A "Bush v. Gore" What If....

Courtesy of Sandra Day O'Connor, Scott Lemiuex shares his memories of a horrible series of Supreme Court decisions.

And, again, it’s not just that justices notably unsympathetic to broad equal protection claims claimed to accept an innovative equal protection argument. Where Bush v. Gore immediately falls apart and becomes a historic disgrace is that the completely lawless remedy left an election count with all of the alleged equal protection defects of the court-ordered recount (and the “mess up” job of the Florida authorities) in place.

Here's a thought experiment: What if, rather than tampering in a poorly conducted state election the Supreme Court had let the result stand. Even in the worst of circumstances the Constitution provides a remedy, specifically that the House of Representatives would elect the President.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

Had the election come down to that, we might as a nation have taken a hard look at how elections are conducted, inconsistent approaches to taking and tallying votes, and similar flaws and set about fixing them. Instead the Supreme Court allowed the nation to bypass that type of difficult work, and subsequent concerns about election technology, fairness and potential for actual fraud have largely been either ignored or have gained attention based not on the genuine flaws reveled by Florida, but based upon demagoguery about largely imaginary allegations of voter fraud. Rather than having remedies directed at improving elections, legislatures have largely focused on making it difficult for certain classes of voter to reach the polls and vote.

Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. But....

Romney's Foreign Policy Blunders, Laid Bare By His Defenders

Twelve years ago we were told not to worry about voting for G.W. Bush, even though he had little interest in or aptitude for foreign affairs, because we could assume he would surround himself with foreign policy geniuses who would give him the best possible advice and guidance. We weren't voting for a President - we were voting for a team!

Five years later, G.W. had learned enough to fire most of his initial advisers, and to ignore Dick Cheney, but the nation is still trying to dig its way out of Bush's first term disasters. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is pushing upon us another candidate who quite obviously has little interest in or aptitude for foreign affairs - one who has been running for President for six years, after positioning himself for that run over a period of decades - and we're supposed to be reassured because some of his advisers are drawn from Bush's second term, or something like that.

But you know what we're not hearing? We're not hearing an honest defense of the Republican Party's choice of candidates, or an honest explanation of why we should trust a foreign policy ignoramus to again serve as President. We're instead told that if the candidate, visibly sweating and stumbling every time he goes off script, does not diverge too far from memorized talking points, he should be deemed to have "passed" a test of his foreign policy credentials.

During the debate, Romney attempted to equate naval strength with the number of ships in the fleet. By Romney's standard, a kid in a bathtub could conceivably have a stronger Navy than the U.S. There's a lot more to naval power than a raw ship count. One of the defenses of Romney that has gathered some traction among his low-information adherents is an attempt to fact-check Obama's successful joke about Romney's measure,

You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

Really, when you are so desperate to dig your candidate out of a hole that you try to fact-check the punch line of a joke, you may as well cash in your chips and go home. You can fact check my bath tub joke above, if you like - you can explain that bathtub toys aren't Navy ships and that Romney was talking about ships. But the larger point holds.

On top of that, the "fact check" is pretty pathetic - back when bayonets were essential to combat they were in high demand and short supply, but now that most of the services no longer use them in combat we have heaps of them, used at times for training or for ceremonial purposes. And at times military officers still wear sabers. As a comeback, that's called missing the forest for the trees.

Romney made another comment that gained him immediate Internet attention, that "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea." People got out their maps and noted not only that Iran is not landlocked, it shares no common borders with Syria. When asked to explain Romney's statement, his campaign replied,

“It is generally recognized that Syria offers Iran strategic basing/staging access to the Mediterranean as well as to terrorist proxies in the Levant. This is a large reason why Iran invests so much in Syria.”

Which, of course, does nothing to rehabilitate the assertion.

If you step back and look at Romney's history of foreign policy statements, you will find that he says a lot of things that don't make much sense or don't fit with the facts. Why? Because he knows little about the subject, and is primarily reciting poll-tested, scripted sound bites that are meant to make him look informed and serve as ground from which he can attack the Obama Administration's record. With some of his positions, such as the mythic "apology tour", given that Romney is not a stupid man he knows he's lying. But with some of his more bizarre, low-level errors, it's reasonable to infer that it's a scripting (or, if you prefer programming) error. He misremembers a talking point, but it's a relatively minor issue so nobody notices or corrects him, or if they do it gets lost in the noise of more substantive issues.

I'll grant, there is a third possibility, one we saw play out in the second presidential debate when Romney fell flat on his face while trying to attack the President on Libya. Some of his advisers don't seem to get outside of the bubble. Romney delivered his attack line as scripted, and what a delivery it was, but he and his advisers had the facts wrong.

I suspect what happened with the "route to the sea" comment is that somebody gave Romney a talking point about how Iran was smuggling arms through Iraq to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and as a result has influence on terrorist groups that those groups could potentially attack communities on the Mediterranean Sea" and, with apologies to Gary Larson, Romney heard something along the line of "Iran, blah blah blah, smuggling, blah blah blah, Syria, blah blah blah, sea", or perhaps that's all that stuck. And thus it came out as "[Syria is] their route to the sea."

So you have a statement that makes no sense on its face, and an explanation from the Romney campaign that sheds no light on its meaning. With no punch line to "fact check", what's a partisan to do? The Volokh Conspiracy's David Kopel gives it his best shot.

1. A poorly written, unattributed online article, published six years ago, purports that Iran's initial vehicle for delivering a nuclear warhead would have to be by sea. Unless I somehow overlooked the canal between Iran and a port city in Syria, though, that claim has no relevance. If the idea is that Iran would have to build the nuke into a ship and sail it into a port, concern about that form of delivery has been around for a long time. But if you presuppose that Iran can smuggle all of the necessary parts and components of a nuclear device out of the country by land and air, and assemble the device at a remote location, Syria would be an incredibly poor choice of location.
   
   Kopel extrapolates from the article, adding any number of leaps of his own, "Syria is Iran’s route for the projection into the Mediterranean Sea (and from there, the Atlantic Ocean) of conventional naval power, and, perhaps soon, of nuclear weaponry." Leaving aside the fact that having zero naval vessels in Syrian ports makes for a weak projection of conventional naval power (even Romney and Obama can agree that zero ships makes for a weak navy) there's nothing in Romney's language that would suggest Kopel to have correctly identified his thought, it's not actually supported by Romney's chosen words, and there is no reason to believe that Romney was talking about this particular issue.

2. Kopel found a claim from March of this year that Iran had sent a tanker to China filled with Syrian oil, "to evade the economic sanctions on Syria". Kopel appears to believe, based upon that single, reported incident, that if Iran provides Syria with sea access in order to avoid sanctions, the reverse must also be true. He also seems to believe that oil tankers project "naval power".

3. Kopel then switches gears, turning to a fact check by Glenn Kessler that, after consultation with experts, had Kessler conclude that Romney had served up word salad. Kopen focuses on the passage, "Tehran certainly uses Syria to supply the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, but that has little to do with the water. The relationship with Syria could also effectively allow Iran to project its power to the Mediterranean and the border with Israel. But does that really mean, 'a route to the sea'?"

   It's not "a route to the sea", though - "their route to the sea". Nonetheless, Kopel contends that Kessler's conclusions are wrong, and that Romney was really talking about "Syria as the base for the projection of Iranian naval power", while using words that... say nothing of the sort. Kopel does not explain how you can project naval power without a naval presence.

4. What better way to top off a serving of weak tea, than with a large side order of umbrage. Kopel references an unsourced post by somebody on Yahoo! Answers, sneering, if "you find yourself being outclassed by Yahoo! Answers, perhaps it’s time to rethink your assumptions that you’re much smarter and better informed than Mitt Romney". The same author answers questions of constitutional law - perhaps the Conspirators should invite him to join their blog.

   The Yahoo comment claims, "Although Iran is indeed located on the seacoast of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, the international trade sanctions have restricted and impeded its ability to transport armaments and other goods through its own seaports. To defeat these trade sanctions, Iran has resorted to using its air transportation to transport goods through an air corridor in Iraqi airspace into Syria and its seaports, such as Latakia." In other words, Kopel is endorsing the position that Syria is smuggling... consumer goods?... by air, over Iraqi airspace, into Syria, where they are loaded onto ships and exported to nations eager for Iranian manufactured goods at any price. Because if you're going to try to export your goods in violation of international sanctions, the best approach is to pick the most expensive means of getting them out of the country (air transport) into a nation with... ports operating under similar international sanctions.

I gave Kopel far more attention than he deserves. A shorter version of Kopel's defense of Romney,

1. Romney made a statement that he has made on several prior occasions and, at first blush, is both wrong and nonsensical.

2. If you ignore Romney's words and his campaign's explanation of those words, you can pretend Romney was talking about something else.

3. Once you substitute your speculation about what Romney may have meant for what he actually said, you can contrive facts that make the pretended argument somewhat defensible.

4. If you disagree with the contrived explanation of the reinvented comment, you're dumb and uninformed.

I wish we could go back to the "good old days" when G.W.'s backers were reasonably honest about his foreign policy ignorance, not because I'm comfortable having a president who shows little interest in or aptitude toward foreign policy, but because I would like the voting public to know that's the choice they're making. Why aren't we being offered that choice, this time around, despite the similarities between Romney and G.W.? Because the Republican Party fears the comparison. And with the help of people like Kopel, they hope that people won't figure out the full extent of Romney's ignorance until after the election.

For now, ask yourself... if Romney's foreign policy expertise were defensible, why is he offering such a weak defense? Why isn't he explaining what he actually meant instead of cowering and hoping nobody asks follow-up questions?

Foreign Policy? What's That?

David Ignatius presents what on one hand is a fair criticism of the President for his failure to articulate clear policies on foreign policy issues, and is on the other hand an unfair implication that this failure is both unique to President Obama and not a predictable consequence of our political system with its rigidly scheduled elections, presidential term limits, shallow political commentary and larger public disinterest in foreign policy.

Let's be blunt, our nation's Middle East policy has been a disaster for pretty much as long as the Middle East has had geopolitical significance. For much of that history, the United States has backed dictators and monarchs, even if that meant suppressing secular democratic movements and turning a blind eye to the rise of Islamic radicalism and the impact our policies have on popular opinion. We have been consistent in our support for Israel, but that's a one-off, not a coherent regional policy. The most articulate Middle East policy I can recall is the Carter Doctrine, "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." But that's more about hegemony than about creating a Middle East that, if not aligned with our interests, is at least not in large part openly hostile.

I have commented for years on what is obvious, that Presidents shy away from doing anything important prior to elections. And I'm not just speaking about the months or year leading up to an election. I'm talking about any major policy proposal or change that is expected to be difficult or potentially unpopular. To the maximum extent possible many of those issues are postponed until after the President is elected to his second term, or are implemented on a time table that delays important policies and benchmarks from being implicated until a year or two after the election.

Ignatius complains that a comment by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a "laugh line" that reflects "President Obama’s risk-averse refusal to engage on foreign policy issues", but I find it to be neither a laugh line nor even about Obama.

“I do believe that some conversations and key issues must be talked about again once we come out of the other end of the political election atmosphere in the United States.”

It's a candid statement of the reality faced by any nation hoping to effect foreign policy change in the United States. If it's controversial, the President is likely to put it off until after the election. If it's both difficult and controversial, there's a good chance any given President will punt, or take late action that leaves his successor to deal with any problems or to clean up the mess.

Ignatius complains,

The “come back after Nov. 6” sign is most obvious with Iran. The other members of the “P5+1” negotiating group understand that the United States doesn’t want serious bargaining until after the election, lest Obama have to consider compromises that might make him look weak.

It's fair to ask, what does Ignatius believe that the nation will gain by pushing ahead with negotiations right now, and trying to come to some form of deal with Iran in advance of the election? Will we suddenly be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief, end all sanctions against Iran, and live forever as a big happy family? Of course not. If and when an agreement is reached, things will continue to carry on pretty much as they are.

Ahmadinejad and some of his aides let slip during their visit to New York that they may be willing to offer a deal that would halt enrichment of uranium above 5 percent. Is this a good deal or not, in terms of U.S. and Israeli security? Sorry, come back later.

Why does Ignatius pose that as a rhetorical question rather than sharing his opinion, or the opinion of any of the other nations in "" who aren't burdened by pending elections? In case he needs the reminder, Netanyahu, bomb chart in hand, just gave the U.N. a somewhat condescending lecture about Iran. I missed the part when he said, "But if Iran says they won't enrich past 5%, peace will break out all over." If, consistent with the consensus view of their plan, Iran hopes to be the turn of a key away from becoming a nuclear state, does it matter if they "only" enrich uranium to 5% if with a few taps on a keyboard the very same centrifuges can enrich uranium to 20%?

This is pretty amazing:

Will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keep his gun in the holster until after the polls close? The White House certainly hopes so. But someone should check the odds with Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who is one of Mitt Romney’s biggest financial backers.

What we saw over a period of months was Netanyahu's open effort to influence the outcome of U.S. elections, despite a growing criticism of his tactics by other political and military leaders, right to the point he flew to the U.S. to grouse about being snubbed by the President and to appear on Meet the Press, but then... oh, those polls. Time to be contrite, stay out of U.S. election politics, distance himself from any claim that he hopes for a Romney victory. Looking at Adelson's bet on Romney and their joint visit to Israel earlier this year, it isn't the President who looks like the loser in that round of high stakes gambling.

Ignatius then complains that, although the President has implemented programs in Egypt and Syria that Ignatius seems to regard as promising, the President isn't talking about those programs. So the problem isn't that the President is failing to form good policy, or is making bad bets, it's that he's not flashing his cards? How would public attention improve Obama's policies? How might Republican demagoguery affect their implementation? Given Romney's embarrassing demagoguery on Russia and New START, it's difficult to believe that it would be helpful.

Ignatius proceeds to complain, not about Obama Administration policies as such, but about the fact that the Obama Administration isn't discussing its policies.

I’m told that the talk in the Libyan underground is about a “global intifada,” like what the new al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been preaching for the past five years. But ask U.S. officials about that subject, and you get a “no comment.”

I expect that pretty much every al-Qaeda sympathizer on the planet talks about a "global intifada" and a resurgent al-Qaeda, but politics aside, that doesn't mean it's good policy for the Obama Administration to talk about those groups and their goals, to give those groups publicity and attention that they may not merit in order to vindicate Ignatius's sources. Ignatius complains, "The administration has a lot invested in the public impression that al-Qaeda was vanquished when Osama bin Laden was killed", but I think it's more accurate to say that the media has chosen to treat al-Qaeda as an old story, perhaps even a non-story, and the Obama Administration sees no benefit in trying to inspire the media to again cover the story. It's not just the media - it's also the Republican Party.

The same is true with the war in Afghanistan. Ignatius may wish that the President were giving him a play by play on troop levels, but when you hear Romney talk about Afghanistan - if he even remembers to bring it up - he'll flip between criticizing the President for setting a firm date for withdrawal and giving the enemy too much information, and insisting that he'll have Afghanistan be fully responsible for its own security by the end of 2014. Why no mention of that incoherence?

Ignatius complains about the President's off-the-cuff candor with Dmitry Medvedev that, on certain issues, he would have more flexibility after being reelected. Well, no kidding. To those who pay even slight attention to U.S. politics, the story was that the comment was caught on microphone, not that the President stated something that is blindingly obvious. So why is Ignatius trying to turn that comment into something more than it is? Into something that makes Obama's putting off issues until after the election any different than Bush's pushing off his plan for Palestinian statehood until his second term, claiming a mandate to privatize Social Security after forgetting to mention it during his reelection campaign, having his tax cuts expire two years after he was out of office....

This strategy of avoiding major foreign policy risks or decisions may help get Obama reelected. But he is robbing the country of a debate it needs to have — and denying himself the public understanding and support he will need to be an effective foreign policy president in a second term, if the “rope-a-dope” campaign should prove successful.

That's the wishful thinking of somebody who places a high priority on foreign policy. As Ignatius knows, the average American has little interest in foreign policy and even less knowledge. Has he forgotten Bush's embarrassing lack of knowledge during the lead-up to the 2000 election, "but it's okay, because he'll surround himself with really good advisers." And the public, buying into that argument, bought into the conceit that nations like Pakistan aren't really relevant to our interests, so why should they care if the President can name their leaders or even find them on a map.

I don't disagree with Ignatius that timing foreign policy actions around elections is unhelpful, and that our nation would benefit from finding a way to avoid the problem, but unlike Ignatius I'm not willing to pretend that the phenomenon is new or unique to Obama. I also find Ignatius's comments to be, in large part, style over susbstance. I am perfectly happy to have the Obama Administration refrain from commenting on every hyperbolic claim of every group that sympathizes with al-Qaeda, even if it means that Ignatius can't win confirmation for whispered rumors form his sources.

Let me take you back roughly a year to when elections weren't on Ignatius's mind.

Barack Obama got elected president in part because he promised to change the foreign policy priorities of a Bush administration that was unpopular abroad, had strained relations with key allies and was facing a growing Iranian challenge and a continuing menace from al-Qaeda.

So what’s happened over the past 32 months? There have been a lot of bumps and bruises, especially in the global economy. But if you step back from the daily squawk box, some trends are clear: Alliances are stronger, the United States is (somewhat) less bogged down in foreign wars, Iran is weaker, the Arab world is less hostile and al-Qaeda is on the run.

Back then, Ignatius concluded, "Obviously, it will take awhile to accept that quiet American leadership is still leadership." I hardly dare ask whether Ignatius's change of position on the Obama Administration's successes and "quiet leadership" is itself a creature of this being an election year. David Frum quotes Ignatius,

David Ignatius of the Washington Post described Mitt Romney as a man having "no grasp of foreign affairs" whose approach to the subject amounts to a "series of sound bites" all of which portray a candidate who knows little about a subject of the utmost importance.

I'll be interested to see whether those thoughts percolate through to his pre-election commentary, as so far, he's pulling his punches.

Memories....

What a socialist....

• "Prosperity can be a tool in our hands -- used to build and better our country. Or it can be a drug in our system -- dulling our sense of urgency, of empathy, of duty."

• "We will strengthen Social Security and Medicare for the greatest generation, and for generations to come."

• "Medicare does more than meet the needs of our elderly, it reflects the values of our society."

• "To seniors in this country ... You earned your benefits, you made your plans, and [I] will keep the promise of Social Security ... no changes, no reductions, no way."

• "I will work to reduce nuclear weapons and nuclear tension in the world -- to turn these years of influence into decades of peace."

• "We will give low-income Americans tax credits to buy the private health insurance they need and deserve."

• "We will transform today's housing rental program to help hundreds of thousands of low-income families find stability and dignity in a home of their own."

• "We must help protect our children, in our schools and streets, by finally and strictly enforcing our nation's gun laws."

• "A hundred years from now, this must not be remembered as an age rich in possessions and poor in ideals. Instead, we must usher in an era of responsibility."

• "Corporations are responsible... to treat their workers fairly, and leave the air and waters clean."

The Tea Party Purity Test

As I see it, the context of Michael Gerson's lament on the Tea Party is that he represents the faction of the Republican Party that is taking the long view - that an embrace of the Tea Party is likely to bring long-term political pain even if it results in short-term gain. But if Michelle Malkin is his "Exhibit A" of "childish political thought", perhaps he should take ownership of and responsibility for his own past actions and opinions.

In Tea Party theory, inexperience is itself seen as a kind of qualification. People like O'Donnell are actually preferable to people like Rove, because they haven't been tainted by public trust or actual achievement. This is the attitude of the adolescent -- the belief that the world began on their thirteenth birthday. It is also a sign of childish political thought.

So let's flash back to 1999, when the nation at large was introduced to G.W. Bush, with that introduction engineered in no small part by Karl Rove. His inexperience was of no concern, we were assured, because he would surround himself by experts. He was a different breed of Republican - an outsider; a uniter, not a divider; a compassionate conservative; an advocate for immigration reform. Don't ask about his "lost years" - he had become a sober, Christian conservative, and that should be enough for anybody.

From what I've read, a lot of Tea Party members haven't been politically active during their lives. They may have voted, but they didn't spend a lot of time reading about or thinking about the issues. That, frankly, is far from a surprise. You can read the paper before work (or, at least, you could have back in the day of most Tea Party members), work all day, watch the TV news before bed and think you're informed, and that would likely set you above and beyond most Americans in terms of your effort. But let's face it - at the end of the day that's likely to leave you with only a superficial understanding of the issues. Hence partisans like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and, yes, Karl Rove are able to identify opportunities to sink their hooks and reel people in, the goal not being to illuminate but to create a following. Had Karl Rove created the Tea Party movement in his own image, Gerson would be praising his genius.

I find it interesting that Gerson blasts Michelle Malkin, for her criticism of Karl Rove, as part of the problem - she's "childish". Why not go after Rush Limbaugh for saying what amounts to the same thing. Why not go after the big dog? Oh, that's right - because for doing that even Karl Rove can be called to heel, and Gerson's no Karl Rove. Malkin's prominent enough to be recognized, but not so prominent that Gerson is likely to face blowback.

Gerson's first complaint about the Tea Party approach is that it sends the message,

The facts do not matter. Politics is war carried on by other means. Anyone who doesn't consistently take one side is a traitor.

Would any of that bother Gerson if the warfere weren't internecine? Michelle Malkin has been using the same tactics ever since she gained prominence. What about Ann Coulter and her eager use of the word "Treason"? The facts don't matter now? When did they matter under Bush?

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

What about Ari Fleischer's infamous warning¹ (his very late explanation taken for what it's worth)?

Gerson continues with his explanation of what makes the Tea Party's political thought "childish":

Some conservatives have adopted the Bolshevik approach to information and the media: Every personal feeling, every independent thought, every inconvenient fact, must be subordinated to the party line -- the Tea Party line.

This reminds me of something....

When I was a speechwriter for the Bush Administration, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a columnist for the Washington Post, I put away childish things.

Gerson's accusation is something of a hollow man - he doesn't name a conservative who fits his accusation, although by implication he's including Malkin. I doubt he can name a conservative commentator who truly fits that description, who has abandoned past opinions and principle and now subordinates his every opinion to the Tea Party. Were he to find such an individual he would do us all a very great favor, because we would finally know what the Tea Party stands for.

Gerson offers up a second criticism of "Tea Party purists", again without identifying a single such purist, as believing that "their ascendance makes other elements of the conservative movement unnecessary":

If Tea Party activists believe they can win in a political coalition so pure that it doesn't include strong, mainstream conservatives such as Karl Rove, they are delusional. And they are hurting their own cause.

Is this to be read with an eye toward history, with G.W. and Karl Rove deciding that they could rule the country based upon the support of 51% of the electorate, rejecting the qualms of the "paleocons", the "reality-based community", fiscal conservatives, foreign policy conservatives, and any other faction whose believes and agenda didn't match their own? If so, yes, he has a point - if you represent a minority of Americans you will not be able to sustain victory at the ballot box without expanding your base. If not, his complaint reduces to the question of whose elephant ox is being gored.

Gerson's third complaint is a magnification of his second,

Third, some conservatives seem to display special venom for those who are "compromised" by the experience of actually winning and governing. Rove, according to Malkin, is an "establishment Beltway strategist."

How much of the last few decades of political history, including campaigns involving Karl Rove, are we to ignore? Because in case Gerson missed it, everybody wants to be an outsider. One of G.W.'s remarkable feats in constructing his brush-cutting cowboy image was convincing the nation that he, grandson of a U.S. Senator, son of a former President, beneficiary of his family's vast wealth and generations of political connections, was a Washington outsider. When you work as hard as Rove has done to turn words like "insider" into slurs, you don't have much ground to stand on when your work is turned against you.

[Karl Rove's résumé] does not make him always right. But it means he has had responsibilities bigger than running a Web site. This is an advantage for a commentator, not a drawback.

I joked a while back that the most prominent people held up as possible Republican Presidential nominees - Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney - quit the jobs that supposedly qualify them for the White House. In their recent experience, the only thing they've been running is their mouths. I recognize that Gerson has no love for Sarah Palin, but what do his words say about the rest of his party?

But seriously, the number of prominent right-wing pundits whose most significant "real world" experience came from writing speeches for politicians is high. Can Gerson truly be surprised that many of them fail to 'put away' their 'childish things'?
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1. While I have some sympathy for the idea that Fleischer, in warning Americans to "watch what they say, watch what they do", meant something other than what he said, he had ample opportunity on the very same stage to correct himself and the Bush Administration could easily have issued a clarification. The fact that they did not suggests that, whatever Fleischer's intent, the Bush Administration was content to let the public perception of the remarks stand.

Why Isn't Obama Soaring?

I don't ordinarily pay much attention to Maureen Dowd, but she raises an issue today that should be addressed, and is in fact addressed in part by her column. Why hasn't Obama been able to deliver an early knock-out punch to McCain?

When I say it's addressed in part in Dowd's column, I don't mean directly. I mean through her trademark clever rhetoric, backhanded compliments, and standard depiction of Democrats as effete. When she turns her sights on Obama, commenting on his recent international tour, she states,

Some news analyses of his trip wondered “Where’s the Bounce?” The old Hillary refrain - why can’t he close the deal against a supposedly flawed opponent - echoes.

Why would that refrain echo? It was only a few months ago that the Clinton campaign was arguing that Obama was the flawed candidate. Are we to forget who closed that deal?

Here we have Dowd personifying two of the problems Obama faces:

• Reporters and commentators who are more interested in the campaign itself than they are in the substantive issues underlying the race - the candidate's platforms, ideas, and proposals; and

• Reporters and commentators who want to make this a personality contest, but based upon their own prejudices and preconceptions as opposed to the actual personalities of the candidates. McCain's incredible gaffes on foreign policy issues are ignored, but the slightest misstep by Obama during his travels would have been seized upon as "proof" that he's unfit for the Presidency.

Yesterday's column by Richard Cohen also exemplifies these flaws in the coverage of the campaign. Cohen praises McCain for taking actions that typically helped him politically and were at worst neutral, while attacking Obama for having the happy coincidence that his braver political stances (like McCain's) happened to coincide with the views of his constituency. He's so wedded to the notion of McCain the "maverick" and "straight talker" that he implies McCain was pained by his need to flip-flop and pander. He accuses Obama of a lack of loyalty when a "position or person becomes a political liability. (Names available upon request.)" - this is supposed to be taken seriously? Of course we want the names. If there's any substance to this accusation, why is his column nothing but fluff?

Cohen's worst sin is the same as Dowd's - he won't look past the latest campaign ads or his own preconceptions of the candidates to state why one is better than the other. Is there some reason Cohen needs people to spoon feed him a list of Obama's accomplishments? If he wants to know what Obama stands for, is there some reason that he can't simply go to Obama's website and read his platform? Is that too much work? Is it not worth their time to be substantive? Is it that much more fun to be derisive? (Yes ,it's a two-way street; it just happens that McCain is getting the benefit of this right now - the "come from behind maverick" versus "the guy who can't close the deal.")

Another problem frequently gets raised by others. Hillary Clinton got some negative attention for it. Chris Matthews can't stop talking about it. Obama's "problem with white people". This can be taken in one of two ways - as a suggestion that, unlike others, white people are particularly perceptive, attuned to the issues, and able to see through the dross. This special awareness makes them better able to perceive the real differences between the candidates, and they aren't sold on Obama. The other way to look at it is that white people have a problem voting for a candidate who isn't white. If that's the case, Obama's going to have a tough time getting the "bounce" he needs because he isn't able to change his skin color.

If we are to be honest about this, we can concede that there is a block of voters that will not vote for Obama because of his race, period, end of story. There's also a block of voters predisposed against Obama because of his race, but that could be inspired to support him anyway based upon the issues. It would be nice if the media would start focusing on the issues that distinguish McCain from Obama, so voters are better able to pick a candidate based on those issues. But instead we get silly columns that ignore Obama's accomplishments in favor of the "we're gambling on the unknown" narrative, or ask why he can't "close the deal" with that group of undecided voters who don't even know what the deal involves. Oh, it's not that there isn't some truth to that narrative - if there weren't it wouldn't stick - but Cohen parrots it and twists the few facts he knows to fit his thesis, rather than making even a slight effort to uncover facts that might paint a different picture.

In a sense, this is the same thing we saw eight years ago, with the media selling us the nonsensical notion that there was no real difference between Bush and Gore, save perhaps that you would rather "have a beer with" Bush. Why not a column taking a hard look at the candidate's respective health policies? Their economic policies, and how they would deal with the massive (in my book inexcusable) fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration? At energy policy? Jobs, education, or immigration? The nation's crumbling infrastructure?