David Brooks, Master Craftsman of Republican Talking Points

Okay... it's really not worth my time to dissent a column this risible, but... today, David Brooks gives a lecture on bipartisanship that, true to his standard, consists of his spin on the latest Republican talking points, recast to appear measured and moderate to those who might be... normally I might say, average to less-informed voters, today I'll say, people who aren't very good at thinking. How many sharks can you jump in a single column?

Brooks starts with a Richard Dawson impression. Survey says.... "viewers loved Mitt Romney’s talk of professionalism and bipartisanship." No need to argue why that is or what it actually means.

In other words, primary campaigns are won by the candidate who can most convincingly champion the party’s agenda, but general election campaigns are won by the candidate who can most plausibly fix the political system.

As any Tea Party member can tell you, there is a difference between "bipartisanship" and what it might take to "plausibly fix the political system". Brooks also knows as a matter of policy, reaching a bipartisan solution can weaken a policy proposal. That's not always the case, but by definition a bipartisan solution is going to be less partisan than, if I need to say it, a partisan solution. If you're looking for purity of ideology, you want partisanship.

Brooks then goes through a Romney-like list of elements he deems essential to "break[ing] through the partisan dysfunction and mak[ing] Washington work". Let's start with what it doesn't take:

1. It "doesn’t take moderation". Brooks points to Ted Kennedy, whom he argues "had the ability to craft large and effective compromises on issues ranging from immigration to education and health care."

   That of course explains why Ted Kennedy won the nomination to be the Democratic Party's candidate back in 1980, sailed into the White House and... oh, right.

   Well then, it explains why David Brooks and the Republicans view Kennedy as a pillar of bipartisanship, a figure they respect and admire, and regard the culmination of his career of work in favor of healthcare reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as what you can achieve through a true bipartisan effort. Oh... right.

   Well, Ted Kennedy did cosponsor the DREAM Act, and that sailed through the... oh, right, the Republicans changed their mind.

   Recall, Ted Kennedy is not only Brooks' best example in support of his point, Kennedy is his only example. I'm not going to dispute that over the course of a very long career Kennedy cosponsored some important legislation with Republicans, but anyone with knowledge of history knows that much of that cooperation occurred during a prior era when the parties were less polarized, when the Republicans didn't see obstructionism as a winning election strategy, and worked in contexts in which the Republican cosponsors saw an opportunity to benefit from attaching their names to the bill. John McCain didn't drop his support for the DREAM Act because Kennedy became less persuasive. He dropped it because he was afraid of losing his seat to a primary challenger.

2. Might doesn't "make right". Brooks lectures that the effective President has to avoid thinking that his position is objectively the correct one, and that he can "win the debate" and get everything he wants simply by "get[ting] the facts out there". Brooks somehow forgets to tell us where "out there" is, or what any of this has to do with passing legislation.

   Were Brooks honest about it, he would admit that he's not talking about what it takes to pass legislation, but what it takes to defend legislation that is not popular. If the opposition party is lying about the legislation and its effects, can you count on convincing people of the truth merely bu putting "the facts out there"? Obviously not.

   As you work through his column, it becomes increasingly clear that Brooks is making little effort at internal consistency. He's instead alluding to right-wing criticisms of President Obama.

3. Don't live in a fantasy world - "distant fantasies almost never come true", so it's better to work for incremental change. What Brooks actually means here is that a President who has the opportunity to pass legislation that Brooks opposes should instead pass something modest, perhaps inconsequential, in the name of "partisanship". Never mind that the actual fantasy would be believing that, after another election, somebody like Mitch McConnell will change his stripes, apologize for setting a legislative agenda around defeating you, and suddenly become a partner for progress.

Of course by now you're wondering, what does it take to be the bipartisan savior - the "governing craftsman" for whom Brooks so hungers.

1. Having a "dual consciousness" - "[T]he governing craftsman has to... distinguish between a campaign consciousness and a governing consciousness." Campaigning involves "simplifying your own positions, exaggerating your opponent’s weaknesses and magnifying the differences between your relative positions", while governing involves doing "the reverse of all these things".

   Needless to say, Brooks offers zero examples to back this claim up.

   Let me give you an example for how presenting complicated positions, attempting to bridge the differences between yourself and the opposing party, and taking up their opposition works in practice. A President might take, say, a health care reform idea that has its roots in the Republican Party and right-wing 'think tanks', and has even been adopted in one state by a Republican governor, attempt to tweak and update it so it will work on a national basis, and repeatedly attempt to reach across the aisle for bipartisan support. Sound effective?

   Now let's consider what "the opposite" looks like. The sort of approach Brooks would surely tell us would be a one-way ticket out of Washington. The opposition leader might sniff that his number one job is to defeat you, not work with you. The opposition might engage in demagoguery about the plan, asserting that it is socialism, a government take-over of health care, that bureaucrats will decide the care that you get, that it will have death panels that can deny you life-saving care.

   Thank goodness we live in a political culture in which "governing consciousness" rules the day, because one would hate to think what might happen a president or opposition leader couldn't get past his "campaign consciousness". The horror.

2. "Being able to count".

   Is Brooks trying to rule out Mitt Romney at this point, based on budget numbers that don't add up? No, Brooks is pointing ot the obvious fact that if a President wants legislation to pass he must gather enough votes in the House and Senate to get it to pass.

3. Being able to "distinguish between existential issues and business issues." Brooks evokes that famous American politician, Winston Churchill, and contents that "Churchill would have made a terrible mistake if he had compromised with the appeasers". That assertion is going to make little sense to a casual reader, but immediately evokes the right-wing tropes against President Obama - Mitt Rommey's demagoguery and his persistent lies about an "apology tour". Brooks, a good Republican to his very core, is articulating a set of rules for others, specifically Democrats, not for himself.

   Brooks has one other example he offers in support of his point, "On the other hand, Dan Rostenkowski and Robert Packwood were absolutely right to compromise to get the tax reform of 1986 passed." Let's see... so far his examples of politicians who live up to his deals are the late Ted Kennedy, the late Winston Churchill, the late Dan Rostenkowski, and the long-politically dead Robert Packwood. As I said, he's describing what happened in an era during which the parties were less polarized, and pretending it carries over into a significantly different era.

   Assuming Brooks is aware that Winston Churchill would be ineligible to run for President, which of the two additional names he's mentioned does he imagine would have been the "craftsman" politician who would have been elected to the presidency in a walk and presided over a golden era of bipartisanship?

   Brooks feigns child-like innocence, that "in the middle of the fight almost every issue will feel like an existential issue, though, in reality, 98 percent of legislative conflicts are business issues". Perhaps Brooks is describing his own confusion, because although I can see plenty of examples of the opposition party turning "business issues" into stumbling blocks - preventing appointments from going through, needlessly obstructing the progress of legislation that it will ultimately support, spreading misinformation about what should be relatively non-controversial passages in new or pending legislation, and the like.
   
   I'm not coming up with an example of a president confusing business issues with existential issues. It's fair to observe, though, neither does Brooks - we know he's attacking President Obama through innuendo, but Brooks knows how foolish he would look if he came right out and made that claim.

4. Brooks offers the brilliant insight, that his bipartisan leader must be "able to read a calendar". Brooks explains that the politician must understand that they cannot postpone their agenda until after the next election in order to act - that it's "usually better to make a small step next month than do nothing in hopes of a total victory next generation".

   Let's imagine then, that the President is facing a large deficit and national debt, and that people are urging a so-called "grand bargain" that will supposedly balance the budget for decades to come. "Never mind the fact that this Congress cannot bind future sessions of Congress", those maximalists might argue, "You can't take seriously any budget proposal that doesn't fix everything for decades - or longer!"

   The David Brooks who wrote the current column might lecture those politicians and peers that they are being absurd, not only due to the fact that the next session of Congress might undo the work, but because it's not a realistic outcome to expect. He might argue, "If you calm down and take a look at the President's tax plan, you'll find that it does a lot to accomplish your stated goals. This isn't an existential issue - it's business. It's what can pass through Congress, right now. Think of it as a first step down a long road."

   But the David Brooks we have come to know and love? He wants none of that incremental stuff.

   Obama would be wiser to champion a Grand Bargain strategy. Use the Congressional deficit supercommittee to embrace the sort of new social contract we’ve been circling around for the past few years: simpler taxes, reformed entitlements, more money for human capital, growth and innovation.

   So guzzle that Kool-Aid and shoot for the moon! But... what if the public resists?

   Don’t just whisper Grand Bargain in back rooms with John Boehner. Make it explicit. Take it to the country. Lower the ideological atmosphere and get everybody thinking concretely about the real choices facing the nation.

   Doesn't that translate into the big "no-no" of thinking, "all I have to do is get the facts out there, win the debate and then I’ll get everything I want."? No, you see, this is completely different - all you have to do is get the facts out there, win the debate, and then David Brooks will get everything he wants. No rules or principles should get in the way of that.

5. Be "socially promiscuous." Brooks argues that a good deal maker will have lots of friends, be constantly glad handing the opposition, "celebrate their anniversaries and birthdays". You know, the sort of thing that helped Clinton have such a smooth, carefree relationship with the opposition party during his presidency.

   Were Brooks an honest man, he would admit that he's merely parroting an Republican talking point that the President does horrible things like... eating dinner with his family when he could be out at cocktail parties glad handing Republicans and lobbyists. Never mind that, by a number of accounts, Mitt Romney is no social butterfly, and came to be detested by pretty much every one of his primary opponents in two consecutive primary seasons. Never mind that many Republicans openly hated him right up to the second they were stuck with him.

6. Be a really good liar, and conspire against your base. Seriously. Brooks lectures,

   It is relatively easy to cut a deal with the leader of the other party. It is really hard to sell that deal to the rigid people in your own party. Therefore, the craftsman has to enter into a conspiracy with the other party’s leader in order to manipulate the party bases. The leaders have to invent stories so that each base thinks it has won.

   On the little issues - the "business issues" - that's relatively simple, politics as usual. A bit of spin, the issues not that important, you make a deal. How in the world, though, does Brooks believe that will work in relation to solving big issues. Might it sound like President Obama, at a debate, telling the public that he and Mitt Romney aren't very far apart on how to fix Social Security? If so, what are the odds that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are going to get out of the way and allow the passage of a modest reform bill that will fix Social Security's balance sheet for the next 50 - 75 years?

7. Next, you have to compromise in advance - show "substance pragmatism". Your base wants Medicare for all? A public option alongside private health plans? The insurance industry and healthcare industry want to be sure that the reform will not affect their bottom line profits? Insurance companies want to ensure that they will stay in business, perhaps even become more profitable, despite changes that will otherwise reduce their bottom line? A "craftsman" President might do what President Obama did - work with the various industries and their lobbyists to overcome their opposition to any reform, build the reform on the platform of a right-wing, Republican-endorsed system of private insurance, a mandate to purchase insurance, and keeping the reformed system as market-based as possible. He might get a true craftsman like Ted Kennedy to strongly endorse the bill and its passage.

   No, of course that's all wrong. Stop arguing based upon those facts with their icky "liberal bias" - Brooks' column is about advancing Republican spin. What an honest Brooks might describe as the outcome of his "conspiracy with the other party's" leadership to "manipulate the party bases" and "invent stories." Because that's what pundits do when they are approached for help by a "governing craftsman".

Brooks knows he's being dishonest when he argues that voters are demanding "craftsmanship" in advance of the "brutal trade-offs that loom ahead". Were he an honest man, he would note that Romney's new "talk of professionalism and bipartisanship" is belied by his own campaign trail rhetoric and that, rather than addressing any of the "brutal trade-offs" that Brooks sees as inevitable Romney is promising the Sun, moon and stars - tax cuts for everyone, a huge increase in military spending, pain free spending cuts (trust him, even though he only states support for cutting PBS and the unpopular parts of Obamacare), and that he'll cure the nation's woes by magic - why, if people simply believe he's going to be elected, flowers will burst forth from the ground, the stock market will reach uncharted heights... yeah.

Brooks also cannot be so obtuse as to believe that "Voters [were] astonishingly clear. In 2000, they elected George W. Bush after he promised to change the tone in Washington". If Brooks checks his history books, he'll find that if you look at the popular vote the 2000 election was won by Al Gore. Last I checked, losing the popular vote was an "astonishingly clear" message that more people wanted your opponent to win than wanted you to win, even if you carry the electoral vote. Similarly, Brooks might realize that more was going on in 2008 than the Republican's self-proclaimed maverick, campaigning on a claimed record of "reaching across the aisle," lost to a candidate who merely "promised to move the country beyond stale partisan debates". The country I was in was suffering from a profound economic crisis, and McCain's response was not perceived as impressive. Where was Brooks?

Brooks would have done better to have written a column about how politicians will try to sell you snake oil while on the campaign trail, but alas, that would have ended up being a column in support of the wrong party.

Ross Douthat's Fantasy Primary

Ross Douthat defends the fact that Santorum is still afloat in the Republican primaries,

Even the elevation of Rick Santorum as the last not-Romney standing testifies to the Republican electorate’s relative sobriety. For all his follies and failings, Santorum is a more plausible presidential candidate than most of this season’s alternatives — more experienced than Cain and Bachmann, more substantive and eloquent than Perry, more principled than Gingrich.

Douthat's damning of Santorum with faint praise reminds me of the old joke, "In heaven, the food is French, the police are British, the engineers are German, the lovers are Italian...." Douthat would be making pretty much the same claim no matter who else was left in the race (except Gingrich). Douthat also reveals his dream candidates, purporting that other than Jeb Bush, whose disastrously incompetent brother "tarnished [his] (last) name", the only reason they're not running is that "the current presidential campaign arrived too soon for them to be entirely seasoned."

If the current race pitted Jeb Bush against, say, Mike Huckabee and Mitch Daniels, nobody would be talking about how the party has gone off the rails.

Why not? To borrow from Douthat's style book, Huckabee has all of the economic sense of Herman Cain, and all of the aptitude for foreign policy of Michelle Bachmann. Mitch Daniels seems to inspire all of the enthusiasm of Jon Huntsman - Douthat lectures, "Republican voters probably should have given Jon Huntsman more consideration", but fails to explore why they did not. Jeb Bush has what... two terms as governor in Florida in which he didn't mess anything up too badly and the family name? What's not to love.

If it were being held two years hence, and featured Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, the excitement on the Republican side would rival what the Democrats enjoyed in 2008. But those four, and others like them, decided they weren’t ready yet.

Although I understand why Douthat wants to fetishize those four as wonderful up-and-coming leaders, fantasy often collides with reality in a most unpleasant fashion. Rick Perry was a great presidential candidate, the guy who was going to clear the field of the weaklings, until he actually started a campaign:

As The New York Times's Ross Douthat said when Perry first entered the race, quoting a Texas competitor, "Running against Rick Perry is like running against God."

I suspect Douthat in part wants to build a Frankenstein candidate - Christie's bombast, Jindal's wonkishness, Paul Ryan's ability to spout absolute nonsense and be taken seriously, and Marc Rubio's assumed charisma. But had they run, I would not be half surprised if Douthat were writing the very same editorial, but damning Santorum with somewhat modified faint praise, something along the lines of, "For all his follies and failings, Santorum is a more plausible presidential candidate than most of this season’s alternatives — more experienced than Christie and Rubio, more substantive and eloquent than Jindal, more principled than Ryan."

And Yet... Everybody Will Still Die

Paul Krugman correctly notes that we can't fix the budget problems created by Medicare and Medicaid simply by cutting spending.

Think of it this way: Congress could, with a stroke of a pen, cut Social Security benefits in half. But it couldn’t do the same with health spending: Medicare can’t suddenly start paying to replace only half a heart valve or mandate that bypass operations stop halfway through.

Limiting health costs, therefore, requires a smarter approach. We need to work harder on prevention, which can be much cheaper than a cure. We need to find innovative ways of managing health care. And, above all, we need to know what works and what doesn’t so that Medicare and Medicaid can say no to expensive procedures with little or no medical benefit. “So-called comparative effectiveness research” is central to any rational attempt to deal with America’s fiscal problems.

He correctly criticizes Mike Huckabee for attempting to perpetuate the tired old line about "death panels", particularly in relation to comparative effectiveness research. Huckabee's comments highlight a contradiction in the Republican stance on Medicare: they want to kill it, for example by replacing Medicare with a voucher system, never mind that you wouldn't be able to obtain meaningful insurance coverage with the voucher - but at the same time want to protect and even to expand it in order to curry favor with older Americans - hence their creation of unfunded drug benefits and prattle about "death panels".

But while Krugman is correct that we need to find ways to bend the cost curve, and that prevention and comparative effectiveness research may be the best way to achieve that, those measures will only go so far. Because we can delay the inevitable, but eventually a lot of us will end up in nursing homes and eventually every single one of us is going to die. The cost of that long-term care will for many people be largely picked up by Medicaid, and the high cost of end-of-life care by Medicare. The end of life counseling that the Republicans distorted into "death panels" might help with the cost of end-of-life care, but I'm skeptical that a significant number of people in our age- and death-phobic society will suddenly embrace the inevitable and eschew expensive treatments. Also, while it's easy to express shock at the extraordinary medical cost for the average person's last year of life, the fact remains that it's usually easier to tell when that "last year" begins in retrospect, and that while you may be able to get people to agree that they would be better served by living out their last year in home hospice care it may be quite another thing to convince them, "And you're already in your last year." Assuming we can accurately make that assessment.

When You Hitch Your Wagon to a Lie Machine....

Although it was Jonathan Capehart's response that first caught my eye, Stephen Stromberg wrote about Mike Huckabee's "slip", suggesting that President Obama grew up in Kenya,

It's the Republican equivalent of a Freudian slip....

This episode demonstrates something more pernicious than the existence of one more Obama conspiracy theorist. It demonstrates the extent to which references to birther-like mythology -- and its less-offensive-but-still-pretty-absurd cousin, the Dinesh D'Souza-inspired speculations about Obama's "Kenyan, anti-colonial worldview" -- have become embedded in conservative political culture. It demonstrates the extent to which Republican politicians feel the need to indulge the portions of the GOP base for whom Obama's "Kenyan" roots matter -- whether by asking for his birth certificate or merely suggesting that this man, who has in many ways lived a quintessentially American life, is nothing like the rest of us in some fundamental, worryingly foreign way.

In context, Stromberg is not describing an actual Freudian slip, but is suggesting that "Huckabee was simply floating around on auto-pilot, mouthing the sorts of things he heard at CPAC."

Capehart is less sympathetic, dismissing that the statement should be described as a "Freudian Slip":

A slip would be saying "Osama" instead of "Obama" when referring to the president. What the former Arkansas governor, who is reportedly thinking about running for the Republican presidential nomination again in 2012, did was inexplicably slide head-first into the far right's nether world of conspiracy and paranoia.

Capehart also notes that Huckabee's spoekesperson "misspoke" and meant to say "Indonesia" instead of "Kenya,

So, then, what about all that stuff about the British and Kenya and Obama's father and grandfather? Oh, nevermind.

Capehart is, of course, correct that this wasn't a Freudian slip and should not be dismissed as one. It means, as Stromberg suggests, that Huckabee is so immersed in a sea of disinformation that he can't see the shore - and that he either doesn't know or doesn't care. Huckabee should have taken full responsibility, not attempting to dismiss his spread of factually incorrect information as having "simply misspoken", but acknowledging that his speculation about the President went far into the realm of lies, delusions and/or fantasy.

I don't think Huckabee is planning a run for President. He's building himself a mansion, and is raking in a ton of money working for outfits like Fox that don't care if his comments are truthful. In fact, some of his paymasters may prefer that his comments about the President not be truthful. If you ask the age old, "Is he stupid or lying" question, what answer is implied when you follow the money?

Sarah Palin for President in 2012?

Should Palin run for President in 2012, I've speculated in the past that it would be as an independent. Her recent comments suggest to me that she probably does want to run, but will only run for the Republican nomination if she's all-but-assured of a victory. Otherwise I continue to expect her to take the easier path of self-coronation; I expect that she has enough followers in any given state to be assured a place on the ballot.

But wait, you say, wouldn't Palin be a spoiler for the Republicans in the election, just as Ross Perot was arguably a spoiler for G.W. Bush? Yes - it's quite likely that as a third party candidate the votes she attracts would otherwise go to the Republican nominee, and that President Obama will be reelected in a walk. But I suspect Palin would argue that it "serves them right". Petty? Vindictive? Well, yeah.

It was not very long ago that Sarah Palin argued that the Republicans should work to bring the Tea Party movement into the fold. Now she's positioning herself, ludicrously, as an outsider - it's Palin and the Tea Party against the GOP.

The Palin-aligned website Conservatives4Palin is using the Politico story [reporting that advisers to top potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates are united in their desire to stop Sarah Palin from winning the presidential nomination] for fundraising, as well as for the opportunity to cast what it calls the GOP establishment as an all-boys club.

"The GOP Establishment deems that nominating Governor Palin in 2012 would spell disaster," writes Whitney Pitcher. "However, for whom would a Palin nomination be a disaster? The GOP Establishment? One of the GOP boys: Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, Thune, Barbour, Daniels?"

"If Governor Palin were to win the GOP nomination, the Establishment dies," adds Pitcher.

It was fun and games for the GOP when Palin was a 50' Eyesore that the Dems couldn't stop staring at, but... funny how these things turn out.

I've heard it suggested that, as a Republican nominee, Palin could present a serious challenge to President Obama. Perhaps if the recession takes a second dip, or Obama hires David Broder as an adviser, but otherwise I don't think so. Leaving aside Palin's present unpopularity, it's highly unlikely that she's going to be coronated as the party's nominee in the manner of G.W. Bush. A primary fight will get ugly, and fast. And I would love to see who Palin might pick as VP who wouldn't make her look like a featherweight by comparison. I mean, she could appoint Dick Cheney to find a VP for her and then act surprised when he designates himself, but... that's already been done.

But seriously, note that some of the "best" candidates on the aforementioned list of "GOP boys" have little advantage on Palin in the résumé department. To the extent that some, at least, completed their terms as governor (as I've previously quipped) in their recent experience the only thing they've been running is their mouths. Newt Gingrich, devoid of charisma and a purveyor of fake awards; Mitt Romney, former corporate raider and proponent of healthcare reform that looks very much like the laws the GOP is now sworn to tear down (and was a terrible campaigner in 2008); Mike Huckabee, granter of an unfortunate pardon and resentful of the notion that a presidential candidate should be sufficiently versed in science to pass a test at the eighth grade level.... Rudy Giuliani, not even meriting a mention?

Oh yes, there's Jeb Bush. The GOP could coronate Jeb and, quite possibly, end up trailing Palin in the election returns. (But then, advice to the Republicans from Bob Shrum has to be taken in the same light as advice to the Dems from William Kristol or David Brooks - "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly".)

So yes, everybody, keep staring at Sarah Palin. Don't point out how facially absurd it is for somebody who was crushed in the 2008 election to suggest that a vote that doesn't even take you out of office means that you "blew it". Yes, Rupert Murdoch, keep her on the payroll. Get her more reality TV shows. Keep her front, center, and "relevant". Bring her on.

Romney, Palin and Huckabee

It's difficult to believe that those three are taken seriously as presidential contenders.

If I were running against them for the nomination, with their track records of challenging President Obama's qualifications for the job, I would be inclined to ask the rhetorical question, "How long has it been since any of my opponents ran anything but their mouths?"

What If They're Not Planning to Run as Republicans?

Ross Douthat doesn't believe that Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin represent the future of the Republican Party... although he apparently likes them better than anything else he sees.

This means that there are substantial political rewards awaiting the politician who becomes the voice of an intellectually vigorous conservatism. It probably won’t be Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin.

Probably? What potential does Douthat see that either Palin or Huckabee is suddenly going to become intellectually curious?

If Republicans are lucky, though, it will be somebody who shares their charisma — but who prefers the responsibilities of leadership to the pleasures of celebrity.

No, if Republicans are lucky they won't be looking at a Palin/Huckabee ticket on a Conservative Party ticket, Douthat himself having all-but-blessed abandoning the Republican Party in the name of ideological purity, even when the third party candidate offers nothing of substance.

Huckabee chooses celebrity because that's the only way he can remain relevant. If you listen to him speak, he's clearly thinking about running for President, trying to stir up anti-incumbent sentiments with talk of "flushing the toilet" (no party reference attached), and making a case that people should quit their day jobs before running for President. Palin seems content to rake in the bucks, literally capitalizing on the fact that you can fool some of the people all of the time. Her habit of quitting whenever the going gets tough probably does disqualify her as a presidential candidate, but what if she throws her weight behind Huckabee? If necessary, on a "flush 'em all" Conservative party ticket?

I know Douthat sees no benefit in trying to enforce ideological purity at the Presidential level, but he just might get his wish for a "scapegoat-priest-king" in the form of Pastor Mike. And really, if the first three potential Republican Party leaders that come to his mind are "Huckabee, Palin, and... I got nothing", his party has a problem.

Update: While Palin wouldn't rule out running with Glenn Beck, Beck has scoffed at the notion of a Palin/Beck ticket as opposed to Beck/Palin. How could Palin not have seen that coming?

Fearing Huckabee

I don't underestimate Mike Huckabee. I've seen how personable he can be, and how he can get laughter and applause even from an audience that is hostile to many of his idea. (Check out, for example, his appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher.) He comes across as personable, likable, and even superficially convincing. He manages to bob and weave around direct questions without seeming excessively evasive. He keeps his cool under pressure. Those are all good things in a political candidate.

Does that mean I would vote for him? Hardly. As I've previously stated, I think that any politician who supports FairTax should be disqualified from office on that basis alone. His use of coded messages to the religious right makes Bush's similar efforts seem understated. He opposes abortion rights (a valid position), but also opposes sex education, and some (perhaps all) forms of birth control. He is anti-gay and, while championing "covenant marriage", cynically used his "covenant marriage" to his wife to obtain wedding gifts - circumventing state laws limiting the amount of gifts to public servants. His supposed belief in reform and generosity with pardons, transformed by concern for his standing in the polls into braggadocio about how many death warrants he has signed. He is ignorant of... pretty much everything, as evidenced by his stated tax policy, historic statements on AIDS, disbelief in evolution, and woeful ignorance of foreign policy.... Need I continue?

I'm not going to argue that all of this is obvious to voters. For goodness sake, last night I heard somebody on a call-in show explaining that he was trying to figure out whether to support Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul. But he's no Clinton. When the media ultimately goes after him and his scandals, I don't think he'll be able to charm his way into the nomination, and even less the Presidency.

While the Republican Party's fear of a Huckabee nomination is palpable, Bill Kristol attempts to turn conventional wisdom on its ear and make his potential victory a bad thing for Democrats.

Some Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination. They shouldn’t be. For one thing, Michael Bloomberg would be tempted to run in the event of an Obama-Huckabee race — and he would most likely take votes primarily from Obama. But whatever Bloomberg does, the fact is that the Republican establishment spent 2007 underestimating Mike Huckabee. If Huckabee does win the nomination, it would be amusing if Democrats made the same mistake in 2008.

Okay... let's review.

First we assume Huckabee and Obama are nominated. Next we assume that "well-born" and monied Republicans are so happy with this outcome that they push Michael Bloomberg as a third party candidate, pouring their time and money into Bloomberg's campaign. Strangely, Kristol does not imagine that Bloomberg will draw any votes from Obama. That should leave Obama with a comfortable lead in the polls. Except Kristol also assumes that Huckabee will siphon away support from Obama - so much that he could win the election.

This seems to come back to the Republican attack machine's line that Huckabee is a liberal populist and, of course, every Democratic candidate is a liberal populist. Thus, when asked to choose between a Democratic Illinois senator with a progressive record on social issues, and a Republican Arkansas governor with a reactionary record on social issues, voters truly won't be able to tell the difference. And this is before we consider the investment Bloomberg and right-wing 527 groups would be making in trying to draw voters away from Huckabee - Bloomberg will need those votes to win.

Am I arguing that the Democratic Party has nothing to fear from Huckabee, or shouldn't take him seriously if he in fact gets the nomination? Not at all. But I'm not convinced by Kristol's straw man. Is he truly trying to convince Democrats that Huckabee is a threat, or is he trying to convince himself that his party still has a shot at winning the next election?

A question for Kristol's next column on this subject: Who does he imagine is going to bankroll a Mike Huckabee presidential campaign, particularly if Bloomberg enters the race?

I Haven't Seen Him This Angry Since Clinton Was Elected....

Had Romney won in Iowa, would George Will be this angry?

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination. The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says that "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

Did Will similarly decry George W. Bush's allusions to being guided by the hand of God, or does it only matter in this case because will thinks Huckabee believes what he says, whereas G.W.... And that's the rub, isn't it?

Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

Huckabee's "faction" is supposed to bring out the voters for the wealthy elite who run the Republican Party, and gratefully accept the crumbs scattered to them following each election. There has long been the whisper that swing voters shouldn't be overly concerned about the Republican Party's overtures to the religious right, because they have no intention of carrying out their promises. The problem is, the religious right is dissatisfied with lip service. Having seen G.W. run the government with, for most of his tenure, a majority in both houses, it hasn't been lost on them that their agenda was not a priority.

I saw a chart this morning which reflected that the Republicans who are the angriest with their party are most likely to support Ron Paul. Those Republicans who are less angry with their party, but nonetheless angry, are turning to Huckabee. Why aren't they turning to Romney, who promises that (despite his record) he has been transformed into a social conservative? Could it be that they think he's a phony, and they don't see it as part of their "bargain" with the monied factions of the Republican Party to pretend that he represents their interests?

George Will has joined the efforts of the monied factions of the Republican Party to depict Huckabee as a populist liberal. This isn't a new approach, and hasn't worked very well for Romney. I guess they just don't see how, when every important battle within the party is resolved in favor of what Will deems the "Madisonian" faction, it is breaking their side to get behind the one candidate they believe will actually try to put their agenda first. Or, as David Brooks puts it,

Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.

And yes, that's enough to make George Will's head explode.

Emulating Huckabee?

Chris Suellentrop quotes, with apparent approval, a blogger who believes that the Democratic candidates should emulate Mike Huckabee's rhetoric:

What are the nuances I’m talking about? For one thing, as far as I know he never uses Reagan-type racist code terms like, “state’s rights”, which is code for keeping black people from voting, or “welfare queen,” which is another, racially loaded term.

Okay... so which Democrats are imitating Reagan in their use of such terms? Shouldn't this admonition in fact be directed to the other Republican nominees?

In fact I believe he is on record as saying that the major problem of the American prison system is that it is filled with people who are drug addicts, not criminals, and that instead of prison they should be in rehab. Since the majority of prisoners in American jails are persons of color, this statement is profoundly un-racist.

Where is the evidence that this message resonates with the American public? That is to say, out of the mouths of a serious contender for the Democratic nomination, or out of the mouth of Huckabee as a Republican nominee, what about it will resonate as a good idea as opposed to evidence that the speaker is "soft on crime"?

In fact, outside of a minority who recognize it as a disaster, is there any significant movement to reconsider the policies behind the "War on Drugs"? While it would be an improvement if public opinion shifted toward a more balanced approach, with addiction treated as a public health issue and a focus on the demand side of the "War on Drugs" as opposed to a continuation of failed policies directed at supply, I suspect that at present, rhetoric directed against the "War on Drugs" will hurt candidates in either party. Promises to provide funding for rehab as an alternative to jail will likely inspire to questions: "With what money," and "Why is that your priority, when there are so many other people in need?"

Surrounding Yourself With "The Best People"

When Bush was elected, many deflected his inexperience by claiming he was excellent at delegating, and would surround himself with competent people. I was reminded of this the other day when I heard Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas, use the same line to defend Bush's appointment of Karen Hughes as the envoy in charge of promoting the nation's image in the Islamic world. He responded to questions about her qualification by asserting that she's bright and capable, and would surround herself with good people. And, of course, there's the bang up job Bush has done appointing "good people" to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

I guess, ultimately, the goal is to appoint lots of people who have no real qualification, but are also skilled delegators... and to hope that the people at the bottom of the organizational chart actually turn out to have sufficient competence to perform the tasks delegated down from the top. Still, I would have appreciated it had Bush made a slight exception, and appointed a qualified person to head FEMA. (But hey - he seems like a smart guy, and I'm sure that he has surrounded himself with....)