Getting Paid to be Contrarian is One Thing....

Part of how you get commentary published, it seems, is coming at issues from an angle that at least some of your audience hasn't seen before. But sometimes, perhaps often, the angle tells us more about the person writing the commentary than about the issue they're addressing. Case in point, Megan McArdle's self-described counter-factual on why she would have preferred for Hillary Clinton to have won the 2008 election. The first counter-factual,

I think that Hillary Clinton would have been more cautious when dealing with Republicans, and therefore ultimately more successful in some ways. At the very least, she would not be facing the same level of vehement opposition in Congress.

Certainly there is no reason to believe that the Republicans would have opposed Hillary Clinton, ginned up fake controversies over her past or present actions, or ridiculed and sabotaged her health care reform. That is, if you ignore pretty much everything in Hillary Clinton's past, as it relates to the Republican Party. The party that is still wailing "Benghazi!" would have been deferential to Hillary Clinton? Really?

I think liberals really do not understand emotionally the extent to which the Tea Party was created by the Affordable Care Act and the feeling that its government was simply steamrolling it.

Except that the Tea Party movement did not grow out of healthcare reform. It grew out of the financial industry collapse and bail-out. It was carefully steered in the direction of healthcare reform through Republican demagoguery and strategic misinformation. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they would not have been led to oppose modest healthcare reform, or that their energies would not have been directed at other significant initiatives -- as has actually occurred with issues such as immigration reform.

(One suspects that McArdle has spent little if any time talking to actual liberals.)

From the Tea Party's perspective, you had an unpopular program that should have died in the same way, and for the same reasons, that Social Security privatization did: because sensible politicians saw that, no matter how ardently they and their base might desire it, this was out of step with what the majority of the country wanted (and no, you cannot rescue the polls by claiming that the only problem with the law was that it wasn’t liberal enough; when you dig down into what people mean when they say that, the idea that there was ever a majority or a plurality that was secretly in favor of Obamacare collapses).

Except... no. Social Security privatization died because the then-President's own party wouldn't get behind it. We're talking there about something that was easily recognized as benefiting a relative few, those privileged with "managing" our money, while creating significant risks for everybody else. While it's reasonable to say that you cannot sustain an argument that a "more liberal" plan would have been more popular, that question is moot for the same reason that the question of Social Security privatization is moot -- a "more liberal" plan would not have been voted into law. If you look at the actual content of the PPACA, other than the mandate (which we all know to be a necessary aspect of keeping private insurance companies on board while requiring them to insure people with pre-existing conditions) you'll find that the individual components of the bill are largely popular. You'll find that the most contentious aspects of the bill, such as "death panels", are Republican fabrications.

The rage was similar to what progressives felt as they watched George W. Bush push the country into a war in Iraq. That defined and animated the anti-war movement (which is why said movement collapsed when Bush left office, and not, say, when Bush agreed to a staged withdrawal of our forces).

For the most part, the anti-war movement collapsed when the war started. Whatever anti-war movement continued after that point was quite modest. Also, no, the rage and demonstrable ignorance of the Tea Party was nothing like what one saw in a typical anti-war protest, nor were Democratic politicians out, en masse, pushing misinformation or refusing to correct misinformation embraced by anti-war protesters.

Yes, those people would still have hated Republicans, even if there had been no Iraq War. But they would not have been as passionate, as organized or as powerful without it.

Who are "those people"? When I look at the Tea Party, I see a movement that has sent ripples through the Republican Party, has toppled incumbent politicians and had its own elected in their place, and has caused some of the most absurdly ignorant people to be elected to Congress since... I'm not sure when. The anti-war movement, by way of comparison, unsuccessfully advocated against the Iraq war and then... nothing? I'm not even sure where McArdle comes up with her canard that the anti-war protesters "hated Republicans", but hers seems to be a classic "hollow man" argument -- putting words into the mouths of "those people" in order to easily swat down an argument that few (if any) made, rather than having to address actual people and actual arguments. Counter-factual, indeed.

Liberals tend to write off this anger as racism, as irrational hatred of Barack Obama, or as perverse joy in denying health care to the poor, but at its root, it’s the simpler feeling that your country is making a mistake and you can’t stop it because the people in charge are ignoring the obvious.

It's not an "either, or". You (and by "you" I apparently mean, "anybody except McArdle") can recognize the actual racist statements and actions of people associated with the Tea Party, and can recognize the racism implicit in birtherism, the suggestion that President Obama is not a "full blooded" American, and the like, while also recognizing that the Tea Party is at its heart a fear-driven organization. It was quite obvious that when the Tea Party was screeching about death panels, or carrying around signs to the effect of, "Keep your government hands off of my Medicare", that they were afraid of change. It was also apparent that they were not approaching the issues in a rational manner, and that the monied interests and Republican politicians affiliated with the movement liked it that way.

Yes, a lot of money and energy was poured into the Tea Party by rich backers, but rich backers cannot create a grassroots campaign unless the underlying passion is there in the voters (paging Karl Rove and Crossroads). The Obama administration created that passion with Obamacare.

That, again, is nonsense. There's an element of truth to the notion that you can't astroturf your way into a massive grassroots movement, but what anybody but McArdle would have noticed is that the monied interests she mentions spotted an early opportunity to co-opt and direct the anger of the Tea Party movement. Those backers weren't interested in stopping the financial industry bailout. They were -- and remain -- interested in harming Obama's agenda. As with Mitch McConnell's stated goal, the priority was to try to make Obama a one-term president. They were not interested in educating Tea Party members about the issues -- to the contrary, they helped maintain a constant feed of misinformation. They would have been every bit as interested in harming Hillary Clinton's agenda.

I think that Hillary Clinton would have pulled back when Rahm Emanuel (or his counterfactual Clinton administration counterpart) told her that this was a political loser and she should drop it.

That may be true, but where McArdle sees that as a good thing I do not. Why not? Because unlike McArdle, who likely enjoys platinum quality employer-provided health benefits and sits on considerable family wealth, I actually needed to purchase insurance for my family. The PPACA permitted me to purchase insurance of a quality comparable to a good employer-sponsored plan at a fair price -- not necessarily at a cost savings over the cost of such a plan but with a more favorable pricing structure than what I had paid for COBRA coverage. Between the expiration of my COBRA coverage and the January 1 start date of the PPACA, I purchased a comparatively overpriced plan on the individual market, riddled with exclusions, and had to deal with the absurd arguments that insurance companies use to jack up premiums over "pre-existing conditions". For people not as lucky as McArdle, that's a big [Biden's Word] deal.

I’ve written before about how my Twitter feed filled up with comparisons to 1932 the night that Obama took the presidency, and it’s quite clear to me that the Obama administration shared what you might call delusions of FDR. It thought that it was in a transformative, historical moment where the normal rules of political caution didn’t apply. The administration was wrong, and the country paid for that.

So McArdle has looked down her nose at Obama from the start? And the country has "paid for" the president's pressing forward with the high-priority Democratic agenda item, healthcare reform, by actually getting healthcare reform? The horror!

That’s not to say that Republicans would have somehow been all kissy-kissy with Clinton -- they weren’t very nice to her husband, after all.

Not very nice.... That's quite a way to describe the constant attacks, inquisitorial approach to his background, and the use of impeachment as a political tool.

But I doubt she would have had the debt ceiling debacle or the deep gridlock of the last four years, because it was Obamacare that elected a fresh new class of deeply ideological Republicans who thought they were having their own transformative political movement, and they were willing to do massive damage to their party, their own political fortunes and, in my opinion, to the country in order to take a stand against “business as usual” -- business that included legislating or paying our bills.

Because using the debt ceiling as political theater, and shutting down the government, was something that the Republicans never dreamed of doing when Bill Clinton was President. That is, if we're again using the term "counter-factual" to mean, "ignoring indisputable fact." Further, if McArdle believes her own argument about the increasing polarization of the electorate, and was paying any attention to the likely outcome of the election, the difference is at most one of (slight) degree -- the odds of the Democrats holding the House were vanishingly small, and one would have expected the Republicans voted into formerly Democratic seats to be part of a new partisan wave. Predictably, McArdle offers no acknowledgement of the fact that the Democrats held the Senate, or the fact that a smaller Democratic loss in the House would not have changed the subsequent power dynamic in which House Republicans refuse not only to compromise, but refuse to legislate.

Besides, I thought McArdle was taking the position that the problem was healthcare reform, not the debt driven by the economic meltdown and financial industry bailout. Why does McArdle believe that the Tea Party would have ignored the issues that underlie their genesis, and become complacent in relation to the bail-out, but for healthcare reform? If they were so obsessed with healthcare reform, how is it that they (mistakenly?) voted into office those who chose to focus on the debt ceiling and force a government shut-down? For that matter, the Republican Party could have easily bypassed its relatively small number of Tea Party members and passed a funding bill, simply by allowing a funding bill to reach the floor -- so how is it that this isn't a problem inside the Republican Party, as opposed to one supposedly driven almost exclusively by the President's being Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton?

Of course, in my counterfactual, Hillary also probably wouldn’t have proposed ambitious health-care reform; she’d have done something more modest, like a Medicaid expansion.

More modest... except had McArdle been paying any attention to the Tea Party, she would have heard them complain about any program that directs money to the undeserving poor. She might have noticed the right-wing demagoguery over SCHIP, a program to insure children. She might have even noticed that Republican governors have gone out of their way -- to the point of litigating the issue to the Supreme Court -- to avoid accepting free money to expand Medicaid.

To my mind, however, that would have been a much better outcome for everyone. So there’s my counterfactual for the summer: If Hillary Clinton had won, Obamacare wouldn’t have happened, and Democrats -- and the country -- would be better off.

I'm sure that when McArdle and her husband offer their wealthy friends cocktails, perhaps with some sort of dipping sauce McArdle whips up herself in her Thermomix, that's the sort of observation that makes them chuckle. To notice how the PPACA helps actual people? That's beneath her notice. I don't personally believe that Hillary Clinton would have embraced McArdle's notion of modesty, or that she would have so easily folded on a more ambitious plan when faced with Republican opposition -- if I were to accept that counter-factual, I think we have to include the probability that Clinton would have been viewed within her own party as a failure, and would likely have faced a primary challenge after her first term. As Clinton would not have found that acceptable, it's reasonable to conclude that she would have found a way to stick to her guns.

The Second-Guessing of Obama

Before reading Jackson Diehl's latest editorial, I had come to two basic opinions in relation to the current set of accusations against President Obama: First, that the accusation that the President is indecisive on issues of military intervention is largely a canard. When the choice is to intervene or to refrain from intervening, and the U.S. refrains from intervening, you don't need a clear statement from the President, "We're not intervening at this time" in order to figure things out. Second, that the people who were criticizing the President for not being sufficiently decisive were, in fact, the same people who would prefer that our nation err on the side of military intervention.

I do concede that the President's messaging can be wanting, a problem that has existed from the start of his Presidency, as even when nuance and cautious explanation is warranted it can be better for a President's pronouncements on a conflict to be clear and definitive. "We're not intervening in [Nation] at this time because, [brief explanation], but we leave the door open to future intervention if [contingency]" -- for example, "We're not intervening in Iraq at this time, as we believe that our support for the Iraqi government and military, as well as for the Kurds, is sufficient to hold back ISIL, but we will reconsider our position if ISIL continues to advance in Iraq," or, "While we hope that the Iraqi Army will be able to protect the Yazidi people with our continued support, we will call upon our allies and engage in direct military action if that is what becomes necessary to prevent genocide."

Reading Jackson Diehl's editorial, my first thought was, "I doubt that's what the President actually said" -- at least in context. Sometimes a president will make statements in a speech, or in response to a question at a press conference, that don't make much sense -- that can happen to anybody. But the words Diehl ascribes to the President, while using rather inflammatory adjectives, immediately struck me as having been stripped from their larger context,

"What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision."

These words, marrying petulance and implausibility, were spoken by President Obama when he was asked, shortly after the beginning of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, whether he regretted withdrawing all U.S. troops from the country during his first term. "That entire analysis is bogus and is wrong," was his startling answer.

Here's the actual exchange:

What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.

And the Iraqi government, based on its political considerations, in part because Iraqis were tired of a U.S. occupation, declined to provide us those assurances. And on that basis, we left. We had offered to leave additional troops. So when you hear people say, do you regret, Mr. President, not leaving more troops, that presupposes that I would have overridden this sovereign government that we had turned the keys back over to and said, you know what, you’re democratic, you’re sovereign, except if I decide that it’s good for you to keep 10,000 or 15,000 or 25,000 Marines in your country, you don’t have a choice -- which would have kind of run contrary to the entire argument we were making about turning over the country back to Iraqis, an argument not just made by me, but made by the previous administration.

So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis were -- a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq.

Having said all that, if in fact the Iraqi government behaved the way it did over the last five, six years, where it failed to pass legislation that would reincorporate Sunnis and give them a sense of ownership; if it had targeted certain Sunni leaders and jailed them; if it had alienated some of the Sunni tribes that we had brought back in during the so-called Awakening that helped us turn the tide in 2006 -- if they had done all those things and we had had troops there, the country wouldn’t be holding together either. The only difference would be we’d have a bunch of troops on the ground that would be vulnerable. And however many troops we had, we would have to now be reinforcing, I’d have to be protecting them, and we’d have a much bigger job. And probably, we would end up having to go up again in terms of the number of grounds troops to make sure that those forces were not vulnerable.

So that entire analysis is bogus and is wrong. But it gets frequently peddled around here by folks who oftentimes are trying to defend previous policies that they themselves made.

Let me also add that I appreciate Tom Ricks' evolution on the question of a residual force -- that at first he thought it would have been desirable to keep a residual U.S. combat force in Iraq, but as the situation has worsened he came to realize that such a force would have been inadequate -- and that the U.S. would have been forced to choose between a significant deployment of additional forces or withdrawing from the conflict, neither of which would have been positive outcomes. Obama's statement inclues a similar analysis. Diehl is among those who continue to quibble over the decision to withdraw combat forces, a decision that the President correctly notes was in fact made by the prior administration and was forced by Iraq's refusal to agree to an acceptable status of forces agreement -- and while it may be true that the President didn't go all-out to twist Maliki's arm to allow combat forces to remain, even in hindsight that does not appear to have been a bad decision. Unless, that is, you would prefer that we now have 50,000 combat troops in Iraq, actively fighting on behalf of Maliki in a renewed civil war.

The analysis that the President stated was "bogus" was the absurd notion that keeping a residual combat force in Iraq would have prevented the nation from experiencing the problems that it has experienced as a result of its poor governance under Maliki. Diehl, to his discredit, purports that the President said that it was "bogus" that it was his decision not to try to force Maliki and Iraq to allow for the continued presence of combat forces, or to maintain combat troops in Iraq as a hostile force that was neither welcomed nor extended any legal protection by the (supposedly) sovereign government of Iraq.

Given that Diehl criticizes the Bush Administration for "resist[ing] the conclusion that his toppling of Saddam Hussein had been a mistake and the subsequent occupation was disastrously managed", I thought I would take a look for a column in which he apologized for his own cheerleading of that war and admitted his own mistakes. The closest I found was this,

The 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has prompted plenty of analysis of the mistakes made there, along with a few tendentious claims that “the same people” who supported war in Iraq are now pressing for U.S. intervention in Syria. I’m one of those people. So, to paraphrase the polemicists: Did I learn nothing from the last decade? Do I want to repeat the Iraq “fiasco”?

Diehl then argues vociferously for military intervention in Iraq because he believes it will be different than the result iof intervention in Syria, speculating, "As in the Balkans — or Libya — the limited use of U.S. airpower and collaboration with forces on the ground could have quickly put an end to the Assad regime 18 months ago, preventing 60,000 deaths and rise of al-Qaeda." Students of history might object, "But, even acknowledging that they helped, it was not actually the air strikes that turned things around in the Balkans, and the aftermath of toppling Qadaffi has destabilized the region and created a host of new security and humanitarian problems." Diehl similarly waxes poetic about "The Surge" and what it supposedly accomplished, despite the fact that the reality is far more complex, and that it was local outreach that helped calm the civil war much more than more boots on the ground. Diehl sneers, "Like the failed U.S. commanders who preceded Gen. David Petraeus, Obama argues that 'there’s no American military solution' in Iraq", as if what we're seeing is an entirely new civil war, and not a civil war that had its roots in prior ethnic conflicts -- not just the civil war that occurred under U.S. occupation, but a history of ethnic, religious and tribal rivalries that started well before Iraq was even a nation state.

This appears to be the answer to his second question, "Do I want to repeat the Iraq 'fiasco'?":

The problem here is not that advocates of the Iraq invasion have failed to learn its lessons. It is that opponents of that war, starting with Obama, have learned the wrong ones.

Frankly, that non-answer was foreshadowed by his use of scare quotes around the word "fiasco". There's nothing in his editorial that suggest that Diehl learned anything from the Iraq intervention, or that it has at all colored his apparent predisposition to shoot first and ask questions later. Although a year later he seems more willing to suggest that the Iraq invasion was "a mistake" for which others should take responsibility, I see no sign that he's reconsidered his own pro-war stance.

Diehl closes with this:

This is not to argue that Obama should dispatch hundreds of thousands of U.S. ground troops to the region. The point is that a doctrine whose first priority is avoiding U.S. engagement is bound to fail. The goal must be offensive: to defeat those forces that are destroying Iraq and Syria, from the Islamic State to the homicidal regime of Bashar al- Assad. That can be accomplished only with U.S. military and political leadership. And it will require Obama to accept the conclusion he still bitterly resists: that he was wrong.

So... Diehl wants the President to admit that he was "wrong" to not somehow force the presence of a continued combat force in Iraq, or to maintain such troops in the absence of a status of forces agreement? Yet he offers nothing to refute the President's expression that the presence of a combat force would not have rendered Maliki's government any more effective, or Ricks' concerns about an ultimate forced choice of "retreat or take sides and escalate" in the face of civil war?

Leaving aside for the moment that there's far more evidence of error by Diehl than by Obama, whether we're talking about Diehl's urging war in Iraq, his errors of history, or his misrepresentation of the President's statement, Diehl offers here an argument, not a valid conclusion. Diehl falls into the category of pundits who argue that if the President [did something] then we would be looking at an outcome that is better than what we are presently experiencing. This brand of pundit is awful at explaining what the President should have done, or why it would be expected to bring about a better outcome. Let's say that the President had followed Diehl's wish that he topple the Assad regime and assume that what followed would be more stable and more friendly to the west.

Should we recall that ISIL, the entity that moved into Iraq and has renewed that nation's civil war, was a powerful enemy of the Assad regime? Does Diehl truly believe that weaker entities in Syria would have been able to unite and stabilize the country and militarily defeat groups like ISIL? Why should we believe that the attacks Diehl desired would not have led to the same sort of destabilization and fragmentation that we saw in the former Yugoslavia, but with much more profound consequences for the region? In the same sort of military and humanitarian crises we've seen following the intervention in Libya? In the rise of ISIL as the dominant military and political force in Syria, with its tendrils extending into Lebanon and Iraq? Wherever you may find answers to questions of that sort, it won't be from Diehl.

Gerson Wants to Intervene in Syria, But Can't Explain How

When I read Michael Gerson complain that the United States hasn't done enough in Syria, I think he's being genuine. My problem with his columns is that they show an astonishing lack of thought about the subject, and a complete lack of understanding or appreciation for why most oppose the type of intervention he desires. If anything makes me question his sincerity, it's his dishonest characterization of the President's position:

When the rebellion was a broad, non-radical uprising — the dead in Caesar’s photos — President Obama did almost nothing to help. When radical groups gained momentum, it became an excuse for further inaction, because America didn’t want to create jihadists. We got the jihadists anyway, who are now causing regional havoc. At every stage, Obama defended his policy with false choices and flanking attacks on straw men: Any critics of his minimalism wanted Marines in Damascus. And when he eventually adopted the policy recommended by many of his critics — aid to the responsible rebels — it was very late.

Were Gerson to educate himself, he would become aware that the White House has attempted to identify, train and arm "responsible rebels" since 2012, and weapons and equipment have been provided for almost a year. Gerson works from the assumption that Syria is overflowing with easily identified U.S.-friendly rebels, with sufficient numbers and dedication to defeat all other factions in Syria, take control of the nation and turn it into a western-friendly state. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests something else, entirely. Perhaps Gerson thought this screening test was serious and workable? We're to believe that significant numbers of fighters can be armed, with little to no chance of serious mistakes?

Gerson wants to pretend that the most powerful factions fighting Assad arose in a vacuum, that groups like ISIS would scarcely exist had the U.S. poured arms into the region with little concern beyond a warlord's promise that he really liked the U.S., but there's never been a showing that Gerson's wish was anything more than a fantasy. You certainly won't find substantiation in anything Gerson has written.

Now Gerson complains that a genocide is occurring in Syria, and that the world must do something. Given that he mocks those who suggest that it would be necessary to dispatch a considerable force of ground troops into Syria to arrest the chaos and stop the bloodshed, it would be nice if he would tell us exactly how he proposes that we stop the civil war and its atrocities. He could explain why he rejects Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, General Martin Dempsey's concern that "intervention would end up costing so much, the U.S. military would be unable to respond to crises in other parts of the world". As is par for the course for a Gerson column, those real-world concerns are simply ignored.

You know, it would be great if all of the world's problems were easy to solve. It would be great if all it took for a nation to become a stable democracy was the toppling of its tyrannical leader. It would be wonderful if it were cheap and easy to transform a nation, used to totalitarian rule, into a modern economy with progressive values and a desire for democracy. It would be great if the type of intervention Gerson wants would end the spilling of innocent blood, with no risk of creating a larger, longer or more violent war. But as much as Gerson isn't able to contemplate that such interventions aren't easy, cheap or bloodless -- a reflection not only of an inability to think things through but also to learn from his own past mistakes -- the real world is far more complex. Gerson simply isn't able to process that his eager desire to arm Syrian rebels could lead to any number of outcomes that would be worse for the region and its people than the dismal status quo. Why is Gerson so certain that leader who emerges from the rubble won't be the moral equivalent of Pol Pot? Why does he believe that U.S.-backed forces will do any better at hanging onto their weapons than the Iraqi army that abandoned its arms to ISIS?

Gerson should continue to advocate for the victims of the world, at least the ones he cares about. He should feel free to act as the nation's conscience. But when he wants the U.S. to contribute weapons, support and training to factions in a civil war, I think he owes it to his readers to explain exactly what intervention he proposes, how it can be safely accomplished and why we should believe that it is likely to result in a better outcome. If he cannot do that himself or after consultation with an expert, why should he expect to be taken seriously?

Obama Does Understand War, Which is Perhaps Why He is Vilified by Warmongers

Eliot Cohen whines in the Washington Post,

Abraham Lincoln hated war as much as Barack Obama does. He saw so much more of it firsthand, lost friends in it and waged it on an immensely vaster scale than Obama has. And yet, almost exactly 150 years ago (Aug. 17, 1864, to be precise), he wrote this to the squat, stolid general besieging the town of Petersburg, south of Richmond: “I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog gripe, and chew & choke, as much as possible.” And so Ulysses S. Grant persevered.

Therein lies the difference between Lincoln and Obama, which explains much of the wreckage that is U.S. foreign policy in Gaza and elsewhere today. Lincoln accepted war for what it is; Obama does not. The Gaza war is a humanitarian tragedy for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. It is also a barbaric conflict, as leaders of Hamas hide their fighters behind children while baiting their enemy to kill innocents. But first and foremost, it is a war, a mortal contest of wills between two governments and two societies.

In his eager regurgitation of propaganda against the Palestinian people, Cohen tells us more about himself than about the President. Hamas is vile enough without the endless justifications of the killing of Palestinian civilians, especially children. Perhaps that's Cohen's primary objection -- that people are looking at the morality and proportionality of the conflict, rather than buying into the "Anything goes" attitude that he would have us ascribe to Lincoln.

For all of his warmongering, Cohen can't bring himself to explain why the President is wrong, or what he should have done differently -- other than, perhaps, endorsing "more war" as a one-size-fits-all solution to world crises. Cohen complains that the President doesn't give rousing speeches that cause the nation to rally behind wars in nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, or to rally behind new wars in nations like Syria and Libya, never mind that the reason that the public doesn't presently rally behind wars is the pathetic incompetence of the administration he served. Cohen has conveniently forgotten that the President ran in part on an anti-war platform, his rejection of Bush's war of choice in Iraq, and that since McCain's defeat the nation at large has consistently rejected those who favor Cohen's views. Let the next Republican presidential candidate run on a promise of more and larger wars, regardless of their impact on the U.S. economy and let's see how far he gets.

The President is palpably smarter and more thoughtful than Cohen, which could explain part of the difference, but I suspect that the larger conflict is in fact that the President prefers to prevent or end wars, while Cohen is happy to play the role of the useful idiot.

Maybe the Problem is... Too Many Law Schools?

The New York Times has run some viewpoints on the idea of replacing part of a conventional legal education (three years of law school) with "legal apprenticeships". Some of the authors share concern about the high cost of a law degree, but no attention is paid to why that cost is so high (I'll give you a few hints: fabulous infrastructure, high administrator salaries, high law professor salaries, and low course loads for professors). Frankly, if you look at their core mission and core function, there is no need for law schools to be anywhere near as costly as they are.

From the other direction, there is concern that students will lose out on enlightening classroom discussions. I doubt that things have changed much since I was in law school, where professors were often heard to complain about apathy taking root in the second year of law school, and being firmly established by the third year such that it was difficult to get students to participate in classroom discussion. It wasn't just apathy, as some students are intimidated by classroom participation, some law professors are bullies and some law professors simply aren't any good at leading classroom discussions. Whatever the cause, after the coercion of the first year of law school, of being called upon and put under a very bright spotlight, many students did largely or completely withdraw from classroom discussions.

One contributor enthusiastically gushes over the glorious educational experience that is law school, never mind that practitioners often have a very different take on the benefits of law school education than law professors. Don't get me wrong, most practitioners appreciate the manner in which a good legal education can cause you to analyze issues and develop arguments, but there is much more to legal practice and law school has historically done a poor job of preparing law students for the actual practice of law.

I don't find the argument for apprenticeships to be particularly compelling, either. The critics question whether apprenticeships would be managed by appropriately competent, dedicated supervising attorneys. I've seen law firms whose approach to training new lawyers, fresh out of law school, is to hand them a bunch of case files and tell them to represent the associated clients, so yes, I think that's a big concern. I question where you could find enough spaces for these new apprentices to provide a meaningful number of openings for law students. I question whether they would provide decent compensation and reasonable hours, or if they would turn out to involve the type of exploitation that we've seen in nations that require "articling" for lawyers who want a bar admission -- long hours, little to no pay, but with the necessity of obtaining a position resulting fierce competition for any openings no matter how terrible the working conditions.

Thinking about some of the unpaid internships and exceedingly low paid associate positions I've seen advertised in recent years, it's difficult for me to believe that apprenticeships with private law firms will turn out to be a particularly valuable educational experience -- but what I would expect them to do is to reduce the number of jobs available for actual law school graduates. If you were to charge tuition for apprenticeships, funding them to the point that the apprentices could spend their time learning and studying rather than earning their keep through the mundane law firm tasks that they are likely to be assigned to perform, it's difficult to believe that they would cost less per year than law school.

The essays leave me not with the impression that we need or don't need apprenticeships. It leaves me with the impression that we need to reform legal education. Unfortunately, especially when I consider the manner in which the professors who oppose apprenticeships praise the current law school experience, I don't think that's at all likely to happen. More than that, if you want to solve the problem of there being too many law school graduates, far too many for the market to absorb, the first thing to do is reconsider the number of law schools, or at least the number of students they enroll -- but reduce those numbers and what will happen to those glorious buildings, glorious salaries, and gloriously low course loads?

About Those "Think Tanks"....

I'm a bit surprised, looking back, that I haven't written more about Stephen Moore. There's this piece, but given how often I've rolled my eyes at Moore's smiling regurgitation of hackneyed talking points and false statements that he has to know are wrong, I expected to find more. I guess, despite his ability to make me roll my eyes, he hasn't had much to say that was particularly interesting. You would think any self-respecting organization that falls under the umbrella term, "Think Tank", would have kicked Moore to the curb long ago... but he has a sinecure at the Heritage Foundation.

So what brings Moore to mind? The declaration by Miriam Pepper, editorial page editor of the Kansas City Star, that "I won’t be running anything else from Stephen Moore" due to his numerous factual errors. (I think it's fair to say that the statements were factually incorrect, but I'm not so sure that they should be called "errors".)

"You assume Heritage has edited these pieces too," Pepper says. "But, lesson learned. There will be no future Heritage pieces published that don’t get thorough factchecking."

She might assume Heritage is concerned that its fellows push accurate facts and information. But let's just say, Moore's been doing this type of thing for a long time....

Why is This Outrageous?

Michelle Bachmann has walked back from her usual craziness, and is reporting that the government plans to subject undocumented minor children to medical experimentation. I know, I know... at first blush it does sound crazy -- like she's one of the inmates running the asylum. But if you stop to think about it, these kids are the first carriers of Ebola to be located in North America. They have calves the size of cantaloupes. They suffer from an odd sort of depression or anxiety disorder that leaves them looking as sad as a bus full of YMCA campers. How is it not completely sane, at least by Republican standards, to suggest that the government might want to look into that?

[Insert smiley here for the sarcasm-impaired.]

Think Tanks Follow the Money

Robert Samuelson states some facts about think tanks that, for some reason, aren't often voiced by elite columnists:

Most think tanks were once idea factories. They sponsored research from which policy proposals might flow. In the supply chain of political influence, their studies became the grist for politicians’ programs. But think-tank scholars didn’t lobby or campaign. Politicians and party groups did that. There was an unspoken, if murky, division of labor. This was [Stuart] Butler’s world.

But it’s disappearing, and many think tanks — liberal and conservative — have become more active politically. They are now message merchants, packaging and merchandizing agendas for a broader public. Heritage has long been aggressive in peddling its message and has become more so. In 2010, it created an affiliate — Heritage Action — that lobbied and mobilized grass-roots conservatives. In this world, I surmise, Butler’s role is diminished. By contrast, Brookings remains a bit more traditional....

What’s occurring is a subtle change to a major American institution. Heritage is not alone. To varying degrees, other think tanks face similar pressures. They will probably do less thinking and more politicking and self-promotion.

Probably? There's no probably about it.

Why would Brookings hire a right-wing ideologue like Stuart Butler? Why would Heritage hire Jim DeMint, a man nobody would mistake for a great thinker, as its leader? Follow the money.

I'm reminded of David Frum's (interesting, but flawed) novel, Patriots, in which a fictionalized think tank... I can't recall the name he used, but "The American Heritage Institute" might be about right... has relegated the old-timers who do traditional, nonpartisan research to its "founder's floor", while the newer "scholars" engage in little more than a free-for-all of politicking and money-grubbing.

The Charismatic Sociopath

Watching Kevin Spacey in House of Cards, depicting the scheming Frank Underwood, I can't help but wonder... how is it that the lead character of a show, a man who will literally lie, cheat and steal his way into the White House, maintains popularity with the show's fans? Spacey's character is unquestionably a sociopath or, if you prefer, afflicted with antisocial personality disorder. At times he strategically all-but-admits his sociopathy to other characters as a tool to win back their trust.

I've seen studies that indicate that people are quite good at spotting sociopaths, but if the sociopath is sufficiently charming will nonetheless allow themselves to succumb to his charms and confidence. Plenty of people saw through Bernie Madoff, but plenty more chose not to. I guess if you're smooth enough, charming enough, we can find a way to turn off our better judgment.

The Call for Constant Parental Supervision

Ross Douthat tells us about the night he had to walk home from baseball practice,

When I was about 9 years old, I graduated to a Little League whose diamonds were a few miles from our house, in a neighborhood that got rougher after dark. After one practice finished early, I ended up as the last kid left with the coach, waiting in the gloaming while he grumbled, looked at his watch and finally left me — to wait or walk home, I’m not sure which.

I started walking. Halfway there, along a busy road, my father picked me up. He called my coach, as furious as you would expect a protective parent to be; the coach, who probably grew up having fistfights in that neighborhood, gave as good as he got; I finished the season in a different league.

Here are two things that didn’t happen. My (lawyer) father did not call the police and have the coach arrested for reckless endangerment of a minor. And nobody who saw me picking my way home alone thought to call the police on my parents, or to charge them with neglect for letting their child slip free of perfect safety for an hour.

Douthat should include the coach among those who didn't call the police on his parents. I'm tempted to be more than a bit uncharitable in my interpretation of what Douthat means by "rougher after dark", and I suspect he's dressing up a rather mundane story, but New Haven is a big place. Douthat should consider something more: What the police would have been likely to do if they were summoned. Odds are they would have tried to help young Ross find his way home. Also, as Douthat compares his own experience to those in the news of late, it seems worth noting that he doesn't accuse his furious father of overreacting.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the argument that our nation has become overprotective of children, but that's in no small part due to the fact that changes in our culture have led to a car culture, a culture in which you can drive down a street or even go to a park and find yourself quite alone. When I was a kid, I could walk from my home to the neighborhood park, and I would see other kids (and adults) on the sidewalk on the way there, and plenty of kids (and adults) at the park when I arrived. For much of the summer, one of my cities of residence would have staff at the park, organizing activities and supervising a splash pool. I don't think that human nature has changed, that fewer adults would help a kid in distress, but instead think that the problem is that fewer adults are around to provide that type of support to somebody else's unsupervised child. The biggest difference between a person driving by in a car, then and now, is that back then drivers didn't have cell phones.

Douthat lists a series of stories in which parents were arrested or had their children removed from their care after leaving them unsupervised, often for short periods of time, or even for matters outside of their control.

Some of these cases have been reported, but some are first-person accounts, and in some the conduct of neighbors and the police and social workers may be more defensible than the anecdote suggests.

But the pattern — a “criminalization of parenthood,” in the words of The Washington Post’s Radley Balko — still looks slightly nightmarish, and there are forces at work here that we should recognize, name and resist.

Douthat identifies what he believes to be the three primary causes of this pattern, upper class helicopter parenting producing a culture in which people expect children to be supervised at all times, media-driven anxiety from stories overstating dangers to children, and an erosion of community and social trust. I suspect that there is something to the first argument, as parents who have the privilege of always supervising their children, whether directly or through caregivers, can easily lose track of how difficult it is for other parents to accomplish a similar level of supervision. No doubt, the media's horror stories inflate public fears and make people wary of letting their children go out alone. An erosion of community and social trust, though? It fits with Douthat's preconceptions, but I don't see it. Instead I see a significant change in context, with our society shifting to indoor activities and its becoming alien to see an unsupervised child at play in a park. It's not particularly realistic to expect that a person, catching a glimpse of a child who may be lost, to park their car, approach the child and investigate before deciding what their next step should be, even if we assume the child won't be calling the police on her own cell phone due to "stranger danger" lessons.

Let's also not forget the angry parent. Just as Douthat's dad tore into his coach with a criticism that must have amounted to, "How dare you leave the child (who we forgot to pick up) alone to find his way home after practice?" How many passersby want to encounter the angry parent who, upon seeing them approach a child who seemed to be unattended, approaches with a belligerent, "How dare you!" How many store owners, finding children wandering unsupervised in their aisles, want to take the risk of having the children wait in their offices while they try to track down parents? Particularly with the exaggerated but accepted "stranger danger" threat, and with the disproportionate anger that can come from some parents even when it was their own negligence that necessitated stranger involvement, it's no small wonder that some people choose to notify the police.

The problem at that point, also, is less that the police were notified, and more that prosecutors are willing to authorize charges over parental mistakes that cause no harm, where a stern lecture might suffice. And in that context, once again, we have a significant media role -- "Protective services was called about this child on three separate occasions, but did nothing...." Nobody wants to be the subject of that sort of headline, so the reflex has switched from a friendly drop-off and perhaps a warning about providing proper supervision to the initiation of legal proceedings.

Moving back to the complexity, for a moment, sometimes at the root of these cases you will find either that the reason for court intervention is more complicated than a news media sound bite might suggest, or can find another case that suggests why the police or a prosecutor don't find an act to be as harmless as the media coverage suggests. Leaving a "4-year-old in a locked, windows-cracked car for five minutes on a 50 degree day" may not pose a danger that the child will die from exposure to heat, but cars are not safe playgrounds for children. You'll find plenty of stories about near-misses and injuries resulting from a child's shifting a parked car into neutral or releasing a hand brake and, although car cigarette lighters are now something of a rarity, of children injuring themselves with items left inside the car.

I'm also reminded of a time when one of my clients decided to bring his girlfriend's four-year-old child to court, on a date that he expected to be sentenced to jail. The judge drew the conclusion that the child was present as an insurance policy, inferring that the defendant thought he might not be sent to jail if that meant that somebody else would have to take care of the child. The judge sentenced the defendant to jail and was prepared to call protective services. I offered to try to find the child's mother and, after several hours and the leaving of countless messages, while ultimately delivering the child to his grandmother, was not particularly impressed that I had done the child any great favor by keeping protective services out of his situation. As my experience with that type of case has expanded, I would be surprised if the child had not already been the subject of a protective services investigation. I'll say this: He was a remarkably well-behaved child who handled the situation very well, and he deserved a better life than the one he has likely since experienced.

Douthat notes that work requirements for welfare recipients can result in contexts in which "a single mother [is] behind a fast-food counter while her kid is out of school". Douthat's childhood was apparently sufficiently sheltered that he is not aware that most single mothers are neither on welfare nor working fast food jobs, but that aside he raises a fair observation about the inherent tension within Republican views on the subject:

This last issue presents a distinctive challenge to conservatives like me, who believe such work requirements are essential. If we want women like Debra Harrell to take jobs instead of welfare, we have to also find a way to defend their liberty as parents, instead of expecting them to hover like helicopters and then literally arresting them if they don’t.

And the solution is.... to be continued? What an unfortunate moment for Douthat to have run out of space for his column.

If you want a culture in which children can play in public, walk to school, take urban public transportation and the like, without parental supervision and without raising any concerns or eyebrows, you need to focus less on nebulous notions of "community and social trust", and focus much more on getting a population of kids and parents back on the streets such that it's not unusual for a child (of appropriate age and maturity) to engage in public activities without supervision, and where there's a natural population of people on the streets and in the parks who will react to any danger the child might face. Scolding people for not putting their lives on hold to investigate a child's status before notifying the police is not an approach that is likely to solve anything. With the manner in which our society has evolved to one of indoor activities and empty public spaces, I'm not sure that any generation of kids in the foreseeable future is going to enjoy the sort of liberty I had as a child, to go to a park, walk to school, ride my bicycle around town, take public transportation and the like, without any thought of parental supervision.

Obamacare Works, Period

The other day, Reihan Salam was on Real Time, but didn't manage to air all of his anti-Obamacare tropes before the host switched to a different subject. One he did manage to voice is the suggestion that the 74% of Republicans who like their benefits under their PPACA health insurance policies are wrong. I'm not sure how the logic of that argument works, as they either like their benefits or they don't. Perhaps he means that they're wrong in principle, as they should instead prefer the status quo ante or some unidentified alternative program, but endorsing that position would suggest that Salam doesn't think the program represents good policy even if it provides people with what they assert to be good health insurance coverage.

Salam did suggest that the only reason Obamacare is working is because it is subsidized. In a sense that's true, as it is the subsidies that help create the volume of enrollees necessary to create the large risk pools that allow the program to work, enrolling all applicants without regard to preexisting conditions. But outside of that narrow context, Salam is wrong. As somebody who has purchased a PPACA policy without a subsidy, I can attest that I was able to choose and enjoy a policy that provides coverage superior to anything I was able to purchase as an individual consumer prior to the Act's effective date, and that the price of the policy was reasonable even without a subsidy. The manner in which the PPACA's policies are priced for dependents allowed me to obtain coverage comparable to that which I had previously received through COBRA but at a lower price.

Although the pre-PPACA policy I had purchased to cover the period between the expiration of my COBRA eligibility and January 1, 2014, cost less than my PPACA-compliant policy, it also offered far less. I also didn't have to try to remember years of detailed medical information which the insurance company could use to find pretextual reasons to increase my rates or deny care. I recognize that many Republicans, perhaps including Salam, believe that having inadequate health insurance coverage is a feature, not a bug, forcing people to pay a greater portion or all of the cost of certain basic care, mental health care, addiction treatment and the like, and that the ideal health insurance policy involves a HSA and only catastrophic insurance coverage, I would have a greater appreciation for that argument if an appreciable number of its advocates were willing to walk the walk -- legislate or contract away their own health insurance benefits for the inadequate coverage they wish to foist off on the rest of the country.

Salam suggested that there is inequity in having a multi-tiered health insurance system, with Medicare being less attractive than PPACA plans, which he asserted are less attractive than employer-sponsored plans. It's important to note that I've seen employer-sponsored plans that are far less attractive than most plans available under the PPACA, and the plan I purchased was quite comparable to the employer-sponsored plan I had been continuing through COBRA, so I don't find his argument of inequity between employer-sponsored plans and PPACA plans to be particularly compelling. As for Medicare offering less than private health insurance, I see no evidence that the Republican Party at large views that as a problem that needs to be fixed. A party whose governors have largely chosen to grandstand, harming their states and large numbers of their constituents by refusing to expand Medicaid. Inequities exist, but it's not clear that we should prioritize their elimination over other healthcare reforms, or even that the people want inequities removed as opposed to the establishment of a reasonable minimum for what health insurance plans must offer.

Typical Republican alternatives to the PPACA have involved either throwing everybody into the individual market, with low-coverage catastrophic insurance and HSAs, or a voucher system where (if you qualify) you get a voucher or tax credit with which you are to pay for your insurance and fund your uninsured care. Those proposals bring back some of the worst aspects of the former system, at best foisting those previously deemed uninsurable or who would face staggering insurance costs due to pre-existing conditions into government programs -- after all, why should we expect health insurance companies insure sick people when that cost can be borne by the taxpayer? To the extent that the Republicans attempt to bridge the gap between the Gingrich-style plans and the PPACA, including large risk pools and exchanges, but most notably preventing insurance companies from raising premiums for people with pre-existing conditions, the more necessary it becomes to impose some form of mandate -- and even if you automatically enroll people in insurance while using the voucher or subsidy they left unused, such that you can argue that "It's not a mandate", somebody has to foot the bill.

On the whole, Salam is one of the more honest and thoughtful commentators on the Republican side. I would like to see him address the issue of health care in light of his abilities. We can start with the fact that there is no actual Republican health insurance reform that is being seriously advanced within the party. We can add to that, the fact that reforms that will shake the system are likely to cause people to lose their current insurance, whether that occurs abruptly or as a new policy is phased in. In other words, unless the Republican Party wants to take an enormous political risk that implicates all of its anti-Obamacare rhetoric, we're looking at incremental reforms, not the reinvention of health insurance and the healthcare market. Within that context, what reform ideas would Salam propose that have any chance of getting passed by the Republican majority in the House, let alone becoming law? If the answer is, "None", then he's reinforcing what many, and probably most supporters of the PPACA already acknowledge -- as flawed as the law may be, it's the best law that could get through Congress.

Sometimes, When Everybody Thinks Your Analysis is Bad....

...It's because your work actually is bad.

I haven't paid any particular attention to The Independent's analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but this self-serving headline caught my eye: When both Palestinians and Israelis think we are biased, we must be doing something right. While it is true that partisans will rarely be satisfied with objective coverage of an issue that is close to their hearts, being attacked from both sides sometimes truly means that your coverage is inadequate or incompetent. If you want to convince the partisans that your position is balanced, it makes little sense to predicate your argument with a claim that is untrue on its face.

Too Many Desperate Law School Grads Spoil the Broth....

I learned something interesting from an executive from a large health care organization, the other day. She receives 200-300 job applications for any available position within her organization -- not much of a surprise given the economy and the fact that it's an attractive employer. But she indicated also that, for a lot of positions, they are flooded with applications from recent law school graduates -- to the point that hitting the entry for "law school" toward the top of somebody's résumé results in a near-automatic rejection of the application. (Odds are that the initial screening is done by computer....) It's not that a law school graduate with an appropriate job history or qualifications couldn't do some of the posted jobs, or couldn't learn the position over time. It's that so many desperate law grads are applying for the jobs that hitting a reference to law school or a "J.D." suggests that there's a very low possibility that the candidate is qualified for the position as posted.

No matter what you hear from people who claim that the law degree is a flexible degree that allows you do do more than practice law, unless you have confirmed both that it's true for the industry in which you hope to work and that the industry is hiring recent law grads, don't believe it -- and if you find such an industry, consider how small it is and how few graduates they hire before choosing law school as a path to employment. If you're interested in working in an industry that does not regularly hire people with law degrees, find out what degrees they prefer and get one of those degrees instead of a J.D.

I'm not optimistic about the future of the legal profession, or the potential for law school graduates who aren't able (or aren't willing) to pursue BigLaw careers to find remunerative work in smaller legal practices. Some will manage to do so, either starting their own firms or finding their way into legal jobs that allow them to create a foundation for later promotion or lateral moves. But from what I see, despite the reduced numbers of students attending law school, the future of the profession doesn't look particularly bright -- and if you're not going to end up working in law, in my opinion for most fields your three years of law school are either going to be a neutral or a detriment.

Golf is the Game of Presidents, So Get Over It

Presidents play golf.... Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter (although after his presidency), Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama.... Dana Milbank knows this fact, but nonetheless....

On June 14, Sunni rebels threatened Baghdad after seizing much of Iraq — and President Obama fearlessly played a round at the Sunnylands Golf Course in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

The next day, the militants posted pictures of their mass execution of Shiite members of Iraq’s security forces — and Obama boldly teed off again, at Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s Rancho Mirage estate.

These split-screen scenes were reminiscent of the weekend in March when Russia was about to annex Crimea. Obama played golf both Saturday and Sunday at Key Largo, Fla.’s Ocean Reef resort with former NBA star Alonzo Mourning and former NFL player Ahmad Rashad.

It’s enough to make one wish the president would take up a different pastime — like, say, stamp collecting.

Yes, a president needs down time. And, yes, he can run the country whether he’s in a sand trap or the Situation Room. But Obama’s golf habit needlessly hands his critics a gimme.

Only if reporters like Milbank treat it as a serious accusation, rather than dismissing it as tripe.

Former vice president Dick Cheney, writing in the Wall Street Journal with his daughter Liz, complained: “Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing.” House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers gave a TV interview asking Obama to “please come back from the golf course” and find an Iraq solution.

An appropriate response to Rogers might be, "What do you imagine that the President might do to solve Iraq's problems that he is not already doing?" That would go for the Cheneys as well, but the absurdity of the Cheney accusation triggered another memory in Milbank:

I was one of the many who had fun with George W. Bush’s classic tee shot in 2002: “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.” But as The Post’s Colby Itkowitz noted, Bush hung up his spikes after the Iraq invasion. (He busied himself with other leisure pursuits, such as clearing brush.)

Bush earned himself the jokes not by playing golf, but by foolishly adding the "Now watch this drive" line to what should have been a serious response to a serious issue. Had Bush stopped before that final sentence, it would have been just another day on the golf course. Don't take it from me -- take it from Milbank:

Don't watch this drive. In his first three years in office, Bush played golf 16 times. But, according to the White House's unofficial statistician, CBS News's Mark Knoller, Bush has not teed off since Oct. 13, 2003. Some muse that Bush was cowed by filmmaker Michael Moore's mocking of Bush's golf habit in "Fahrenheit 9/11" which featured footage of Bush mixing remarks on Middle East violence with a command to "watch this drive." But Bush's golf ban far predates the Moore film and seems to coincide with Bush's discovery of mountain biking -- a better sport for appealing to the common man.

For goodness sake, even Dwight Eisenhower played golf. Woodrow Wilson played golf. Harry Truman didn't play golf at all, so there's no inference to be drawn from his abstention. And really -- the staged brush clearing photo ops on the ranch G.W. sold immediately upon retiring from the White House? Milbank believed that stuff?

As former Texas agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower, who dubbed the Crawford digs a "ranchette," said in 2004, "Bush is always inviting the media out to take pictures of him clearing brush. In my experience real ranchers spend virtually no time clearing brush. They're usually tending cattle....the cattle you see as part of the photo op aren't even his. They're somebody else's that he rents the land to."

Milbank complains,

The image problem isn’t from leisure activity per se but the type of leisure activity. A majority of Americans now believes that Obama doesn’t understand their problems, and images of him playing golf — perceived, fairly or not, as a rich man’s game — confirms this out-of-touch reputation.

Yet Reagan was a man of the people, and G.W. was a guy you would want to drink a beer with.... Go figure. Maybe Milbank would have the President take up a real "man of the people" hobby, like watercolor portraiture?

This is similar to the problem that dogged Mitt Romney, and now Hillary Clinton. The Post’s Philip Rucker this week noted that influential Democrats are concerned that her “rarefied, cloistered lifestyle could jeopardize the Democratic Party’s historic edge with the middle class.”

Wait... this happened because Hillary Clinton plays too much golf? Because if not, perhaps opportunistic demagogues like Rogers and Cheney aren't sincere in their mention of golf, but are using it as a basis for a criticism that they would be making no matter what the President were doing in his leisure time. Ya think? And as for Mitt Romney, he doesn't play golf, either... so it's actually possible to be perceived as elitist and out-of-touch without playing golf? Who would have thought....

Perhaps this is the real problem....

The game has driven another wedge between the president and White House reporters who, during their turns on pool duty, chronicle with envy his weekly outings with friends and aides.

“Beautiful day for hitting the links,” the Washington Examiner’s Susan Crabtree wrote from Fort Belvoir. “Unfortunately pool is headed to the base rec center for the duration.”

“Looked like a nice place to play golf,” wrote the Houston Chronicle’s Kevin Diaz from the “exclusive” Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, “at least from the maintenance shed where pool spent the day.”

How... moving. It must be tough to have to watch the President from a distance, rather than getting an up-close view as you're handed packaged talking points and photo ops.

Heck, if Iraq is so much more serious than golf, why are reporters following the President to a golf course where they know they won't get a story? Why is Milbank writing a story about those poor, unfortunate reporters? Think of all the shoe leather and column inches they could be devoting to stories on Iraq! I have to ask, though, did Milbank offer similar sympathy to White House reporters when they watched G.W. race off on his mountain bike?

I know that he has columns to write and deadlines to meet, but when his game is on Milbank can do so much better than this.

The Fantasy of Arming Secular Syrian Dissidents

A consistent argument made by critics of the Obama Administration is that the Administration should have somehow identified, trained and armed secular, western-friendly factions in Syria, and that this would have changed the balance of power in that nation's civil war. The concepts for what the outcome might be seem to vary with the person making the argument, and perhaps also with the time of day. The pure fantasists seem to believe that the western-backed factions could have defeated Assad's government, crushed Islamist factions, and instituted a secular, pro-western government in Syria. A more moderate argument is that these secular factions would have fared so well in battle that they would have forced both the Assad government and the radical factions to the negotiating table where they would hash out an agreement for a new, more inclusive Syrian government, also more friendly to the west. There's also the nebulous argument that boils down to, "I have no idea what would have happened, but we should have done it anyway", or perhaps, "Whatever choice the Obama Administration makes, I'm going to argue that it should have done something else."

Do you recall how last year, John McCain went to Syria and met with various groups that he ostensibly would have had the U.S. arm and back in an effort to defeat the Assad regime? How well did that go, again? Yes, McCain had lots of excuses and regrets over meeting terrorists and kidnappers -- but ISIS appears to view McCain's visit as a propaganda coup. I guess his position is that the U.S. would have done a much better job of identifying western-friendly factions than he did, and would have avoided arming the very factions with which he posed for photos, so as to by now have defeated those factions? Could any part of McCain's Syria policy survive outside of the realm of fantasy?

One thing I don't hear much about is who these secular, pro-western Syrian fighters are, how many there are, how we know that they are truly committed to a more balanced view of the west, why we believe that arming and training them will actually shift the balance in the Syrian civil war, and how they will unite a post-war Syria. Which is to say, the argument for arming these factions is made without addressing any of the relevant concerns. One of the huge concerns held by western nations and Israel is that arms given to factions believed to be friendly to the U.S. could end up in the hands of factions that are hostile to U.S. interests -- just as happened when ISIS fighters went into Iraq and confronted that nation's army. Whatever we make of the incompetence of Iraq's Maliki administration, if the best trained army in the region turns tail and runs from a few thousand ISIS fighters, why are we to believe that the unidentified and as-of-yet untrained Syrian dissident factions would have stood, fought, and defeated ISIS?

The essence of the fantasy is that we could have identified so many pro-western factions, and trained and armed them so effectively, that they would have crushed groups like ISIS. That argument defies logic. ISIS was active in Iraq, under its former name, before essentially withdrawing to Syria following the last outbreak of civil war. Why should we believe that they would remain in Syria and fight to the last man, rather than figuring out that they had much more friendly and more fertile ground for their activities back in Iraq? The position that they would have stayed in Syrian until they were wiped out defies not only basic logic, but the experience of what terrorist organizations do when they face too much pressure in one location. It's reasonable to infer that under that particular fantasy scenario, at best ISIS would have withdrawn to a third country, and at worst they would have gone into Iraq albeit possibly on a different schedule.

Other than as a tool to criticize the Obama Administration, where is the evidence that arming dissident groups. beyond those efforts actually made over the past three years, could have made a difference in Syria or Iraq?

The Fantasy of a Residual Force in Iraq

One of the comments I frequently hear is that the Obama Administration should somehow have convinced the Maliki government to enter into a new status of forced agreement that would have kept a residual U.S. force in place in Iraq for years, perhaps forever, with the express or implied argument that such a residual force would have somehow overcome sectarian tensions within the country and prevented a renewed civil war. Many of those making the argument fail to mention the fact that the withdrawal date that was followed by President Obama was negotiated by President Bush. I appreciate Tom Ricks' position on a residual force, specifically that although he had thought it would have been a good idea at the time, if possible, in retrospect it would have been a costly mistake -- with the present sectarian warfare, U.S. forces would have required significant reinforcement, or would have had to withdraw from combat, with either of those outcomes being worse for the U.S. than leaving the conflict to the incompetent hands of the Iraqi army.

At the time the Obama Administration was attempting to negotiate a new status of forces agreement, the American public didn't want to keep combat troops in Iraq, the Iraqi public didn't want our forces there, and the Maliki government also wanted the U.S. out. The argument that President Obama could have used his powers of persuasion to maintain a significant presence of U.S. troops, despite the opposition of everybody affected by the decision, is an interesting one, but to me it exists only in the realm of fantasy. There's nothing surprising about ethnic tensions in Iraq, nor that the actions of the Maliki government have worsened ethnic tensions.

It's reasonable to infer that if Maliki foresaw this type of breakdown and renewed civil war, to the extent that a U.S. military presence would have prevented the problem he would have wanted U.S. forces to remain. Given his administration's secular favoritism, cronyism, and incompetence in its management of the Iraqi army, it's reasonable to infer that one looming factor in his wanting U.S. combat forces out was that they might delay or prevent the implementation of his plans -- plans to reward his cronies and advance a sectarian form of government. Nothing about Maliki should have been a big surprise by the time U.S. combat forces left Iraq, so where's the evidence that Maliki would have changed his mind, upsetting the Iraqi people and alienating his friends in Iran, had Obama said "pretty please", perhaps "with sugar on top"?

Contrary to the apparent beliefs of the fantasists, I don't believe that the U.S. presence would have delayed civil war forever, or even for more than a couple of years (if that). Why not? Because Iraq experienced a civil war during active U.S. military occupation, with essentially the same parties fighting it out. The war, occupation and "surge" put a band-aid on the civil conflict, covering a festering wound. It would have taken true commitment to the cause for a central government to even partially heal that wound and, if we're honest, the Bush Administration knew from the earliest days of Maliki's governance that the Maliki was not the man for that job.

For some of the advocates of a residual force, such as John McCain, the position seems rooted in traditional wars between nation states. The U.S. is involved in a war and, when the war ends, it leaves a significant military presence in the nation where operations occurred in order to secure that nation from a potentially or overtly hostile neighbor. McCain apparently sees no distinction between wars between nation states and civil wars, despite his own experiences in Vietnam both during and after the war. Suffice to say, there's an enormous difference between maintaining a military force that is supposed to keep a lid on civil unrest and ethnic tensions, and one that sits near a border to intimidate a neighboring nation out of trying to cross that line.

Other than dragging the U.S. back into an Iraqi civil war, something few other than perhaps John McCain would actually favor, what would have been the benefit of a residual force? The best case scenario seems to be that the U.S. presence would have delayed the inevitable, but the worst case scenarios that Ricks describes seem far more likely.

Roger Cohen's Fantasy of Air Power and Influence

Come on, Roger -- you know better than this.

There was a moment in the Syrian conflict when decisive military aid to the opposition could have changed Assad’s calculation. President Obama mouthed vague promises of arms and allowed Assad to regroup.

First, you're awfully mealy-mouthed in your claim.... "decisive military aid" (whatever that is) could have (but might not have) changed Assad's "calculation" (presumably not to sue for peace, and broker some sort of imagined, long-term peace deal that made nice with some of the dissident groups, disarmed other factions like ISIS and stabilized his country). The conceit here seems to be that there's a magical point that the U.S. could have caused the warring parties to reach where the opposition factions would not have been quite strong enough to topple Assad, but where he would have been sufficiently weakened to be convinced to give them enough of what they wanted to lay down their arms and unite behind his reformed government. It's an interesting fantasy, but not one I think could have been turned into reality. Assad and his military would not want to relinquish power to their blood enemies, nor would those enemies happily again subject themselves to his rule (or that of his hand-picked successor, if part of the fantasy is that he agrees to step down).

Cohen buys very strongly into the notion that, as a bombing campaign appears to have tipped the balance in the Bosnian conflict, it's a tool that can magically change the balance favorably to U.S. interests in pretty much any conflict. Drop enough bombs from a safe altitude and the facts on the ground inexorably change in your favor. Cohen is apparently unaware of the basic facts of the conflict in Bosnia. That was not a conflict that ended based on air strikes alone, no boots on the ground, but was a conflict that involved a significant deployment of ground forces to cement and maintain the peace. The initial troops were NATO forces, and those troops were eventually replaced by E.U. forces. Where does Cohen believe that the troops will come from to secure a post-bombing peace accord in Syria, even if we assume that the fantasy scenario would be achievable? Is there a single western nation that is interested in committing troops to such a venture?

Further, even during the bombing campaign, it was key that Bosnian and Croatian ground forces were able to go on the offensive. While Cohen seems to believe that various Syrian opposition groups might fill that role, he doesn't identify which ones or how we could be sure that the ones who ended up in the leadership of a theoretical alliance of opposition groups would be the factions we would want to prevail. You don't have to look past what is presently happening in Iraq to recognize that some of the groups operating out of Syria are hostile to U.S. interests, nor what happens when you arm a weak group and a stronger, anti-western faction steamrolls them and takes their U.S.-provided arms. The lesson of Bosnia may be that a western air campaign can help achieve balance between two armed factions fighting on the ground below, but it should be recalled that victory still required the two warring sides on the ground to be roughly equivalent in strength.

More than that, we have a fantasy of finding huge numbers of trustworthy, U.S.-friendly factions that the U.S. can arm, that can be trusted to work together against the government, to hold onto those arms, and to ultimately either so threaten the Assad government as to force it to become more inclusive and progressive (and friendly to the west) or to topple it and impose a more progressive, pro-west government. I'm reminded of G.W. Bush's joke, where he pretended to search for Iraqi WMDs in the Oval Office -- where are we supposed to find these factions, and in those numbers?

And that's not where the silliness ends,

Force in the absence of a sustained political and diplomatic strategy leads nowhere. This has been Obama’s failure in Afghanistan, where the United States never invested much capital in a diplomatic solution involving negotiation with the Taliban; and in Iraq, where the president allowed American forces to withdraw without leveraging the massive U.S. investment there into ensuring that the sectarian Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki reached out to the Sunnis and Kurds.

What does Cohen believe would happen if the Obama Administration openly declared that it was in negotiations with the Taliban, and hoped to integrate the Taliban into the Iraqi government? Was Cohen asleep during the Bowe Bergdahl foofaraw, in which Republicans couldn't shove themselves before cameras quickly enough to declare that the Taliban is a terrorist organization with which we should have no dealings at all? Did he miss the dire warnings that five Talibani prisoners, having been released, were going to pose a grave and continuing threat to the safety of the United States? Did he miss that, behind the release of Bergdahl, it is inescapable that negotiations did involve the Taliban? We should be able to infer from those facts that, at least at some level, the U.S. is negotiating with the Taliban and that the negotiations likely do involve trying to keep it from attempting to destabilize or overthrow the Afghan government, but that it would be ridiculously stupid for the Obama Administration to publicly announce that any such negotiations are occurring.

As for the president "allowing" U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq, Cohen seems to have scrubbed from his memory banks the fact that George W. Bush negotiated the withdrawal date for combat forces, and that the Iraqi government was not willing to enter into a new status of forces agreement with the immunity clauses required by the United States for a continued military presence. What would Cohen have had Obama do? Disregard the concerns of the military, ignore the wishes of the sovereign government of Iraq, and keep the forces in place? I'm also reminded of Tom Ricks' concession that, although he initially wished that the U.S. could have kept forces in Iraq, in hindsight it's a good thing that the U.S. did not as it would presently be in the position of having to massively reinforce that deployment or withdrawing -- neither of which are good outcomes. Cohen seems to disagree -- so he would have us send tens of thousands of combat troops into Iraq to secure the Sunni areas were ISIS operates, even as Iraq's own army chooses to turn and run?

The past months have constituted a low point in American foreign policy: the rampage by the Sunni fanatics of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria through wide swathes of Iraq; President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and successful troublemaking in eastern Ukraine; Syria’s descent into ever further horror; China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea; the failure of U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Sure, but it's a bit much to imagine that the president could have done much on any of those fronts. The problems in Iraq are borne of the final status of forces agreement, negotiated by G.W. Bush, and the poor governance of the Shiite leadership of Iraq, the leadership of a government that formed and came to power under G.W. Bush. It was entirely predictable that Maliki's actions would eventually create a crisis -- it was much less a question of "if" than "when". As for Putin's actions in Crimea, what use of forced does Cohen imagine would have deterred him? The same sort of chest-thumping machismo that didn't deter Putin from taking military action in Georgia when G.W. Bush was President? Does Cohen believe that the U.S. can credibly threaten China with military reprisals? Does Cohen believe that the "Israeli-Palestinian talks" had any chance of success under Prime Minister Netanyahu, or that there was some magical reason to believe that this was the one time that doing the same thing over and over again would achieve a different outcome? And if it's a show of military force that makes the difference, how did G.W. Bush's "roadmap" work out, back when he was eagerly starting wars in the Middle East?

Even leaving aside the fact that Cohen's imagined outcome of a bombing campaign is fantastical, the notion that all of these events can be pinned on Obama because he didn't bomb Syria is absurd. One could make a similar list of bad events under G.W. Bush -- North Korea and Pakistan going nuclear, the abject failure of his Israel-Palestine peace initiative, the catastrophic failure of his policies in Libya, China's actions in the South China Sea to assert sovereignty over those waters (no, they're not new), Putin carving territories out of Georgia.... Should we mention the incompetence that led Iraq into civil war, or the failure to stabilize Afghanistan? The list goes on.

Fundamentally, Cohen seems to have lost track both of history and of the limits of what happens when you apply force (particularly when you do so in a half-hearted manner, such as "Let's do airstrikes and see what happens, but make abundantly clear we're never going to have boots on the ground") in parts of the world -- in this case, parts of the world that are not exactly sympathetic to U.S. foreign policy interests. He falls into a long line of armchair commentators who seem to believe that people on the ground don't mind being bombed, as long as those bombs are delivered by the U.S. Air Force or NATO. Were he to pay better attention to his history, it's difficult to believe that he would have written that column.

David Brooks Plays His Part... Badly

David Brooks has "earned" the reputation of being a moderate Republican by taking the latest Republican talking points, removing their most wild-eyed elements, then adding his own modest spin to them before regurgitating them into a column. But today he plays the role of stenographer,

American troops left in 2011. President Obama said the Iraq war was over. Administration officials foresaw nothing worse than a low-boil insurgency in the region.

Almost immediately things began to deteriorate. There were no advisers left to restrain Maliki’s sectarian tendencies. The American efforts to professionalize the Iraqi Army came undone.

This slide toward civil war was predicted, not only by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham and writers like Max Boot, but also within the military. The resurgent sectarian violence gave fuel to fears that the entire region might be engaged in one big war, a sprawling Sunni-Shiite conflict that would cross borders and engulf tens of millions.

Brooks should consult Daniel Larison, as not only is Larison a better thinker than Brooks, he is prolific. Odds are Larison will have shared several insights about this type of claim while Brooks is still polishing the words of his biweekly column. Case in point,

Many of the most common reactions to the recent gains made by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have been badly mistaken. Complaints that the U.S. “failed” to retain a residual force in Iraq conveniently ignore that the Iraqi government and people were against allowing this, so that was never a realistic option. They also overlook that a continued U.S. military presence would likely not have been able to prevent ISIS’ recent territorial gains, but would almost certainly have provoked a new insurgency that targeted American soldiers. It is extremely doubtful that a small U.S. force would have given Washington any meaningful leverage to force Maliki to change the way that he governs. Maliki was already governing in a sectarian and semi-authoritarian manner when the U.S. had a major military presence in the country, so it seems clear that retaining a smaller presence would have had no effect on him and his allies. It is even more doubtful that the U.S. would use this leverage if it had it.

This is the trouble with trying to condition future aid on improvements in Maliki’s behavior: when push comes to shove, the U.S. usually refuses to cut off aid because it doesn’t want to “abandon” its client. We trick ourselves into thinking that propping up the client is extremely important to us, which is somehow supposed to justify his abuses and our endless enabling of them. The client knows this and continues to behave however he pleases. Lynch points out that Maliki will probably agree to all sorts of concessions now in order to acquire the aid he seeks, but will forget all about this once the immediate crisis is over....

Of course, Brooks' "solution" is to ignore all of that and to pretend that we can somehow magically support Maliki and thereby end the conflict and sustain a united Iraq.... so Brooks' ideal would be for Maliki, the U.S., and the ayatollahs of Iran to work hand-in-hand to preserve Iraq's union. What could possibly go wrong....

It is not too late to help Syrian moderates.

By doing what, David? And please -- specifically identify they Syrian moderates that, with additional backing, not only have a chance of victory in the Syrian civil war but of creating and sustaining a regime that isn't overtly hostile to the United States, and follow up by explaining exactly what "help" we would be offering. Please explain why we won't see the same sort of catastrophe we're witnessing in Iraq, where Iraq's soldiers have scurried away and left their U.S.-supplied munitions for factions that are hostile to U.S. interests. But really, there's no chance of your doing any of that, is there. You're just regurgitating a Republican talking point.

And Iraq?

In Iraq, the answer is not to send troops back in. It is to provide Maliki help in exchange for concrete measures to reduce sectarian tensions. The Iraqi government could empower regional governments, acknowledging the nation’s diversity. Maliki could re-professionalize the Army. The Constitution could impose term limits on prime ministers.

There are two ways to interpret that proposal. The first is as a pipe dream -- the notion that all the u.S. has to do is offer some unspecified form of "help" to Maliki and he'll magically inspire his army to turn back around and fight the factions from which it just fled, thereafter maintaining peace and security within the context of a much more inclusive, reformed national government. The second is that the U.S. will help broker a de facto partitioning of Iraq into semi-autonomous Sunni and Shiite zones, while supporting a decades-long process of trying to turn Iraq into a reasonably stable nation with a reasonably competent government and military -- thats not exactly the sort of proposal one makes with the thought of bringing an immediate end to a civil war.

It's funny how in repeating the attack point against President Obama that he should have left more troops in Iraq, something that would at best have forestalled this type of uprising, Brooks simultaneously rules out having U.S. forces go back into Iraq to put down the uprising. Brooks is smart enough to recognize that the President's decision was in fact correct under the circumstances. He may even be smart enough to recognize that our wish to maintain Iraq as a unified nation doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the Iraqis don't share that goal. But he's pretty clearly anticipating that his readers won't be smart enough to notice the contradiction inherent to his attack on the President.

Like Michael Gerson, Brooks is suddenly fond of the word "stupid"... perhaps because they're transcribing the same talking points?

The president says his doctrine is don’t do stupid stuff. Sometimes withdrawal is the stupidest thing of all.

But again, that particular attack line has already been refuted by Larison. Brooks can complain that withdrawal was "stupid", but don't look to him to explain how any other option was either better or available. Also, don't think too hard about his suggestion that we could magically solve this crisis if only we had the U.S. forces present in Iraq that he explicitly does not want to send back to Iraq.

The Danger of Providing Arms to Civil War Combatants

David Ignatius shares an update about the situation in Iraq,

ISIS forces have swept south along Highway 1 from Mosul, swelling their ranks by liberating 2,000 to 3,000 jihadist fighters from a prison in Nineveh province. The jihadists have captured so much U.S.-made equipment that it’s reportedly hard to distinguish friend from foe along the chaotic highway south.

Those who argue that we should throw powerful weapons to the "least worst" of the Syrian rebel factions had best keep in mind how quickly those arms can end up in the wrong hands.

Ignatius closes with an odd accusation,

Restitching the fabric of Iraq and Syria may be Mission Impossible. But with its focus on counterterrorism and weapons supplies, the Obama administration seems to have decided to treat the region simply as a shooting gallery.

As opposed to... doing what? Perhaps he's alluding to what had seemed to be a rhetorical question,

Can [the United States and its allies] convene a regional peace conference — which would seek to reconcile Sunni and Shiite forces and their key backers, Saudi Arabia and Iran — in some new security architecture?

Can they convene such a conference? I have every reason to believe that they can find a nice conference center, a printer who can engrave some attractive invitations, and a decent caterer. But the real question is, would such a conference accomplish anything? I suspect that, even at his most optimistic, Ignatius would admit that the odds of any material progress are vanishingly small.