No, Really, He Had No Idea....

Usually a political commentator's hit-and-run jobs are more... figurative.
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Addendum: The accident and failure to stop may be related to Novak's illness, and there's nothing funny about brain tumors. Let's wish him the best.

Advice From A Man Without Honor

Robert Novak's rules of politics aren't exactly a secret, but....

• If you can't win honorably, win dishonorably.

With Sen. Barack Obama moving ahead of Sen. John McCain in our latest Electoral College rundown, the private Republican view is that the focus must be on Obama in the coming campaign for McCain to win. A positive campaign will lose, and the spotlight on Obama must be harsher for McCain to have a chance.

It's no particular surprise when the loser in a political battle resorts to gutter tactics, but it's unseemly to urge gutter tactics... isn't it?

• If lying about what your opponent says helps you win dishonorably, go for it!

Obama has made a rare political mistake in seeming to say it is more important for the population to learn Spanish than for immigrants to learn English. The English language issue is an important one, especially with white middle-income voters, which is Obama's potentially fatal weak spot.

As any honest person could tell you, Obama didn't say that. He indicated that you don't need to worry about mandating the use of English. He instructed people that rather than worrying about whether somebody else learns English, they should focus on whether their own children speak Spanish (or another language). I'm sitting in a country right now where school kids are choosing to learn languages such as Russian, German and Spanish with an eye toward their economic future. Where's our eye?

And why isn't it "elitist" to brand "white middle-income voters" as xenophobic rubes who break out the pitchforks and torches any time somebody suggests that other nations, languages or cultures are important to our future?

• Any reason you can think of to vote Democrat, no matter how real, is imaginary

Former Sen. Phil Gramm is still McCain's close friend and adviser despite having told too much of the truth in public by saying we are a nation of whiners.

So stop whining about imaginary problems with the economy, already. You're harshing Novak's buzz.

The Problem Isn't So Much When It Was Said....

Robert Novak is upset that John McCain hasn't finished the process of flip-flopping on every issue he has ever championed. Conflating the political desires of all conservative factions into one, Novak writes,

McCain clinched the nomination, he has not satisfied conservatives opposed to his positions on global warming, campaign finance reform, immigration, domestic oil drilling and how to ban same-sex marriages.

Novak also suggests that McCain has been unfair to John Hagee, you know, by holding him accountable for his words.

Founder and pastor of the Cornerstone megachurch in San Antonio, Hagee endorsed McCain at a joint news conference Feb. 27. William Donahue, president of the Catholic League, immediately asked whether McCain agreed with Hagee's description of Catholicism as a "Godless theology." McCain started backing away, asserting that his courtship of the pastor was "probably" a mistake.

Donahue, accustomed to no remorse by Catholic-bashers, was surprised when Hagee apologized in writing and then engaged him in a warm private meeting at Catholic League offices in New York. But Obama supporters seeking the McCain equivalent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were not done. The Huffington Post featured a decade-old video of Hagee asserting that Adolf Hitler was God's "hunter," who forced Jews to create the state of Israel as their natural home.

It was a decade old? How inexcusable. As should be obvious to any adherent of Novak, it's only fair to go back seven years when dredging up videos of pastors saying inflammatory things. Besides, Wright used the active voice rather than the more acceptable passive voice. (What sort of minister uses the active voice, anyway?)

For people who aren't Novak, and thus don't apply the bright line "seven years of video clips" rules to radical statements, the question might be, "Does he still believe what he said?" There's every indication that both Wright and Hagee stick by their words. Some people attempt to defend Hagee by suggesting that there are extremist Jewish leaders who make similar arguments. Others point to his related statements, suggesting that the anti-Christ will be a gay man and, like Hitler, of Jewish heritage, and question how far we are supposed to go in rationalizing away Hagee's injection of Jewish heritage into the most contemptible people of human experience. (You don't get more contemptible than the anti-Christ, do you?) That recording is only four years old? I guess Novak's rules for the use of audio clips are different than his rules for use of video clips.

Actually, Hagee was a founder of Christians United for Israel and the first non-Jew named "humanitarian of the year" by the San Antonio B'nai B'rith. Donahue, his former adversary, called Hagee "the strongest Christian defender of Israel I have ever met." But McCain, who held his fire when reacting to Hagee's anti-Catholic remarks, had no patience with less clear evidence of anti-Semitism.

Here's the thing. Some people have a problem with an evangelical leader who introduces elements of anti-Semitism into his theology, and endorses an ultimate theory that Israel must be defended not for the Jews, but as part of a Biblical "end of days" prophecy under which all of the world's Jews will gather in Israel to either convert to Christianity or perish in a Sea of Fire. In the eyes of some, even if you form a group called "Christians United for Israel", there's cause for concern that this is exclusively an evangelical Christian vision of Israel, not one that actually favors Jews - a people you describe as "not spiritually alive".

A prominent Christian ally of McCain's understands his reluctance to make a pilgrimage to Colorado Springs with no assurance that Dobson would endorse him or even restrain his criticism of him. But this evangelical sees the treatment of Hagee as cold calculation designed to ensure that McCain does not lose the Jeremiah Wright issue.

Let me get this straight. An anonymous, but "prominent" evangelical backer of McCain suggests what seems obvious - that McCain is walking away from Hagee and Parsley in order to preserve his ability to attack Obama on Rev. Wright? But his objection is to McCain's walking away, not to his original cynical embrace of two leaders who, only a few years ago, McCain might have decried as agents of intolerance? WWJD, indeed....

Novak's Best Defense Is A Good Offense

I guess this question goes to Scott McClellan - how does it feel when a man with no honor attempts to impugn yours?

The Rhetorical Gift That Keeps On Giving

Continuing the tradition of putting words into the mouths of people who probably don't exist, today, it's Novak on Obama.

The young orator who had seemed so fantastic, beginning with his 2007 Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech in Iowa, disappointed even his own advisers over the past two weeks

Name one?

and old party hands mourned that they were stuck with a flawed candidate.

Name one?

Didn't think so.

There's little substance to Novak's piece, but he does try to perpetuate some McCain mythology.

Democrats abhor bringing up what Obama calls Ayers's "detestable acts 40 years ago," but they will be brought into the public arena even if that is not McCain's style of politics.

But it is McCain's style. And it's not an isolated incident, either. Saying McCain isn't going to roll around in the gutter like this doesn't change the fact that he already is. It just makes the speaker look like Robert Novak ignorant, dishonest, or both.

... And The Spin Machine Keeps On Spinning

Robert Novak is smarter than a lot of his fellow columnists. Unlike, for example, a Michael Gerson, who happily says the most stupid things to advance the Republican agenda, Novak puts those words into the mouths of others. Perhaps accurately, but let's just say I wouldn't recommend talking to him about a controversial subject lest you become his convenient foil.

Novak starts out by reminding us that it's important for Obama not to be seen as an angry black man.

Did [the latest speech] solve Obama's pastor problem? Leading Democrats certainly hope so, but they are not sure. His vulnerability transcends relations with a radical preacher. If Obama comes to be seen not as a presidential candidate who happens to be black but as a black candidate in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he will face a difficult struggle in the general election against John McCain even if he bests Hillary Clinton.

That's clever. Novak could have issued a straightforward acknowledgment of the fact that only "teh stupids" would conclude that Obama is "in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton", and that nobody who is familiar with Obama's record would make such an obvious error. But candor is not consistent with Novak's goal, which (of course) is to keep the tarnish on Obama's image, not to clean it off.

So who is Novak's foil?

My friend Armstrong Williams, the African American conservative, told me, "It is not unusual to hear in many black churches the same language that Reverend Wright is being criticized for." I raised this with NPR reporter and Fox commentator Juan Williams (no relation to Armstrong). "Not at all," replied Williams, who also is African American. "It's ridiculous. I never have heard that in church."

Wright's demagoguery is so unusual in Juan Williams's view that it was necessary for Obama to separate himself from it two months ago. Instead of orating about race in America, Williams says, Obama should have repented as a "sinner" partaking of lies from the pulpit. It was a post-partisan, post-racial opportunity lost by the candidate.

From what I can see, Williams is Episcopalian. I can't say that I'm surprised that his church experiences would depart from... well, pretty much any church that doesn't offer staid, conservative services that follow centuries of church doctrine and tradition. It would seem, well, vapid to speak of a "white church" experience by comparing Episcopal services to the preaching style of John Hagee, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggert, Rod Parsley, Jim Bakker.... "That's not a 'white church' experience - I've never heard anything like that in church." Well, duh.

"Partaking lies from the pulpit"? Williams was truly suggesting that Obama's immediate response to the Wright controversy should have been to condemn the entire church, all of its works, and everybody who attended services while Wright was leading the church? That, to Novak, would have been taking a "post-partisan, post-racial opportunity"? I think the laugh track on the Washington Post website must be broken, because at this point we should be hearing raucous laughter. (But at least at this point he's not (overtly) trying to put that suggestion into Williams' mouth.)

The "thrown under the bus" line should be retired, but of course Novak drags it out:

Nobody knows whether Obama's performance has damaged his candidacy permanently, but his supporters hope the issue is out of the news. The difficulty is that Jeremiah Wright, thrown under the bus by his former parishioner, can reemerge any time he wishes and renew discussion of the Democratic presidential front-runner's real identity.

And if Wright doesn't wish, he'll have partisans like Novak trying to bring the issue to the forefront at every opportunity.

But for Novak to suggest that Obama's statement threw Wright under the bus? After suggesting that the proper response to the initial scandal would have been to throw Wright, his entire church, and his entire conversation under a Mack truck and run over them fifty or sixty times? If you were ever in doubt that Novak is a man with no shame....

Defunding Social Security As An Election Strategy

Okay, I understand why Novak is arguing that we should slash FICA taxes and tell younger workers, "In return for your reduced tax burden you will get little to nothing from Social Security when you retire." Demolishing Social Security fits with his world view. But what I can't understand is why he believes McCain should make that part of his platform. I grant that McCain has been promising to cut pretty much every tax under the sun, but even he would probably recognize that "this one is different".

Novak has a hard time keeping his lines straight. First, it's:

Moreover, Republicans talk about offsetting losses in payroll tax revenue by cutting future Social Security benefits, which contains seeds of electoral catastrophe.

This later becomes,

Even Republican advocates of cutting the payroll tax talk about offsetting it with reduced future benefits. That's a bargain young workers would buy in a minute, and current Social Security recipients would be assured that their pensions would not be reduced one penny.

The distinction, apparently, is that you hammer the theme, "Younger workers, you're not going to get Social Security anyway, so let's reduce your taxes and phase it out," reassuring current recipients, "You're still going to get every cent of what was promised to you," and telling everybody else... er, Novak left that part out. Yet that block of "everybody else" is an important group to address, as putting their future benefits at risk "contains seeds of electoral catastrophe".

The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished. The truth is that there is no such fund, and the heavy payroll tax revenue resulting from the Greenspan Commission's 1983 "reform" not only provides enough money for Social Security but funds other programs, as well.

Wow. So in Novak's mind, Social Security is so "rich" that even if we pretend that the treasury notes comprising its "trust fund" are worthless, it can continue to pay not only for itself but for a host of other programs. And it could thus pay for itself even after a tax cut. What a compelling case for a "reform" that slashes benefits.

McCain says that he doesn't really understand economics. Novak appears to either be in the same club, or to be trying to take advantage of McCain's weaknesses. Either way, taking Novak's advice seems like a surefire way for McCain to blow a hole in his own foot.

Pay No Attention To The Race-Baiter Behind The Curtain

Robert Novak writes,

In such a prolonged contest, Obama will enjoy overwhelming African American support. The question is whether the Clinton campaign can resist pointing this out in an effort to mobilize white backing. It certainly has not resisted so far, demonstrated by feckless Gerry Ferraro's mimicking what she heard from Bill and Hillary.

As Novak suggests, why would Clinton need to point that out when they have people like Gerry Ferraro Robert Novak making the argument for them?

McCain and Alito

Today, Robert Novak rambles about whether John McCain is a "conservative", based upon rumors that McCain would have picked John Roberts for the Supreme Court but not Samuel Alito.

That was the background for conservative John Fund's Wall Street Journal online column the day before Florida voted. Fund wrote that McCain "has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito because 'he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.' " In a conference call with bloggers that day, McCain said, "I don't recall a conversation where I would have said that." He was "astonished" by the Alito quote, he said, and he repeatedly says at town meetings, "We're going to have justices like Roberts and Alito."

Personally, I would not pick either of them.

That's not about ideology, as such. It's about personality. I am not particularly enamored with people, no matter how bright and accomplished, who appear to possess authoritarian personalities. Nor am I particularly enamored with people who seem to be locked into a particular ideology, where "All roads lead to Rome." It's a bit like seeing Scalia concoct a brand spanking new version of "sovereign immunity", which I'm sure he would insist is 100% consistent with the intentions of the founding fathers (even if he was the first to notice). I'm not thrilled with eagerness with which the Roberts Court approaches voting rights - not with an eye to protecting voters, but what seems to be an eye for preventing challenges to unconstitutional laws until after an election is over. Gerrymandering? Reproductive freedom? Habeas Corpus? What surprises do you expect?

When you take any particular question going before the court, nine times out of ten you can guess how the various justices are going to vote before you read the decision. If you are handed a decision and get the vote count, probably 19 times out of 20 you can accurately guess which Justices joined the majority opinion, and which dissented. And that's if you're not a Supreme Court scholar, but just a passive observer of the court. The factions of the political right that are infatuated with Roberts and Alito like to skewer the court's "swing voters" - those who don't consistently fall under their preferred ideology. It isn't that those factions know something about the law or Constitution - their only concern is the advancement of a specific political agenda.

Maybe I would feel differently if I were President, and had the opportunity to appoint a justice so rigid in his beliefs that I was confident that he would provide a consistent vote for my political agenda - continuing perhaps for decades after I left office. But I'm not the President, I get to be more idealistic, and I want justices who actually wrestle with the issues rather than consistently falling back on ideology. And I would just as soon avoid having any authoritarian personalities on the Court.

Why Does Robert Novak Hate America?

First he publicly discloses the name of a covert CIA operative, and now this?

Americans are not good at nation-building.

Any real American knows - we're good at everything.

Seriously, though, the issue isn't that we're "not good at nation building". The issue, which Novak is attempting to conceal behind a clould of smoke, is that the Bush Administration has been top-to-bottom incompetent in relation to every aspect of its Iraq war strategy. Had it wished to do so, it could have listened to the scholars and State Department experts who were warning it of the difficulty of nation building, and could have heeded their advice as to how it might be achieved (and also to their warnings as to the consequences of failure). But that would have meant revising their war plans, developing a much larger occupation force, giving up the rapid privatization and flat taxation plan they wished to impose on "liberated Iraq", and admitting to the American public that the war and occupation would be extremely costly and would involve a very long commitment.

Thanks to an incompetent Administration, editorially backed by Novak and his ilk, we got the extremely costly war and long commitment, with little else to show for it.

What? You Want *Tears*?

Some news agencies and columnists seem shocked that the U.S. public is indifferent to the incarceration of Judith Miller, for her refusal to obey a lawful court order that she disclose her source(s) in relation to the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame. David Broder suggests that the moral of the story is that reporters need to be more careful when selecting their sources - but that doesn't apply to Miller (at least in this context) as she didn't run a story on Plame. She obtained information from sources which revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative. To the extent that some people are less sympathetic to Miller because of her history of cultivating dubious anonymous sources, and printing stories based upon their "disclosures" which ultimately proved to be false, I don't think that explains the public indifference to Miller's incarceration, or the possibility that it might be extended by virtue of criminal contempt charges.

The public has a natural skepticism of "anonymous sources", and with good cause. A lot of misinformation, and a lot of injustice, has resulted from the abuse of anonymity. When a reporter asserts that she will go to jail rather than disclose her source, the public can reasonably be expected to consider the actual downside of disclosure. Not the "chicken little" downside, where we are immediately propelled down a slippery slope to a point where nobody dares to provide information to reporters under cover of anonymity. But an actual downside - the here and now, "in this specific case" downside, which can be weighed against the benefit of disclosure.

In the case of the "outing" of Plame, the "downside" of disclosure is that the people who leaked Plame's identity will become known. In a best-case scenario, if you accept the word of the Bush Administration's spin doctors, Plame herself had limited value as an operative. But it isn't just about Plame - it is everybody who had contact with Plame during her covert work, and everybody associated with the company she ostensibly worked for, which was also unmasked as a CIA operation. And while I doubt that the typical citizen has thought through all of the ramifications of the disclosure, I don't think that there is much sympathy at all for the people Miller is protecting. This is not a situation where a leak helped unmask government deception, government corruption, or crimes by government officials. This is a situation where the corrupt, deceptive, and/or criminal conduct is the leak itself.

Am I surprised that Miller, her appeals exhausted, her justification for her refusal to testify (she has a release, but it might have been coerced) tenuous, and the principle for which she ostensibly stands (advancing the ability of the media to uncover sensitive stories by protecting anonymous sources) turned on its head by the actions of her sources, gets little public sympathy? Particularly at this point, where Miller's testimony appears to be desired not to gain new names, but to connect a few key dots to complete the investigation of a crime? Not at all.

Broder also notes,

Novak, who has a well-earned reputation for carrying water for his favorite conservatives, has not been prosecuted for publishing Plame's name and has refused to discuss his role in the case or his dealings, if any, with the grand jury investigating the leak.

At this point, is there actually any lingering doubt about Novak's cooperation with the Grand Jury?

Changing the Balance

Robert Novak, anticipating Rehnquist's imminent retirement, informs us,

That would enable Bush to play this game: Name one justice no less conservative than Rehnquist, and name Gonzales, whose past record suggests he would replicate retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on abortion and possibly other social issues. Thus, the present ideological orientation of the court would be unchanged, which would suit the left just fine.

Well, not really. But maintaining the ideological status quo would probably be the sort of bitter pill the left would quickly swallow, given the alternative. But, as Novak obviously knows, Bush's problem is most certainly not how to please the political left.

If a Rehnquist vacancy now is thrown into the mix, will Bush be tempted to temporize by naming one conservative and one non-conservative? If he nominates conservative Justice Antonin Scalia as chief justice and thus creates a third confirmation, will he think he has escaped by saying he has named two conservatives? No such maneuvers will make Gonzales acceptable to the Bush base.

Consequently, Bush's USA Today interview has been a source of intense anxiety on the right. Typically, the president did not defend Gonzales on his merits but with outrage that anybody would dare criticize his friend. That reflects a general schoolboy attitude that is losing the president support from fellow Republicans and conservatives.

I find it interesting that in this hypothetical scenario (in which Bush names "one conservative and one non-conservative") Gonzales is somehow transformed into a "non-conservative". That, to me, highlights the depravity of our present political classifications (or, should I say, stereotypes) - you can only be a true conservative these days, it seems, if you adhere to the philosophies of the religious right - even if you are otherwise contemptuous of everything traditionally associated with political conservatism. Otherwise, you're at best a "paleo-conservative" or, worse, a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

If Bush gets the opportunity to appoint two justices, and he doesn't make appointments which leave the religious right satisfied that Roe will be gutted or overruled, he will create an interesting conundrum for the Republican Party - a party which got about 30% of its votes in the last election due to high voter turnout and high voter loyalty among the religious right. If, in appreciable numbers, they stay home or vote for a third party candidate in the 2006 or 2008 elections, the post-election maps may be considerably more blue than the Republicans would like.

Oh, sure, you can make the same argument that Gore made in 1999 - a Republican counterpart to "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." But if you voted for Bush on the belief that he would deliver the Supreme Court and saw him deliberately pass on the opportunity to fulfill that implied promise, how inspired would you be to vote for a Republican candidate who in all likelihood will be more secular and more centrist than Bush?

Upcoming "Movie Of The Week"

As Deputy Attorney General James Comey is appointed to serve as a special prosecutor in the Plame case and investigators ask White House staffers to waive confidentiality of their discussions with reporters, plans are announced for the film version of the scandal:

An audio clip.

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