Rand Paul's Grandstanding on Syria

Courtesy of Time Magazine, Rand Paul reminds us that he intends to run for President in a couple of years:

War should occur only when America is attacked, when it is threatened or when American interests are attacked or threatened. I don’t think the situation in Syria passes that test.

He should have stopped there.

Even the State Department argues that “there’s no military solution here that’s good for the Syrian people, and that the best path forward is a political solution.”

Paul knows that he's taking the State Department spokesperson's position out of context. The situation for which the State Department asserts that there is no military solution is the civil war itself, not the possibility of a strike in response to the use of chemical weapons.

Paul puffs,

I will not vote to send our nation’s best and brightest to fight for anything less than victory. If American interests are at stake, then our goal should not be stalemate.

Paul presents a false dichotomy - that the only possible goal of a military action against a foreign nation is to depose the existing government, and that anything short of that constitutes a stalemate. Paul might have tried to make the argument that a strike that does not weaken Assad would not advance U.S. goals, but instead he presents an argument that is

Paul asks a series of fair questions about what might happen if Assad were deposed, but none of them relate directly to the question he is supposedly addressing - a limited strike that is meant to send a strong message to Assad, and ideally to deter his future use of chemical weapons, but not change the balance of power between Assad and the various rebel groups. If Paul wanted to make a valid argument, he should have started by explaining why it is not possible to strike Syria without toppling Assad. If he does not believe that to be true, his argument is dishonest. If he does, he should explain why.

Paul closes by pounding the table about the separation of powers, suggesting that President Obama should adhere to the position he took when he was a Senator, "that no President should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority unless there is an actual or imminent threat to our nation." Perhaps Paul would stick to that principle as President. Perhaps he would insist upon strict interpretation of the Constitution in accord with his references to James Madison. Paul may be looking at the history of U.S. military adventurism and concluding, few of those actions should have occurred, and no more should occur unless there's a bona fide crisis that necessitates military action before it's possible to consult Congress or unless Congress fulfills its constitutional role and declares war.

But if that's Paul's actual position, he would be a rarity among presidents and the only modern president to take that position. I think a Senator has the right to be offended by a President who, by statement or implication, asks for Congress to approve military action while taking the position that he will proceed no matter what Congress decides. I would have a lot less sympathy for the President, though, if Congress didn't have a very long history of shirking its duties - of granting presidents broad authority to engage in full-scale war against other nation states without actually declaring war, of blithe acceptance of unilateral military action initiated by presidents in the absence of urgency, or of grandstanding when things go wrong but avoiding taking action that would cause it to share responsibility.

Leaving aside my skepticism of Paul, I don't think that there is any way to view his editorial as anything but something he hopes to tout in future political ads, particularly if things go wrong. "Look how wise I was. [Just like Obama before he changed his mind]". But while a cogent argument against military intervention in Syria can be made, this isn't it. Paul doesn't question that Assad used chemical weapons. He does not explain why it's not in the best interest of the United States to deter the use of chemical weapons, even when they're not directed at U.S. territory or citizens. He instead relies upon a false dichotomy, misrepresents the position of the State Department relative to a punitive strike, and accuses the President of hypocrisy.

I would expect more from a man of Paul's professed values, but his editorial is entirely consistent with that of a self-promoting opposition party politician who wants to have it both ways - a (supposedly) principled reason for voting against a strike just in case things go well, and an increased opportunity for finger-pointing and demagoguery if they don't.

Rand Paul for... Unsuccessful Presidential Candidate!

Ross Douthat wants to turn Rand Paul into a mountain, but qualifies his statements to such a degree that it's clear he views the man as a molehill. One he would prefer to become an influence within the Republican Party, but a molehill nonetheless.

Officially, Paul’s filibuster was devoted to a specific question of executive power — whether there are any limits on the president’s authority to declare American citizens enemy combatants and deal out death to them. But anyone who listened (and listened, and listened) to his remarks, and put them in the context of his recent speeches and votes and bridge-building, recognized that he was after something bigger: a reorientation of conservative foreign policy thinking away from hair-trigger hawkishness and absolute deference to executive power.

Or they might see Rand as engaging in cynical grandstanding over an issue that, yes, he probably believes in - but in a manner that he knew would not amount to a hill of beans. He knew that his party was, in essence, using him to create headlines - ideally some negative press for the President, but also cover for their actual filibuster of the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the D.C. Circuit Court. As for listening to Rand Paul, did anybody actually do that? If they did, among other things, they would have heard him criticize President Obama over his skepticism of Lochner v. New York, a century-old case that held limits on the length of an employee's workday or week to be unconstitutional. Yes, a handful of libertarian scholars have made it their pet case, but it has largely been regarded as a bad decision (Robert Bork called it an "abomination) by legal scholars across the political spectrum. To put it another way... I refer you to Charles Pierce's 5 minute rule ("This rule states that, for five minutes, both the son and the father, Crazy Uncle Liberty (!), make perfect sense on many issues. At the 5:00:01 mark, however, the trolley inevitably departs the tracks.") Even if we assume that Paul sincerely wants to move the Republican Party in the direction of opposing military adventurism, hawkishness and deference to executive power - a deference they insisted be shown to G.W. Bush but are happy to permit Paul to question when the other party's guy is in charge - Douthat admits that his party is not at all inclined to follow:

And he’s exploited partisan incentives to bring his fellow Republicans around to his ideas, deliberately picking battles — from the Libya intervention to drone warfare — where a more restrained foreign policy vision doubles as a critique of the Obama White House. Those incentives, rather than an intellectual sea change on the right, explain why his filibuster enjoyed so much Republican support. (Most of the senators who gave him an assist were just looking for a chance to score points against a Democratic White House.)

Might? A gratuitous qualification. Once Rand was done with his song and dance, Brennan was promptly confirmed. But Douthat hopes more will come of Rand's display:

But if Paul hasn’t won the party over to his ideas, he’s clearly widened the space for intra-Republican debate. And if he runs for president in 2016, that debate will become more interesting than it’s been for many, many years.

Why, it would be like the race would have been in 2008 or 2012, had Ron Paul chosen to run. Oh... right. It might be fun to see Paul questioned about his more bizarre political positions, and his somewhat bizarre sense of history (e.g., that the Lochner decision was a strike against Jim Crow... perhaps even Douthat had stopped listening by that part of the filibuster), but I don't expect Rand to have any more influence on his party than Ron. He's an ambitious man, and he clearly wants to advance within the party, but while Douthat may believe it to be impressive that Rand's "two big interviews after his filibuster were with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh", to me that choice screams that the man understands that he's far from ready for primetime.

There’s a lesson here for his fellow Republican politicians — though that lesson is not, I repeat not, that they should all remake themselves as Paul-style libertarians.

Does Douthat truly believe that any Republicans are about to make that mistake? (Should I interject that, although Douthat appears to be unaware of it, Rand Paul does not view himself as a libertarian?)

Rather, the lesson of Paul’s ascent is that being a policy entrepreneur carries rewards as well as risks — and that if you know how to speak the language of the party’s base, it’s possible to be a different kind of Republican without forfeiting your conservative bona fides.

Nobody questions Pat Buchanan's "conservative bona fides", and he can still give speeches on a variety of subjects that are in the right language to fire up the Republican Party's base, but... that's not a formula for winning elections. Douthat's hanging his hopes on the wrong guy.

American Grandstand, Feauring Rand Paul

Had Rand Paul been President on September 11, 2001, he would have fired somebody... other than himself.

We spent trillions of dollars, but there were a lot of human errors, these are judgment errors, and the people who make judgment errors need to be replaced, fired, and no longer in a position of making these judgment calls."

He's apparently in a tizzy that the Secretary of State doesn't personally review and evaluate each and every one of the 1.4 million or so cables received by the State Department.

I don't believe for a second that, had he been a Senator back in 2001, Rand Paul would not have fallen right into line, circling the wagons around Bush and Rice just like every other Republican. In start contrast with Condoleezza Rice's dismissal of responsibility by her and Bush, the "historic document" excuse, Clinton has been receptive of criticism of the State Department and of how security issues might be improved. Rand Paul-style grandstanding, basically trying to score cheap political points by attacking somebody whose last name is "Clinton", obscures the actual work to be done and makes even valid criticism look partisan.

Airport Security (G)Randtanding

Paul Rand usually tries to portray himself as a different sort of politician - one who truly believes in individual responsibility, effective government, and who could cure much of what ails our system of government. But his position on TSA airport screening seems like run-of-the-mill politics - shifting responsibility for something that's unpopular from those who could actually do something, that is, people like Rand, to people who are trying to do their jobs as ordered.

My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us.

No, really, it means that rather than addressing the TSA as an organization, or working through Congress to hold accountable those who created and implemented the policy, Rand is choosing an easy target and blasting away, knowing full well that his bill has no chance of being passed.

Rand does make some valid points although, as made, this one shares some of the same flaws as his legislation:

Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.

I share Paul's sense that, if the nation's wealthiest and most politically powerful figures had to go through standard airport security, they would be insisting upon change. Does this mean that Rand will be including in his proposed legislation the requirement that "the political elites in our country" go through standard security screenings? Hm. He seems to have left that part out of his bill....

Rand's better point is this:

The incident of the so-called “underwear bomber” last Christmas is given as justification for the billions of dollars the federal government is spending on the new full-body imaging machines, but a Government Accountability Office study earlier this year concluded that had these scanners been in use they may not have detected the explosive material that was allegedly brought onto the airplane. Additionally, there have been recent press reports calling into question the accuracy and adequacy of these potentially dangerous machines.

Yes, there should be a demand that security measures be cost-effective, that we figure out if new technologies are safe and effective before spending $billions on implementation, and that those who made the decision to roll out the machines should be held accountable if the money proves to have been wasted. But alas, apparently there was insufficient space in Rand's proposed legislation to investigate the decisions involved or to hold the decision-makers responsible if their haste turns out to have produced massive waste.

Rand closes with dogma no less irresponsible than "security at any cost":

The solution to the need for security at US airports is not a government bureaucracy. The solution is to allow the private sector, preferably the airlines themselves, to provide for the security of their property.

So we are to disregard the history of private security at airports, and the massive holes it created that were supposed to be closed by the creation of the TSA, the professionalization of airport security and standardization of security screenings, and drink the Kool-Aid that "the private sector always does it better"? Paul and those who rolled out these new measures with no evidence to support their position represent two sides of the same coin.

Libertarianism Withering Under the Spotlight

I don't see much point in discussing libertarianism as a theory of government, as it's not much of a challenge to go after the low hanging fruit. Libertarianism has value. There's value in resisting the tendency of government to grow in size, scope and power, whether in relation to individual rights and freedoms or the regulation of business and industry.

Let's face it, when it comes to running a government, libertarianism is best left to dystopian science fiction. The best "defense" of libertarian government that you're likely to hear is that "we haven't tried it". It's the same thing that Marxists and communists argue - you can't judge their theories of government based upon history, because every implementation to date has been flawed. Libertarians can spot the defect in that argument when it comes to communism, but not when it comes to their own theories.

There are very few pure libertarians - those who truly embrace the extreme form of the theory that I've heard described as "anarchy with lawyers". If your neighbor builds a toxic waste dump in his back yard, it's his land. If the smell bothers you or the sludge is contaminating your land or water, you can sue him. What could possibly go wrong? (Never mind that lawsuits require laws and court rules, are time consuming and expensive, and can impose serious financial hardship or be unaffordable if you're going up against a defendant with deep pockets.) In fairness, next to nobody falls into that category. Libertarianism transforms itself into a theory of more limited regulation and government, with nothing approximating consensus between libertarians as to what lines should be drawn and where to draw them. It's not just that pure libertarianism, when explained, is unappealing to most people - it's unappealing to most libertarians.

The next problem is that most libertarians are either cafeteria libertarians - they'll pick and choose where the government can intrude on people's lives - or single issue libertarians. Rand Paul is getting a lot of flak over his "libertarian" approach to civil rights, and skepticism over his call for the abolition of the Department of Education, but when government intrusion and wealth distribution benefits him, he's the first to the trough. Should we consider a significant deductible on Medicare recipients? Sure, why not - that's consistent with being libertarian - but you have to make sure that compensation for doctors is not affected, and certainly that it's not cut. (Minimum wage, on the other hand, doesn't affect doctors' wages.) In fairness to Paul, he has previously distanced himself from the label, "libertarian", even though he seemed please to be regarded in that light.

When I hear Rand Paul's defense of BP, I can't help but wonder if, in a different context, he would be complaining about the violation of the rights and destruction of property of a business that did nothing more than successfully lobby for a tax cut. Tea Party hero, indeed.

The single issue libertarians can be a bit scary. Even with cafeteria libertarians it's often difficult to tell whether their beliefs are motivated by libertarianism, or if they embrace libertarianism as cover for their controversial beliefs. It's much more comfortable, after all, to attack the Civil Rights Act from the cover of libertarianism than... well, from any other angle. Then you encounter the brand of libertarian who seems to care primarily, if not exclusively, about abolishing age of consent laws, and... what do you make of that? But what you will often find is that the libertarian you're talking to is a lot like Rand Paul - they want to cut government programs and spending that don't directly benefit themselves, but want to perpetuate those programs that provide them with a benefit. You can find self-professed libertarians living in Section 8 housing.

The libertarian focus is often on "property rights" - you own a business, so what right does the government have to tell you that you can't exclude a particular individual from your business. "Racism is wrong and I don't support it," they may explain, "But market forces will prevail, and the business down the street that hires the best candidate regardless of race, or the business down the street that doesn't discriminate, will win out over the business that does."

Try pointing to the history of Jim Crow or apartheid, and you'll hear about the role of government in enabling and perpetuating institutionalized racism, as if that erases the fact that nothing short of massive government intervention could bring it to an end. You'll hear again about market forces, but no explanation as to why it took another thirty years, a massive lawsuit, and an eight figure payout before Denny's caught on that segregated seating in its restaurants was supposed to have been a thing of the past. The same market forces that perpetuated Jim Crow perpetuated that practice at Denny's, and it appears that the involved restaurants were responding to local market preferences. Just as with some members of the chain providing discounts for churchgoers. Sometimes discrimination boosts business, even if a few people are offended or a different class of people is excluded. Libertarians will tell you what a good thing it is that social clubs were exempted from anti-discrimination laws, but seem to forget the obvious lesson that the same reasons people may prefer the "exclusivity" of their social club can be paralleled in other contexts.

Let's say we grant the Rand Paul dream and let private businesses discriminate. What happens if an individual attempts to get service? What happens if there's a protest? What happens if there's a sit-in? How much force does the state license the business owner to use to enforce his right to discriminate against somebody who has the temerity to want a cup of coffee at a "whites only" business? If the business owner calls the police and says, "I have a trespasser in my business," will the person be arrested and prosecuted by the state for violating the business owner's rights - simply because he had the wrong color skin to patronize that business?

Whether it's through the sanctioning of violence or criminal prosecutions to enforce property rights, if the power of the state falls behind those who want to discriminate, how is that libertarian? Would the most libertarian solution be to allow the business owner to file a civil lawsuit against the unwanted patron, a "solution" not likely to satisfy anybody? (Maybe the trespasser could countersue, adopting the libertarian argument that the business owner was harming his business by discriminating, and was thus unjustly enriched through the unwanted patron's presence in the store.)

There is a cure for all of this - it's called "thinking things through". Once you do that, you'll find that you may be sympathetic toward libertarianism, and even embrace the notion that the government has next to no role in certain areas of our business and personal lives. You may embrace limited government. But by the time you're through, if you still call yourself a libertarian it will be in a similar sense to calling yourself "a vegetarian who enjoys an occasional steak."

Update: Charles Lane offers what may be a more clear statement of my point about how private discrimination would rely upon state power for its enforcement.