Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Lord Peerless

Isn’t it refreshing to read the words of a distinguished Independent who can see through the shenanigans of both Parties and expose them for the cynical manipulative jacknapes they are? His Grace, Lord Saleton, the Duke of Slate delivers a thorough dressing down to those nasty odiferous Democrats that would make even a heathen Jacobite realize that it is all so very silly to be a partisan. It’s much better to remove one’s self from the lower orders who muck about in the political mud, splashing it willy nilly on their betters.

I am, therefore, from this day forward, an Independent. I shall spend my days staring in the mirror at my remarkable visage congratulating myself on being a peerless, dispassionate observer of the hideous hoi polloi while remaining above the fray.

My newfound evenhandedness comes as a result of the great Lord Saleton’s brave revelations about the unseemly new proclivity of the Democratic rabble to accuse the Republicans of being dishonest while pretending that they are not even more dishonest themselves. Yes, they are actually doing that. I know it’s difficult to fathom but it will do our class no good to put our heads in our jewelry boxes and pretend otherwise.

The scope of Democratic perfidy was so shocking I had to have my butler administer a large draught of laudanum and Madeira just to keep my poor head from spinning. When I revived, I was eminently grateful that that His Lordship was sufficiently clearheaded that he was able to suppress these absurd ramblings in just a few short paragraphs:

In Florida, Al Gore originally asked for a recount only in counties in which he thought Democrats would gain votes. Moreover, to be precise, he wasn’t for “counting” more ballots; he was for reinterpreting already-counted ballots until he came out ahead. Gore’s lawyer, David Boies, argued that ballots should be interpreted as votes for Bush or Gore based on “the intent of the voter, not how the voter manifests his or her intent”—in other words, without rules. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a Gore surrogate, actually claimed, “The punch cards were wrong.” Gore eventually moderated his position, but not until he had to.

And here I had thought that the knave Albert of Gore had asked for recounts in certain counties because there was no provision for a statewide recount in Florida law and asking for one would have necessitated appealing to each county in the state under an extreme time constraint. Wherever did I get the idea that precedent implied that applying for recounts in particular counties was predicated upon the idea that both parties would choose certain counties to serve as proxies for their support in the state as a whole? Merciful heavens, how misinformed I have been!

And I had also been under the misapprehension that he had asked that all ballots in the requested counties be recounted and now it is revealed that he only wanted already counted ballots to be “reinterpreted” until “he came out ahead.” My dear God, how can the man live with himself?

And then there is the vile Shylock, Mr David Bois, asking that the intent of the voter be the basis of interpretation. The rotten cur. Yes, the state constitution may have explicitly said that the votes must be counted so as to reflect the intent of the voter, and the scurrilous rogue Bois may have been talking about situations in which the ballots clearly showed a preference that the machines were unable to detect, but those of us who reside above the stinking morass of partisan politics know that he was really arguing that the recount should be conducted with no rules at all. That is the way “those people” think.

As for that most famous partisan General Markey, only a fool would believe that his statement didn’t reflect the totality of the legal arguments set forth in the various court cases. There was nothing more that needed to be said. The Democrats are, quite simply, liars and idiots.

But, Lord Saleton doesn’t stop there! He shrewdly points out that the Texas Republicans are only violating custom, not law, in attempting to redistrict to their advantage only two years after a court redrew the lines. Finally, someone points out that custom is no longer a guiding force in our culture. We modern Independents answer to nothing but the law and the rules. It’s true that Archbishop Thomas DeLay said quite plainly that he wanted to redistrict because he “wanted more seats,” but that is his privilege as head of the House of Common Republicans. Unless there is a specific law against it, there can be nothing wrong with it.

(And, Lord Saleton verrry cleverly uses the most devastating tool in his rhetorical arsenal. He says, “I can only imagine the cries of outrage I’d be hearing from my liberal friends if those were Republicans thwarting a Democratic legislature.” Checkmate, my little partisan friends.)

As for His Grace’s revelations about the despicable claims that His Highness is not legitimate, one can only say bravissimo! Just because the electoral college vote in the state governed by the president’s brother was decided by a mere 500 votes and the president didn’t win the popular vote and a divided Supreme Court decided the election in a legally dubious decision and the Republicans impeached a Democratic president on a party line vote just 2 years earlier, doesn’t mean that the Democrats should be unmannerly and accuse the Republicans of undemocratic actions and assuming the presidency through ignoble means. In any event, if the Republicans threw punch card ballots over the white cliffs of Dover would that give the Democrats leave to do the same? I think not.

Similarly, Democrats have absolutely nothing to complain of when the paid citizen gatherers of Viscount Issa managed to persuade the harried vassals of California to sign petitions (whilst carrying bags of nappies and victuals outside the market) to oust the evil Grayman of Davis from his unlawfully obtained governorship. After all, he did deserve it. He violated the rights of Republicans to vote for the governor of their choice by running advertisements in their primary. True, there is no law against it, and the technique was used by many Republicans in other states, but it is unseemly to violate customs merely because they are not technically unlawful.

We Independents do not believe that just because a law does not exist prohibiting certain behavior that we should nonetheless engage in such behavior. There is such a thing as right and wrong. And, while Republicans may have engaged in similar behavior, their states do not have similar recall laws so they logically cannot be held to the same standard.

Lord Fair and Balanced concludes his unbiased observations by revealing what is really important in this debate.

I’m not excusing the games Republicans play. But by projecting all evil onto Republicans, Democrats spread the same political disease: the notion that you don’t have to be wary of lying or cheating unless the other side is doing it. Lying and cheating don’t belong to Republicans or Democrats. We’re all susceptible, and we’re all guilty.

Sure, some people are more guilty than others. But if that’s your obsession, I commend to you the words of my colleague, Jack Shafer: If you’re interested in which wing lies more, you’re probably not very interested in the truth.

Indeed. If one is more interested in the lies of one side or another, one is simply inferior to those of us who are taking the High Road. We do not care about the silly prevarications of politicians, whether it be about the democratic system or weapons of mass destruction.

How tedious these little people become with their shrillness. Quiet please. Great minds such as ours must be serene and tranquil in order to remain above the fray. Please, please keep it down, children.

Would you care for a kumquat?

Religious Tolerance

Calpundit says that atheistic types should let up about religious symbols in the public square because it unfairly tags liberalism as being irreligious and hurts the Democrats for no good reason.

I might be persuaded to agree but only after we’ve truly tested the constitutional argument that religious conservatives have been making — that the establishment clause has been misinterpreted. Their argument is that religious speech in general, not just Christianity, has been banished from state institutions and that this perverts the founders intention which was that America should be a country of religious pluralism not secularism.

Therefore, I would like to see the issue engaged in a different way. The next time a Judge Roy Moore wants to install the Ten Commandments in his courtroom or some high school senior wants to lead the school in a prayer I would encourage several people of different faiths to demand that their religion be treated no differently and observed in exactly the same manner. I think it might be especially helpful if Muslims, Buddhists, Rastafarians and Scientologists waged this fight since they represent a variety of ways in which American politics’ new public embrace of religion might be tested.

My gut tells me that the reason the body of law developed as it did was that judges and legislators knew from reading the history of Europe that it was far more practical to secularize the state apparatus than it was to try to get various religions to agree that each was equally entitled to a claim on that apparatus. In fact, it may be just that reasoning that allowed this country, more than all others, to enable religious pluralism and allow so many different faiths to flourish along side each other relatively comfortably.

Rather than just allow the Christians to unilaterally change that to their advantage however, let’s put the establishment clause to the test. If Judge Roy Moore would not object to having a statue of Heile Selassie next to his monument or a bunch of Hare Krishna’s selling books in the lobby of the courthouse, then I suppose I couldn’t really argue with his sincerity in making the claim that he’s not trying to unconstitutionally establish Christianity as the state religion.

If he does object then I think we’ll know that his agenda is really to establish his religion as the legitimate religious voice associated with the state. And, that is exactly what the establishment clause was designed to prevent.

Neoconmen

Just to add my voice to the chorus, I’ll agree that Wolfowitz’s retreat on the issue of al Qaeda terrorists crawling all over Iraq is a media tactic.

I’ve told the story before, but I’ll repeat it here (because, well…why not?)

When I was volunteering for the Clinton campaign in 1992, I happened to find myself alone with a very high level campaign strategist one night. I was gloating about the fact that Mary Matalin had had to apologize that day for a misstatement she’d made about our candidate.

This operative just shook his head and said, “Yeah, but she got it out there, didn’t she?”

Since then, I have expected this kind of thing coming from campaign strategists, operatives and party tools. And both sides do it to some extent. It’s their job to manipulate the media and it’s a comment on the total incompetence of that media that they can get away with it.

But, until now there was a dividing line between those people and policy wonks whose reputation rested on their professional integrity. They simply didn’t do this kind of thing for purely political purposes. Brad De Long has discussed this in terms of the economic advisors as did John DiUllio in his infamous Esquire article.

It’s true that in the foreign policy realm, there have been many examples of wonks floating untruths for the purpose of leading the press in certain directions for policy reasons. But, this complete merging of domestic politics and policy among the professionals is, if not unprecedented, extremely unusual.

Wolfowitz, by showing his true stripes these last couple of weeks, finally and completely reveals that he is not the high minded neocon visionary that everyone assumed. He’s a political hack.

In fact, it is beginning to become pretty obvious that the entire neocon movement isn’t an intellectual undertaking at all. It’s just another GOP con game.

Grandiloquent Putz

A big bravo to Natasha at Pacific Views:

I wrote a post a while ago suggesting that whatever our differences, Democrats shouldn’t pick each other apart. I even repented of my former hostility towards the idea that I might be forced to vote for Lieberman if he wound up on the Democratic ticket. However, over the course of the Democratic debates, I’m reminded why I thought that way in the first place.

It isn’t because I don’t believe Lieberman is a ‘real’ Democrat. And I think, as I said before, that we need to drop that whole silly line of debate. It’s because, on balance, I think he’s a pompous windbag. And god knows, Democrats have to work like hell to shake that whole pompous windbag PR.

That really is the problem with Lieberman — his politics aren’t that much farther to the right than most of the major Dems. It’s simply that he is unbearably sanctimonious. He makes William Bennet (especially these days) seem like a ring-a-ding-ding member of the Rat Pack.

Is it possible that Lieberman actually thinks that people voted for President T-Ball because of his phony spiritual pandering rather than his crotchgrabbing, frat-boy personality?

Whatever the case, he’s completely out of touch with the current climate. He’s only going to damage the party if he doesn’t wise up.

Subliminal Wurlitzer Music

Atrios says of Bobo Brooks’ latest column, “to the extent that it is coherent it’s actually profoundly offensive.”

Arthur Silber says “I guess there might be an interesting point in Brooks’ topic somewhere, but he certainly doesn’t manage to find it, or make it.”

I think Brooks is actually doing something quite innovative with his first two columns for the liberal NY Times by subtly playing to the prejudices of his new audience in service of his old one. In both columns he presents himself in full patented “even handed” mode by ostensibly criticizing George W. Bush. But, in reality, he’s implanting certain images and memes in the discourse that help George W. Bush.

In the first column he portrayed the muscular Bush administration as being unwilling to admit it was wrong — but ending up doing the right thing nonetheless. Never complain, never explain. Just get the job done, dammit. Peggy Noonan and the girls sigh deeply and call for another Mojito. He’s no jump roping Clinton. Real Men never apologize; they’re too busy saving the world.

Today, in a twofer, he twists Dean’s straight talking image and real record of accomplishment into one of a phony blue blooded aristocrat who was bred for leadership and merely pretends to be a regular guy. This is designed to sow doubts among his followers about his authenticity.

Then, setting aside his obvious mental deficiencies and life long failures, he uses the same WASP association to elevate the image of the real inbred Little Prince to show that his silver spoon actually well prepared him for leadership.

The first two Brooks columns have very creatively made Bush appear to be a strong, decisive leader, who by birth and experience was destined to lead the world — a man unaffected by the criticism of the chattering classes, focused only on results. He’s done this in a much more subtle way than the bludgeoning you find on Fox or the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but we should not mistake it for anything but the Bush marketing it really is.

And, by the way, his new audience isn’t us. And it isn’t really the readers of the NY Times. It’s the news writers of the SCLM.

Fire Him

Jayzuz.

Even the Soviets had more respect for the concept of inalienable human rights than this asshole does. At least they held show trials, fergawdsake — a pretense of due process that acknowledged, however disingenuously, that a civilized society must offer a legal justification for imprisoning someone.

We don’t even pretend to have principles anymore.

Grand Strategy

Matthew Yglesias has such a good post up today — honest, heartfelt and smart. The discussion of his intellectual journey from cautious multilateral hawk to Grand Strategy neocon and back is one of the first pieces I’ve read that actually describes the salient difference between the two, and one which (for once) accurately describes the difference between most Democrats and the starry eyed idealists in the “grown-up” administration.

I certainly agree that Americans aren’t especially suited for unilateralism. Spartans we aren’t. We’ve got other things to do than fight an extremely expensive perpetual war for global dominance. And our president hasn’t exactly made a case for term sacrifice other than to shop til we drop.

However, I think he gives short shrift to the “much-maligned Clinton policy of crisis-management … keep the country strong, the alliances firm, and when something goes wrong to try to set it right.” I actually think it IS a grand strategy, in that it allows the US, through step-by-step example, education, commerce and leadership to lure the world to liberal democracy. It is the only way it will work in the long term. Force is on the menu, and will of course be necessary from time to time to protect ourselves or our allies. But, it alone cannot create the necessary environment for positive change.

The fallacy of the Bush Doctrine and the entire Neocon Grand Strategy lies in its internally illogical belief that democracy and freedom can be forced on others through the barrel of a gun.

It’s basically the difference between enticing someone into bed and raping them. They both end with the same basic act, but those who are the object of the first feel quite differently about the method of getting there than the second. It’s true that the charmed may feel manipulated, but they are unlikely to feel violated and angry. The difference, needless to say, is the difference between choice and coercion.

PoMo-tional Opportunities

According to Howard Fineman:

There is evidence everywhere that, at heart, George Bush’s re-election strategy will focus on touting his aggressive use of the American military abroad (and the government’s investigative powers at home) in the war on terror—while simultaneously (by presidential inference and surrogate attack) accusing Democratic opponents of being too wimpy by nature to handle the bad guys.

[…]

White House insiders I’ve talked to in recent days say, in sum, the following: that they plan to sell the president to the country based on what they see as his strength of character, his leaderly resolve and his sense of moral clarity—a man’s man, in other words.

That’s the main reason why I’m for Clark. Bush’s so-called strength is an image that’s been created out of whole cloth, with the willing acquiescence of a confused and shallow media. We should throw down the gauntlet and challenge this absurd perception. But, we have to do it right.

As much as I hate to deal with matters of life and death in this way, I’m afraid that we have no choice. The post-modern presidency isn’t really the problem. They’re simply taking advantage of the post-modern media.

This interesting book by Pippa Norris; The Virtuous Circle, Political Communications in Post Industrial Societies (pdf) discusses the current situation:

Focus groups and opinion polls can be seen as an effective way that parties can stay in touch with public opinion, and one which is more representative of the general electorate than reliance upon the opinions of local party activists.

Alternatively, the evolution of modern and post -modern campaigns can be seen as threatening the democratic process, widening the gap between citizens and their representatives. If parties and candidates adopt whatever message seems most likely to resonate with focus groups, if pollsters, consultants and advertisers rather than politicians come to determine the content of campaigns, and if ‘spin’ outweighs ‘substance’, then the serious business of government may be replaced by the superficial manipulation of images. ”Packaging politics”, Bob Franklin argues, “impoverishes political debate by oversimplifying and trivializing political communications.”

[…]

Some fear that the shift in campaign techniques may have a direct impact on civic engagement; if voters have become passive spectators of symbolic events staged in television studios rather than active participants in local party meetings and community campaigns. As discussed earlier, the most common concern is that post-modern campaigns turn off voters due the decline of face-to-face communications and the rise of practices such as negative news highly adversarial to government, horse-race journalism, and trivialization of campaign discourse.

The Dean and Clark phenomena are exceptionally good news, then. Instead of being passive spectators, the people have used one of the new technologies to facilitate the face-to-face communications that many believe are indispensable to counteract the increasingly deadening impact of the post-modern campaign.

But, if anyone believes that this is going to supplant the powerful mainstream news media by 2004 they are living in dreamland. For the coming election (and perhaps for the foreseeable future) political campaigns will have to be run, at least in part, as product marketing — “packaging politics” as it’s referred to above. As long as huge sums of money are at stake in elections, as long as human beings are more engaged in their day to day lives than in the abstract and complex issues of national governance and as long as television remains the public’s primary entertainment and information medium, we are going to have to recognize that symbols, archetypes, images, soundbites, brands and metaphors are the means to sell the message.

And, I think we need to relax a little bit about it. Post modern communication isn’t immoral and it isn’t stupid. It’s just fast, fleeting and simple. The problem is that policy, politics and governing aren’t.

I don’t think there’s any turning back. We must accept this new reality and learn to work with it, while we try to balance it out with sincere grassroots democratic efforts like the Dean Meet-ups and the draft Clark campaigns. If we fail to do both we will lose, and the simple reason is that the other side is doing it already.

The hard core of the Republican party are, by and large, very amenable to appeals to authority. The dominance of talk radio and fundamentalist pulpits and it’s insularity from the chaotic give and take of real debate give the dittoheads the illusion of winning without ever having to fight.

But, the GOP’s dirty little secret is that they know that the majority of Americans are not by nature authoritarians — they are individualists and communitarians. This goes back to the puritans and pioneers who settled this country. And it is why they have used the post modern media to portray the Republican Party caring about such formerly local concerns as education and why they spend so much time promoting their brand-name-in-a-suit as a particular archetype — a manly, maverick warrior. The Party is branding itself as the New England Town Meeting meets the Western ideal and the Southern Cavalier.

They are remarkably successful at this largely because the post modern media is set up to deal with images, sensation and speed and the Republicans are willing and able to give them what they need. Not surprisingly they have also figured out that in this fast and fleeting post modern media world, dishonesty and rank manipulation are more possible than they’ve been since Hearst practically ran US foreign policy.

Unfortunately, it is happening at the very time when a radical ideology has overtaken the GOP that literally threatens American democracy and national security. This is the kind of dangerous confluence of events from which unanticipated, cataclysmic political changes are made.

We simply must become more sophisticated in our thinking about these issues. We have to realize that it is not enough to have the best ideas, the best policies or even the best candidate. We have to come to terms with the fact that in this high speed post modern world, we must begin to sell our politics in a post modern way.

In a world where a sub-sentient, fratboy can be successfully marketed as a strong, decisive leader to a significant number of independents and Democrats, I think it’s obvious that the Republicans are on to something.

Unless Clark turns out to be a complete bumbling idiot on the trail (which would be very surprising) I believe he is the best positioned, by way of image, biography and association (“packaging”) to expose the Bush “mystique” as nothing more than a chimera and at the same time begin to revitalize the outdated image of the Democratic party.

I’d like nothing more than to reject this simplistic formulation and have the candidates run solely on the issues. But, the brutal politics of the last ten years have convinced me that we must learn to compete in the post modern media. I’m not interested in tilting at windmills while the power crazed modern Republicans turn the country into a functional one party state.

No Cigar

TAPPED says:

One doesn’t exactly expect last night’s Democratic debate to receive fair treatment at the hands of the National Review Online, but Michael Graham’s attack on Howard Dean goes beyond the anticipated:

Gov. Dean’s claim that what he wants more than anything as president is to “restore the honor and dignity and respect that this country is owed around the world” may not inspire the typical union member or soccer mom, but to the internationalists of the far Left, it was right on key.

If only the “far Left” is interested in making America honored and respected around the world, then Tapped thinks a lot of new members are going to be signing up for the “far Left,” including members of the Bush administration who are currently begging for help in various foreign capitals. It’s especially odd because Dean’s closing statement included a remark far more worthy of criticism:

Over a decade ago, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down without America firing a shot. And that was for two reasons. The first was that we had a strong military, and that’s important. But the second is that on the other side of the Iron Curtain most people wanted to be like America and they wanted to be like Americans.

And in the two and a half years into this presidency, you would be hard-pressed to find a majority in any country in the world where people wanted to be like Americans again.

TAPPED says the North Koreans probably would. That’s true, but the North Koreans live in hell.

*And did everyone notice that FoxNews cut away before the closing statements in the debate were even finished to have their partisan spinners immediately spin it in the most negative fashion they could find?

WTF?

Everybody’s Talkin’

Kos posted this interesting California based poll on the recall showing Bustamonte holding on to his lead.

I would trust the California polls over the national polls on this question. This is a very fluid political situation in a very unusual state. The California pollsters are invariably closer to the mark here than any of the big national guys.

I have to say that in the last few days of doing business around LA, I have had (and overheard) more conversations with strangers about politics than I can remember since the Nixon years. (The impeachment featured a lot of covert whispering. You never knew when you were going to be confronted by a rabid, out of control, wing-nut Clinton hater … plus the pornographic Starr Report was often “inappropriate” in public.)

I’m hearing almost across-the-board derision about Arnold, some of it disdainfully humorous and some plainly insulted by his lack of preparation.

This is all anecdotal in the extreme, I know, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s just unusual in my experience for people to be so openly engaged.

I also happen to live just 4 blocks from Ahnuld’s campaign headquarters. You’d think at least a handful of his supporters would show up from time to time in the local Starbuck’s talking up their guy while standing in line for their soy latte’s. I haven’t heard anything but loud, vociferous Arnold bashing throughout the neighborhood. If Ahnuld can’t get the desperate, brown nosing, Hollywood opportunist contingent behind him, he’s got problems.

I also think Davis is making some headway with his “hair shirt and humility” tour. He looks tan and almost human. But I believe that the biggest thing that will help him was the appearance of Howard Dean, calling the GOP out. If it’s followed up with more of the same from other candidates, along with the Big Guns — Bill, Hill and Al — I think he might pull it out.

The Democrats are starting to get riled up.