Author: Batocchio

No Fury Like Vice Scorned

by batocchio

If you’ve missed it, Barton Gellman’s latest Cheney article, “Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush,” is worth a read:

In his first few months after leaving office, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the “far left” agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney’s White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush.

Cheney’s disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.

“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

A president, showing independence from his vice-president? Dangerous stuff. I’d note, though, that this is perfectly in line with the neocon idea that Bush was an empty vessel and Palin was a “blank page” to fill with their ideas. (Hey, ya gotta know your market – no one bright would buy the neocon ideology, all the more so after its huge disasters.)

Back to Gellman, near the end of the piece:

“If he goes out and writes a memoir that spills beans about what took place behind closed doors, that would be out of character,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as White House spokesman during Bush’s first term.

Yet that appears to be precisely Cheney’s intent. Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney’s book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that “the statute of limitations has expired” on many of his secrets. “When the president made decisions that I didn’t agree with, I still supported him and didn’t go out and undercut him,” Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. “Now we’re talking about after we’ve left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. . . . And I don’t have any reason not to forthrightly express those views.”

Liz Cheney, whom friends credit with talking her father into writing the book, described the memoir as a record for posterity. “You have to think about his love of history, and when he thinks about this memoir, he thinks about it as a book his grandchildren will read,” she said.

I’m sure they’ll especially enjoy the torture scenes. Still, amazingly enough, Liz Cheney may have inadvertently done something good (assuming the raw, unvetted-by-criminal-defense-lawyers version can get out).

The Poor Man Institute points out:

…Consider this: By the time Cheney grew disenchanted with his protege, Bush had already started two wars against the dirty Moslem horde, deployed a mercenary army with a twisted religious sadism, authorized widespread torture, sanctioned indefinite detention and kidnapping, implemented a program for illegal wiretaps/surveillance of US citizens, signed-off on illegal settlement expansion in the occupied lands, endorsed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, supported Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia, stoked a bloody (if unsuccessful) coup to topple Hamas in Gaza, and numerous other atrocities to warm the defective heart of Dick Cheney.

So the question is what, exactly, did Bush refuse to do that led to this increasingly messy divorce?

That is one of several big questions. In late July, after high profile pieces on the Libby pardon and Bush’s consideration of deploying the military domestically broke, Digby made a similar point:

Reading this thing about the Tanks of Lackawanna, something has become clear to me that wasn’t before: the excesses of the Bush administration, the war, the torture, the wiretapping, were the result of compromises between the sociopathic Cheney faction and the merely dull and incompetent remainder of the administration, including the president.

(The “Tanks” link points to DDay’s post on this. If you missed them, I’d also recommend the Glenn Greenwald and Scott Horton posts on the military story, and Emptywheel’s post “The Bush Fairy Tale on the Libby Pardon.” When it comes to the Bush administration, as horrible as they’ve often appeared, subsequent revelations have almost always revealed them to be even worse.)

Commenting on the Gellman story and Cheney’s plans to write a book, Anne Laurie writes:

Apparently omerta has its limits. I know a lot of us DFHs feared that the horrors of the Cheney Regency would never receive a public airing, if only for fear of the War Crimes Tribunal, but perhaps vanity will achieve what mere human decency and the rule of law never could.

Here’s hoping. Still, the rule of law would be nice, if “quaint” in the view of Alberto Gonzales and the rest. I remain a fan of pitching the idea that the only thing that could possibly exonerate Cheney and the gang, and win them the accolades they so clearly deserve, is a full, unfettered investigation into the torture program (and the surveillance program and…).

I keep on plugging it, but Gellman’s book Angler is one of the very best on Cheney and the Bush administration out there. As it is, he’ll have to update it or write a sequel because some of what’s come out since is even more nefarious. But if you’re looking for a Cheney primer, you can read Angler excerpts here and here. Gellman’s piece on “the Cheney Rules” is also a useful overview, and Scott Horton conducted a good interview with Gellman. Work by Jane Mayer, Ron Suskind and others give a much clearer picture of the Bush administration as well. Meanwhile, the Frontline episode “Cheney’s Law” is one of several good pieces they’ve done on Cheney and the Bush administration.

Ah, the sweet smell of vanity and towering hubris. These guys have a warped view of the world, but their self-images are distorted as well. Remember, back during planning for the Gulf War, Cheney was repeatedly pitching crazy military plans to Norman Schwarzkopf. It’s almost impossible to overstate how arrogant Cheney and his gang are (Addington’s one of the worst). Cheney’s approach showed an utter contempt for the American people, the entirety of Congress (including his own party), and even key members of the Bush administration. As I wrote in an earlier post, Cheney felt he was wiser than the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Conventions, the Federalist papers, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the Constitution, and the Boy Scout Oath. In the Scott Horton interview, Gellman describes Cheney as “a rare combination: a zealot in principle and a subtle, skillful tactician in practice.” In Cheney’s battle over whether to protect his proud legacy versus his instinct for self-preservation from prosecution, I’m hoping he pulls a Libby and the vain, arrogant zealot wins out.

Cheney thinks he’s Jack Bauer. Part of him must be itching to go Colonel Jessep and yell the ugly truth at us all.
 

A Field Guide to Political Creatures

by batocchio

American politics can be better understood by looking at three important political creatures – the wonk, the hack and the zealot. Here’s a brief introduction.

Wonks

Occasionally shy, the wonk may be tracked by following its trail of citations. Quotation droppings can also serve as useful clues. Wonks are especially fond of chewing on obscure policy papers and classic works such as this one (that coincidentally captures the wonk mindset):

Meno: Somehow, Socrates, I think what you say is right.

Socrates: I think so too, Meno. I do not insist that my argument is right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs both in word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

Highly inquisitive and giddy over problem-solving, wonks typically possess enormous stamina that aids them in poring over legislative bills, detailed memos and original documents. Many prefer a dry climate. It’s not uncommon for male wonks to sport beards, but beware the moustache of understanding. The wonk is most easily found in one of its natural habitats – academic departments, activist meetings, certain blogs, Scandinavian award ceremonies and PBS shows. The wonk responds well to empirical data, geeky humor and sometimes wit, but certain breeds can become confused and flustered by prolonged exposure to bullshit. When provoked, some wonks utter a piercing, shrill cry that petrifies their enemies.

Hacks

Over the years, once mighty herds of news wonks were hunted mercilessly in the name of profit, contributing to the ascendancy of the hack. Steven Pearlstein describes the devastation after a typical swarm of hacks:

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress — I’ve made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation…

The hack thrives in moist, damp environments, such as loss-leader magazines, conservative think tanks, political television shows and talk radio cess pools. Hacks display a variety of plumage, often preen and strut, and sometimes can be identified by a sneer or other look of disdain. They play better with their own kind (assuming similar markings), but frequently grow territorial, aggressive and predatory around any other creatures. Some try to disguise themselves as wonks as a hunting technique, with varying degrees of success. They require constant scrutiny, since they tend to steal or destroy anything not firmly secured. Some are quite belligerent, yet prove cowardly when confronted. When pinned down, a hack often flails about wildly, and may bite off its own leg to escape (some instead go very, very still).

Zealots

Let’s move on to our third type of political creature. Noted Zealotologist John Cole writes:

Now- nobody SANE is arguing that the health care reform proposals will include death panels, which is probably why James [Joyner] thinks it is so preposterous. He is sane.

On the other hand, the same crazy people who the right wing has whipped into a froth the past couple of decades sure as hell do believe there are going to be death panels. But then again, they also think a small increase in the top marginal rate is socialism, that Sarah Palin would make a great president, that you can make people ungay with therapy, that the earth is ten thousand years old, that Obama was born in Kenya and doesn’t say the pledge of allegiance and was sworn in on a Quran, that the Clinton death list is real and that Hillary murdered Vince Foster, and on and on and on. And operatives in the Republican party, to include elected officials, have spent decades making people believe this stuff. We didn’t imagine Dan Burton shooting pumpkins in his backyard and we aren’t imagining Richard Shelby and others pushing birther nonsense. There is an entire industry pushing this crap.

While the zealot desires that its perceived enemies huddle in the cold (and die), the zealot itself prefers a hot climate, to match its burning rage. Zealots are fond of rituals of shared grievance and fictional courage. The zealot can found wielding teabags, threatening to “go Galt,” bullying politicians and citizens at town hall meetings, agreeing with Bill O’Reilly, and crouching in caves covered in batshit. Zealots are best handled with caution or avoided altogether if possible. Their inscrutable, sphinx-like logic can prove hypnotizing, and even the brave of heart and nimble of mind may find him or herself captivated. Disruptive but normally a limited threat in isolation, zealots in numbers can grow dangerous. When challenged or agitated, the zealot can puff up in size and employ a relentless sonic attack.

It can be difficult at times to distinguish hacks from zealots, and the two often intermingle. In fact, they often can’t tell each other apart. Traits of hackery and zealotry may ebb and flow back and forth – or coexist – in the same entity. Field studies have discovered hacks and zealots cavorting together, rolling in tall piles of false talking point papers mixed with fresh batshit. Regardless, for dealing with either type, protective fact-checking and latex gloves are highly recommended. Prolonged exposure is best countered with equal or greater time with basically sane, decent people, wandering in nature, or doing something generally positive. If, after exposure to either type, your annoyance lasts more than four hours, turn off the TV.

There’s at least one more important political creature that bears mentioning – the Jester. The most insightful of these can be found on basic cable. Impervious to bullshit, and eager to call it out, they are the only creature hacks fear more than wonks. (They’re also an exception to the “turn off the TV” rule.)

In any case, that’s a partial field manual to political creatures. Join us next time, when we’ll diagram a Glenn Beck monologue with crazy string.

(I’ve linked it before, but Steve Benen has a better –and more realistic – breakdown on the different types of opponents to health care reform. See also “Bush’s War Against Wonks” by Bruce Reed and A Political Bestiary. This post is basically a tongue-in-cheek riff on part of an older, serious and very long post on American politics. And of course Stewart, Colbert and a number of other bloggers do better satire.)
 

Knowing the Difference

by batocchio

Here’s a tale told in three videos. We’ll start with some recent town hall furor captured by TPM (via Sadly, No):

I know that years down the road, I don’t want my children coming to me and asking me, ‘Mom, why didn’t you do anything? Why do we have to wait in line for, I don’t know, toilet paper or anything?’ I don’t want to have to tell them I didn’t do anything. As a normal citizen, the most I feel like I can do is come to this town hall meeting.

“The country is slowly being ripped apart,” said Katy Abram, who identified herself as someone who didn’t care about politics until the last few years. “It scares the life out of me.”

Abram was one of 30 people selected to ask a question to Specter. When she got up, she said, in part, “It’s not about health care … It’s about the systematic dismantling of this country … I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. I want to restore this country to what it was under the Constitution.”

First they came for the grandmothers, and I did not speak up, for I did not have a grandmother. Then they came for the toilet paper… Those French-loving Democrats start by winning elections, then impose death panels, internment camps, and bidets.

Lawrence O’Donnell had the same woman, Katy Abram, on Hardball (via Brilliant at Breakfast):

On the one hand, they way she talks about war – war, ya know, where people die and little things like that – makes me feel like pounding my head repeatedly against the wall. On the other, I will give her some credit for occasionally admitting that on some matters – well, many – she just doesn’t know. She’s not an informed citizen, nor has she tried to become informed, and she sure as hell should not be running the country. But Bill Kristol, John Bolton and the gang would never admit that they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, nor are they typically honest about their agendas. (Jezebel has an interesting take on Abram, too, and includes The Daily Show‘s clip on her.)

Lawrence O’Donnell deals with Abram fairly gently while trying to engage her on the basis for her views, and I think that’s the most effective approach, especially since she’s not belligerent. In a one-on-one situation with real people versus professional hacks, that seems like the way to go. It’s also not a bad idea on the national level. As it turns out, O’Donnell worked with a guy named Aaron Sorkin who wrote a relevant scene:

The bully pulpit is powerful, and using it is a good idea given such a vile misinformation campaign against health care reform. The Sorkin scene expresses a yearning for an informed citizenry. It’d be nice if that could prevail over the loons who think they’re in Red Dawn but acting like they’re in The Lord of the Flies (or the mob in The Ox-Bow Incident, or The Manchurian Candidate, or…).

Real life is generally more complex than fiction, of course. Steve Benen has a very good post on five basic types of opponents to health care reform. The hacks and zealots aren’t reachable, but others are. There are legitimate debates to be had about health care on top of that, and keeping pressure on Grassley, Baucus, Enzi and others is important. Yet currently, it seems like a big fight just to get the public discussion back to the realm of basic sanity. That’s not accidental. But having more informed, interested, basically sane people at town hall events would help.

Firedoglake has a search engine for town hall events and a widget for passing the information on.

Update: Via this comment thread and others, here’s the Daily Howler take and a Daily Kos diary on Abram. Make your own call. For what it’s worth, I’m less interested in Abram specifically and more concerned generally about the group Benen calls “The Dupes” in his breakdown, the people “who stand to benefit from reform, but are skeptical because they don’t know who’s telling the truth and who isn’t.” To my mind, that’s a huge problem on a host of issues, although it sure ain’t the only one.
 

Silent Questions

by batocchio

The questions we ask determine the answers we receive. The specific form of those questions, and the assumptions they hold, further shape our answers. Those are the key ideas in one of my favorite pieces on critical thinking, a short 1976 essay by Neil Postman called “Silent Questions.” Unfortunately, it can be hard to find a copy. Here’s a taste:

I cannot vouch for the story, but I have been told that once upon a time, in a village in what is now Lithuania, there arose a most unusual problem. A curious disease afflicted many of the townspeople. It was mostly fatal (although not always), and its onset was signaled by the victim’s lapsing into a deathlike coma. Medical science not being quite so advanced as it is now, there was no definite way of knowing if the victim was actually dead when it appeared seemly to bury him. As a result, the townspeople feared that several of their relatives had already been buried alive and that a similar fate might await them—a terrifying prospect, and not only in Lithuania. How to overcome this uncertainty was their dilemma.

One group of people suggested that the coffins be well stocked with water and food and that a small air vent be drilled into them just in case one of the “dead” happened to be alive. This was expensive to do, but seemed more than worth the trouble. A second group, however, came up with an inexpensive and more efficient idea. Each coffin would have a twelve-inch stake affixed to the inside of the coffin lid, exactly at the level of the heart. Then, when the coffin was closed, all uncertainty would cease.

This is no record as to which solution was chosen, but for my purposes, whichever it was is irrelevant. What is mostly important here is that the two different solutions were generated by two different questions. The first solution was an answer to the question, How can we make sure that we do not bury people who are still alive? The second was an answer to the question, How can we make sure that everyone we bury is dead?

The point is that all the answers we ever get are responses to questions. The questions may not be evident to us, especially in everyday affairs, but they are there nonetheless, doing their work. Their work, of course, is to design the form that our knowledge will take and therefore to determine the direction of our actions. A great deal of stupid and/or crazy talk is produced by bad, unacknowledged questions which inevitably produce bad and all-too-visible answers…

The first problem, then, in question-asking language may be stated this way: The type of words used in a question will determine the type of the words used in the answer. In particular, question-words that are vague, subjective and not rooted in any verifiable reality will produce their own kind in the answer.

A second problem arises from certain structural characteristics, or grammatical properties, of sentences. For example, many questions seem almost naturally to imply either-or alternatives. “Is that good?” (as against “bad”), “Is she smart?” (as against “dumb”), “Is he rich?” (as against “poor”), and so on. The English language is heavily biased toward “either-or-ness,” which is to say that it encourages us to talk about the world in polarities. We are inclined to think of things in terms of their singular opposites rather than as part of a continuum of multiple alternatives. Black makes us think of white, rich of poor, smart of dumb, fast of slow, and so one. Naturally, when questions are put in either-or terms, they will tend to call for an either-or answer. “This is bad,” “She’s dumb,” “He’s poor,” etc. There are many situations in which such an answer is all that is necessary, since the questioner is merely seeking some handy label, to get a “fix” on someone, so to speak. But, surprisingly and unfortunately, this form of question is also used in situations where one would expect a more serious and comprehensive approach to a subject…

A similar structural problem in our questions is that we are apt to use singular forms instead of plural ones. What is the cause of…? What is the reason for…? As with either-or questions, the form of these questions limits our search for answers and therefore impoverishes our perceptions. We are not looking for causes, reasons, or results, but for the cause, the reason, and the result. The idea of multiple causality is certainly not unfamiliar, and yet the form in which we habitually ask some of our most important questions tends to discourage our thinking about it. What is the cause of your overeating? What will be the effect of school integration? What is the problem that we face? I do not say that a question of this sort rules out the possibility of our widening our inquiries. But to the extent that we allow the form of such questions to get unchallenged, we are in danger of producing shallow and unnecessarily restricted answers.

This is equally true of the third source of problems in question-asking language, namely, the assumptions that underlie it. Unless we are paying very close attention, we can be led into accepting as fact the most precarious and even preposterous ideas…

A number of these observations may seem like common sense, but that doesn’t mean they’re commonly applied. Some of Postman’s references are dated, but his core ideas hold up very well, and go nicely with George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language.” These days, it’s more common to hear people speak of these dynamics as “framing.” The recent book The Death of Why? seems to center on similar issues. Postman looked at this from the teaching angle himself in several books, including Teaching as a Subversive Activity (the first chapter is called “Crap Detecting”). And all of this is completely in the spirit of what Socrates did in Plato’s dialogues and many a good teacher or thinker has done throughout the ages. One can speak of silent questions, framing, false premises, unchallenged assumptions, implicit false assertions, or something else. Whatever one calls it, the point is to reflect and use a critical eye, on the world and discussions around us, but also on our own thinking.

Most of the liberal blogosphere’s media critiques attempt to do just this – question the framing and the unspoken (and often false) assumptions driving coverage. Everyone has his or her blind spots, but the corporate media definitely has its patterns. And poor questions tend to lead to muddled conversations which contribute to poor public understanding and poor policy. Sadly, it’s not hard to find examples every day.

“Marquee” events can be even worse. Almost all the questions during the presidential/primary “debates” were absolutely atrocious, despite above-average prep time for the journalists (the NPR debate was probably the sole good one). James Fallows gave a useful overview of the debates, but for a partial recap, there’s: Wolf Blitzer asking misleading questions on taxes and Charlie Gibson believing $200,000 joint income is middle-class (no class issues in our media coverage, no sirree), Gibson making misleading claims about capital gains taxes, Fox News asking irresponsible questions on torture ripped from 24 for a Republican machismo contest, badgering by Brian Williams and Tim Russert, Russert asking misleading questions about Iraq, Russert haranguing Obama on Louis Farrakhan after he’d already answered repeatedly, a “debate on race” with superficial questions aimed to make candidates squabble (“Do you believe this is a deliberate attempt to marginalize you as the black candidate?” “Senator Edwards… what is a white male to do running against these historic candidacies?”) and the absolute nadir, the ABC primary debate between Obama and Clinton. That debate capped off a steady pile of loaded, shallow, gossipy questions with a few poor policy questions for a turd on top. Yet theoretically, given their importance, the debates should have represented the best of mainstream political journalism. It’s pretty easy to ask a candidate a question to make him or her uncomfortable due to its slanted nature or sheer idiocy, of course. But posing a tough but trenchant question on policy or governance that might actually inform the public requires that a journalist be thoughtful and interested. As Neil Postman writes later in the same essay, poor questions “insinuate that a position must be taken; they do not ask that thought be given.”

Some important questions rarely ever get asked. The media seldom seems to wonder “How do we hold Wall Street/Washington accountable?” or pose other questions about abuses of power. I’ve used this example before, but Dahlia Lithwick captures Senator Lindsey Graham’s contortions on torture beautifully:

All morning, Graham clings to the argument that he believes in the rule of law. And as he does so, he explains that the lawbreaking that happened with respect to torture: a) wasn’t lawbreaking, b) was justifiable lawbreaking, c) was lawbreaking done with the complicity of congressional Democrats, d) doesn’t matter because al-Qaida is terrible, or e) wouldn’t be lawbreaking if the Spanish police were doing it.

I’d say Graham is flailing because rather than using consistent principles, he’s arguing from a conclusion backwards – don’t investigate or prosecute these abuses. However, if we phrase that in the form of a question, Alex, it becomes something like, “How do I prevent my pals in the Bush administration from being prosecuted for war crimes?” You can see the same basic dynamics in some beginning acting exercises or everyday situations (such as teenagers trying to borrow the car keys from their parents) – the objective never changes, but the tactics and specific arguments shift constantly. Sometimes pundits and politicians will contradict themselves even within a single segment, because their goal is “to win the half-hour” (as Dan Froomkin puts it), not to build or maintain a system or principles.

Graham’s maneuvering is also designed to shut down questioning – he’s not inviting anyone to examine these matters more carefully, he’s trying to prevent it. Graham’s mostly a partisan hack, but in the case of torture it’s because he has some inkling of the stakes of accountability. In partial contrast, while many torture apologists in the punditocracy are biased toward protecting their luncheon buddies and oppose investigations and prosecutions too, it seems they’re genuinely unreflective and uninformed as well. Take a look at Glenn Greenwald’s conversation with Chuck Todd on torture investigations. Todd’s amiable enough, I suppose, but he’s painfully uninformed on the subject matter, including legal statutes mandating that credible allegations of torture be investigated, and the strong evidence that the OLC memos “authorizing” torture were neither issued in good faith nor legally sound. Like most of the Beltway crowd, apparently Todd has simply never asked, “What are the possible consequences of not investigating this?” As Greenwald points out, it’s one thing to argue against investigations, but never for a moment to consider why they might be desirable or even necessary is an appalling omission. But that’s the rule rather than the exception in the corporate media. Issues are decided largely by unreflective consensus, and there’s simply little social pressure among the chattering class to be informed about policy, the law, or facts, let alone care about them.

As bad as most of the mainstream media is, no one loads their questions up with crap quite like Fox News. One of my favorites comes from the 2005 edition of their annual “War on Christmas”:

Now there’s a fair and balanced question: Economic Disaster if Liberals Win the “War on Christmas”? This presupposes that a “war on Christmas” can exist, that one is being waged, that such a war can be “won” or “lost,” and that liberals are waging it – all before we even get to the question of whether “economic disaster” will occur. But that part of question, as breathlessly sensationalistic as it is, is largely superfluous. The main point of asking the question in the first place is to push its premises, that liberals hate Christmas, Christians, and prosperity, and are the enemy of all that is good and holy (apparently, Bill O’Reilly).

This example’s actually more innocuous than most of their blather, and Fox News’ routine, demonizing propaganda would be merely funny if it weren’t for two factors – Fox News pretends to be legitimate and is often treated as such, and together with the rest of the right-wing echo chamber, it does have an effect. While Bill O’Reilly and Fox News aren’t directly responsible for Dr. George Tiller’s murder, all that ridiculous anti-abortion “liberals hate babies” and “Tiller the Baby Killer” crap contributed to a dangerous climate and validated extremist views. Fox News certainly never portrayed Tiller as a compassionate person who helped women facing some very tough situations. The teabaggers, birthers, and angry, uniformed town hall mobs spring in part from the same fevered mindset. Liberals may view right-wingers as dangerous and mock and insult them, but it’s pretty rare for liberals to use eliminationist rhetoric, which is disturbingly common on the right-wing. (It’s not both sides bringing guns to town hall meetings and threatening violence there, either.)

Rachel Maddow and Steven Pearlstein have produced good pieces at major media outlets on how conservatives have distorted the health care debate. The “shrill one,” Paul Krugman, is also reliably incisive. But a great deal of mainstream coverage has been pretty bad on the issue, and it’s more common for journalists to make ridiculous contortions to present false equivalencies. It’s extremely rare for health care reform to be criticized from even slightly to the left, all the more so because those perspectives are crowded out by blather such as Sarah Palin’s idiotic and irresponsible statements about government death panels (Newt Gingrich doubled down on that). Such tactics push the discussion into paranoid fantasy land, and challenging that vile stupidity wastes time that could be spent debating possible solutions to very real problems. (In this case, pointing out how insurance companies effectively have their own death panels is rather pertinent.)

The media simply decides what’s important and what’s not, but often with little regard for public opinion or reality. As DDay and Ezra Klein note, single payer was deemed Not Serious, just as war protesters weren’t, but astroturf organizations have often been treated as legitimate. Meanwhile, as Thers quipped, “Imaginary Liberal “Disruption”: Fascism! Actual Conservative Disruption: Democracy!”

Some of the most glaring unchallenged assumptions are on budgetary matters. As Stephen Walt observes:

One of the great triumphs of Reagan-era conservatism was to convince Americans that paying taxes so that the government could spend the money at home was foolish and wrong, but paying taxes so that the government could spend the money defending other people around the world was patriotic.

This comes via Eric Martin, who has more on the inconsistency between Beltway attitudes on war and health care. Television journalists, most of them richer than the average American, have repeatedly pressed Obama about what the middle class must “sacrifice,” yet never acknowledge the massive wealth inequity in America, nor how it’s grown worse over the past 30-some years. Might the most prosperous and privileged have some duty, too? Again, everyone has his or her blind spots (this writer included), and while there’s far too much deliberate hack work out there, some of these unchallenged assumptions are probably unconscious. But they’re even more harmful and persistent because of that. As Paul Krugman points out, “the fundamental fact is that we can afford universal health insurance — even those high estimates were less than the $1.8 trillion cost of the Bush tax cuts,” which he notes most Blue Dog Democrats supported, and which disproportionately benefited the wealthy. Furthermore, “even as they complain about the [health care] plan’s cost, the Blue Dogs are making demands that would greatly increase that cost.” (Matthew Yglesias dissects these contradictions as well.) The issue has never been costs – it’s priorities. As Digby notes:

…You have to recall that there was no discussion, zero, when the last administration asserted without any debate that we were engaged in a war without end, for which costs could not be measured nor should they be. It was accepted by members of both parties as a simple imperative and no discussion of cost-benefit analyses were even on the table. But when it comes to directly benefiting Americans with a life and death threat of another sort, that’s all we talk about. This is not an accident.

It’s also no accident that Robert Samuelson, who’s expressed feudal attitudes on health care, has also made misleading attacks on Social Security and attacked decent wages and health care for auto workers as “welfare.” Nor is it an accident that many opponents of health care reform have health care themselves, and largely ignore that roughly one in six Americans is uninsured, and that many of those who are covered are underinsured. They’ve got theirs. Perhaps it’s hard for these pundits to imagine otherwise.

Occasionally health care opponents do voice their silent questions and unchallenged assumptions, such as the one that ‘people who don’t have the money to pay for good insurance deserve to die.’ My favorite recent example comes from the reliably disingenuous and callous Wall Street Journal editorial page, in a piece by a British physician titled, “Is There a ‘Right’ to Health Care?”:

When the supposed right to health care is widely recognized, as in the United Kingdom, it tends to reduce moral imagination. Whenever I deny the existence of a right to health care to a Briton who asserts it, he replies, “So you think it is all right for people to be left to die in the street?”

When I then ask my interlocutor whether he can think of any reason why people should not be left to die in the street, other than that they have a right to health care, he is generally reduced to silence. He cannot think of one.

As John Casey notes:

I can think of a lot of things wrong with this argument. In the first place, perhaps Dalrymple (that’s the author’s name) ought to ask different people from the men on the Clapham omnibus. Secondly, it’s weird that the people he asks always give the same answer and are stumped by the same objection. Third, Dalrymple’s question is adequately answered by the person, who takes it as self-evident that no one should be left to die in the street when someone can do something about it.

Rights, for the average guy on the Clapham omnibus, are like that. Ask the average American on the 151 Sheridan whether she has the right to private property, and she will say “yes.” Ask her why it shouldn’t be the case that no one should take away her goods for no reason at all and she will stare at you and repeat that she has a right to private property.

The recognition of baseline inalienable rights (so we can say for the sake of argument) does not mean one lacks moral imagination…

Beyond any questionable claims about British health care, the Dalrymple op-ed is a dreadful piece, even as just a thought experiment (and if you’re familiar with the WSJ editorial page, or if you read the whole op-ed, you’ll know it’s not). It’s quite an amazing conceit that posing that it’s “all right for people to be left to die in the street” somehow represents bold, independent thought versus the usual selfishness married to unusual ghoulishness. It certainly doesn’t show “moral imagination” – just a privileged, feudal outlook and a contempt for one’s fellow human beings. Compassion basically requires imagination of a sort, but certain political ideologies don’t fare well with either compassion nor imagination, and are belligerently proud of that. I suppose it’s refreshing to hear someone from this group actually come out and explicitly state their actual positions. (I wonder, does this guy tell his patients, “Tell me why I shouldn’t let you die”…?)

To return to Postman’s essay, I’ve always gotten a strong nosferatu vibe from the buried alive story he tells at the start. The tale’s also strangely relevant to several of the political battles of today (as the WSJ piece shows). In the story, the first group (“How can we make sure that we do not bury people who are still alive?”) is concerned with people, and set on preventing or alleviating their suffering. The second group (“How can we make sure that everyone we bury is dead?”) is focused on money, perhaps on fear, and essentially ignores the concerns of the first group. Crucially, the second group doesn’t or can’t imagine itself in that horrible situation, and their “solution” is one which allows them to dismiss it. Looked at one way, liberal reformers are the first group and their opponents are the second. But stepping back, perhaps it’s the reformers who need to wield stakes (metaphorically only, of course) against a parasitic and predatory ruling class, to combat that boot stamping on a human face, the steady stream of zombie lies, and that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.
 

The Persistence of Ideology

by batocchio

If conservatism at its best involves sticking with policies that have proved effective, at its worst it entails sticking with policies that have proved unsuccessful or even disastrous. It’s not as if some pure, beneficent strain of conservatism is common, though, to the degree it exists at all. Movement conservatism has long consisted of policies that benefit a select few at the expense of the nation as a whole. In many cases, conservatives are still obstinately pushing ideologies and policies that have yielded horrible results – sometimes even for themselves. Admitting error is rare among this ideological crowd, taking blame is rarer still, and actually changing approaches is seen as anathema. Here’s a look at this dynamic in three areas. (Be warned this is a long post; please feel free to skim it or skip around.)

Economics

Most of the teabaggers weren’t quite sure exactly what they were for, but they were sure they were against Obama. Some unwittingly or willingly were demonstrating to lower poor Steve Forbes’ taxes. As many liberal bloggers observed, merely raising the top marginal tax rate to Clinton levels was somehow labeled socialism, while many of the protesters seemed unaware that the middle class was getting a tax cut under Obama. The disconnects were many, but the most glaring was probably that many were effectively protesting for the same ideology and policies that had proven so catastrophic during the Bush administration.

Some of this is the old conservative shell game of moneyed elites and their shills, selling resentment to the base against the “cultural” elites and minorities who are supposedly oppressing them – all the better for those moneyed elites to increase wealth inequity in America to ever more harmful levels. Yet at times, it seems some conservative shills have convinced even themselves of an alternative reality where the New Deal was a colossal failure and Reaganomics (and its many variations and attendant policies) were somehow successful for the country as a whole.

Back in October 2008, Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) spoke at the University of Chicago about Milton Friedman’s economic philosophy. I’d strongly recommend reading (or watching) the whole thing, but here’s one key section:

When Milton Friedman turned ninety, the Bush White House held a birthday party for him to honor him, to honor his legacy, in 2002, and everyone made speeches, including George Bush, but there was a really good speech that was given by Donald Rumsfeld. I have it on my website. My favorite quote in that speech from Rumsfeld is this: he said, “Milton is the embodiment of the truth that ideas have consequences.”

So, what I want to argue here is that, among other things, the economic chaos that we’re seeing right now on Wall Street and on Main Street and in Washington stems from many factors, of course, but among them are the ideas of Milton Friedman and many of his colleagues and students from this school. Ideas have consequences.

More than that, what we are seeing with the crash on Wall Street, I believe, should be for Friedmanism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for authoritarian communism: an indictment of ideology. It cannot simply be written off as corruption or greed, because what we have been living, since Reagan, is a policy of liberating the forces of greed to discard the idea of the government as regulator, of protecting citizens and consumers from the detrimental impact of greed, ideas that, of course, gained great currency after the market crash of 1929, but that really what we have been living is a liberation movement, indeed the most successful liberation movement of our time, which is the movement by capital to liberate itself from all constraints on its accumulation.

So, as we say that this ideology is failing, I beg to differ. I actually believe it has been enormously successful, enormously successful, just not on the terms that we learn about in University of Chicago textbooks, that I don’t think the project actually has been the development of the world and the elimination of poverty. I think this has been a class war waged by the rich against the poor, and I think that they won. And I think the poor are fighting back. This should be an indictment of an ideology. Ideas have consequences.

Now, people are enormously loyal to Milton Friedman, for a variety of reasons and from a variety of sectors. You know, in my cynical moments, I say Milton Friedman had a knack for thinking profitable thoughts. He did. His thoughts were enormously profitable. And he was rewarded. His work was rewarded. I don’t mean personally greedy. I mean that his work was supported at the university, at think tanks, in the production of a ten-part documentary series called Freedom to Choose, sponsored by FedEx and Pepsi; that the corporate world has been good to Milton Friedman, because his ideas were good for them…

Now, the Friedmanites in this room will object to my methodology, I assure you, and I look forward to that. They will tell you, when I speak of Chile under Pinochet, Russia under Yeltsin and the Chicago Boys, China under Deng Xiaoping, or America under George W. Bush, or Iraq under Paul Bremer, that these were all distortions of Milton Friedman’s theories, that none of these actually count, when you talk about the repression and the surveillance and the expanding size of government and the intervention in the system, which is really much more like crony capitalism or corporatism than the elegant, perfectly balanced free market that came to life in those basement workshops. We’ll hear that Milton Friedman hated government interventions, that he stood up for human rights, that he was against all wars. And some of these claims, though not all of them, will be true.

But here’s the thing. Ideas have consequences. And when you leave the safety of academia and start actually issuing policy prescriptions, which was Milton Friedman’s other life—he wasn’t just an academic. He was a popular writer. He met with world leaders around the world—China, Chile, everywhere, the United States. His memoirs are a “who’s who.” So, when you leave that safety and you start issuing policy prescriptions, when you start advising heads of state, you no longer have the luxury of only being judged on how you think your ideas will affect the world. You begin having to contend with how they actually affect the world, even when that reality contradicts all of your utopian theories. So, to quote Friedman’s great intellectual nemesis, John Kenneth Galbraith, “Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his policies have been tried.”

Throw in the Laffer curve, the Two Santa Claus Theory, E. Coli Conservatism, dishonest attacks on Social Security and the tax code, “deficits don’t matter,” Phil Gramm, strangling government in a bathtub, and vowing never to raise taxes, not even in the face of Armageddon – and it all adds up to a disaster, except for a select few.

For any economic philosophy, it’s important to ask, what are its goals? Who benefits? What are the actual consequences of implementing policies based on this philosophy? In the case of conservative economic approaches, are wealth inequity and poverty even seen as problems? How is “the public good” defined and addressed, if it is at all?

Defenders of these conservative approaches still abound, especially among devotees of Reagan or George W. Bush. The ever-popular conservative mantra, “no one could have predicted,” was especially fashionable for them after the financial crisis hit and before the looming presidential election. On NPR show Left, Right and Center back in early October 2008, conservative columnist Tony Blankley, both a free marketeer and pro-bailout, claimed there was no contradiction in his positions. He went on to offer one of my favorite attempts at white-washing conservative ideology (about 13:10 in):

Let me suggest – and we can have this discussion, and we will – that the causes of the Great Depression, the causes of the French Revolution, continue to be seriously debated, decades or centuries after the event, and we’re going to be debating what caused this crisis for a very long time. I would argue that it was not free markets, and you’ll argue that it was, and this is a debate we can have, nobody at this point knows, because we’re in the middle of it. We haven’t had a chance to step back and start looking at the data. That’s something that will be done over the next number of years.

It’s a wonder anyone studies history or the market at all, given this fog. Details may not be known, but the broad strokes and key culprits are. In Blankley’s defense, he’s acknowledged elsewhere that some deregulation was harmful (Robert Scheer and Matt Miller both challenged him in the same segment). But conservatives’ perfect free market – a sort of capitalist Garden of Eden of purity and innocent, victimless greed – simply doesn’t exist. It’s dangerous to insist that it does or that it should. It’s not as if conservative solutions to grave problems in the actual market responsibly address reality, either. The only “consistency” between widespread deregulation and a bailout is always giving the rich what they want – allowing them high profits for themselves in good times and protecting them from risk at public expense in the bad. Like many conservatives, Blankley also acted as if the crisis was some mysterious natural occurrence outside of human agency, and no one could possibly say why it happened.

If it’s a mystery that passeth all understanding to these people, it raises the question as to why they should be running things at all, or consulted – but economic theories of movement conservatism often seem more grounded in theology and fantasy versus empirical data. It’s not just economics that seems to mystify them, though, but basic human nature. DDay’s recent post on Brooksley Born featured this tidbit:

Greenspan had an unusual take on market fraud, Born recounted: “He explained there wasn’t a need for a law against fraud because if a floor broker was committing fraud, the customer would figure it out and stop doing business with him.”

The mind reels. Although Greenspan’s tried to revise his own culpability in creating the financial mess, he did admit to Congress last year that:

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

As Digby quipped at the time, “Apparently, it never occurred to the great guru that wealthy people would be greedy enough to destroy the system. It didn’t show up in his “models.””

Unfortunately, Tim Geithner and the Obama gang seem to be too willing to continue the dodgy moves of Paulson and the Bush administration. Maybe it’s class solidarity, similar ideologies, or the difficulty of fighting the bankers who own Congress. Maybe they simply aren’t working hard enough to protect the country’s economy against astonishingly arrogant, reckless and selfish corporate narcissists. Maybe they simply fail to realize the true nature of these oligarchs, and how dangerous they are. Maybe they’re just too corrupt themselves. What Jonathan Schwarz wrote back in October about a flabbergasted establishment is as relevant as ever:

Who wouldn’t be stunned when the most greedy, venal, vicious, cruel, arrogant, ignorant human beings on earth aren’t eager to work in the public interest? Especially when people like them have never been willing to do so in the entire history of mankind, except on the rare occasions when they’ve been directly threatened with execution? It’s stunning!

Somehow, it never occurred to them that human beings would be greedy and selfish.

Foreign Policy

In The Prince, Machiavelli advised it’s better for a political leader to be feared than loved, but neoconservatives and followers of the Bush Doctrine clearly believe that’s just too tame. Why bother with the good will of most of the world and cooperative approaches when instead, you can charge ahead, foster hatred in a greater number of people and nations, and cultivate distrust and disapproval even among allies? Yet strangely, this pugnacious approach has not helped national security.

If the neocons have been right about anything of consequence, it’s a well-kept secret. For years now, they’ve blamed the mess in Iraq on the Bush administration’s poor execution of their lovely plan, and ignored that America has been bogged down already in two wars in all their reckless saber-rattling against Iran. Just as conservative economic theory presumes that a perfect free market exists, neocons hold that America is simultaneously infallible and omnipotent. Let the reality-based community worry about such paltry things as the actual consequences of policies; great thinkers and armchair warriors cannot be trifled with such matters.

Back in 2006, neocon Francis Fukuyama wrote a book about his disenchantment with the movement, and Louis Menard made a number of sharp observations:

Although “America at the Crossroads” is intended, in part, for policy intellectuals—the journal-of-opinion writers and editors, political advisers, and think-tankers who deal with questions of governance from a philosophical point of view—Fukuyama is not, fundamentally, a policy intellectual himself. He is an original and independent mind, and his writings have never seemed to be constructed on a doctrinal foundation. He takes ideas seriously and he tries to see the big picture, and even if you think that he takes ideas too seriously, and that his pictures tend to be too big to help with the practical challenges of political decision-making in the here and now, his views on American policies and their implications deserve thoughtful attention. Such attention might begin, in the case of the present book, with the observation: No duh. It took Fukuyama until February, 2004, to realize that Charles Krauthammer, who has been saying basically the same thing since the end of the Cold War, is the intellectual cheerleader of a politics of American supremacy that appears to recognize no limit to its exercise of power? And that the Bush Administration, to the extent that it has any philosophical self-conception at all, operates on the basis of the crudest form of American exceptionalism? And that neoconservatism, whatever merits it once had as a corrective to liberal wishfulness and the amorality of realpolitik, long ago stiffened into a posture of reflexive moral belligerence about everything from foreign policy to literary criticism?

The present condition of the neoconservative movement is the outcome of a classic case of the gradual sclerosis of political attitudes. All the stages of the movement’s development were based on the primitive psychology of the “break”—the felt need, as one ages, to demonize the exact position one formerly occupied. The enemy is always the person still clinging to the delusions you just outgrew. So—going all the way back to the omphalos, Alcove 1 in the City College cafeteria, where Kristol and his friends fought with the Stalinists in Alcove 2—the Trotskyists hated the fellow-travellers they once had been; the Cold War liberals hated the Trotskyists they once had been; and the neoconservatives hated the liberals they once had been. Now the hardening is complete. Neoconservatism has merged with the politics that its founders, in their youth, held in greatest contempt: the jingoist and capitalist American right. We look from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but it is impossible to say which is which.

(Gotta love a really apt Orwell reference.)

To his credit, Fukuyama has criticized his past positions, and some conservative economic dogma as well. That’s in sharp contrast to the deep intellectual dishonesty endemic to a neocon movement that views war as glorious and war spending as good business. As Steve Clemons noted back around the 2006 midterm elections, neocon Richard Perle’s ‘truthfulness depended on whether it was before or after the election.’ And in February 2009, in “How to Disappear Completely,” Eric Martin noted how several neocons (including Perle) have gone to darkly comical lengths to erase their own histories, down to denying that the neoconservative foreign policy they themselves crafted and named has ever existed. I find the dynamic fascinating and damning – most of the neocons still won’t admit that they’re wrong, but they’re aware enough of the damage to their reputations to lie about their central role in one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.

Neocons and most movement conservatives seem to take a dismissal of consequences as proof of seriousness and a disconnect from reality as a point of pride. As Fred Kaplan observed back in 2006, “The Republican administration has violated so many precepts of International Relations 101 that clichés take on the air of wisdom.” Back in 2002, as the administration was trying to sell the Iraq War, Bush officials spoke with several conservative think tanks. The American Enterprise Institute supported regime change in Iraq – yet opposed reconstruction, because that was “nation-building.” The Bush administration, in turn, didn’t want to talk about reconstruction or overall costs, either, because it might hurt selling the war. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire anyone who talked about Phase IV (reconstruction), although he also insisted that Defense and not State be in charge of all operations. It’s a convenient ideology, that allows for bombing the hell out of a country and its population without any responsibility for picking up the pieces. It’s an arrogant and cruel approach, especially when one also actively interferes with others’ attempts to fix any of the mess.

Damning the consequences (or the torpedoes) seems to be one hallmark of cowboy diplomacy. But these cowboys and wannabe warriors are a strange breed, viewing cooperation as wimpy, and preoccupied with asserting their dominance and tough guy bonafides. For people obsessed with their own images, they’re shockingly unaware of how others see them. John Bolton’s approach to diplomacy amounted to walking into a bar and punching some poor schlep in the face, thinking everyone else in the bar would be impressed (or intimidated) and want to buy him a drink. When informed in 2007 that 80% of Iraqis wanted American troops out of their country, neocon father and imperialist Norman Podhoretz said, “I don’t much care.” Meanwhile, Bush was positively fixated on the Iraqis showing gratitude; back in 2006:

President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday. . . .

[T]he president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd.

Nor is cluelessness and belligerence limited to one party. In October 2008, Glenn Greenwald scrutinized an op-ed on Iran by “Two former Senators — conservative Democrat Chuck Robb and conservative Republican Dan Coats (that’s what “bipartisan” means).” Predictably, it contained more sabre-rattling and tough, serious talk. As Greenwald observed (emphasis his):

It’s just objectively true that there is no country in the world — anywhere — that threatens to attack and bomb other countries as routinely and blithely as the U.S. does. What rational leader wouldn’t want to obtain nuclear weapons in a world where the “superpower” is run by people like Dan Coats and Chuck Robb who threaten to attack and bomb whatever countries they want? Even the Coats/Robb Op-Ed argues that Iranian proliferation would be so threatening to the U.S. because “the ability to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon would effectively give Iran a nuclear deterrent” — in other words, they’d have the ability to deter a U.S. attack on their country, and we can’t have that.

So: It’s not that we necessarily want to attack Iran, but we can’t allow them any safeguards should we choose to attack them in the future. Their potential self-defense is a grave threat to our potential invasion. It’s comparable to Bush administration claims about torture back when they were still officially pretending we didn’t torture – another law outlawing torture would be harmful, because even though we didn’t torture, we might choose to do so in the future.

This mad approach to foreign policy and human rights is strikingly similar to an old Monty Python book gag, Llap-Goch (caps in the original):

“LLAP-Goch is the Secret Welsh ART of SELF DEFENCE that requires NO INTELLIGENCE, STRENGTH or PHYSICAL courage… It is an ANCIENT Welsh ART based on a BRILLIANTLY simple I-D-E-A, which is a SECRET. The best form of DEFENCE is ATTACK (Clausewitz) and the most VITAL element of ATTACK is SURPRISE (Oscar HAMMERstein). Therefore, the BEST way to protect yourself AGAINST any ASSAILANT is to ATTACK him before he attacks YOU… Or BETTER… BEFORE the THOUGHT of doing so has EVEN OCCURRED TO HIM!!! SO YOU MAY BE ABLE TO RENDER YOUR ASSAILANT UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE he is EVEN aware of your very existence!

(It’s a bit frightening that the Pythons basically predicted almost the entirety of the conservative blogosphere.)

Jonathan Schwarz captured a similar level of insanity and befuddlement about human nature in a post that quotes from an old news article (his emphasis):

Intelligence officials believe [Hezbollah leader Imad Moughniyah] is seeking personal vengeance on the United States and Israel for the deaths of his brothers, which explains in part his willingness to lend his expertise to operations organized by other groups. Mugniyeh’s brothers were killed in retaliatory attacks in Lebanon believed to have been carried out by Israeli and U.S. operatives.

“Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mugniyeh,” an Israeli-intelligence officer told Jane’s Foreign Report recently. “The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation.”

Wait…you’re telling me that a young man, when his country was invaded by foreigners, got angry? And then when they killed his brothers, he became even madder? And he wanted revenge on the people who’d done it?

Somehow, it never occurred to them that people won’t appreciate having their loved ones killed.

Torture and Human Rights

(Read the full cartoon here.)

I’m not going to spend much time on this one (since I’ve tried to do so in greater depth before), except to note a handful of points. The Bush administration was warned about abusing and torturing prisoners many times by some of their own people – but did it anyway. The JPRA report even told them that any information obtained through torture was unreliable –something that’s been known since at least Roman times. Perhaps they knew that torture “worked” well enough for their purposes – false confessions to justify a war of choice – or they just didn’t care. Regardless, it was impossible for them to arrive at that dark place without monumental arrogance, dehumanization of all potential victims, and a deep and utter contempt for democracy. Conservatives Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg, among others, condemned the abuses at Abu Ghraib – until it became apparent how high up the blame probably went. Then they started making excuses. Is it possible to be more authoritarian, partisan and dishonorable than that? Most of the movement conservative base has done the same, supporting torture – torture – and done so rabidly, all because their leaders told them it was necessary and done to mysterious, dangerous men who don’t look or speak like the “real” Amuricans who love their country. It’s hard to imagine a more clear moral line than torture, but for authoritarians, it’s all about tribal loyalty – torture is wrong when done to them, right when done to an Evil Other (even if he or she happens to be innocent). For the far right, torture is like everything else – the right thing to do when so ordered by Republicans, and absolutely imperative to do if it upsets a Democrat or liberal. Spite and tribal identity are about their only “moral” standards. A significant number of rule-of-law conservatives, including members of the JAG corps, oppose torture and support due process for the innocent and guilty alike, but the conservative base and most of the conservative punditry ferociously oppose them on both counts.

Somehow, it never occurred to them that people will say anything if tortured.

More likely – and more frightening – they simply don’t give a damn.

It’d be nice, and good for the country, if any remaining sane, fiscally responsible and rule-of-law conservatives could take over the Republican party. As it stands, it’ll be a wonder if they can even get back to the good ol’ days, when the Republican party stood merely for screwing over the poor and hating minorities, and not torturing people to start unnecessary wars.

As for the Democrats – my concern for the Obama administration is that in too many areas, they’re adhering far too closely to the Bush playbook. The tasks they face are monumental, and often with powerful, entrenched interests opposing them. But while competent management helps a great deal, it can only do so much if the plans themselves are fundamentally flawed. Their stances on military tribunals, possible indefinite detention and state secrets range from troubling to horrible. On the economic front, I have to wonder if Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin are similar to liberal war hawk Michael O’Hanlon. For O’Hanlon, still resistant to admitting error on Iraq, it’s not enough that he be right in the future – he needs also to have been right. His reputation and pride hinges on his past, dreadful policies somehow being vindicated (even though attempting that is a quagmire on its own). I wonder if Obama’s economic team is comparably set on vindicating their past, harmful policies. They certainly seem committed to rescuing the established, corrupt order versus the economy itself. (Then there’s the possibility of good ol’ corruption itself.) Human folly isn’t limited to one political party, even if one has a strong natural advantage.

Conservative stances on economics, foreign policy and human rights provide a pretty bleak snapshot of the Republican party. The poor remain faceless to them, as do foreigners blithely bombed and the victims of torture and abuse. Torture, with its dynamics of power and false confessions, actually makes a frighteningly apt metaphor for movement conservatives and obstinate ideologues everywhere. Why do these people ignore data and counsel, inflict suffering on populations foreign and domestic, and fiercely dismiss overwhelming evidence against their favored approach? Just as with torture itself, it’s simple – they like the answers it gives them.

(That’s it for me for now. Thanks very much to Digby and the rest of Hullabaloo crew for letting me sit in with the band. See ya in the comment threads.)

The Torture Apologia Chart

by batocchio

It can be difficult keeping up with all the torture apologist appearances and their BS du jour. Generally, they rotate through the same old long-debunked arguments, although occasionally they try out new lines of defense and attack. Some, like Clifford May on The Daily Show, try the “shotgun” approach combined with the style of a pushy car salesman – don’t stop talking, talk over everybody else, change the subject if challenged, you-don’t-buy-that-well-how-about-this, what can I do today to get you in the seat of amnesty for war criminals, friend?

Typical of torture apologists, it’s a disingenuous performance that makes much more sense if one realizes he’s arguing from a conclusion, not larger principles – don’t prosecute or investigate any of the culprits. Because of this, torture apologists frequently offer extremely convoluted and even contradictory arguments. As I’ve written before, their defenses normally fit into a pattern of descending denials: We did not torture; waterboarding is not torture; even if it is torture, it was legal; even if it was illegal, it was necessary; even if it was unnecessary, it was not our fault. Leading torture apologist David Rivkin has argued both that waterboarding isn’t torture and conceded that it is – with different audiences. Scott Horton recently highlighted some of the contradictions in Dick Cheney’s big “I saved the country through torture” speech (and several other sites picked up on another key Cheney inconsistency). Meanwhile, Dahlia Lithwick captured this dynamic beautifully with Lindsay Graham at the Senate hearings on prisoner abuses in May:

All morning, Graham clings to the argument that he believes in the rule of law. And as he does so, he explains that the lawbreaking that happened with respect to torture: a) wasn’t lawbreaking, b) was justifiable lawbreaking, c) was lawbreaking done with the complicity of congressional Democrats, d) doesn’t matter because al-Qaida is terrible, or e) wouldn’t be lawbreaking if the Spanish police were doing it.

These contortions would be merely comical if it weren’t for the extraordinary damage done, and the Beltway pundit consensus that no one should be held accountable. And the more torture apologists can muddy the waters and confuse the public, the more likely they can prevent a full investigation and possible criminal trials, and the less likely they will be forced to offer the same weak defenses in court.

What follows is a chart of torture apologist arguments, the text of the chart, and an explanation. I might make a sort of annotated version later, with more detailed explanations, rebuttals of the major arguments, and links. But many fine sites (including Hullabaloo) have offered detailed debunks of individual arguments in the past, and I’ve given my shot in “Torture Versus Freedom.” (This is also in part a companion to an earlier piece, The Torture Flowchart.) Regardless, if you like visual aids to dissect your daily dose of hackery – and somewhat busy, low-res charts – here ya go.

The Chart

(Click, or go here or here for larger views.)

Here’s the text:

We Did Not Torture

A. We did not torture because:
1. SERE training proves these techniques are not torture.
2. OLC memos say it isn’t torture.
3. “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” are not the same as torture. (Just look at the name, guys!)
4. These techniques do/did not cause permanent or lasting harm.
5. Psychologists said it was all right.
6. If you call it torture, you will have to prosecute (and you don’t want to do that).
7. It’s unpatriotic to say Bush officials authorized torture.

We Did Not Break the Law

B. What we did was legal because:
1. OLC memos say it isn’t torture.
a. They were sound legal positions.
b. They were written in good faith.
2. There’s no precedent for prosecuting such abuses.
3. American legal statutes are unclear on torture.
4. The Geneva Conventions:
a. Define torture vaguely.
b. Do not apply to these prisoners (nor do other legal protections).
5. Torture is in the eye of the beholder.
6. Psychologists said it was all right.
7. When the President does it, it’s not illegal.

We Did Not Endanger the Country

C. What we did was necessary because:
1. We were panicked after 9/11.
2. There was an imminent threat (and only this would work).
3. There might have been an imminent threat.
4. The CIA requested these techniques.
5. We obtained key information that saved lives.
6. We obtained confessions necessary to justify a war.
7. Abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo:
a. Were the result of a few bad apples and not official policy.
b. Should not be conflated with our “interrogation” of high-value prisoners.
c. Did not radicalize insurgents who attacked American and coalition troops.
8. Bush kept the country safe.

We Were Not Reckless

D. We treated these prisoners decently, because:
1. Extreme techniques were only used when other methods didn’t work.
2. This was an emergency (tick tick tick…).
3. Waterboarding was only used on three prisoners.
4. These methods were never used more than necessary.
5. These techniques do/did not cause permanent or lasting harm.
6. These were bad people who deserved far worse. (Why do you care?)
7. They don’t observe the Geneva Conventions, why should we?
8. Guantanamo is like a holiday resort.
9. Reports? What reports? (Red Cross, Senate, JPRA, etc.)

We Were Not Immoral

E. Torture is not immoral because:
1. Torture is not inherently immoral.
2. It is immoral, but in special circumstances, it’s necessary.
3. These people are not like us and do not deserve humane treatment.
4. Treating these bad people harshly or humanely does not:
a. Dissuade their fellows from bad conduct.
b. Affect our relationship with allied countries.
c. Endanger our troops.
5. The prisoners aren’t saying what we want them to say.
6. Torture is a kindness, giving prisoners an excuse to confess.
7. We needed to justify a war.

We Are Not Arrogant

F. Torture opponents are more sanctimonious than torture apologists because:
1. Remember 9/11. (9/11! 9/11!)
2. What we did was necessary.
3. What we did worked.
4. Torture “works” (in general).
5. Compared to rapport-building techniques, torture is:
a. More effective (obtains information humane treatment will not).
b. Quicker (it’s an emergency).
6. The Constitution is not a suicide pact (civil liberties are a luxury).
7. They want the enemy to win and hate America.
8. All of the abused were guilty; all of the tortured were bad men.

We Should Not Be Held Accountable

G. Prosecutions (and/or investigations) would be bad because:
1. It would criminalize policy differences.
2. It would create a chilling effect on counsel.
3. It would infringe on the powers of the presidency.
4. Holding leaders accountable would:
a. Create a bad precedent politically.
b. Disgrace America.
5. It won’t happen again.
6. The torturers have learned their lesson.
7. It would be divisive (Broder and Rove will be upset).
8. Both parties are (equally) culpable.
9. It will reveal our secrets to the enemy.
10. We’re all going to die if you do! (And it’ll all be Obama’s fault)

You’ll notice some repeats and overlaps, and I’ve tried to use a rough color scheme, but feel free to improve on this sucker if you find it at all useful. Red roughly corresponds to authoritarian arguments, fear-mongering, bullying and bigotry. Somewhat contradictory to those are the claims of responsibility and utility in blue. Green is for legal matters, and purple is mostly for arguments about politics and fallout (often a mix of authoritarian and utilitarian pitches). Black is for particularly noxious, immoral arguments (all of which have actually been made, unfortunately).

I’ve got “We were panicked after 9/11” in grey (C1), separate from the more bullying, don’t-challenge-us, “Remember 9/11!” (F1). Personally, I think “we were panicked after 9/11” would be the most compelling argument for mitigating a sentence in court, but the problem – for the key figures, at least – is that the evidence and timeline simply don’t sustain a defense of “good faith.” (See Marcy Wheeler’s invaluable “The 13 who made torture possible” and her torture timeline for more, as well as Digby’s recent post, “Panic Artists,” on Richard Clarke – who was recently trashed by Dick Cheney.) The Bush administration was repeatedly warned off this course, but ignored counsel, squelched and punished dissent, hid what they were doing (even from some of their own people), and reportedly started torturing at least some prisoners only after they wouldn’t “confess” to the Al Qaeda-Iraq connection the Bushies wanted to justify a war with Iraq. That level of evil and abuse of power shouldn’t be blithely excused, especially before a full investigation. I think mitigation and forgiveness also depend on some recognition and admission of wrong-doing by the culprits, and Cheney and the gang are instead warning doom, attacking all critics and insisting they were right, dammit. Why should anyone believe they won’t abuse power in some way again if they can? There are indeed true believers in the cause (Torture! War! Monarchial powers!) but it’s very easy to be both a zealot and a liar, and the many lies and omissions in prominent torture apologist arguments just don’t support a “good faith” interpretation, either. Most every torture apologist argument really seems to boil down to two items – (G10) ‘We’re all going to die!’ and (D9) “Reports? What Reports? (Red Cross, Senate, JPRA, etc.)” (in its own special yellow at the bottom center). The strategy is to keep everyone afraid and to ignore/hide/challenge the growing mountain of damning evidence. But this chart can certainly be improved.

I’m a bit facetious with a few items, but torture apologists often advance arguments implicitly rather than explicitly (normally to get someone to concede a false premise). I’ve featured a few arguments that torture apologists try to avoid altogether – I’ve yet to hear anyone (not even Bill Kristol or Dick Cheney) come right out and use the defense, “We had to torture to justify our beautiful war, dammit!” However, our mostly complacent media hasn’t forced many torture apologists to justify that stance or refute that explosive charge. Nor has the media forced many torture apologists to respond to accounts that American human rights abuses radicalized many of those who attacked and killed American and coalition troops in the Middle East. David Waldman, Matthew Alexander and a handful of others have made one or both of these points in media appearances, but the media as a whole has somehow shied away from these items, even though they’re clearly newsworthy, make for attention-grabbing headlines, and are kinda important.

In any case, I think I’ve covered most of the major arguments, and wouldn’t you know it, nearly all of them are problematic, severely flawed or outright false. I might post a revised version later, recapping the many existing debunks and rebuttals, organized per argument, or might handle most of that yet again through a future torture apologist roundup. This chart probably works best as an oversized bingo grid – watch a torture apologist and see how many arguments you can spot! Rebutting every one of Cliff May’s rapid-fire bullshit arguments would probably be great training for a TV appearance, although I think pinning him or another apologist down would be even better: How do you respond to the bipartisan Senate report, and the charge that torture was used to obtain confessions to justify the Iraq War? How do you justify abuses that have directly lead to attacks on American and coalition troops and made that war of choice even worse? If the law requires that credible allegations of torture be investigated, what possible reason is there not to investigate? (Wouldn’t a failure to do so set a dangerous precedent that some people are above the law?) If what Dick Cheney and you are saying is true, wouldn’t a full investigation (or even a trial) exonerate everyone?

(Actually, the Tom Tomorrow cartoon Digby linked earlier says it all better.)

Not Writing for Power

by batocchio

In May, Scott Horton interviewed Chinese playwright and activist Sha Yexin. The whole thing’s worth reading, but I found one exchange particularly striking:

5. At the recent Beijing meeting on Chinese drama and literature, you said that playwrights should never forget the role of literature and the aim of writing, and that they should never write for power. Could you elaborate on that?

Why shouldn’t one write for power? Here are my reasons:

First, power corrupts. The British historian Lord Acton said: “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This famous quotation has now become political common sense. Its correctness has been borne out by the intensifying corruption in China, where power is exercised without oversight or restraint. When corruption and power exist in co-prosperity, how can people fight corruption? In present-day China, anti-corruption is kept at a certain level to ensure that people will not revolt while power will not get out of control. In some districts, corrupt elements have become leaders of the anti-corruption effort. Undiscovered corrupt officials are fighting those already exposed.

Second, power makes people stupid. By using mathematical theories, the American scholar Jonathan Bendor proves the great value of independent thinking and the limitations of decision makers. When leaders are too busily occupied with myriad state affairs, institutional methods can be used to ease their cognitive constraints, by seeking wise solutions from among the people and encouraging independent thinking in government officials. But in a totalitarian country, such institutional methods do not and cannot exist.

Most power-holders in such countries are fond of dictatorship. Each of them puts forward his “ideas” and “theories” when it is his turn to rule the country, hoping to see his thought adopted as the “guideline” to unify the thinking of the whole nation. Acting in this way, they deprive themselves of the kind of wisdom and talent that are needed to solve the thorny problems facing the country. As a bunch of dumbbells, they can not help becoming an object of ridicule among the people.

Third, power brings flip-flops and hence suffering to the people. Since power has reduced the wisdom and intelligence of the power-holders and their think tanks, setbacks caused by repeated policy changes including the adoption of reactionary measures are bound to occur. Frequent ideological reversals and repeated changes in ideas and policy bring about great social instability. It becomes very difficult to attain a truly harmonious society and avoid more flip-flops in the future.

Fourth, power produces cruelty. Those who hold power can be overwhelmed by the glare of the spotlight that accompanies power. They may experience a peak period in which they feel accomplishment, happiness, or pleasure. But according to Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist, this peak period does not last long. The powerful had problems coping with the end of this period. Once they reject oversight, checks and balances that come from outside, they immediately become completely irrational and inhuman. If someone wants to share power with them or seeks to replace them with new power-holders, they become mad and cruel, and have no scruples in resort to guns, cannons, and tanks, producing huge social disasters.

If you are a writer who writes for power, objectively you are working, directly or indirectly, for corruption and stupidity, for more suffering and cruelty for the people. You may have some excuses if you are forced to write for power. If you write for power out of your own will, how can you evade your responsibility as an accomplice?

As may be easily understood, what I am speaking about is power in a totalitarian state. It is power without oversight and constraints, as compared with power born from democratic elections. Refusing to write for power also means refusing to write according to the will of those in power, or to promote their ideology in one’s writings.

One may choose to write for any other purpose: to write for art, for life, for oneself or others. But he or she must not write for power.

I haven’t read any plays by Sha Yexin yet, but now I want to seek them out. There are many different reasons to write, not all of them profound nor political, but over here in the States it can be easy to take the freedom to write for granted. The stakes for Sha Yexin and a number of other writers are higher. I’m reminded of the samizdat tradition in Soviet Russia of clandestinely passing around censored writings. (The German film The Lives of Others captures this dynamic well, and incidentally, it’s not one of the greatest “conservative” films ever made, although I’m glad some conservatives appreciate it.) Sha Yexin’s admonition not to write for power is well-taken. It also makes me think of one of my favorite pieces on writing, William Faulkner’s Nobel speech (although it seems a crime to quote just a section):

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

(This post is a partial recap of an earlier one that included some personal memories of studying in Russia, although I’d recommend driftglass’ take on the same interview and Chicago politics.)

Cokie’s World

By Batocchio

(King Louis XVI and courtiers at Versailles in Ridicule, 1996.)

Has anyone heard yet whether Cokie Roberts approves of the stadium venue for Obama’s acceptance speech? Has Colorado been deemed sufficiently “American”? Has she “summered” there? Inquiring minds want to know!

Cokie does have her moments, I suppose. But she deserved all the criticism she received and more over her Hawaii comments. Meanwhile, if you’ve missed them, you may want to check out Eric Alterman’s 2002 piece on Cokie Roberts (via TBogg), and Bob Somerby on Cokie’s speaking fees and the television pundit gravy train. (And boy, has Howard Kurtz changed!)

Cokie’s world, the Beltway Village, Versailles on the Potomac, can’t be fully understood in “reality-based” terms, or notions of what constitutes good journalism. Those are valid forms of criticism, but they don’t get to the heart of what ails these supposedly smart and often highly-educated people. Wisdom sadly doesn’t always accompany knowledge, but the problem is more one of social customs. It’s sometimes really amazing to see, but for many Village pundits, what’s right, and sometimes truth itself, is entirely socially determined. They’re a pretty anti-empirical, unreflective lot. They often possess a blithe authoritarianism, or at least an obsession with prestige. Social norms can be very good– but the Beltway conventional “wisdom” can be awfully dumb.

Richard Cohen may be too easy an example, but he really is the Village attitude and approach laid bare. He’s provided plenty of fodder for the liberal blogosphere (and maybe high school debate classes) with column after column featuring some glaring disconnect or shoddy argument. Before the McCain campaign’s POW rollout this month, Cohen may have invoked McCain’s POW status even more than McCain himself. Cohen’s POW defense of McCain earlier this year was widely ridiculed, and for good reason. He’s written several columns where he’s basically stated, ‘I prefer John McCain because I know him and like him.’ That’s fine, I guess, but it’d be nice if he came out and said just that, admitting his criteria were fundamentally social in nature, rather than trying to justify his personal preferences with other arguments, and consistently ignoring obvious relevant facts in the process. Cohen doesn’t really analyze anything substantially, doesn’t learn from his core mistakes, and rarely seems to think things through. Instead, he represents a set of attitudes, and is mostly obsessed with propriety over morality.

Similarly, “centrist” David Broder always seems to come up with novel reasons why you shouldn’t vote for a Democrat, such as pushing executive experience as the most meaningful standard. Executive experience is a valid concern, of course, but Broder never seems very concerned about significant policy differences between candidates, has a funny sense of bipartisanship, and somehow seems to believe, despite the past eight years, that policies have no important consequences. Probably, Broder’s view of the political game ossified years ago, and he’s just never bothered to update his diagnosis nor his prescription to accommodate any pesky new facts (similar to Reagan and Bush the younger, come to think of it). Taken as a whole, the Village makes for one hell of a study in cognitive dissonance. “Surely the Vice President would never lie to us about a matter of such importance!” “Surely the administration must have the nation’s best interests at heart!” “Surely having an enjoyable beer with someone is a more important gauge than competency for one of the hardest jobs in the world!” Despite warnings before each and every disaster, the Bush administration has proceeded undeterred, often taking extremely radical steps in secret, and at times lying to their own allies. These are people of neither good faith nor good judgment, and it would be hard to overstate their arrogance. Yet in the world of the Village, George W. Bush has made bad decisions because he simply wasn’t counseled, or wasn’t counseled politely enough – or he hasn’t made bad decisions at all. The commercial angle of Beltway “wisdom” shouldn’t be overlooked either – these people all gotta make copy, or fill air time. And a system that rewards bad reporting and disastrous punditry tends to keep reproducing exactly that. Consider what Jonathan Schwarz often says: “Reporters don’t have a choice. Repeating stupid right-wing claims is their job.”

Years ago in an anthropology class, I read a fascinating essay about kinship ties in Washington, D.C. written by Professor Jack Weatherford of Macalester College. It was a class favorite. Here’s an excerpt from what looks like a slightly earlier version, “Tribal Politics in Washington,” 1993:

In 1990 when the editors of Spy magazine decided to make a diagram of the American political universe, they did not place the President of the United States at the center, nor the leaders of Congress, nor the richest person in the country, nor the strongest lobbyists. They selected radio and television reporter Cokie Roberts who serves as a political reporter for ABC News as well as for National Public Radio. As a reporter, Cokie Roberts certainly is not the best known personality in the country, but her selection by Spy reveal an inside look of how Washington works. To understand why they named her as the focal point, we need to examine where she fits into the system.

Cokie Roberts is the daughter of Congresswoman Lindy Boggs of Louisiana’s second district from 1972 until 1990. Cokie Roberts’ father Hale Boggs represented the same New Orleans district until his death in an Alaska plane crash in 1972, and he had served as the House Majority leader. Cokie Roberts’ brother is Tom Boggs, a major Washington lobbyist who once ran but lost an election for representative from Maryland. Cokie Roberts’ sister is Barbara Boggs Sigmund who ran for the Senate from New Jersey and later became mayor of Princeton, New Jersey.

On her mother’s side Cokie Roberts is related to Rhode Island’s Senator Claiborne Pell; Cokie’s full name is Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Clairborne Boggs Roberts. Senator Pell is the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the senator for whom the Pell Grants were named. His father, Representative Herbert Pell, served in the House, representing New York. Other political members of Cokie’s family through the Clairborne and Pell connections include former Senators William Clairborne and George Dallas. The ties even stretch back well before the founding of the country to John Pell, who served as a minister in the British Court of Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century and whom history credits with introducing the mathematical notation for the division sign to the English-speaking world.

Growing up as a member of the congressional kids club on Capitol Hill, Cokie Roberts knew the other kids in the club such as young Al Gore, Jr., the son of Senator Al Gore, Senior of Tennessee and young Chris Dodd Jr., son of Christopher Dodd, senior of Connecticut. While Cokie Roberts pursued career in broadcasting, these other kids grew up to follow their fathers into political careers.

Cokie Roberts is married to Steven V. Roberts, senior editor of U.S. News & World Report. While Cokie Roberts serves as a commentator on ABC’s This Week With David Brinkley, her husband appears on NPR’s Washington Week in Review. In her capacity as a reporter for public television, Cokie Roberts worked under Sharon Percy Rockefeller, who chaired the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Sharon Rockefeller, the daughter of former Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, was married to Senator and former West Virginia Governor Jay Rockefeller.

With all of her connections through kinship, marriage and other intimate networks, Cokie Roberts is truly the center of the political universe of Washington, D.C.

Daughter Rebecca Roberts is now a reporter as well. Now granted, the essay is from 1993, but it still gives a useful glimpse into Beltway culture. The Democrats have the Kennedys, of course. Certainly George W. Bush benefited from his kinship ties, and is probably the ultimate example of promoting pedigree over merit. Among the conservative punditry, there’s quite the wingnut welfare system, and sometimes it even creeps into more legitimate publications. I guess Gore’s ties didn’t help him much back in 1999-2000, but perhaps that was because the press was “going to make him jump through the hoops” until he condemned Bill Clinton over Lewinsky, and they didn’t see “anything wrong with that.” Remember, protocol must be observed, lest you be ridiculed. Trashing the Constitution is fine, especially if you hide most of the violence behind closed doors; just don’t try to come in and trash the Village if it’s not your place.

I imagine some enterprising anthropologist or student would have a wealth of material for further studying Village mores. But in any case, even if Cokie is no longer the reigning queen, surely she’s still a duchess or something. So I say: Move over, Matt Drudge! It’s not your world after all! It’s Cokie’s world, it’s her America, and the rest of us just live in it!

Well, unless you’re from Hawaii.

(Ridicule, 1996)

(Update: Fixed some typos.)
 

McCain POW Bingo

By Batocchio

Even if you didn’t see John McCain’s interview this week with Jay Leno, you may have read about this exchange:

LENO: For a million dollars, how many houses do you have?

McCAIN: Could I just mention to you, Jay, that, in a moment of seriousness, I spent five-and-a-half years in a prison cell. I didn’t have a house. I didn’t have a kitchen table. I didn’t have a table. I didn’t have a chair. And I spent those five-and-a-half years because, not because I wanted to get a house when I got out.

Oh yes, he went there, and he had that answer prepared. Crooks and Liars has the video of this section, and a great clip of Rachel Maddow critiquing McCain. (NBC has short fluffy snippets, and for now has the full Monday August 25th episode posted, with the interview starting about 19 minutes in.)

McCain generally does extremely well in these formats, presenting an amiable, jocular persona. It helps sell those claims that Obama is the most liberal senator (not so), and that Biden is the third-most. Leno did ask McCain about his negative ads, but in that apologetic-for-asking-a-real-question-and-I’ll-won’t-press-you-on-your-bullshit-response way of his. McCain answered he thought the ads were funny, but that they also pointed out differences in their positions (on the importance of Paris Hilton, I guess). The reluctantly negative warrior then segued into roughly the same spiel David Broder swallowed, that McCain wouldn’t have gone negative – excuse me, that the rough tone of the campaigns might not have happened, McCain is not responsible — if only Obama would have appeared with him in town hall meetings.

It was quite the performance. The thing is, while I don’t like McCain’s policies, I’ve had sympathy for McCain over the fact he was tortured. I have sympathy and respect for any POW, or any innocent imprisoned, especially for years on end. It comes with being a bleeding heart liberal, I suppose. But I know I’m far from alone. And that makes the increasingly frequent, exploitative mentions of his POW experience more galling.

It bears mentioning that McCain’s never been that reluctant to talk about his POW experiences, it’s just that he typically prefaces his stories with saying he is, and the press has dutifully repeated that (see the Daily Howler archives). That doesn’t preclude all sympathy for him, but his positions haven’t always matched his persona, either. Back during the Republican primary debates, Fox News tossed up a softball question, a ticking time bomb scenario more ludicrous than many 24 plots, to allow the candidates to engage in competitive machismo about “interrogation” (Stephen Colbert has a good recap of all the “Double Guantanamo” madness). Unlike other candidates, McCain talked about how torture was wrong and a violation of American values. It was a more adult response, which naturally didn’t go over well with the base. However, McCain later backed Bush administration efforts to legalize torture. Contradicting an earlier stance, he’s also backed many Bush administration positions on Guantanamo prisoners. Given numerous reports that many prisoners are innocent and have been mistreated, and McCain’s own experience, his stance is particularly appalling – and to some people who liked him, disappointing. Billmon’s sharp piece on McCain draws a portrait of a politician who’s always traded mainly on his image. Regardless of one’s former or current feelings toward McCain, his POW experience has gone far from being part of his personal charm offensive to an active tool of rebuttal and attack.

And plenty more POW references could be on the way! Via Steve Benen, here’s MSNBC’s First Read from Sunday (emphasis mine):

[McCain] advisors say if Obama gets “nastier” on that issue that opens the door for them. Advisors say the “Rezko deal stinks to the high heavens.” They will be prepared to show McCain’s “home” in Hanoi by using images of his cell. They claim they have not overused the POW element and insist they have “underused it.” They say Americans think most people in presidential politics are wealthy and will point out that Obama “made himself a multi-millionaire after he entered public life.”

Yikes. “A Noun, A Verb and POW” is right – we could be heading to all POW, all the time, 24/7. Perhaps Steve Benen can (spare one of the many clones that help him blog to) track McCain campaign POW references from now on. I’m also not exactly overwhelmed by the argument that making one’s fortune by writing two pretty well-written, well-received books is somehow disreputable, while getting wealthy by marrying a rich beer heiress after dumping one’s first wife in, um, rather deplorable circumstances, is somehow the height of honor. Does McCain really want to open that door? Does his campaign really want to continue to toss away deniability on the “respectful campaign” front? Plus, the “scandals” conservatives are trying to tag on Obama are little more than guilt by association, whereas the Keating Five scandal is something McCain himself actually did. That’s not to say the McCain approach won’t be effective, since we’ve seen it can be. But it is riskier. Despite his pleas for town hall meetings, McCain has not taken a particularly serious policy approach to his campaign. His much-maligned speech on June 4th focused mainly on Obama, and his submission to the NYT on Iraq was rejected because it offered no actual plan, mostly just criticism of Obama. Given Bush’s unpopularity and McCain’s actual positions, McCain’s best chance is to sell his persona and to try to make the election a “referendum on Obama.” But to quote John Cole on the POW thing, “At what point does this become a joke in the larger culture, rather than just the blogospheric subculture?”

A fine question. And to help achieve that cultural contribution, I’ve taken a first stab at McCain Bingo. It ain’t as good as the Get Out of Gaffe Free Card, but here’s card #95, in honor of McCain’s high percentage on voting the Bush line. Feel free to make suggestions for other square entries, or to make your own cards. My friends, you owe it to this great nation.

(Click the picture for a larger image.)
 

The Sporting Life

By Batocchio

Much of our political coverage amounts to gossip and bad sports commentary. When the Obama campaign rebutted McCain’s “celebrity” attack ad with one of their own, the AP reported that “McCain’s ‘celebrity’ taunts are bugging Obama,” taking their cues from GOP strategist Terry Holt, who asserted, “If the celebrity issue were not hurting them, they would have ignored it.” The Politico pushed the same angle in “GOP’s celeb-Obama message gains traction,” adding a dose of the GOP’s beloved gender attacks:

“This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

Ron Fournier’s hit piece on Obama over the Biden VP choice really boiled down to, “Obama’s weak, and scared of McCain,” repeated over and over again for emphasis. Sometimes, the shallow coverage favors the Democrat, as with LA Times blog Top of the Ticket’s “Barack Obama gets under John McCain’s skin,” but it’s still rather silly stuff, especially when that’s all there is to the story. Still, most of the recent “head game” stories seem to focus on Obama. If he’s attacked and says nothing, the charge must be true or he’s weak, and if he punches back, it must be true and he’s “rattled,” “upset” and so on. (Obama’s probably most been most effective when gently mocking, as with his tire gauge retort.)

The head games fascinate the press, but reality just ain’t that popular with them. Earlier this month, Bob Somerby chronicled how on Race to the White House, Rachel Maddow dared to mention that McCain’s off-shore drilling proposals “would really have no impact on gas prices for, I don’t know, a generation,” and then added, “That’s brilliant politics. It just has no basis in reality.” Her point was promptly brushed over by John Harwood and David Gregory, as well as Pat Buchanan, who remarked:

David, I’ve got to step in here because Rachel has really finally nailed one cold. Look, we’ve got $4 a gallon gasoline, $150 a barrel oil, and the Republicans are blaming Barack Obama for it, and they are succeeding with the issue and forcing him to change. That is a winner. Astonishingly good politics, a rarity for the Republicans lately.

The consequences of policies don’t matter. What matters is how everything plays. (At least Maddow’s getting her own show now.)

Digby’s post linking Eric Boehlert is a good reminder of how the game works. The degree of Clinton-trashing Boehlert documents is striking, while New York magazine’s “Obama Agrees to Roll-Call Vote for Clinton. Does That Make Him a Sissy?” plays into familiar dynamics. Somehow, I doubt that Hillary or Bill Clinton will deliver a true Mark Antony speech laced with nasty digs at Obama and a call for insurrection. I don’t doubt for a second, though, that some reporters will eagerly look for such digs. (It beats writing about health care.) Karl Rove trashed Michelle Obama earlier, suggesting she was unpatriotic. He loves to attack the strength. Rove’s remarked that he practices politics “as if people were watching television with the sound turned down,” and he had to be nervous seeing the happy Obama family last night and how well that played. (It’ll be interesting to hear what he says about Hillary Clinton’s speech, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t hit the divisiveness theme somehow.)

Rove’s a partisan hack, of course, but at least some viewers know he worked for Bush (although his work for McCain should always be disclosed). I’m more concerned about supposedly objective reporters. I keep coming back to these examples because the contrasts are so stark – the Obama tax plan would give more money to the middle class than the McCain plan, which would also make the rich even richer, and McCain’s plan for reducing the deficit amounts to wishing for a pony. By all means, let the McCain campaign have its say, let them defend their policies and critique Obama’s. But reporting the actual policies would be nice. (The competing tax plans have gotten some air time on TV, but it’s been pretty scant.)

Many of these issues aren’t that hard to cover, either, yet it’s far more common that we hear about Obama’s celebrity, or that like Bush before him, John McCain is a swell guy. And did you know he was a POW, but reluctant to talk about it? He’s a scrappy guy, a great American underdog story, poor little Admiral’s son made good, losing the primaries in 2000, counted out this time around, but bouncing back… I suppose McCain hasn’t gone full-blown into the “Aw, shucks” mode of Fred Thompson, and hasn’t yet hit the full Bull Durham mode of saying he’s gonna give the presidency 110%, he just hopes he can help the country, just wants to give it his best shot and the good Lord willing, things’ll work out… But McCain has been running mainly on his personality, on his persona, and has gone something like 146 consecutive starts speeches offering incoherent statements and unsound policies. He really has been the Teflon candidate.

McCain’s popular with the press, but he also benefits because so many of our political journalists have an awfully odd attitude toward their beat. As Bob Somerby observed back in June:

In short, these people hate knowledge, complexity; they hate the infernal need to explore. Let’s put it another way: They hate politics. It’s weird, yet the contrast constantly strikes us. Sports reporters love to talk about sports. [Richard] Cohen hates talking about politics.

Most of all, they hate talking about policies and their consequences. That would be boring – and more work. The sporting life, the gossip game, is both easier and more fun. Honestly, I think there’s a place for little side stories, learning more about a candidate as a person, biographical details, favorite movies and all that. However, especially when it comes to television coverage, often we receive little more than fluff, with not much substantive discussion. And if that weren’t bad enough, there’s generally favoritism to the fluff.

DDay’s post “If A Nose Grows In The Forest…” explored these dynamics earlier this month. After noting that NBC’s Chuck Todd “comes out and admits that he’s a sportscaster,” DDay observed:

Here’s the thing, though – in the case of the Village, it’s more like a home-team sportscaster. The guy who is paid the Raiders to cover the game, and he hates every other team and has no problem shaping the story to benefit his guys.

We’ve seen, many a time, how the press will vouch for Saint McCain. But while there are certainly plenty of godawful sportscasters, they tend to, y’know, report what actually happened. Even if we view the press as sportscasters, or even home-team sportscasters, our press corps lacks good play-by-play announcers, but is positively overflowing with really bad color commentators.

To strain this metaphor even further (and apologies to all non-sports fans), say the Green Bay Packers were playing the Chicago Bears and scored the first two touchdowns. If our political reporters were sportscasters, David Broder would insist that the Packers should let the Bears score, Sean Hannity would loudly proclaim that the Bears did score, and Cokie Roberts would misreport the score and then proceed to ignore the game.

I’ll be interested to hear the speeches tonight, not so much the commentary. Still, I must remember there’s always room for the coverage to grow far worse. Some day in the months ahead, we may see some enterprising news producer combine the worst of Bob Costas with the worst of Charlie Gibson, and bad debate questions will plunge to a new low: “Senator Obama, at the Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps won an unprecedented eight gold medals, bringing pride to America, while his mother Debbie cheered him on every step and stroke of the way. So why are you raising his capital gains taxes?”

Update: Fixed some typos.