Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Political Enthusiasm

Sam Rosenfeld asks a very good question. Why aren’t the elected Dems using the Roberts nomination to make our case for the future? There is no margin anymore in giving the Red State Dems “free” votes on anything because the Republicans have shown time and again that there is no reward for “good” Democratic behavior. I would hope that Reid is whipping the caucus to give Roberts as small a margin as possible. But, there’s more to it than that. There is opportunity in losing by making a well defined case against the politics, philosophy and policy that Roberts so clearly represents. I’ve seen no signs as yet that the Senate Democrats are going to exert even the smallest amount of political intensity to that job.

Acknowledging that Roberts nomination is almost sure to be confirmed, Rosenfeld says:

What remains continuously puzzling is the binary logic Democrats insist on applying to situations like this, wherein either a full substantive victory or the complete evaporation of political energy seem to count as the only possible alternatives. On this issue as with many others, there remains a weird disinclination to focus party efforts on using substantive defeats over actual policy outcomes (which are largely foreordained anyway for the minority party) to highlight contrasts with the GOP and forge a message for future electoral battles.

On the one hand, Roberts’ confirmation is essentially a lock, barring unforeseen developments during the hearings. Outside advocacy groups have their own interests to attend to and their own reasons for demanding opposition to the nominee, but for Senate Democrats, an active push to block Roberts doesn’t really make sense. On the other hand, there truly is little substantive justification for Democrats to actually endorse this nomination. So why do it?

As Matt wrote last month, “being in the minority comes with a few advantages — first and foremost among them a release from the obligation to think realistically.” It shouldn’t be impossible, with creativity and coordination, to make the principled argument against Roberts part of the case for sending more Democrats to Washington. And it’s a bit distressing that throughout the coverage of base-party tensions over strategy on Roberts, this never seems to come up as an option worth considering.

This seems to me to be a Dem weakness across the board. If we can’t win, why bother? (A corollary to this is, “if it’s risky we shouldn’t do it.”) I suspect this is a matter of psychology — some of it a holdover from the 60’s, as we’ve discussed before — and some of it an unwillingness to admit that the political minority and we are playing a different game. Yglesias’ point is important. When you don’t have the responsibility of governance (and particularly when the majority goes out of its way to govern in a purely partisan way) you are much freer to operate from a totally political standpoint.

It seems that many Democrats find that cheap or disreputable. But what it is, is opposition politics. Because you have no real power to enact your agenda, the strategy should be to frame the opponents agenda in the most offensive way possible and present an alternative that could not be passed today in either governing coalition but for which you would like to build a consensus over time.

I think that the Roberts nomination should be opposed on the basis of his active hostility to a right to privacy. Others may differ — he’s absurdly business friendly and anti-environmental, so a case can be made against him on that. In fact, he’s pretty much everything loathesome I can imagine in a judge, (except that he is not anti-intellectual and he’s obviously well qualified for the job.) But we should find a philosophical issue or two that we believe really define the difference between the two parties and begin to inculcate that difference in the minds of the electorate.

It’s risky because we have no assurance that people will always agree with us. But that risk aversion is our biggest problem. We seem to think that we can be all things to all people and we just can’t. So, we need to stake out a claim and work to bring some people over to our side. That takes time and effort and a willigness to use every opportunity we have in front of the cameras or on the op-ed pages to make our argument to the American people.

PM Carpenter recently discussed Newt Gingrich’s recent call to arms in just these terms and clearly illustrates why the other side wins (barely) even though they are not really supported by the people on the issues themselves:

[Newt says] “Our core pattern should be ‘there is a BIG difference [between left and right] and it is a fact….’ We must then take such key facts to immediately illustrate a large vision; we cannot remain in arguments at the detail level.”

If you’re a conservative, odds are you won’t admit what Newt just admitted. If you’re a liberal, you’ll smile at what Newt just admitted, which is that conservatives cannot successfully debate liberals because the details that underlie most debates tend to support the liberal position, not the conservative. If the details supported Newt’s side, rest assured he would be touting the marvels of the fine point.

His outline of political action was also a resoundingly open call to demagogic arms. The “core pattern” he mentioned means, in translation, to repeat, repeat, repeat the “BIG” differences without ever substantiating the conservative arguments behind them. In fact, there should be no conservative arguments – just catchy slogans that appeal to those uninterested in inconvenient details. It’s not the “Big Difference” that Mr. Gingrich stresses as the advisable course of action. It’s the “Big Lie.”

That is the game they have been playing for 25 years and they are winning with it. And it’s more than just the fact that they can’t win the substantive argument. It’s also because they’ve learned how to define themselves in big, philosophical terms and they successfully used their public platforms throughout their years, in and out of power, to project that definition. They never miss an opportunity.

I don’t suggest that we adopt their dishonest demagoguery, but we do have to learn how to counter this effectively. Having wonky analytical arguments may be good for policy (and I hope we will always do this) but politically it’s disasterous. Clearly, the public doesn’t want to hear the details. If they did, they’d study the issues and vote for the party that most closely aligns with their interestsd — and the Democrats would have a majority. They want a vision.

We will probably not win on Roberts. The nuclear option is very unlikely to be triggered unless Bush nominates a total nutcase — and since the bar for that has been set lower than Janice Brown, I don’t think it’s possible. That’s the sad consequence of not winning the presidency or the Senate in the last election. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t use these occasions to build for the future and make our case. Just because we can’t win it today doesn’t mean that we don’t have a responsibility to lay the groundwork for winning tomorrow. Are these politicians so spoiled that they simply refuse to stage a tactical defeat, even for a higher purpose?

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Acting The Role of Reporters

Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei says Bush spokesman Scott McClellan “is seen as someone who might not tell you a lot, but is not going to tell you a lie. More broadly, we go to the [White House press] briefings if for no other reason to hear the White House spin on world events. They rarely figure into our daily reports because we will talk to Scott and others one on one and not in front of a crowd.”

Setting aside the ridiculous assumption that McClellan tells the truth, which is completely unbelievable unless he’s a braindead robot, can someone tell me why reporters should get their questions answered in private? The press briefings are purely PR exercises and the reporters should refuse to go instead of giving the white house a platform to spin bullshit as news. If the real news is gathered privately, then the press is simply playing a role in a public relations event.

The reader who pointed this out to me said something to the effect of, “it’s easy to see why JD Guckert felt so at home in those briefings.” No kidding.

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Feckless, Photo-op

Kos has posted a handy list of the fine support the Republicans gave their commander in chief when he took action to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. I urge you all to read it and maybe even print it out to hand to your Republican friends when they get in your face about it being unamerican to not support the president in a time of war.

There is one quote missing from Kos’ list, however, and it’s one I must have heard a hundred times, from none other than our favorite maverick JJ McCain:

We didn’t have to get into Kosovo. Once we stumbled into it, we had to win it. This administration has conducted a feckless photo-op foreign policy for which we will pay a very heavy price in American blood and treasure.

Iraq, on the other hand, was necessary.

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Rationale #459

In case anyone is wondering what is the latest rationale for the war in Iraq, Nicole Devenish, whitehouse spokesperson just said that we are “laying the foundation for peace.”

Isn’t that great? Why didn’t we think of it before? That could serve as a catch-all rationale for any war in history — and it can be used by either side. “The Emperor of Japan may have been a little bit ambitious when he had his navy bomb Pearl Harbor, but he should be given credit for laying the foundations for peace.”

I finding it hard to believe, but this ridiculous notion of David Ignatius’— that we will be successful if things turn out ok in 30 years seems to be catching on. On Hardball they were busily comparing George Bush to Harry Truman — because Truman was unpopular while he was re-building Europe and Japan and we all know that Truman was considered to be a great president decades later. Of course he hadn’t unilaterally started WWII with a bogus rationale, but that’s just a niggling detail.

So we can assume that Junior will be seen as a great president someday just like old Give “Em Hell Harry. He was plainspoken too, don’t you know. (Nobody seems to notice the eery resemblance between Bush and his fellow Texan, Lyndon Johnson, however.)

It would seem that in this one unique instance the government is taking the long view. We don’t know when there will be peace — why, it could take years and years. But we know that when Iraq does achieve it, they will have George W. Bush to thank for it. Praise be.

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Telling The Story

Michael at Reading A1 wonders why some Democrats seem skittish about Cindy Sheehan. I have wondered this too. It seems as if our side has a knee jerk fear of controversy. I think he correctly diagnoses the problem:

Every so often I’m brought up short by the “discomfort” within the operative class, current or wannabe, toward political demonstration—as if it would be slumming to stand on a hot tarmac with a bunch of sweaty people holding a sign; as if it showed a lack of that so-prized seriousness to speak in and with symbols, rather than engaging in policy debate. Cindy Sheehan is reminding us, we don’t especially need policy debate right now. What we need, very badly need, are stories: and story is just what the theater of Camp Casey is giving us. The right-wing talking point—that Cindy Sheehan doesn’t really want to engage in dialogue with George Bush, that her demand for the dialogue he won’t give her (and wouldn’t, even if he were improbably to meet with her) is a sort of playacting—is accurate, but beside the point. The relations of power are difficult to conceptualize, and can be even for people trained to do that sort of thing. There is nothing difficult, on the other hand, about the mother of a dead soldier standing ignored at the end of the man’s driveway who sent her son to be killed, waiting stoically in the Texas sun for an answer she knows will never come. Nor is there anything about it that doesn’t speak volumes of truth to the ugly situation in which we find our country, five years on in the Rove/Cheney regime.

I’m flabbergasted that anybody on the left has even a moment’s hesitation about this, has the least qualm about making use of the gift of symbol Cindy Sheehan is presenting us.

Politically, nothing could be more important for Democrats than to tell the story of Iraq in human terms.

The president got himself re-elected with this image:

As music blared from stadium loudspeakers, Marine One, the presidential helicopter, carrying Bush, his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, and first lady Laura Bush, landed in left field, dusting some of the 10,000 cheering supporters with dirt from the warning track. Bush emerged to the theme of the movie Top Gun.

“The choice in this election could not be clearer,” Bush said from a podium set up on second base. “You cannot lead our nation to the decisive victory on which the security of every American family depends if you do not see the true dangers of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Political theatre works. If people could be politically persuaded by civilized debate, the Lehrer News Hour would be the highest rated news show on television. Most people need drama, excitement, pathos, catharsis — on some level their emotions have to connect with their minds in order to understand.

Up to now, the story of Iraq has been told through the prism of American might and glory. It was a stirring tale. Unfortunately, the story of Iraq isn’t really a story of might and glory; it’s a story of arrogance, incompetence and human suffering. That’s the story that Cindy embodies as she stands out there in the hot sun, surrounded by supporters, asking the president to answer the question for which he has no answer.

The spectacles of 9/11 and Iraq are over. Even the war supporters are singing a different tune now —- the swashbuckling “I-raq ‘n Roll” has given way to the mournful “Arlington.” Cindy Sheehan’s story is the story of that shift in the zeitgeist. We do not need to be afraid of this; it’s good for the country.

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They’re Killing Us

John Aravosis, linking to Steve Soto’s wonderful post about liberal pundit Richard Cohen, says in his headline “good guy, but dead wrong about Karl Rove and the war in Iraq.” He may be a good guy, I don’t know him, but the problem is that he’s dead wrong about a lot of very important things at exactly the wrong moment.

I’ve written a lot about Richard Cohen over the years because I think he is a large part of what ails our side in this political/civil war. The liberal elite pundits, whom everyone assumes speak for “reasonable Democrats” are the first link in a chain that defines Democrats as being without conviction or belief. Democratic politicians, the media and the strategists take cues from their positions as to what constitues the “correct” liberal position. And it’s killing us.

Richard Cohen is the poster boy for this destructive effete punditry. His claim yesterday that the Plame investigation was “not a major story. It’s a crappy little crime and it may not be a crime at all,” is just the latest in a long line of cocktail party bon mots that seem almost designed to ruin any chances the Democrats have of making headway in the media. Perhaps there is no better example, however, than this one from November 2000:

Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”

At precisely the wrong moment, Cohen made precisely the wrong argument. It is his very special gift. The Republicans can always count on Cohen to give the respectable liberal view that Republicans are really the good guys and prove to everyone else that Democrats are a bunch of wimps.

Yesterday, he claimed that he doesn’t blame reporters for getting the Iraq war wrong because they have to rely on their sources, (which we now know is solely comprised of the Bush administration and each other.) John Aravosis politely replies:

I’m a reporter, a writer, an activist, and many other things. And I didn’t “get it wrong” like Richard Cohen apparently did. I totally got that something didn’t add up BEFORE the war in Iraq started. I remember telling many people that the fact that the rationale for going to war in Iraq had changed, oh, 27 times (literally) had me a bit concerned. I remember telling them that I supported going into Afghanistan but Iraq smelled fishy – Bush didn’t have a clear reason for going in and something didn’t smell quite right.

Oddly enough, Cohen was an early skeptic of the war. Back in July of 2002 he was questioning the necessity for war:

The reason I started this column with LBJ’s letter to Marshall Surratt of Dallas, Texas (a copy of which Surratt recently sent on to me), is that the lack of candour and the willingness to exaggerate the stakes in Vietnam cost both Johnson and the United States dearly. Not only was the triggering event for that war, the Tonkin Gulf incident, either wholly or partly concocted, it was used to justify a policy that had already been decided.

Is the same thing happening with Iraq? Are the events of September 11 being used to justify a goal that was already something of a fixation for some Bush administration figures?

I don’t know. But I do know that certain hard questions have not yet been answered.

[…]

The US can take casualties, but only if it understands why. War plans are being drawn up in the Pentagon. But explanations are lacking at the White House.

All it took to turn him into an enthusiastic supporter was Colin Powell, every reasonable liberal pundit’s favorite Republican Daddy. He could hardly contain his breathless relief that he could now join in the excitement:

“…the case Powell laid out regarding chemical and biological weapons was so strong — so convincing — it hardly mattered that nukes may be years away, and thank God for that. In effect, he was telling the French and the Russians what could happen — what would happen — if the United Nations did not do what it said it would and hold Saddam Hussein accountable for, in effect, being Saddam Hussein.

The French, though, are so far deaf to such logic. Their foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said that the consequences of war are dire and unpredictable. He is right about that. But the consequences of doing nothing — and mere containment of Iraq amounts to nothing — are also dire and somewhat predictable. The United Nations will be revealed as a toothless debating society — a duty-free store on the East River — and every rogue will have learned a lesson from Saddam Hussein: Stall until everyone loses interest.

By this point a very large minority in the US and majorities of everyone in the rest of the world were convinced otherwise. There were massive protests that were disregarded as old hippy relics by the beltway media elite. It was clear that they were not being skeptical of any of the many rationales the Bush administration presented — all they knew was that Bush had decided to go to war come hell or high water and once they knew that they became supporters of the war. Their intoxication was palpable.

And while the Republicans were being extolled for their resolute courage, the Democrats were being portrayed as bedwetting panic artists. This image was used to great effect during the presidential campaign. It was at this point that liberal Richard Cohen, with his usual impeccable timing, chose to admit that he had gotten all askeered about anthrax:

I’m not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration’s desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack — more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.

[…]

The terrorist attacks coupled with the anthrax scare unhinged us a bit — or maybe more than a bit. We eventually went into a war that now makes little sense and that, without a doubt, was waged for reasons that simply did not exist. We did so, I think, because we were scared. You could say we lacked judgment. Maybe. I would say we lacked leadership.

Very inspiring, no? A leading liberal admitting that he supported the Bush administration because he was afraid. Does it get any worse than that?

The Democrats have an image problem. And that image problem is constantly reinforced by the liberal pundits who helped create it in the first place. We are saddled with this milquetoast reputation in large part because the “reasonable” liberal pundits have political tin ears and yet are catered to and listened to by Democratic politicians and their handlers.

Like I said, I’m sure Richard Cohen is a good guy. But no politician anywhere should care what he thinks or listen to him or anyone like him, and there should be a concerted effort to persuade the media that these guys do not speak for us. Richard Cohen is what’s killing us.

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Shoulda Listened To His Daddy

While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well.

Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different–and perhaps barren–outcome.
“Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam”George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft Time (2 March 1998)

That’s a snarky title, but it’s quite true anyway. There are going to be many different ways to evaluate this period in our history, but the prism of the father-son relationship is perhaps the most compelling — and maybe the most important. That combination of the second rate son with the manipulating neocon advisors is the stuff of Shakespeare.

Look at what Scowcroft and Bush Sr were saying and look at the state of Iraq today. It is breath-taking, isn’t it? It can really only be explained by magical thinking on the part of the neocons and the long frustrated desire on their part to conquor something. And Georgie just wanted to do what his father didn’t do — take out Saddam and win a second term. By that standard he’s been a rousing success. One wonders if he feels satisfied. He doesn’t look it.

In our endless search for explanations as to why they really did this inexplicable thing, Junior’s relationship with his father and the neocon psyche are probably the places where the answers truly lie.

I wonder what would happen if a reporter were to ask Junior how he felt about the fact that his father’s predictions of failure in Iraq had all come true? I’d really like to see that.

Thanks to Chris K for reminding me of this article.

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No Claims Of Fairness Here! 🙂

I often get a little bit annoyed when people automatically dismiss something written in a partisan publication purely because it is partisan. It’s tempting to do that, but it skews your world view if you assume that all conservative or liberal newspapers and magazines are liars. It’s important to read them and try to see them as objectively as possible if you want to understand the real state of the debate. Certainly, their editorial policy and choice of stories will favor their side, but I have always assumed that the reputable publications do try to adhere to basic journalistic standards when it comes to straight reporting.

So, this exchange of e-mails between a National Review reader and an investigative writer shows me once again that I have been far too trusting. Evidently NR writers proudly admit to only using Republican sources. And they admit to it with all the naive earnestness of Jimmy Olson:

In hindsight, I really could have worded that sentence better. I certainly wasn’t trying to mislead readers or skew the facts. Based on additional research I did this morning, I can see your take is correct.
As far as my heavily GOP sources go, I do write for the biggest U.S. conservative publication. No claims of fairness or objectivity here! 🙂

Thanks to Matt Stoller for the tip. Read the whole thing. It’s a fascinating exchange and a very interesting insight into the way that conservative “reporters” think. Note especially the fact that even though the reporter thinks that Doug Forrester is toast in New Jersey, he happily writes a phony, error riddled probe of Jon Corzine anyway. Just for fun, I guess.

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Lock-step Agreement

Reader Richard M sent in this link to an article written by David Shipley regarding the function of the op-ed page of the Ny Times:

The Op-Ed editors tend to look for articles that cover subjects and make arguments that have not been articulated elsewhere in the editorial space. If the editorial page, for example, has a forceful, long-held view on a certain topic, we are more inclined to publish an Op-Ed that disagrees with that view. If you open the newspaper and find the editorial page and Op-Ed in lock step agreement or consistently writing on the same subject day after day, then we aren’t doing our job.

How odd then that the editorial page runs a plaintive request for Judith Miller’s freedom and the next day the op-ed page runs Bob Dole’s spirited defense of Miller’s position. It would seem that the gamut of opinion on the subject runs from Miller being a valiant journalist protecting the first amendment and her sources to Miller being a courageous reporter protecting her sources — and the first amendment.

I’m looking forward to further stirring justifications of Miller on the op-ed pages. Perhaps they could even get Judy herself to write one. After all, she hasn’t written one thing on the subject.

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“Kick ‘Em Out”

I hear liberals say in frustration that they’d like to leave the country or that they’d like to secede, things like that. But I never hear them say that they’d like to kick their political rivals out of the country. Perhaps it’s a fine distinction, but it’s a distinction nonetheless. Via media Matters, here’s Rush:

We just had Stephen Breyer saying, oh, yeah, totally appropriate, we must import what they’re doing around the world in other democracies, it will help buttress their attempt to establish the rule of law, and we might learn something, too. Well, here’s something I’d like to import. I’d like to import the ability that the Brits are doing to export and deport a bunch of hate-rhetoric filled mullahs and imams that are stoking anti-American sentiment. Wouldn’t it be great if anybody who speaks out against this country, to kick them out of the country? Anybody that threatens this country, kick ’em out. We’d get rid of Michael Moore, we’d get rid of half the Democratic Party if we would just import that law. That would be fabulous. The Supreme Court ought to look into this. Absolutely brilliant idea out there.

That first amendment has outlived its usefulness now that the right people are in charge anyway. (Calling the government “jack booted thugs” would be fine under certain circumstances, but not in others, I assume.)

So Rush just openly fantasizes in front of his 20 million listeners about deporting Michael Moore and half (only half?) of the Democratic Party. I’m sure all those Real Americans in their offices and cars just sat back and thought, “yeah, wouldn’t it be great is we could just get rid of all those people once and for all?”

In modern parlance I think that could be called “political cleansing.” It’s been done before — usually by communists, the modern republican’s favorite role models. Totalitarians ‘R Us.

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