Facts Make the Tea Party Veer to the Political Left on Spending?

This isn't new, but I just came across it.

In fact, a sophisticated poll covering 31 budget items as well as revenue sources conducted around the 2010 elections found that, even then, Republican, Democratic and independent voters all agreed on much higher taxes and much deeper defense cuts as the most striking elements of how the budget should be crafted....

...[S]upport for government spending has varied somewhat cyclically since the[ 1964 election], but only within a relatively narrow range, as recorded by the gold standard of public opinion research, the General Social Survey [data archives here].

The GSS asks about more than two dozen specific problems or program areas, asking if the amount we’re spending is “too little,” “too much” or “about right.” Not only do most Americans think we’re spending too little in almost every area — most conservatives also think the same. Indeed — hold onto your hats — even most conservative Republicans feel that way as well....

The researchers also found broad agreement across party lines. Their first report noted, “Among a total of 31 areas, on average Republicans, Democrats and independents agreed on 22 areas — that is, all three groups agreed on whether to cut, increase or maintain funding. In 9 other areas there was dissensus.” That’s not to say there weren’t differences. Republicans cut much less from defense — $55.6 billion for core defense (versus $109.4 billion) — and much less overall — $100.7 billion (versus $146 billion) — than Americans as a whole. But even so, the position of Republican respondents overall was still dramatically to the left of the political conservation in Washington....

[Tea Party members were] more conservative than Republicans overall, but they still come across as wild-eyed socialists compared to their D.C. representatives:

Those who described themselves as “very sympathetic” to the Tea Party (14% of the full sample), as would be expected, raised taxes and revenues less than Republicans in general, and less than Democrats and independents. Even so, on average, Tea Party sympathizers found a quite substantial $188.2 billion in additional revenues to reduce the deficit ($105.2 billion in individual income taxes).

This sort of information makes it more understandable why the Republicans have proved to be such poor fiscal stewards when they hold power. They demagogue about taxation and spending, but prioritize budget increases in areas such as military spending and revenue reduction via tax policy that favors the wealthy and corporations. When it comes to actual budget cuts, they can read the polls as well as anybody else. In specific regard to Medicare and Social Security,

Combining GSS data from 2000 to 2012, and asking about Social Security and spending on “improving and protecting the nation’s health” (GSS’s closest match with Medicare), liberal Democrats thought we were spending “too little” rather than “too much” on one or both by a margin of 87.1 percent to 2.4 percent — a ratio of over 36-to-1. But all other groups of Americans held the same view, even conservative Republicans — just not by the same overwhelming amount. They “only” thought we were spending “too little” rather than “too much” by a margin of 59.2 percent to 13.1 percent — a ratio of 4.5-to-1. With figures like that — all well to the left of Democrats in D.C. — it’s no wonder that conservatives in Congress always talk about “saving” Social Security and Medicare, and forever try to get Democrats to take the lead in proposing actual cuts.

The Republicans are not willing to lose the next election by savaging domestic spending in a manner necessary to even make up for their spending increases and tax cuts, let alone make cuts dramatic enough to put the budget into balance or to create a surplus and spend down the debt. Instead, when they take power, we get Dick Cheney-type comments that "deficits don't matter". Instead, if you want a balanced budget, they offer the worst of both worlds -- tax policies that reduce revenue and spending policies that increase the overall budget, resulting in a significant increase in the nation's debt.

Is it Really 'Picking a Fight' if the Other Guy Doesn't Notice

Michael Gerson, in an effort to redeem his former employer's record, has to go all the way back to an early campaign speech.

In the summer of 1999, George W. Bush chose the first major policy speech of his presidential campaign to pick a fight with Grover Norquist. Bush flatly rejected the “destructive” view “that if government would only get out of our way, all our problems would be solved” — a vision the Texas governor dismissed as having “no higher goal, no nobler purpose, than leave us alone.”

As they say, you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. The fact that the only significant evidence Gerson can find to support his notion that Bush was standing up to the anti-tax crowd comes from a campaign speech is telling.

For some reason Gerson didn't link to the actual speech, but it's available online. The speech was part of Bush's attempt to reinvent himself as a "compassionate conservative", a concept to which he offered little more than lip service.¹ Once Bush took office it wasn't that "deficits don't matter" because we need to "carry a message of hope and renewal to every community in this country". It was "deficits dont' matter" because Bush wanted to expand spending on Medicare (something Mitt Romney might cynically characterize as "buying votes") and massive tax cuts for the wealthy, even if it meant that the deficit would go through the roof.

Gerson relies upon the conceit that a single campaign speech in which Bush supposedly picked a fight with Norquist should be read in a vacuum. As if the only person whose opinion matters in the entire Republican hierarchy is a single anti-tax zealot. Given a choice between a Democratic President who was disinclined to cut taxes and would have tried to maintain budget balance, and a Republican candidate who was promising massive tax cuts for the rich even if it meant going back to deficit spending, who do you think Norquist would choose? And... one suspects Norquist was receiving assurances behind-the-scenes.

Twice in the past week, Bush has sharply criticized his party. A week ago, he charged that congressional Republicans were trying to "balance the budget on the backs of the poor." On Tuesday in New York, he said that his party has been too negative, too pessimistic and too enamored of believing that free markets can solve social problems while ignoring the role of government....

Grover Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform, said the Bush speech was not even discussed at the weekly meeting of conservative activists that he hosts each Wednesday.

"What, me worry?"
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1. I don't want to be unfair here - perhaps Bush sincerely believed in the "compassionate conservative" concept that he made a cornerstone of his campaign. But if he did, he either quickly changed his mind once in office or decided that it wasn't a concept worth pursuing.

Reinventing the Republican Party - "And Never the Twain Shall Meet"

A significant number of Republicans have renewed their argument for a modest reinvention of the Republican Party, that it needs to move away from social conservatism, tone down its anti-immigrant rhetoric, cast off the remnants of the southern strategy, and emphasize broadly accepted conservative principles: personal responsibility, independence, hard work, and the like. That appears to be the vision of David Brooks, although he has to distort history in order to try to lay claim to those values as somehow being Republican. It has been somewhat amusing to see how many conservatives now claim to have "always argued" in favor of such a transformation of the party, never mind that before the election most never raised the argument in more than a whisper and many were at times part of what they're now describing as the problem.

Here's the thing: If the Republican Party can in fact transform itself, if it can convince America "We're no longer interested in your bedrooms. We want to be the party that helps everybody get a reasonably equal start in life, and give everybody the opportunity to advance, but not the party that subsidizes irresponsibility. No more 'trickle down' or 'laffer curves', we are going to focus on building the economy based upon sound principles. No more anti-science arguments or measures, that stuff is an artifact of the past. We're going to maintain a strong military, but will refrain from adventurism and have no interest in empire. We're going to stick to free market principles, we're going to push for small government, we're going to avoid trying to solve society's problems through laws and regulations, but we are advocates of good governance, and for government to be there when we need it," it will be in a powerful position in future elections. I could see that type of party pulling 55-60% of the vote.

The difficulty the Republican Party faces is two-fold. First, Members of Congress are going to be focused principally upon their own needs and futures, not what might benefit the party as a whole. They will want to avoid primary challenges from the right. It will be difficult for the Republican Party to transform itself when a significant core of its elected representatives refuse to play along. Second, the presidential primary process requires the party's candidate to run a gauntlet that poses similar issues along the way - if a candidate alienates the religious right, a competitor who by all right should be laughed out of the room can become a viable alternative for the nomination.

That is to say, a serious reform effort is going to be painful. First, when you tell your wealthy contributors, "How about we try to give you 95% of what you want instead of 100%," those contributors are apt to say, "Then what makes you different from the other party?" And if you tell the religious right, "We're no longer going to go to the wall for you on moral issues," even if at some level the voters at issue were already skeptical of your sincerity, you risk that they will decline to show up at the polls or will back a third party candidate.

Meanwhile, you aren't actually that far into the hole. Despite all of the flaws of your party, its platform, the nomination process and your presidential candidate, you came very close to winning. Despite the problems caused by the Tea Party and some candidates who no sensible person would want associated with the party, you have a solid majority in the House of Representatives and can correct your mistakes in the Senate races without drastic action. Further, things cycle - no party stays in power indefinitely and it may be "your time" as soon as four years from now. Why change?

Perhaps more than that, if the price of not changing is that you lose a few more elections before facing the music, whereas the price of facing the music now is that you lose a few elections while reinventing the party, is there an actual benefit in attempting a dramatic transformation instead of a less coordinated evolutionary process going forward? Isn't it better to keep things pretty much the way they are, to try to win the next few elections, than to write them off in the name of a dramatic experiment that guarantees that some Members of Congress will lose their seats and at best will make a presidential candidate marginally more competitive four years from now?

Is it possible to dramatically transform the Republican Party without alienating core elements of both its base and its deep-pocketed supporters? I doubt it. And as much as some of the more level heads in the party can see the need, even describe a path, I think they're going to receive a lot of push-back. At best, "Maybe we can run a candidate who says all of those nice things, while reassuring the base and our donors that we still have their backs?" If it almost worked with Mitt Romney, might it not work with the next candidate?

The Conservative Vote for Romney - Reluctant at Best?

One of the aspects of the Republican Party that I find interesting is that it is deemed the "conservative" party. That, I suppose, is because it is devoted to cutting taxes for the wealthy and gives sufficient lip service to various lines of conservative thought to keep the votes rolling in. But other than the tax cuts, it's history of governance isn't what I would call "conservative".

At the Volokh Conpsiracy, (libertarian) David Post summarized his views on the candidates, and was in some senses easier on both of them than I would have been. He gives "Obama maybe a B or B+", noting that Obama inherited a "global economic meltdown" from which we're recovering, adding, "For some reason I cannot even fathom, many otherwise reasonable people seem to regard this as a terrible failure on Obama’s part."

Mitt Romney? "The guy’s as light a lightweight as I can imagine – he makes Bush look like Schopenhauer. "The guy’s as light a lightweight as I can imagine – he makes Bush look like Schopenhauer." Post is concerned that he has no sense of how Mitt Romney would respond in a crisis situation, but his impression is that "reacts the way Bush reacted when something he couldn’t imagine happening actually happened... and it’s not a comforting thought".

My personal thought is that if the Republican Party were able to nominate a centrist, pragmatic, fact- and issue-driven businessperson, this election wouldn't be much of a contest. That type of candidate, I think, could pull in 60% of the vote. But thanks to the nomination process, the need to pander to certain elements of the base to get a shot at the White House, that's not going to happen. It's difficult to get somebody better than a G.W. Bush, and frankly now that the Tea Party Movement has recognized the power of the primary it may be difficult to do better than a Romney - somebody who seems to hold no core values or beliefs, and will say and do anything to advance his own self-interest.

Had Romney articulated the positions associated with his latest self-reinvention, the centrism he outlined during the debates (more or less "I'll do exactly what Obama's doing, but better - and I'll cut taxes") it's unlikley that he would have been any more successful than Huntsman - a guy who made the mistake of taking actual positions early in the primary process, and thus ended up being one of the first guys shoved out of the clown car. When you consider that the last three men standing were Romney, Santorum and Gingrich... wow. But Romney can attest that if you survive the nomination process, even if you willingly surrender your soul to achieve that goal, it's enough for most of the base to simply not be the other guy.

There's an interesting assortment of takes on "how I'm going to vote" from various flavors of libertarian and conservative at The American Conservative. Some of the comments are insightful, some are odd or shallow, some are witty, others serious, and some mix and match, offering an insight in one sentence and a head scratcher in the next. Sometimes you get to the end of the comment, read the author's claim to fame, and... "now it makes sense" - not necessarily the reasoning, but why the author is taking that particular view. For example, "Within 30 years, the U.S. will be majority non-white and will cease to exist as we’ve known it," came from a VDARE.com editor, and the snark, "on the economy, unemployment is too high, growth is too slow, and Barack Obama is too 'green'" came from a Fox News contributor. There's a lot of hand-wringing about, of all things, feminism and yes, the absolute horror that churches be required to offer birth control to employees of their secular operations. Okay, I can't resist taking a shot at this one:

For me, there’s never even been a possibility of voting for Obama. The Democratic Party history is one immersed in slaughter: removal and abuse of the American Indians, the desire for a national police force to return escaped slaves, and the concentration of loyal Americans of Japanese descent into camps.

Obama has embraced this wretched tradition. Indeed, no president has overseen a loss of civil liberties more dramatically than the current one since Franklin Roosevelt disgraced the once august executive office. Not only did Obama fail to close Gitmo and reverse Bush’s policies promoting “national security,” he’s not-so-slowly Gitmoizing the entire United States. As the great Robert Higgs has argued, if you don’t believe we are living in a police state, you must be blind.

Yes, it's all one unbroken history, with Obama being the worst president since FDR due to his failure to overturn the atrocious policies put into place by... George W. Bush... and due to his adherence to the Constitution when Congress - with overwhelming Republican opposition to Obama's plan - refused to fund the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Let's all sing along, "Don't know much about history...."

What's interesting is how many are unwilling to vote for Romney, declaring that they'll either abstain from voting or support a third party candidate. More than a few prefer Obama.

It's easy to get discouraged with our system and its two parties - it's difficult not to feel taken for granted, to not feel like you're choosing the lesser of two evils. I don't know what a Romney victory would mean for the Republican Party, although it's difficult to imagine that it would lead to the party being more conservative. Many of the authors on the American Conservative website are concerned that Romney is ignorant of foreign policy and that his advisers will push him to involve the nation in new, large-scale military conflicts. If anything weighs against that possibility, it would be that Romney appears to be exceptionally risk-averse. It's difficult for me to imagine that he would push the country toward war, unless the polls were telling him that the nation was eager to go there. On the other hand, given how spineless he has proved to be on economic issues, it's easy for me to imagine his pushing through his proposed tax cuts with an associated explosion of debt (but recall: he's not going to balance the budget for a decade, so he takes no responsibility for either the starting or ending points of his economic "reforms").

What bothers me most about Romney it not his foreign policy ignorance. It's how freely and easily he lies. How it doesn't even seem to bother him to dramatically change his message, his supposed core values, from day to day, from audience to audience. To the extent that his quest for self-advancement is likely to lead him down a path he believes will get him reelected, it's still difficult to take comfort in the notion that his cautiousness and focus on his own popularity might moderate his agenda. From an economic standpoint the path of least resistance is apt to look like Bush's first term. I agree with those who see the most likely lesson of a Romney victory as being "You can brazenly lie your way all the way into the White House," and I would prefer that the lesson be, "You can fudge the truth, as politicians do, you can spin, you can demagogue, but there's a point at which your deceit disqualifies you from elected office."

Take That, Nancy Pelosi....

George Will believes that conservatives should view the Supreme Court's endorsement of the "activity/inactivity" distinction as a consolation prize. Maybe he's right - after all, as the issue seems to come up every two centuries or so, perhaps a couple of hundred years from now the Supreme Court will review an inartfully worded statute and find it to impose an unconstitutional mandate. And perhaps they'll again say, "But who cares, because if we call it a 'tax' it's all good".

Will takes a potshot at Nancy Pelosi:

When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), asked where the Constitution authorized the mandate, exclaimed, “Are you serious? Are you serious?,” she was utterly ingenuous. People steeped in Congress’s culture of unbridled power find it incomprehensible that the Framers fashioned the Constitution as a bridle.

You know, "Ha ha ha ha, she said 'Are you serious' because she thought the mandate was permissible under the Commerce Clause. But the joke was on her because it was actually permissible under Congress's power to levy taxes. Next time she's asked that question and she again answers 'Are you serious', she'll be so embarrassed that she once gave the same answer for the wrong reason."

Brooks suggests that the proper question for the Court is "the 'legitimacy question'":

Is it proper for the federal government to do this?

As I have previously commented, I agree with that thesis - that the court should not put form ahead of substance. But unlike Will I noticed that the court answered his question in the affirmative.

You have to also love Will's argument of convenience about conservatives, democracy and patience:

Conservatives understand the patience requisite for the politics of democracy — the politics of persuasion. Elections matter most; only they can end Obamacare. But in Roberts’s decision, conservatives can see that the court has been persuaded to think more as they do about the constitutional language that has most enabled the promiscuous expansion of government.

All the right wing demagoguery against the ACA, the creation and advancement of a legal theory designed solely to target the ACA, lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, trying to win through the courts a battle that they lost in the legislature... None of that was about trying to "end Obamacare" because (now that the Supreme Court has ruled) conservatives understand that "only elections" can do that.

One last question: If Will is in fact concerned about how "constitutional language" is interpreted, where can I find support for the "activity/inactivity" distinction in the actual language of the Constitution? I urge him to stop writing columns and devote every waking moment to the intense study of the Constitution. After all, it's not a long document - how long can it take?

Political Partisanship and Hypocrisy

There's a particular brand of conservative punditry that goes roughly along the lines of,

1. Liberals used to oppose X when Republicans were in charge;

2. Liberals now support Y, or at least aren't vocally supporting it;

3. X and Y are the same thing;

4. Therefore liberals are hypocrites;

5. "Republicans rule, liberulz dr00l!"

I am going to pick on Ross Douthat, not because his is the worst example of the phenomenon - go read a random column by Mark Thiessen and you'll see he's far from it - but because it illustrates (and to an extent acknowledges) some of the problems with that type of column. I must also wonder, do columns structured in this fashion convince anyone of anything? Are their authors preaching to the choir? Phoning it in, using cheap tricks to pad out a column that otherwise wouldn't merit more than a few sentences? Hoping to tap into Ann Coulter's readership? With Thiessen I get the impression that he is incapable of perceiving that his arguments aren't well-supported, but with Douthat I get the sense that he knows what he's doing.

Douthat opens his column,

When George W. Bush was president of the United States, it was an article of faith among liberals that many of his policies were not just misguided but unconstitutional as well. On issues large and small, from the conduct of foreign policy¹ to the firing of United States attorneys,² the Bush White House pushed an expansive view of executive authority, and Democrats pushed right back — accusing it of shredding the constitution, claiming near-imperial powers³ and even corrupting the lawyers working in its service.

That was quite some time ago. Last week the Obama White House invoked executive privilege to shield the Justice Department from a Congressional investigation into a botched gunrunning operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The previous week the White House invoked powers that President Obama himself had previously claimed to lack, unilaterally revising the nation’s immigration laws by promising to stop enforcing them against a particularly sympathetic population....⁴

[A]part from [Obama's] disavowal of waterboarding (an interrogation practice the Bush White House had already abandoned), almost the entire Bush-era wartime architecture has endured: rendition is still with us, the Guantánamo detention center is still open, drone strikes have escalated dramatically, and the Obama White House has claimed the right — and, in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, followed through on it — to assassinate American citizens without trial.⁵

Douthat claims first that this supposed shift of "liberal" support represents "predictable hypocrisies when one side passes from critiquing authority to embodying it". There are, of course, many problems with this type of reflexive accusation of hypocrisy:

1. It's not hypocritical to change your mind. Sometimes the benefit of a policy that seems ill-advised becomes more apparent over time, the excesses that might occur under an expansive interpretation of the policy are avoided, or the cost of switching to a superior policy rejected by a prior administration exceeds the benefit of its belated implementation, so you accept the world the way it is and move on. (In the context of his essay Douthat notes, "Sometimes it was the original partisan critique that was overdrawn" - although he tends to view any criticism of the Bush as "partisan" even if it came from conservative or libertarian quarters.) If "I changed my mind" is proof of hypocrisy, the Republicans are about to nominate one of the biggest hypocrites in the history of politics. But a genuine change of heart is not hypocrisy.

2. An opponent's hypocrisy does not prove you right. Douthat's argument highlights this fact. If we're talking about "partisan about-faces", with the party in charge changing its position based solely upon its assumption of power, we're speaking of the compromise of principle in the pursuit of power. That tells us nothing about the relative merits of the competing policy positions.

3. You should not confuse issue fatigue with hypocrisy. It is not particularly difficult to muster or provoke outrage, but it's difficult to sustain outrage. As people get used to the status quo, as other issues arise, people lose track of past outrages that are no longer part of the public conversation, and are no longer being covered by the media. Were Douthat to have actually read the better critiques of Bush's expansion of political power, whether from liberal or conservative sources, he would have found warning after warning to the effect that once a controversy passes it is unlikely that any future President will give up powers obtained by his predecessor.

4. People become accustomed to the status quo. Related to issue fatigue, once a period of grief or outrage has passed, people tend to become accustomed to their new circumstances. Douthat should know that - no small part of conservatism is a resistance to change, and once you are accustomed to the status quo anything else represents a change.

One of the weaknesses of this type of argument, somewhat acknowledged by Douthat and often exemplified by Thiessen, is triumphalism: the declaration that your opponent's hypocrisy, real or imagined, somehow vindicates your position. That's a much easier approach to take than making a convincing, substantive argument in favor of your position, but from a substantive standpoint it's nothing more than hot air.

Douthat in effect shines a spotlight on the weakness of the "hypocrisy" argument when he claims,

Today those incentives are strongest for Democrats — visible in their support for Obama’s more dubiously constitutional forays, and also in the widespread liberal attempt to explain his struggles by casting him as a Gulliver tied down by an antiquated system of government.

Hyperbole aside, Douthat's observations of Obama's "more dubiously constitutional forays"⁶ are the continuation of Bush-era security policies, invoking executive privilege (with no explanation of how thet assertion might be a "dubious constitutional foray"), and "revising the nation’s immigration laws by promising to stop enforcing them against a particularly sympathetic population". That's some pretty weak tea.
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1. If by "the conduct of foreign policy", Douthat is referring to starting a war of choice in Afghanistan, creating black hole prisons, torturing prisoners in U.S. custody and the like, well, yes... that was controversial. Contrary to Douthat's suggestion, "Republican" and "conservative" are not synonyms, and this was not a context in which liberals and conservatives lined up neatly on opposite sides of the argument. There were and are plenty of conservatives who deplore Bush's foreign policy, who deplore the manner in which Congress has effectively shifted war-making authority to the President, and who don't believe that fighting wars of choice to reinvent nation states that pose no direct threat to us represents either good foreign policy or a wise use of taxpayer dollars. Douthat also knows that the Democratic Party on the whole either acquiesced or supported many of Bush's policies.

2. I expect that Douthat is referring to the Bush era U.S. Attorney scandal because, for the first time, the Obama Administration has invoked executive privilege and that was the tool Bush used to hide his reasons for firing U.S. Attorneys who for the most part appeared to be doing their jobs properly - apparently due to their refusal to initiate or bury criminal charges based upon the suspect's party affiliation. But there's nothing new about an assertion of executive privilege.

There's also nothing wrong with being suspicious of a President's assertion of executive privilege - the President is not entitled to a presumption of innocence and I think we'll enjoy a healthier political environment if the President is concerned that a resort to executive privilege will bring both attention and heat than one in which people shrug and accept that they may never learn the truth about a controversy. Arguably that skepticism is more likely to manifest itself as melodrama or demagoguery if the President comes from the other political party, but if that's the price of a healthy level of skepticism so be it.

3. The concept of "the imperial presidency" was popularized by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. back in the early 70's to describe the growth in Presidential powers over the course of U.S. history. As for its more recent use, would Douthat see the following as an example of an over-the-top attack on a President for supposedly "claiming near-imperial powers":

[The President] exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utmost in the area in which those powers are already at their height — in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, [the President] has accelerated the disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law.

Wow - what a perfect example of somebody attacking the President as adopting policies that are not only misguided but also unconstitutional, of claiming near-Imperial powers. Except you know what? That was John Yoo, architect and perennial defender of some of the Bush Administration's greatest excesses, demagoguing against Bill Clinton at the dawn of the Bush presidency. Yoo stands as a very good example of the partisanship Douthat claims to be describing, as now that Bush is out of power he has returned to prior form.

Also, is the following an expression typical of "liberal" concern about G.W.?

The Constitution’s text, structure, and history will not support anything like the doctrine of presidential absolutism the administration flirts with in the torture memos....

As revealed by the torture memos, in the administration’s theory, Congress is powerless to prevent the president from doing whatever he believes to be necessary to win a war. And, as it turns out, Congress is also powerless to prevent the president from starting a war, if he believes that war is in the national interest. Administration officials have repeatedly advanced the claim that the president’s powers include the power to decide, unilaterally, the question of war or peace....

In fairness, the administration did eventually secure a use-of-force resolution from Congress, all the while denying that any authorization was needed. But, given the administration’s broad view of the president’s war power taken in conjunction with its arguments in the Padilla case and the torture memos, the administration’s position can be summed up starkly: When we’re at war, anything goes; and the president gets to decide when we’re at war....

The administration’s conduct in the wake of Katrina suggests that its reflexive response to any crisis—whether real or hypothetical—is the same: we need more power. That is a dangerous reflex.

Only if you believe that the Cato Institute represents liberal ideology.

4. Although Douthat later claims, "It was conservatives who pointed out the dubious constitutionality of Obama’s immigration gambit", he fails to direct us to a compelling constitutional analysis. A quick search found any number of responses from opinion and political leaders that make broad allusions to the separation of powers, but nothing substantive. Similarly, Douthat whines, "Among liberals, it was taken for granted that the worthy ends were more important than the means", but he's hollow manning. He does not, and apparently cannot, identify any significant proponent of a position he's pretending to be representative.

5. While Douthat comments in relation to rendition, drone strikes, and the targeting of U.S. citizens deemed allied with enemy forces,

[The Obama Administration's] moves have met some principled opposition from the left. But the president’s liberal critics are usually academics, journalists and (occasionally) cable-TV hosts, with no real mass constituency behind them.

Douthat seems to miss the fact that the arguments against that type of policy aren't new, and that while a new excess such as the Bush Administration's torture policy can evoke a reaction, that reaction is rarely going to be sufficient to inspire the reversal of the policy. There were many philosophical and practical arguments made against the use of torture, and while the Bush Administration initially rejected both it appeared to ultimately accept that torture was impractical. What does Douthat deem to be a "real mass constituency"? As I recall, even after being abandoned as a failure, Bush's torture policies were supported by close to 60% of the public.

Douthat intentionally omits the fact that it is Congress, not the President, that prevents the closure of the Guantánamo detention center - a closure favored not only by President Obama but, by the end of his term, by President Bush.

6. Douthat might argue that his conclusion does not necessitate his expressing an opinion as to whether the various "dubiously constitutional forays" he describes are proper or improper exercises of executive power. His language suggests that he is falling into the partisan trap that he describes - even after suggesting that past opposition to Bush's policies represents overdrawn opposition and how a new president's continuation of once objectionable policies may exemplify how power educates rather than corrupts, he can't keep himself from describing Obama's continuation of those policies as constitutionally dubious.

Shifting Public Opinion

One of Bill Maher's consistent complaints about the Democratic Party is that it fails to shift public opinion on important issues. He perceives the Republican Party as able to shift public opinion. In some sense this is true - if you look, for example, at climate science or healthcare reform, the Republican Party has been very successful at confusing the debate, misrepresenting the facts and science, and shifting public opinion in favor of the interests it represents. It's as if they're emulating the tobacco industry executives who used to consistently lie about the safety of cigarettes, while paying off Members of Congress who supported them. (Sorry... making campaign contributions, right on the floor of the House. Gotta use the right euphemism.) Actually, that's exactly what they're doing.

But even in that context it's not as if they're working in a void - there are always Democrats who are happy to hop on board the gravy train. You cannot count on a "mainstream media" owned by billionaires with their own political agendas (and no, I'm not just talking about Fox) to want to clarify the issues. And even if the information is "out there", most people don't have the time to research the facts - they rely upon the representations of "trusted" third parties who often, unfortunately, don't deserve their trust - even if they have the skills. And let's not forget confirmation bias - it's much easier to convince somebody of something the first time around, but once that belief is set they will tend to discount any information that challenges their existing belief. Everybody at times falls victim to confirmation bias.

There's an ugly reality to politics, in which finding a narrative that works is more important than telling the truth. It's the same thing that happens in a trial, when the attorneys for the two different sides make very different arguments about the meaning of the same set of facts, but with more feedback. In a trial the lawyer tries to figure out from a juror's expressions, reactions, eye contact, and other indirect clues whether or not the juror is receptive to an argument. In politics there are opinion polls, media reactions, and now social media, all of which provide advance hints and near-instant feedback.

You can see what I'm talking about, right now, in the presidential campaign. Both sides throw out accusations and innuendo meant to discredit the other, in the manner of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. If the assertion doesn't resonate, it's time to rework it or try something else. If the accusation rebounds, it's dropped. If it works, a new plate of spaghetti is prepared based upon that winning strand, and the process starts again. See, e.g., Romney's latest, fumbled attack - a slightly reworked version of the attack that various political opponents have been attempting against Obama for more than four years. (Are you hungry for warmed over, four-year-old spaghetti? Yum....)

When you hear somebody who espouses more radical positions on the political left complain that the President is not effectively advocating for that position, upon investigation you will usually find that they are overstating the probable impact of such advocacy, that the person is ignoring the fact that Congress is unwilling to act (less of an issue if the other party is in control, but a potentially significant P.R. issue if the president's own party won't follow his lead), and also overestimate public support for the proposal. I do think that there is power in the President's ability to stand before the nation and present arguments about public policy matters, but I believe that the impact is gradual - and won't always be successful. I think that Presidential actions on gay rights issues have helped shift public opinion over time, but we're talking decades. The bully pulpit is not a source of instant gratification.

But, you respond, sometimes an argument resonates with the people and enables a President (and Congress) to implement a significant policy change, or to pass what was previously controversial legislation. Well, yes, but when that happens it's almost always within the context of an emergency. Sometimes the emergency is real, sometimes in retrospect it sounds like "We've always been at war with Eastasia", but I won't deny that it can be a very effective tactic.¹

When you're trying to shift public opinion, it helps if you have a strong foundation for your position. If you're really dealing with something new, you may be able to lay the foundation before your opponent responds and gain a significant advantage over him.² When Ronald Reagan demagogued about the welfare state, it didn't matter if there actually were Cadillac-driving welfare queens, because the public was looking at decades of massive public expenditure in the "war on poverty", money flowing from them to the "undeserving other", with clear evidence that many projects had failed and many others had not succeeded. That also stands as an example of a shift over time - it took another decade for the most significant welfare reforms to become law.

You're most likely to succeed in shifting public opinion when there's broad public acceptance of the foundation of your argument. The argument that we need to balance the budget resonates because most people want the budget to be in balance. The argument that spending large amounts of money in a renewed "war on poverty" would be a waste resonates, because most people believe that past similar efforts were on the whole a waste of money. The argument that unions are, on the whole, bad resonates because - for a broad range of reasons - most people are skeptical of unions and their present contribution to society.³

Ideally, politicians would approach issues like this:

1. Our nation is facing [issue] that we need to address.
2. Possible solutions to [issue] are [responses].
3. Although there is some disagreement upon which response is the best, we're working to figure out and implement a response that will adequately resolve the problem.

For a simple example, consider past "fixes" of Social Security - tweak tax rates and ages of eligibility, and at least on paper it's good to go for another half century or more. But that doesn't happen because neither party actually wants to cut benefits - at least not for current recipients or those who will soon receive benefits - because those people vote. And one party doesn't actually want to fix the current system - they want to privatize it or eliminate it. There is thus little attempt at an honest discussion, while pundits who know the back story tut-tut about how serious the issue is without explaining why it's not addressed.

How do you fashion an appeal that is likely to work? That is likely to get the public to advocate for policies that don't advance, and perhaps even harm, the greater public welfare or their own self-interest? The Catholic Church helped us out by creating a short-list of triggers: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

1. This is a time of war.
2. No patriotic American would criticize the President in a time of war.
3. Critics of this war, therefore, are not patriotic.

1. Taxes are bad.
2. My opponent wants to take your money to pay for [programs that benefit others].
3. I won't raise taxes under any circumstances, so you should vote for me.

1. We need to protect children.
2. My opponent wants gay people to get married, to have families, to teach in schools, to have the opportunity to seduce your children or make them gay.
3. I will protect your family and our way of life.

1. The other side says that free government insurance is necessary, using that child as an example.
2. That child has granite counter tops in his home.
3. Therefore, the program is really about taking your money to give free stuff to people who are already richer than you.

I'm not endorsing this approach, either to campaigning in general or in "tossing red meat to the base", but when done correctly (so to speak) it works. One of the reasons that Democrats aren't as effective with this type of argument is that people who align themselves with the Democratic Party - and more importantly, those who give money to the Democratic Party - find it distasteful. Another is that a lot of left-wing concepts are designed to appeal to our enlightened side - charity, sacrifice, patience.... "No - what's in it for me"?

When a rich Democrat argues that he supports higher taxes, even though he will may tens of thousands, perhaps millions, more in taxes himself, the Republican response is to suggest that he has a hidden agenda or to repeat the ludicrous argument that, if he truly meant that, he would already be voluntarily paying extra money to the IRS. Because... appeals to our darker nature are more effective and, frankly, the people who are most receptive to arguments that appeal to our baser nature know their own motivations, and are thus apt to project them onto others.

Another problem is that a lot of left-wing ideas are premised upon the belief that with the right argument, the right circumstances, the right... something... we can all be better, more enlightened people, happily working for the common good. You are going to do much better in creating and implementing solutions to problems, and in convincing the public that your proposals are workable, if your reform is not dependent upon improving human nature.

Finally, with intentional oversimplification, the political right tends to have a blind spot when it comes to military action, and the political left tends to have a blind spot when it comes to "great society" projects. "Don't worry about the cost - we can afford it, and it will probably pay for itself." The right has the advantage, because shooting things and blowing them up produces an immediate, visceral reaction. "Go team!" The left has the disadvantage that such programs involve appeals to our better nature, fly in the face of a history of what are perceived as similar, failed efforts, and can be challenged by resort to the aforementioned cheap rhetorical tools - appeals to spite and envy, appeals to ridicule, etc.

In short, in my opinion, if you want to shift public perception on an issue:

1. Start with a strong foundation - working with, not against, something the public already believes;

2. Propose a solution consistent with human nature - one that can be understood and accepted by our selfish, sometimes irrational minds;

3. Recognize that some of the most effective tools are unseemly - and that your choice may be between making a more effective dishonest argument and a less effective honest argument.

4. Even if you stick to principle, you should not expect that your opponent will be similarly principled.

5. Expect the process will take time - years to decades - if it works at all.

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1. "This is a terrible emergency, brought about by irresponsible members of the financial industry. We must bail them out, protect their salaries and bonuses, and get them back to 'business as usual' as quickly as possible, whatever the cost to the taxpayer." "This little vial could hold enough Anthrax to cause immediate chaos - and Iraq may have tons of it."

2. The Swift Boat Liars did this to John Kerry, who apparently believed that their incredible accusations would be compared by others to the factual record, but ended up on the defensive for the rest of the campaign.

3. One of the difficulties faced by those who would like to help support organized labor is that unions have played a terrible P.R. game, and that the core purposes of a union - advocating to improve a worker's wages, hours and working conditions - do in fact raise the cost of business and create resentment among non-union workers. Also, the excesses of major unions in past years carry an echo.

Social Conservatism vs. Political Conservatism

In the context of ant-gay marriage amendments, Daniel McCarthy's argument represents the distinction between somebody who is actually politically conservative and somebody who is motivated by the brand of "social conservatism" in which government regulation of private adult conduct is desirable:

The tendency of democracy, in values conflicts as well as economic policy, is to look to short-term, easy fixes that aren’t fixes at all: temporizing measures that placate voters and keep power-seeking coalitions together, but that leave the larger forces of culture to work their logic without citizens even being conscious of what’s happening. Amending fundamental law to ban gay marriage when Americans have already created a culture that insists on equality — in all things but wealth — only turns constitutions into op-ed pages.

For somebody who is politically conservative, the idea of entrenching social mores into a constitution should be troubling.

David Brooks and the Class Divide

David Brooks has been reading Charles Murray, so it's time for another of his another "tenth grade quality book book reports".... Call it an oversimplification if you will, but having built his reputation (so to speak) on a sloppily reasoned book suggesting that African Americans struggle because they have low IQ's, Murray has a new book contending that poor white people struggle for sociological reasons. Brooks, of course, makes no mention of Murray's history, instead lavishing his new book with praise.

His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big. A house in an upper-crust suburb cost only twice as much as the average new American home. The tippy-top luxury car, the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, cost about $47,000 in 2010 dollars. That’s pricy, but nowhere near the price of the top luxury cars today....

Worse, there are vast behavioral gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 percent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 percent of the country). This is where Murray is at his best, and he’s mostly using data on white Americans, so the effects of race and other complicating factors don’t come into play.

Get that? Murray's limiting his data to white people allows him to be "at his best", lest "complicating factors" such as race and, um, "other" confuse his thesis. Perhaps by showing, for example, that The Bell Curve is every bit as bad as its critics contend.

Two things to note at this point: First, Murray's story is that of "white people", and second... why 1963? Did the world begin in 1963? Weren't there white people in American prior to 1963? Or did what Brooks describes as Murray's "incredible data" reveal to him that if he started his story in any other year it would be weaker or completely undermined. We could, for example, compare unemployment rates during the Great Depression to those of today, but that wouldn't work so well for Murray's thesis that white society has somehow grown apart. So, why not pick the peak year for the argument that America used to look somewhat like Ozzie and Harriet, and go from there.

Brooks, predictably, accepts Murray's arguments as proof of his own theories about the nation, and that social norms that emerge from a snapshot reflect the norm of human history up through the present era. Now... something is causing the country to "bifurcate[] into different social tribes" and the rich don't spend enough time associating with the poor. What's more, people tend to marry within their social and economic class. Shocking, really. Except that's the story of human history. To the extent that a couple of world wars flattened things out for a while, we've never lived in a country or world in which class and money didn't matter and didn't affect social relationships and behaviors.

Today, Murray demonstrates, there is an archipelago of affluent enclaves clustered around the coastal cities, Chicago, Dallas and so on. If you’re born into one of them, you will probably go to college with people from one of the enclaves; you’ll marry someone from one of the enclaves; you’ll go off and live in one of the enclaves.

With the difference between now and the rest of history being the location of the enclaves? Does Brooks believe that "in the good old days" an Eton boy would go to Oxford, graduate, then marry a scullery maid and settle in Yorkshire? Does he believe that families with surnames like Roosevelt, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Delano, Carnegie and Astor are known for their humble abodes, modest lifestyles, and marriages with members of the working class?

Brooks overtly breaks from the right-wing dogma that "liberal elites" are ruining the country's morals.

Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.

That assertion is consistent with my position that, on the whole, people who disfavor legislation of morality are better at moderating their own behaviors and impulses as compared to those who view it as a necessity, and don't want others peering into their bedrooms. The Republicans who want to legislate morality are speaking to a population that is more than happy to pretend that "liberals" are condescending to them, even when the opposite is at least as often the case, and feels, for whatever reason, that people cannot be trusted to behave in a socially acceptable manner unless they are placed at risk of serious consequence, most notably pregnancy or jail.

Brooks, as you might expect, overstates his case for the moral righteousness of the "cultural elite", as it's easier to get married, stay married, remarry after divorce, and remain within the confines of what Brooks would deem a "conservative, traditionalist" life if you are wealthy, or at least financially stable. Nonetheless, this is probably the most honest criticism I've seen Brooks offer of his party - that it's rhetoric about liberal elites is pure demagoguery.

In the name of false equivalence, what the left hand giveth the right hand must take away:

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent.

Funny, although you certainly do hear about the uppermost echelons of wealth these days, most economic analysis I see still looks at wealth quintiles. The "Occupy" movement gave additional attention to the top 1%, with the real story of being the 0.1%, but that's a different story than the one being spun by Brooks.

If Brooks wants to make the claim that "Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite", perhaps he could do us the favor of identifying the Democrats of whom he speaks. While there's definitely concern on the political left that tax policy favors the wealthiest Americans, that concern has the virtue of being true. While there's concern on the left that the last three decades have seen the wealthiest Americans siphon corporate profits for their own benefit while workers' wages have stagnated or declined, that also has the virtue of being true.

Perhaps Brooks believes what he is implying, that human nature has somehow changed such that economics are irrelevant, but it seems to me that he's offering a red herring. For most of human history there has been great disparity between the wealth of the rich and poor, and throughout that time there has been suggestion that many or most of the poor are undeserving, victims not of society but of their poor values. I suspect Brooks knows he's offering a canard, because he proceeds to acknowledge the role of economics in the present state of society:

The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

The central role being what? Brooks has already told us that the "cultural elites" stand as good role models for hard work and moral behavior. What's left but economics? The top 20% are faring quite well, thank you very much, even as other quintiles have struggled.

From this point, Brooks devolves into what might be called "claptrap":

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

But Brooks told us earlier,

In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad.

How can Brooks argue both that "members of the lower tribe" as a class are simultaneously dropping out of the workforce and working hard? Surely it's one or the other.

Really, it seems fair to say that most people work hard, particularly those in menial jobs in which their bosses view them as expendable and easily replaced, but that the fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, and more notably a lack of jobs that people with less education and academic inclination can use as a stepping stone to the middle class. Brooks may want to pretend that this is a matter of sociology - that all we need to do is imbue the poor with the proper values and they'll be working hard and forming stable families - but you cannot honestly compare 1963 to the present without admitting that you're comparing a period of boom times for blue collar workers with a modern era in which anti-union measures, automation and outsourcing have decimated the blue collar middle class.

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years.

Yet another version of, “Even though I didn’t want to, didn’t have to, and personally did not do what I’m suggesting, in order for more people to grow up with my values I think all young people should have to spend years of their lives jumping through hoops I will now arbitrarily define.” Public service, national service, military service, menial jobs.

In other words, even though Brooks tells us that the problem is not an "underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites", the way to fix the problem is to force young people, rich and poor, to spend years of their lives performing some form of community service while living in some form of MTV-style "Real World" communal housing. That will surely fix everything.

Once Again, The Facts Have a Liberal Bias?

A review of the movie, Conviction, on Netflix:

Acting was good. Ugly cast. Story was tiring. Evil cops and DA's, innocent criminal killers. Typical liberal slant. Boring!!!

The film was... based on a true story in which the defendant ended up serving life in prison due to police and prosecutorial misconduct. (And as much as you could make a movie about, say, Roger Coleman, it wouldn't be very interesting.) I wonder what the author of the review would make of The Thin Blue Line.

Wasn't there once a day when you could interest conservatives in freeing the wrongfully convicted, or did Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.'s experience end that experiment.

Politics vs. Religion - Looking for Converts

One of the oddities of the G.W. Bush era, it seems to me, was the number of celebrity political conversions (or claimed political conversions) following 9/11. Many of the full or partial conversions seemed reactionary - Ed Koch and Ron Silver, and to some degree Dennis Miller, seemed to be excited at the idea of going to war with the Arab world, with Koch's embrace of Republicans as the only party willing to fight a war on Islam seeming to be consistent with his past statements on the Middle East.

I've never really understood why you would want to trumpet conversions such as these. To the extend that you're talking about a person who understands the issues, a more intense examination is likely to reveal that the conversion is largely limited to a single issue or is nominal. In the former case the conversion is likely to reflect a knee-jerk reaction, not a thoughtful response to changed circumstances. Otherwise you should see a shift in political thinking across the person's spectrum of beliefs, not just an announcement to the effect of, "I'm still liberal on everything else, but I'm a Republican because only they'll pursue this war to its bitter end." If it's the latter, the relabeling doesn't carry much significance. "I'm switching from Team A to Team B, but my opinions haven't actually changed."

Dennis Miller seems to fall, to some degree, into both categories. He's generally regarded as a bright guy, and he historically has included any number of obscure references into his humor in order to both convey that impression and to appeal to a more educated audience. He also had a caustic element to his humor that held no sympathy for the far left, and often seemed to take positions that were fundamentally conservative - did you ever get the impression that he favored a progressive tax code? But if you saw his monologues during his final year on HBO, it was hard to miss the fact that he had spent very little energy learning about, and even less thinking about, the Middle East. He also qualified his political conversion by insisting that he remained liberal on a wide range of social issues, such as reproductive freedoms and gay marriage. So the actual conversion was pretty narrow, and on a subject for which he had a new and shallow understanding, and that shallowness was evidenced by the new, shallow, Manichaen position he took on that narrow issue.

Not that I want to be cynical... (want doesn't actually enter into it - I am cynical)... but you sometimes also have to "follow the money". The counterpart to Dennis Miller would seem to be Arianna Huffington, although her claimed political conversion was much more broad-based. Both Miller and Huffington capitalized on their political conversions, Huffington more successfully than Miller. And with Huffington's recent sale of the Huffington Post to AOL, and her associated announced plan to try to harness as much free labor as possible to fill AOL's coffers with cash, some who previously accepted her conversion are taking another look and asking, "Was it sincere?" You could start by asking if her conservatism was sincere. Frankly, in politics, being able to fake sincerity is a valuable commodity. I suspect that if she possessed that talent, Ann Coulter would presently be a self-professed liberal - her ranting doesn't get her much face time on television and, no matter how absurdly titled, her books don't sell like they used to. Coulter does indignant, self-righteous anger quite well, and certainly there's a crowd that finds such displays to be appealing, but at best that's preaching to the choir. But it is interesting to see how these conversions have boosted (most often temporarily) the public profile of celebrities whose careers are on the wane.

The thing is, even though I see lots of evidence that high profile converts think highly of themselves and their insights, and by virtue of their celebrity they manage to get face time on the television to advance their brands, there's not a one of them whom I would point to and say, "That person gave a really good explanation for their political conversion and why their former positions were incorrect," or even for the single issue conversions, that such an explanation was offered for the one issue that supposedly pushed them over the edge.

Celebrities can be strong advocates for specific issues. Some celebrities are smart, informed people in their own right, and can be respected on that basis. But I'm not seeing the appeal of trumpeting the supposed conversion of a celebrity from one political column to another, and even less so when the celebrity's explanation for the conversion reflects that they remain weak, uninformed (even if self-impressed) political thinkers.

At The American Conservative, Clark Stooksbury recently questioned the political conversion of David Mamet,

Now he has a book coming called The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture— in which according to the the publicity material provided to Amazon.com—Mamet will “take on all the key political issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming.” That sounds distressingly like the sort of right-wing tract published several times a year by conservative talk radio hosts, politicians and teenagers.

Stooksbury accepts that, as described by him, Mamet's liberalism could fairly be characterized as "brain dead" but that "His conservatism doesn’t sound particularly compelling either". Initially, Mamet claimed that his conversion to conservatism was driven by exposure to Thomas Sowell (who at least used to make interesting and thoughtful observations); now he claims that he "doesn't read political blogs or magazines. 'I drive around and listen to the talk show guys,' he said. 'Beck, Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved.'" Ouch? But far from a surprise if you remember the column in which he explained his conversion.

From the publisher's description of Mamet's new book,

In 2008 Mamet wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'", in which he methodically attacked liberal beliefs, eviscerating them as efficiently as he did Method acting in his bestselling book True and False.

I can't speak for his arguments about method acting, but the only thing left excoriated by Mamet's village voice essay was the idea that he should be taken seriously as a political thinker. If the publisher's strongest endorsement of Mamet's credentials remains that editorial, it's reasonable to infer that this is a "follow the money" situation - that Mamet, perhaps a few years too late, is trying to cash in on his political conversion. I wouldn't be surprised if his M.O. remains the same, "I was brain-dead in my political beliefs, but the wisdom and insight of Thomas Sowell Glenn Beck has set me straight." Authors pitching to a common audience frequently exchange endorsements; I suspect that Mamet his hoping to get his favorite right-wing radio hosts to endorse his book.

Is the problem that there aren't enough strong political thinkers available, such that people see it as necessary to pretend that a little league player is qualified for the All-Star team? Are we so far into a culture of celebrity that, on the whole, we can no longer tell the difference? Or is the problem that, as compared with the most brilliant stars with which they compete, celebrities with half-baked, high school level understandings of politics actually are thinking at the same level as the professionals? ("Hi, I used to write speeches for a President but other than that have no apparent qualification to write on political issues." "Congratulations, welcome to the op-ed page of the New York Times.")

Last I Checked, The President Was a Democrat

I can't even begin to count the number of times I've heard a right-wing commentator whine that President Obama was "partisan" in describing why he favors the budget advanced by himself and his political party over the exercise in silliness advanced by the Republicans. I'll grant, the Ryan plan is so absurd and weak that you don't need to approach it from a partisan standpoint to devastate it on its merits; but I doubt that's the type of objectivity the Republicans purport to be demanding from the President.

Apparently the President is supposed to act like the dimwitted host of a TV morning show presenting two guests with divergent viewpoints, one of which is objectively wrong, then pretending to be an objective mediator because she has presented "both sides of the issue" without comment. Seriously, even if this weren't a "Democrats vs. Republicans" issue, the President has a duty, some might say an obligation, to oppose policy positions that are absurd and, in his view, objectively harmful to the nation and its people.

But come on. G.W. Bush didn't shrug his shoulders when Democrats challenged him on his plan to privatize Social Security and say, "They have a good point." He didn't hesitate to push his tax cuts through by reconciliation when he wasn't able to muster sufficient bipartisan support to get them past a potential filibuster. Ronald Reagan, prior to blowing the deficits through the roof, didn't hesitate to attack Jimmy Carter over government spending. Since when is the President supposed to act as a meek and objective arbiter of budget proposals, rather than advocating for himself and his party?

I'm not recalling a similar torrent of crocodile tears from the political left when past Republican Presidents argued in favor of their own budgets or their party's political and budgetary goals. What did I miss?

What Does Glenn Beck Believe?

I don't think you'll get a valid sense of his beliefs by listening to him talk. He's quick to criticize the religious beliefs of others, for example, but how much time does he spend discussing his own? His lists of "principles and values" appear to be a reworking of AA's Principles and Virtues - substitute a dash of nationalism for the references to alcoholism, stir, and look what comes out. During his recovery from alcoholism Beck would have seen how the 12-step program can be a powerful tool for self-improvement. Skepticism of AA being duly noted, I'll give Beck the benefit of the doubt on this one.

But I am not going to cut Beck any additional slack. The book that gives me the best sense of where Beck is coming from is Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. No, not the parts about the largely forgotten history of the Mormon Church, and not the front-and-center story of a cruel and bizarre homicide, but the material that describes how various schemers, scammers and grifters take advantage of their fellow Mormons.¹ And although I could assume that some of these people are sincere, I find it hard to offer benefit of the doubt to a guy who proclaims that he has had a vision from God to build a gold mine, and that the gold will be found when Jesus returns to usher in the Millennium. "So give me your money, don't ask for any proof that there's gold at the site because I've already told you when the gold will be found and to challenge that is to question God." What if the mark is skeptical? "Pray on it."² Krakauer describes a law enforcement official's effort to remind the people of Utah that God is not an investment counselor. How does this relate to Beck? See the following video, most notably the content starting at 3:08:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Beck - Not So Mellow Gold
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Among the eccentric offshoots of Mormonism, Krakauer details how self-described prophets or cult-like leaders often deify the Founding Fathers and the foundational documents of the nation, even as they misunderstand, misrepresent, or take out of context the beliefs, statements, and principles of those people and documents.

A charitable interpretation of Beck would be that he learned the tricks of the trade of the scammers and decided to employ them for a cause he believes will do good. In the alternative, f course, he's a scammer. "We report, you decide."

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1. I don't mean to suggest that all of the scammers are sincere Mormon, but according to law enforcement officials quoted in the book it's common for the type of scammer under discussion to use their claims of shared faith as a foundation for building trust with their victims.

2. The concept of praying on important issues and decisions is very familiar to Christians, but within Mormonism there's also belief in Moroni's promise, that if you pray with true faith and a sincere heart, God's truth will be revealed to you.

Frum on the Right-Wing Noise Machine

David Frum has published a blog post that rebukes the conservative media for its shameful conduct, focusing on the Shirley Sherrod case.

Whether it's a change of heart or an end to self-censorship, it would have been nice had Frum been writing stuff like this before he was fired from AEI.

Douthat's Call for a Class War

In a largely sensible editorial about the need to cut subsidies to people and entities that don't need them, Ross Douthat can't stop himself from injecting some silliness:

... Americans with million-dollar mortgages are defaulting at almost twice the rate of the typical homeowner.... The left-wing instinct, when faced with high-rolling irresponsibility, is usually to call for tax increases on the rich.

A classic invocation of the "hollow man" fallacy. You would think that if something was a "left wing instinct", you would see evidence of it. When was the last time we had a serious political effort by a left-wing political party to increase taxes on the rich at all, let alone on the basis of "high-rolling irresponsibility"? (The closest tax I can think of is the short-lived luxury tax, from almost 20 years ago, and even that's a poor fit.) Where can I find a single person who is arguing that because people who have $million+ mortgages are defaulting, we should raise taxes on them or anyone else?

Douthat may be alluding to the call for taxes on the financiers who broke the back of the world financial system, got bailed out, and rewarded themselves with lavish pay and bonuses and taxpayer expense. But it's better described as a human instinct to want to hold those people responsible for the devastation they caused. My guess is that I could get significant support for such a tax from Tea Party supporters. Douthat complains in relation to that very class, "that we subsidize their irresponsibility too heavily — underwriting their bad bets and bailing out their follies," so how does he distinguish himself from those in the "left-wing" who want to impose at least a small price on those very follies. Further, if Douthat is conflating the type of irresponsibility that leads to foreclosure with lemon socialism, he's not even trying to form an honest or cohesive argument.

Douthat also employs the biased sample fallacy to argue,

The same pattern is at work in our entitlement system, which is lurching toward bankruptcy in part because of how much Medicare and Social Security pay to seniors who could get along without assistance. Instead of a safety net that protects the elderly from poverty, we have a system in which the American taxpayer is effectively underwriting cruises and tee times.

How many seniors use Social Security to make ends meet? Why shouldn't a senior citizen who enjoys golf play golf or take vacations, even if he's a recipient of Social Security? What percentage of Social Security recipients can afford to take cruises even with the benefit of that payment? From all appearances, Douthat doesn't know, doesn't care.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, to his great credit, recently floated the possibility of means-testing Social Security.

It's to Boehner's "great credit" that he is adhering to his party's sixty-five year strategy to diminish and, ideally, eliminate Social Security? Yeah, right.

Many Republican senators have been staunch critics of corporate welfare.

Just not enough to make a difference against their party's overwhelming support for corporate welfare. Hence Douthat's lecture:

But conservatives need to recognize that the most pernicious sort of redistribution isn’t from the successful to the poor. It’s from savers to speculators, from outsiders to insiders, and from the industrious middle class to the reckless, unproductive rich.

As Douthat knows, the very form of wealth redistribution he's describing is a core element of the Republican Party's political strategy. Which isn't to say that the Democratic Party is much better; it's not. Why should it be? Sure, there are significant differences in the parties' approach to policy issues, but both parties cringe at the thought of biting a hand that feeds them.

Update: Although the political argument presented is over-the-top, this information throws some cold water on Douthat's notion of wealthy, privileged seniors who blow their Social Security money on golf outings and cruises:

"One out of three working Americans does not have retirement savings beyond Social Security, and about 35% of those over 65 rely almost totally on Social Security alone," Dallas Salisbury, president of the Alliance for Investor Education and the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) , explained to AlterNet. "Of the remaining two-thirds of working Americans that have some retirement savings, 27 percent report less than $1,000, 16 percent between $1,000 and $9,999, 11 percent between $10,000 and $24,999, 12 percent between $25,000-$49,999, and 36 percent $50,000 or more." Perhaps the most shocking number is that half of Americans have $2,000 or less saved for retirement.

Ouch.

Libertarianism Withering Under the Spotlight

I don't see much point in discussing libertarianism as a theory of government, as it's not much of a challenge to go after the low hanging fruit. Libertarianism has value. There's value in resisting the tendency of government to grow in size, scope and power, whether in relation to individual rights and freedoms or the regulation of business and industry.

Let's face it, when it comes to running a government, libertarianism is best left to dystopian science fiction. The best "defense" of libertarian government that you're likely to hear is that "we haven't tried it". It's the same thing that Marxists and communists argue - you can't judge their theories of government based upon history, because every implementation to date has been flawed. Libertarians can spot the defect in that argument when it comes to communism, but not when it comes to their own theories.

There are very few pure libertarians - those who truly embrace the extreme form of the theory that I've heard described as "anarchy with lawyers". If your neighbor builds a toxic waste dump in his back yard, it's his land. If the smell bothers you or the sludge is contaminating your land or water, you can sue him. What could possibly go wrong? (Never mind that lawsuits require laws and court rules, are time consuming and expensive, and can impose serious financial hardship or be unaffordable if you're going up against a defendant with deep pockets.) In fairness, next to nobody falls into that category. Libertarianism transforms itself into a theory of more limited regulation and government, with nothing approximating consensus between libertarians as to what lines should be drawn and where to draw them. It's not just that pure libertarianism, when explained, is unappealing to most people - it's unappealing to most libertarians.

The next problem is that most libertarians are either cafeteria libertarians - they'll pick and choose where the government can intrude on people's lives - or single issue libertarians. Rand Paul is getting a lot of flak over his "libertarian" approach to civil rights, and skepticism over his call for the abolition of the Department of Education, but when government intrusion and wealth distribution benefits him, he's the first to the trough. Should we consider a significant deductible on Medicare recipients? Sure, why not - that's consistent with being libertarian - but you have to make sure that compensation for doctors is not affected, and certainly that it's not cut. (Minimum wage, on the other hand, doesn't affect doctors' wages.) In fairness to Paul, he has previously distanced himself from the label, "libertarian", even though he seemed please to be regarded in that light.

When I hear Rand Paul's defense of BP, I can't help but wonder if, in a different context, he would be complaining about the violation of the rights and destruction of property of a business that did nothing more than successfully lobby for a tax cut. Tea Party hero, indeed.

The single issue libertarians can be a bit scary. Even with cafeteria libertarians it's often difficult to tell whether their beliefs are motivated by libertarianism, or if they embrace libertarianism as cover for their controversial beliefs. It's much more comfortable, after all, to attack the Civil Rights Act from the cover of libertarianism than... well, from any other angle. Then you encounter the brand of libertarian who seems to care primarily, if not exclusively, about abolishing age of consent laws, and... what do you make of that? But what you will often find is that the libertarian you're talking to is a lot like Rand Paul - they want to cut government programs and spending that don't directly benefit themselves, but want to perpetuate those programs that provide them with a benefit. You can find self-professed libertarians living in Section 8 housing.

The libertarian focus is often on "property rights" - you own a business, so what right does the government have to tell you that you can't exclude a particular individual from your business. "Racism is wrong and I don't support it," they may explain, "But market forces will prevail, and the business down the street that hires the best candidate regardless of race, or the business down the street that doesn't discriminate, will win out over the business that does."

Try pointing to the history of Jim Crow or apartheid, and you'll hear about the role of government in enabling and perpetuating institutionalized racism, as if that erases the fact that nothing short of massive government intervention could bring it to an end. You'll hear again about market forces, but no explanation as to why it took another thirty years, a massive lawsuit, and an eight figure payout before Denny's caught on that segregated seating in its restaurants was supposed to have been a thing of the past. The same market forces that perpetuated Jim Crow perpetuated that practice at Denny's, and it appears that the involved restaurants were responding to local market preferences. Just as with some members of the chain providing discounts for churchgoers. Sometimes discrimination boosts business, even if a few people are offended or a different class of people is excluded. Libertarians will tell you what a good thing it is that social clubs were exempted from anti-discrimination laws, but seem to forget the obvious lesson that the same reasons people may prefer the "exclusivity" of their social club can be paralleled in other contexts.

Let's say we grant the Rand Paul dream and let private businesses discriminate. What happens if an individual attempts to get service? What happens if there's a protest? What happens if there's a sit-in? How much force does the state license the business owner to use to enforce his right to discriminate against somebody who has the temerity to want a cup of coffee at a "whites only" business? If the business owner calls the police and says, "I have a trespasser in my business," will the person be arrested and prosecuted by the state for violating the business owner's rights - simply because he had the wrong color skin to patronize that business?

Whether it's through the sanctioning of violence or criminal prosecutions to enforce property rights, if the power of the state falls behind those who want to discriminate, how is that libertarian? Would the most libertarian solution be to allow the business owner to file a civil lawsuit against the unwanted patron, a "solution" not likely to satisfy anybody? (Maybe the trespasser could countersue, adopting the libertarian argument that the business owner was harming his business by discriminating, and was thus unjustly enriched through the unwanted patron's presence in the store.)

There is a cure for all of this - it's called "thinking things through". Once you do that, you'll find that you may be sympathetic toward libertarianism, and even embrace the notion that the government has next to no role in certain areas of our business and personal lives. You may embrace limited government. But by the time you're through, if you still call yourself a libertarian it will be in a similar sense to calling yourself "a vegetarian who enjoys an occasional steak."

Update: Charles Lane offers what may be a more clear statement of my point about how private discrimination would rely upon state power for its enforcement.

Don't Look for Salvation in the Tea Party Movement

Reihan Salam is a smart guy, but I don't know what to make of this:

If large numbers of Republicans outside of the South and the Mountain West win seats in 2010, particularly suburban swing seats, there will be a built-in constituency for a more pragmatic brand of center-right politics. The Tea Party could pave the way for a more inclusive political movement that embraces the same fiscal conservatism while leaving aside more polarizing cultural messages, as seen in the Scott Brown campaign. This would parallel the evolution of the antiwar movement between 2003 to 2008, from a fringe movement that alienated moderates to a tendency that came to embrace a large majority of the public.

The Tea Party movement could help increase GOP turnout in the midterm elections, which of course could help the GOP win seats. Given that, statistically speaking, the opposition party should pick up seats in the upcoming election, and anti-incumbent sentiments are high, all's the better for the GOP.

But Scott Brown is not "the exception who proves the rule." Scott Brown got a lot of support because he was a Republican poised to win "Ted Kennedy's seat". If he were an incumbent in Arizona or Utah, the same Tea Partiers who sent him checks would be launching a primary challenge and calling for his head on a platter. The Tea Party movement is not about making the rest of the nation more like Massachusetts. For better or for worse, Scott Brown cares about being reelected, so you can expect that he will be playing to the larger population of Massachusetts voters as opposed to trying to meet Tea Party litmus tests.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party has not come out for one thing - not one thing - that would substantively improve the nation. When they were talking about protesting the auto industry bailout in Detroit, Motor City Tea Partiers objected. They're not for Medicare cuts - they're in the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" camp. In fact, one of the things that seems to motivate them is the thought that healthcare reform might be funded in part by cuts to Medicare. They're not for Social Security reform. They're not for cuts in military spending. They're not for cuts in subsidies for agriculture or ethanol. They're not for ending the mortgage interest deduction. Sure, they're for cuts - but only cuts that affect other people. In that sense they're part of a grand American tradition, but....

Meanwhile, in Maine,

In Maine, the newly adopted GOP platform outlines various changes, although its ambiguous language leaves the meaning of many sections open to interpretation. There’s a call to restore “Constitutional Law as the basis for the judiciary,” to “reassert the principle that ‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘Freedom from Religion,’ ” to “return to the principles of Austrian Economics,” and to remove “obstacles created by government” to the private development of natural gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power.

Other parts are clearer: a rejection of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, elimination of the US Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, and a freeze and prohibition on stimulus spending. Healthcare is “not a right” but “a service” that can be addressed only by using “market based solutions.”

To the extent that the Tea Party is responsible for that platform, as is suggested by the article, what part of it sounds like a sensible, carefully crafted platform for the future, and what part of it sounds like reactionary populism? (For "more of the same," see also the "Contract From America".) Is that platform more likely to help or hinder the state's GOP candidates?

Reihan suggests that the Tea Party movement will allow the GOP to move away from "more polarizing cultural messages". Well, if the Contract From America signifies anything, that movement won't include religious tolerance. And if Arizona signifies anything, it won't be a greater tolerance toward immigrants. Whether or not it's mentioned, being pro-life will remain a central part of the GOP platform. So... when and how does the party shift back from cultural issues to the economic - freed by the Tea Party to cut any spending it wants, except for the military, Medicare, Social Security, and agricultural or energy subsidies?

Yes, the Tea Party may transform the Republican Party, and may help it gain seats. But really, what political ideology improves itself by harnessing itself to a populist movement, at best substituting one set of litmus tests for another - and more realistically, adding the Tea Party's litmus tests to those already adopted through years of similar dependence on the religious right.

In his final comment on the anti-war movement, Reihan confuses the message with the messenger and ends up with a bad analogy. Sure, some of the groups that organized anti-Iraq war protests were unpopular with the public, but before we went into Iraq the anti-war movement was winning the debate. As one would expect, once the war was launched the public got behind the war, the President, and the armed forces.