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Rotten Elites

I was reading Gary Hart’s op-ed yesterday morning, when I was reminded of this post on A Tiny Revolution to which I’ve been meaning to link.

Hart’s article is a well written, straighforward call for Democrats to step up on the Iraq issue. He is convinced, as I and others are as well, that the crucible of the McGovern campaign (which he chaired) scarred the current leadership class of the Democratic party. He says:

Like the cat that jumped on a hot stove and thereafter wouldn’t jump on any stove, hot or cold, today’s Democratic leaders didn’t want to make that mistake again. Many supported the Iraq war resolution and — as the Big Muddy is rising yet again — now find themselves tongue-tied or trying to trump a war president by calling for deployment of more troops. Thus does good money follow bad and bad politics get even worse.

I think it scarred them to such an extent that they avoid feeling political passion about anything. The Democratic leadership is desperately afraid of making the mistake of 1972 ever again — which they see as wild, peacenik utopianism. As a result are determined to be as colorless and lackluster as possible. They never want to be in the position again of being called “unserious.”

Considering our current political situation, I can’t help but be reminded of the old joke:

“Howard and Joe are facing the firing squad. The executioner comes forward to place the blindfold on them. Howard disdainfully and proudly refuses, tearing the thing from his face. Joe turns to him and pleads: “Please Howard, don’t make trouble!”

So Hart says what we are all thinking and yet it sounds odd and discordant coming from the pages of the Washington Post. And I think the reason is that he isn’t speaking in beltway parlance. And apparently, he never has.

According to the post I linked at A Tiny Revolution, the beltway crowd has always thought of him a a flake and a weirdo — just as they think of people like me and probably most of you who are reading this as weirdos. Jon says:

I grew up in the Washington area and went to school with lots of children of government and media types. Then I went to Yale, which is also full of such offspring. What I saw was that the corporate media—places like the New York Times, Washington Post, the networks, etc.—and government figures are blatantly, brazenly in bed with each other. And not just metaphorically; it’s often literally true. There’s Andrea Mitchell & Alan Greenspan; James Rubin & Christiane Amanpour; Judith Miller & a cast of thousands; and so on.

In any case, whoever they’re shtupping, they share a mindset: they self-consciously see themselves as a governing elite that runs things hand in hand. That’s why Nicholas Kristof is anxious that calling George Bush a liar may make America “increasingly difficult to govern.”

He shares an anecdote of his years at Yale when Richard Cohen came to speak:

Cohen told all us fresh-faced, ambitious, grotty youths this:

The Washington press corps had specifically tried to push Hart out of the race. It wasn’t that he’d had extramarital affairs—everyone knew this was the norm rather than the exception among politicians. Hart wasn’t at all unusual in this respect. Instead, Cohen said, it was because the press corps felt that Hart was “weird” and “flaky” and shouldn’t be president. And when the Donna Rice stuff happened, they saw their opening and went after him.

(I wish I remembered more about what Cohen said about the specific gripe of the press corps with Hart, but I don’t think he revealed many details.)

At the time, I remember thinking this:

1. How interesting that the DC press corps knows grimy details about lots of politicians but only chooses to tell the great unwashed when they decide it’s appropriate.

2. How interesting that the DC press corps feels it’s their place to make decisions for the rest of America; ie, rather than laying out the evidence that Hart was weird, flaky, etc., and letting Americans decide whether they cared, they decided run-of-the-mill citizens couldn’t be trusted to make the correct evaluation.

I’m not a naive person and I know that centers of power always feature this sort of thing to one extent or another. Elites tend to gather. But the thing about democracy is that it’s supposed to keep a lid on the worst impulses of the ruling class by allowing the hoi polloi to be involved in the process. I think that things have gotten seriously out of balance in recent years.

It was clear that Bill Clinton was offensive to the Washington establishment from the beginning, mainly because although he had all the proper elite credentials, he clearly wasn’t a real member of the club. I remember at the time that this surpised me. Georgetown, Yale, Oxford, DLC, Governors association — I thought that made up for the fact that he was a bit of an earthy, good old boy. But it seemed to inflame them even more.

Bob Somerby discusses the WaPo writer John Harris’ book on this very subject:

… finally we get to the real explanation—to some sort of “cultural clash” between Clinton and the press corps. Why did the press corps have such disdain? Why was Clinton covered in the way that he was? Readers, prepare to be grossly underwhelmed. Clinton wasn’t cool, the way JFK was, Harris finally tells us:

HARRIS (continuing directly): There is a certain kind of politician for whom journalists tend to fall. John F. Kennedy, with his cool detachment, humor and irony, was the supreme example. Journalists of that era recall that JFK was breathlessly candid about his political strategies, and even the contradictions between his public statements and private views. Clinton was not a man of detachment. He was immersed in his performance, utterly earnest, offended by suggestions that his private motives were any different from his public pronouncements. At times the antagonism between president and press corps had a high school dimension. Clinton, working hard on his grades, saw the reporters as slackers and bullies—more interested in gossip and carping than anything constructive. The reporters, shooting spitballs from the back of the class, regarded Clinton as a preening apple-polisher.

Clinton wasn’t cool, Harris says. He wasn’t cool, like JFK was! Indeed, Harris has already explored this notion at an earlier point in his book. “Clinton by no means lacked humor,” he writes on page 35, “but his natural bent was toward cheerful patter and oft-told yarns. Washington humor is different—ironic and knowing, the sort of detached wit that John F. Kennedy used to beguile a generation of journalists.”

That’s why the late, great Mediawhores Online dubbed them the Kewl Kidz. And for all their alleged ironic detachment and urbane wit, they never got the joke.

I spent the 90’s in LA, working closely with people who know a thing or two about cool and Clinton was considered the coolest president ever. He was obviously incredibly smart, good humored, catnip to women and had the common touch. It was clear to me from the earliest days of his presidency that his problem with the Washington press corps most assuredly was not that he wasn’t cool enough — it was that he was too cool.I suspect that Clinton always had this problem when dealing with the elites whom he was more than smart enough to hob-nob with — he was too earthy, too sexual, too down and dirty. Like the timorous Dems of the class of ’72, the establishment (of which they are now a part) thinks being overtly human is to be a little bit too close to the beast.

They hated Al Gore for the opposite reason. He reminded them of their own geeky selves. They hated Hart because he emits a whiff of McGovernite hippie — a fate worse than death. In other words, the elite “liberal” media — and the Democatic establishment — all seem to be battling personal demons that they are taking out on Democratic politicans. And they live in this little DC bubble that resembles nothing so much as a royal court where palace intrigue is beamed out into the rest of the world and called “politics.” It’s infected how we all interpret political matters — I have only recently realized just how much it infected me.

I have never been much of a revolutionary. Even when I was young I tended to cringe at any kind of earnest, “to the barricades” kind of thinking. I tend to think in smaller strategic and tactical terms rather than large sweeping movements. However, I have come to realize that this is one of those times when something has to happen from the ground up. Washington has become a kind of aristocrisy, with all the attendant inbred, insular, corruption that eventually befalls a ruling elite.

The biggest sickness in our politics is this top down, elitist mentality in which people are fed a diet of information, entertainment, products and ideas that are focus grouped, soulless and commercial — and which are then filtered through a ruling media class that is so psychologically cramped, so emotionally sterile, so stuck in their own feedback loop that they are presenting a totally distorted version of reality. It’s important that we look elsewhere for wisdom and leadership.

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Winning and Losing

Ezra weighs in on the politics of withdrawal and apologizes for being craven for even discussing it. I can understand why he felt he had to say that because a lot of people object to viewing this serious issue from a political standpoint. But I feel that politics are the only issue as far as Democrats are concerned. We haven’t even the smallest bit of institutional power to affect any change in the president’s Iraq policy.

This confusion continues to be a central problem for Democrats. We need to accept that we are not the governing party. If we think we are going to affect policy from our position as the irrelevant “other” party, we are sorely mistaken. Our elected officials aren’t even invited to routine meetings on legislative issues; we will not be consulted on Iraq. This is an internal Republican party policy debate that they would love to cast as a partisan fight. I can see no reason why we should accomodate them by assuming responsibility for something over which we have absolutely no say and no control.

It’s clear that Democrats are much, much better at actual governance than Republicans who seem stymied, confused and in over their heads. Their political agenda is good for getting (barely) elected but it has proven to be completely inadequate to actually run the country. So I’m not criticising the Democratic love of wonkish planning and analysis. It’s exactly what the country will need when we again become the governing party and have to clean up this gargantuan mess the Republicans have made of things. But people don’t vote for plans even though they insist to pollsters and focus groups that they do. They vote for (or against) leaders and visions.

In order to change the direction of this country we have to prioritize and our first priority and only responsibility is to get more Democrats elected to office so that we can change the balance of power. That’s it. Everything we do must be in service of that goal.

So, let’s not be afraid to talk about Iraq in political terms. Yes,there is a debate within the party about whether or how to withdraw from Iraq. But I don’t believe it will be a very difficult one to resolve when all is said and done. Events and available troop strengths are pushing that issue far more than any Democrats can anticipate or plan for. If we capture a majority in 2006, I would hope that we immediately begin hearings and take an entirely fresh look at the situation as we go into the 2008 campaign. When we have the power to actually do something then we have the responsibility to dig out of this quagmire. Until then, this is Bush’s war and Bush’s war alone.

Ezra brought up 1972, but I think the more pertinent electoral analogy (although it is very imperfect) is 68. Nixon won because of the realignment of the south in response to the civil rights act. And because he was smart enough not to get in the way of the Democrats eating their own on Vietnam. He implied that he had a secret plan to end the war and used his “law and order” image to cement the idea that he wouldn’t cut ‘n run, while never saying anything specific. During the campaign it was Johnson’s war, all the way.

Matt Yglesias says today:

I think David Brooks’ column today makes it clear that conservatives are about done with this venture, too, though they’d like to label it a success and I’d prefer to label it a failure. But that’s half semantics and half politics. I’d rather see the war end than see it drag on for years and years purely in order to make sure George W. Bush gets stuck with the blame for it.

Would that that were the choice. Unfortunately, the war is likely to go on for a good long time whether David Brooks thinks they can declare victory and go home or not. Sure, Bush is going to stage a draw-down before the ’06 elections simply because he has to. The military can’t keep up. But contrary to what others think, I think it’s obvious that Bush plans to have troops in Iraq for a very long time. Just yesterday he said unequivocally “We will stay, we will fight, we will win.” His hope is that Iraq can put together some vague semblance of a working government so that he can declare victory — and stay.

Take, for example, Camp Victory North, a sprawling base near Baghdad International Airport, which the U.S. military seized just before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Over the past year, KBR contractors have built a small American city where about 14,000 troops are living, many hunkered down inside sturdy, wooden, air-conditioned bungalows called SEA (for Southeast Asia) huts, replicas of those used by troops in Vietnam. There’s a Burger King, a gym, the country’s biggest PX—and, of course, a separate compound for KBR workers, who handle both construction and logistical support. Although Camp Victory North remains a work in progress today, when complete, the complex will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo—currently one of the largest overseas posts built since the Vietnam War.

Such a heavy footprint seems counterproductive, given the growing antipathy felt by most Iraqis toward the U.S. military occupation. Yet Camp Victory North appears to be a harbinger of America’s future in Iraq. Over the past year, the Pentagon has reportedly been building up to 14 “enduring” bases across the country—long-term encampments that could house as many as 100,000 troops indefinitely. John Pike, a military analyst who runs the research group GlobalSecurity.org, has identified a dozen of these bases, including three large facilities in and around Baghdad: the Green Zone, Camp Victory North, and Camp al-Rasheed, the site of Iraq’s former military airport. Also listed are Camp Cook, just north of Baghdad, a former Republican Guard “military city” that has been converted into a giant U.S. camp; Balad Airbase, north of Baghdad; Camp Anaconda, a 15-square-mile facility near Balad that housed 17,000 soldiers as of May 2004 and was being expanded for an additional 3,000; and Camp Marez, next to Mosul Airport, where, in December, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the base’s dining tent, killing 13 U.S. troops and four KBR contractors eating lunch alongside the soldiers.

[…]

Suspicions also run deep both inside Pentagon circles and among analysts that the Department of Defense is pouring billions of dollars into the facilities in pursuit of a different agenda entirely: to turn Iraq into a permanent base of operations in the Middle East.

[…]

One indication of an open-ended U.S. occupation is the amount of money that has already been spent on bases in Iraq. KBR’s first big building contract there, in June 2003, was a $200 million project to build and maintain “temporary housing units” for U.S. troops. Since then, according to military documents, it has received another $8.5 billion for work associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom. By far the largest sum—at least $4.5 billion—has gone to construction and maintenance of U.S. bases. By comparison, from 1999 to this spring, the U.S. government paid $1.9 billion to KBR for similar work in the Balkans.

I do not believe there is anything the national Democrats can do to change this policy. We have to change the government. Therefore, I think it’s in their best interests to begin to define what winning and losing means before the Republicans do. In an e-mail exchange on this subject, reader Charles Saeger suggested:

Change:

“We cannot win the war in Iraq and staying could rouse terrorist sentiment against us”

to:

“The Republicans lost the war in Iraq and our continued presence is rousing terrorist sentiment against us.”

I happen to think this has the benefit of being true. The Bush administration lost the war before it began because it was unwinnable as a purely American/British venture. He didn’t mishandle it. He didn’t misjudge. He lost it.

I know it’s unpalatable to use their frame, but I think it’s pretty ingrained in the American psyche. We are the ultimate “win-lose” culture. Because of that I believe it is in our political interest and the country’s security interests to frame this as a Republican loss. Terrorism is still a threat. Nukes in the hands of bad actors are a very, very serious threat. We are economically and militarily weakened by Bush’s response to 9/11.

The Republicans lost Iraq. Like Lincoln when he replaced McClellan, the voters of the United States need to replace the Republicans if we want to “win” the war on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

If we can convince the country of that then we are in a good position to get them to listen to our alternative plans for withdrawal as a tactical retreat in the bigger war on terrorism. Framing it as an American loss, (“our” loss) however, will set the stage for another 30 years of “liberals wouldn’t let us win it” bullshit. It’s time to put that nonsense to bed. The GOP has proven in real time, right before our eyes, that they want to start wars but they don’t have a fucking clue how to win them. That needs to be reiterated over and over again to the American public. If it sinks in we might just be able to find our way out of this ridiculous national security paradigm we’ve been in ever since the wingnuts asked “who lost China” back in 48. It created Vietnam and it created Iraq. Enough.

Who lost Iraq? George W. Bush and the Republican party.

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Christian Assassination Doctrine

I don’t know if I heard this right, but I think that one of the CNN anchorettes just asked a first amendment expert if Pat Robertson’s statement should fall under freedom of religion since he was advocating “the idea of taking out one very bad individual to save thousands of others.”

I don’t even know where to start laying out everything that is wrong with that premise. I’m no biblical scholar but I don’t think there is any religious precept that backs up this notion, certainly no Christian precept. But even if there were — when did Hugo Chavez morph into a genocidal monster? I certainly understand that free market capitalists have serious beefs with his economic vision and he’s not exactly a beacon of transparent governance and political freedom, but he’s no Stalin. He’s not even Fidel. Robertson himself said that oil was the main concern. (She would have made sense if she said “saving thousands of others … a few bucks at the gas pumps.”)

I haven’t heard this formulation anywhere else, but I haven’t been keeping up on all the nuances. Is the religious right now characterizing criticism of Robertson as an attack on his religion or was this just a case of a very dumb TV actress coming up with this weird premise all by herself?

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We will stay, We will fight, We will win!

Is Bush on drugs? He is more “animated” than I think I’ve ever seen him. He’s all hunched over, swinging his arms wildly, screaming into the microphone. It’s quite a performance.

My favorite line so far is the patented “they can run but they can’t hide.” C’mon. You just have to sit back and admire the sheer audacity of continuing to say that after four long years.

He must be thrilled to be back in the saddle, running for president, which is the only thing he knows how to do. And he must be happy to be back lying his ass off in front of his hand-picked enthusiastic crowds. I’m especially enjoying his little historical analogy comparing the Iraqi constitutional drafting process to our own, neglecting the relevantlittle fact that our constitution left a tiny little problem hanging out that resulted in the bloodiest war in American history — or the other niggling little fact that the Iraqis are blowing each other up over similar disagreements already. But hey, what’s a little civil war now and then?

And to think they gave Howard Dean days of shit for his scream. This guy is doing a bad imitation of a certain gentleman who also used to work himself into a frenzy before his adoring crowds. Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!

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Christian Soldiers

Maybe I’ve missed it, but with all the hoohah on TV about Robertson putting out a hit on Hugo Chavez today, I haven’t heard much in the coverage about him putting out hits on the supreme court and the State Department (“Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up”) earlier this year.

I don’t know that any of Robertson’s followers literally believe they are the instruments of God, but let’s just say you don’t have to have a crazed imagination to think that one or two just might. And as much as the media seems to be trying to portray old Pat as some sort of a has-been, he still has a very large following.

January 2005:

The 700 Club’s average daily audience, according to AC Nielsen’s November sweeps, is up 26% over last year. At a time when most daily shows are struggling The 700 Club is experiencing tremendous increases. November’s average daily audience of 922,000 households is the highest in ten years and we experienced the same success in October and November.

The Barna Group, which does in depth polling on Christian issues, says:

( Mar 14, 2005) The reshaping of Americans’ lives is evident in various facets of their life, including the spiritual dimension. A new nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group indicates that while 56% of adults attend church services in a typical month, a much larger percentage is exposed to religious information and experiences through various forms of media. Radio and television are the most popular Christian media, but faith-related Internet sites as well as religious magazines, newspapers and books also enjoy significant exposure.

[…]

The percentage of adults who watch Christian television programming has remained unchanged since 1992, with an estimated 45% tuning in to a Christian program during a typical month. Relatively few adults (7%) watch Christian television on a daily basis. About four out of ten adults (41%) never watch such programming.

Christian television draws its strength from people in their 60s and older, females, residents of the South, African-Americans, people with limited education and income, and born again Christians. Two-thirds of the born again population views Christian programming each month, which is more than double the proportion of non-born again adults (30%) who follow that pattern. The segments of the public least likely to watch Christian TV include mainline Protestants, Catholics, unchurched people, Asian-Americans and college graduates.

A rather large number of Americans watch Christian TV. An increasing number of them get their news from this media. Pat Robertson, whose 700 Club appears more than once a day on Disney owned Family Channel, is the most popular of all…and he’s a lunatic spreading hate and violence to people who are very susceptible to his message. It’s only a matter of time.

This media is an unofficial adjunct of the GOP and an extremely important cog in their evangelical political machine. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying watching Republicans squirm as they try to distance themselves from this ass today. Has anyone seen or heard any response from the other big names on the Christian Right?

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Every Loss Is A Win

(Or, a dead soldier is like a dollar in the bank … the Bank of Political Capital.)

Poputonian from Kidding on the Square wrote me this e-mail which I found quite insightful. With his permission, I’m posting it here:

On February 20, 2003, exactly one month before the United States invaded Iraq, Norman Mailer spoke these words before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco:

Terrorism and instability are the reverse face of Empire. If the Saudi rulers have been afraid of their mullahs for fear of their power to incite terrorists, what will the Muslim world be like once we, the Great Satan, are there to dominate the Middle East in person?

Since the administration can hardly be unaware of the dangers, the answer comes down to the unhappy likelihood that Bush and Company are ready to be hit by a major terrorist attack, as well as any number of smaller ones. Either way, it will strengthen his hand. America will gather about him again. We can hear his words in advance: “Good Americans died today. Innocent victims of evil had to shed their blood. But we will prevail. We are one with God.” Given such language, every loss is a win.

Every loss is a win. So that’s how they do it.

More than two years later, Junior is still drilling down that hole. Reuters made this report on Saturday, August 20, 2005:

Bush invokes Sept 11 to defend Iraq war link:

In a few weeks, our country will mark the four-year anniversary of the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. On that day, we learned that vast oceans and friendly neighbors no longer protect us from those who wish to harm our people.
…
Our troops know that they’re fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy.
…
They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war.

But sometimes when political capital is low, really, really low, when your own worshipers begin thinking disloyal thoughts, you have to pull out all the stops. This is when you start trading in dead soldiers. Even National Public Radio noted how unusual it was that in his speech today in Salt Lake City, Bush invoked the dead. Here is what a desperate president said to his throng of future detractors:

We have lost 1,864 members of our Armed Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and 223 in Operation Enduring Freedom. Each of these men and women left grieving families and loved ones back home. Each of these heroes left a legacy that will allow generations of their fellow Americans to enjoy the blessings of liberty. And each of these Americans have brought the hope of freedom to millions who have not known it. We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists, and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us win and fight — fight and win the war on terror.

Given such language, every dead soldier is a win.

The Politics Business

Writing about this morning’s very creepy article about the new evangelical Christian training for conservative aides on capitol hill (which he points out should hardly be necessary since there already exist a ton of institutions for that purpose called … “church”) Jesse notices something that I think is quite important:

There are times where I really wonder if there’s any such thing as grassroots conservatism anymore. Conservatives seem to be intent on making any expression of conservative belief little more than the assembly of an out-of-the-box movement. You want to start a petition for intelligent design in your school district? Here’s the talking points, magazines, a list of local experts and the e-mail for your very own Discovery Institute scientist.

The modern Republican Party isn’t just antipathetic to democracy – it seems to be doing everything within its power to convert it into a sham of itself, all the benefits of democracy without any of the actual practice or participation. You can be a principled Christian conservative for $345, with free lunch! For an extra $50, learn how to dress your spouse to communicate that they’re not Hillary!

For all the talk of the conservative philosophical backbone, modern conservatism is little more than a paint-by-numbers affair, with doting teachers standing over you making sure that #3 is red and not green, because that might otherwise send the wrong message. It appropriates the rhetoric of soul-saving while remaining entirely soulless itself.

I think that its soullessness may be due to the fact that movement conservatism is now a business. So is the Christian Right. The “Republican industry” has become a livlihood for a whole lot of people who are not directly involved in the political process or the typical televangelist ministries. Somebody has to provide all those “paint-by-numbers” petition kits and out of the box local candidate blow-up dolls. We need to start seeing them through this prism.

The question is what kind of a business model are they using? (It may or may not be relevant that one of the biggest funders of conservative causes in the nation is the DeVos family — of Amway fame.)

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Efficient Pain

OneGoodMove has video of a protestor being tasered over the week-end. As with all these taser vids, I got a queasy feeling in my stomach when I saw it. I don’t know how many of you have been shot with electricity, but I have had it happen by accident and it’s really awful. Worse than being hit hard. Way worse.

This video shows an unarmed, restrained, female protestor on the ground being tasered. It looks very efficient, very easy, very simple. I’m very suspicious of police having simple, easy, efficient and unaccountable ways of subduing unarmed citizens.

I understand why cops like tasers. It’s a non-lethal way of making citizens immediately compliant. Who wouldn’t like that? But I am viscerally uncomfortable with the fact that police have the unrestrained discretion to inflict serious pain on citizens simply because it does not leave a mark. Just as they should not be allowed to punch a restrained protestor in the face, which would also subdue her, they should not be able to taser a restrained protestor. The law should not allow authorities to inflict pain unnecessarily even if the pain does not result in serious damage. And evidence is mounting that it does.

Talk Left (which has a very handy compendium of information on the taser, here) wrote yesterday about the police who are suing because of injuries sustained when they were tasered in training. And quite a few lawsuits are coming down the pike from others who have been permanently damaged by tasers. The company that manufactures them has been extremely uncooperative and unforthcoming with information. It’s most telling that cops who volunteer to take tasering in training rarely offer to take another one.

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Tid Bits

I don’t want to get into the Able Danger mess because, as I wrote earlier, my gut tells me it’s nonsense. However, I can’t resist sharing two new pieces of information:

From Steve Soto I learned that the whole “roll-out” of the story was pre-approved by Dennis Hastert, Pete Hoekstra and most amazingly, Steven Cambone at the Pentagon. I’m sure they were all just showing their deep respect for whistleblowers. (Too bad Bunatine Greenhouse didn’t get pre-approved.)

The other tid-bit, via Laura Rozen, is that another member of the team came forward to say that Atta had been named in 2000. Unfortunately, he couldn’t produce any evidence because:

The former contractor, James D. Smith, said that Mr. Atta’s name and photograph were obtained through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. Mr. Smith said that he had retained a copy of the chart for some time and that it had been posted on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base. He said it had become stuck to the wall and was impossible to remove when he switched jobs.

It would be interesting to know if he switched jobs before or after 9/11.

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Politics vs Policy

Matt thinks that the base is all about shrill rhetoric over substance, and I think there’s some truth to that.

My main critique of the netroots would be that I sense a large degree of willingness to elevate shrill rhetoric over actual policy. Dick Gephardt, having done more than any other member of the Democratic Party to land the country in Iraq, was able to recapture the hearts of many bloggers by calling Bush a “miserable failure.”

It warmed my heart to hear that line, too, just as I thrilled to Hackett’s Bush-bashing. But I’d much rather live with a moderate tone and an an anti-war policy than live with the reverse. Liberals need to be clear about what our priorities are.

I think most liberals’ first priority at this point is to remove the Republicans from sole power and many in the Democratic netroots have come to the political conclusion that we will only do that if we speak truth to power. The immoderate tone that thrills the netroots is not just for emotional satisfaction; it is a political strategy for beating the opposition.

I think that many in the netroots are no different than the vast majority of Americans everywhere. Policy is seen through a heuristic prism of impressions, image and preconceptions. Very few people are engaged in politics as a purely intellectual debate about the actual efficacy of one policy over another. Most people, even most smart people, make their political decisions based on a whole range of perceptions, only a few of which are based on strict reason.

I think the base of the Democratic party has come to the conclusion that one of the reasons Democrats have been successfully tagged as being soft on terrorism, crime, national security what have you, is because of the way we appear to the American people when we allow the other side to bash, swift-boat and deride with impugnity. And they have concluded that one way to show that we are not in fact a party of wimps and sissies is to call out the Republicans.

It is conventional wisdom that one of the reasons Hackett did as well as he did was because of his sincere righteous indignation about the leadership of this country and I think it’s at least partially true. That translates to strength and authenticity to people who hear long-winded multi-year withdrawal scenarios and immediately switch the channel — which are a majority of voters. I think the guy is tremendously charismatic whose status as an Iraq war veteran made him somewhat unique, but there is little doubt in my mind that he was able to win over some people, probably the Ross Perot type independents, who respect candor and authenticity. In this day of over-handled candidates it is a very heady breath of fresh air to see a Democrat appear unafraid and unintimidated.

I think it’s terrific that people want to have a dignified wonk-fest about how to deal with the situation in Iraq. But I will guarantee you that the best “plan” isn’t going to win any elections. They never do. Elections will be won because the country is sufficiently disillusioned with the GOP and the Democrats prove to them that they are a better alternative. And that proof will not come from the details but from the big picture.

I’m not even sure I think that Democratic politicians should be on the record with any detailed withdrawal plans at all at this point. The focus, to my way of thinking should remain on the president as the country (finally) internalizes the fact that this war was a mistake. There is plenty of time for our patented 10-point-plan yawner of a stump speech as we move into the next election cycle.

Right now I think the right political move is to keep the pressure on the Republicans. Make them take ownership of this war, gas prices all the simmering discontent that you can see lurking in all the polls on every issue. Separate ourselves, not with our intellectual superiority (which is a given in any case) but by our energy and our disgust with the status quo.

The think tanks and pundits can debate the various strong points of withdrawing on a six month vs a two years modified pull back or an urban withdrawal backed by air support or whatever. I think that’s great. But since we have no chance of implementing any plan ourselves and since it is, in my view, almost impossible that any action the Bush administration undertakes will be successfull no matter how perfectly we design a plan for him to implement — from a political standpoint all this wonkery beside the point.

What we should be debating is how we win elections. The base of the party is ready to support anyone who is willing to speak in clear, straighforward terms about the contrast between the Republicans and the Democrats and they believe that it could be a winning electoral strategy to do that. Certainly, they are extremely impatient with the split the difference, triangulation strategies that have failed to win majorities for the last several election cycles.

That, I think, is the real question here. Will our “shrillness” help or hurt the party? I think the netroots believes it’s time to try a message that has a little more heat than lukewarm water. The establishment, still smarting from their seminal loss in 1972, is scared to death of anything that resembles real passion. Far more than a serious division in the party over specific policy, that, I think is the real fault line. What kind of politics — not policies — do the Democrats think will win?

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