Jennifer Rubin Finds a Mirror

Jennifer Rubin, who people say is smart but who nonetheless rattles off a predictable set of talking points and often makes hare-brained assertions, comments on Ted Cruz,

Smarts don’t always equate to common sense. In the case of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), there is an inverse relationship between the two. I’m told by smart lawyers that he has a sharp legal mind, can think on his feet and has remarkable recall for facts, cases and even page numbers of the briefs. But his political judgment has become distorted by ambition.

Hm...

Her illustration of Cruz's 'smarts' reminds me of an anecdote about a lawyer who was similarly famed for his ability to provide pinpoint citations, on his feet, in court. Somebody asked him, eventually, how he managed to recall cases and even page numbers with such specificity. "I make them up. Nobody ever checks." But with a bit less cynicism, having a good memory - even an eidetic memory - is proof of good memory, not intelligence. Cruz may well be as smart as some people say, or he may be smart in the same sense that Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan are touted as intellectual giants among their Republican peers. When the pond is that shallow, you don't need to be a particularly big fish to stand out - and sometimes all it takes is for you to be the one people see because it's sticking its head out of the pond with its mouth constantly open. I'm also reminded of a certain trial lawyer who once ran for President, who strikes me as having been deemed a great trial lawyer by virtue of having a well-rehearsed presentation of a particular type of big money case, and who retired into politics when that particular line of litigation dried up. Or a certain TV host who brags about her conviction rate for homicide prosecutions, never mind that homicide cases are often open-and-shut with defendants going to trial only because they have nothing to lose. You have to look beyond the surface to find out if somebody truly is as brilliant as he and his friends claim him to be.

Rubin notes that Cruz was spouting nonsense about how Mitt Romney was the greatest guy in the world before he lost, at which point she contradicted her prior claims about him and denounced his deep flaws without appearing to notice the contradiction. No, wait, that was Rubin. She notes that Cruz is pretending that the President might sign a bill defunding the PPACA/Obamacare, and purporting that the public won't blame the Republicans if they shut down the government.

Well, maybe he understands something else. Perhaps he is as smart as his admirers claim and he is wildly ambitious, hoping to draw attention and fundraising dollars for his windmill-tilting scam. Later in the CNN interview he made it clear he was playing to the base on this one... And who better to pull the tsunami to shore than Cruz, right? Send money! Come to his events! Become outraged when the “unprincipled” Republicans won’t support him!

Read his blog! Oh, wait...

Cruz is emblematic of a group of conservative hucksters peddling outrage and paranoia who contend that the strength of the political resistance they generate is equivalent to their own importance, and that one dramatic, losing standoff after another is the pinnacle of political success. Alas, they confuse their own fame with achievement and divisiveness with progress.

And if that doesn't work out for him in politics, maybe Fred Hiatt can give him a job?

Rubin suggests that Cruz would be better off following the lead of Speaker Boehner, and "trying to put the monkey on the Democrats’ backs (as the speaker of the House is doing) in the Obamacare fight". Nobody has ever accused Boehner of being a genius, but perhaps Rubin should take note of the fact that pretty much every aspect of Obamacare is popular, save for the mandate which is a necessary part of the popular provision that requires insurance companies to provide coverage without respect to preexisting conditions. Pushing a fantasy about defunding Obamacare is probably more sensible than crossing your fingers and hoping that the mandate proves so unpopular that people are willing to throw the baby out with a few inches of bathwater.

A political loner and man of rhetoric, not of action or achievement, he bears a striking resemblance to the current Oval Office resident. Each considers himself the smartest man in any room (inducing annoyance and resentment among his party members) and each fails to understand rhetoric is not effective governance.

Projection, much? Seriously, how many people other than Rubin look at Cruz and say, "Wow, he's just like President Obama"? This would be one of those "predictable talking points and hare-brained assertions" to which I previously alluded.

If I read more of Rubin's pontifications, I might know who she is pushing as the next Republican presidential nominee. Perhaps somebody who, unlike Mitt Romney, doesn't see himself as God's gift to the country and the smartest man in the room, who scurries away from his own record whenever it becomes politically inconvenient? Because Rubin doesn't seem to like those characteristics in candidates she doesn't support....

Do Sexual Ethics Matter in Politics

I often hear it argued that a politician's private life should remain private, and that infidelity should be considered irrelevant to a politician's public life. This is true to a point - if you know that a particular politician is inclined to have extramarital affairs and you elect him anyway (cough Clinton cough) then you shouldn't pretend its a huge shock or somehow an indictment of his character when he continues to act in character. If you care that Rudy Giuliani occasionally dresses in drag don't vote for him - but it's public information and the voters elected him knowing that he likes to play dress-up (and I have no reason to believe that, in his case, it's anything but a lark).

I heard it argued that the breaking of the story in relation to John Edwards was a public service, as he was hiding a scandal from his supporters and donors that would have devastated his chances of election had he been nominated for the Presidency, and similarly that the disclosure of Anthony Weiner's exploits on Twitter was a public service to the voters of New York who might have supported him in a run for mayor. The implication of that argument is that, absent an election, the behavior of both men is irrelevant to their public lives. I've also heard it argued that if you take Newt Gingrich's infidelity while married to a cancer-stricken wife and combine it with Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child you have John Edwards - but Gingrich is deemed a serious presidential candidate and Schwarzenegger's image is at worst a bit tarnished. Is that fair?

Well... yes. It isn't so much that Edwards suffered a collapse of his public persona because he had an affair that resulted in a child, so much as it is that he was revealed to have a private life completely at odds with the persona he was selling to the public. And when it looked like he was going to be caught, the cover-up was pretty outrageous.

But I think there's something else that the "It's their private lives" crowd is missing. The question of whether you can neatly compartmentalize fidelity - "He cheats on his wife and fakes his religious fervor, but I trust him to be faithful to his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution." Perhaps some compartmentalization is possible. Perhaps Bernie Madoff would never have dreamed of stealing from the collection at his synagogue, even as he happily ripped off his investors.

Perhaps with some relationships the flexibility of the marital vows is part of an explicit understanding between the partners (although that was pretty clearly not the case with Edwards - although that brings us back to the issue of lying to voters and supporters over something that could blow up during an election. Perhaps you can rationalize the deception in those cases - it's society that's being unreasonable in holding that a perfectly qualified individual is "unelectable" if he has an open marriage or is an atheist, and thus he's justified in pretending otherwise in order to obtain and hold office. But it seems to me that most people act pretty consistently across their lives - if they don't steal at work, they don't steal at church. If somebody like Madoff doesn't steal at church it's probably because it's too little money to be bothered with - but if that church were to have a considerable endowment and were to invest with him, "game on".

I personally believe that somebody who is dishonest in relation to the most central personal relationship of their lives is likely to display the same level of dishonesty in other contexts. Liars lie, cheaters cheat, and thieves steal. Some dubious behavior may hint at personality traits that could be beneficial to a political leader - if we're honest, there are times when a psychopath's sang froid, ability to fake emotion, lack of conscience, and ability to lie without the usual outward signs of deception could be useful to a President. That's not to say we want a psychopath in office, but maybe we do want a guy who can have a huge scandal break just before his State of the Union Address, and who will nonetheless proceed to present that speech as if nothing untoward has happened. Both the human psyche and the world are complicated. But if you're electing a thief, liar or cheater, you should have the opportunity to know what you're doing.

Update: In the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg argues that

[Weinergate] confirms a pet theory of mine: the Clinton Rule, which states that when a married politician appears before cameras and microphones and starts babbling absurd lies about some sexual something, the person he is really trying to lie to is his spouse. The lies that get told to the public and the press are side effects.

and

By itself, the fact that a person has lied about sex tells you nothing about that person’s general propensity to lie.... If the politician is a habitual or characterological liar, the public record will show it and the lying-about-sex is redundant. If the politician is not a habitual or characterological liar, his lying-about-sex is misleading—is itself a lie, in a way.

Hertzberg assumes that the public record will be both available and clear. It may be that it's the lies about infidelity that lead people to look more closely at the rest of a politician's record. But he's also compartmentalizing behaviors, as if you believe that a person's essential character is consistent across the board, somebody who cheats on his spouse is in fact likely to display similar conduct in other contexts. Even if we limit it to "He'll only lie to me if it's necessary to save his political career," and even if I think that a public reaction to his infidelity would be exaggerated and thus sympathize with his desire to keep it secret, I don't see why lying to save his career in this context would not suggest that he will lie to save his career in other contexts. Frankly, if the argument is that the public needs to shift its opinion on infidelity and be less judgmental of politicians' affairs, even if there is an individual price to pay before cultural perceptions shift, politicians would do themselves and their peers a much greater service by being honest.

Don't Say Anything Bad About the Magic Man!

Throughout recorded history there have been people who, whether self-declared or declared by others, are deemed indispensable - they're magic men, without whom a business, a nation, perhaps the world is doomed. Occasionally there's a kernel of truth to the claim, and a business can falter when a skilled leader quits or dies. But even then in most cases the business carries on and, when it doesn't, the fault is usually because the "magic man" neglects to engage in succession planning. Beyond that, death remains a constant. "Magic," indispensable men have always died, and yet the Earth continues to spin on its axis.

It's not particularly surprising that somebody like David Brooks romanticizes our nation's political leaders as various incarnations of magic men, and even less so that he does the same for military leaders. But I still found his argument in defense of media self-censorship to be surprising. Not that Brooks would believe in or endorse self-censorship in the name of protecting the rich and powerful, but that he would so readily admit that to be his estimation of what constitutes good, responsible journalism.

The reticent ethos [in which journalists didn't report facts harmful to the rich and powerful] had its flaws. But the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.

Another scalp is on the wall. Government officials will erect even higher walls between themselves and the outside world. The honest and freewheeling will continue to flee public life, and the cautious and calculating will remain.

David Brooks seems to personify what he views as a "good journalist" - eager to please those in power, and the first to censor out of his column anything that might embarrass or jeopardize future access to one of his sources. Never mind that he's putting himself in a category of journalist that is happy to repeat without attribution attacks and innuendo about others obtained from their carefully cultivated, flattered and protected stable of "insiders".

Brooks is also eager to brand General McChrystal as an irreplaceable magic man, never mind that he has already been replaced. The offense is not that the general displayed contempt for the civilian leaders working in Iraq and of the Vice President, and reportedly spoke poorly of the President while on the record with a reporter from Rolling Stone. That's forgivable as "kvetching" or "venting". The place to find offense is that a reporter, having observed military officers making unprofessional comments while on duty and on the record would dare to report the facts.

But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.

By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.

From what I have heard about General McChrystal, including his carefully calculated leaks to force the Obama Administration's hand on its Afghanistan war policy, it seems reasonable to infer that he's a very competent soldier and officer. The position of general is highly political, and for McChrystal to reach his rank despite his tendency toward the impolitic suggests that he must be good at his job - otherwise I suspect he would still be a colonel. But at the same time he's not a magic man, his policy has not been playing out as he had projected, and he is responsible for his lapses in judgment and for failing to squelch similar lapses of judgment by his staff.

Brooks appears to believe that the sin is on the part of the reporter - that it was perfectly reasonable for the general to assume that the reporter would act as Brooks would prefer, treating him as a magic man whose words should never see print lest they derail a glorious career (not to mention cutting off a high level source). Brooks admits that McChrystal would have to be blind to fifty years of history to have assumed that his remarks would not be reported, so as defenses go it's a weak one. But it comes through, loud and clear, that Brooks himself would prefer his romanticized era of media self-censorship and believes that he, personally, would have killed any part of the story that reflected badly on McChrystal.

Brooks isn't particularly careful with his facts. He claims, "[McChrystal] had outstanding relations with the White House and entirely proper relationships with his various civilian partners in the State Department and beyond," despite the fact that McChrystal's own comments suggest a poor working relationship with pretty much every civilian leader save for Hillary Clinton - and insofar as there is evidence, whether you call it "venting" or "kvetching", the facts suggest that McChyrstal's comments reflect reality. Brooks also accuses the reporter who broke the story of making "the kvetching the center of his magazine profile," suggesting at best that he hasn't read the article and at worst that he doesn't care about the facts when he's defending a powerful figure. The "kvetching" would better be described as the addition of colorful anecdotes to a long article with a much broader focus. It was not the Rolling Stone article that led to McChrystal's resignation, but the manner in which mainstream commentators and pundits responded to the "kvetching".

I haven't been following the commentary very closely, but I have yet to find commentary by a retired military officer who either defends McChrystal's conduct or dismisses it as "no big deal." Brooks may not be comfortable with the fact that the U.S. military has civilian leadership, but some people actually do regard respect for the constitutional role of the Commander in Chief to be relevant to both military discipline and our system of government. It was not a reporter who "took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him" - McChrystal is responsible for his own fate.

Going back in time to the period of journalism that Brooks romanticizes,

During World War II and the years just after, a culture of reticence prevailed. The basic view was that human beings are sinful, flawed and fallen. What mattered most was whether people could overcome their flaws and do their duty as soldiers, politicians and public servants. Reporters suppressed private information and reported mostly — and maybe too gently — on public duties.

The culture of reticence, of course, worked to protect the rich and powerful. The not-so-rich and not-so-powerful did not enjoy similar immunity. A political figure might have a health problem that could cause many to question whether he could properly serve in elected office, and reporters would leave the story alone. But if a less powerful rival were to have a similar affliction, or were caught in a scandal, it was fair game. B-list actors were called out and blacklisted for drug use and affairs, while A-list actors largely enjoyed media immunity.

Brooks may believe that the politicians protected by that system were, for the most part, in government "because they sincerely want to do good", but there's no reason to think differently of the less powerful people who were regarded as fair game for the media. We're still not working on a level playing field - the mainstream media sat on inflammatory stories about GW's military service (or lack thereof), of Clinton's affairs, of Edwards' love child, and now we find of Al Gore's supposed mistreatment of a masseuse. There are reasons for that reticence, good and bad, but less public figures get a lot less benefit of the doubt, and a lot less media worry about fallout from the publication of possibly false, inflammatory stories to their careers.

No, nobody wants to be raked over the coals by the media. Yes, that's a factor that keeps some people out of public life - even if they don't have skeletons in their closets, some people are put off by the idea that the media will nonetheless be poking through their closets for skeletons, real and imagined. But sometimes the public really does have a right to know, and it's not better to go back to an era that was even more skewed in favor of the rich and powerful than what presently passes for media analysis. We may lose a magic man from time to time, but in hindsight the magic will usually be revealed as an illusion and the world will keep on turning.

Edwards Drops Out

Normally I wouldn't comment on this, but under the circumstances I wanted to dedicate a song to Charles Krauthammer. Here you go.

Oh My... John Edwards Is a Politician

For reasons I can't quite grasp, Charles Krauthammer devoted a lengthy column to attacking a candidate he views as having no chance of victory, John Edwards. It seems like a waste of a column to me, but maybe Krauthammer was out of ideas this week. Or maybe he hates Edwards "that much". Read it, and see how Krauthammer (yes, really) rushes to the defense of "left liberals":

A cynical farce that is particularly galling to authentic and principled left-liberals. "The one [presidential candidate] that is the most problematic is Edwards," Sen. Russ Feingold told the Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wis., "who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war. . . . He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record."

I think the critique of Edwards is largely fair - you should judge a candidate upon their actual voting record and, if they wish to depart from their record, they should have a good explanation. I don't think Edwards' departures have been adequately explained. But in fairness to Edwards, you could write a very similar piece about some of John McCain's more notable changes of heart, or perhaps noting his sometimes foolish consistency. And good luck finding any consistency in Mitt Romney's record....

Krauthammer saves the best for last:

It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the whole world. But for 4 percent of the Nevada caucuses?

I'm sure that sent a chill down Edwards' spine. When you hear the voice of experience talking like that, it has to put a scare into you.

The Vice Presidential Debate

What to me was perhaps the most significant result of the VP debate was the fact that, as combative and pointed as it often was, it had no estimable impact on my opinion. That is, nothing about the Vice Presidential candidates or their respective performances had an appreciable impact on how I view the heads of their respective tickets. That might not have been the case, had one of them had an on-stage meltdown, but obviously that didn't happen.

If I were to declare a "winner" in the context of which candidate looked most Presidential, it would be Edwards. If I were to declare a "loser" in the context of which candidate clung most desperately to a pathetic lie, it would be Cheney and his continued advancement of an Iraq-Al Qaeda nexus with an implied link to 9/11.

If I were to give a candidate bonus points for refusing to bend his personal convictions to the will of his party, they would go to Cheney for his silence on the issue of rights for domestic partnerships. Certainly it isn't bravery to sit in silence, rather than speaking one's conscience, but it demonstrated that there are lines Cheney will not cross with respect to his family and his party. When Cheney's boss was put to a similar test, and could have spoken out against the smear campaign over Kerry's war record, he failed - that is, unless his claimed personality traits of courage and credibility exist only as fiction. I am not sure that similar tests have yet been put to Edwards or Kerry.

At the same time, if I were to give penalty points for stubborn idiocy, it would be for Cheney's insistence that he would handle Iraq in exactly the same way if he were to do it again. That simply can't be true.

The "Zap Them With A Cattle Prod And Wake Them Up" award goes to Babbling David Brooks and Narcoleptic Mark Shields, who provided some post-debate commentary on PBS. They found the Iraq material exciting, but were bored by the domestic issues. Thus, declared Brooks, this election really does turn on Iraq. What a pathetic way to prioritize the many important issues this nation faces.