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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the Constitution lets the Senate write its own rules.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up, infrastructure,

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

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

For Keystone XL, though, different rules apply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow... crocodile tears for union worker.

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

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

Oh, this should be good....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marc Thiessen, Ignorant Alarmist on Ebola

That Marc Thiessen... he just loves to argue from fear. Today, from the starting point of a "worst case scenario" involving an intentional release of smallpox in a series of U.S. shopping malls, he's feigning concern that Ebola could be use for biological warfare. Describing this "worst case scenario" for smallpox,

After 13 days, 16,000 smallpox cases have been reported in 25 states and 1,000 people have died. Vaccine supplies have been depleted. Canada and Mexico have closed their borders to the United States. It has become logistically impossible to identify and isolate smallpox victims and their contacts to prevent the disease from spreading. Trading on the stock exchanged is suspended. International commerce grinds to a halt. No country in the world will allow flights originating in or transiting through the United States to land. States have closed their borders with other states. There are riots and looting throughout the country.

After 25 days, the number of cases has risen to 30,000, with 10,000 expected to die, and the National Security Council is advised that, absent large scale and successful vaccination programs, the epidemic “could conceivably comprise as many as 3,000,000 cases of smallpox and lead to 1,000,000 deaths.”

If we're assuming that smallpox is epidemic within the United States inside of two weeks, it would be too late to close the borders. The U.S. is a highly mobile nation, and U.S. travelers would already have spread the virus around the world. In terms of what might happen in the absence of a large scale and successful vaccination program, we need not be particularly worried as we would see such a program immediately implemented. Whether it would be compulsory, or whether we would allow people to let themselves and their children become infected with smallpox due to religious objections or fantasies about the evils of vaccines, is a discussion for another day -- the vast majority of people would eagerly extend their arms for the jab of a needle.

Thiessen appears to be unaware of why biological warfare has been largely avoided. Certainly we have a history of smallpox being used as a biological weapon of sorts in this country, with the "plague traders" who would sell infected blankets to an Indian village, collect them after the virus wiped out most of their customers, then sell the same infected blankets to another village. But the fact is, playing around with germ warfare is extremely dangerous. If you release germs to the wind, assuming you can create an effective means of delivery, you can't count on the winds not to blow them right back in your face. If you try to strike a more technologically sophisticated opponent with a virulent disease, you risk having that disease communicated back into your own population -- which lacks the same level of sophistication and resources for containment, vaccination and treatment. If we're talking about state-sponsored terrorism, let's just say that a sudden, mass-vaccination program for smallpox would be noticed -- and if you don't protect your own population, "successful" germ warfare with a disease like smallpox is going to bite you in the posterior.

This is Thiessen writing, so you know his argument is going to get worse. And it does.

So what about Ebola?

Unlike smallpox, which is hard to come by, the Ebola infection is raging right now in parts of Africa where Islamist extremists could have easy access.

Except that the people who use it in "worst case" germ warfare scenarios aren't imagining that it would be stolen from a secure laboratory. They know that at present the smallpox virus can be synthesized, and they know that as time progresses the lab technology to synthesize viruses like smallpox and polio will only get cheaper. But never mind that, Thiessen has come up with a dark fantasy that he believes will scare your pants right off of you:

Ebola has up to a 21-day incubation period — more than enough time for terrorists to infect themselves and then come here with the virus. In a nightmare scenario, suicide bombers infected with Ebola could blow themselves up in a crowded place — say, shopping malls in Oklahoma City, Philadelphia and Atlanta — spreading infected tissue and bodily fluids.

Let's pause for a moment and reflect on the total number of suicide bombers who have made it into the United States and blown themselves up in shopping malls. With the number "zero" resonating in your head, now picture Thiessen's fantasy -- these would-be suicide terrorists would be picked from people wholly unknown to the United States government or any of its internal or allied intelligence agencies. They would get visas to the United States. Shortly before coming to the United States, they would visit an Ebola-infected region and deliberately expose themselves to infected blood and vomit. Nobody would notice this unusual travel pattern. Then they would come to the United States before becoming symptomatic, acquire the material to build suicide vests, build those vests, and blow themselves up in shopping malls.

Thiessen seems to realize the absurdity of his own scenario, as he continues,

Or, the virus could also be released more subtly. Terrorists could collect samples of infected body fluids, and then place them on doorknobs, handrails or airplane tray tables, allowing Ebola to spread quietly before officials even realize that a biological attack has taken place.

Of course, we're back to the question of containment. Even in this scenario Thiessen is taking the approach of the worst case scenario, the notion that Ebola can survive for long periods of time in trace amounts on surfaces and remain highly contagious. Thiessen also seems to know, despite his earlier fear-mongering, that such a means of attempted transmission would not be very effective -- now he's imagining "what would happen if 50, 100 or more Ebola patients started showing up at U.S. hospitals". He posits that it would result in mass panic -- which may be true, but if so would have a lot less to do with Ebola itself than with demagogues like Thiessen. And, again, the more widespread the infection, the more likely it is that the disease is going to spread to other nations -- and potentially devastate the nations Thiessen fantasizes as being the source of the "germ warfare".

Having played a central role in the beating of the drums of war, Thiessen is fully aware of how the U.S. managed to manipulate the segment of the population that was unaware that Saddam Hussein played no role in the 9/11 attacks into supporting a full-scale assault on Iraq. What does Thiessen believe the response would be to a group that claimed responsibility for an effective germ warfare attack within the United States, or for a government that sponsored such an attack? That is, Thiessen's terrorists would not only have to operate with a significant level of sophistication in preparing their plot and getting infectious matter to the United States, while being simultaneously ignorant of the inherent dangers in germ warfare, they would have to be wholly undeterred by the idea that the United States would respond with a military fury that would make "shock and awe" in Iraq look like a children's party.

Also, but for the fact that it's presently in the headlines why Ebola? It's a terrifying disease, certainly, but it's not particularly communicable and to date the evidence is that an infected person is not infectious until they're symptomatic -- at which time, due to the severity of symptoms, at least in this country they're apt to be seeking emergency medical attention. That helps explain the zero cases identified to date where an infected person in the developed world spread Ebola to another person while outside of a hospital.

As is Thiessen's wont, he has to include a gratuitous slam against the President,

Then there is the impact of all the false assurances from President Obama that Ebola was unlikely to reach our shores and that if it did that “our doctors, our nurses and our medical staff are trained, are ready, and are able to deal with a possible case safely.”

which brings to mind a column by Fred Hiatt, the guy who believes that Thiessen is an asset to the Washington Post's editorial pages:

With a new week, and the possibility of additional Ebola patients, Americans — or at least American politicians — have an urgent need: someone to blame.

After all, while more than 4,000 Africans dying of Ebola was not enough to grab our attention, two infected nurses in the United States is a full-fledged crisis.

To save readers from viewing hours of repetitive cable television and political advertising, I assembled a handy list of villains proposed (or soon to be proposed) by talking heads of the left and right. Feel free to select one or more.

• President Obama, for caring about Africans more than he cares about us....

• Obama, for not listening to the World Health Organization’s warnings on Ebola....

What’s striking in the present case is how the absence of that sense of unity feeds on itself. Obama shouldn’t have suggested that Ebola was unlikely to reach America, Frieden shouldn’t have assured us that every hospital would be ready on Day One.

But in a climate that is so unforgiving, so quick to pounce, so unwilling to accept that mistakes will be made and should be learned from, it’s understandable that leaders trap themselves into promising more than they can deliver.

A desire for accountability does not have to preclude a certain generosity of spirit, or some empathy for those who are performing public service. We seem to have forgotten that.

There's a danger in taking a stance against demagogues, fear-mongering and gotcha politics when one need only scan across the printed page, or click a link on the virtual page, to see one (or more) of your own columnists engaging in the behavior you are pretending to decry. If you want "talking heads of the left and right" to display a more generous spirit, holding people accountable while admitting their own role in trapping leaders into over-promising, perhaps the first thing to do is to clean house.

Meanwhile, Thiessen should reflect on the comments that his column is generating which, unlike those he hopes to generate -- angry rant against the President and Democrats -- mostly identify him as having written a terrible column designed to create fear.

The WSJ Editorial Page Embarrasses Itself Again

It amazes me that newspapers like the Wall Street Journal remain wedded to the Peter Principle, insisting upon promoting the weakest of thinkers to manage their editorial pages. It's not that the board is full of complete idiots -- they're smart enough to recognize that when you write an editorial this stupid you publish it as an unsigned editorial so your name is only indirectly associated with your assertions. But still, they wrote it and they published it.

Readers may recall the original Buffett Rule that President Obama offered as part of his re-election campaign that essentially posited a minimum tax rate for the rich of about 30%. Mr. Buffett heartily endorsed the idea and Mr. Obama hauled out St. Warren as a soak-the-rich cudgel to beat up Mitt Romney in countless speeches.

So it was fascinating to hear Mr. Buffett explain that his real tax rule is to pay as little as possible, both personally and at the corporate level. "I will not pay a dime more of individual taxes than I owe, and I won't pay a dime more of corporate taxes than we owe.

If it needs to be explained, there is nothing wrong and nothing hypocritical about following current tax law, even as you advocate changes that would increase your tax burden. This type of silly accusation is made with some regularity, and in a variety of contexts, but never by a strong thinker.

Movement Toward Gay Marriage and the Myth of Roe v. Wade

Although I rarely find Charles Krauthammer to make a meaningful contribution to a public discussion, and his column on the DOMA decision isn't really an exception, he is repeating some unimpressive arguments raised often enough that it may be worth attempting to push them back. Before I get to the current column, I'll travel back in time seven years to some of his prior musings on the subject. Back then, Krauthammer was pushing the anti-gay marriage canard that if you allow gay marriage it inevitably follows that you should legalize polygamy:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

Right there, Krauthammer give us pretty much all the evidence we need that his thinking on this issue is weak, and that he doesn't understand the legal issues involved in the case. I don't want to assume to much, but I would hope that even Krauthammer would concede that to apply a similar argument to anti-miscegenation laws would be an "epic fail".

After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) the same race, and if, as advocates of interracial marriage insist, the race requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

I know that opponents of marriage equality argue vociferously that "allowing gay marriage is completely different from allowing interracial marriage", but the reason that comparison comes up is because of arguments like Krauthammer's. By his "logic", there is no distinction - if you don't allow discrimination in which of two, unmarried adults can get married, you cannot defend restricting the institution of marriage to two unmarried adults.

The response of many opponents of gay marriage is that being gay is not a protected category - it's not on the short list of factors that the state is supposed to scrupulously avoid using to discriminate between citizens - and thus the reasoning behind Loving does not extend to gay marriage. That because the discrimination is not based upon a protected class such as race, religion, national origin, color, (in their opinion) sex, or another such category, that the courts should not concern themselves with the question. Krauthammer does not appear to be working from the "protected category" argument, because "married vs. unmarried" isn't on that list.

The language of DOMA permitted the Supreme Court to resolve the case from a different angle - that Congress intruded into an area of law traditionally left to the states (domestic relations) in order to impose restrictions and disabilities on a class of people, and thus ultimately violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government. What frightens opponents of marriage equality is that the court all but said that there is not even a rational basis for opposing gay marriage - that should the issue be squarely raised. Given that the two leading arguments against gay marriage (and you'll forgive me if I missed a third)¹ are "tradition" and various forms of "gay sex is icky", it's not surprising that they are concerned that a future court might find there to be no rational basis for the continued state-level prohibition.

Perhaps Krauthammer accepts that the arguments against gay marriage are fundamentally weak. Perhaps, like many gay marriage opponents, he starts channeling Rick Santorum - never mind that the same "slippery slope" argument applies to anti-miscegenation laws (and were probably applied to that particular marriage equality argument in certain parts of the country). The slippery slope argument can be raised about any change, and its use is usually fallacious. In this particular instance, no surprise, it is fallacious.

We can start with this: When you have two unmarried individuals, the marriage contract is between them and them alone. If you then say, "We don't care if you're married already, you are free to marry an additional spouse," you risk infringing the rights of the existing spouse. And if you require that spouse's knowing consent to the new marriage - or should I say, all spouses - you're conceding a significant difference between the marriage of unmarried people and the marriage where one or more of the parties to the marriage is already married. Adding additional spouses is not, as Krauthammer blithely asserts an "individual choice" because the marriage already involves more than one individual. States have created bodies of law addressing the rights and duties of married couples, property division upon divorce, child custody upon separation or divorce, what property is part of the marital estate, pension and inheritance rights, access to health insurance benefits, taxes, housing laws, eligibility for social services.... When you add additional parties to the mix, every single one of those laws would need to be revisited and would become ridiculously complex.

There's a reason why the few nations that permit polygamy restrict that right to the male partner, and given him most of the rights within the marriage including in relation to assets and the children - because once you move toward an egalitarian arrangement it becomes extraordinarily difficult to create legal institutions around multi-partner marriages. In those cultures, the marriage is a constant that revolves around the man. Women can enter or leave the marriage. But if you attempt to create egalitarian multi-partner marriages you create a context in which the marriage can continue even after one or more partners leaves. You could end up with a marriage in which the original parties to the marriage are no longer involved, a 'divorce' that creates two or more new 'marriages' in its wake, and claims to custody or visitation from a wide assortment of moms and dads.

If you're not willing to directly address the weakness of the argument for proscribing gay marriage, perhaps it's not surprising that you've given even less thought to the weakness of the slippery slope argument you throw up as a shield. But whether or not you support polygamy, you cannot avoid the fact that there is a rational distinction between categorizing people as "married" versus "unmarried", and you cannot avoid acknowledging the complexity of rebuilding our nation's laws to accommodate marriages involving multiple parties.²

Krauthammer agrees that gay marriage poses no threat to "traditional marriage", so his argument really is one of fairness,

Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other. On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression?

That's a group choice, not, as he earlier posited, an individual choice. Here, Krauthammer is shifting the question from "is there a rational basis for the state to treat unmarried people differently from married people" to "If we allow gay marriage, is it unfair to people who want polygamous marriage." The "logic" here appears to be that it's better to be unfair to large numbers of people than it is to be unfair to smaller numbers of people, without regard to whether the distinction can be explained or justified - and that argument ultimately betrays the fact that Krauthammer's argument lacks a logical foundation. His argument boils down to, "It may be unfair to gay people to not allow them to marry, but allowing gay marriage would not end the unfairness to polygamists that they can't engage in multi-partner marriages, so we shouldn't do it.

As for gay marriage, I've come to a studied ambivalence. I think it is a mistake for society to make this ultimate declaration of indifference between gay and straight life, if only for reasons of pedagogy. On the other hand, I have gay friends and feel the pain of their inability to have the same level of social approbation and confirmation of their relationship with a loved one that I'm not about to go to anyone's barricade to deny them that. It is critical, however, that any such fundamental change in the very definition of marriage be enacted democratically and not (as in the disastrous case of abortion) by judicial fiat.

"...if only for reasons of pedagogy"? How... compelling. To me, that does not sound like an expression of "studied ambivalence" - it sounds like a preference for the status quo and the willingness to disregard the consequences of his policy preferences on any class of people who aren't Charles Krauthammer. As for the conclusion about judicial fiat... call it foreshadowing.

For a guy who wants us to see him as "ambivelent" on the subject of gay marriage, Krauthammer seems to have little conflict - beyond that one-time nod to the pain suffered by his "gay friends", but all of his arguments come down on the other side. For example, he imagines that gay marriage will lead to a "war on religion", picturing a religious college that is sued for denying a married, gay couple the opportunity to live in married student housing. Never mind that the school could avoid being a casualty of this imagined war simply by refusing federal money - a notion that I guess Krauthammer finds far more disturbing than discrimination against gay couples. Krauthammer complains, "It will be sued everywhere in the country if it’s declared to be a constitutional right, because it would imply that anybody who opposes it does it only out of bigotry, for no other reason". Given that the only other reasons for opposing gay marriage that Krauthammer has acknowledged are "pedagogy" and that "allowing gay marriage would be unfair to polygamists"... I suppose he makes a valid point. To assume that all marriage opponents are anti-gay bigots can be said to be making the mistake of attributing to malice something that at times will be better explained by ignorance.

Krauthammer's ambivelence is cast further into doubt by his recent column on the subject. Krauthammer proposes that there are only two possible grounds for holding DOMA to be unconstitutional, federalism and leaving the institution of marriage to the states, and equal protection. Krauthammer sees the two justifications as irreconcilable, and thus that it's inevitable that the Supreme Court will rule that all states must allow gay marriage. I'm not sure whether I should take that to mean that Krauthammer is implicitly conceding that there's no rational basis for laws prohibiting gay marriage, or if he's unable to fathom why the court does not find "reasons of pedagogy" to be an adequate basis for discrimination.

From a technical standpoint, Krauthammer is conflating a decision holding that the federal government cannot arbitrarily curb the rights of a group of people with an emphasis on interstate recognition of marriage, with state legislation that is entirely intrastate in nature. Krauthammer complains about equal protection,

In states with same-sex marriage, Washington must give the same federal benefits to gay couples as to straight couples because to do otherwise is to discriminate against the gay couples. After all, they are equally married in their states. For Washington to discriminate against them is to deny them equal protection of the laws. Such discrimination is nothing more than irrational animus — and therefore constitutionally inadmissible.

Except the Supreme Court was commenting not on state laws for or against gay marriage, but on a federal law that targeted married gay couples and stripped them of a basic legal protection - to have their lawful marriages respected by other states. As the Court put it, "The Act’s demonstrated purpose is to ensure that if any State decides to recognize same-sex marriages, those unions will be treated as second-class marriages for purposes of federal law." There's nothing inherent in the Windsor decision that removes from a state the right to forbid same sex marriages within its borders - but that state will no longer have a federal statute that it can point to as a justification for disregarding the validity of gay marriages lawfully entered in other states.

In other words, Krauthammer's argument only holds if he believes that there are no better arguments for opposing gay marriage than those proposed by the defenders of DOMA. I'm not sure if I should take this as an implicit abandonment of his notion that gay marriage can be forbidden "for reasons of pedagogy", but it's safe to infer that he does not expect the Supreme Court to find a law premised upon his position to have a rational basis.

As Krauthammer sees it, the problem with this decision is that it paves the way for a future decision that will require all states to permit gay marriage.

Which is exactly where the majority’s [equal protection] rationale leads — nationalizing gay marriage, the way Roe nationalized abortion. This is certainly why David Boies, the lead attorney in the companion Proposition 8 case, was so jubilant when he came out onto the courthouse steps after the ruling. He understood immediately that once the court finds it unconstitutional to discriminate between gay and straight couples, nationalizing gay marriage is just one step away.

I know there's a "conventional wisdom" that holds that but for the opinion in Roe v. Wade we would have had a national debate that would have led toward reproductive freedom across the country, and that the reason we have a continued debate over abortion rights is because the Supreme Court cut that debate short. The only problem with that argument is, well, everything. Roe v. Wade is controversial because it's at the center of the abortion rights debate, but despite decades of controversy and opprobrium it was, is, and remains consistent with public opinion. To the extent that Roe foreclosed part of a debate, it was not the part that would lead toward the expansion of reproductive freedoms for women, it was the effort to restrict and outlaw abortion procedures. Scott Lemieux argues,

In general, the comparison of abortion politics before and after Roe v. Wade is most consistent with the expectations held by skeptics of judicial exceptionalism. Clearly, the legitimation hypothesis is not applicable in the abortion case. The court’s intervention certainly did not resolve the abortion issue in any meaningful sense, and the public certainly did not accept the court’s verdict as the final word on the issue. On the other hand, there is also little evidence that the court’s action would have produced more countermobilization than a similar policy enacted by Congress or state legislatures. The pro-life movement was a powerful force before Roe, and the decision did not demonstrably change either the tone of abortion discourse or the distribution of public opinion on the issue. There is no evidence, specifically or generally, that policy-making by the courts is thought of as inherently illegitimate by the public. It should be re-emphasized that these empirical findings do not mean that there was no countermobilization against Roe.... Certainly, abortion politics are more salient at the level of presidential politics in 2003 than they were in 1972 when George McGovern declined to take a position on the issue. The comparison of abortion politics before and after Roe, however, compels the strong inference that it is the nationalization of abortion politics represented by Roe, and not the legalization of [abortion], that is the key variable in explaining this shift. Hypothetically, had Congress passed (and been constitutionally able) to pass legislation with similar policy content, there can be little question that abortion would have become a more salient issue in presidential politics as well.

Lemieux's argument, as exemplified by his reference to McGovern, is also consistent with the fact that it was not until the Reagan era, and its effort to turn the religious right into a permanent Republican voting bloc, that being "pro-life" became a litmus test in the Republican Party.

Krauthammer is not demonstrating concern that this theoretical cut-off of debate predicated by decisions like Roe or Windsor will prevent the development of abortion rights and gay marriage as national legal rights. For example, if he's truly concerned about federalism, why didn't he blow a gasket about DOMA, a law that allowed state legislatures to avoid trying to create laws and policies consistent with their own constitutions and the U.S. Constitution. What meaningful debate did we have in the decade after the passage of DOMA?

Krauthammer's selective focus on court decisions that lead toward gay marriage, and his (at best) disinterest in state and federal legislation and ballot initiatives that attempt to impede or prevent movement toward gay marriage, suggests that his opposition is to the expansion of rights and not to the means by which those rights are expanded or protected. In this specific case it seems less that Krauthammer's actual objection is to the fact that the Supreme court intervened, and is more to the fact that he is unable to articulate a single reason why the Court's decision was incorrect.
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1. A third argument might be, "If gay marriage is allowed, the result will be to weaken the traditional institution of marriage." The primary problem with that argument is that there's no evidence to support it, not even from jurisdictions that permit gay marriage. If you don't care whether your argument is supported by evidence, you could as easily argue that gay marriage will bring on a Martian invasion. Either way, in the absence of evidence you're blowing smoke.

2. Krauthammer claimed, "This line of argument makes gay activists furious" - no, Charles, this is what "furious" looks like; odds are that was people pointing and laughing.

Mamet's Plays vs. Political Commentary

I've seen David Mamet interviewed, so I know he's no slouch. He seems to be writing his political drivel in earnest, so I can't say that he's a fraud. So what does that leave me with? Some form of narcissism crossed with life in a self-imposed bubble. Back when Mamet "came out" as a conservative, he did so through an essay that reflected a surprising lack of depth and intellectual rigor. But the surprise is not that a smart person can be foolish, or that his initial comments on a subject that he has consistently overlooked will demonstrate the fact that he's new to the issues. The surprise is that somebody whose work suggests that he grapples with serious issues would be so inept at grappling with actual issues.

Five years later, Mamet shows no more sophistication as a political thinker than he did on day one, and if anything his positions are even further removed from objective fact and history. My inference is this: Mamet is good at picking up on serious issues, and of creating fictional scenarios that expand upon those issues, but he's not particularly good at relating his scenarios to reality. Meanwhile, he restricts himself to a circle of similarly minded people who gush over his brilliance, but have no greater knowledge or capacity for analysis than he does. That appears to have been true when he was coasting through life giving essentially no thought to politics except for occasionally fuming that NPR was too sympathetic to Palestinians.

Paul Waldman opines,

To be clear, the point isn't that Mamet is conservative, even though it's true that the overwhelming majority of artists are liberal, so that makes him unusual. The point is that he brings to his political analysis none of the things that make him a good playwright. It would be one thing if Mamet was, let's say, a widely admired painter or photographer who turned out to have simplistic political views. Visual artists sometimes disappoint their fans by not being particularly eloquent when they're called upon to discuss their work, but words are not their tools. A playwright, on the other hand, spends his time studying and manipulating language, ideas, and characters. That someone who has produced insightful art about corners of American life and the human condition more broadly would then turn around and offer political analysis with all the sophistication of the twelfth caller to Sean Hannity's radio show this afternoon is profoundly puzzling.

But it's a good reminder of something: Political writing is a craft, just like writing plays. Pretty much everyone who has ever read a newspaper thinks they could do it as well or better than those who do it for a living, but most of the time they can't. David Mamet spent a lot of time and energy working on his craft, but the fact that he got famous doing it doesn't mean he has any opinions about or analysis of politics that anyone would gain anything from hearing.

I agree with the latter part more than the former. That is, I agree that somebody who has great gifts in one area may lack gifts or skills in another. But I think the things that make Mamet an interesting playwright and screenwriter are the same things that make him a terrible political analyst.

I have enjoyed a lot of Mamet's work, but I have the impression from some of his work that he tell into the same sort of trap that we have seen with other writers, that of thinking he's smarter than his audience. Works like The Spanish Prisoner succeed based upon the strength of the acting, the "solution" to the protagonist's problem was obvious and I find it a bit painful at times to watch "brilliant" characters do one stupid thing after another when the solution is right before their eyes - and when the character finally figures it out, rather than applying a logical ending (not very dramatically interesting) he resorts to the deus ex machina. Even in works I like a lot more, such as The Verdict, Mamet demonstrates little patience with reality. When he needs to force an outcome, his characters do what is necessary to force the outcome - absurd evidentiary rulings, a "feel good" jury verdict without regard for what would happen on appeal. But in Mamet's better dramatic work, the deviations from reality are a form of poetic license. It's not important that the courtroom scenes are often absurd, because the goal isn't realism - Mamet is showing us the flaws of the characters, the arbitrariness of the legal system, how a case can turn more on the personality of the judge than on the law and facts.... And sometimes he's just spinning a ridiculous yarn about one con game or another, with uneven results.

To me, it seems that Mamet is doing the same thing in his political commentary that he does in his scripts, but that he has somehow lost track of the difference between spinning an entertaining yarn that happens to address some important issues and speaking about the real world. Much of Mamet's fiction leaves me with the impression that he does little research, that he's not interested in interviewing experts or poring over books to try to determine if his stories are plausible or if he could accomplish the same dramatic effect while hewing closer to what actually might happen in real life. His political writing displays a similar disdain for research - he'll go with the common wisdom, the buzz from his sycophants and adherents, with reality being less important than belief, perhaps justified by the narcissistic conceit that "If my friends and I believe it, it must be true."

From his political "conversion",

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

From his latest screed,

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

Has Mamet truly grown less informed about government over the past five years? Perhaps he floats in a circle of ignoramuses, and their ignorance is catching. Or perhaps he doesn't want to let the facts, even facts he has previously acknowledged, get in the way of his story. I recognize that many of Mamet's factual errors, such as his ignorance of Marxism, may simply be that - repeating the conventional wisdom of his new circle of peers, a reflection of the aforementioned conceit, "If we believe it, it must be right." But with mistakes like "The Founding Fathers... were not even politicians" it's difficult to imagine that Mamet even cares about whether his assertions of fact are correct. For the story he's telling, it's better that the founding fathers be non-ideological non-politicians so, just as with the fictional characters of one of his plays, he changes the facts and personalities to fit his story.

Another flaw of Mamet's political analysis? His logic is terrible. One small example,

As rules by the Government are one-size-fits-all, any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator. The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

Except government rules are not "one size fits all". Even if they were "one size fits all," that would not necessitate that a "any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities" (whatever Mamet means by that) "must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator". Mamet statement about race is absurd. It appears that he's alluding to affirmative action and civil rights laws, but those programs are not predicated upon a government determination "that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people". They're predicated upon this nation's history of institutionalized racial inequality and racial discrimination. Based upon Mamet's false and absurd distortions, anti-discrimination laws become "monstrous", proof that the government can't believe what everybody knows, that the races are equal in every respect. And yet, in a wonderfully ambiguous flourish "it" is "the law".

Mamet continues,

President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

We can start from, is Obama's statement true or false? Does Mamet believe that the President has insufficient money to meet his needs? Does he believe that Mitt Romney is struggling by on his quarter billion dollar fortune, barely able to keep the heat on in his five houses? From any reasonable standpoint the President was correct. But facts are boring, right? So Mamet goes off on a tear about how the Constitution does not place the government in charge of determining "needs". And after that non sequitur whines that the President is speaking for another person. As if Romney denied the charge. As if any person with a brain between his ears would dispute the charge. And then what he seems to think is his pièce de résistance, his brilliant and irrefutable point, "Who elected [the President] to speak for another citizen?" (Well, you see, David, we live under this system of government referred to as a representative democracy, and we do in fact elect our representatives to speak for us.) And yes, it gets worse from there - for the President to suggest that Romney has more money than he needs is the same thing as the government imposing "one-size-fits-all", never mind that the President was speaking about treating different classes of people (notably the ultra-rich) differently than the average working stiff. And there is no difference between that and slavery.

Mamet makes one ridiculous assertion after another.

What possible purpose in declaring schools “gun-free zones”? Who bringing a gun, with evil intent, into a school would be deterred by the sign?

The purpose of the law, of course, is to allow the police to stop and detain, and when appropriate prosecute and imprison, somebody who brings a firearm into the gun-free zone. If it's not illegal to have a gun in a school zone, the police are constrained in their ability to act before the gun is drawn.

We need more armed citizens in the schools.

Why? Because Mamet says so? And this is a universal truth? A school with a gang problem will be a better and safer place if every kid above the age of 18 has the right to bring a gun to school?

Walk down Madison Avenue in New York. Many posh stores have, on view, or behind a two-way mirror, an armed guard. Walk into most any pawnshop, jewelry story, currency exchange, gold store in the country, and there will be an armed guard nearby. Why? As currency, jewelry, gold are precious. Who complains about the presence of these armed guards? And is this wealth more precious than our children?

Actually, no, in most such stores there are no armed guards. But where they are, it's to protect against robbery. Fundamentally, Mamet knows the difference between children, money, precious metals and jewels - not one of the scam artists in any of his plays or movies has mused over whether it would be better to scam somebody out of a valuable patent, tens of thousands of dollars, $millions in gold, or their kids. I doubt we would have to explain to Mamet that just because banks transport cash and securities in armored cars, it does not follow that we need to replace the nation's school buses with armored cars. Businesses don't invest in bulletproof glass and armed security because they are protecting against obscure risk and enjoy wasting money, but because due to the nature of their operations they are under genuine risk of armed robbery.

Q. How many accidental shootings occurred last year in jewelry stores, or on any premises with armed security guards?

I'm not sure how many of the shootings were accidental, but it would seem quite a number - often by somebody who disarms the security guard. ("In 23% of shootings within the ED, the weapon was a security officer’s gun taken by the perpetrator."). As if we needed further confirmation that Mamet does no research and has little interest in facts. Mamet believes that all that is involved in having armed security in schools is "the cost of a pistol (several hundred dollars), and a few hours of training (that’s all the security guards get)" - reflecting his deep ignorance both of the cost of gun ownership and maintenance, and of the actual and continuing training required to make sure that the person with the gun has the necessary skills to use it safely and appropriately.

Did I mention Mamet's inaccurate claim that the President "just passed a bill that extends to him and his family protection, around the clock and for life, by the Secret Service". Does Mamet even know how a bill is passed? That the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans? Apparently not. Mamet makes the absurd assertion that by recognizing that the President and his family have different security needs than the average American, the government is "regulat[ing] gun ownership based on its assessment of needs", which is... Marxism. Wait - you thought Marxism was when the government treated all people as if they were the same, and that "one size fits all" solutions were tantamount to slavery? That was paragraphs ago. Things have changed. And is Mamet seriously suggesting that the only solution that avoids Marxism is to either extend Secret Service protection to everybody in the nation, or to leave the President unprotected? To the extent that you try to find logical coherence in his arguments, yes, in fact he is.

Getting back to Mamet's plays for a moment, some defend his often stilted, stylized dialog as being "how people talk in real life." I've met a lot of people in my life and none speak in the manner of the characters of, say, House of Games. But the manner in which Mamet spins into a verbal frenzy, taking the President's true statement about Romney's wealth and, in a matter of a few sentences, equating it with slavery? Perhaps the reason I don't think Mamet's dialog is realistic is that I can't hear the voices in his head.

Waldman's commentary on the craft of political analysis is fair to a point, that people underestimate what is involved in writing good political commentary, but if we look at the most commercially successful political analysts of the day we often see little of that craft in their work. If I open a newspaper, I might find Charles Krauthammer opening a column with a dig at the President's use of a teleprompter, an absurd, racially-tinged attack that long ago passed its expiration date. I might find George Will spouting off about how climate change is a myth, with no more interest in the facts than Mamet. And if I flip open a Newsweek... make that click open... I might find... Mamet.

Sorry to say, the biggest money makers in the world of political commentary are charlatants - Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the like - and many of the faces pushed upon us by the "respectable" media are well past their prime, or were never up to the task. Many of the best political analysts would struggle to get a column published by a major newspaper or to get invited to sit among the talking heads on a televised panel or news show. The shocking part is less that Newsweek is so eager to gain readers that it posts an editorial that is on par with an episode of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo". The shocking part is how many people who you would think would have more respect for themselves eagerly line up to play the role of Honey Boo Boo.

Richard Cohen's Squishy Moral Relativism

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

- Benjamin Franklin

"I am torn between my desire for absolute security and my abhorrence of torture."

- Richard Cohen

Alas, poor Richard Cohen, having spent many years thinking (to the best of his ability) about torture, and writing columns about torture, he just can't figure out where he stands:

As with the famous ink blots developed by Swiss psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach, some people look at the film and conclude that torture works, others conclude that it doesn’t, still others think the movie advocates torture, while some — and now we have gotten to me — don’t know what to think. I am implacably opposed to torture... unless it can save lives.

I oppose taxes, unless they're necessary to fund the government. I oppose vaccinations, unless they're necessary to prevent disease. Can you get more squishy?

Cohen is grateful that the film, Zero Dark Thirty, has started a debate over torture. This isn't like during the Bush Administration, when people were debating the definitions and use of torture in response to the actions of our own government. Our government has, after all, determined that torture is not a sufficiently effective tool for gathering actionable intelligence, and thus has abandoned the use of torture in favor of what it has determined to be better methods of intelligence gathering. No, that silly old debate didn't resolve anything, but now there's a movie!

Cohen speaks of "three senators [with] access to highly classified information... [who as] a group [] are a somber lot" taking the position that torture does not work. He elaborates,

Still, others have taken the same position. Journalists with no access to classified information but with access to people who possess that information insist that (1) torture doesn’t work and (2) it did not lead to the killing of bin Laden. Okay, point taken.

Apparently, to Richard Cohen, there is no difference between asserting, "point taken" versus "point not taken", because to him the important question is no longer whether torture "works", but whether torture is "moral". The concept of the lesser of two evils? Apparently that's not a concept that Cohen has ever encountered.

Is it immoral to waterboard someone who knows of an imminent Sept. 11-type attack? Wouldn’t it instead be immoral not to do everything in your power to avoid the loss of thousands of lives? Torture in that case might be hideous, repugnant and in some rarefied way still immoral, but I could certainly justify it.

In other words, who cares about the "real world" - Cohen has seen movies and TV shows in which bad guys are tortured into confessing their secrets seconds before nuclear bombs explode, with the good guys defusing the bomb just before the countdown timer reaches "zero", and if good guys do it on TV it can't be immoral!

The phrase "it depends" has been chased from our political life — a sign of feared wishy-washiness, which is, crucially, bad for TV ratings.

And yet it's TV shows and action movies, built to get those ratings, structured around simplistic plot lines and countdown timers, that inform Cohen's views. Does it matter that he can't find anybody "in the know" to tell him that torture "works"? Not in the slightest. He just wants somebody to admit that if we assume that torture can work in a fanciful, action movie scenario, there's moral ambiguity when the hero uses torture to elicit crucial information from a cartoon villain.

Cohen wants to engage in a dangerous form of moral relativism, the type that naturally extends to "If they do it, it's wrong, but if we do exectly the same thing it's an act of good because our motives are pure." He doesn't understand the difference between when something is morally justifiable and when it is moral. "If it saves a lot of lives" isn't sufficient - resorting to what appears to be Cohen's greatest source of moral influence, the motion picture, let's borrow from Batman and imagine The Joker is threatening to blow up Manhattan unless somebody shoots Richard Cohen in the head. Would it become moral to shoot Richard Cohen in the head? ("Ah, but I'm an innocent," Richard Cohen might protest, which under his theory of morality is beside the point. If it's "in your power to avoid the loss of thousands of lives" then it's "immoral not to do everything in your power to avoid the loss of thousands of lives", right?)

Cohen is also concerned that if the government bans torture, then people detained by the government won't be afraid of being tortured:

But it would be all right with me if the government were silent on torture so that no detainee could be confident of civilized treatment or if, in a crisis, an understandable looking away was permitted. Life ain’t neat.

I'm not sure where he thinks he's going with this. (Actually, I am, but only because I've read beyond this column.) Cohen imagines a nation in which torture is legal, and can be used on any detainee, but in which it is not actually used? Because then detainees will believe that it might be used and will volunteer information rather than risking being legally tortured?

Really, what Cohen is doing is alluding back to an argument he's made in the past, based upon his misunderstanding of the detention and torture of a single individual:

I refer you to the 1995 interrogation by Philippine authorities of Abdul Hakim Murad, an al-Qaeda terrorist who served up extremely useful information about a plot to blow up airliners when he was told that he was about to be turned over to Israel's Mossad.

As Cohen is no longer referring us to Murad, it seems reasonable to infer that somebody has clued him into the fact that the plot was revealed not through the use of torture, but because Murad's computer was overflowing with files detailing every element of the plot. And they may also have clued him into the fact that Murad was subsequently tortured, and that the torture produced no useful information while sending authorities on myriad wild goose chases. What do you do if the one anecdote you use to support your argument turns out not to support your argument? If you're Richard Cohen, it would appear that you continue to make the same argument but stop mentioning the anecdote. Cohen concludes his column by telling us that, thanks to the release of an action movie, "We are getting a robust debate over torture that we should have had years ago". Which is false. We had the same debate years ago and, but for a few details, he wrote the same column years ago. Several times. He also writes, "we are finding out a bit more about it — whether it works and whether it can ever be justified." Those are questions Cohen also asked and answered years ago. For example, on April 28, 2009,

Yet the debate over torture has been infected with silly arguments about utility: whether it works or not. Of course it works -- sometimes or rarely, but if a proverbial bomb is ticking, that may just be the one time it works.

And on May 12, 2009:

I know how upsetting this will be to some Cheney critics, and I count myself as one, who think -- in respectful paraphrase of what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman -- that everything he says is a lie, including the ands and the thes. Yet I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth -- i.e., torture works.

By September 1, 2009, it was all squish:

The questions of what constitutes torture and what to do with those who, maybe innocently, applied what we now define as torture have to be removed from the political sphere. They cannot be the subject of an ideological tug of war, both sides taking extreme and illogical positions -- torture never works, torture always works, torture is always immoral, torture is moral if it saves lives.

So even back in 2009 Cohen was lecturing us that we should never speak in absolutes, whatever the facts may be. Except back then it was "extreme and illogical" to argue that "torture is moral if it saves lives" whereas now that's his central thesis.

George "Grandpa Simpson" Will Wants a Balanced Budget Amendment

Mind you, he doesn't actually try to make a case for a balanced budget amendment, but he does display a fascinating disconnect between his political views and the facts. First up, an angry rant about how the Democrats did not raise taxes enough:

Liberals could have had a revenue increase of $3.7 trillion over 10 years. Instead, they surrendered nearly $3.1 trillion of that. They cannot have repeated bites at this apple.... And because tax reform is dead for the foreseeable future, so are hopes for a revenue surge produced by vigorous economic growth....

By rescuing almost everyone from the restoration of Clinton-era rates, liberals abandoned any pretense of paying for their program of ever- expanding entitlements. Instead, they made trillion-dollar deficits their program.

Were Will interested in facts, he might note that the Republican Party opposed the tax increases that the Democrats proposed, which is to say that if Will is going to complain that Congress hasn't raised enough taxes on enough people he's directing his temper tantrum at the wrong party. As for the conceit that we might have had some sort of larger discussion of "tax reform" but now we can't, due to a modest tax increase on the wealthy, perhaps he can direct us to where that negotiation was occurring - or where we can find anything approximating a serious Republican "tax reform" proposal - and explain why the odds of progress on these confabulated tax reform negotiations and proposals are less likely to bear fruit today than they were two weeks ago.

Because 82 percent of American earners pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes, no politically conceivable or economically feasible middle-class tax rate can fund the entitlement state.

So... because we fund Social Security retirement, SSDI and Medicare through FICA, the fact that pretty much every working person pays FICA taxes.... Um, non sequitur, much? When programs are funded through dedicated taxes, one might think that the proper approach to addressing funding issues would be to examine the dedicated taxes, not go off on a rant about how other taxes should be higher.

People who choose to live in places vulnerable to flooding believe it would be unfair that the cost of their property insurance fully reflect this risk. So government subsidizes their insurance, and hence their decision to live where there is increased risk of property damage that, when it happens, the government helps pay to rebuild.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: What do you call a wealthy person who carries government subsidized flood insurance on his waterfront mansion, one of several homes he owns, and then after a hurricane sues his insurance company because despite the subsidy he chose not to carry adequate subsidized flood insurance to replace his home and contends that the damage was caused by the wind? No peeking.

Will also carries on about one of his pet fixations, Amtrak, complaining that it loses money on food service. Alrighty....

Absent from Will's rant is any argument that a balanced budget amendment would be good policy for the nation, how it might be structured, or even whether his party would support it. If Will had a bit more perspective, he should realize that his own rant effectively answered that question - When they are in control, Republicans are the party of "Deficits don't matter". They're the party that implemented the temporary tax cuts that Will apparently wishes would have expired in toto, and they are the party that prevented the expiration from reaching a slightly larger number of taxpayers.

George Will's Self-Serving Arguments on Campaign Spending

Note to George Will: If you can't make an honest case for your position on campaign spending, specifically allowing unlimited corporate money into political campaigns, perhaps you should admit that your argument is nowhere near as compelling as you pretend.

The 2010 elections, the first after the Supreme Court’s excellent Citizens United> decision liberalized the rules about funding political advocacy, were especially competitive. Social science confirms what common sense suggests: More spending on political advocacy means more voter information and interest. The approximately $2 billion spent in support of this year’s presidential candidates — only about two-thirds as much as Procter & Gamble spent on U.S. advertising last year — surely contributed to the high turnout in targeted states.

Let's start with the statement, "Social science confirms..." - if in fact social science supports Will's suppositions, where can I find it? Why isn't Will citing studies, or linking to materials that support his contention that his positions are now supported by "social science"?

The first thing "social science" supposedly confirms is "spending on political advocacy means more voter information and interest". Where can I find evidence that increased spending on political advocacy resulted in more information being available to voters? Where can I find evidence that the spending made voters more interested in the election? Given that a great deal of third party spending goes to negative advertising and misinformation, to the extent that we assume that voters are engaged by the advertising where is the evidence that it improves how voters engage with the facts and issues? If "more voter information" is provided, but it's inferior in quality or false, could it not result in a less informed electorate, less capable of making an informed decision?

When we talk about the amount spent on the election campaign, how does $2 billion become a trivial amount? Why does Will believe P&G's advertising budget to be a relevant number for comparison to election ad spending?

Will says that the ads "surely contributed to the high turnout in targeted states" - again, based on what "social science"? Why should we assume ads, not GOTV efforts, were what brought otherwise ambivalent voters to the polls? In recent years the top six states for voter turnout have not been swing states - unless you count Wisconsin as a swing state. This year?

Ohio had a 61.8% turnout - down 5.1% from 2008.
Florida had a 62.2% turnout - down 3.9% from 2008.
Virginia had a 63.8% turnout - down 3.2% from 2008.
Colorado had a 65.6% turnout - down 5.4% from 2008.
North Carolina had a 64.5% turnout - down 1% from 2008.
Pennsylvania had a 57.7% turnout - down 5.9% from 2008.
Iowa had a 69.1% turnout - down 0.3% from 2008.
Nevada had a 56.9% turnout - down 0.1% from 2008.
Wisconsin had a 72.2% turnout - down 0.2% from 2008.
Michigan had a 63% turnout - down 6.2% from 2008.

In other words, there's what Will is saying (increased political advertising in swing states brings more voters to the polls) and then there's reality - spending went way up, voter turnout went down. Karl Rove, king of campaign filth, has been shedding crocodile tears over "voter suppression" caused by negative ads - perhaps he and Will should talk.

Will next attempts to play the hypocrisy card,

Media and other “nonpartisan” — please, no chortling — dismay about “too much money in politics” waned as seven of the 10 highest-spending political entities supported Democrats and outspent the three supporting Republicans, according to the Wall Street Journal.

First, the fact that you believe that campaign finance should be regulated does not mean you have to go into an election unarmed. There is nothing wrong with following the law as it presently stands, even as you're arguing that it should be changed - even as you're promising to change it if you're elected. That's not hypocrisy - it's common sense. And by the same token it's possible to be appalled by how much money you're able to raise and spend on your campaign, even as you're continuing to raise and spend that money to try to win. It's possible to be appalled by the expenditures of your favored party or candidate, yet still see the necessity of contributing to their campaign.

As Will did not link to the source of his "seven of the top ten" allegation, I had to search for it. Given that Will did not provide a link, I expected to find that his source did not say what he was implying - and sure enough it did not. In terms of dollars spent, as of the date the article's figures were compiled, the three right-wing groups spent $205.6 million, and the seven left-wing groups spent 229.8. If you remove the 27.6 spent by the Senate Democrats' Super PAC, the three outside right-wing groups outspend the remaining six Democratic outside groups. If you look at updated data, and believe that the raw count is somehow relevant to the discussion, the number shifts to 6:4 groups in favor of the Republicans.

It's also immediately apparent that Will is referring to out-of-date information. It would be one thing if November 1 were the best you could do, but... not even close. As the figures used by the WSJ come from The Center for Responsive Politics, it's easy to obtain more recent data. Surprise! The number one and two organizations on Will's list, both supporting Romney, spent an additional $136 million between when the WSJ compiled its statistics and the date of the most recent data from their named source. SEIU's spending, recited in the WSJ piece as $69 million, is listed as $30.1 million... odd? Will, I'm sure, is heartened that the top two organizations are both conservative, and both make the left-leaning groups seem woefully underfunded.

At least Will is honest in the end, at least about his motives:

The advocacy infrastructure being developed by both sides in the post-Citizens United world will, over time, favor the most plausible side, which conservatives know is theirs.

That is, despite all the window dressing, for Will it's not about the Constitution. It's not about educating voters or bringing them to the polls. It's about helping the party he supports get a structural advantage that will help it outspend the other party. It seems reasonable to infer that Will's actual fear is that his party can't win in the marketplace of ideas, and that he thus supports their being able to drown out other voices through massive campaign spending. Will can pretend it's about principle if he chooses, but it seems inescapable that the primary driver for his position on campaign funding is politics.

Update: As more votes are counted, the voter turnout picture is more mixed. For the key swing states, Virginia and Florida showed very small increases in turnout, while turnout was significantly down in Ohio. Will's position that the barrage of campaign spending increased turnout remains unsupported by the data.

Still Crazy Illogical After All These Years

I've commented on the dimwitted argument by people that it's hard to believe don't know better, that any negative movement in the stock market is somehow the fault of a Democratic politician. For example, George Will.

Right-wing law professor Jim Lindgren made that insipid argument four years ago. Today he doubles down.

If Lindgren believes this type of claptrap, it would seem you can teach law while having a very poor grasp of logic. If he does not, that type of games-playing is beneath him.

Michael Gerson Doesn't Like Arithmetic....

I won't blame Michael Gerson for the title to his latest column, as it was likely chosen by an editor, but wow... what a ridiculous attempt at a play on words. Gerson is hopping on the Republican bandwagon by attacking Nate Silver, a guy who announced well in advance of the polling of this race, "Here's the formula I'm going to apply to the polling data to try to predict a winner in the presidential race," because he has done exactly that - he has applied his formula exactly as promised, in a clinical, nonpartisan manner, but... darnitall, his numbers keep favoring the President.

Gerson starts out with a reasonable point - that the specificity of the numbers produced by Silver's formula may be misleading. Gerson complains that Silver's formula, as of the time of his writing, put President Obama's chance of reelection "at 86.3 percent. Not 86.1 percent. Not 87.8 percent. At 86.3 percent." But the specificity is a product of the formula, not a claim that the formula is perfect. I'm not sure what difference it would make to Gerson, or to anybody else, if Silver rounded his numbers to the nearest one or five. For that matter, if Silver used a ten point scale, rounding off his number and saying "right now Romney has a 1/10 chance of winning", I would expect that Gerson and friends would be complaining about the lack of specificity and insisting that he use the "real" numbers from his formula.

But here's the thing: Gerson has no complaint about the polls themselves - just the algorithmic attempt to explain what the polls mean. He's fine with the race being declared "a dead heat" or "48:46". If the polls were coming back 60:40 for Romney I expect he would be ecstatic. What he doesn't like is being told that, if the polls as accurate, even if the polls are coming back with the candidates separated by a number less than their margin of error, the polls have a cumulative significance. A persistent small lead in poll after poll really does suggest that one subject has a genuine, persistent lead.

Gerson complains that analysts like Silver have their "bases covered",

If the state polls are correct, the aggregator gets credit for his insight in trusting them. If the assumptions contained in those polls — on the partisan composition of the electorate or the behavior of independents — are wrong, it is the failure of pollsters, not of statisticians such as Silver.

Well... yes. When somebody produces data that is correct, an analysis based upon that data is more likely to be correct. When somebody produces data that is wrong, "garbage in, garbage out." But that simply brings us back to the earlier point, if Gerson believes that the polls may be garbage, why isn't he objecting to the polls themselves rather than grousing about how statisticians analyze poll data?

Toward the end of his column Gerson complains that "current fashion for polls and statistics" extends to political commentary and,

Instead of making political analysis more “objective,” it has driven the entire political class — pundits, reporters, campaigns, the public — toward an obsessive emphasis on data and technique. Quantification has also resulted in miniaturization. In politics, unlike physics, you can only measure what matters least.

If that's Gerson's concern, the first question that comes to mind is why Gerson isobsessing over statistical analysis of poll data, rather than criticizing the larger, chronic tendency of his peers to cover elections as if they are a horse race. The second, where can I find the new breed of pundits who actually attempt to apply data to their analysis? Is Gerson talking about David Brooks and his marshmallows? Or is he pointing at Paul Krugman as the exception who proves the rule?

Gerson snarks, "Strongly consider a profession in which one is right, by definition, 100 percent of the time", never mind that if Silver's predictions are wrong he and his formula will take a hit. Gerson can produce, as a matter of habit, thinly reasoned column after thinly reasoned column and, as long as enough people read them, the New York Times will keep paying him a six figure salary and he'll be in a position to pick up far more than that on the lecture circuit and through book deals. If Silver's formula were as flawed, he would be discredited in the realm of politics.

Gerson continues his complaint about... was it polling... complaining that,

An election is not a mathematical equation; it is a nation making a decision. People are weighing the priorities of their society and the quality of their leaders. Those views, at any given moment, can be roughly measured. But spreadsheets don’t add up to a political community.

Who argued that spreadsheets, algorithms, statistics, polls, anything like that "add up to a political community"?

In a democracy, the convictions of the public ultimately depend on persuasion, which resists quantification.

Yet Gerson knows that is untrue. He worked for an administration that was dreaming of creating a permanent Republican majority, even if just 51% of voters, and was no doubt specifically tasked with crafting speeches meant to satisfy that narrow majority based upon aggregated polling data. He has seen how politicians running for office use polls to shape their message and their sound bites, to target segments of the population they believe are likely to vote for them. Gerson is rooting for a candidate who won't put on a shirt without checking the polls, who changes his positions on key issues every time the polls tell him that likely Republican voters want to hear something different.

Gerson declares,

The most interesting and important thing about politics is not the measurement of opinion but the formation of opinion. Public opinion is the product — the outcome — of politics; it is not the substance of politics.

Really? In that case it would be interesting to have Gerson explain to us how the vast fortune spent on political campaign ads over the course of this election have reshaped public opinion. How the campaign speeches have done so. When opinions have changed it seems to have been forces outside of the political sphere that have led to the change - a hurricane blasting the East Coast, for example - not politics. What election is Gerson looking at?

Also, when political scientists attempt to determine which people hold certain beliefs, then to determine why those people hold their beliefs, they're engaged in the study of how opinions are formed. Gerson knows that his party has made an artform of crafting language to persuade people to support its positions, and to obscure the truth behind them, labeling and relabeling their programs. "Privatize? We would never suggest that. Vouchers? Never heard of 'em." There's a reason why some political scientists study the phrases used in political speeches and, having penned a large number of them, Gerson has to understand that, even if he feigns ignorance.

If political punditry has any value in a democracy, it is in clarifying large policy issues and ethical debates, not in “scientific” assessments of public views.

Perhaps the takeaway from that is, "Perhaps that's why punditry, as presently practiced, has so little value in our democracy." Columnists may not be producing a "scientific" assessment of public views, but they're more than happy to label the nation's politics and leaders - "center-left", "center-right", etc. - and they're more than happy to declare what "the people" want and expect from their political leaders. Gerson believes that such statements are more valuable when they come from the gut, as opposed to from any attempt to methodically collect and analyze actual data?

And while I'm sure Gerson embraces the conceit that, through his column, he is "clarifying large policy issues and ethical debates", few columnists make such an effort. Most are happy to instead share their own opinions, or to advance the positions of groups that fund their speeches and buy their books, even if that means muddying the waters. Gerson played a lead role in the team that sold the Iraq War to the American public - not the entire public, but enough of the public such that the war could go on. Even if he might protest, "That was before I was a pundit," he's going to lecture others about clarifying issues of public policy and ethics? First, how about an apology?

Gerson next switches gears, and starts attacking political science and what he sees as its "mania for measurement". Let's note up front, Nate Silver is not a political scientist - to the extent that Gerson believes that any exercise in measurement and statistical analysis of a political question falls under the umbrella of "political science", he's mistaken.

Crack open most political science journals and you’ll find a profusion of numbers and formulas more suited to the study of physics. In my old field of speechwriting, political scientists sometimes do content analysis by counting the recurrence of certain words — as though leadership could be decoded by totaling the number of times Franklin Roosevelt said “feah” or George W. Bush said “freedom.”

You know, the sort of thing no pundit would ever do. What sort of pundit would devote a paragraph of an interview to a self-adulating politician's description of his insistence that God be named in a political platform based on the argument, "have you checked any polling lately" - and what sort of deeply religious columnist would not be offended by that? Oh... yeah.

Frankly, Gerson's comments suggest to me that he has read very little analysis by political scientists, and has even less of an understanding of what they do or how their work is used. He focuses on the word "political", and loses track of the fact that political science is much more about policy formation than it is about politics. Gerson speaks of political science as "a division of the humanities", "mainly the realm of ethics — the study of justice, human nature, moral philosophy and the common good".

A couple of years ago I sat through a series of presentations by political science graduate students, involving such efforts as an analysis of dental care training and treatment provided to impoverished preschoolers and its impact on their later dental and physical health - focused very much on the bottom line, the cost to a community that would implement such a program and the savings that would result. Sure, you could "go with your gut" on something like that, but when you have limited resources and don't want to waste money the statistics Gerson derides can be crucial to good policy formation, wise allocation of tax dollars and avoidance of waste.

Gerson's thoughts on political science seem a bit like his reaction to Nate Silver - "Deriving numbers and statistical probabilities from data? I don't get it." He again displays confusion about the precision of a statistic and its greater meaning, that political scientists are attempting to apply "the precision of mathematics in a field of study whose subject can yield no such certainty". Except as Gerson should know, you can find patterns in just about anything and can collect data to identify or clarify the significance of a pattern. The numbers produced by a statistical analysis may look precise, but you're going to be less concerned about the data and more concerned about the probabilities - how likely it is that the same result would occur by chance. And yes, even when you're using data and statistics, you actually can use political science as part of "the study of justice, human nature, moral philosophy and the common good".

By the end of the column, Gerson's argument appears to reduce to, "Statistics are cold and impersonal, and I would rather ignore them and talk about issues of ethics and values - the things that really matter." I guess he's calling for a return to his pet phrase, a concept that was never transformed into reality, "compassionate conservatism". I am not sure what role Gerson had in advancing Bush's use of empty catch phrases like "A hand up, not a handout", but Gerson's fundamental problem appears to be that he cannot distinguish politics from policy, rhetoric from reality. He gets misty-eyed when Republicans speak of "equality", but does not care that behind the rhetoric lie policies that will inevitably increase inequality.

Actually, perhaps that's why he hates the numbers and those who work with them. Perhaps he truly wants to believe that Paul Ryan's goal of undermining of public services and government programs that aid the poor and middle class, in favor of massive tax cuts for the rich, is in fact part of a larger goal of increasing equality, and when people inject reality into the mix his first urge is to run, screaming from the room.

If Paul Ryan quotes Lincoln, Gerson would ask us to listen to the pretty words, and to keep our eyes away from the reality he knows they are designed to obscure. And alas, whether he believes himself to be sheltering and nurturing a concept that will never reach maturity, if he's more cynically working to obscure the realities of his party's agenda and a Paul Ryan-type budget, or if he's focused on a narrow social conservative agenda and doesn't otherwise care about veracity, Gerson truly does seem to believe that to be his job as a pundit. Then again, maybe it's more simple than that: Maybe Gerson is comfortable in his assumption that the issues that are important to him - the ones that lead to his "the ends justify the means" commentary, his most mendacious claims and distortions of political reality - are equally important to others, and he's uncomfortable being confronted with data that suggests that he's wrong not only about the electorate but about his own party.