Congress Needs to Do Its Job

Daniel Larison is writing about one of his pet peeves:

Virginia Sen. Tim] Kaine’s point [on Congressional abdication and presidential overreach] is well-taken, and this is one more reason why the war against ISIS needs to be debated and voted on in spite of the president’s pretense that he doesn’t need Congressional approval. It is profoundly wrong to commit the U.S. to military action without having first considered the merits of the operation publicly and deliberately, but there is something even worse. It is even worse to commit the U.S. to a war that isn’t necessary for American security whether Congress has gone through the motions of a debate or not.... [Kaine is correct that Congress mustn’t be permitted to keep dodging its responsibilities on matters of war, and presidents mustn’t be allowed to wage wars without Congressional approval, but it’s even more important that members of Congress break the habit of signing off on the latest elective war. It is Congress’ habitual deference to bad presidential judgment on matters of war that is even more appalling than its refusal to debate and vote on the wars presidents choose to start. That can’t be fixed without first reviving Congress’ role in the process, but simply getting Congress to debate and vote on these wars is also woefully insufficient.

When I read Larison's complaint about a Congress that refuses to debate war, or that is excessively deferential to requests for the authorization to start or continue a war, I couldn't help but think of Ross Douthat's complaint that the constitution will be ruined if a Democratic president follows the lead of past Republican presidents and achieves by executive order what Congress has failed to accomplish through legislation. The sort of, "Wars, drones, security state, black hole prisons, torture, whatever.... immigration is serious argument that, to me, represents the worst form of missing the forest for the trees. Congress can pass legislation in response to an executive order, often long before the order takes effect. Congress can't unstart a war.

There is no hypocrisy in Larison's criticism of President Obama. Larison has consistently argued against the type of overreach he describes in Obama's actions. He is an established opponent of military adventurism and wars of choice. He's correct, in my opinion, that the nation would be well-served by Congress doing its job, by not turning a blind eye to unilateral military action by the President or granting its blessing after-the-fact. Larison is unimpressed with past Congressional debates over war authorization, and understandably so, but I'm not sure what the remedy would be short of electing different representatives.

My first reacton to Douthat's over-the-top rhetoric on how immigration reform could destroy our way of life (I exaggerate slightly) was that it was another example of Douthat writing about something that he doesn't understand. The blog posts that follow his editorials sometimes suggest to me that he encounters the basic facts and competing interpretations for the first time only after he publishes an editorial, with his making a strong, subsequent effort to reconcile the facts with his already-established opinion. In relation to unilateral war action, I found this complaint about the President's decision to go to Congress before waging war on Syria:

It would be a good thing for the country if the older constitutional norms regained some force – if we declared war in cases where we now issue so-called authorizations for the use of military force, and issued authorizations in situations where presidents of both parties claim the power to act with no congressional blessing whatsoever. But when a constitutional power atrophies, it’s extremely unlikely to be restored through the kind of last-minute, poorly-thought-out, and self-undermining approach that the White House has taken in this case.

You see, in Douthat's mind the President should have spent months reminding Congress that it has a role in debating the wisdom of involving a nation in a war, and should not have surprised them at the last minute by suggesting that they fulfill their constitutionally defined role. Douthat carries on at some length about legality and morality, bou don't have to spend much time reading between the lines to see what Douthat is actually thinking: He supported intervention in Syria, Congress voted against it, and it was thus wrong for the President to have gone to Congress.

Going to Congress is entirely optional, and it’s what presidents do when they’re pitching wars that they themselves don’t fully believe in, and need to rebuild credibility squandered by their own fumbling and failed alliance management. What future White House would look at that example and see a path worth following?

You see, where the Congress specifically addresses and issue and dictates how wars are to be declared, it is nothing short of weakness for a President to give anything more than lip service to those requirements. That's certainly not what Douthat would want a future president to do. You only destroy the constitution by acting in a legal manner, consistent with its terms, in the face of Congressional inaction, and in a context in which Congress is free to legislate on the issue, not by ignoring its explicit terms and launching wars that cannot be undone.

Douthat also complains,

Ah, you might say, but if Congress actually votes the Syria authorization down, then future presidents will feel constrained by the threat of a similar congressional veto whether they want to emulate Obama or not. Except that it’s actually more likely that future presidents will look at a congressional rejection in the case of Syria and see a case for going to Congress even less frequently than recent chief executives have done.

The problem with that conceit should be obvious: Congress does not have to wait for an invitation before it takes up the issue. Congress can look at a crisis in a nation like Syria and, on its own initiative, take up the question of whether military intervention is appropriate. It can pass resolutions urging the President to act. It can pass authorizations giving the President the power to Act. Or it can do the opposite, using its power of the purse to withhold funding for military action that it deems unwise. The question of whether or not Congress acts is not one that is controlled by the President -- it's controlled by Congress itself.

Douthat closes with the same sort of trademark silliness that he used in his immigration editorial,

It is just possible, I suppose, that if Congress votes “no” on this resolution and then the president unwisely goes ahead with strikes anyway and then the House impeaches the president for violating his oath of office... and then the whole thing spirals out into a wild constitutional crisis that leaves this administration permanently crippled, the end result of that crisis could conceivably reshape the White House/Congress balance of power on foreign policy, and leave future administrations more constrained.

Turning briefly to the Constitution, Article I, Section 8,

The Congress shall have Power... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Congress does not need to wait for a president to invite it to participate in a decision to start a war, or to sit on its hands until a president ignores its refusal to authorize war. It can initiate impeachment proceedings any time a president launches a war without its authorization. Congress has done its best to avoid having to take up its constitutional duties, from passing the War Powers Resolution, an ostensible check on presidential power that is effectively treated as a delegation of constitutional responsibility, to allowing the President to declare that pretty much any military action taken by the United States -- even an action explicitly targets a single country for invasion with the purpose of removing and replacing its leadership -- as a "police action".

Whatever temptation might exist to suggest that what we're looking at is a political debate, with Larison supporting a framework that limits international adventurism and Douthat embracing a President's right to unilaterally engage in that sort of adventurism in the role of "world policeman", the text of the Constitution plainly favors Larison. At the same time, it's difficult to avoid seeing Douthat's positions as being driven by anything other than politics. When it comes to war, he doesn't seem to care what the Constitution says, and if anything he is concerned that a president's respect for the Constitution would be too constraining. When it comes to the issuance of executive orders that are consistent with both the law and Constitution, at least when he opposes the outcome, taking action by executive order usurps the authority of Congress and threatens our system of government (never mind that, at all times, Congress remains free to act).

At the end of the debate, though, it boils down to the same fundamental issue: If Congress cannot or will not do its job, the President is likely to look for ways to act unilaterally. In my opinion it's worse in a context like war powers, where Congress has a clear, constitutionally defined role and, instead of fulfilling that role, effectively encourages the President to act unilaterally. Congressional deference to the President on matters that arguably should have required a formal declaration of war did not begin in the 20th Century -- it's a long-standing problem that became particularly glaring when Congress allowed presidents to launch the Korean and Vietnam wars as "police actions". Larison can complain that the President is operating under a pretense that he does not need Congressional approval for military action in Syria, but it's only a pretense if Congress is willing to act. If Congress won't call for a vote, and won't impose any consequence on unilateral action by a President, then (constitutionally or not) Congress has effectively delegated its war-making power to the President. Douthat can whinge that the President should not engage in perfectly lawful action to bypass Congressional gridlock, but again it's only an issue if Congress refuses to act.

Either way, nothing is going to change until Congress decides to start doing its job.

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.

David Ignatius States the Obvious

Which is to say, Ignatius has penned an editorial entitled, Claims of U.S. weakness and retreat of U.S. power are unfounded. That shouldn't be a surprise given the author, but it seems increasingly rare to see basic common sense on foreign policy issues from the Washington Post's editorial crew.

Ignatius has some criticisms for the President, but they invite criticism of their own:

I agree that [President] Obama’s foreign policy has not been as firm, especially in dealing with Syria and Russia, as it should have been. As a result, the United States has suffered some reputational damage.

It's reasonable to infer from Ignatius' statement that he believes that the U.S. should have taken military action in Syria. The problem is that, as Ignatius recently told us, there are no good ways to intervene in Syria. It's an odd sort of criticism, that the President should have boldly taken a different path that might have had negative results, perhaps worsening the situation. Truly, if Ignatius believes that there is an appropriate, stronger line to take with Syria, he should explicitly describe the intervention that he favors. Further, if his concern is truly with "global security", Ignatius should explain why he omits reference to Libya where the U.S. did intervene militarily to topple a despot, but where a consequence of that intervention has been the creation of a great deal of regional turmoil -- and also stands as an object lesson as to what could happen if Bashar al-Assad is toppled without the involvement of a very large western occupation force ready to impose and hold the peace.

It's also not clear why Ignatius believes that being more "firm" with Russia would do anything to change Russia's policies or Putin's behavior. Does he believe that Russians will somehow eject Putin from power if they perceive that President Obama is unhappy with him? I would expect not, given that it's obvious that the President is unhappy with him yet his domestic popularity has improved. I think Daniel Larison makes an apt observation:

When U.S. Russia policy prioritized working with Russia on matters of common interest, relations with Moscow measurably improved and the U.S. made some modest gains on a few issues. When Washington returned to its old habits of agitating over internal Russian affairs and seeking to overthrow Russian clients, relations went into rapid decline. Since then, U.S. punitive measures have contributed to the intensifying Sino-Russian cooperation....

Again I'm left wondering, what "firm" measures does Ignatius believe would change Russian behavior, and on what basis?

Ignatius made an argument toward the end of his editorial that I wish he would clarify:

The worriers [about weakness] get one big thing right. A strong, forward-leaning United States is essential for global security.

There are many regions in the world where the people don't enjoy much security, and many more where ethnic minorities are mistreated. Is Ignatius lobbying for U.S. military intervention that is truly aimed at "global security", or is he conflating "global security" with "the advancement of U.S. foreign policy interests"? The latter seems more consistent with the editorial position of the Washington Post, which under the leadership of Fred Hiatt reliably supports military adventurism in the name of muscular foreign policy. But there is a huge difference between that and actually working to achieve "global security", even if human rights violations are sometimes offered as a justification for intervention in a nation or region that, in the mind of the editorial board, affects U.S. foreign policy interests.

When looking for the prior link to Daniel Larison, I noticed that he has also written about this argument. Larison argues that many of those who make that argument about "America’s indispensability... are routinely wrong about specific issues":

Ignatius’ review of the [book, "Taking on the World" and its authors'] constant alarmism reminds us of something else that should be only too familiar to those of us that have observed or participated in foreign policy debates. No matter how often such people are profoundly wrong about important events and the appropriate way that the U.S. should respond to them, they continue to be relied on as authorities and guides in subsequent debates. Alarmists are never held accountable for their alarmism, at least not as long as they subscribe to the prevailing consensus view about what the U.S. role in the world should be. If you can get “one big thing right,” you need never worry about being right ever again. Then again, the alarmists are just taking their belief in American “indispensability” to its predictable conclusion: if a “strong, forward-leaning” U.S. is “essential” to global security, frequently panicking about potential “retreat” and “weakness” becomes a major part of maintaining that role.

Larison sees the tendency to perceive a constant need for U.S. intervention to address perceived threats around the globe results in the notion that non-intervention is treated as a failure of American strength, character and endurance, and creates an all-or-nothing foreign policy in which leaders are not trusted to determine which threats are serious such that, even in relation to minor threats, doing nothing becomes unthinkable. Larison argues that the "false belief in American indispensability breeds intense anxiety about security and causes people to imagine dangers that don’t even exist", resulting in U.S. involvement in "disastrous and unnecessary conflicts". I think the sort of argument Ignatius is implicitly making, "I don't know what we should do, and every choice is bad, but we must appear strong or, at a minimum, we risk reputational damage".

Ignatius sees Obama's actions as a retreat from military action, and also as consistent with history,

...[A] retreat to lick the nation’s wounds is fairly common after wars — and rarely does lasting damage.

But it apparently does not occur to him that strong military action in Syria, or attempting to escalate tension with Russia to the point that Putin might be cowed, are both ideas fraught with peril. That is, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

Just Add the Word "Republican"...

Daniel Larison is not impressed with Michael Gerson's argument on why Congress needs to authorize force in Syria:

Insofar as the ability of future presidents to wage wars of choice on their own authority would be limited or even slightly constrained by a no vote from Congress, that would be a welcome and very desirable outcome. Gerson is drawing attention to one of the possible benefits of the resolution’s defeat. Even so, the president would retain enormous latitude in the conduct of foreign policy, and he would he hardly have his “hands tied behind his back.” It is laughably false to claim that the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy or his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces would be seriously impaired, and it could hardly be dangerous for the powers of the presidency to be restrained after growing virtually unchecked over the last forty years.

Gerson’s argument is an attempt to blackmail members of Congress by claiming that they will inflict massive institutional damage simply by carrying out their own constitutional responsibilities and by reaching a conclusion different from the one Gerson wants. It is a fairly desperate move, and it is the sort of argument that should make more members of Congress recoil from what they are being asked to support. Gerson is horrified that Congress might actually vote down unnecessary and deeply unpopular military action, which speaks volumes about his priorities. Americans should not be afraid to let their representatives do the work they were elected to do by speaking and voting on behalf of their constituents. In this case, that obviously means voting down the resolution, and that is what I hope most members will do when it comes up for a vote later this month.

As happens all too ofter, Gerson's editorial is risible from top to bottom,

Obama is inviting members of Congress to share responsibility for a Syrian policy that has achieved little to justify their confidence. In fact, he has undermined political support for the legislative outcome he seeks. For more than five years, Obama has argued that America is overcommitted in the Middle East and should refocus on domestic priorities. Now he asks other politicians to incur risks by endorsing an approach he has clearly resisted at every stage.

Gerson would apparently have us believe that the President has spent five years resisting Republican calls for additional military intervention in the middle east, and has reached the point where he has actually convinced the Republicans in Congress that "America is overcommitted in the Middle East and should refocus on domestic priorities". Oh, their poor heads must be spinning, having spent five years giving the President a fair, deferential hearing and now, just when they had decided that there was no situation grave enough to justify additional military action in the Middle East, being told that there actually are situations in which the President believes that military intervention is appropriate.

Obama attempts to rally the nation around a reluctant exception to his ambivalence. And this exception — a calibrated punishment for the use of chemical weapons — seems more of a gesture than a strategy.

Gerson proposes instead, what... the George Mallory philosophy of military intervention?¹

Gerson does not want the President to have completely unlimited discretion to attack any nation in the world without the consent of Congress:

This does not, of course, amount to blanket permission for self-destructive military actions such as attacking China or surrendering to Monaco.

But, you know, short of that.... As long as it's some other nation that is being destroyed, Gerson's "compassionate Christian" perspective seems to be, "Go for it!"

Nations such as China, Russia and Iran would see this as the triumph of a political coalition between the peace party of the left and the rising isolationists of the right. And they would be correct.

They would be correct because... they're stupid?

Larison suggests, "There is no way to know what long-term effect the defeat of the Syria resolution might have on the actions of future presidents, and it is even less certain how other governments would interpret a Congressional rejection of the resolution", and that's true to a point, but history suggests an answer: The next President will not feel bound to follow the policies or priorities of the current administration, and foreign nations understand the difference between a nation led by Ronald Reagan vs. George H.W. Bush vs. George W. Bush vs. Barack Obama.

One might anticipate that foreign leaders will look at the past five years of Congressional obstructionism, and then look at the fact that it was the Republicans who were blocking military action, and conclude, "More than a half-century after the start of the Vietnam war, hacks like Gerson still believe they can sell the Democrats as a 'party of peace'? And given that same history, that 'isolationists of the right' will have any influence the day after the next Republican President takes office? Seriously?"

And those who claim that this credibility has already reached bottom are lacking in imagination.

I suspect that most of those who read Gerson know that the President and Congress have a long way to go before reaching bottom.

Try reading Gerson this way:

[Repubican] Legislators are not arguing between preferred policy options, as they would on issues such as health care or welfare. They are deciding if they will send the [next Republican] chief executive into the world with his hands tied behind his back.

As in, the next President might feel compelled to consult Congress before acting, the Democrats might feel free to vote against military adventurism, and war opponents would be able to point to any number of comments made by Republicans in the present debate that suggest naked, partisan hypocrisy. Gerson's mistake,² of course, is assuming that the next President is going to care.

Really, the best argument Gerson can make for a military assault on Syria is that if Congress evaluates the situation and finds an attack to be inappropriate, future Presidents might hesitate before launching wars of choice, and the world will scoff, "The United States isn't going to attack us unless they have a UN mandate, a NATO mandate, a Congressional mandate... or the President feels like it"? The horror!
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1. "Why do you want to attack another country in the Middle East, Mr. President?" "Because it's there."

2. Or should I say, one of them.

Paying for Something You Don't Get Isn't a "Gain"

Via Daniel Larison, I see that the National Review's Christian Schneider doesn't understand what it means to gain from something.

Most important, it is younger voters who have the most to gain from Ryan’s plan to reform entitlements. With Medicare set to go bankrupt in a decade, Ryan can make a strong case to young voters that his plan is the only chance their generation has to benefit from the programs they currently fund.

Only if they're stupid enough not to see through that fraudulent argument.

Ryan, as you recall, is a typical "reformer" in that he lacks the courage to propose an immediate reform, so he's promising seniors that nobody above the age of 55 is going to be affected by his plan to transform Medicare into a voucher program. Let's imagine that Romney and Ryan win and make Medicare privatization the number one item on their agenda. The first set of vouchers won't be issued until 2023 or so, and it won't be for another fifteen or twenty years that enough seniors vested into the present Medicare system die off that the high cost of end-of-life care is no longer borne in large part by the present defined benefit Medicare program.

Then, with the caps on increases in the value of the "New Medicare" vouchers, unless healthcare inflation somehow fixes itself, you'll see the system deteriorate as seniors can afford less and less health insurance coverage for their vouchers. So if you're thirty today, you'll pay FICA taxes over the next twenty-five years to support defined benefit Medicare for most seniors, then you'll pay those same FICA taxes over the next ten or so years as the defined benefit recipients die off and the vouchers become less and less valuable, and your reward at the end of your lifetime of payment of the same FICA taxes that used to give seniors a robust, defined benefit plan? A voucher that is likely, at best, to allow you to pay for mediocre health insurance coverage. But you'll surely smile and thank Ryan and Romney for making you an "informed consumer" who has to sweat every healthcare dollar you spend because much of that money now comes out of your retirement savings.

Seriously, the Romney/Ryan plan is terrible for young people. It's an unconscionable ripoff. If Romney and Ryan believed the plan would sustain present levels of medical care they would not hesitate to implement it immediately. Instead they're not only taking the cowardly "put off the plan's implementation so far into the future that we're guaranteed to be out of office before anybody has to take responsibility" approach, they're employing a shockingly dishonest, race-baiting approach to sell it to seniors ("Obama wants to take away your Medicare, you sad, old white man, and give it to undeserving people who aren't like you"). When Romney tells seniors, "You paid" and that Obama is going to cut "guaranteed healthcare", it's a lie. But that's exactly what Romney and Ryan propose to do to young voters.

Broad Praise vs. Hard Criticism on Foreign Policy

Okay, what's going on here. First, David Brooks has shared some harsh words for the foreign policy positions of Mitt Romeny, which he ascribes to Romney's opportunism and an attempt to distinguish himself from President Obama.

Mitt Romney has been wandering around the country trying to find a place to disagree with Barack Obama,” he said during a panel discussion at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s annual conference. “He’s desperately trying, and every time he does, he looks like an idiot, because he has to say something so far out there on Russia or whatever it is.

A plausible alternative explanation is that Romney, like G.W. Bush and Sarah Palin, has little interest in or knowledge of international affairs and foreign policy, and is a painfully slow study. That he accepts and is repeating positions that were drilled into him by members of his foreign policy team. That he's not attempting to distinguish himself from the President by making reckless statements on foreign policy issues that, for the most part, the nation at large isn't following. This is one of the few areas where we don't have a track record of contradictions to point to, and it seems quite possible that Romney means what he says.

Brooks is predictably more circumspect about Romney in his print column, but he extends quite a few compliments to President Obama. Obama pays attention to details, shifts his policies when and as necessary, "has shown a good ability to combine a realist, power-politics mind-set with a warm appreciation of democracy and human rights", "has also shown an impressive ability to learn along the way", "has managed ambiguity well", has "dealt with uncertainty pretty well", and "has also managed the tension between multilateral and unilateral action".

Daniel Larison takes issue with some of the actions that Brooks views as successes, as well as to some of Brooks' criticisms, and also notes that Brooks omits mention of Russia and Syria. For reasons Larison has long pointed out, Russia could be a "case in point" for Brooks' thesis, with Obama implementing a thoughtful, effective policy and Romney spouting nonsense. But on the whole Brooks is commenting more on a thought process than on policy.

Oddly, Brooks doesn't seem to realize that the President approaches domestic issues in the same manner. I guess there's also a possibility that Brooks does see the similarity, but favors domestic policy changes that aren't likely to be brought about through Obama's conservatism - his preference to make changes within the system, observe, test, modify, over more radical solutions supported by political factions on either side.

I'll give Brooks some credit for complimenting a President he hopes will lose in November, but I'll temper that by pointing out that by omitting Russia from discussion, and failing to directly compare and contrast the candidates' Russia policy, Brooks does his readers no favors. It may well be to Obama's credit that foreign policy is a background issue but, as Brooks obviously knows, our nation could face huge, negative consequences if we shift from Obama's carefully thought-out policy to approaches Brooks himself deems idiotic - and unlike Brooks, I am not comfortable assuming that Mitt is needlessly engaging in demagoguery over issues nobody cares about, as opposed to articulating policy positions that he actually believes.

Romney's Lack of Policy Detail

Bill Kristol is complaining that Mitt Romney isn't sharing enough policy details:

Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he's running?

Adopting a prevent defense when it's only the second quarter and you're not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign's monomaniacal belief that it's about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it's only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.

To the extent that he critiques this sort of behavior, Kristol is correct:

But what are voters to think when they hear the GOP nominee say, as he did yesterday to CBS’s Jan Crawford, "As long as I continue to speak about the economy, I'm going to win"? That they're dopes who don't know the economy's bad, but as long as the Romney campaign keeps instructing them that it is bad, they'll react correctly and vote the incumbent out of office?

No, I'm not talking about treating voters as dopes, lamentable though that may be, as that's pretty much how political campaigns are won. I'm talking about actually stating your policy in terms so blunt that, if the "dopes" don't figure out what you're up to, your opponent can plug your statement into a campaign ad and make it obvious. There's a difference between joking or poking your opponent about the economy, making it the center of your campaign, and describing that as your plan. It's like when the villain in a James Bond movie reveals the details of his previously inscrutable scheme - you tell everybody exactly what you're doing and let your opponent identify and exploit your vulnerabilities. If Romney were a coach, one wonders if he would give the other team his playbook.

Daniel Larison responds,

According to the emerging conventional wisdom, Romney’s political fortunes would improve if he would only be more specific about what he would do. That seems incorrect. Romney isn’t going to win the election on the strength of his “detailed policy proposals,” and we all understand that. Dukakis and Kerry weren’t lacking for policy proposals, and they didn’t lose because their proposals were considered insufficiently specific.

Larison also shares Jonathan Bernstein's observation that,

Exactly no one is going to vote against Romney because he declines to advocate specific policies, but there’s always the risk that embracing one set of policy choices could alienate voters who otherwise might just want to throw the bums out.

Charles Pierce, on the other hand, is trying to figure out where Kristol is going with this, pointing to Kristol's own history of attacking political positions not on their merits, but with the hope of harming their proponent. That ties in with Larison's argument that policy details can potentially alienate more voters than they attract.

But are they overlooking the elephant in the room? Kristol, a narcissist par none, has rarely given good campaign advice and is better known for the opposite.¹ But pierce the veneer and you see what you usually see with pundits like Kristol - they're not saying "You need to take a position" - they're actually stating, "You should take my position. Were Romney to endorse key positions shared by Kristol, and it may boil down to just one, Kristol would be happy as a clam.
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1. "Ooh.. I know who you should pick for your Veep!"

Americans Elect and the Disconnect Between Policy and Politics

A few weeks ago when I read Thomas Friedman's editorial, "Down With Everything", there was a lot to like. There was an overt recognition that our nation's political problems arise in large part from structural problems, particularly with the U.S. Senate, and (although omitting discussion of the problems that would result from trying to diminish the input and influence of special interests) how powerful special interests have an undue influence on policy. Friedman also acknowledges the role of government and regulation in creating the nation's economic success.

The editorial, though, reflects Friedman's (dare I say) anti-democratic tendencies. He loves magic men - individuals he perceives as able to transform governments, institutions and popular movements - and there's virtually nothing that he doesn't seem to believe could be improved by finding a Steve Jobs or a Nelson Mandela to bring about reforms that Friedman himself cannot articulate - but which we are to assume would fix (or perhaps, more modestly, significantly improve) whatever is wrong. He has shied away from proposing a "magic man" solution to the problems of the United States, perhaps because in his heart he realizes that such an approach is inherently anti-democratic, or perhaps because he recognizes that "magic man" arguments work best when people don't know much about either the proposed leader or the organization or movement he would supposedly transform. But he does love his super committees:

If we are to get out of our present paralysis, we need not only strong leadership, but changes in institutional rules,” argues Fukuyama. These would include eliminating senatorial holds and the filibuster for routine legislation and having budgets drawn up by a much smaller supercommittee of legislators — like those that handle military base closings — with “heavy technocratic input from a nonpartisan agency like the Congressional Budget Office,” insulated from interest-group pressures and put before Congress in a single, unamendable, up-or-down vote.

Filibuster reform has never been high on Friedman's list of priorities. But supercommittees and "up or down votes"? He loves them. Even if it means pretending that a committee has succeeded when it failed... that is, if a report that comes from the committee's leaders accords with Friedman's own notions of good policy.

On one hand, you might think that Friedman is suggesting that the problem is institutional, and that what we really need to do is to find a way to get our government to focus less on politics and more on policy. The problem with that argument, it would seem, is that Friedman's own policy goals (which are most commonly articulated in the form of massive cuts of Medicare and Social Security) are impeded less by factionalism and more by democracy. George W. Bush's (terribly misguided) proposal to partially privatize Social Security failed not because he couldn't have mustered enough votes, but because too many Senators recognized that they would not be reelected if they supported the changes.

Simply put, an era of supercommittees would do little to insulate Congress from wealthy and powerful special interests. Those interests would help define the scope and power of the supercommittees and limit the scope of their authority. What they would do is allow Members of Congress to tell their constituents, "It's not my fault that these cuts went through - I didn't vote for them." Such an approach does nothing to remedy the institutional problems that, in Friedman's view, necessitate the foisting off of every difficult issue to such a committee, nor do they do anything to educate the public as to why reforms - even reforms that are unpopular or that will detrimentally affect the voter - represent good or even necessary policy. It does little, perhaps nothing, to reduce the power of the special interests that so heavily influence government, instead creating a context in which special interests will battle to influence the supercommittee process. And to the extent that it allows the government to move forward even when a majority of legislators are not willing to act responsibly, it effectively divorces their decision-making from the goals, priorities and interests of their constituents. Also, as with the committees that currently exist in Congress, powerful voices on supercommittees will themselves become targets for lobbying.

Friedman also makes the assumption that supercommittees will always work for good - by which I mean that they will always advance the policies that Friedman personally supports. Although some, at times most, Members of Congress may demagogue about the importance of issues that Friedman regards as inconsequential, or advocate policy reforms that Friedman regards as misguided, Friedman seems to believe that they will never be able to either control the creation of a supercommittee on one of those issues or that a majority of a supercommittee's members will focus on irrelevancies or advance bad policy.

To some degree, Friedman's wishful thinking is borne of a history in which supercommittees have been created to address a specific, genuine problem, with members selected in a manner that makes it pretty clear whether the committee will succeed and what its conclusions will be. But the less consensus there is for any given policy solution, and the more supercommittees you create to bypass the normal legislative process, the more examples of incompetence, outside influence, and even corruption you will find. It's a simple truth of bureaucracy - open, democratic processes are apt to seem messy and disorganized, whereas closed, non-democratic processes are apt to be more efficient but less responsive. As we move in the direction of "every important decision shall be decided by supercommittee", we move toward a closes, non-responsive, non-democratic form of government.

Friedman seems to recognize the importance of having a government that can form good policy, although he shares the natural human tendency to define "good policy" as "policies I, personally, think are good." But to the extent that his proposed solutions to political gridlock aren't anti-democratic, they tend to focus on introducing more politics into the equation. I'm sure Friedman believes that by introducing third parties with additional ideas - ideas he once again assumes will correspond with his own - their ideas will resonate with the public, cause the other political parties to see the light, and cause powerful special interests who have kept those policies from being implemented to fade into the woodwork. Having lived in a couple of nations with multiple political parties, and having seen the political processes of many others, I think that concept of how a third party would work is naive.

Here is how [Americans Elect] will work.... First, anyone interested in becoming a delegate goes to the Americans Elect Web site and registers. As part of that process, you will be asked to fill in a questionnaire about your political priorities: education, foreign policy, the economy, etc. This enables Americans Elect to put you in contact with others who share your views so you can discuss them and organize together. Then you will be invited to draft a candidate or support one who has already been drafted and to contribute to the list of questions that anyone running on the Americans Elect platform will have to answer on the site.

“The questions, the priorities, the nominations and the rules will all come from the community, not from two entrenched parties,” said Ackerman.

Any presidential nominee must conform to all the Constitutional requirements, as well as be considered someone of similar stature to our previous presidents. That means no Lady Gaga allowed. Every candidate will have to post in words or video his or her answers to the platform questions produced by the Americans Elect delegates. In April 2012, the candidate pool will be reduced to six through three rounds of voting. The six, assuming they all want to run, will then have to name their running mates. The only rule is that a Democrat must run with a Republican or independent, and a Republican with a Democrat or independent.

“Each presidential candidate has to pick a running mate outside of their party and reaching across the divide of politics,” said Ackerman.

So the idea was not truly to open up the nomination process to non-traditional candidates - somebody you might want to run the nation but who had eschewed politics - for fear of a "Lady Gaga"-type nomination. And bipartisanship was fetishized to the point that a Presidential candidate would have to pick somebody from the other political party - presumably again somebody with a sufficient political résumé to be firmly associated with the other of the two major political parties - a policy that demonstrates no apparent understanding of the history of the Presidency and why we moved away from having a separately elected Vice President. And these Republican-Democratic teams would stand as something unique and apart from the Republican and Democratic teams they would be running against because... bipartisanship!

Commenting on the failure of Americans Elect, Daniel Larison observes,

Americans Elect failed because it stood for almost nothing, and what it did stand for (bipartisanship, mindless “centrism”) are things that the people who vote for third party candidates dislike or don’t value as something desirable in itself. Americans Elect is a financially opaque, unaccountable organization that pretends to be a vehicle of transparency and political accountability. It has no program or agenda, and it cannot identify substantively where the government has gone wrong under the current two-party system. All that it is capable of doing is complaining that members of the two parties are insufficiently chummy and collaborative, and it has presented this message at a time when there is not much confidence in either major party.

Successful third party candidacies have to tap into discontent with something specific about the incumbent, or they have to represent a more radical challenge to both parties. To the extent that it has a political position, it is the opposite of radical, and it has floundered because its backers don’t really disagree with Obama about very much in terms of policy. It an organization of Tom Friedmans with ballot access.

I think Larison is on to something about the circumstances under which third parties can emerge, particularly in the context of our system which is structured toward two dominant parties. But I think it's also fair to note that it's naive to posit that adding a third political party to an election is going to reduce the level of politics in government, any more than the panoply of Republican candidates in the recent nomination contest helped that party focus on key policy issues. The idea that a Presidential ticket split between two political parties is going to be the least politically contentious of the three (presumably) leading partnerships is interesting. I personally can't see how you could have two candidates who were more than nominally aligned with the two major political parties who would not be doing more explaining away of policy differences than elucidation of shared policy goals throughout the campaign and in the debates.

Fundamentally, adding another pairing of candidates to the presidential race (even if you assume that they will resonate to a greater extent than any of the other third party candidates who already appear on the ballot) does not seem to me to be an opportunity to shift the focus of the race from politics to policy. I don't share Friedman's certitude that the best policy decisions are reached by compromise between the two parties - that reflects, to me, Friedman's mistaken bifurcation of political views into two dominant camps, never mind how fractured those camps often are, and a mistaken belief that the two major parties are so completely correlated with and representative of conservative and liberal ideology that any compromise they fashion will be acceptable to both groups. Frankly, if it were that easy we wouldn't need supercommittees to protect elected politicians from being responsible for the actions of Congress. To me, Friedman seems to be among those who focus on the political horse race, assume that the campaigning and demagoguery are about policy formation not political victory, and thus believe that adding more politics to the fray will somehow lend itself to better policy formation. I would expect that, at best, the third party Friedman envisions might not make things worse, but better? I see no reason to expect that.

Paul Krugman has a criticism of Americans Elect that isn't entirely fair to its proponents:

So why Americans Elect? Because there exists in America a small class of professional centrists, whose stock in trade is denouncing the extremists in both parties and calling for a middle ground. And this class cannot, as a professional matter, admit that there already is a centrist party in America, the Democrats — that the extremism they decry is all coming from one side of the political fence. Because if they admitted that, they’d just be moderate Democrats, with no holier-than-thou pedestal to stand on.

Although perhaps Obama's proposed "grand bargain" on the deficit, rejected by the Republicans, should have established his crediblity with this particular group, the reason why "professional centrists" don't see themselves as Democrats, and see the Democratic Party as a part of the propblem, is that they tend to advocate both balancing the budget (now!) and the position that it's impossible to do so without massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Although for entitlement reform, when push comes to shove the Republican Party is more words than action, the Democratic Party is the primary defender of both Social Security and Medicare. (Never mind that, just as last time, you could get the Democratic Party to sign on to the modest reforms necessary to stabilize Social Security for the indefinite future, and that only the Democrats have introduced serious cost-cutting measures to Medicare as opposed to the Paul Ryan "unlikely to ever happen" privatization plan.)

When President Obama took office, the Democratic Party had a golden opportunity to demonstrate that it was a mature, capable and responsible political party, able to implement sound solutions to serious problems. Instead, just as it did during Clinton's early years, it proved fractious, unwilling to boldly tackle the big issues, and susceptible to extortionate demands from a handful of legislators who held deciding votes. When you hear prominent Democrats talk about healthcare reform you do not hear explanations of how they might have achieved a better bill - you hear complaints that the issue should have been deferred or abandoned. Extremism may not be the problem among Democrats, but opportunism, avarice and politics remain.

Still, that's not problems you're going to resolve by introducing a third "bipartisan" party.

Krugman optimistically expresses,

Americans Elect was created to appeal to this class of professional centrists — which meant that it was doomed to go nowhere. Because outside that class, the large number of people who believe in all the good stuff the centrists claim to favor are, you know, going to vote for Obama. The large number of people who don’t believe in any of that are going to vote for Romney.

The problem here is that a lot of centrists don't believe that President Obama is going to advance the policy goals they favor. They may not have any more confidence in Romney, perhaps less, but if they believe that entitlements are out of control they have seen three years of Democratic inaction on Social Security and cost-saving measures for Medicare that, at present, remain theoretical. As much as they may believe that President Obama would implement some sound policy reforms if presented with a blank slate, they recognize that he is at heart very conservative in his approach to reform. His most dramatic reform, the Affordable Care Act, is a modest echo of ideas of the Heritage Foundation and of his Republican opponent in the coming election. I think there would be appeal to voters who want to see the formation and implementation of good policy, to have a third party candidate who they believed could deliver what they want - what the country needs.

The problem for Americans Elect is that there is no reason to believe that they would deliver. That serious candidates would sign on, that the forced pseudo-bipartisanship of the ticket would be either genuine or helpful. That the contribution to an election would be anything more than adding more politics, more sound and fury, instead of bringing more attention to the most serious policy issues and the most credible responses to those issues. Were the focus on issues, not politics, Americans Elect could do something very different - attempt to articulate the issues, propose solutions, and ask candidates from across the nation to endorse those solutions. It could then articulate which candidates it most supported in any given race based upon the candidates' response. But alas, that would be a lot more work, a lot less fun, and may serve to highlight how it's less a matter of partisanship between the parties that's impeding progress, and more a matter of voters wanting to derive significant benefits from government without having anybody be asked to pay the bill.

It sounds like much more fun to create a website through which we'll supposedly find ourselves a magic man and call that a solution.

Outsourcing on Bipartisanship

It's tempting to quote the whole thing, but instead... Go read Daniel Larison's comments on bipartisanship in politics, President Obama, and Obama's slow reaction to Republican obstructionism.

Romney's Inevitability

For those of us who have seen Romney as inevitable, pretty much from the time the candidate pool was established, answering the question, "How did it happen", has been easy: The rest of the candidate pool was not very good. Most of the candidates had serious flaws, baggage, or credibility problems that made it seem pretty obvious that they would fail. The fact that many within the party want an alternative to Romney has been obvious, also from the outset. But there are two problems: First, the various people who did not enter the race who have been ballyhooed as possible saviors of the party are also seriously flawed, and second, the number of litmus tests imposed on Republican candidates make it very difficult for a candidate to enter the race without seeming as empty-headed or two-faced as the candidates who are already running. Romney is in a unique position in that to the extent that he fails to meet litmus tests he is nonetheless a known quantity - he failed those tests four years ago.

Daniel Larison suggests,

Conservatives did not rally behind any one candidate to oppose Romney months ago because I think many of them expected Romney to falter or implode long before this, so they thought they had the luxury of time to choose from among the alternatives. Romney didn’t implode, and conservatives frittered away valuable time on various long-shot and incompetent candidates.

I think, more accurately, Jeb Bush chose not to run because he would still be dragged down by his brother's disastrous record, and he is young enough to wait four or eight years to try for the nomination, Rick Perry revealed himself to be a woefully incompetent candidate, and the rest of the names that get tossed out don't reflect candidates any better qualified or more appealing than the better half of those who were already running,¹ and some are just plain unelectable.

But there's more to the analysis than people being used to Mitt Romney, or pundits waxing romantic about how presidential he looks. If you examine his record it's fair to say that the man has no core beliefs, that he's willing to bend and compromise on anything in order to gain power, that he stands for nothing but himself. But that would be completely wrong. There is one issue for which Romney has been 100% consistent, as far as I can tell, from the day his daddy bought him his first copy of the Wall Street Journal: He's 100%, unequivocally on the side of Wall Street and the financial industry. Josh Marshall finds it weird that "Romney surrogate and former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu" has "suggested that the investor community might punish Newt-backer Sheldon Adelson for funding Newt’s anti-Bain Capital movie".

Does he think that people don't remember when you attack them and pay for the attacks in a primary, especially when one ever the parties receiving that attack is a party he likes to go to to finance his expansions?

The "King of Bain" movie may be an attack on 1980's style corporate raiders and leveraged buyouts, and it's certainly an attack on Mitt Romney, but it's only arguably an attack on Wall Street by proxy - when you go after their boy you go after them.²

I believe that concern about Romney comes from two directions:

First, from Republicans who believe that he cannot be trusted to hold to the party line on anything, given that he has a history of political compromise. Quite notably, the compromise that led to his health insurance program being implemented in Massachusetts reveals not only his support for a plan almost identical to the Affordable Care Act, it reflects how he will orchestrate a compromise bill that cedes a lot to his political opponents in order to position himself for his next anticipated election.³ That is, once in office Romney's concern will be to be reelected, and probably also to try to rank as a great President, and he knows full well that the gridlock and partisanship of the past few years will do nothing but tarnish his presidency.

Second, there appears to be a genuine concern that Romney will prove to be a wooden, uncharismatic candidate whose past waffling, and present advocacy for wealth and power, will lead to his self-destruction on the campaign trail. The Bain stuff is coming out now, some say too early. But he seems intent on maintaining his tax returns as a campaign issue - not wanting to disclose how much he earns as an "unemployed" person, the comparatively tiny amount he pays in taxes on his millions in passive income, or confirm that he exploits overseas tax shelters to further reduce his tax obligations.

Romney is subject to attacks on his personal integrity - and he doesn't do much to help himself on that front with his own dubious commitment to facts and truthfulness - and to political attacks from the right ("He's a phony, he will compromise with Democrats") and the left ("Why should we worry about President Romney? Sure, he'll fight tooth and nail to prevent reasonable regulation of the financial industry or steps to hold them accountable, and will bail them out in a heartbeat, but on pretty much every other issue he has at one time or another staked out positions to the left of President Obama.")

Concerns that Romney is not sufficiently in line with the religious right? As long as no third party candidate runs to draw off the most ardent of religious conservative voters, it will be Republican politics as usual: Say what it takes to get the religious right to come out and vote Republican, toss them a few bones once in office, talk a good game, but deliver little of substance. To a degree it's better to keep the religious right unhappy, because if their issues were actually addressed they might lose the fire in their collective belly and stop performing as such a reliable Republican voting bloc. But no danger of that - the Republican Party is personified by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum - public piety, perhaps in Santorum's case actually believed, but advancing an agenda that benefits wealth and power, and helps them obtain and maintain wealth and power once they leave office. it's called lip service - they should be used to it by now.
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1. Common suggestions are Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and John Thune.

2. (Added) Since I wrote this, it has been observed that Romney appears to have prepared to respond to attacks on his record by Democrats with childish, misleading name-calling - and he has not changed his tactics, so his hacks and proxies are now accusing other Republicans of being socialists or "sounding like" Occupy Wall Street.

3. The insurance reform he achieved as governor was supposed to be a cornerstone of his campaign for the presidency as the man who could bring a conservative, free market reform to the nation's health insurance market. The frenzied, reactionary opposition to the Affordable Care Act turned his success into something of a liability, but one to which voters have become accustomed - perhaps it was voter opposition to a Massachusetts/ACA-style reform that has proved to be overstated.

Substance vs. Grandstanding

The Republican Party (a/k/a "The Grand[standing] Old Party) is taking time out from its game of chicken with the economy to possibly team up with Dennis Kucinich to pass a resolution against the continued military involvement of the U.S. in Libya. Dan Larison writes,

If the Kucinich resolution passed, that would be great news, but I have to wonder if it would change anything in the near term. The administration would have a problem if it just ignored it and flouted it, but it is already ignoring and flouting the law, so why wouldn’t they do the same to the Kucinich resolution? The resolution directs Obama to withdraw U.S. forces from the war within a specified period of time, but the administration clearly pays no heed to deadlines set by Congress.

That's the thing about meaningless gestures - they're meaningless. Congress has the power to set hard deadlines, to cut off funding. Instead, we're talking about a deliberately toothless resolution. Members of Congress can pander to one group or another, or set themselves up for a campaign commercial, while doing nothing. And let's not forget, the reason we're in this situation in the first place is that for decades Congress has been unwilling to fulfill its constitutional role in relation to the declaration of war and has happily delegated that responsibility to the President. Even as the GOP ponders following or imitating Kucinich, look at what John Boehner has to say:

Boehner, though, says Obama is “technically” in compliance with the war powers requirements.

Wow - what a ringing endorsement of Larison's position that the Obama Administration is "flouting the law". Or, for that matter, Glenn Greenwald's.

And note the individuals on whom Obama is now relying to protect him from this bipartisan effort to put an end to his illegal war: "GOP House leaders" -- John Boehner and Eric Cantor, who refused to allow the bill to come up for a vote despite ample support among conservative members of their caucus as well as numerous liberal House members. Can we hear more now about how the two parties are so radically different that bipartisan cooperation is impossible? The Emperor has decreed that we will fight this war, and thus we will -- that seems to be the prevailing mindset.

Let's be honest for a moment - this is not a bipartisan deference to "the Emperor" - it's about "How will this look in a TV commercial (either mine or my opponent's)?" Cantor and Boehner fear commercials about how they "let Gadafi win", or about how "They didn't stand behind the troops," or describing how the President had to "stand up to them" in order to prevail in the toppling of a "terrorist dictator". You want them to vote against the intervention in Libya? Find a way for them to spin the vote against the President in the next election and they'll be all over your bill.

Iraq, Iran, Sunni, Shiite, Arab, Persian... What's the Difference?

Daniel Larison does a yeoman's job holding political candidates accountable for their foreign policy blunders, in the past commenting on notable gaffes by such notables as Mitt Romney, even as the mainstream media displays a lack of interest or pretends that the remarks are insightful. He recently commented on Tim Pawlenty's confusion of Iraq and Iran:

The reporter corrects him at this point, and Pawlenty gamely tries to recover. The most that can be said for Pawlenty in this episode is that he is giving better foreign policy answers than Herman Cain. It’s also fair to say that he’s already doing worse than then-Gov. Bush was doing at this point in 1999. It’s pretty clear that he was rehearsing a bad answer on the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, which had almost nothing to do with the question he was asked. He was asked a question about contradictions in U.S. regional policy related to the expansion of Iranian influence, and he wasn’t even attempting to answer that question. He went through his answer substituting the words Iran and Iranians without missing a beat, and that is probably because his grasp of these subjects remains very superficial. If it had just been the name of the country, everyone might be able to shrug it off as a slip of the tongue, but it was more than that.

I'm with Larison on this one - well, no, I'm not quite as sympathetic to the "slip of the tongue" argument. While, particularly in retrospect, the import of Bush's ignorance of South Asia, and the treatment of Gore's knowledge of the region and its leaders as a pedantic irrelevancy, seems wholly irresponsible on the part of the media, there is a huge difference between not knowing the name of the President of Pakistan and confusing Iran with Iraq (even if we overlook the fact that Pawlenty did not display even a glimmer of understanding of the question asked).

Pawlenty was born in 1960, meaning that if he followed international events at all he should have overcome any ability to confuse Iran and Iraq by the time he reached his early 20's. It's not a grave sin to not care about or follow international affairs, even to shrug off conflicts in the Middle East, in favor of domestic concerns - or even to switch off the world news to catch sports updates on ESPN. It's possible to govern a state without knowing or caring much about international affairs. There are also degrees of ignorance, some of which suggest a basic interest or knowleged that a charitable person might argue could be overcome - confusing Shiite and Sunni, for example, as McCain at times did. But if you were a young adult during the Iran-Iraq War, subsequently lived through the first Gulf War, and are claiming to be competent to be President during this period of massive military intervention in the Middle East, that level of ignorance and confusion demonstrates a lack of interest that suggests that your place is, at best, in state and local politics.

An adult who can't differentiate a scapula from a patella? Probably not the best candidate for medical school. An adult who confuses Mississippi with Massachusetts? Probably not the best candidate for governor. They may be very competent within the sphere of their jobs and informed within their ares of interest, and they may be capable of learning the facts if given enough time and tutoring, but their inherent lack of interest in the subject matter does translate into a high probability that the best we can expect from them is basic competence. We should expect a lot more from somebody who claims he's qualified to be the President.

A Weak Case for War

If you follow Eunomia, the recent New York Times columns by Ross Douthat and Anne-Marie Slaughter on the possibility of military intervention in Libya may seem like familiar ground. Slaughter advocates a "no fly zone", an approach challenged by others as inappropriate. Douthat implies that we should be cautious.

Douthat has received quite a bit of praise for his column from those who are skeptical of where a "no fly zone" would lead, and he does a good job of gently laying things out.

Moreover, even with the best-laid plans, warfare is always a uniquely high-risk enterprise — which means that the burden of proof should generally rest with hawks rather than with doves, and seven reasonable-sounding reasons for intervening may not add up to a single convincing case for war.

Advocates of a Libyan intervention don’t seem to have internalized these lessons. They have rallied around a no-flight zone as their Plan A for toppling Qaddafi, but most military analysts seem to think that it will fail to do the job, and there’s no consensus on Plan B. Would we escalate to air strikes? Arm the rebels? Sit back and let Qaddafi claim to have outlasted us?

If we did supply the rebels, who exactly would be receiving our money and munitions? Libya’s internal politics are opaque, to put it mildly. But here’s one disquieting data point, courtesy of the Center for a New American Security’s : Eastern Libya, the locus of the rebellion, sent more foreign fighters per capita to join the Iraqi insurgency than any other region in the Arab world.

And if the civil war dragged on, what then? Twice in the last two decades, in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, the United States has helped impose a no-flight zone. In both cases, it was just a stepping-stone to further escalation: bombing campaigns, invasion, occupation and nation-building.

Me? I'm feeling less patient. I am frustrated by calls for military action by people whose positions on Libya seem to shift with the wind. In the 1980's, Qaddafi was crazy, and an undisputed supporter of terrorists. In the 1990's he remained a tyrant, kept at arm's length by much of the west, but our interest in him and his regime diminished. In the 2000's, along came G.W. and all of a sudden Qaddafi was redeemed - because he gave up WMD programs that didn't appear to amount to much and allowing western investment - and he was held up by leaders like Bush and Blair like a trophy, "Exhibit A" that the "War on Terror" worked. And then, lo and behold, it turns out that he's still a tyrant and isn't eager to relinquish power to rebel factions and... it seems like we're back in the 80's.

As I've suggested before, sometimes it feels like the loudest voices for military intervention around the world began and ended their study of military conflict by watching episodes of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers - the good guys go up against opponents who are manifestations of pure evil, defeat them in clean, honorable battle with no collateral damage, and the world is saved! Not even the never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq can change their minds. ("All we're doing" is intervening in a civil war while engaging in an act of war against a nation that hasn't attacked us and shows no interest in doing so - first we bomb their air defenses, then we create a 'no fly zone' and then we win! What could possibly go wrong?")

Look, I can understand the sentiment that all you have to do to bring peace, love, understanding and freedom to a population that lives under a tyrant is to decapitate the regime. It's a perfectly appropriate belief to hold before you expose yourself to enough human and military history to see how things are more likely to turn out. Slaughter suggests that if we don't help defeat Qaddafi, "when Colonel Qaddafi massacres the opposition, young protesters across the Middle East will conclude that when we were asked to support their cause with more than words". Except, you know, sometimes the revolution brings to power somebody like Pol Pot or Rouhollah Khomeini. Frying pans, fires, and all that. So I'm with Douthat here - part of the process of deciding when and where to intervene has to be to look at what's likely to result from your intervention.

By virtue of my own frustration with the "Let's have another war" crowd, I do have a criticism of Douthat. The man simply can't bring himself to take a stand. He trots out the parade of horribles, "All this nasty stuff could happen if we intervene militarily in Libya," but he can't bring himself to state a stronger conclusion than "th[e] case [for war] has not yet been made". He's an opinion columnist, and I guess that does count (in a wishy-washy way) as an opinion. And no, I'm not trying to argue that he needs to rule out any possibility that a case could be made that would inspire him to change his mind. But after laying out a strong argument as to why the case has not been made for military intervention, would it have been too much for him to run with his own argument? To emphatically state that the burden of proof is properly placed on the proponents of the war, that we should not be tricked into excusing their failure to meet that burden by rhetorical flourish or by the type of doctored evidence that was at the heart of the case for the war in Iraq?

Is he afraid that he'll be accused of defending a tyrant, much the way skeptics of the war in Iraq were accused of being happy to let Hussein terrorize his people? If that's the worst that can happen, given his position and the fact that he's a reasonably good writer, he can pen a column explaining why that's a (deliberately) unfair and inflammatory argument. If not... come on, man. Take a stand.

Update: Robert Farley comments on the... should I say utilitarian views of the neocons?

Whether they leave the point implicit or explicit, the neocons are reasonably clear about their preferences; we should support the rebels to the extent that we can be certain that they’ll win, and then we should install and support whichever parts of the rebel alliance are most to our liking.

The difficulty comes, of course, when you hitch your wagon to the wrong star - Ahmed Chalabi or, as increasingly appears to be the case, Ahmed Karzai, and the like. It may turn out that, when the shooting is over, there's no part of the "rebel alliance" that's actually to your liking, or deems the person you had hoped would lead and shape the "rebel alliance" into a new government to be wholly unacceptable. And it may be that your anointed leader for the new era is almost as problematic, albeit perhaps in different ways, than the leader you deposed.

Democracy Building According to Jackson Diehl

First, you replace the non-democratic government of the targeted nation with a... dictatorship. Ah, but not just any dictator. A benign dictator. A philosopher king, if you will. And then you charge him with keeping the peace while he assembles the nation's various political factions and they collectively write a constitution. And then they work together to engage the middle class such that, when the election occurs, it's the nation's wealthier members, manufacturers and merchants who choose the next government, not the unwashed masses. Seriously folks, this is the real Deihl:

"This administration has been at best lukewarm towards our cause of democracy," Saad Eddin Ibrahim, one of the most respected Egyptian opposition leaders, told me Thursday.

"Clinton's statement on Tuesday reflected what the policy has been for two years," Ibrahim said. "The second statement was a bit more balanced. But it is still not balanced enough for our taste. What we hope for is explicit support for the demands that are being put forward by the people in the streets."

Those demands are coherent and eminently reasonable: Mubarak should step down and be replaced by a transitional government, headed by ElBaradei and including representatives of all pro-democracy forces. That government could then spend six months to a year rewriting the constitution, allowing political parties to freely organize and preparing for genuinely democratic elections. Given time to establish themselves, secular forces backed by Egypt's growing middle class are likely to rise to the top in those elections - not the Islamists that Mubarak portrays as the only alternative.

I recognize that it takes valuable seconds to find demographic information on nations like Egypt, and that people like Diehl probably have better things to do with their time than to see if the facts support their arguments, but it seems worth asking: In what sort of democratic election will Egypt's middle class be able to define the outcome? Egypt has 9.7% unemployment (a long-term problem, with the official figure likely understating the reality), 20% of the population lives in poverty, and the population is 90% Muslim. Close to 30% of the adult population is illiterate - a 17% male illiteracy rate and a 40.6% female illiteracy rate. One third of the population is under the age of 14. The median age is 24. This may strike Diehl as odd, but those demographics do not suggest to me that a secular middle class will be able to control the reform process.

Diehl criticizes the Obama Administration for standing behind Mubarak instead of... I'm not sure what. I guess, telling him to resign and appoint a philosopher king as his successor.

Thus began what may be remembered as one of the most shortsighted and wrongheaded policies the United States has ever pursued in the Middle East. Admittedly, the bar is high. But the Obama administration's embrace of Mubarak, even as the octogenarian strongman refused to allow the emergence of a moderate, middle-class-based, pro-democracy opposition, has helped bring the United States' most important Arab ally to the brink of revolution.

There are two ways of looking at this, of course. Diehl's way, that within days Mubarak's regime will fall and a forward-looking, secular, democratic regime will take over, reform the nation of Egypt and uplift its people, and leave its people angry that the U.S. wasn't more supportive at the onset of their revolution. Or that the Mubarak regime will prove sufficiently stable to withstand the protests. But since Diehl is suggesting that Egyptians resent President Obama's supposed abandonment of the Bush-era "freedom agenda", it's worth stepping back a few years to see how Bush treated Egypt and Mubarak. And who better to give us that history than Jackson Diehl?

So Democrats have to start by "reclaiming our own ground," [Will] Marshall says. His book proposes two important ways to do that. First, Democrats can clean up the crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the CIA's secret prisons, and restore America's reputation as the world's foremost defender of human rights. They can also end Bush's cynical policy of demanding democracy from enemy regimes such as Iran and Syria while tolerating the continued autocracy of such friends as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Were Diehl attempting to be fair, he would also acknowledge how the Bush Administration insisted upon elections for the Palestinian Authority then reacted in horror when the wrong party won. Diehl appears to share that sense of "democracy" - he doesn't want elections in Egypt now, implicitly acknowledging that Islamic factions would win an election. He wants the nation ruled by the benign dictator until secular parties "establish themselves" and we can be pretty sure that "secular forces backed by Egypt's growing middle class are likely to rise to the top in those elections". Should Diehl get his wish, one wonders... will Diehl call for elections if, six months or a year from now, it still looks like Islamic parties would prevail in an election? No, actually one doesn't. It looks like Diehl's "freedom agenda" is that of Bush: it only counts as freedom if the correct person or party comes out on top.

We can also play the game of "Which Secretary of State is Diehl attacking"?

But her aims are utterly different from those with which Bush began his second term - such as the "freedom agenda" he restated in Prague. Democracy promotion in the Middle East is out, replaced by a belated but intense effort to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. Even more strikingly, the "regime change" strategy that once marked Bush administration policy toward North Korea has been dropped in favor of an all-out effort to negotiate a rapprochement with dictator Kim Jong Il.

vs.

Bland, carefully balanced statements were issued by second- and third-level spokesmen, while [she and the President] - who regularly ripped Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - remained silent.

Condi vs. Hillary. Yes, that first comment was directed at Condoleezza Rice. Except when Rice walked away from the "freedom agenda" and embraced tyrants Diehl saw her moves as "bold new strategies" - "No wonder, perhaps, that the secretary hasn't bothered with directives about dissidents."

Diehl's primary mistake lies in his hallucinatory belief that the U.S. can control events in Egypt - or is it that he believes he can control the events through some form of extremely powerful wishful thinking: That the U.S. could do something that would inspire Mubarak to resign and appoint Mohamed ElBaradei to be his temporary successor. That the masses would accept Mohamed ElBaradei as the leader, and would accept his initiative to draft a constitution establishing Egypt as a secular democracy. That the various political factions involved would cooperate in creating such a constitution, and the factions Diehl wants to see marginalized or excluded from that process would acquiesce. That secular political parties would flourish - but perhaps just two or three of them, such that they could reasonably form a government. That the middle class would overwhelmingly and successfully elect a secular, democratic government. And that all of this could be achieved within six months. As Daniel Larison has observed,

The administration could tell Mubarak that. Instead of the increased criticism it has already promised, the administration could threaten Mubarak with its “wrath.” Would this entail merely the suspension of aid, or would it involve more serious penalties? In other words, what exactly should the administration be threatening to do to Mubarak and his allies if they do not comply? It’s all very well to bluster and make threats, but Mubarak knows that our government is not going to risk seriously undermining the current government. He will assume that the administration is bluffing and playing to its domestic audience, and he will probably be right. If the administration is not bluffing, it genuinely risks making the same mistake that Carter made in his handling of the Shah and domestic opposition to his regime.

Larison continues with an explanation of why it's unrealistic to expect the Muslim Brotherhood to remain on the sidelines. Larison predicts, quite reasonably,

By the end of the week, it looks as if the Brotherhood will have officially joined the protests as well. The protesters cannot be neatly separated into the “good” secular democrats here and the unacceptable Islamists over there. For that matter, there is as yet no evidence that any of the protesters object to the Brotherhood’s participation.

Larison relates the observation of Jonathan Wright that one of the reasons the Islamic Brotherhood has remained in the background is likely because its involvement "would frighten off some of the other groups" and that with its open involvement "the government will feel free to use much more brutal methods to disperse protesters". If Mubarak falls and a new government is to be peacefully formed, the Islamic Brotherhood will demand a seat at the table.

Partisanship and the TSA Controversy

Let me start by largely agreeing with Roger Cohen, who notes that the implementation of full body scanners at airports is irrational, and may be driven largely by the efforts of former government officials turned lobbyist (such as Michael Chertoff). Cohen doesn't fall into the trap of calling for profiling or for "Israeli-style" security, something that is completely unworkable in the U.S. system of air travel - and to many, far more objectionable - in favor of using actual intelligence to determine which passengers should be screened.

Let's be honest for a moment. Airport security screening as we know it was designed to stop hijackings in the classic sense - the opportunistic diversion of an aircraft to a different destination, or an attempt to hold hostage the passengers on an airplane. It was largely focused on obvious weapons, principally guns. That meant made it possible to screen passengers relatively quickly and painlessly. Most notably after the Lockerbie bombing, security was tightened in order to try to prevent bombs from being brought on to aircraft. Post-9/11, the effort to keep bombs off of airplanes has become increasingly zealous, to the point of the full body scanners backed up with frisks. Old style security isn't adequate for the types of bombs and weapons that the TSA is now seeking, because those bombs and weapons are non-metallic and may be prepared, sealed or carried in a manner that makes them very difficult to detect. There's a particular concern about PETN.

At the same time, the odds of a passenger actually carrying such a device are vanishingly small. In the ten years since 9/11, there have been a couple of attempts to get explosive devices disguised as clothing items onto airplanes - hence no shoes and scans of our underparts - and additional attempts to sneak explosives into air cargo - but not one such device has been intercepted by the TSA. And for 95+% of passengers, we have sufficient intelligence to know that they're not going to voluntarily hide such an explosive device in their clothing. That leaves the well-considered possibility that an explosive device may be slipped into their baggage, justifying better quality scanning of both checked and carry-on bags. And yes, there's the "action movie" scenario to consider - due to some sort of threat against your family, a terrorist coerces you into trying to smuggle a bomb onto a plane.

While Eugene Robinson suggests, quite correctly, that the principal reason for popular objection to the new security measures is that "I (or my grandmother) might get scanned", he suggests that's acceptable because terrorists are smart enough to identify people who won't fit a profile, and also that profiling is a greater threat to civil liberties than is the potential virtual strip search of anybody who wants to ride on an airplane. But when Robinson alludes to the 9/11 hijackers "not fitting" a profile because they were Saudi nationals, he's missing the point that we had ample intelligence to be concerned about those people. And it's been conceded that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the "underwear bomber") should never have been allowed to board the aircraft he attempted to bomb - he got on due to an intelligence failure, got through security (albeit outside of the United States), and was foiled by his fellow passengers. So far there is no reason to believe that body scanners or enhanced pat downs would have detected his explosive device. So tell me again, how does scanning grandma make us safer? In what parallel universe is Bob Herbert's grandmother going to try to smuggle a bomb into an airplane? (And in that universe, why wouldn't she pick an airport or security line that doesn't have a body scanner?)

But the action movie scenario is exceptionally far-fetched, and creates multiple points of potential failure that don't exist when you find a Richard Reid, Jose Padilla or Abdulmutallab who is willing to actually carry the device onto the plane. First you have to get the device and a sufficient cohort of terrorists into the United States, then you have to find a mark who is traveling on the correct plane at the correct time, then you have to find a way to coerce your mark into trying to smuggle the bomb onto the plane, then you have to maintain that level of coercion for a long enough period that he attempts to board the plane, then you have to hope he doesn't call the police, tip off security, or act so nervous at the airport that security figures out something is wrong, then (assuming your plan is sufficient to get past security) you have to hope the device isn't detected by happenstance, then you have to hope he doesn't choose not to activate the device or deactivate it during the flight... Terrorists may sometimes appear to be stupid or inept, and luck has been involved in our avoiding catastrophe with the post-9/11 bombing plots, but there's a reason that none of these attempts have involved trying to coerce innocent, outside parties into carrying bombs onto planes - it would make the scheme more complicated, necessitate involving more people and in its implementation would all but doom the plan to failure.

A few days ago Ross Douthat wrote an editorial suggesting that the controversy over the new screening methods reflects partisanship and hypocrisy. At the surface level that seems reasonable, as our nation (like every other nation) suffers no shortage of either commodity. But Dan Larison provides an apt rebuttal:

On the whole, people on the left who are not troubled by the obnoxious TSA scans and pat-downs have not been terribly troubled about most of the other infringements on constitutional protections carried out over the past nine years, and most of the people on the right who have discovered “libertarian impulses” in this case have shown no signs of such impulses until the last year and a half. These impulses were not suppressed during the Bush years. They did not exist. Instead, they have materialized out of nowhere.

Larison also notes,

Even when some conservative hard-liners have objected to the TSA procedures, it is usually not because they have rediscovered their inherent distrust of the national security state’s power (which they never had!), but because these procedures have simply underscored for them how silly it is to screen all passengers at airports. The uproar over obnoxious TSA methods has presented them with a new opportunity to revisit their calls for profiling. At best, most of these protests are complaints against inconvenience rather than objections against intrusive government, and many of them do not reject authoritarian practices, but simply want to change the form of authoritarian practices. To that end, rhetoric about preserving American liberty is useful, but these are often the same people who have tended to justify every government encroachment on liberty and every expansion of the warfare and national security state in the name of “defending freedom.” This is all fitted into the larger Republican attack that Obama refuses to “name” the enemy, and that he has erred by no longer referring to the “war on terror.”

Larison notes that the alleged "partisan mindset" was absent from the recent vote to renew the PATRIOT Act.

But there's something else to consider, much to the consternation of the Glenn Greenwalds of the nation: Issue fatigue. Something becomes a hot issue for a while, is played out in the press, nothing changes, and time passes. While people may not forget the issue, it loses its urgency. And, as Larison notes, most people are happy to acquiesce to the subversion of the civil rights of others, so there's little price to be paid for an elected official who happily shreds the Constitution in the name of "the war on terror". When you couple that with the fear, which seems particularly high on the part of Democrats, of being held accountable if anything bad happens - of having to confront a "why didn't you order all air passengers to be strip searched and fluoroscoped before boarding"-type argument following a successful terrorist attack - that they would rather waste billions of taxpayer dollars chasing shadows (hey - it's not their money) than have an adult conversation about risks and costs.