The Only Thing That Could Have Made It Better....

A speech by Spiro Agnew?

The New York Times dragged William Safire out of his rocking chair to give us... well, the same thing he's been giving us since the days when he penned those Agnew speeches. In Safire's analysis of the conventions, you'll be shocked to know, Lieberman was stellar and Emperor Obama had no clothes... as it turns out, because McCain stole them.

About the only member of the punditariat who agreed that this season’s emperor of oratory was short on clothes that night was David Broder of The Washington Post, who had the unfair advantage of being objective.

(You're not objective, after all, unless you agree with Safire.)

[I]n choosing an exciting new running mate even as Obama was splashing about in the news media adulation of his smoothly delivered acceptance extravaganza, McCain stiffly stole the clothes of change.

What, you thought I was making that part up? ;-)

What's this about?

Then the St. Paul convention was hit by Hurricane Sarah and her admirable family.

I must have missed something. Either that, or it's admirable for family members to simply show up at a convention?

Safire closes, scarily, with

We can hope that the winners in tomorrow’s alliteration wars will be the pleasant Pollyannas of positivism.

Let's hope that contribution to the "alliteration wars" doesn't stick....

Holy Prescience, Batman

I stumbled across this from my archives.

In today's Times, Bill Safire cautions us not to get too exuberant in what he sees as an amazing financial recovery for the nation, for fear of causing another bubble.

Revisiting that editorial,

Contrarians, arise! As consumers are consumed with buying DVD's over their cellphones, getting second mortgages to take advantage of stock tips and letting their invaluable animal spirits get the better of their judgment, it is for us to march around with sandwich boards that say ''Repent - The End Is Near.''

That's what you get, though, for wearing a sandwich board and portending doom - nobody listens to you.

Forged Documents

In case you were thinking that the prior two posts represented the worst of Today's issue of the times.... Wrong! That prize goes to Bill Safire, who declares,

Some person or persons conceived a scheme to create a series of false ... documents and append a photocopied signature to one of them. ... Who was the forger? Did others conspire with him or her to present a seeming government document - with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to defraud...? Who was to benefit and how?

Wow. Is Safire reconsidering his blind support for Chalabi's declaration that he had thousands of documents establishing unprecedented corruption and avarice, provign that pretty much every anti-War voice in the West had received bribes from the "Oil for Food" Program? Um... no.

Well, then.... Perhaps Safire is reconsidering his blind support for the childish forgeries which "proved" that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Niger? Um... that wouldn't be it either.

Actually, as you may have guessed, Safire's peevishness is directed at CBS, for airing forged documents about Bush's (non-)service in the National Guard. And, surprise - he's as conspiratorial as ever (perhaps a side-effect of his work in the Nixon Administration):

What benefit did the Bush-hating Burkett gain from CBS in return for his fake documents? One plausible answer: he got coveted access to someone high up in the Kerry campaign.

Sure. CBS is secretly brokering contacts between its confidential sources and "someone high up" in the Kerry Campaign.... And Ahmed Chalabi has the proof, if only those evil Kerry supporters hadn't somehow persuaded the Bush Administration to accuse him of funneling highly classified information to Iran (which, fortunately for Chalabi who is now safely ensconced in Tehran, frequently offers asylum to supporters of the U.S. who have not lent it any aid or comfort), simultaneously allowing a band of thugs to raid one of his investigator's offices and steal each and every document, whether on paper or in electronic form (including all backup copies) which would have documented the claim.

Oh, excuse me - I got this story crossed with Chalabi's story about "oil for food" which, as expressed in the idiotorial under discussion, Safire believes.

Spinning, spinning, spinning....

According to Bill Safire, the White House should not have distanced itself from its inclusion of the so-called "sixteen words" in the State of the Union Address ("The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa") because there is additional information which supposedly gives credence to the words. Although it seems obvious that, had the White House been aware of any credible information beyond the forged Niger documents, it never would have declared that "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address."

With all due respect to Safire's Nixonian philosophy that "Being Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry", the "new" allegations from the Butler report Safire believes somehow rehabilitate the uranium charge are not inconsistent with the White House's statement. That is, it remains probable either the White House based its statement upon the fact that Britain hadn't advanced any information beyond the existence of the forged documents, or that it didn't deem the information from Britain to be sufficiently credible to support the "sixteen words". Either way, the White House would have been correct to issue its pseudo-retraction.

Looking for Something In All The Wrong Places

Today, Bill Safire (like several columnists before him) complains that the 9/11 Commission is focused on the wrong questions:

Today we are engaged in the wrong debate. The brouhaha about whether the new Bush administration treated the threat of Al Qaeda as "important" versus "urgent" is history almost as ancient as whether F.D.R. did enough to avert Pearl Harbor.

Funny.... When the 9/11 Commission was formed, numerous columnists from the political left and center complained that its focus was too narrow, and that it appeared to be designed (by the Bush Administration and the Republican majority in Congress) to avoid a full inquiry into the most crucial issues surrounding 9/11 and terrorism prevention for fear that the President might be embarrassed - with particular criticism focused on the selection of Henry Kissinger as its proposed Chair. Now that it looks like the President is going to be embarrassed anyway, the right has started to whinge (while the left remains silent), making it appear that this inquiry has become far less about finding out "what happened and why it happened" and much more a game of political "gotcha". Safire concludes,

Let the floo floo birds look back in anger, scheduling the 9/11 commission's report on the opening day of the Democratic convention, hoping to persuade voters that Bush's concern with Saddam's threat diminished our suppression of Osama.

Other birds who dare to look ahead will wonder: Are those fixated on fixing blame avoiding the needed debate about how best to get to the root of terror in the Middle East today?

Safire deliberately fails to mention the fact that the 9/11 Commission asked the Bush Administration for an extension that would have delayed the release of its report until after the election, and Bush refused. And Safire conveniently forgets to mention the drooling loonies on the right who are so backward-focused they want to blame everything that has happened during Bush's watch on the Clinton Administration.

But beyond that, why is it only now that he is asking us to look ahead? Those of us who have been looking ahead for years had concerns about domestic terrorism before 9/11, and had grave concerns about the Bush Administration's so-called "war on terror" even before it became strangely focused on Iraq. "Don't look back - only look ahead" isn't great advice when it only comes after somebody has taken you down a blind alley.

Comments

Safire Goes "Paleo"

Sometimes Safire betrays the fact that he used to actually be a conservative, as opposed to whatever he is today, as he did with his editorial on privacy:

Terror's threat is real. But as we grudgingly grant government more leeway to guard our lives, we must demand that our protectors be especially careful to safeguard our rights. Officials all too often fail to see both sides of their jobs.

As reported last week by Robert Pear and Eric Lichtblau in The Times, the Justice Department said that medical patients "no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."

This abhorrent philosophy underlies a counterattack launched by Justice at doctors who went to court to challenge the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Most Americans, including many who are pro-choice, favor that legislation. I think the doctors are mistaken in their constitutional objection. But in defending the law, Attorney General John Ashcroft went overboard.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe suggests that the Bush Administration's encroachments on our rights are much greater than most recognize.

Comments

Seeing Dead People is One Thing....

But talking to them?

Besides - it's obvious that this is fiction. If there were a purgatory, that would evidence that there is also a hell. And if there is a hell, Mr. Nixon isn't in purgatory....

Comments

Who Said "Conservatives" Can't Be Funny?

This column is funnier than the column it attempts to explain - Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host, offered his brand of parody, suggesting that Jimmy Carter responded to the Lord of the Rings trilogy by condeming the movie, attributing statements such as,

"Who knows what might happen if enough young people start thinking that war is an option, or that some people or countries can be labeled 'evil,' or that there is something noble about a soldier who kills for a 'just' cause?"

Although it seemed obvious to me that Prager was trying to be funny, his only overt notice was at the conclusion of his piece, "This story is fictional, but not false."

Now he reports receiving feedback from four groups: (1) those who thought he was funny, (2), those furious for his false attribution of various statements to Carter, (3) those who didn't recognize the joke, and thanked him for bringing Carter's comments to light, and (4) those confused about the last line, asking "What part of your column was fiction?". Prager explains that the last line was meant to label the piece as a parody, as was the false news service line he used. He then compares himself to Bill Safire, who has parodic, fictional conversations with public figures in his columns (without this type of confusion, presumably, by virtue of being a better writer). Then he complains that he has never and would never falsely attribute quotes. But this is the funny part:

Jonah Goldberg, an astute observer of contemporary life, actually excerpted my column, "Jimmy Carter: 'Compassion for Mordor,'" on his National Review Web site.

Yup. How's that for astute. Goldberg's readers set him straight.

Okay, this part is funny, also - Prager complains about those who did not understand his final line - declaring that he, like "Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and other great writers revealed great truths through fiction, and I guess everybody should have realized that he kept such rarified company. (I wonder if poor Bill Safire felt the sting of not being referenced in that list of great writers.) He of course concludes with an overt attack on Carter as "deeply morally confused about good and evil, who damaged his country as president, and who hurts it today." Um... I guess if you're as self-important as Prager, or as he now demands to be called "Shakespearevsky", you have every right to judge.

(Incidentally, if you found the original piece to actually be funny, please speak up.)

Comments

The "Religion Divide"

Today, William Safire writes,

With the year 2004 still in its diaper, a spacecraft aptly named Stardust, launched five years ago, scooped up a shovelful of dust from the nucleus of the comet Wild 2 a quarter of a billion miles away. If it brings back even a thimbleful of these first materials from deep space two years from now, we may learn whether comet dust contains the organic molecules necessary for life — which would be evidence that comets are universal messengers of life-producing chemicals.

How very secular of him to say so. (He goes on to apologize for misquoting the Bible.)

This, while we are increasingly told in the news of a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans over religion. In "The God Gulf", Nicholas Kristof writes:

America is riven today by a "God gulf" of distrust, dividing churchgoing Republicans from relatively secular Democrats. A new Great Awakening is sweeping the country, with Americans increasingly telling pollsters that they believe in prayer and miracles, while only 28 percent say they believe in evolution. All this is good news for Bush Republicans, who are in tune with heartland religious values, and bad news for Dean Democrats who don't know John from Job.

To me, the notion that only 28% of the public believes in evolution - a percentage that obviously includes the very conservative Mr. Safire - is more of an indictment of our nation's educational system than it is evidence of a "God gulf". Also, the term "relatively" is somewhat misleading - it is possible to be religious while being skeptical of claimed miracles and while believing in evolution. (It is also possible to be deeply moral and ethical without being religious, and many secular movements have helped advance and protect rights and freedoms we now see as integral to U.S. culture.)

Kristof continues,

So expect Republicans to wage religious warfare by trotting out God as the new elephant in the race, and some Democrats to respond with hypocrisy, by affecting deep religious convictions. This campaign could end up as a tug of war over Jesus.

It is a mistake for a relatively secular person to claim a religious awakening on the campaign trail, as such conversions do not seem genuine. But note that it apparently is not hypocrisy to abuse God's name, and to espouse a religious fervor that in many cases seems to end the second the speaker leaves the stage - in order to try to win elections - apparently that's just good Republican politics. (Granted, Kristof does take on Bush for some of his more ludicrous statements on religion - "To me, nonetheless, it seems hypocritical of Mr. Bush to claim (as he did in the last campaign) that Jesus is his favorite philosopher and then to finance tax breaks for the rich by cutting services for the poor" - but even there the hypocrisy cited is not in the abuse of religious belief on the campaign trail, but in the tax cuts).

From my perspective, the "God gulf" is not a natural phenomenon, but results from the intentional manipulation of the public. We are not told of devout Democrats, or the religious values which lead them to their political choices. We are instead told that Democrats are "increasingly secular" because the evangelicals are increasingly Republican. While it is fair to say that the average Democrat is more secular than the average evangelical, the average Democrat is no more secular (and many are far less secular) than Bill Safire. Kristol's own statistics tell us that. If 72% of Americans reject evolution, and the population is relatively split between Democrats and Repubicans, there are far more skeptics of evolution in this nation than there are adherents to the new religion of Republicanism.

Additionally, it is worthy of note that many highly secular people also have highly evolved moral codes, and there is no great secular wish to deprive the rest of the population of their right to worship in the manner of their choosing. Kristof references the message in Cheney's Christmas card and his impression that Bush's religious message is sincere. The notion that being raised in a religious household will somehow cause children to be good, respectful, law-abiding citizens is perhaps called into question by the conduct of the President's own daughters. And what do evangelicals make of Cheney's daughter? The President and Vice President know that they are abusing religion and advancing lies about religion - their own beliefs, and how religion affects family and society - and they do so with the deliberate goal of further dividing this nation against itself... yet it is the Democrats who are accused of hypocrisy?

Comments

Words I Never Thought I'd Hear

The other day, a long-time friend of mine and self-described classic conservative, told me, "I had to admit this, but I've been thinking about it and I have to admit that Bill Clinton had the potential to be a great President - if he'd only kept his damn zipper up." He then expressed what he detested most about Clinton - his worldview was completely at odds with that my friend had developed through years as a military officer, but was coming to recognize as pervasive in government - in GW's government - since entering the civilian world.

Which brings me to a couple of weirditorials. Not idiotorials, but not entirely sensible, either. First, we have Robert Samuelson arguing,

The political story of 2003 was, in some ways, the fashionableness of "hate." It became respectable not simply to disagree with George W. Bush or to dislike him and criticize him -- but to go further and declare your everlasting hate for the man. People bragged about how much they hated Bush. This loathing of Bush from the left does not, as yet, seem any more vicious (and perhaps less so) than the loathing of Bill Clinton from the right. But what is different is the willingness to call it "hatred" and to have the label blessed by much of the press, which has concluded that Bush is different from other modern presidents.

Perhaps it is just me, but I don't recall any shortage of people willing to describe their sentiment toward Bill Clinton as "hatred". To the extent that the press covered the hatred differently, perhaps it was out of a misguided sense of "fairness" and "balance" - to those criticizing Clinton. Outlets like Fox News, which have no particular interest in fairness or balance beyond sloganeering, don't much care if their treatment of "Bush Haters" is dismissive of the reasons for that hatred.

From his comfy chair, Samuelson hypothesizes,

In the end, Bush hating says more about the haters than the hated -- and here, too, the parallels with Clinton are strong. This hatred embodies much fear and insecurity. The anti-Clinton fanatics hated him not simply because he occasionally lied, committed adultery or exhibited an air of intellectual superiority. What really infuriated them was that he kept succeeding -- he won reelection, his approval ratings stayed high -- and that diminished their standing. If Clinton was approved, they must be disapproved.

Ditto for Bush. If he succeeded less, he'd be hated less. His fiercest detractors don't loathe him merely because they think he's mediocre, hypocritical and simplistic. What they truly resent is that his popularity suggests that the country might be more like him than it is like them. They fear he's exiling them politically. On one level, their embrace of hatred aims to make others share their outrage; but on another level, it's a self-indulgent declaration of moral superiority -- something that makes them feel better about themselves. Either way, it represents another dreary chapter in the continuing coarsening of public discourse.

I don't know about that. The people to whom I have spoken who most "hate" Bush, whether at home, in England, or in Canada, seem to have formed that opinion early in his Presidency, prior to 9/11 when his approval rating was anything but high. While it may be that some resent the fact that a large percentage of the population supports Bush, that development came after their contempt was fully formed. Also, obviously, those in Canada and England also don't fear being politically exiled or marginalized - they have no vote, and no direct stake in U.S. popular sentiments.

Also I am not sure that any of his detractors see much "success" in Bush's record - other than, that is, his amazing ability to slash taxes for the wealthy and to raise taxes for his reelection campaign. The jury's still out on Afghanistan and Iraq - although I certainly hope that the ultimate verdict is delivered as quickly as possible in our favor. I personally think that if Bush had achieved rapid democratization and redevelopment in Iraq, with the "candy and flowers" welcome we were implicitly promised following the invasion, a lot fewer people would be in the "haters" camp.

And then we have Bill Safire.... Bill talks about his lack of "cognitive dissonance" in distrusting the Clintons, and applauds his own "consistency" for insisting that Cheney, whom he trusts implicitly, disclose the facts and circumstances of his energy task force. (This created in poor Bill some "cognitive dissonance" because it meant that he "chose to stray off the Bush reservation" - and no, I'm not making that up. But that was okay, because he claims it would have been even more dissonant had he approved the inappropriate secrecy.)

As you might expect, he ends up taking pot shots at Howard Dean, for imposing a full decade of "executive privilege" on the records from when he governed Vermont. He suggests that this must create "cognitive dissonance" ("C.D.") in Dean's supporters:

They could deal with C.D. by (1) suppressing their cognition about executive-branch secrecy, or (2) changing their cognition about Dean or (3) calling on their hero to tear down that stonewall. There is also the choice of emulating the shrewd action of Aesop's fox: deciding that the grapes of wrath are sour.

Now, I'm all for transparency in government, so given those three choices I would say "tear down the wall". But... if Safire wanted to be honest, and to avoid another bout of cognitive dissonance in himself, perhaps he should have mentioned that President Bush has placed his own gubernatorial records under a reported fifty year seal in his father's presidential library. Even Fox News seems to think that a relevant fact when criticizing Dean.

Comments

The "Great Insider" Speaks....

In today's column, Bill Safire writes:

Another useful bit of information is the origin of "spider hole," a phrase used by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to describe the dugout hiding place in which the fugitive Saddam was cowering.

This is Army lingo from the Vietnam era. The Vietcong guerrillas dug "Cu Chi tunnels" often connected to what the G.I.'s called "spider holes" — space dug deep enough for the placement of a clay pot large enough to hold a crouching man, covered by a wooden plank and concealed with leaves. When an American patrol passed, the Vietcong would spring out, shooting. But the hole had its dangers; if the pot broke or cracked, the guerrilla could be attacked by poisonous spiders or snakes. Hence, "spider hole."

This is an interesting anedote, but it doesn't quite accord with my understanding. Granted, Safire was around and writing speeches for Spiro Agnew during the war years, whereas I was mostly... not born yet. But nonetheless... Let's take a look at Vietnam "Military Jargon":

Spider Hole - A descriptive and realistic expression for a soldier's foxhole.

And let's take a look at how an actual veteran uses the term:

The second most threatening area on the drop zone was the impact point, the point from which we controlled the drops, and the ideal arrival point for each drop. We had to rapidly dig out and crawl into a spider hole from which to work relatively protected from the Vietnamese who were shooting at us constantly -- snipers, mortars, artillery, rockets. We were proud of the speed with which we could dig these little holes out of that clay with our military-issue entrenching tools.

Beyond that, the "Cu Chi tunnels" were not, as Safire seemingly suggests, short tunnels connected to foxholes. They were an intricate series of tunnels, bunkers, kitchens, store rooms, dormitories, and traps, built on three underground levels starting during the resistance against the French. There were about seventy-five miles of interconnecting tunnels, which were dug into the clay earth of the region as opposed to being lined, in Safire's fanciful interpretation, with clay pottery.

But, in rattling out his editorial, Bill was probably more concerned with letting us know that he had attended a party thrown by Donald Rumsfeld than with spending a few minutes on Google to confirm that he got is lingo right.... (In case you are wondering, Safire "stuffed" himself "on lamb chops and potato pancakes".)

Comments

You Mean, There's a Long Term?

In today's Times, Bill Safire cautions us not to get too exuberant in what he sees as an amazing financial recovery for the nation, for fear of causing another bubble.

If the market keeps going up and the "wealth effect" further boosts consumer confidence, if economic figures continue to dance with Rosie Scenario, and if government mindlessly continues to stimulate with heavy domestic spending an economy that no longer needs stimulation — then all bets on the coming boom are off.

We could count on Chairman Greenspan to tighten money and resuscitate "irrational exuberance" if growth hormones race through the body politic. But as we saw in the 90's, that would not be enough to avert boom-and-bust.

Something Safire doesn't mention, but which has been a low murmer in the back of a lot of global economic discussion over the past two years, is the fall of the dollar as compared to the Euro. In today's London Guardian, Polly Tonybee observes,

Meanwhile, the euro soars to its highest level against a dollar sinking fast, due to Bush's deficits. Odd how the eurosceptic press that crowed at the euro's "weakness" now simply fails to report its steep rise. Significantly, business sees what's in the wind. The UPS Europe Business Monitor yesterday reported a majority of British businessmen now think the euro will displace the dollar as the main international currency reserve.

A majority of British businessmen, sitting in a nation which has refused to join the Euro, feels that way? Then perhaps Safire's concern should be something more than, "Will this deficit-driven 'recovery' last six months or two years?" Because an international shift to the Euro, driven by those same out-of-control deficits, will likely have a much more profound effect on our long-term economic future.

Comments