~ BANNED IN EUROPE! ~
| My Webpage
| |
"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Hemmed In?
Regarding Laurence Haas: A Democratic President would be far less hemmed in than he asserts. Remember, there is a long history of campaigning this way - Woodrow Wilson "kept us out of war", Roosevelt ran as a peace candidate in '40. When the rubber hit the road, both did what they had to and are known as great statesmen and military leaders today, not for their anti-war rhetoric during political campaigns.
As for the current crop of "anti-war candidates", while it's kind of cynical to say their campaign rhetoric will mean nothing when we're faced with the need to "project force abroad", it's also reassuring to realize that the current Democratic candidates are, well, lying, even if they are getting credit for being "the candid truth tellers". (Ok, Dennis Kucinich exempted: He's sincere).
Just take Al Gore (please) - today he sounds as rabid anti-War Left as the rest of them, but during his actual career, he employed people like, well, Lawrence Haas. Right now the Dems are just saying what the "Netroots" demand to hear. Is this behavior corrosively destructive to our civic discourse? Yes. But it doesn't have as many real foreign policy implications as people who are taking them at their word believe.
At least I hope that's true. To the extent to which they're sincere, instead of cynically playing to the "netroots" base, we're in trouble. But then they'd be "hemmed-in" whether they spoke this way during silly season or not.
"Stolen Election!" - That would be the title of countless of Left/Liberal blog posts right now, had the results gone the other way. Well, I'm sure there were "election irregularities", as they say, in the usual number.
But we, the conservatives, the Right, did not lose this election because of shenanegans. We lost it for a number of reasons. Valid reasons. Number one, the Republican Congressional majority came to have a sense of entitlement, not that different from the Democratic majority that was thrown out in '94. Hopefully, they will learn the right lessons and not the wrong ones.
Hopefully also we will be mature about defeat. We will not become virulent obsessives, pointing fingers and wallowing in conspiracy theories. Such behavior is not the sole provenance of the Left: All humans are prone to such rationalizations of disappointment. Yes, the mainstream media was blatantly against us and twisted the presentation of things to cast "our side" in the most unfavorable light, and "theirs" in the most favorable.
But what's new about that? We faced that in elections before, and won anyhow. We have more megaphones than we had before. The Republican's, and conservative's, failure was in communicating things properly ourselves. In being constant in explaining what we believe, and primarily constant in emphasizing why the Iraq war, for all its disappointments, is a necessary battle in the overall war (see also here, as well as the Orson Scott Card link, in the post below).
"Communication" makes it sound similar to what the Dems say when they lose: "there's no problem with our policies, just in selling them to the people. The Republicans distort it." But that's not what I mean.
I mean communication in deed as well as rhetoric. Republicans, and conservatives in general, should have behaved in office as if they meant what they said about the importance of this moment in time, and of the importance of their leadership. But too often they did not. Just often enough to cause the American people to rebuke them.
Electoral spankings are a necessary component of a Democracy. The last thing we need is a party which believes they cannot lose, that they are the majority for the foreseeable future. Republicans, because of past victories and the number of "safe" Congressional districts, came to believe that. They behaved as if they believed that the only way they could lose is if they didn't roll out the pork barrel enough (thus "earmarking" on a grand scale). Buying the your vote with your own money is what caused a lot of people to sour on the Democratic leadership: Should the Republicans be surprised it caused people to be cynical about them?
Let me go back to rhetoric, though. The term itself, "rhetoric", has taken on negative connotations in our society. But rhetoric is important: Properly communicating an important message, convincingly doing so, with conviction, is vital to any democratic politics. Here is where the current political leadership on the Right - not just Bush, but certainly from him on down - has failed. It is a not unimportant failure. For that reason, we lost an opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to decisively communicate not just the war we're in, but the fallacy of certain visions that make the war we are fighting as problematic as it is.
We should look at this electorpal defeat not with disappointment or bitterness and recrimination, but as a chance for renewal. In democratic politics, no defeat need be permanent. There will be another election. What will count is what lessons we take away from this one, and how we respond to it. Let us re-forge our positive vision: Renew our emphasis on the policies we favor and would enact, rather than just what we'd prevent the other side from doing.
One thing to keep in mind. If one looks seat by seat, it's clear that the Republicans lost their majority on the basis of things other than the war itself. There were enough Foleys and Delay's to make the margin of difference. The Republicans also did enough wrong as a majority that, even in the absence of the war, they would have likely lost as many seats.
But those of us who are pro-war should take little consolation in that. Saying that does not mean the war had nothing to do with it. It only means that the voters had plenty of other reasons to vote against the Republicans, in addition to their disillusionment over Iraq. But we need to face candidly the fact that we have lost the support of a majority of Americans for the war. The only reason our losses were not greater is the American's also are not exactly thrilled with the Democrats, either, whose flaws are also manifest to them (oh, that and gerrymandering, which makes the vast majority of districts, for both parties, deplorably safe. But more on that subject, another time).
Admitting to ourselves that the war cost us in this election does not mean it was wrong. Nor does it mean that the war should be fought with an eye on its electorial consequences. But it does mean we need to do a lot more to convince our fellow citizens of the rightness of persevering than we have been able to manage to. We should not tell ourselves that it doesn't matter, as long as Bush is in office things will carry on regardless. That reflects a certain amount of indifference to the opinions of one's fellow citizens.
Nor does it mean, of course, that we must accept that they are right. We must respect their opinions enough to try to persuade them otherwise, and, if we should fail, then understand the ramifications that will have in the next election. Because even if we are not convinced that their doubts about the war are right, we shall have to accept the outcome of that election, and its policy consequences, regardless.
On the election. It's an excellent, thoughtful essay.
I have to say I pretty much agree with an earlier Glenn Reynolds quote, that the Republicans deserve to lose but the Democrats don't deserve to win.
Ultimately I think the later outweighs the former: The Democrats don't deserve to win a bit more than the Republicans don't deserve to lose. But it sickens me that the Republicans are in a position of rallying the country in their nation-wide election campaign, behind what amounts to "don't like us? Look at the alternative, it's worse!". This may work, but they use it as an excuse to be unrepentant for their "unforced errors" (to borrow again from Reynolds' pre-mortem).
Both parties have been using a version of that campaign strategy for a long time with their base: "Sure, you don't like us, but look at who will be in power if you don't keep supporting us anyhow!" In most elections, the Republicans have used it less (at least within recent memory), emphasizing what their goals are. This led to a different but important emphasis: "We have these goals. You share them. If the other guys win, we won't be able to achieve them."
You should be able to spot the difference. The difference may be subtle, but it's vital. It's the difference between having an agenda, and just being in power. The current campaign has slid over the thin line, and is now almost entirely: "vote for us, or you'll get them". It's a campaign of exhaustion that resembles, if anything, John Major's campaign against Neil Kinnock. Remember what happened to the British Conservative Party in the next election. They have yet to recover.
They say "the stakes are too high for you to stay home," but the stakes are also too high for our elected officials (to call them "leaders" would be, in most cases, to degrade the word) to behave as they have been. No, I don't mean (primarily) the Foley thing and other distractions. But the general frivolity, negligence, loggrolling, irresponsible spendthrift budgets, lack of real seriousness when it comes to budgeting for the forces we need to confront the challenges we face, and so on. Not to mention trade and immigration, among other issues.
I originally intended this to be a short post - mainly the Orson Scott Card link. What we really need is an entirely new generation of political leaders. Ones that fit the term "political leaders" in a way that the current group does not.
Everything that made "Boomers" so insufferable (on the whole) throughout their lives, they've brought with them into politics, not least of which their narcissism. Indeed, they illustrate why narcissism is such a dangerous vice, in that it causes them to inflate the importance of petty issues (at the expense of more significant ones) and lose all sense of proportionality. Apparently this causes all too many to lack the judgment necessary to differentiate between the vital (American success in war, for example) and the less-vital (whether Nancy Pelosi gets to be Speaker or not). Thus too many see the larger issue simply as a means to advance their cause in the smaller. I get the sense from too many that they view the war (or whatever issue) primarily as a tool to gain power. This is the reverse of how it should be: Being in office primarily as a means to win the war, or achieve other policy goals. But for the "me" generation, everything, in war and peace, is really all about them.
But, to paraphrase Rumsfeld, I suppose we're stuck fighting this war with the political class we have, rather than the political class we might wish we had. Help us, Oh God.
Aside: I've always said that one of the features about democracy is that it means a nation gets the leadership it deserves. If that is true, what that says about us I do not know.
A bit late with a quote from this, but it's actually better to have waited a bit and seen if it would hold up. Sadly, it really does:
In my time, I've known dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and other members of Britain's House of Lords and none of them had the contempt for the masses one routinely hears from America's coastal elites.
Dismissiveness towards the views of a majority of voters is no way to win elections. That's the practical side of what's so wrong with the undertone one sees all too often, and the idea that they don't need to change anything to win.
I've said before: I have my own views, and prefer people who more closely hold them win elections. But I like it when we have two healthy parties competing for votes. It makes it better all around. The converse tends to bring out the worst in all parties, which only exacerbates the problem. This part is also good:
More to the point, nobody who campaigns with Ben Affleck at his side has the right to call anybody an idiot. H. L. Mencken said that no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Well, George Soros, Barbra Streisand and a lot of their friends just did: The Kerry campaign and its supporters -- MoveOn.org, Rock The Vote, etc. -- were awash in bazillions of dollars, and what have they got to show for it? In this election, the plebs were more mature than the elites: They understood that war is never cost-free and that you don't run away because of a couple of setbacks; they did not accept that one jailhouse scandal should determine America's national security interest; they rejected the childish caricature of their president and paranoid ravings about Halliburton; they declined to have their vote rocked by Bruce Springsteen or any other pop culture poser.
Which, yes, drips with contempt of its own. No side is immune from it, but some display it more than others. Right now, it's the Democratic side that people see as the worst offenders in this. And those people who spent bazillions misunderestimating the electorate will continue to do so until they learn to respect those who don't share their opinions. That doesn't mean they need to transform their own views to match those they don't share. But how you go about trying to persuade, trying to reach people, changes a lot based on whether you respect the views you don't share, or sneer and call them stupid and dismiss them out of hand, rather than taking them as something that needs to be dealt with on the merits, seriously and substantively.
I would argue that there's also something to this:
At some point in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, your typical media liberal would feign evenhandedness and bemoan the way the choice has come down to "two weak candidates.''
But, in that case, how come the right's weak candidates are the ones that win? Because a weak candidate pushing strong ideas is better than a weak candidate who's had no ideas since Roe vs. Wade.
But one-problem-per-post is probably a good limit. Fixing the problem of tone and attitude towards those who don't agree with them is the first thing that needs to be adressed. After that, then they might open their mind to new ideas to appeal to those people, and kill two birds with one stone, rather than simply assuming they have all the answers and the only problem is people who are too stupid or deluded by Karl Rove's (before it was Lee Atwater. Before then, Roger Ailes, before then. . .) Jedi Mind Tricks.
A little over a year ago I wrote a piece FOR Sincere Liberalism. Now Peter Beinart has a a TNR piece arguing in favor of a Trumanesque Liberalism.
It's a very candid piece, coming to the same conclusion I do - that modern Liberalism is being pulled to where it is by its radicalized activist base, that their base's attitude is the problem. But it's harder to change that than it would be to simply change leadership. But it's a change that must be done, and I recommend you read Beinart's article if you haven't already.
For whatever reason, I was really struck by last week's TNR cover:
Dispair over the loss of the singularly uninspiring John Kerry to George Bush? At minimum, I agree with Martin Peretz - a movement that puts so much of its hopes in a vessel that they knew was manifestly flawed perhaps shouldn't get so distraught over his loss. But. . .they did. They aren't foreigners, they're fellow Americans. A lot of us on "our side" of the divide were (also) talking about the great stakes of this election. I know I was, and I still sincerely believe that it was one of the more important elections of our time. Lets say you held that belief, but came down on the other side of the divide, how might you feel? How might we have felt if a man we believed was not suited to take on the challenges we face won the Election, with so much at stake?
It's easy to lampoon the often hyperbolic reaction of the Left and of Liberals (they are not identical) to the election. It's easy to see dangerous tendencies in their reaction, as I did, when it comes to their tendency to dismiss (and thus delegitimize) disagreement with them as stupidity, ignorance, selfishness, or the like. It's important to identify such attitudes, and argue against them and the dangers they pose. I certainly do not feel it is appropriate to characterize my vote as one cast out of ignorance, stupidity, or selfishness. It may have been misguided (that remains to be seen), but it was based on a lot of knowledge of what is going on in the world, and my opinion about what would be the best policies for our country to pursue, in all our interests, and who was best suited to carry it forward.
I believe that those who voted for the other side were wrong, in that I don't share their conclusions, and often not even their world-view (when it comes to Liberalism and the programs they advocate). But the young lady in that picture obviously cares about something. One can surmise it's the future of the country. She feels as deeply as I would if the shoe were on the other foot that the wrong decision was made in the election.
In the end all the talk about what is wrong about the other side doesn't help keep us together as Americans. There is talk, satirical and otherwise, of secession. Obviously it's not serious - not right now. But the divisions in the country are real, and are dangerous. I certainly don't agree that it's all our side's fault, nor do I believe that the means of resolving the divide is to let the Wookie win. I've discussed passive-agressive methods of delegitimizing dissent in the guise of "consensus" and "not being divisive" before, where such mantras are invoked to compel acceptance of one side's policies and render disagreement unacceptable.
That's not a solution. But we do need to find some way to focus more on what we share as Americans rather than on our differences. Even if those commonalties are seemingly banal. We need to at least agree that we all care about the Country's future. We're bound together by a lot of things - something that the "secessionists" Kerry voters who might otherwise talk about interdependence should agree with, if they weren't in such despair.
One of the reasons I posted on winning with dignity and not "rubbing it in" or otherwise being obnoxious about "our" victory, even in the face of abuse by "their side", was because of this. We need less rancor, not more. This does not mean our differences of opinion on public policy aren't real. It's just that we shouldn't cross swords over them, or tear the country apart over them.
Self-Congratulation as a Basis of Election Strategy
There's a reason why Democrats and the progressives who rally under that banner at election time lose elections. It isn't because, as they want to reassure themselves and others, that a majority of the country is just too uneducated to understand politics and reality. The truth is that those who like to describe themselves, as "members of the reality-based community" are detached from it. That form of self-congratulation is simply a(nother) display of it.
Throughout the election and in its aftermath they hurled a variety of epithets at the Bush team, Republicans in general, and their supporters. But one word often entered my mind every time they did that: Projection. They seem completely oblivious to the venom that has become the foundation of their reality. The way they talk to each other about the rest of us who do not share their views is not hidden anymore - if it ever was. There are several recent examples of the attitude that those who do not agree with them, those who hold different views, simply aren't decent enough, good enough, enlightened enough to support them (another example of this attitude). That the reason they did not win the election is because too many people are benighted, selfish, uncaring, and uneducated. But these are just recent examples of an endemic phenomenon. Sad American put it best, explaining how they lost a vote they could have had:
I don't think you really want my vote. I actively sought out your perspective. I tuned in regularly, for months, to your biggest media project, your serious effort to get your message out: Air America Radio. I listened all day on Good Friday as host after host mocked people like me for believing in Jesus's life, death, and resurrection. I listened as Janeane Garofalo, who was one of my favorite comedians for years, expressed hatred and disgust for Bush voters so vile that I ended my live stream feeling assaulted, as if I'd been vomited on. I listened the night that Mike Malloy told a young Republican to hang up the phone and go open a vein. I listened to pure, unadulterated venom that was so intense I sometimes cut the stream and cried. Tonight, your spokespeople on AAR have been calling people like me "snake-handling evangelicals," and that was about the kindest thing I heard.
The fact is they don't think they should have to earn your vote. Their attitude is closer to the One-Party State mentality than that of Bush & Rove - disagreement from them, dissent that is expressed in the form of a differing world view, is rendered illegitimate. Yes, they will tolerate marginal dissent, dissent from the Left. But only within certain boundaries. See how they ostracized those voices among their own movement, from the old Scoop Jackson Democrats through Casey Democrats to the Zell Miller & 9/11 Democrats. Values mattered to those Democrats, but not in the form of bigotry. But they didn't leave Liberalism - Liberalism left them. Thus they became Reagan Democrats and now, if often reluctantly, Bush voters.
The main problem among the modern progressive community is that for all they congratulate themselves as being the open-minded tolerant respecters of diversity, they aren't. Perhaps they invoke such terminology so often in word for the precise reason that it is not displayed in deed. You don't have to talk so much about something like that when you're actually doing it. Actions speak for themselves. Democrats are now telling themselves that they need better packaging, as if more effective propaganda to gull the rubes is the solution. That's what passes for soul-searching and re-evaluation based on empirical evidence among the "reality-based community". And that is why they fail.
Of course, it should be said that the Right has its share of people who behave in the same way. This is often the retort of by people confronted by the above argument. It's true, but misses the point. It's just another way of avoiding confronting the problem. Because though conservatives have such people, a difference in degree can be significant enough to be a difference in kind, and apparently the electorate is not as turned off by it, because it isn't as prevalent. It's endemic among the Left, but has been marginalized (I believe - and election results back me up) on the Right. Whatever the case, even if it's true that both sides are equally guilty, the attitude that those who do not agree with their views are unworthy and their opinions are illegitimate is hurting "progressives" more. That's a simple fact the "reality based community" must confront. If they solve this problem but the Right's share of people with that attitude towards others continue, then the Left have an advantage where right now they are clearly disadvantaged.
To the better angels among the Left/Liberals, two pieces of advice for next time:
It's not about packaging, it's about persuasion. Packaging is just a means of transmitting a message. An attitude that you just need to package it better is different from one based on being more persuasive, convincing people with arguments rather than just propaganda.
Replace, displace, or otherwise marginalize what has become the voice of your movement - the Democratic Underground types, the Kos types, the Michael Moore types, the MoveOn types, the "Air America" types. Listen more to the Pat Cadells of your Party and less to the once-and-future (I hope) fringe types who have become your mainstream, the public face of the progressive/Left community.
Free advice is worth what you pay for it, and coming from someone on "the other side" you might suspect it, but it is sincerely meant - because I do believe in a two-party, not a one-party, system, and want a functioning alternative to the Republicans.
Well, after further review, there won't even be the recounting. Kerry's concession was particularly graceful, in particular the line that elections should be decided by the voter, not a protracted legal process.
Edwards' speech, on the other hand, was a boorish expression of the Endless Campaign, and helps highlight the fact that just because you're a Democrat from the South, that doesn't mean you're a temperate moderate - something South Carolinians discovered after electing him, which was one reason why he had less than full enthusiasm for trying to keep his Senate seat and was more than ready to move on. Hillary Clinton is more moderate by comparison.
If they were taking my advice, and more importantly if this were the time to give it, I would recommend that the Democrats nominate Evan Bayh in '08, or at least put him on the ticket with Hillary!!! - he's a real moderate, and could give them a better shot at Ohio and they might even have a shot at his home state of Indiana.
Anyhow, as I go forward with this site, I'm going to renew my focus on the war and the international situation. Of course, not to the exclusion of domestic events.
Congradulations to the Bush-Cheney team, I hope they'll govern well and learn from the past - no one is perfect and even supporters of Bush and the Republicans should and do know that there is always room for improvement. Lets trim the sails on domestic spending while we work on market-oriented reform of government programs and the tax code, and insure it works for Americans, not just for "our side".
Well, I was hoping Bush would win my old home State, Wisconsin, where I grew up and still think of as where I come from (when people ask where I'm from, I don't say Colorado). Alas, it looks unlikely.
You can't have everything.
Oh, I didn't blog last night because I had people over to watch the returns, and it'd have been rude to them.
Players who played for Vince Lombardi, when they talk about players who showboat in the end zone, talk about acting like you've been there before - and will be back again.
The message there is to behave with some dignity. Don't gloat, don't showboat, don't rub it in. I know that it'll be tempting when you're confronted by people who you know would be in-your-face if the shoe was on the other foot, and indeed who might say, write, or do things that provoke tempt you to come back with an in-your-face retort of your own, one that may seem smug.
But lets try to avoid that. This doesn't mean be silent. Being humble doesn't mean being reticent. But there are good ways of conducting oneself. Rebut them on the merits, without attitude or rancor. We need to try and find a way to step back from the poisonous partisanship of recent years - not from partisanship itself, but from the hysterical and venomous sort.
Which brings up another thing. Don't let people convince anyone that partisanship by its nature is bad. That is usually a passive-agressive way for them to impose their way and compell you to not disagree, to rule out of bounds legitimate disagreement on the merits. Or to say that, even though you have a majority, if you push your agenda rather than adopting theirs, you're being "partisan" (wrong) rather than "bipartisan" and "unifying" and "consensus-building" (good). Winning means you are able to move policy in your direction. It is fair to point out that if Kerry won, that's what he would work to do. Policy agendas differed, one agenda won and the other did not. Just because one wins with dignity and does not gloat, it doesn't mean victory doesn't matter. Just ask those old Lombardi Packers.
Oh, and the recounts. . .and the petulant ranting about how "we waz jobbed". But it looks like Bush has won and I am wrong - not that I mind being wrong in this case. The election seems to be just outside the margin of theft in Ohio for President and South Dakota for Senate.
Still, I was right (see my comments here and my post here) that it would come down to Ohio, and that Kerry had a better chance of winning that than he did in Florida.
More later if I get time to post, but now I'm off to PT.
According to this story, Kerry is already in the process of putting his Cabinet together:
Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware has been asked by Mr Kerry to become Secretary of State in a Democratic administration, according to Kerry campaign aides.
That might bother some people, who could see it as presumptuous, but it doesn't bother me at all. He should be ready to hit the ground running if he wins, and if he doesn't, then no harm, no foul. Indeed, the article's headline can be taken further - I think this is one of the things we should consider copying from the Brits. Why shouldn't Candidates name their Cabinet, or at least those who will fill the major offices, during the Campaign? If they did so, they would run with a sort of "Shadow-Cabinet", and voters would be better able to judge what they are voting for. An Administration isn't just one man - it's those he (maybe someday she) will put into office as well when elected.
Candidates could name who will fill major Candidate posts during their Administration at the Conventions. That would help breathe some life into the Party Conventions, which have become decreasingly relevant in the modern era.
First read Ralph Peters, no knee-jerk defender of the Bush Administration or its handling of Iraq, on the shameless lie upon which the Media-Democratic Complex is basing their late hit. Read the whole piece, which goes point by point to debunking it. He concludes with this:
Sen. Kerry knows this is a bogus issue. And he doesn't care. He's willing to accuse our troops of negligence and incompetence to further his political career. Of course, he did that once before.
Such a candidacy, such a campaign, a political movement that would produce such a candidacy, does not deserve to be given power - whatever Andrew Sullivan says about rewarding their tactics as a means of forcing them to become responsible.
Next this piece on RealClearPolitics on the stakes of this election:
This November we will vote in the only election during our lifetime that will truly matter. Because America is at a once-in-a-generation crossroads, more than an election hangs in the balance. Down one path lies retreat, abdication and a reign of ambivalence.
Down the other lies a nation that is aware of its past and accepts the daunting obligation its future demands. If we choose poorly, the consequences will echo through the next 50 years of history. . .
The defeat of President Bush will send a chilling message to future presidents who may need to make difficult, yet unpopular decisions. America has always been a nation that rises to the demands of history regardless of the costs or appeal. If we turn away from that legacy, we turn away from whom we are.
Second, we inform every terrorist organization on the globe that the lesson of Somalia was well-learned. In Somalia we showed terrorists that you don't need to defeat America on the battlefield when you can defeat them in the newsroom.
Read the whole thing. Had I more time, I'd write up something more extensive myself, and I hope I will be able to do so this weekend.
The real question is why the debate moderator didn't put Kerry on the spot by asking questions like some of these instead of letting him get away with fine-sounding generalities and platitudinous handwaves.
Especially #1, and referencing this statement by Kerry in the context of it would have been appropriate (given Bush's statements were fair game for reference in questions).
Ruth Wisse on this weekend. Of course, liberating tolerance is on display:
But this enviable autonomy doesn't extend to graduate students or untenured colleagues. Recently, I had two encounters with sobering implications for the academy. A junior professor told me that when she began teaching at Harvard she resigned from several organizations that would have betrayed her conservative leanings. She hadn't wanted to give colleagues an easy excuse for voting her down when she came up for tenure; but now that the prospect of tenure was before her, she didn't know whether she wanted to stay on in such a repressive community. My second conversation was with a rare pro-Israel Muslim whose contract as lecturer hadn't been renewed, very probably because he was critical of the way his subject was being taught. This young man was in a great mood. He was leaving for Washington, where he could make a greater contribution to national security.
That's why this stuff is self-perpetuating. There's more illustrating the same phenomenon. Check it out.
Almost everything falls into that category. Iraq's messy. So? What isn't? America has no Colonial Office, no political administrators with decades of experience in far-flung climes; its occupation of Iraq was learnt on the fly, because there was no other way. But the ludicrous defeatism over what's at worst a partial success is unbecoming to a great nation. If the present Democratic-media complex had been around earlier, America would never have mustered the will to win World War II or, come to that, the Revolutionary War. There would be no America. You'd be part of a Greater Canada, with Queen Elizabeth on your coins and government health care.
The sad thing is that I think that there are many in the "citizens of the world" (AKA Kerry supporters) gang among us who would be happy to make that trade. At bottom it's an attutude that comes out in a variety of ways, that this country isn't that special, not particularly worth defending, and is the source of the world's problems rather than a force for good in resolving them.
Anyone who thinks I'm going too far in making such an assertion is free to write me and I'll be more than willing to discuss it further. In the meantime, I refer to these previous posts that touch on it in part, and in particular to this and this and the Of Course You Know, This Means WAR! post.
I was going to make a post on this topic when I got back to regular blogging, and was reminded to do so reading this John Leo piece that Glenn Reynolds linked to. That is, if the shoe is on the other foot, what should the Right do?
Should Kerry win, as I predict, should we be petulant, cantakorous, and see the war mainly in terms of how we can use it to our own partisan advantage in regaining power? In other words, should we behave as the Democrats and Liberals have?
Someone, I can't remember who, asked a question along these lines on their blog when I was at AIT. Unfortunately I can't find the link back to it, but they asked conservatives to candidly and honestly say whether they would behave the same way we have seen the Liberal-Left behave, behavior we have deplored. It was a good question: will we be hypocrites? Are we really serious about the war, to the point of setting asside partisan interest?
We should be. I've written on that topic before, as well. But the question itself is somewhat telling, and highlights something that is very corrossive. That is the apparent fact that the phrase "politics stops at the waters edge" is only to apply when Democrats are in power.
In his efforts to convince us all to vote for Kerry, Andrew Sullivan makes this argument ("Forcing the Dems Into Responsibility" - as if giving a notoriously irresponsible teenage boy whiskey and car keys was the way to make him responsible). His further statements ("Kerry As Good Cop") along those lines highlight a form of political blackmail by the Left. This "Let the Wookie Win" attitude, give them power and stop contesting their presumption that it's theirs by right, or they won't help on matters of national life and death is an ill omen. That's hardly a sign of a healthy political movement that deserves to be in charge. It's not a sign of a healthy national political dialogue. It's not a signpost of sound civic discourse. Sullivan's argument that we should give them power in order to "call their bluff and force the Democrats to get serious again about defending this country" may be the best he can come up with. But it's a distrubing argument to make.
As is the fact that we have to raise the question of how we'll respond if Kerry wins, and whether we'll support the war when we should, when policies are pursued that we would otherwise support, if they're pursued by "the other side" but not us. It's a good question. The fact that I don't believe Kerry will follow sound policies in prosecuting the war is a big reason why I can't vote for him, and why I think the question is somewhat hypothetical. But at least for this blogger, I will support him in the same way I supported Clinton when he (finally) took action in the Balkans, and when he tried to rally the world against Saddam in the late '90s. If by some chance Kerry supports the FTA the way Clinton pushed for NAFTA, I'd support him on that. Certainly, as a soldier I'll obey the orders of my Commander in Chief. I do reserve the right, as a Blogger, to be critical when I think things are being mishandled, just as I have when "my guy", Bush, has mishandled things.
But poisonous politics where the only way something can be "bipartisan" is if one side (the Democratic Left) is in charge, well, as I said that's disturbing. We should not emulate their behavior, but the fact that they are behaving the way they have is not an argument in favor of giving them power. Not to me, and it's shocking that Andrew Sullivan thinks it is a good argument for electing them. Don't let the Wookie Win unless they deserve it on the merits. Their behavior shows they are not so deserving.
Note the title of this post. It's not "who should win", it's who will. In this world, outcomes are often imperfect at best.
The election is going to be close enough that illegally cast votes, boxes of cast ballots "found" late on the Res (New Mexico, '00; South Dakota '02), and massive turnout in certain inner-city precincts controlled by Democratic election officials, where "massive turnout" is turnout exceeding 100% of eligible voters residing in the precinct and 99.5% counted as Kerry votes will tip the balance. That is why a massive effort is underway to block any effort to insure that votes counted are legally cast votes.
But Kerry's win will not be exclusively do to the Democrat's efforts to increase the number of votes they get by such means. Lets face it - Bush will have lost the election because he failed to grasp the opportunities he had to win it.
These opportunities were opened in the debates. The first debate was key. His failure to point out that Kerry voted against the first Gulf War, and that Kerry's reaction to the first WTC bombing was to try to cut intelligence funding by billions of dollars, was a major error. One that cannot be belatedly recovered from in advertisements in the closing weeks of the campaign. Those are just two examples. Another would have been to highlight the fact that Kerry claims to want us to be more multilateral in our diplomacy and involve our allies in major negotiations, but in North Korea he wants to exclude them. Bush failed to do that in the first debate, only making that point (somewhat clumsily) later.
He missed opportunities in the third debate, too. He should have brought up the fact that the majority of small businesses created during his Administration were created by women, and that Kerry wants to raise taxes on them - which will make it difficult for them to succeed. Kerry pandered to women in that debate, and Bush failed to respond. Instead he simply restated his education policy (several times).
But it is the first debate that really turned the campaign. Bush's failure to articulate his policies and the flaws in Kerry's is what allowed Kerry to close the gap to the point where the Democrat's "get out the manufactured vote" campaign will succeed. There's no point bemoaning the later after the election, and ignoring the former - the Bush campaign's own failure.
In Greek tragedy, every heroic protagonist has an "Achilles Heel". All along for Bush his has been an inability to articulate his policies. This hasn't been universal - Bush has shown, on several occasions, that he can give a good speech, effectively outlining and explaining his policies, effectively speaking to the American public. His speech writers have, at times, done their jobs well. Bush is often very good speaking off-the-cuff as well. His interview with Bill O'Reilly which aired on Fox News Channel the same week as the first debate shows that Bush can think on his feet. (By the by, that interview was closer to a real debate than the "joint-press-conference" format used for Presidential debates).
But at key moments he has not done well. That first debate was the key moment in this campaign. In the other two debates, Bush did well enough that one might say he won them, despite the opportunities that were missed then (no one is perfect).
I don't make this prediction with any satisfaction whatsoever. I don't think Bush has handled the war perfectly, as I mentioned yesterday and will discuss again soon. But I think he has handled it better than Kerry would have, and better than Kerry will. One can see that in both large and small things. One example from this morning is the statement of one of Kerry's campaign handlers on Fox News this morning that they're going to use Clinton to remind people that during the Clinton era, we were at peace.
Were we? Or did we, bipartisanly, ignore a war that was already being waged against us? Now, as I've written before, I don't fault people for that attitude then, at the time. But I do think that those who still think that way, rather than understanding that the peace was a faux one, are not the kind of people we need leading us now. Why does the Kerry campaign want to remind people of the "peace" of the '90s, if it isn't to build up a desire for a return to that state of mind? Is this any way to wage a war going forward?
Then there's domestic policy as well - if the economy is soft, raising taxes on those who would invest and create jobs is hardly a way to stimulate it. And no, that didn't work for Clinton - GDP growth dropped after his '93 tax raises, and interest rates rose. It was only after the Republican take over of Congress, and a shift in policy, that growth picked up again. Bush's economic policies are much better if one wants strong economic growth. The fact that I, or a number of other bloggers, could make this case (as I've done before) better than the Bush Administration is pathetic.
Then of course there's the Courts, where a Kerry Administration would be a disaster (unless you're Pro-Abortion Choice and that's the only Court related issue you care about). Prospects for reform and modernization on a whole swath of issues would be snuffed out, and our walk down the path of a nation whose domestic policies are set by trial lawyers using court cases to create de-facto legislation would advance significantly. But if Bush wins, and Republicans carry Congress, then there is a real opportunity to start some long-delayed and long-needed reforms of government-run programs.
But this post isn't about why you should vote for Bush. It's not about why you should vote against Kerry. None of that matters, because Kerry will win. There's also the tanking Stock Market, rising oil prices, and other things that no President has much influence over which will influence the outcome, but it's hard to take lessons from that except "don't be unlucky". So I focused on what we can learn from the next time around.
Megan Mcardle asks for help in deciding who to vote for. My comment got so long that I decided, what the heck, I'd post it here. It's far from perfect, written spur-of-the-moment. But it'll be a good lead-in to a post I want to write on what's going on, going wrong (and right) in Iraq and the costs we've paid in invading.
Don't get me wrong, I still support the war. But only a fool believes there haven't been "opportunity costs", as there are when you make any choice from a range of options. But more on that later. This post is about (some of) the reasons to vote for Bush.
She's seems to be asking mainly for the positive reason(s) to vote for one of the two major candidates, rather than the negative ones to vote against the other guy. It's pretty obvious, for example, to everyone except his most blind supporters that Kerry's "plan to win the war in Iraq", and the WoT in general, is a non-starter (relying on allies who haven't the means, even if they had the interest, to contribute meaningfully. I give Afghanistan as the example - that is the model, in essence, that Kerry offers for Iraq, but the allies contribute very little and will only participate meaningfully in places that are already so secure that their assistance really isn't needed. That is, they'll provide security once an area is already secure. . .); and on the other hand, only the most blind Bush supporters believe that everything is proceeding exactly as he has foreseen in Iraq.
I'm a Bush supporter who all along thought that the aftermath of toppling Saddam would be more difficult than the "regime change" itself, and that has proven to be the case. But I don't pat myself on the back, because it's far more difficult than I thought it was going to be and there are many ways that Bush's team mishandled things. However, I think they were mishandled in ways that, if Kerry were in office, they would have been mishandled worse. Take Fallujah - does anyone think that Kerry would have sent the troops in to clean it up sooner? That is, that he would take a harder line and be more aggressive in crushing pockets of resistance? But, again, that's a negative.
Lets turn to the positive. The first reason, IMO, to vote for Bush may not involve the war, or the economy, and things like that. Indeed, it involves another branch of government entirely. This isn't just an election about who will control the White House for the next four years. This is an election about who will control the Supreme Court for the next 20 years. Whichever side wins will be appointing at least two, and very possibly three or four, Supreme Court Justices. They will appoint people as young as they can. Neither will appoint "Dream Candidate" justices, ones that are your ideal in every respect. But which do you think are likely to make appointments closer to what you'd like to see?
That will shape much of what happens in this country over the next two decades. It will shape the realm of the politically possible. What do you want to see done and/or undone (fixed, reformed)?
As for foreign policy and the war, with all their faults I think the Bush team has a more clear-eyed vision of the world. For all that Kerry's supporters speak of them being blinded to reality and unwilling to see things for what they are, it is closer to the truth to say that is projecting. It took a realistic calculus, and willingness to take the difficult step of acting on that, to realize that whether we wanted to or not, we were going to have to fight this war largely without the "allies" that Kerry says we abandoned. The simple fact is that few nations in the world are able to contribute much to this fight, when it comes to what is actually needed (force-projection), and few are willing to spend what it takes to develop such resources. Those few countries are the ones that are with us. The others (France & Germany mainly) have for over a decade talked a good game about their desire to create such forces, able to act anywhere in the world. But to this day they have not spent what it would take to field such forces in on meaningful scale. Their latest ambitions in this area have been redirected to cobbling together an EU Force that will rely principally upon assets the UK has; this is simply re-arranging Org Charts (and who controls what), rather than developing any additional capabilities.
Kerry was for regime change and IMO has largely criticized things that didn't work out but on topics where it is hard to see how anyone, including himself or Bush's predecessor, would have done better. It's not a "negative" against him to point out that the countries which refused to support a UN Resolution to take strong action against Saddam in '98, when Clinton & Blair ended up striking Iraq to the condemnation of the same crowd that condemned Bush & Blair, the same crowd that were then proposing that instead we should remove sanctions, were not going to participate in regime change in '02-03, no matter who was in the White House.
This is a flaw in the worldview of that side of the political spectrum, the idea that anything - any disagreement, conflict of views and difference of opinion, can be overcome through negotiation, if diplomacy is done right. Not everything can, where real interests are involved. Hell, the same people understand that at home. Woulds Kerry vote for Bush's tax cut bills if Bush and his domestic policy advisors had just been smoother talkers? Or do Bush and Kerry just have such different views on economic & tax policy that no amount of jaw-jaw-jaw would have resulted in Kerry supporting Bush's tax policies? A counter-argument may be that "oh, well Bush could have changed the bills to get Kerry's vote" - but that involves not persuasion to support a policy, but changing the policy to fit the other guy's preferences. That's a different kettle of fish.
So on foreign policy, one has to conclude that either Kerry's view of the world is unrealistic, or that in diplomacy & negotiation with other countries, he would be willing to modify America's policies, adjusting them to conform to what is acceptable/desired by other countries, for the sake of consensus-building. Consensus-building is not without value, but whether it's worth it depends upon what you're giving up for it, and what actual, practical benefit you get from gaining it.
So that's where the rubber hits the road. I think the Bush team has been slow in recovering from mis-steps. But the only things Kerry proposes that have a realistic chance of coming to pass, increasing the American Army some and stepping up the training of Iraqi forces, are things that Bush is already doing. And of the two, while neither is perfect (not at all!), I think Bush will allow a more aggressive pursuit of the enemies in Iraq than Kerry will want to engage in. We see some of that starting now. Frankly I wish it had taken place six months ago or more, but Bush was trying to accommodate the desires of others (Iraqi leaders who wanted negotiated cease-fires and deals). I think that what happened as a result shows the limitations of that way of proceeding. I think that the Bush team is closer to understanding those limitations while Kerry will never understand that, will always be ready to accept another round of negotiations and cease-fires that allows the other side to live to carry on the fight.
We see that in the difference between how Bush is handling North Korea vs. how Kerry wants to handle it, too. It's not just that all the sudden Kerry-the-multilateralist is in favor of America going unilateral and cutting out the allies. It's his willingness to do what the other side wants to placate them (Kim Jong Il wants bilateral discussions, because he understands he's more likely to get what he wants as a result - another "Agreed Framework" farce/fiasco).
Btw, the unseriousness of the Kerry team, and dems in general, on grave foreign policy matters is again on display here. They are all aware, and indeed were at the time, that the "Agreed Framework" with North Korea was a boondoggle of the highest order (and were cross at Carter for unleashing the discussions that lead to it, but felt cornered into doing it). But to get at Bush, and because they're like the Bourbons (neither forgetting history nor learning from history), they're proposing to go down that same path again.
I think Bush's tactics there are much better - though again, not perfect. But there's the rub, too; perfect options don't exist. Not in foreign policy, not in diplomacy, and not in politics and who to vote for.
Faced with the candidates we have, I know which one I'm going to vote for.
Reading Instapundit, I was struck by a line at the end of this post:
The "zero defects" approach to war is, I think, born of a combination of military ignorance and partisanship.
I've mentioned the cluelessness of most reporters when it comes to military matters myself more than once. But I think the problem goes beyond that, and beyond partisanship - though it's related to an ideological mindset.
It's not just military ignorance at work here, but historical ignorance - as Glenn alludes to. You don't really have to have in depth knowledge of the military to do better than most reporters do today. I doubt that reporters in the early '40s started with a better knowledge of the military. Neither did reporters who covered WWI in '17 and '18. So why is coverage so different now?
I'll get to the answer in a second, but first I should note that what I'm doing here, and what Glenn did in his post, involved putting things in historical context. Most reporters aren't able to do that, and when they try they tend to flub it badly.
The reason for that, and the reason why coverage of the war and just about anything else (from the environment to the state of politics to the economy and standard-of-living-issues) boils down to the remarkable lack of intellectual curiosity among reporters. Indeed, among those who work-with-words in general.
The simple fact of the matter is that our intellectual class is not very intellectually curious. Instead, they tend to be ideologues who believe they already know, and their job is to transmit their better understanding of the world and its workings to the rest of us, using current events as examples. Of course, this isn't universally true, but it is generally the case.
Reporters in the past were not "professionals" as such. They didn't attend J-School. Reporting was more of a craft than a profession - which ironically made them more curious. They had fewer preconceived notions, I think, and dug for the facts. Again, broad generalizations are at work here - I'm not overlooking the "yellow journalism" of the past, and editors and publishers with their axes to grind, and there was certainly a partisan press back then as there is now - and FDR was often its target.
But reporters now seem to go into any topic, any story, with far more preconceived notions, provided by ideology, than reporters did in the past. Most of these are often wrong or misleading or misapplied, but they aren't able to correct for it because of a lack of real intellectual curiosity. In the past, reporters didn't have a J-School degree, so they substituted common sense for a college education. That seemed to work better, and I think successful bloggers, whatever their education level, tend to have it.
We're told time and time again by scions of the mainstream media that "bloggers aren't professional journalists". With the exception of the ones that are, that's true. Your typical good blogger substitutes sound judgement and common sense for a professional credential. That's what blogging often adds to news. A blogger may not do any "real journalism", going out and getting new news. They - we - generally rely on other media sources for the raw information. But the "added value" a reader gets from blogging comes from that critical eye, good judgement, common sense, and the ability to put information in a more intellectually grounded context than the mainstream media is generally able to provide anymore.
When I flew back home for leave after AIT we went to a place for breakfast the next day and there was a car in the parking lot with a Kerry bumper-sticker and a "War is Not the Answer" bumper sticker. I kept thinking that given what they say about bringing in more honesty and candor in politics, it would behoove the Kerry Campaign to find some way to combine those bumper-stickers in a way that accurately expresses their attitude towards the entire War on Terror. But I couldn't think of a concise slogan. Until the other day.
Here I am sitting down reading an article in THe Economist on the campaign, and they write about "the 'war on terror'." EUREKA!
So here's the slogan:
Turn The War On Terror into "The War On Terror": Vote Kerry
Which accurately and concisely conveys the way they (Kerry and his closest foreign policy advisors) see it, as akin to the "War on Poverty" and other such pseudo-wars.
On PBS's Newshour, Tom Dashle was bemoaning "the use of wedge issues" in this campaign.
Of course, it is important to see through the political fog and understand what a "wedge issue" is. A "wedge issue" is any issue that gets between Democrats and power. In a democratic republic, that means any issue where a majority of the people are not in favor of their position and/or policies.
Not for nothin', but I did see the debate last night. Better late than never with my reaction to it. A bit of a caviate - saw it on a grainy, black & white 5" screen with horrid reception, so I more heard than saw it. But I thought both Bush and Kerry made their points well. Bush did do a lot better this time around - but one wonders if the damage was already done. So far from what I've seen, the ratings for this one weren't as big as the last time. So that means more opportunity for our impartial press (see previous post) to spin and skew things to favor the "right" outcome - Kerry Uber Alles. I probably agree with the Instapundit reader (middle of the post) who thought Bush does better with an active audience to speak to.
All and all, I think Bush did better than Kerry, but that might just be because I tend to agree with him more, and see the flaws and misrepresentations in what Kerry is presenting. If I were on the other side, I might think Kerry won. But Bush did far better, and if this debate counts for anything to the audience who saw it (rather than being told what they should think by Kerry's willing accomplices in the press), that will be the major impression to take away from it - just like the second Reagan/Mondale debate in '84.
Lets hope (and pray) that we Yanks do, too. Lets hope these folks do as well - and that their first election is the first of many, not the one and only.
So I haven't been online much over the last several months, but I gather that Andrew Sullivan is disillusioned with Bush, and understand the reason ("Freedom Matters"). Indeed, on that, I share his position.
But perhaps because it doesn't hit as close to home for me, it hasn't angered me as much. Also I think I see how Bush was goaded into advocating a Constitutional Amendment on this, which he hadn't done before people on the other side of the issue - on Andrew's and mine - pressed it. Now, I think the case for marriage equality had to be pressed at some point, and sooner rather than later is better.
But a rational person knows that those who oppose something will, well, oppose it. Those on the other side of any issue won't just fold, they'll try to insure their policy preferences win out, not ones they disagree with. Believing otherwise is an adolescent approach to civil discourse and policy debates. That said, has Bush really "failed to reach out to gay people"? I'm not sure that's accurate at all - whenever Bush has mentioned the FMA in a speech, he has also firmly said that Gays should not be discriminated against. Where there is disagreement is that those of us on the other side of the issue from Bush see denying marriage rights to Gays as discriminating against them. But Bush has not "Gay baited" or "Gay bashed". Andrew's rhetoric has been far more intemperate than anything I've witnessed from Bush on this subject (and any other, for that matter).
Sure, Andrew has expressed his disagreement with Bush Administration policies on other issues over the years as well. I've concurred with many of the same myself - while also noting that Bush did not run as a small-government conservative (neither did McCain, for that matter). His major spending initiatives, from the Education Bill to the Medicare Drug Bill, were all things he said he would do when he ran in 2000. They weren't sprung on unwitting small-government conservatives as a surprise, the way his father's tax increase was. So when Andrew writes that he "used to be surprised" ("Bush's Conservatism"), um, why should he be? Was h
