I’m sure that most of you read Daily Kos and have come across this diary by thereisnospoon, but if you don’t you really should check it out.
Do you see how this works? Systematically, piece by piece, the GOP takes what had been considered impossibly radical positions and makes them worthy of consideration just by talking about them–and then makes what had been considered outside possibilities truly possible. Now, I happen to believe that legalization of homeschooling is a good thing (though there should be oversight)–others may disagree.
But the important thing to remember is that the Republicans are carrying out this same exercise with every public policy debate today–from invading Iran to making birth control illegal to eliminating Social Security. The once unthinkable becomes possible–and they don’t care if they take some heat for it initially.
I would love to see bloggers on our side engage this issue because I think we might just be able to influence how certain ideas bubble up into the zeitgeist over the long haul, and this is a very interesting way to think about it.
I have long felt that one of the things the right does well is prepare the ground for ideas that are not considered mainstream. The ideas themselves … well, that’s another story and their ideas often fail on their own merit. But they are very good at bringing their ideas into mainstream dialog and making them sound comfortably familiar. And with each success, they move the goalposts farther to the right.
I was struck by this when I was reading an old article about Newt Gingrich from the mid-80’s. The writer went on at some length about his crazy, freaky idea to change social security to a privatized “IRA” type system. The tone was of stark disbelief that anyone could come up with such a crackpot scheme. But, of course, this idea became quite mainstream within a little more than a decade.
I just think there is merit in thinking about the right tactics for advancing big ideas that may not be on the radar screen right now, but could be if we are tactically intelligent about advancing them. And I think the blogosphere may be a good place to get these ideas percolating.
I love Will Bunch’s post about Democrats being the new “silent majority.” Even if it weren’t true, which it is, it is just a terrific way to frame our political situation right now.
Many of my fellow baby boomer liberals believe that the country recoils from extremes and they are right. But they are stuck in a time warp. They don’t see that in 2006, the extremes don’t look like this:
Atrios is doing a fun series on Richard Cohen’s greatesthits. If you haven’t been over there to read them, check them out. The man has a very interesting history. He thinks racial profiling is perfectly understandable — and really gets upset when his readers aren’t perfectly polite in their disagreement with him on that. He thinks that women are asking for it. They should be aware that it’s their fault if dirty old men like Cohen lose control when they think a woman is dressed provocatively in the office. (That’s why Allah invented the Burka!)
Yet people in Washington think of Richard Cohen and others like him are the kind of liberal whom they can really respect — not that icky uppity kind who insist that racism is wrong or that disgusting pigs like Richard Cohen don’t get to dictate the office dress code in order to keep themselves from acting out. This filters into the elected Democrat mindset. They spend time in the capital, they absorb this stuff.
And to the extent it filters out to the country and the media, people see a schizopherenic vision of liberals — wingnut radio says we are shrieking hippie communists who “smell” (a common rightwing moronic slogan) while the mainstream media reveres milquetoast apologists whom nobody really understands or respects except the beltway establishment. It’s a problem. And it’s a problem that winning this next election won’t solve.
Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report caught this little gem. Those fancy pants Connecticut blue bloods sure do have lousy manners:
The AP ran a report last night on Bush visiting Florida to tout his Medicare prescription drug plan. It was mostly boilerplate stuff, with one exception.
He stopped by Broward Community College, where government officials set up tents and tables with laptops to help dozens of seniors there choose among the myriad plan options available.
Bush visited with some waiting in a courtyard where Frank Sinatra’s “Young At Heart” played on the loudspeakers, then he went indoors where people were looking over the laptops. He walked around giving handshakes and hugs to those who rose for his entrance, and greeted a man who remained sitting in a wheelchair with, “You look mighty comfortable.” (emphasis added)
Now, I realize the president was probably kidding. For all I know, the senior citizen laughed.
But I have to wonder what on earth Bush was thinking. Maybe the president has never had a friend or family member confined to a wheelchair, but as a rule, noting how “comfortable” they look is rarely a friendly way to start a conversation.
No it isn’t. But then neither is noting someone’s baldness or that they’ve gained weight and Junior does that all the time too. It’s his way of putting people off balance and getting everyone on his side to pile on another.
There’s an interesting simple psychology involved in such things. If someone can coerce those in a group to help him attack a single member they become his accomplices. For instance, getting everybody in the press corps to laugh at a reporter’s baldness makes those reporters part of the president’s gang. And, of course, it intimidates them. If they stray, they too will be subject to that kind of public humiliation. It’s the evil fratboy theory of social relations, very primitive stuff.
That Bush may be reduced to plying this unconsciously with senior citizens in wheelchairs is not surprising, given his poll numbers.
Ms. Harris was on hand this morning to meet President Bush as he stopped in Tampa en route to a Medicare event in this nearby, senior-rich town — just one day after Governor Jeb Bush said publicly that he did not believe Ms. Harris could win against the Democratic incumbent Senator here, Bill Nelson.
[…]
After saying hello to his brother and straightening his tie, the president shook hands with Ms. Harris and spoke with her for roughly 30 seconds, with Ms. Harris talking far more than the president, who did not kiss her or put his arm around her — or do anything more than pat her on the back.
An aide to the president said later that they were only speaking about “the weather,” and a spokesman for Ms. Harris refused to divulge the details of the conversation.
She knows a whole lot of details about what went down in Florida in 2000.
I certainly hope that Democrats aren’t going to follow John Dickerson’s tepid analysis that concludes they shouldn’t mention investigations or risk losing in November. They are being played.
It’s also worth noting that Republican attempts to highlight the investigations issue have come almost exclusively in fundraising emails. In other words, they’re using it as a tactic to gin up their plugged-in supporters, but not, so far, as a part of their broader message to ordinary voters. And when you think about it, you can see why they might not be too enthusiastic about a campaign message that draws voters’ attention, even obliquely, to the slew of scandals and screwups of the Bush years. After all, it’s not exactly inconceivable that voters might welcome the prospect of a party pledging to look into, and then fix, the policies of a president with a 32 percent approval rating.
Ya think? The Republicans are in free fall. Considering that, is it not possible that the American people would like to find out what happened to the billions missing in Iraq? That they would be happy to see the congress exercize its oversight of the executive branch? That looking into the hanky panky leading us into a dramatically unpopular war is good for the country? Hello?
Many in the establishment believe that Democrats are in grave danger if they ever show they give a damn about anything. It’s one of the reasons why people don’t feel anything for the Democrats. And for some, the strategy is always the same no matter what the circumstances: when the Republicans are popular, don’t make waves. When the Republicans are unpopular, don’t make waves.
But think about this. Do the Republicans really want all these scandals being brought up constantly during the campaign? I don’t think so. That’s why they are trying to manipulate the Democrats into keeping quiet about them. Any six year old could see through this cheap ploy.
Update: Yglesias has more on this, here. He makes the interesting point that “One of the main things those people might be hoping for from a Democratic congress would be a check on Bush’s power. Indeed, many of them may not be very interested in a progressive agenda for America at all, just scared of where the current crew is heading things. By promising oversight, Pelosi is re-iterating that though you can’t vote the unpopular Bush out of office, you can vote in a congress that will keep him under control.”
Update II: Billmon says Rove is smoking crack if he thinks ginning up the wiretapping is going to work:
The point is, when you get down to 31% approval in a Gallup Poll, and your disapproval rating is trying to poll vault over the record high set by Richard Nixon just before he resigned in disgrace, it means the American people essentially think you’re the political equivalent of crab lice. At that point, they’re probably going to hate anything and everything you do — even if they actually agree with it — just because you’re the one doing it.
…to stave off the specter of Democratic rule, Rove has decided that the only way to rally the Republican base is to invoke the specter of Democratic rule. Democrat John Conyers, who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has spoken of investigating the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. Henry Waxman and Ted Kennedy will get subpoena power if the Democrats win both houses. Unspecified horrors lurk behind every corner if the Democrats take control and hold hearings about the administration’s relations with the oil and pharmaceutical industries. A sea of partisan vendetta, Republicans prophesy, stretches to the horizon if the Democrats are allowed to win.
As a strategy, this has its shortcomings. It’s not clear how many independents, or even conservatives, will warm to a campaign that focuses on forestalling congressional oversight — not with gas prices soaring and the American military bogged down in a war with an increasingly undefinable mission.
Again, I think Rove is trying to mau-mau the Democrats and getting the always compliant press to help him do it. He’s shaping the battlefield the way he wants it. It won’t work unless Democrats take the bait.
I have had a few conversations and email exchanges over the past few months in which we all sort wondered whether it was such a good idea for Bush and Cheney to be so publicly derisive of the CIA. Calling them incompetent and lazy and (*gasp*) liberal just seemed like stupid thing to do with an agency filled with spies.
Then I read this today, from Tim Grieve in Salon and I just have to wonder…
The White House said Monday that it intends to hire as the No. 2 man at the CIA a former agency official who quit in 2004 in a dispute with Porter Goss. As admissions of mistakes go, this is a pretty big one — even if no one at the White House will actually admit it.
Stephen Kappes, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, resigned from the agency in November 2004 after Patrick Murray — a former Hill staffer who was serving as Goss’ chief of staff at the CIA — ordered him to fire his deputy, Michael Sulick. As the Washington Post reported at the time, Murray’s order to Kappes came after Sulick had confronted Murray about a threat Murray had made to another agency official.
The threat? That the agency official would be held responsible if anything from the personnel file of the “newly appointed executive director” made it into the media. And the “newly appointed executive director”? He wasn’t identified in the Post’s account back in 2004, but we all know his name now: Dusty Foggo, who resigned from the CIA yesterday amid a corruption probe.
[…]
So where are we today? Goss is gone. Murray is presumably gone. Foggo is gone. And the White House is trumpeting the fact that Kappes will be coming back. “The move was seen as a direct repudiation of Goss’ leadership and as an olive branch to CIA veterans disaffected by his 18-month tenure,” the Post says this morning.
Holding out an “olive branch”? From here, it looks more like “falling on your sword.” The White House may indeed be interested in repudiating Goss, but let’s not forget who forced his brand of “leadership” on the CIA in the first place.
Just what happened to make the white house change it’s approach on this when it refuses to do the kind of things that might boost them in the polls and help their guys win in the fall is anybody’s guess. But you have to wonder if it went something like this:
GEARY
I didn’t do anything.
TOM
It’s okay. You’re very lucky — my brother FREDO operates this place, he was called before anyone. If this had happened someplace else, we couldn’t’ve helped you..
GEARY
I — when I woke up, I was on the floor — and I don’t know how it happened.
TOM
You can’t remember?
GEARY
I passed out.
[He stands up and moves over the bed where we see a bloody dead girl.]
I — I’ll fix it.
[He unties the girl’s hand from the bed post.]
Just a game.
[He takes a towel and begins to wipe up the blood that is all over her. He looks at the towel and wipes off his hands.]
Jesus, Jesus.
[He begins to cry. As he does, TOM looks over at NERI who is wiping his hands in the bathroom.]
Jesus, God — Oh, God. I don’t know — and I can’t understand — why I can’t remember.
TOM
You don’t have to remember — just do as I say. We’re putting a call into your office — explain that you’ll be there tomorrow afternoon — you decided to spend the night at Michael Corleone’s house in Tahoe — as his guest.
GEARY
I do remember that she was laughing…we’d done it before — and I know that I couldn’t’ve hurt — that girl
TOM
This girl has no family — nobody knows that she worked here. It’ll be as if she never existed. All that’s left is our friendship.
Now here’s something to make you scratch your head. Jason Vest over at the Project For Government Oversight blog points out that the congress always intended for the CIA director or his deputy to be someone from the military, active or retired, and until recently it was actually explicit:
First, pertinent legislative history about intelligence chiefs: Since the CIA’s beginning, it has been, as our august legislators put it, “the sense of Congress” that “it [wa]s desirable” to have as either Director or Deputy Director “a commissioned officer of the Armed forces, whether in active or retired status,” or someone who has “by training or experience, an appreciation of military intelligence activities and requirements.” Congress specifically stated that only one position could be filled by an active duty officer, and further mandated that such an officer be removed from the Defense Department’s chain of command.
In 2004, when the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act severed the dual DCIA/DCI roles (acronym translation: where the head of the CIA also headed the entire intelligence community) and created the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Congress amended the existing statute, and applied the language to the new DNI and his Deputy. For some reason, however, Congress neglected to re-apply the same language to the new CIA Director and Deputy Director positions (indeed, Congress actually forgot to re-authorize the Deputy Director position altogether). But last year–in addition to correcting that little boo-boo–the Senate intelligence committee suddenly decided, after all these years, that the top two CIA officials should only hail from “civilian life.” (Of 19 CIA directors, six have been active-duty flag officers, five have had some previous military service as commissioned officers, and three have previous served as intelligence officers.)
Isn’t that interesting? From what we have been hearing, Hayden being a member of the active duty military is unprecedented. I confess that although I knew several directors had military titles, I assumed they were retired. WTF?
But the point of Vest’s post is not actually this interesting new spin point, it’s that the congress has been, typically, rubber stamping every intelligence function the pentagon wanted, particularly empowering the rightwing ideologue Stephen Cambone. This entire debate is some sort of kabuki.
But even more galling about the sudden flurry of Congressional concern about the Pentagon’s influence over intelligence is that the biggest enabler of expanded military intelligence power has been Congress itself. The Armed Services’ committees happily (and quietly) acceded to Donald Rumsfeld’s request to create a Deputy Undersecretary for Intelligence in 2002; in 2003, the Senate committee took about 15 minutes to confirm Stephen Cambone after a farcical hearing. Since then, Cambone’s set to building himself an empire that’s rife with red flags, ranging from unresolved Abu Ghraib related matters, to sketchy overseas covert units to troubling domestic intelligence activities. The state of things at the miltiary’s National Ground Intelligence Center hasn’t exactly inspired confidence.
[…]
There are no shortage of reasons to be leery of Hayden as potential DCIA. But if Congress is really worried about expanding military control of intelligence, they might want to consider the performance not of four-star generals who’ve been statutorily taken out of the military flow chart, but of certain Pentagon civilian officials who direct military intelligence policy and generals under them.
Now check this out from Dennis Hastert today (via Roll Call):
Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has come out against the nomination of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to head the CIA, calling the ousting of former Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) from the agency’s top post “a power grab” by John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. Hastert’s opposition to Hayden is not based on any personal reservations about the nominee. Rather, Hastert is concerned that installing a top-ranking military official at the “CIA would give too much influence over the U.S. intelligence community to the Pentagon.”
“I don’t know anything about him. He has never darkened my doorstep,” Hastert told reporters on Monday in Aurora, Ill., when asked about Hayden. “I don’t think a military guy should be head of CIA, frankly.”
Hastert added: “I don’t oppose him, I don’t know anything about him.” Hayden has been serving as Negroponte’s deputy following a six-year stint as head of the National Security Agency.
Hastert’s aides later expanded on his comments. “The Speaker does not believe that a military person should be leading the CIA, a civilian agency,” said Ron Bonjean, Hastert’s spokesman.
Hastert also said Negroponte stopped by his office Wednesday and made no mention of the fact that Goss, who served in the House with Hastert for 16 years, would be stepping down as CIA director two days later.
“It looks like a power grab by Mr. Negroponte,” said Hastert.
I don’t pretend to understand the byzantine maneuverings of the spooks, the pentagon and the congress on this issue. But you would think that somebody in the press would have noticed that this argument about Hayden being in uniform is bizarre considering that six Directors of 19 have been active duty and that until recently the congress explicitly desired a military man in charge, wouldn’t you?
And this caterwauling about the pentagon having too much control of intelligence is obvious bullshit since they’ve been giving Rumsfeld everything he wants in that area for years. There may be a turf war going on, but it looks like there’s a very active CYA operation in the congress as well.
This story gets stranger by the day.
If there are any mainstream reporters out there reading this, you should make it a habit of checking out Vest’s stuff. He consistently sees things that others in the field do not.
I got in late last night and was able to only muster a short spurt of lefty blogger vitriol for Richard Cohen before I collapsed, but I’ve had my coffee and I realize that I’m not finished with him.
First, let’s just stipulate that this “war” between the blogosphere, its readers and the mainstream media is completely understandable. People like Cohen’s only feedback for thirty years has been a letter or two from cranky old ladies in Bethesda and a good natured spirited debate about motherhood over a bottle of fine 1998 Hirsch Vineyard Pinot Noir at George Tenent’s house. He is out of touch. And that is the problem.
He believes that his angry readers of all political persuasions are crazy and violent because they are angry. Today he calls the lefty criticism a “Digital Lynch Mob.” When the right barraged him with criticism over a column about Bernard Kerik in 2004, he wrote:
I got a bucket full of obscene e-mails right in my face. I was denounced over and over again as a liberal who, moreover, never would have written something similar about anyone Bill Clinton had named. This would be news to Clinton.
What struck me about the e-mails was how none of these writers paid any attention to what I had to say. Instead, they preferred to deal with a caricature — someone who belonged to a movement, a conspiracy, and was taking orders in the service of some vast, nefarious cause. E-mails are the drive-by shootings of the common man. The face of the victim is never seen…We have become a nation of B-52 bombers, hitting targets we never see.
“The drive-by shootings of the common man.” My, my, my. One does tend to get a bit non-plussed when the hoi polloi forget their place, doesn’t one?
Critical Emails are neither ropes, rocks or drive by shootings. (And in this day and age foul language is not “obscene.”) They are the written opinions of Richard Cohen’s readers, many of whom until recently didn’t know what dreck the columnists for the Washington Post produced everyday. The internets have brought him legions of new readers — many of whom are appalled at what he writes.
This is why:
Even the after-hours camaraderie of Washington is gone. Republicans hang with Republicans, Democrats with Democrats — and they all get out of town as fast as possible. A little bourbon would do wonders for our dysfunctional government.
The reason I started with the startling scoop that George Tenet has a mother is that too often, especially in Washington, it is easier to avoid such humanizing touches than to deal with them. Like Will Rogers, I (almost) never met a man I didn’t like — and after that, honest, rigorous criticism becomes very hard indeed. It is easier by far to turn government officials from conscientious public servants, or even just hapless human beings, into mere celebrities. But they don’t make big money in their jobs (though some, of course, do later on), and they almost always work very hard. And when they screw up it often appears on the front pages of newspapers or on the nightly news. Sometimes, when things are dark and people are dying, they sit before the TV and watch what they have done — and cry. They do, and I know this for a fact.
Boo fucking hoo.
Damn that partisanship, and damn both sides equally for this sordid state of affairs. The fact that character assassination of Democrats is a fundamental tenet of the peculiar institution of the Republican party does not mean that it isn’t Democrats’ fault for not trying harder to be friendly. A little honey works better than vinegar, after all. Except … except, it actually doesn’t. The Republicans rolled them and rolled them and rolled them; the GOP took total control of the US government and then they rolled them again. All the while the alleged liberal Richard Cohen has been wandering through Georgetown drawing rooms having conversations about people’s mothers and, apparently, watching others weep as they confront the fact that they are responsible for killing people (which is, I agree, better than when the president lifted his fist and said “feels good!” in the moments before he ordered the invasion of Iraq.)
The media elite’s wide eyed shock that average Americans are angry about this state of affairs is simply mind-boggling. The polls show that it isn’t just the “angry” left, it’s the entire Democratic party, most of the independents and a growing number of Republicans too. Does he not know how his condescending elitism sounds to the people who read his column? (Joe Klein similarly goes on and on about populism in his new book Politics Lost, his tone dripping with contempt for the idea that common rabble are challenging those who know what’s best for them.)
We are dealing with a political culture so insular that that they no longer resemble the seat of power in a democracy but rather the court of Versailles. Richard Cohen and the rest of the professional political class in the capital are misreading what is happening just as Louis XVI did when he asked “This is a revolt?” —- to which the duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt replied, “No, sire. It is a revolution.”
For the first time, I’m truly feeling the democratizing power of the internet (and I’m realizing why the powers that be are trying to cut off its oxygen.) The beltway courtiers are nibbling idly at their cakes, unnerved by the unruly mob of common men committing drive-by emails and digital lynch mobs and storming the stifling, airless social club that has become the nation’s punditocrisy. They don’t realize yet that this isn’t a fringe group of long haired hippies (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who are going to make the whole country hate us for our unruly ways. It ain’t 1968. There’s a lot of water under that drawbridge.
And, of course, it wasn’t that simple anyway. Liberals of a certain age are just terrified of liberal passion because they believe that 60’s leftists destroyed the Democratic party. (I would argue that it was the overreaction — the pale, flaccid, politics of the Richard Cohen school that killed us.) In any case, they always failed to notice the lurking radical rightwing beast that was just as active during that radical period building a movement that was far more damaging to Democrats than anything the SDS ever dreamed up. (But then, they are nothing if not pathologically self-absorbed.)
The 60’s New Left is not particularly relevent to this debate. It’s time that establishment liberals exorcized those demons. The political architects of today’s political era are not FDR liberals, but Nixonian conservatives. It’s stunning to me that after all this time they still fail to recognize that.
We may win an election or two coming up. I fervently hope so. But if anyone thinks that the conservative movement is just going to shrivel up and die, they have another thing coming. We are still fighting on their turf and will be for some time to come. Worrying about offending the “silent majority” again is beside the point. Our little blogswarms can hardly cause a backlash that would rival the non-stop anti-liberal rhetoric that’s been spewed into the atmosphere for the last two decades. But it’s just possible that we might convince a few people out there that the Democratic party still has a pulse.
And as I wrote last night: there is no political downside to hating Richard Cohen. Everybody does. And why shouldn’t they? He stands for nothing. The problem is that he’s been sold as a liberal — which is why we are bothering with him at all. He’s the poster boy for flaccid, ineffectual progressive politics and we’re sick of it. He is not us.
Update: Swopa notices that Cohen’s latest trip to the fainting couch over the digital lynch mob is quite at odds with his earlier view that character assassination is the coin of the realm in DC — and that we who complained should grow up.
I can see why he thinks bourbon is the answer. He must need a lot of it to calm the competing voices in his head.
UpdateII: Jonathan Schwartz comments on Cohen’s equivalence theory. Check this one out too.
Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier.
That’s the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas.
Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium.
After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.
“He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years,” Jackson said of the prospective contractor. “He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’
“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary.’
“He didn’t get the contract,” Jackson continued. “Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe.”
Anyone want to calculate the odds Jackson will stay?
