How Mitt Romney Will Cut Taxes for the Rich Without Technically Lying

E.J. Dionne restates the conventional wisdom on Romney's stated tax policy, but makes a good catch:

During the same nomination battle, Romney abruptly changed his tax policy to placate the supply-side-Wall-Street-Journal-Grover-Norquist axis in the GOP. Romney’s initial tax proposal was relatively modest. The right wasn’t happy. No problem, said Romney, and out came his new tax plan that included a 20 percent cut in income tax rates, “rate cuts” being a term of near-religious significance to supply-siders.

Romney pointedly asserted (again, in the primaries) that he wanted the tax cut to go to everyone, “including the top 1 percent.” But this doesn’t sell to swing voters now, especially after the leaked video in which Romney wrote off 47 percent of Americans as incorrigibly dependent. So in the first debate, Romney tried to pretend that he didn’t want to cut rich people’s taxes. He reassured us that “I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.” (By the way, he could cut taxes for the rich a lot and still keep their “share” of the government’s overall tax take the same.)

Here's what Romney said:

Well, sure. I'd like to clear up the record and go through it piece by piece. First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high- income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. They'll do fine whether you're president or I am.

There is a difference - a huge difference - between reducing the "amount" and reducing the "share". If I pay $80 in taxes and you pay $20 in taxes, I'm paying 80% and you're paying 20%. If a politician says he's going to reduce the amount of your taxes but not mine, the meaning is pretty obvious - your taxes go down, mine stay the same. A 20% tax cut would leave me paying $80, but you would pay $0.

But the word, again, is "share".

Back to that 20% cut: If both of our tax rates were reduced by 20%, I would pay $64 an you would pay $16. And guess what? My share of the taxes would still be 80% despite a massive reduction in the amount I paid.

Ah, you say, but how do you square that analysis with the following:

And finally, with regards to that tax cut, look, I'm not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce the — the revenues going to the government. My — my number one principle is there'll be no tax cut that adds to the deficit.

How can that work if you issue a significant tax cut?


If Romney does nothing, the deficit is going to drop by hundreds of billions of dollars as we emerge from the recession. Let's say the deficit were projected to drop next year to $600 billion. You cut taxes by $400 billion and the deficit goes right back up to $1 trillion. But wait - didn't you just increase the deficit? No! You reduced the deficit from $1.1 trillion to $1 trillion. Sure, it might have otherwise be smaller, but you can say with a straight face (or psychopathic smirk), "I told you the truth. There was no tax cut that adds to the deficit."¹

But you object, "The deficit isn't going to drop that quickly." To which I respond, "Taxes will be decreased in phases." Romney's been playing games with spreadsheets for most of his adult life. This is just another game, but with a far less sophisticated audience than he dealt with at Bain.
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Similarly, Romney's stated "jobs plan" is to lean back in his chair, watch the economy grow - natural growth over the course of the next four years is projected to add 12 million jobs, even if the President does nothing - and call it a "plan".

Paul Ryan is a Coward

Oh, I know, I'm supposed to pat Paul Ryan on the back for being so "brave" and "honest" about our nation's deficit, and of "standing up to special interests" in his proposal to slash and privatize Medicare. But all I see is cowardice.

1. Ten Years?: Ryan proposes the political coward's timing for his proposal. End Medicare in ten years. If a Republican President is elected in 2012, even if he serves two full terms he'll be out of office by the time the plan hits the fan. For that matter, no matter who succeeds President Obama, the next President will either be out of office or into his second term before the plan takes effect.

2. Grandfathering Grandparents?: Privatizing Medicare is supposedly an opportunity for the private insurance market to shine. Never mind the history that tells us that private insurers require subsidies in order to compete with Medicare. If Ryan believes this plan will do anything but slash coverage and benefits, why does he grandfather into the system anybody who qualifies for Medicare before 2022? Why not let them enjoy the benefit of the "free market" along with the rest of us?

3. Procrastination: For that matter, if the cure to the problem comes from the (not particularly) free market for health insurance, why wait ten years? Why not propose that this plan take effect immediately? It's not as if private health insurance companies have no foundation for offering insurance to seniors - they have their experience with the (heavily subsidized) Medicare Advantage program to draw from.

4. Lots of Time for a Full Retreat: Ryan leaves the door wide open for a full retreat by the Republican Party if his "reform" proves unworkable - and insulates two, and quite possibly three Presidents from having to take responsibility for that retreat. So again, why not put the nation's money where his mouth is?

5. What About Inflation?: Although it would be a good thing to find ways to make the provision of health care less expensive, the crisis in the making comes from healthcare inflation. Ryan's plan does nothing to influence inflation and, in fact, could worsen inflation by diminishing economies of scale in the healthcare market.

I don't agree with Matt Yglesias that the ten year window is about demographics. Seniors are seniors - they're going to have more money than most of the rest of us, they're going to vote more diligently than most of the rest of us, and thus politicians will listen to them more closely than they do to the rest of us. So again, I have to come back to cowardice. He doesn't have the fortitude to tell today's seniors, "As of next year you're going to get a voucher for free market health insurance", because he knows that the immediate reaction will be, "We'll have to pay how much for how little coverage?" He also knows that if he continues to ignore the elephant in the room, healthcare inflation, the situation will be far worse in ten years - and he's afraid to admit that to the extent that the present system is sustained over the next decade it will be in no small part to reforms put into place by the dreaded "ObamaCare".

E.J. Dionne gives Ryan a certain benefit of the doubt,

But while I am assailing his ideas, let me put in a good word about Ryan himself: He is, from my limited experience, a charming man who truly believes what he believes. I salute him for laying out the actual conservative agenda. Here’s hoping he is transparent in the coming weeks about whom he is taking benefits from and toward whom he wants to be more generous. If he thinks we need an even more unequal society to prosper in the future, may he have the courage to say so.

I have no reason to doubt Ryan's charm, although I don't think we need to wait and see if he'll have the courage to admit his actual agenda. I'll be pleasantly surprised if he proves himself to be honest, and willing to absorb the consequent political price, but... it won't happen. A word from Paul Krugman:

Oh, and for all those older Americans who voted GOP last year because those nasty Democrats were going to cut Medicare, I have just one word: suckers!

The same goes, I think, for anybody who believes that the GOP is sincere about this budget plan - at least in the sense that they won't flee from Ryan's ideas like proverbial rats from a sinking ship if these reforms threaten their chances in future elections.

Update: Michael Grunwald at Swampland takes a look at Paul Ryan's cowardice:

So by all means, let's have an adult conversation about deficits. A good place to start would be the origins of our current predicament. President Clinton left behind a huge budget surplus. As Joe pointed out, it was wiped out by President Bush's tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit.

All of those budget-busters went on the national credit card. And all of them were supported, no doubt courageously, by Congressman Ryan.

Grunwald also reminds us that the Republicans misrepresented and savaged every cost-saving mechanism proposed for or included in the Affordable Care Act, and yet pundits who gush over Ryan never got around to describing the President's or his party's advancement of those policies as "courage".

Obama Debating Boehner

E.J. Dionne proposes that the President debate the House and Senate minority leaders.

Between now and November, President Obama should debate both John Boehner, the House Republican leader, and Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the Senate. Their confrontations, televised and during prime time, would certainly get the attention of voters and make clear what the stakes in the election are.

I disagree. Even between presidential candidates, debates often amount to little more than the exchange of talking points. Recall Sarah Palin, up-front, stated she felt free to ignore the questions posed to the candidates and talk about whatever she wanted. To allow people like Boehner and McConnell to debate the President would elevate their importance and allow them to spew nonsense in the President's face while granting legitimacy to that nonsense, while the President would be expected to respond with the decorum required of his office. Also, as if it needs to be said, Obama's not presently up for reelection.

If Dionne wants somebody to debate Boehner, the proper counterpart is Nancy Peolosi. And for McConnell, of course, Harry Reid.

There's Nothing Wrong With a Good Rant....

And Applebaum offers up a good entry in the "Americans are stupid" category, the type of rant that Americans love to hate, or hate to love, or... maybe it's a little bit of both. But I think that it's reasonable to expect that a rant that is published in a major newspaper be factually accurate.

Applebaum's argument could easily be paraphrased as, "If like me, you spend a lot of time living in Europe, you'll come to see Americans as selfish and stupid." With due respect to Applebaum's attempt to suggest that Europeans are less selfish and more enlightened, or expect less from their government, she does a poor job making her case. I think it's more reasonable to say that Americans are people, and thus are subject to being selfish, misled by demagoguery, and at times irrational. Look at one culture, look at 'em all - people are people.

Beyond that, Applebaum seems eager to shift the responsibility for a mass response to demagoguery onto the people. Not onto the "Mama Grizzlies" who actively and dishonestly attempt to whip up a frenzy of self-contradictory anti-government sentiment - "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Paul Krugman addressed the issue in a manner that, although not original, recognizes where the responsibility belongs:

There’s no point berating voters for their ignorance: people have bills to pay and children to raise, and most don’t spend their free time studying fact sheets. Instead, they react to what they see in their own lives and the lives of people they know.

Applebaum faults the American people for listening to the nation's political opinion leaders and acting as if the analysis that's presented to them is accurate. It doesn't seem to occur to her that she and her peers have a role in the equation, and that when seeking out the roots of the problem she would benefit from consulting a mirror.

But the biggest problem is that her editorial is replete with errors of fact and logic....

• "Americans -- with their lawsuit culture, their safety obsession and, above all, their addiction to government spending programs -- demand more from their government than just about anybody else in the world" - Applebaum should take note that while the U.S. relies heavily on litigation to resolve its disputes, Europe relies much more heavily on regulation. Yes, in the U.S. you might get a class action suit over a product that fails five minutes out of warranty (not that it would be a very strong suit), but in Europe you're more apt to have the government tell the company that produced the product that, despite the duration of its warranty, consumers had a right to expect greater durability so they must fix or replace the item. We could argue about which approach is better, but it's dishonest to pretend that Europeans merely accept the status quo while Americans go off to court.

  It's also fair to ask, if we're accused of having a "lawsuit culture", how many Americans actually file a tort lawsuit during their lifetimes? Most people seem to get through life without suing somebody else - so, other than media spin, what makes that a "lawsuit culture"?

  It's also reasonable to ask, if the U.S. is deemed to be "addicted" to government spending, what spending programs that directly benefit individuals do we have in the United States that are absent from typical European nations, and for those with counterparts how do benefits and expenditures compare? I'm having a difficult time thinking of government sponsored social programs where, on the whole, Europe lags behind the U.S.

• "They don't simply want the government to keep the peace and create a level playing field. They want the government to ensure that every accident and every piece of bad luck is prevented, or that they are fully compensated in the event something goes wrong." - Would people respond to this differently if Applebaum said "you" instead of "they"? And if we are talking about the society and not individuals, how is this actually different from Europe? What risks do Americans deem unacceptable that Europeans shrug off as part of life?

• "And if the price of their house drops, they will hold the government responsible for that, too." - The only people who got serious financial help due to the collapse of the housing market were bankers. Other than the failed HAMP program, ordinary homeowners were told to suck it up. So what is Applebaum talking about?

• "When, through a series of flukes, a crazy person smuggled explosives onto a plane last Christmas, the public bayed for blood and held the White House responsible" - I remember things a bit differently. It seemed to me that it was the right-wing media that howled for blood, and whined that President Obama didn't respond quickly enough, or (like Bush did with the shoe bomber) dared to allow the suspect to be Mirandized and treated like a criminal rather than being whisked away to a black hole where he could be held indefinitely as an "enemy combatant". Sure, a lot of people responded to that demagoguery. But why is Applebaum faulting the people and not the demagogues?

• "When, because of bad luck and planning mistakes, an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, the public bayed for blood and held the White House responsible again." - Actually, wasn't it the same story over again? President Obama responded as if the matter were appropriately delegated to BP and a variety of government agencies, the media howled that he wasn't taking things seriously enough until he finally spoke on the subject, the media then howled that he didn't show enough emotion, and when he devoted more time to the matter after-the-fact the media howled that he was being distracted from his other duties? Again, even if people bought into the media's spin and right-wing demagoguery, how is that their fault?

  For that matter, where can I find Applebaum's sane voice, debunking the rhetoric and challenging her peers to report the actual story rather than trying to transform it into yet another hypervenitlation about Obama.

• "Nevertheless, these kinds of events set off a chain reaction: A government program is created, experts are hired, new machines are ordered for the airports or new monitors sent beneath the ocean. This is how we got the Kafkaesque security network that an extraordinary Post investigation this week calls, quite conservatively, 'A hidden world, growing beyond control.'" - Yes, it's good of the media to occasionally point out to us that the consequence of having an irresponsible media is that some people gain unrealistic expectations of what the government can and should do. But it's fair to observe that there's no shortage of fancy, new bomb detection equipment in European airports, and that European countries have their fair share of "hidden world" surveillance programs. Has Applebaum been to London lately? Without ending up on police-operated CCTV?

• "It's true that the French want to retire early, and that the British think health care should be free, but when things -- any old things -- go wrong, Americans also write to their congressional representatives and their commander in chief, demanding action. And precisely because this is a democracy, Congress and the president respond, pass a law, build a building." - I'm not sure that there's a country in the world in which people don't want to retire early, including this one. (And on that subject, is Applebaum imagining that the French want to retire early based upon private savings?) It's also not my impression that the British want healthcare to be "free" - they have the notion that they pay for the National Health Service (NHS) through their taxes, if you can imagine, not that it's "free".

  But the notion that Americans need only write to a Member of Congress and, poof, instant legislation results? Beyond silly. First, last I checked, Europeans at times will write to their elected representatives. No difference there. Second, if it's that easy, why are we waiting for legislation on so many issues that the people deem important? Why wasn't a "public option", favored by a majority of Americans, part of healthcare reform? Why did we launch a war in Iraq after public opinion had shifted, and a small majority opposed the invasion? Where can I find an actual manifestation of the fealty Applebaum imagines?

• "To put it bluntly, middle-class Americans of the right, left and center have come to expect a level of personal financial security that -- despite the stereotypes -- most people around the world would never demand from their governments." - So, pray tell, what are the benefits demanded and received by Americans that aren't either wanted or needed by "most people around the world"? Universal healthcare? Some form of government-sponsored retirement benefit? Seriously.

• "The majority of Americans are wary of global trade, don't trust free markets and also think that "the benefits from . . . Social Security or Medicare are worth the costs of those programs." And when the sample is restricted to people who support the Tea Party movement? The share is still 62 percent." - So Americans are wary of free trade... as opposed to, say, France, in which the typical citizen fully embraces free trade, and calls for the abolition of all tariffs and other barriers to international trade? Americans trust "free markets" less than Europeans?

  As for Social Security and Medicare, how is it incorrect to believe that those programs are worth what they cost? And in what European nation can I find the opposite - the majority of the people saying that their national health insurance programs and retirement benefits aren't worth what they cost?

  Applebaum seems to be confusing the views of the aristocratic circles of Europe, in which she socializes, with the views of the masses - but that, also, is no different here. You'll find the greatest opposition to national health insurance and Social Security among the people who need it the least.

• "Yet it is Social Security, Medicare and the ever-expanding list of earmarks -- federal grants -- that are going to sink the American budget in the next few decades, not President Obama's health-care reform (though that won't help)." - "Can we afford to pay for this", of course, is a different question than "Is this worth what it costs". For all I know, a Lamborghini is worth every penny its owners pay for it, and it's probably a lot of fun to have one; it's still not in my budget.

  Yes, over the long-haul, we need to find ways to improve the financial viability of Medicare and Social Security, although it's dishonest or at best sloppy of Applebaum to suggest that they threaten imminent bankruptcy. In relation to the healthcare reform bill it's flat-out wrong to suggest that "it won't help", because it is both projected to lower government spending and introduces tools and measures that are intended to help the government identify and act upon areas of potential savings. Could it do more? Sure. no small part to demagogues and a lazy media, screeching about "death panels" caused legislators to back away from anything that might be construed or misconstrued as rationing or limiting access to health care.

  Earmarks, of course, have minimal impact on the deficit - they direct how money, already allocated, is to be spent.

• "Yet in Washington, these expenditures are known as 'third rails': If you touch them, you're dead." - As I recall, John McCain gained significant public support for his war on earmarks. Third rail? Try finding a politician willing to defend earmarks, particularly as they've been used over the past decade.

  As for Social Security and Medicare, they're not "third rail" issues because you can't get a majority of Americans to agree with the need for reform, or the need to establish long-term viability. They aren't touched because politicians fear that cuts will incur the wrath of a small but consistent voting bloc - the elderly - and get voted out of office, and that a fix via a tax increase will bring about anger from groups that are wealthy and influential. Both programs have been tweaked and modified over the years without the sky falling. If the Republican Party would back away from its demagoguery, I think that a similar fix could be implemented within months.

• "President George W. Bush talked a little about making individuals more responsible for their retirement, and then he gave up. The 'privatization' of Social Security, as it was sneeringly described, was too unpopular, particularly among his supporters." - And again the real problem appears to be that Applebaum is channeling the concerns of her aristocratic peers. The reason that President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security was called "privatization" was... because it was privatization - taking money from Social Security and putting it into private accounts. At first, G.W. and his fellow "reformers" had no apparent problem describing his plan as privatization. When they couldn't sell their idea under that honest label they did attempt to sell the same thing under a different brand. Given how the stock market has performed since G.W.'s plan tanked, even before considering the fees that private money managers would have taken to manage those private accounts, it's difficult to see how opponents of G.W'.s proposals were wrong.

• "Look around the world, and we don't look as exceptional as we think. Chileans are willing to save for their own retirement." - Yes, look around the world - but not at Europe. No, don't look around the word - look only at Chile. And while you're at it, pretend that U.S. citizens don't save for their retirement through 401k, 403b, IRA, 457b, and similar private accounts. As for Chile, Applebaum's talking point has passed it's expiration date.

• "Most Europeans are reconciled to the idea that not everybody, at any age and in any condition, is entitled to the most expensive medical technology." - The same, of course, is tru of most Americans. The issue is that when it's you or your loved one who needs that treatment, you want them to get it. I somehow doubt that's any less true in Europe than it is here.

• "A secretary of state or defense traveling with dozens of cars and armed security guards would seem absurd in many countries" - Well, yes, but their Secretaries of State aren't the credible targets of kidnapping and assassination attempts. Ours is.

• "...as would the notion that the government provides a tax break if you buy a house" - Different nations offer different subsidies, depending upon what they value. The U.S. emphasizes home ownership, and thus subsidizes home ownership. But you know what home ownership does? It ties people to a location and a mortgage, making them less able to move to change jobs and more dependent upon a steady flow of income - and is associated with lower levels of labor organization and strikes. So, Anne, is the problem that the U.S. too heavily subsidizes housing, or is the problem that too many Europeans rent?

• "...or that schools should close if there is ice on the roads." - Pray tell, what nations don't have "snow days" when they have reason to be concerned that the roads will be dangerous? What nations in which the state offers school busing don't have snow days? I suspect that the correct answers are "none" and "none".

• "Yet we not only demand ludicrous levels of personal and political safety, we also rant and rave against the vast bureaucracies we have created -- democratically, constitutionally, openly -- to deliver it." - Ah, if only we lived in Europe, where everybody loves the government, nobody complains of government waste or inefficiency, nobody expects the government to address society problems, nobody strikes, and nobody protests.

Applebaum's editorial doesn't really say anything of note, and thus appears to have passed with little critical attention. But given that most people who read a newspaper aren't aware that op/ed writers aren't fact-checked, it perhaps highlights a need to better educate the public that what they read in the paper may be something the author just made up. After all, a lot of Applebaum's concerns are based upon exactly that - the people believing stuff that politicians and pundits made up.

Update: E.J. Dionne gets it right:

Yet [in jumping the gun in the Sherrod case] the Obama team was reacting to a reality: the bludgeoning of mainstream journalism into looking timorously over its right shoulder and believing that "balance" demands taking seriously whatever sludge the far right is pumping into the political waters.

This goes way back. Al Gore never actually said he "invented the Internet," but you could be forgiven for not knowing this because the mainstream media kept reporting he had.

There were no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills. But this false charge got so much coverage that an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll last August found that 45 percent of Americans thought the reform proposals would likely allow "the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly." That was the summer when support for reform was dropping precipitously. A straight-out lie influenced the course of one of our most important debates.

The traditional media are so petrified of being called "liberal" that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors. Mainstream journalists regularly criticize themselves for not jumping fast enough or high enough when the Fox crowd demands coverage of one of their attack lines.

OMG - The President Is Paying Too Much Attention to the BP Disaster!

Where would we be without Beltway journalism. One day its stars are patting themselves on the back for getting President Obama to devote significant face time to the Deepwater Horizon spill. The next thing you know, watch out, that could distract him from the nation's real problems.

In writing that "It's devilishly difficult to explain why deficits are good now and bad later," Dionne neglects to state why - and contrary to the implication of his article, it's not because of the Deepwater Horizon spill. With a Democrat in the Oval Office, the most ardent defenders of Bush's trifecta "joke" and his runaway spending have reinvented themselves as deficit hawks, and a sizable percentage of the voting public is buying it. The media has done a lousy job explaining how deficits work and why this may not be the time for austerity - and if Obama were to support another enormous stimulus package they would resort to the "he said, she said" routine, letting the newly reminted opponents of government spending misrepresent the effects of stimulus spending to date and attack the President for his "out of control" spending. Finding responsible tax increases that could offset the spending? That would only grease the wheels of the Republican noise machine. Dionne knows this.

This is a bit like the bursting of the housing bubble. Nobody saw it coming, right? Except, you know, for everybody who is actually paying attention. It's more accurate to say that there was a lot of intentional blindness and the mainstream media chose to tune out the voices of doom. The President is not going to set himself up for a lecture by Dowd as to how he's being "professorial" and out-of-touch, or the inevitable round of editorials excoriating him for not slashing spending ("Oh no - we're Greece!") knowing full well that neither the media nor his own party has any interest in covering his back. Yes, "advocates of further stimulus have to know they are losing the political argument", but it's not because they've been silent, or haven't been trying to educate the public.

(On a related note, via The NonSequitur, consider what life would be like if political scientists covered the news.)

Running Against McCain

E.J. Dionne suggests,

So what's the path of integrity for one-time McCain fans in the center and on the left? It would be to base our judgments on the extent to which the rebellious McCain we admired has given way to the McCain who is as conservative as he always said he was - even if many liberals (and, for different reasons, many conservatives) didn't want to believe him.

Is there a need for a special "path of integrity"? I don't think that a Democrat who would have preferred McCain to Bush in 2000, or again in 2004, to note, "I thought he would be better than G.W. Bush, but that doesn't mean I think he's better than anybody." Or to observe, "He has done some good things, and to me that puts him head and shoulders above the other Republicans who he defeated in the primaries, but I now have to compare him to the Democratic nominee."

What gives me the most pause about McCain? His retreat from his own historic positions without regard for whether he is followng a "path of integrity". The positions where I found him historically most impressive, such as fiscal conservativism, willingness to stand up to intolerance? When he decided to run for President again, they were the first to go. Where he is the most consistent as a "conservative", it seems, is when he advocates against abortion rights or flag burning. To the extent that it is even fair to call it "conservative," that platform doesn't inspire me.

Meanwhile, Richard Cohen is telling us that McCain could win based on the one issue where he has been consistent - to maintain the Iraq War as a war without end.

John McCain lacks Nixon's raw talent for hypocrisy, so I don't think he'll go that far. But he will make his stand on the surge, and it will be, for him, the functional equivalent of Nixon's secret plan. His plan, McCain will say, is to win. The Democrats' is to surrender, he will say. The issue, if he frames it right, will not be the wisdom of the war but how to get out with pride.

But that's not what's going to happen, is it? The Democrats will be asking, "How do we get out with pride, while maintaining stability in the region," and McCain will be arguing, "Get out? Why would we ever want to do that?"

McCain, of course, owns the surge. He advocated putting additional troops in Iraq way back when President Bush, deep in denial, was proclaiming ultimate faith in Rummy and his merry band of incompetents.

McCain only "owns" the surge because the mainstream media lets him. Why doesn't he own the entire war? ("Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.") Why doesn't he "own" the catastrophically bad plan that he endorsed, up to the date it should have been obvious to a sack of hammers that more troops were needed? McCain argued,

Many critics suggest that disarming Iraq through regime change would not result in an improved peace. There are risks in this endeavor, to be sure. But no one can plausibly argue that ridding the world of Saddam Hussein will not significantly improve the stability of the region and the security of American interests and values.

That argument was being plausibly made at the time. It proved correct. But Mr. "Straight Talk" - Mr. "National Security" - wasn't listening. And McCain's enduring embrace of Chalabi is evocative of Bush's deep stare into Putin's eyes - how wrong can you be?

So when Cohen gushes, "McCain, in fact, oozes national security", the question is legitimately raised, why are so many in the mainstream media unwilling to point out that, on the whole, McCain's judgment on the war has been terrible? (And what else is there?)

Military Recruiters & Law Schools

The Washington Post has shared two opinions on military recruiters at law school. First, E. J. Dionne Jr. declared "Let The Military On Campus", asserting,

The best way to change the military and to create greater fairness in sharing the burdens of defending our country is to embrace the call to service, not reject it. By opening their doors to recruiters, our universities can strengthen our democracy.

My memory of military recruitment at my law school was seeing an occasional uniformed officer of the armed services in the hall during interview week, and a fellow student's pleasure at getting a summer job that, although not his first choice, he seemed to enjoy.

The true representatives of the military in my law school class were a friend who was going into active duty service after graduation - and paying his own freight for law school - and a Marine reservist who, having recently concluded his active duty, missed a semester after he was called back into the service for the first Gulf War. And let's not forget the retired Lt. Colonel who was one of the most formidable and exacting law professors in the school. The arguable institutional anti-military sentiment (although it came in the form of "anti-war" sentiment) came from a different law professor, mentioned in the comments a few days ago, who announced to the class that her mandatory attendance policy did not apply to students who skipped class to protest the war. And the students who carried anti-military attitudes seemed unaffacted by all of this.

Today, in an unsigned editorial, the Post adds that while universities should feel free to treat the military in the same manner as private employers who discriminate,

But banning military recruiters from campuses or limiting cooperation with them contributes to a cultural gulf that already divides elite universities from the armed services. Particularly now, as military lawyers -- both civilian and uniformed -- are taking on so many of the cutting-edge issues in the war on terrorism, we would want to see more law school graduates enlisting. A fruitful engagement between the military and these law schools seems essential, and an open recruiting environment should be part of that.[1]

This is an interesting idea - the notion that more law students should enlist in the military - but it is strangely divorced from the question of need. That is, I was not aware that, even with the dubious exclusions from various law schools over their policies toward gays, any branch of the Armed Forces was having difficulty meeting its recruiting goals for lawyers. And last I checked, it was the law professors and law students with military backgrounds who provided the true engagement, not the almost invisible recruiters, holed up in cubicles in the recruiting office for at most a few days per year. Whatever the merits of permitting or excluding military recruitment, if you want to build relationships and reduce a "cultural gulf" the best place to start is with the students and faculty.

[1] I'll resist wordplay over the Post's choice of adjective in that last sentence. But I do wonder if the author assigned to the piece was having some fun slipping something past his bosses.

Government For Sale

In today's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne speaks of The Politics of Payoff, and looks at the beneficiaries of the Bush Administration's wild spending spree.

The Post also discusses the Bush Administration's steel tariffs, noting, "Not only were the steel tariffs purely about domestic politics from the start, no one in the administration ever pretended otherwise. Their main purpose, which no one denied, was to win back some of the steel country votes the president lost in the 2000 elections."

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