Before Charles Lane Accuses Others of Hypocrisy, Perhaps He Should Look Up the Definition

I've commented in the past about accusations of hypocrisy, and how they are often misplaced. It's not hypocritical for Warren Buffett to pay only the taxes required by current law, while simultaneously arguing that taxes on the wealthy should be raised. Even assuming that the material facts are identical, it's not necessarily hypocritical for somebody to take a different position than the one they took years or decades earlier, as sometimes people change their minds. It's not hypocritical to stop protesting an action or issue that once drew you out to the streets, every time that issue comes up -- you can continue to feel strongly about the issue while succumbing to issue fatigue, recognizing that your protests are not having any effect, or moving onto other issues or priorities that get in the way of organizing protests and rallies.

Still, accusations of hypocrisy abound. Certainly there are times that they are warranted, but often they're the hallmark of a lazy columnist. Falling into that latter category, Charles Lane is waving his finger at "liberals".

Building the Keystone XL pipeline, to speed the flow of crude from Canada’s oil sands to refineries in Texas, would be “game over for the climate,” says NASA-scientist-turned-climate-activist James E. Hansen. Heeding Hansen’s words, environmentalists have sworn to stop the project, which requires U.S. government approval.

Perhaps we should note, up front, that not all environmentalists are liberals, and not all liberals are environmentalists.

Yet large, bipartisan majorities of the House and Senate support Keystone XL, as does 60 percent of the American public, according to the latest USA Today poll.

And... that has absolutely nothing to do with whether the project is environmentally wise.

Today, it is still on hold, because Tuesday night 41 Senate Democrats voted against ending debate on a bill to green-light Keystone XL, thus thwarting what might have been a disastrous exercise of democracy.

Perhaps it escaped Lane's notice, but that is not the first-ever use of a filibuster in the Senate. As Lane himself noted in a prior screed,

Republican opposition to Obamacare may be hypocritical, irrational and opportunistic — especially GOP opposition to the exchanges, which the party previously favored in various forms. And, yes, the modern filibuster takes counter-majoritarianism to an extreme even the Framers probably didn’t contemplate.

But the Constitution lets the Senate write its own rules.

The fact that Senators who are part of an institution that has created and upheld the filibuster actually employ a filibuster is in no way hypocritical. Even if we assume (in defiance of the facts) that each and every one of those Senators would vote for straight majority rule in the Senate, it would not be hypocritical of them to employ the actual rules of the Senate when voting on legislation.

In short, the filibuster may have just saved the planet, at least for now.

Or so it must be believed by Keystone XL’s opponents — even though they include some of the same people who decried the filibuster, not unreasonably, as an obstructionist, anti-majoritarian evil when Republicans employed it against President Obama’s health-care reform, cap-and-trade and other progressive legislation.

Here, through his link, Lane suggests that Markos Moulitsas is a hypocrite for opposing the filibuster and... he doesn't offer a link, but perhaps Moulitsas praised the Senate vote somewhere? As with Warren Buffett and his taxes, even if Moulitsas is overjoyed that the pipeline bill was filibustered, it's not hypocritical for him to advocate changing the Senate's rules while nonetheless encouraging Senators to use those rules to advance policy positions he favors. The concept isn't even slightly difficult to grasp -- it is possible to believe that something is bad on the whole such that it should be eliminated, even when recognizing that it has potential value under certain circumstances.

When I saw the film, Shattered Glass, I had some sympathy for the Charles Lane played by Peter Sarsgaard, a well-meaning guy who got duped by one of his employees. But the Charles Lane who writes for the Washington Post seems to have a different problem -- he seems to be lazy and indifferent to the facts, the sort of approach to journalism that can allow somebody like Stephen Glass to get away with feeding him the most absurd fabrications as long as they don't conflict with his preconceptions. When you click through the link to the actual statement by Markos Moulitsas, Lane's exemplar of a hypocrite, you hear this:

There's a huge movement, and I think it's going to happen, to change the filibuster rules from requiring sixty votes to requiring forty "no" votes. Right now if you want to filibuster you don't even have to show up, you know, the onus is on the "pro" side to round up the sixty votes. So when you turn it to forty votes you gotta have those forty people there, and if one of them has to go to the bathroom, boom, you call cloture, and that's that.

Moulitsas was not calling for the elimination of the filibuster -- he was calling for the perpetuation of the filibuster, but with a change in how you vote for cloture. Given that Lane knows that forty-one Democrats voted to filibuster, and he should know that Moulitsas favors a filibuster rule that would sustain a filibuster based on those forty-one votes, his insinuation of hypocrisy has no basis in reality. It's instead an example of Lane getting his facts wrong. And with that example having been dredged up from September 10, 2010, either Lane couldn't find an actual example of a statement from a liberal that would support his thesis, or he got lazy.

Majority rule is not the only progressive principle some progressives seem ready to sacrifice on the anti-Keystone altar.

First, are we talking about "liberals", are we talking about "progressives", or does Lane view the term as interchangeable? Either way, I am not aware of any consensus among either group that we should eliminate representative democracy in favor of direct democracy.

If we're simply talking about Senate rules, to put it mildly, there is no consensus among liberals or progressives that the filibuster should be abandoned. Some believe that it should be eliminated, but others (as with Lane's exemplar progressive, Markos Moulitsas) favor continuing the filibuster but changing the rules to make it less of a tool for obstruction, and still others would leave well enough alone. Meanwhile, it was not so many years ago that Republicans on the floor of the Senate made frequent calls for a "straight up or down vote" when confronted with the filibuster. Some of that opposition may have been opportunistic, but the fact is that the recognition that the filibuster is anti-democratic and could benefit from reform is not something that is unique to the political left.

Remember the corrupting influence of money on politics? Billionaire Tom Steyer has spent millions on TV ads backing environmentalist Democrats and trashing the pipeline itself, thus purchasing outsize influence in the White House and the Democratic Party.

Although this should go without saying, campaign finance reform has traditionally been a bipartisan issue, once championed by none other than John McCain. As should also go without saying, proponents of campaign finance reform have not proposed that no money be spent on political advertising. But beyond that, we're back to Warren Buffett and his taxes. You can believe that wealthy individuals and corporations gain an outsized voice in politics and government through their direct and indirect contributions, while nonetheless believing that you should take full advantage of the existing laws to advance your causes. There is no hypocrisy in advocating for a change in the law while operating under the existing laws, and it would be extraordinarily foolish to refuse adequate funding for your political goals out of principle when the likely consequence would be that your opponent would win. Heck, Steyer even spoon-fed that reality to those who are a bit slow on the uptake, and Lane quotes the explanation:

“On issues as critical as climate change, we will take action and work within the system that we’ve got until we can change it,” Steyer pragmatically told Forbes magazine.

How can Lane read that statement yet fail to understand that it's not an example of hypocrisy?

Next up, infrastructure,

Most of the time, liberals tout the job-creating potential of critical infrastructure projects, based on the indirect “multiplier effect” that even short-term construction can have on economic growth.

Perhaps lane doesn't realize that with his opening qualifier, he hobbled his argument before it left the starting gate. There is a vast difference between supporting infrastructure projects most of the time, and supporting them all of the time. We should note, also, that many conservative voters recognize the need for and benefit of infrastructure projects -- but that doesn't mean that either side has to embrace every infrastructure project, that they cannot prioritize certain types of project over others, or that they cannot object to an infrastructure project that they deem wasteful or harmful.

For Keystone XL, though, different rules apply.

Apparently, to lane, "different rules" means roughly the same thing as "the same rules".

We are instructed, by Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress, among others, that the $8 billion project will create “only” 3,900 “direct” one-year construction jobs and a mere 50 permanent ones. Forget the 42,000 jobs that a State Department analysis said would be “supported” by the project.

Here, rather than pointing to the actual State Department report, Lane links to a post from the Washington Post's Wonkblog. That blog post indicates that "About 3,900 of [the] jobs would be temporary construction jobs", and that once built, "the pipeline would support 50 jobs". In other words, Lane is complaining not that the one person he mentions got the facts wrong, but that he should have provided additional facts.

When you go to the written statement of Daniel Weiss, you find that his reference to the number of jobs that would be created by the Keystone XL pipeline was specifically addressing the number of permanent jobs that would be created. While Lane can certainly argue that a greater discussion of temporary jobs would make the statement more complete, surely he can understand that temporary jobs are not of great significance to an assertion about permanent jobs. After all, if he cannot make that distinction, he is guilty of the same offense he attributes to Weiss -- Lane does not mention that either that the 42,000 indirect jobs would be temporary, continuing only during the construction of the pipeline.

Lane is also engaged in a sleight of hand. The people -- liberal and conservative -- who favor infrastructure projects have done so in no small basis upon the position that although a typical infrastructure project is relatively short-term, we need to invest in our nation's decaying infrastructure and that the short-term boost in employment can help stimulate the economy. As previously stated, this was never an endorsement of any infrastructure project. In fact, the proposed focus has typically been on public infrastructure.

But as Lane knows, those commenting on the very small number of permanent jobs that will result from pipeline construction are addressing a different issue. They were attempting to rebut exaggerated claims by pipeline proponents about the number of jobs the pipeline would generate, and to point out the indisputable fact that the pipeline will create an inconsequential number of long-term jobs. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the people making these observations about Keystone XL would not say exactly the same thing about other major infrastructure projects.

Construction unions understand that employment in their field is inherently temporary in the sense that it ends when the building is built. They strongly favor Keystone XL. Yet this reliably Democratic middle-class constituency is also being thrown under the anti-Keystone bus.

Wow... crocodile tears for union worker.

It's even slightly surprising that unions whose members would benefit from construction jobs favor construction projects. I would not be surprised if there was significant union support to build "the bridge to nowhere". The question of whether a particular faction supports a project does not answer the question of whether the project is wise or appropriate. Further, given that only a few short paragraphs ago Lane was grousing that progressives have forgotten their principle of "majority rule", Lane wants to have it both ways. If it's hypocritical and an affront to progressive principles to not abide by the judgment of the minority, how can it be simultaneously an affront to progressive principles to not allow a vocal minority to impose its will on the majority? Does Lane not find it obvious that it's one or the other?

The least attractive violation of progressive values by Keystone XL opponents’ was their attempt to recast this joint project of Canada and the United States in xenophobic terms.

Oh, this should be good....

One Steyer-financed ad warned that China is “counting on the U.S. to approve TransCanada’s pipeline to ship oil through America’s heartland and out to foreign countries like theirs.”

So... based on one ad that virtually nobody in the nation has seen, Lane has concluded that progressives have embraced xenophobia.... (Has Lane ever noticed the Republican Party's treatment of issues like immigration?)

The only basis for this claim was that state-owned Chinese companies have a modest investment in Canada’s oil sands. The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, awarded the ad four Pinocchios, noting that “it relies on speculation, not facts, to make insinuations and assertions not justified by the reality.”

That's it, then? One ad, financed by one individual, seen by virtually no one? It's difficult to imagine how Lane could build a stronger case.

Speaking of the planet, perhaps the only person on it who still hasn’t made up his mind about Keystone XL is President Obama, though his dithering has recently given way to expressions depressingly reminiscent of those in the Steyer ad.

In reality, President Obama has expressed that he is waiting for private lawsuits over the pipeline's proposed path to be resolved, and for the State Department to complete its analysis of how the pipeline will affect the environment, before taking a position on the pipeline. It's easy to understand why some might want the President to take a firm position, pro- or con-, before all of the facts are in. It's also easy to see why the President would instead choose to remain neutral pending either the outcome of litigation and studies that might prevent the pipeline's construction, or the presentment by Congress of legislation for his signature. Lane chooses the pejorative, "dither", but there is no reason to believe that the President is being even slightly indecisive on the question, as opposed to playing a careful political game on a hot button issue.

And yes, obviously, his suggestion that the President is xenophobic is absurd.

“Understand what this project is,” he said at a news conference in Burma last week. “It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the Gulf [Coast], where it will be sold everywhere else.” Their oil. Our land.

Does Lane disagree that the oil belongs to Canada? Does he disagree that a pipeline that will run across the United States is accurately described by the President as crossing "our land"? If Lane actually believes that the President's statement reflects xenophobia or anti-Canadian agitation, he should seek psychiatric help.

Yet his own State Department’s exhaustive review of the project found that re-exports of the oil, either as crude or in refined form, were unlikely.

This time around, Lane links to the actual State Department report. However, he is not being honest about the report's conclusion:

It is likely that increasing amounts of WCSB crudes will reach Gulf Coast refiners whether or not the proposed Project goes forward (products from this processing will be used in both domestic markets and for export). As a result, future refined product export trends are also unlikely to be significantly impacted by the proposed Project.

The report does not suggest that export won't occur. It suggests instead that enough Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) crude will reach the Gulf, with or without the pipeline, that net exports are unlikely to be affected.

Lane's second link is to a Reuter's analysis of the President's statement, which it declares to "ring[] only half true".

"Some of it will stay in Gulf, some of it will leave," said Sarah Emerson, president of Energy Security Analysis, Inc. in Boston. "I don't think anyone would have built if they thought the oil was just going to stay in the Gulf Coast, that is like bringing coal to Newcastle."

It would be fair to accuse the President of overstatement. However, once again Lane is guilty of the very offense he attributes to others -- he is misrepresenting the State Department's report and is implying, in defiance of the facts and his own sources, that export is unlikely to occur.

Hypocrisy and rhetorical flimflam are standard in politics, and liberals are not the only guilty parties in the Keystone XL battle.

At this point, Lane has identified zero examples of hypocrisy. Not a one. It's not even clear that he understands the meaning of the word. As for "rhetorical flimflam", it's a colorful way of describing something that is inherent to politics. To observe, even with colorful language, that politicians are guilty of practicing politics seems somehow banal.

Keystone XL proponents have undoubtedly tapped corporate coffers to fund their share of exaggerations about the project’s benefits.

Lane speaks of this as if it's an assumption, not a fact. It's a fact.

And of course climate change is real and must be addressed.

Which doesn't mean that Lane isn't going to insist that the President state a firm opinion, or insult him for declining to do so, while we await the environmental impact report.

But in this case progressives are not only being intellectually dishonest and traducing their values, they’re doing so pointlessly: This end doesn’t justify these means.

Really, other than waving his hands a lot, all Lane has documented is that one wealthy person produced one TV ad, approved by nobody but himself and seen by virtually no one, that has an element of xenophobia; and that the President has implied that more of the WCSB crude will be exported than is likely to be the case. And in producing that tepid indictment of "liberals", he has misstated the facts, misrepresented the positions of people he has held up as hypocrites, and misunderstood the basic issues under debate.

Far from being “game over” for the planet, Keystone XL would not boost greenhouse gas emissions significantly, according to State Department experts. With or without Keystone XL, Canada’s oil sands will still be turned into crude oil and shipped, often by rail, to markets in the United States and elsewhere. The environmental movement’s energies — not to mention Steyer’s millions — would be far better spent elsewhere.

Lane's implication is that the crude is going to be extracted, shipped and used, so environmentalists may as well shut down and go home. Sometimes, even a fight for a losing cause can bring about results that benefit the losing side -- a better educated, more aware public, the exercise of greater caution when proposing and planning future projects with significant potential environmental impact, and the like. Also, while Lane writes off the possibility, perhaps those environmentalists don't intend to call it quits if the pipeline is not constructed. But, frankly, it's not his place to tell environmentalists how to expend their energies or to tell Steyer how to spend his own money.

In their tendentious effort to deny these realities, progressives risk violating yet another cherished principle that, in their view, distinguishes them from the right: that of letting facts and science, not ideology, determine policy.

And here Lane is back to his earlier trick of conflating the terms "environmentalist" and "progressive" -- as if there are no conservative environmentalists nor any progressives who don't oppose the pipeline. And in relation to letting the facts and science dictate policy, what was it that Lane said only a few sentences ago?

And of course climate change is real and must be addressed.

So which is it -- is this a situation in which climate change is real and must be addressed, or a situation in which that science is already known and weighs in favor of the pipeline? If Lane's theory is that the oil will be extracted and used, rendering the existence of the pipeline irrelevant to the debate, he's missing the actual goal of the environmentalists opposed to this project -- they don't want that oil to be extracted or used at all. That's not because they are ignorant of science and climate change, or because they are refusing to consider the science when forming their positions on WCSB crude -- quite the opposite. Given that Lane is now endorsing making decisions based on science, it also seems odd that he wants the President to get ahead of the environmental impact analysis for the Keystone XL pipeline. It's almost as if Lane is privileging ideology over science.

Campaigning for a symbolic victory over the fossil-fuel industry, they may end up with a pyrrhic one — if any.

It goes without saying that the environmentalists could lose their fight against the pipeline. But it also goes without saying, even with due respect to Lane's accusations of imagined hypocrisy, if the environmentalists who oppose the pipeline prevail they will not view their victory as pyrrhic. More likely, they will be energized for their next battle.

Do you know what would have made Lane's column better? If, rather than launching a poorly reasoned screed about "liberals", "progressives" and "environmentalists", that did little more than reveal his sloppy, lazy fact-checking, he had tried to lay out the case for why the pipeline is a good idea. He might have tried to explain how the pipeline compares to other possible infrastructure projects in terms of need, job creation and long-term benefit. He could have attempted to address environmental concerns, rather than brushing them off. Too much to ask?

Why Can't Applebaum Simply Admit That She Favors A Full-Scale Invasion of Syria

I have heard an argument floated in relation to Syria that I find absurd: that we need to arm rebel factions to the point that they can imminently topple the Assad regime, and once that happens all of the parties can be brought to the bargaining table where they'll hammer out a lasting peace agreement. First, it's difficult to imagine the argument being made in a context in which the speaker hoped to preserve the government that is under threat. History tells us that defenders of the government will take the opposite position - that peace talks won't be possible until the traitors and terrorists lay down their arms. Second, that's not a context in which either side is likely to want to run to the bargaining table. The government in danger of being toppled has too much to lose, and the "rebel factions" that are poised to depose the government have little incentive to lay down their arms and accept a deal that keeps the threatened regime in place. Third, in a case like Syria's, there are many armed factions. You would not only have to convince every significant faction to join and maintain a ceasefire, you would have to broker a peace deal that they all found satisfactory, and that they all trusted to the point that they don't turn their guns on each other or insist upon carving the nation into territories under the control of various warlords.

Nonetheless, I was not surprised to see Ann Applebaum implicate that argument,

Back in June, the Group of Eight called for “urgent” peace talks. But there are no negotiations to speak of, in part because the Syrian rebels continue to hang on for Western military support that always seems to be just around the corner but never quite materializes.

The rebels are too weak, and too much in danger of losing, to engage in peace talks? Then why, dare I ask, does Applebaum suppose that turning the tables on the government will make Assad's regime rush to the negotiating table?

Applebaum's piece is snarky, first at Clinton for not acting quickly enough to intervene in Bosnia, and next at President Obama for not acting more quickly in Syria. Applebaum suggests that Presidents should not engage in rhetoric about foreign leaders needing to change their ways or resign unless they're willing to promptly back up those words with military force.

Two decades ago, five years ago and today, the source of the problem is the same: The president of the United States wishes to represent things — justice, fairness, international norms — that he cannot, or will not, or doesn’t know how to defend in practice. In the future, it would be far more just, and far less cruel, for the president, and the rest of us, simply to say nothing at all.

I am not convinced by Applebaum's suggestion that the world, upon hearing the President call for a foreign leader to step down, understands that to be a threat of invasion if the leader chooses to remain in power. I think her implication that a government should not make a statement on an undesirable foreign situation unless it is either prepared to take military action or immediately qualifies its comments, but we're not going to do anything about it, is just plain wrong. We can't criticize human rights in China unless we're prepared to invade? We can't press for the release of dissidents in Burma and call for free elections unless we're prepared to invade? Come on.

Applebaum argues that the President has threatened force in Syria, then backed away from the threat, then again threatened force.

For example, in August 2011 Obama declared: “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” To Syrians fighting on the ground, that may have sounded like a promise that U.S. military support, or at least substantial military aid, was imminent.

May have? It also may have sounded like the President was saying that it was time for President Assad to step aside, and it may well be that they were smart enough to figure out that there was no actual or implied threat of imminent military action.

This June, the White House authorized the CIA to begin arming some of the Syrian rebels. This sounded even more like a promise, but as of last week that aid also had yet to arrive.

Were Applebaum more honest, she would share the reasons for that delay as stated in her own source, the anything-but Obama Administration-friendly Wall Street Journal,

U.S. officials attribute the delay in providing small arms and munitions from the CIA weapons program to the difficulty of establishing secure delivery "pipelines" to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands, in particular Jihadi militants also battling the Assad regime.

By virtue of her marriage, Applebaum has very close ties to the international diplomatic community, and certainly has many people in her virtual Rolodex from whom she could easily get a reality check on the Administration's concerns. If she believes that the officials are incorrect, she could present a cogent argument to that effect. The fact that Applebaum instead chooses to misrepresent the reason for the delay suggests that she's not trying to be balanced, or even accurate.

The president famously declared a year ago that the use of chemical weapons constituted a “red line” in Syria. But now that the red line has been crossed, the president has decided that he needs congressional support before he can respond. This is perfectly legitimate — but shouldn’t it have been obtained earlier, at the time the promise was made? Certainly the Syrian regime interpreted the president’s sudden and unexpected desire for congressional support as a “historic American retreat.” Its media gloated accordingly.

Okay... so it's "perfectly legitimate" for the President to go through Congress before launching a military action, but it also is honest for Syria's state-controlled media to characterize that legitimate action as a retreat? Which does Applebaum want - for the President to follow statutory law and the text of the Constitution, or to cast those trivialities aside to prevent a propaganda sheet in Syria from misrepresenting what it means to follow democratic process?

As for the notion that the President could have sought Congressional pre-approval for military action in the event of Syria's use of chemical weapons, that's true of pretty much anything the President says on foreign policy - but you can't take everything to Congress. Why does Applebaum believe Congress would have gone along with such a request, that Boehner and the Tea Party would be ready to give the President the discretion to initiate a military action based upon something that few at the time believed was likely to happen? Does she believe that the Republicans would have been more cooperative a year ago, when the use of chemical weapons was considered unlikely, than they are today when their use has been documented? If so, I would love to hear her explanation.

If you wanted to do so, you could read something sinister into these tactics. Perhaps, some unnamed officials suggested to the Wall Street Journal this week, these delays and sudden changes are intentional: Perhaps the administration’s point is to “tilt” the fighting away from Assad but to prevent an outright rebel victory — in other words, to prolong the war.

Unnamed officials? So we're talking about what... leaks within the White House, suggesting that the President is only following what Applebaum deems to be a legitimate course of action because he hopes to perpetuate the civil war? Let's turn back to the WSJ:

Many rebel commanders say the aim of U.S. policy in Syria appears to be a prolonged stalemate that would buy the U.S. and its allies more time to empower moderates and choose whom to support.

"The game is clear to all," said Qassem Saededdine, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council. "When it comes to the interests of superpowers…the average Syrian comes last."

Some congressional officials said they were concerned the administration was edging closer to an approach privately advocated by Israel. Israeli officials have told their American counterparts they would be happy to see its enemies Iran, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and al Qaeda militants fight until they are weakened, giving moderate rebel forces a chance to play a bigger role in Syria's future.

So while Syrian rebels are depicted as being frustrated that the White House is not simply arming everybody, but appears to be considering arming only those groups whose goals are not hostile to U.S. interests, something that is consistent with the facts, these unnamed "congressional officials" are imagining a secret conspiracy between the Obama Administration and Israel. One can hardly imagine why they don't want to attach their names to the accusation....

I'm curious, also, as to what it means to be a "congressional official". I know what a Member of Congress is. Their staff members aren't officials. I can see why Applebaum chose to say only "officials", but knowing the context I don't find the omission to be particularly honest.

If so, this administration is even more ruthlessly cynical than its critics have maintained, and Syrian conspiracy theorists are right on the mark.

Except the Syrian statement wasn't a conspiracy theory. The Syrian statement was sensible and consistent with the Obama Administration's statements on the provision of military aid - it's perfectly reasonable to conclude that the Obama Administration hopes to "empower moderates and choose whom to support". It was the unnamed congressional "officials" who were pushing the conspiracy theory and Applebaum herself who is choosing to treat it as a serious possibility.

But whether that is true hardly matters because the effect is the same:...

No, I think the truth does matter. First, I think it matters that columnists like Applebaum try to present the truth, rather than misrepresenting their sources and giving air to conspiracy theories before concluding that truth is irrelevant. Second, I think it does matter if the President's delay results from his taking care to avoid potentially turning Syria over to a government not far removed from the Taliban. To somebody who favors such an outcome that may constitute putting the interests of the average Syrian last, but for those who want Syria to have a more enlightened future the truth lies in the opposite direction.

As happened in Bosnia, American pontification, prevarication and postponement in Syria have preempted the policies of others and delayed negotiations. The civil war continues; with every month the devastation increases, the refugees multiply and the levels of political extremism rise. Back in June, the Group of Eight called for “urgent” peace talks.

Such alliteration. It's always fun when a columnist gets in touch with her inner Safire. What's missing is any explanation of how the Administration's failure to... I guess, invade Syria or at least indiscriminately arm its rebel factions without concern for their goals or whether weapons end up in the hands of terrorists... has preempted the polices of "others". Who are these "others", what are their "policies", and why are they sitting somewhere, invisible, silent, and unnamed, as Applebaum takes up their cause. I understand why Applebaum's "It's a conspiracy between Obama and Israel" officials don't want to be named, but this isn't the first season of Lost - who are these others?

The Group of Eight... That wold be Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the U.K., the E.U., and the United States. Of those eight, the U.S. is proposing military action, France has indicated that it won't act unless the U.S. first authorizes military action, the U.K. and Germany have voted against military action, Russia is protesting that Assad is innocent, the Prime Minister of Canada has stated that he has "no plans" for a direct military mission, Italy insists that any military action should be preceded by a U.N. mandate, and Japan is sitting on the fence pending a final U.S. decision. Which of those nations does Applebaum believe to be more hawkish than the U.S., and to have had its plans and hopes crushed by the fact that the U.S. is exercising caution and following constitutonal process?

I was curious, given the circumstances, to see what Poland had to say about the issue. Would Poland be a pillar of Applebaum-endorsed virtue, ready to do the most it could to punish the criminal Assad regime?

Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced last week that Poland will not be taking part in any military action in Syria, though Minister Sikorski said on Monday night that he has told US secretary of state John Kerry that, “Poland does not have the capability [to take part in a military strike] but understands the situation”.

As President Obama tries to win support from Congress for a military strike, Minister Sikorski said in an interview with the TVP public broadcaster: “In my judgement a chemical attack occurred, most likely by the Assad regime. The use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians, their own citizens, is unacceptable”.

“The use of chemical weapons in the twenty-first century sets a very dangerous precedent,” Sikorski said, adding that, "President Obama's decision to give more time to convince the US Congress gives a chance for Russia and China to change their positions.”

So the official position of Poland, as articulated by Applebaum's husband, is that (a) Assad probably used chemical weapons, and that is wholly unacceptable, (b) Poland won't contribute so much as a Zloty toward any military action, and (c) the Obama Administration is correct to go through Congress and the associated delay could help the world achieve a diplomatic solution?

Perhaps the Applebaum household is among those in which the spouses simply don't discuss politics.....

Hard Reality: The Republicans Don't Want to Balance the Budget

You would think that our national experience would teach us something: The Republicans are very good at cutting taxes and spending money, but have demonstrated next to no actual interest in balancing the budget. Still, the snake oil sells and a huge percentage of Americans believe that we can easily and painlessly balance the budget by cutting "welfare", funding for the arts and "foreign aid".

Diane Rehm interviewed Grover Norquist and a Republican Congressman-elect, and the incoming Congressman, Ted Yoho, insisted upon taking a principled stand: He was not going to sign Norquist's anti-tax pledge.

I made a pledge and a promise to the people that I'd go up to Washington and do the very best I could for our district and our country. And signing a pledge wasn't going to solve the problems our nation faces fiscally. You know, and I made a pledge to, you know, two things: one is to our country, I pledged allegiance. And I made a pledge to my wife to be the best husband I could be.

But as Yoho explained his philosophy toward taxes and the budget, Norquist had to be smiling. Why would he need Yoho to sign the pledge when Yoho has already internalized Norquist's "drown it in the bathtub" philosophy of government?

You know, we don't have a revenue problem in this country. You know, our debt is going to kill us, and the biggest part of our debt is our spending. We have got to get our spending under control. And if you look back where Canada was back in the 1960s when they had a real liberal congress or parliament and they put in all the entitlement programs and, you know, tax and spend more, you know, it killed their economy. And they're at the brink of disaster.

Yoho seems sincere, but "the biggest part of our debt is our spending" is an odd statement. Canada has a pretty good track record for balancing its budget, strong per capita income and growth, and its people have a good standard of living. He thinks Canada is at the brink of disaster because of its Medicare program? What's actually going on in Canada...

The report's outlook for the world is decidedly bleaker than for Canada, pointing out that after five years of crisis the global economy is again weakening and risks proliferate.

"The risk of a new major contraction cannot be ruled out," said Pier Carlo Padoan, the OECD's chief economist, citing the ongoing recession in the euro area, a below-par economy in the U.S. and a slowdown in many emerging markets.

That is, the biggest threats to Canada's economy are external.

In fact, the OECD anticipates the U.S. economy will speed up faster than Canada's next year at two per cent and in 2014, at 2.8 per cent growth.

Because the U.S. is starting from further behind, Canada will still maintain an advantage in the recovery over its southern neighbour, however. For instance, the organization projects Canada's unemployment rate will fall below seven per cent by 2014, while in the U.S., it is expected to remain close to eight per cent.

Yoho's positions on Canada are, to be blunt, divorced from reality. Yoho continues to present the Republican / Tea Party line:

This has been, you know, over the course of the last 15, 20 years, bad policies and people not dealing with it. It's time for us to stop talking about it and putting another Band-Aid on it. These are going to be some tough decisions that are going to be -- have to be made. And this is the year we need to do it because if we don't make these decisions, we're going to be in the same place where Greece or Spain was.

Except here's the thing: The Republican Party is not interested in making those tough decisions. They claim to have a budgetary genius in Paul Ryan who, after years of careful thought and collaboration with presidential nominee Mitt Romney, was able to specify a desire to cut funding for PBS. They have a leader in budget negotiations in the form of John Boehner who, building on last year's negotiations and Ryan's budgetary proposals, tosses out numbers that are neither supported by specific budgetary proposals nor sufficient to balance the budget. That's not leadership - it's a continuing display of cowardice.

And why are these Republican leaders such cowards? Because they know what Yoho will find out if the budget is balanced through cuts - the people who have been buying that snake oil will howl when they find out that the Republican approach to balancing the budget necessarily involves inflicting serious pain upon them. It's not that Boehner couldn't propose specific cuts to government programs, including Social Security and Medicare, it's that he doesn't want to face the political consequences. He hopes to trick the Democrats into proposing the cuts so he can argue, "I only voted for them because I'm fiscally responsible, but the cuts that hurt you came from the Democratic Party. I had no choice."

Paul Krugman has reproduced a graph I have at times shared, illustrating that it's Republican policies that have created the present "deficit crisis". Here's the thing: If you and your party are unable to actually identify budget cuts, if you and your party are the ones primarily responsible both for revenue shortfalls and for the unfunded expenditures that drive up the deficit, you owe the voters a moment of honesty. You need to either admit that you don't care about balancing the budget, and that the entire debate is a pretext for your long-standing goals of cutting Medicare and Social Security to the bone, or you need to admit that although you would like to see the deficit reduced you would prefer to have out-of-control deficits and spending growth if the alternative is to raise taxes or risk losing the next election.

Perhaps I underestimate Yoho, but if I do, what are the implications of this:

Rehm: But let me just ask, Congressman Yoho, would you be more willing to raise taxes on upper-income Americans, more willing to do that than to allow us to go over the cliff?

Yoho: No, ma'am.

If you care about balancing the budget, you balance the budget. Once you figure out how to balance revenues and expenditures, you can take a deeper look at the numbers, figure out where you can or should cut, where various taxes and tax rates might be adjusted or tweaked, etc., all without throwing the budget out of balance.

If you protect low tax rates for the wealthiest Americans despite budgetary consequences that you insist threaten the health and future of the nation, can't we be honest about it? You might not mind it if somebody else did the hard work and took the political risks necessary to balance the budget, but you have other priorities.

People in Other Nations Don't Obsess Over Domestic U.S. Politics?

Okay, so that's not news to you, but it appears to be news to Anne Applebaum.

“Is this presidential election really the most important in our lifetime?” That was the question asked, in so many words, by a concerned Brit at a discussion here a few days ago. His words were directed at the political analyst Larry Sabato, whose countenance had been beamed onto a conference-room screen like some giant electronic guru. Sabato didn’t blink. “This presidential election,” he replied, “is definitely the most important since 2008.”

Appreciative laughter followed, but the audience wasn’t entirely satisfied.

Perhaps that should read, self-satisfied laughter followed, but the audience didn't entirely appreciate the joke? Applebaum continues,

For the British — as for most Europeans and, indeed, most other foreigners — that aspect of this election is extremely hard to understand. Is the 2012 presidential race “important”? That is, will it mark a momentous change in U.S. foreign policy and attitudes toward the world — or will its result make no difference at all?

Here's the thing: people in other nations pay more attention to U.S. presidential elections than we do to theirs, because the decisions of the U.S. President are more likely to affect them in some way than the decisions of their leaders are to affect us. It's also, frankly, a bit fun to be appalled by the low quality of one American politician or another, the crazy issues that Americans based their votes upon, and the staggering sums of money expended on the presidential race. A fair retort, in the U.S., it's unlikely that Silvio Berlusconi would have been able to buy himself into a higher office than... the U.S. Senate. A Canadian was giving me a "Mitt Romney, seriously", line the other day to which there is now an easy two-word retort, "Stephen Harper.")

Applebaum goes on to describe past elections in which... Europeans enjoyed being appalled by some of the politicians and their conduct, the money, and a larger indifference - as if they realize that the choice of President is more likely to affect our lives than theirs.

There are multiple reasons for this indifference, starting with the fact that people no longer believe, as many once did, that an American president can solve all of their problems.

You'll excuse me for asking, in what alternate reality did Europeans believe that our choice of U.S. President could result in a solution to "all of their problems"? I've lived in two other countries, have relatives who live in other countries, and have traveled internationally, and yet I've never met such a person.

The myth of America as an all-seeing, all-knowing superpower persists in a few places — ironically, one hears it most often in the Arab world — but most everywhere else it is long gone.

I have to wonder... Applebaum doesn't get out much, does she....

In my experience, people in other countries have long recognized what is only now dawning on Applebaum: That they have no say in U.S. elections and that, although U.S. elections may affect them and the policies of their own government, the primary effect of a U.S. election will be on the people of the U.S. - there, just as here, it's fun to watch the horse race coverage and make condescending comments about the candidates and system, but at the end of the day the elections they most worry about are their own.

In her slow recognition that the outcome of the U.S. election won't matter much to Europeans, Applebaum appears to also be suggesting that the outcome won't matter much to us. That's true to a degree - certainly true to those like her who are fortunate enough to live their lives in a gilded bubble, and it's certainly true that a change of President has no material impact on most international issues - but there are many domestic issues that will affect the middle class and less fortunate individuals in our society, and while a joke along the lines of "this is definitely the most important election since 2008" may seem funny to those who think the election is about a 3% tax increase (vs. a 20% tax cut) for the wealthy, it's not as funny if you're slipping out of the middle class, unemployed, or on Medicaid.

Spinning Conspiracy Theories Is Fun....

But you can be a lot more convincing than this:

Al Franken could win the recount in the Minnesota Senate race.... But odd things have been happening. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal noted that Mr. Coleman’s lead has been mysteriously shrinking, even before the recount begins. Election officials in various jurisdictions, mainly liberal, have been discovering “lost” ballots or “miscommunicated” results.

Well, that sounds bad. How about a f'rinstance?

It doesn’t look bright: one very Democratic area has discovered that its ballot-counting machines registered overwhelming support for Barack Obama but somehow didn’t tally any votes in the Senate race. Hmmm. Guess who those will turn out to favour.

Well, you don't have to be very smart to recognize that a district that has any appreciable number of voters, but where zero votes are cast for the U.S. Senate, odds are that you have a bona fide undercount. You don't have to be very smart to realize that in a district that has overwhelming support for Obama is likely to have at least majority support for Franken. And you don't have to be very honest to acknowledge that there's basis for alleging "conspiracy" in the counting of votes that were actually cast but inadvertently omitted from the first vote count.

So, what's the National Post's excuse, other than perhaps a desire to join the WSJ in a "race to the bottom" for editorial page partisan hackery? (And why aren't they obsessing over the vote count in a Canadian riding somewhere? Surely there's a fake scandal they can gussie up somewhere in Canada....)

The result is critical because the Democrats are three seats away from absolute control of the Senate, and two other states - Georgia and Alaska - also remain unsettled. If the Democrats somehow take all three, Republicans might as well spend the next four years on the beach.

For all the National Post's whinging about the possibility of the Democrats having a sixty vote majority in the Senate, I doubt that they would be expressing equal concern over a Conservative majority government in Canada's Parliament. But they should relax. It's extremely unlikely that the Democrats will win all three seats and, even if they do, Lieberman has all-but-promised to join Republican filibusters, so on many important issues they would still really be a seat short.