paint can, beaten up, gone to the hospital for treatment, and who still has the strength of character to show his attackers compassion, and comfort and compliment a frightened young woman.

Saturday Night At The Movies

The edge is still out there

By Dennis Hartley

No fun to hang around
Feeling that same old way
No fun to hang around
Freaked out for another day
No fun my babe no fun

-The Stooges

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.”

-Hunter S. Thompson

It’s been just over three years now since the godfather of gonzo journalism eschewed his beloved typewriter to scrawl out those words with a black magic marker, four days prior to pulling a Hemingway. Ever the contrarian, Thompson couldn’t resist adding a twist of patented gonzo irony to his suicide note, by entitling it “Football Season is Over.”

Since then, several quickie “tell-all” books have played Monday morning quarterback with the life and legacy of the iconoclastic writer, with what one would assume would be a wildly varying degree of accuracy. That’s because Hunter S. Thompson was a mass of walking contradictions, someone who will likely always remain a bit of a cipher. He was a man whose work was imbued with DFH political idealism and tempered by a full personal commitment to the hedonistic enjoyment of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll; yet he loved to collect guns, watch stuff blow up and counted the likes of Pat Buchanan among his personal friends. I don’t envy a biographer in any medium such a daunting task.

In Gonzo: the Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, director Alex Gibney, who is a bit of a shit-stirrer in his own right (Taxi To the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room, ) may have discovered the right formula. He takes an approach as scattershot and unpredictable as the subject himself and runs with it, utilizing a frenetic pastiche of talking heads, vintage home movies, feature film clips, animation, rare audio tapes and snippets of prose (voiced by Johnny Depp, who has become Thompson’s theatrical avatar, like Hal Holbrook’s synonymous identity with Mark Twain). While Gibney keeps the timeline fairly linear, he does make interesting choices along the way-and equally interesting omissions (e.g., Thompson’s formative years are given the bum’s rush).

Gibney ostensibly begins his film with an examination of the 1966 book Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, which first established Thompson’s groundbreaking style of method journalism (as one interviewee observes, he essentially “embedded” himself with the notorious motorcycle gang, decades before that term was coined). An overview of his Rolling Stone reportage ensues, highlighted by the assignment that resulted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That period is bookended by an account of how Thompson’s bacchanalian propensities caused him to blow his coverage of the Ali-Foreman bout in Zaire, which the director posits as the first inkling that the personal excesses were starting to profoundly affect his ability to dependably knock one out of the park with every essay.

A lion’s share of the film is devoted to two chapters of Thompson’s life: his quasi-serious run for sheriff (!) of Aspen Colorado and his coverage of the 1972 presidential elections. In fact, the segment regarding the 1972 campaign(recounted in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72) is nearly a stand-alone “film within the film”; it’s such a riveting and well-crafted piece that I wished Gibney had expounded even further and turned it into a full-length companion documentary. Gibney points out (quite rightly so) that the Eagleton VP nom debacle and resultant death knell for the McGovern campaign was a crushing blow to Thompson’s earnest 1960s idealism, and signaled the beginning of an escalating disillusionment and bitterness that permeated his political writing from that point on. Gibney also reminds us of something else largely forgotten, the fact that Thompson was quite instrumental in bringing then-governor Jimmy Carter into the national political spotlight back in 1974, by championing his amazing Law Day Speech (pdf).

Consequently, I think political junkies are going to dig this film a lot more than the fans who remain solely enamored with Hunter S. Thompson’s more superficial, substance-fueled “rebel” persona. Excepting the depiction of Thompson’s relatively unproductive latter years, which were spent ensconced in his Colorado compound, too distracted by guns, drugs and sycophants to do little else but slowly disappear up his own legend (kind of like Elvis at Graceland, now that I think about it) the director admirably suppresses the urge to play up the public notoriety and revel in the writer’s recreational excesses, just to sell more movie tickets. If you’re expecting a sequel to Gilliam’s film, this is not for you.

The film is not without its flaws; the frequent use of Depp clips from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas becomes distracting and begins to feel like cheating (by contrast, there is only one brief nod to Bill Murray’s turn in Where the Buffalo Roam.) This is a minor quibble, because there are some real treasures here as well. Devotees will delight in listening to the audio snippets from the original cassettes that Thompson made while cruising through the Nevada desert with his attorney, as well as the recording of a shouting match between the writer and his long-time collaborator Ralph Steadman while they were in Zaire (let us pray that the DVD will bonus more from those priceless tapes).

This is certainly no sugar-coated puff piece; there are several ex-wives and associates aboard who make no bones about reminding us that the man could be a real asshole. On the other hand, examples of his genuine humanity and idealism are brought to the fore as well, making for an insightful and fairly balanced overview of this “Dr. Gonzo and Mr. Thompson” dichotomy. What the director does not forget is that, at the end of the day, HST was the most unique American political commentator/ social observer who ever sat down to peck at a bullet-riddled typewriter. Bastard. We could sure as shit use him now.

Gonzography: Where the Buffalo Roam, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, When I Die, Free Lisl: Fear and Loathing in Denver.

.

Surfing With Floaties

by dday

John McCain is aware of the Internets, but only dimly:

He said, ruefully, that he had not mastered how to use the Internet and relied on his wife and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online to read newspapers (though he prefers reading those the old-fashioned way) and political Web sites and blogs.

“They go on for me,” he said. “I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.”

Asked which blogs he read, he said: “Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously. Everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics.” (it’s RealClearPolitics -ed.)

At that point, Mrs. McCain, who had been intensely engaged with her BlackBerry, looked up and chastised her husband. “Meghan’s blog!” she said, reminding him of their daughter’s blog on his campaign Web site. “Meghan’s blog,” he said sheepishly.

Getting online requires a double-click on the browser application. I don’t necessarily need a President to be able to install the DSL system or a universal broadband card, but the double-click seems to me like a pre-requisite.

Also interesting – in Washington, Drudge rules even the computer illiterate’s world. As well as mini-Drudge.

I apologize in advance for demeaning McCain’s peerless, impeccable service to our country.

.

Tales From BushWorld, William Donohue Edition

by tristero

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, claims he speaks for Catholics, but he only speaks for himself and his fellow lunatics. Real Catholics should be ashamed he pretends to represent them.

In the PZ Affair, which gets more absurd by the day, Donohue has issued another utterly unhinged and dishonest communique. I’d like to remind you that unlike PZ, the man behind this press release has regular access to major national media. That should give you some sense of how genuinely weird our public life has become Check out this deliberately false statement, voiced like a two-bit gangster to his pals:

[PZ Myers] better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won’t be hard to connect the dots.]

But hold on. What Donohue’s actually saying is that in fact, he has received NO death threats. On the contrary, PZ Myers has received four. Donohue fails to mention that.

But Donohue’s bull dung on this is what one has comes to expect from him, merely the usual lying by omission and projection. Next, tho, we go into total woo-woo:

[Thomas E. Foley, chairman of Virginia’s First Congressional District Republican Committee] has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley’s request.

1. No Catholic has been specifically threatened with violence over this incident. But PZ Myers has.

2. It is Dr. Myers’ freedom of speech that has been specifically threatened, not Donohue’s. By posting the email of Professor Myers’ university president, Donohue has targeted Dr. Myers’ job.

3. Earlier in the statement, Donohue calls Minneapolis “Myers’ backyard.” PZ Myers lives 150 miles away from Minneapolis, the site of the upcoming Republican convention.

4. Donohue explicitly, and outrageously, links Dr. Myers to violence, suggesting PZ would be responsible for death threats Donohue might receive and that Catholics 150 miles away from his home are in danger from Professor Myers. This is an utterly insane, disgraceful charge that is as infuriating as it is ludicrous.

Forgive me right now, for not taking the appropriately snarky tone for this farce. I just find it sickening that a thug as dishonest and loopy as Donohue has regular media access when so many more important, charismatic and sober commentators don’t (for Catholics, how about Ken Miller?) But probably tomorrow, I’ll be laughing about it. Assuming some nutjob claiming to defend the honor of the Body of Christ doesn’t go off the deep end.

Y’know, the truth is that there really is anti-Catholic discrimination in this country. I’ve seen it, and it’s really ugly (think psychopastor Hagee for one). That Donohue chooses to gin up false incidents into raging hysteria trivializes the genuine ones; it shows that Donohue either isn’t serious about fighting real bigotry or is too cowardly to go after Catholicism’s real opponents. It is he who should be fired, not PZ Myers, who via his teaching, research, and blog posts (particularly those on creationists and hard science), genuinely contributes much that is good to the public discourse.

Brave New World

by dday

At some level I suppose it’s futile to expect Nero to do something other than fiddling, but it’s the manner in which they went about this that’s so frustrating. Feeling unsatisfied by directly contravening federal Congressional statutes, the Bushes have moved on to contravening judicial mandates. And since nobody in Washington is demanding anything approaching accountability, they’ll get away with it.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare — a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

The Supreme Court, in a decision 15 months ago that startled the government, ordered the EPA to decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse gas pollution from cars, power plants and other sources, or to provide a good explanation for not doing so. But the administration has opted to postpone action instead, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

To defer compliance with the Supreme Court’s demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials’ congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA’s written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA’s analyses found.

Short version: The EPA lost a case in court, the Supreme Court ordered a decision on regulating greenhouse gases as a pollutant, the EPA rendered one, the White House decided not to open the email, and now they’re going to punt on the whole thing. So goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.

The radical nature of the Cheneyite project in Washington has revealed giant flaws in the modern rendition of the Constitutional system. What we’ve now seen is that the structure of democracy in America has to this point been held by a broad gentleman’s agreement. If laws aren’t followed by the branch meant to execute the laws, everything breaks down. If court orders mean nothing, if federal statutes can be appended by someone other than the legislature, we are living in a spinning chaos.

This isn’t that new – Andrew Jackson’s famous quote about Chief Justice John Marshall’s ruling on removing Cherokees from their land in Georgia, “John Marshall has made his
decision, now let him enforce it,” comes to mind – but there’s an audacity to the current project that does suggest that somuch of this government’s practices are faith-based. Many of us believe in the law and the rules and the expected conduct based on following them, and this sliver of conservative thought just doesn’t. They find it perfectly acceptable to disavow their own reports and rewrite their own rules and create their own reality. It’s only because of the stunning lack of success of this project that there’s even a chance to discredit it.

But this all comes back to accountability. Nobody tries to pull this off if they aren’t confident they’ll suffer no consequences. I think one of the more revealing essays of the week comes from Tim Noah at Slate, discussing this new Serious Bipartisan Commission report from Village elders about war powers, which is pretty much not needed if Article I, Section 8 were ever consulted in a rigorous manner. The document that James Baker and Warren Christopher provided this week would eliminate what little accountability is provided in the 1973 War Powers Act, eliminating the sunset provision for military action by the executive without Congressional approval after 30 days. But this is precisely what Congress desires. Noah writes:

Congress doesn’t want to streamline its role in declaring war, because, for all its bluster (not to mention its constitutional responsibility), Congress doesn’t want to be held politically accountable for the results. I first became aware of this phenomenon 21 summers ago while covering a House debate on the use of Navy convoys to escort 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers through the Persian Gulf. Iraq and Iran were at war, and although the United States didn’t officially take sides, this military action reflected our government’s quiet tilt toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq…

Anyway, on that August afternoon in 1987 the House was debating whether to invoke the War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law meant to require congressional approval of any executive action that introduced the armed forces into hostilities, or into a situation in which hostilities seemed pretty goddamned likely, as appeared to be the case here. (Happily, the Navy escort occurred without incident.) What amazed and shocked me, and moved me to write up the debate for the New Republic, was the unembarrassed manner in which members of Congress declared as their paramount interest the absence of any legislative fingerprints on whatever might result from allowing (or not allowing) the Navy convoys to enter an area of violent conflict. In fact, it was pretty much taken as a given that the War Powers Resolution would not be invoked, not because the president was not complying with it (no president ever has) but because doing so would require Congress to either approve or revoke Reagan’s decision. Here is how I described the House debate 14 years later in this column (I can’t seem to locate the original New Republic piece); I should point out that the first two speakers were members of Reagan’s own party:

“This resolution puts congressional fingerprints on our course of action,” complained Rep. Toby Roth. “Does this put the fingerprints and the handprints of the Congress on that policy?” asked Rep. Donald Lukens. No, assured Rep. Pat Schroeder: It was “a teeny-weeny first step” that “doesn’t commit the Congress in any way.” Only then could the resolution pass.

The Baker-Christopher proposal, then, is an empty exercise in high-mindedness for its own sake. Congress has all the war-making power it needs, and considerably more than it wants. The latter problem can’t be solved legislatively. Cowardice, opportunism, and indecision inhabit a realm beyond the reach of law, and you’d think that two experienced hands like Baker and Christopher would understand that better than most.

Oh, they understand it all right. They’re counting on it. And so do the Cheneyites who mapped out this plan for an unfettered unitary executive. It may have lost in unimportant areas like “court” and “public opinion,” but inside the Beltway it is victorious and shining.

.

The Liberal Village Speaks

by digby

I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but so-called liberal political pundits think other liberals should STFU.

What is their problem? News reports suggest that disgruntled Clinton supporters are angry about alleged sexism in the coverage of her campaign, while other Democrats are upset at Obama’s recent moves toward the center. The second complaint is childish. Securing your base and then moving to the center is the fundamental move of politics, like the basic steps of the fox-trot. And Obama is hardly responsible for Clinton’s press coverage. But there is no easy way these folks can vent their anger at Chris Matthews. So they are taking their revenge on people without health care, women who need abortions, and others who they (if they supported Hillary) must think will be harmed by a Republican victory in the fall. That’ll show ’em.

If you listen to a lot of right-wing talk radio (as I do), …they have turned their guns on Barack Obama with remarkable ease and speed.

Democrats aren’t like that. It’s not that they’re too nice or too principled, or too unwilling to be ruthless. The hatred of George W. Bush on the left–and the eagerness to see him gone–is at this point as extreme as anything the right has to offer. (I know this because I share it.) The desire to win for winning’s sake is pretty deep, too. Furthermore, as I suggested in this space a few weeks ago, it is at least an open question as to whether Democrats this year will attempt to match the Republicans in their willingness to “swift-boat”–that is, to play dirty in what they regard as a noble cause.

But true, professional unscrupulousness–the kind of do-anything-to-win pragmatism that Democrats envy in Republicans–requires more than just working yourself up into a lather of dislike. Sometimes, in fact, it requires the opposite: putting aside your dislike, your disappointments, your anger, your feelings of betrayal. In the case of Hillary Clinton’s erstwhile supporters, all of these feelings seem overwrought to me. But there is no point in arguing about this, or at least not now. Now is the time to just get over it.

As the ultimate expression of do-anything-to-win pragmatism, perhaps Democrats should just run actual Republicans for office then? I hear Mitt Romney’s available.

And why is it that people are always telling liberals to “get over it” when they register the slightest objection to getting stabbed in the back by the political establishment over and over again? Setting aside his complaints about the disappointed Hillary supporters, who seems to become more morbidly fascinating to the press even as their numbers dwindle (there’s just something about the Clenis and the Hillgina that sends tingles up some people’s legs,) this is a perfect example of Villager conventional wisdom. Yes, there are certainly occasions when it is necessary to tack right (or left) after a primary. There are many, I’m sure, who would argue that this is one of them. (As I’ve written before, I can certainly see that the breakthrough nature of Obama’s candidacy offers special challenges — I just don’t think that Barack’s approach to “reassuring” voters is particularly believable or effective.) But the idea that this is some kind of inviolable political rule is just nonsense. Ask Karl Rove. Or Ronald Reagan. There are many examples of winning presidential candidates who went all the way to November without seeming to twist themselves into pretzels on fundamental issues of principle. Sometimes they are even called “transformational.”

As for the idea that the Democratic base are a bunch of babies who don’t have the ruthlessness and pragmatism required to blindly follow their leaders over a cliff, well — thank goodness. In fact, here’s a little reminder of what that looks like:

July 28, 2005
A Stroke of Genius?

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Look, all this lecturing to liberals to “get over it” sort of misses the point. If Obama is shifting to the right to appeal to people who think he’s too liberal, then it can only help him if his liberal base is upset, right? The campaign is getting exactly what it wants. Perhaps it’s Kinsley who should get over it and let us all play our assigned roles in this political kabuki dance. He’s ruining the storyline.

But then, he’s not speaking for the Obama campaign. He’s speaking for the village media and they don’t really care about anything but maintaining their stale political narrative of a conservative majority of salt of the earth working folk who recoil in horror at the mere sight of elitist, condescending liberals. But if that’s true at all it’s because liberalism is represented by people like Michael Kinsley who think that any kind of earnest engagement in politics is silly and any form of principled political passion is unseemly. Why wouldn’t people hate us? If he’s what people see a liberalism then they logically think we are nothing but a bunch of snobbish voyeurs who don’t really believe in anything.

Update: The NY Times has published a story proving that the only Democrats who give a damn about wireless surveillance, or anything else of substance for that matter, are a bunch of crazed, leftwing freaks:

Ms. Shade, the Green-turned-Democrat-returned-Green voter, spoke about Mr. Obama while leaning out her second-floor apartment window, where she has placed homemade signs urging the impeachment of President Bush. Others say “Free Gaza” and “Occupation is Terrorism.” She said twice that the American political system was “rotten.”

“You realize,” Ms. Shade said, her voice fading with resignation, “that you’re talking to somebody who’s pretty far out of the mainstream.”

The normal Democrats are nicely following the rules:

“Seventy-five thousand people do not attend political rallies unless something truly magical is happening,” Bob Blanchard wrote on May 18 in the comment section accompanying an account of the rally on the New York Times’s Web site. “Our great country will soon close the book on ‘government by division,’ and embrace ‘government by inclusion.’ ”

Asked last week whether Mr. Obama’s vote on the surveillance law or any other recent statements or actions had altered how he felt about the candidate, Mr. Blanchard, of North Smithfield, R.I., said “absolutely not.”

“When are these people going to go, anyway?” Mr. Blanchard said of left-wing critics he believes have hurt Democrats in past elections. “My attitude is lighten up on the guy. We want to win. Moving to the center is not a crime in this country.”

You can say that again.

.

No Good Deed

by digby

In a moment of supreme blogospheric irony, Correntewire, a blog recently known for its skepticism about Obama, is being threatened by some conservative law professor for characterizing and quoting him in a blog post. (The irony is that the Corrente post in question was a stirring defense of Barack Obama against the charges by this professor that he is a Communist. It even calls Larry Johnson a fool. I’m not kidding.)

Leah Appert lays the whole ugly mess out and it is an ugly mess. The law professor is a blogger whose work is in the public domain, but evidently he doesn’t believe people have a right to characterize his work in ways in which he doesn’t approve. (One wonders what he would say about someone like Rush Limbaugh, who likes to characterize Democratic politicians and liberal activists as parasites and traitors.)

This seems to be going around. Tristero wrote about the PZ Myers flap the other day in which Big Bill Donohue (last seen excoriating Sally Quinn) turned his psychotic glare on Myers resulting in death threats.

I suspect this is going to become more common. Now that blogs have a profile and are being taken more seriously, they are also going to be the subject of a lot of right wing foolishness like this. (They are all going to have more time on their hands to take on the VLWC starting in January.) I’m not sure what to do about it, other than support those who find themselves in the cross hairs. And we can also remind these people that their endless complaint about law professors and trial lawyers being liberal is … true.

.

Packer’s Iraq Problem

by tristero

Anonymous sent me this comment on Packer’s recent article about Iraq and Obama:

With regard to Packer, I had not read his latest piece until just now. Packer is an excellent writer, and, from all appearances, a smart guy. But, he is one of those ‘smartest guys in the room’. He was an early supporter of this disastrous war and used his intelligence as an advocate and cheerleader instead of as an objective, skeptical reporter. Worse, he claimed some high ground for being pro-this-war on the basis of being a ‘first rate intelligence”:

the war has forced on all of us F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous test of a first-rate intelligence: “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

… The ability to function meant honest engagement with the full range of opposing ideas; it meant facing rather than avoiding the other position’s best arguments. In those tense months, the mark of second-rate minds was absolute certainty one way or the other.”

For Packer, the two opposed ideas boiled down to ‘fear against hope’ – elegant, high-flown words to be sure. But in claiming this high ground, Packer (like other idealist intellectuals) was seduced by elegance and finessed away “the full range” of other ideas that sat much less ambiguously in the field of view – such as the rule of law, the teachings and lessons of actual Middle Eastern history, the trumped up and rushed ‘case for war’ and, by the standards of Packer’s own ‘first rate intelligence” yardstick, the distinctly ‘second-rate intelligence’ in charge at the Bush White house – and, therefore, on its face at the time – again, in full view — the kind of absolutist (not to mention lying and corrupt) minds that would be implementing what Packer chose to support.

Packer has subsequently changed his mind about his initial support – but done so in a way that persists, oddly for a first rate intelligence, in making an assertion with ‘absolute certainty’: “There can be no phased withdrawal from the future of Iraq.”

Now, in this latest piece, we again see the agony of a ‘first rate intelligence’ that can neither quite let go of absolute certainties nor fully accept the consequences of his choiceto support the Bush/Cheney war and occupation:

“Iraq, despite myriad crises, has begun to stabilize” — in Packer’s wet dreams it has. Wet dreams because he so desperately wants some kind of fig leaf for his initial flight of fancy. Look, Iraq is a really complicated situation. And an extraordinarily fragile one. But, in light of ongoing violence, horrendous infrastructure, balkanized neighborhoods, shifting conditions in the various parts of Iraq (and, note to Packer: Baghdad is NOT all of Iraq), the number of refugees, the widespread hunger and illness, the varying and numerous militias, the persistent inconvenient fact that only 10% of Iraqi troops can operate effectively on their own without support/leadership of others, the weak leadership of Maliki, and much more, it is stunning that any intelligent person could use the word ‘stabilize’. Stunning. That is, unless that intelligent person has an agenda.

“Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch” — only to those, like Packer, who are denizens of what the left blogosphere so succinctly calls “The Village” — the celebrity journalist ‘in crowd’ who have lost all sight of what journalism is for, and live in a bubble of their own making. In some hoary past, there was this idea that journalists ‘spoke the truth to power’. Today, those in good standing in the Village, speak ‘power to the truth” – they conspire with the Bush folks in ‘shaping reality”. So, I’m reasonably sure that Obama’s rhetoric seems ‘outdated and out of touch’ to those who attend the same cocktail parties Packer does.

“It was a mistake— an understandable one, given the nature of the media and of Presidential politics today—for Obama to offer such a specific timetable” — Nonsensical comment utterly characterized by unreality. Packer is one of those really smart guys who condescendingly characterize others’ choices as ‘understandable mistakes’ in ways that actually are oxymorons. Reread ‘understandable mistake” in light of reality from 2007 until today and you tell me how it doesn’t sound like a joke like ‘military intelligence’? I mean give me a f**king break. If there’s one thing that reasonably clear, it’s that Obama’s timetable (especially when combined with Hillary’s refusal to call her vote for war a mistake) was among the core, the essential, the small number of things that spelled the difference between Obama’s nomination versus her’s. How in any but the mind of a struggling idealist can that be a ‘mistake’? We do live in a real world where there is this phenomenon known as electoral politics. Packer, though, seems so intent — so obsessed — with a deep inner need to find some — ANY — thread that can lead him out of the maze of his own making, the maze in which, he put himself when he threw in his lot with the ‘second-rate intelligence’ war mongering absolutists in charge of this needless, stupid, immoral, strategically flawed, and operationally mangled war and occupation.

“At the start of 2007, no one in Baghdad would have predicted that blood-soaked neighborhoods would begin returning to life within a year.” — This is slimy, immoral, rhetorical gamesmanship. “Begin returning to life” — the smallest, most unstable promise of any upside is used rhetorically to buttress rather large and inflated assertions. And, by the way, in his earlier litany of the causes of this hoped for sunshine, Packer conveniently neglects to mention the Sunni Shia balkanization of Baghdad neighborhoods, the huge number of refugees who’ve left and may or may not return with grievances, or the concentration of forces in Baghdad (which, by the way, is a proof that the entire effort was undermanned militarily from the beginning because military folks have always asserted that to fight this kind of war you need a certain ratio of forces to population). In addition, Packer conflates Baghdad with all of Iraq — making one wonder just how intent he really is in objectivity.

“whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers” – Really, please, Mr. Packer, just stop this! Just stop tarring ALL people with one brush and just stop labeling others with the very kind of idealism that you, more than any, practice. Put differently, what’s up with you? Are you a ‘self-hating idealist’? I mean, on the one hand you throw in your lot with absolutists who like to portray themselves as really pragmatic, hard nosed tough minded guys — you know the kind of tough un-idealistic minded guy who can write that Baghdad and therefore all of Iraq has ‘begun to return to life” and that, even though understandable in the, you know, world of US politics in 2007, Obama’s declaration of timetable was a ‘mistake’ — you know the kind of mistake only made by idealists and not pragmatists. Really, this guy is seriously deluded by his own idealism and ambition. For years, he has deeply wanted to be HEARD by other really smart, pragmatic people like, you know, those folks in the Cheney administration. One can almost hear the whisperings in his brain, “If only they’d listen to me, this Iraq thing could turn out okay.” Now, he wants just as desperately to be HEARD by Obama (hence this ‘mini-lecture’ to the Illinois Senator). Liker others, Packer seems to have seen too many WWII movies and, like the now sainted Russert, really felt in the run up to the invasion that he, Packer, couldn’t be a real man unless he supported a defining war for his generation (a war in which he would not actually fight — but would promote and so forth so that, decades into the future, he could give lectures on what real, non-idealist men did to make the MIddle East safe for democracy — or, perhaps, safe for the hard nosed, pragmatic reality of seizing oil.) One wonders if Packer wears suspenders and smokes big cigars … because, well, you know, those are the kind of props that give egoists the ‘props’ to write this sort of thing….

“He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, re-ënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse.” — Thank you Mr. Packer for this tour of Senator Obama’s mind. And, also, by the way, for your excellent contribution to the political discourse in which any shift in the extraordinarily complex and fragile situation of Iraq is a direct result of Senator Obama’s original plan. Oh, by the way, Mr. Packer, you might want to take your third rate mind and read David Hume on causality. You might learn something.

“Yet, as exhausted as the public is with the war, a candidate who seems heedless of progress in Iraq will be vulnerable to the charge of defeatism” — ‘the public” — puhhlease. Last I heard, though perhaps its just me, there is no such thing as ‘THE public”. There are, not entirely unlike in Iraq, a whole slew of different groups with different opinions and so forth who make up the millions of folks in the US. It does seem that many of these differing groups are exhausted by Iraq. But not all. Some, like the 25 % who continue to support Bush, may not be exhausted by Iraq and, quite possibly, would enthusiastically embrace any charge of defeatism against Obama. Then, there are groups, many of whom might include journalists deeply committed to this war as well as Rovian, Norquistian and Cheneyian apparchiks who are now planting the seeds for future ‘betrayal’ charges against those who “idealistically” opposed this war (I doubt Packer, by the way, consciously and explicitly numbers himself in this group notwithstanding that his writings make him, ipso facto, a fellow traveler of these traitors). Then, there are other groups who, while exhausted by Iraq, would nonetheless vote for McCain for other reasons. And, then there are other groups who will, unquestionably, respond to and rationalize their votes for McCain because of some selected spin, even possibly the spin of ‘defeatism’. But, in the real, non-idealist world of many ambiguities and competing ideas — the real world in which ‘first rate intelligence’ must operate — there really is no such absolute abstraction as ‘THE public”. Uh, George, it’s kinda more complicated than that.

I’d like to add one final comment. Fitzgerald’s description of a first-rate intelligence may be a clever phrase, but that is all it is; its power to describe and explain is limited, more or less, to literature. A first-rate musical intelligence – say, Glenn Gould’s – cannot be described as “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Something entirely different is required, so different that “opposing ideas” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Similarly, in the complex realities of foreign affairs and conflict, Fitzgerald’s definition barely applies. Packer’s appeal to Fitzgerald is an attempted romanticization of a brutal, disgusting, situation. As I wrote a very long time ago, in criticizing Chris Hedges,* there is something terribly wrong with literary approaches to war. It inadvertently romanticizes war – the process of turning human beings into hamburger – and the last thing this country needs is more romantic idealism about the glories, or the horrors, of war.

* But only on his style. Hedges was an early, courageous, and very vocal voice opposed to the Bush/Iraq War.