Just a Little Bit of Torture?

Via Charles Pierce, I found Jonah Goldberg's unimpressive defense of the use of torture. Goldberg opens,

For a long time I resisted the word “torture” when discussing the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used against high-value captives in the War on Terror. I don’t think I can do that anymore.

Let's be blunt, here. There's only one reason somebody like Goldberg would shy away from the use of the word "torture" and it's because he's a coward. The facts were out there. The Senate report adds some shocking details, but if you weren't willing to call "torture" by its name until you learned that it may have involved hummus, you were either choosing not to look at the facts or you were scared of alienating your patrons and followers. In his new defense of torture, Goldberg makes clear that he believes the techniques we knew to be involved in "enhanced interrogation" were torture:

What some of these detainees went through pretty obviously amounted to torture. You can call it “psychological torture” or something to that effect, but such qualifiers don’t get you all that far.

So, then, he's a coward.

Goldberg immediately walks back from his concession of the obvious:

It’s true that torture is to some extent in the eye of the beholder. Everyone can agree that hot pokers, the rack, and the iron maiden qualify. But loud music, sleep deprivation, and even waterboarding? At first, maybe not. But over time, yes. Torture can be a lot like poison: The dosage matters.

To me, that paragraph seems internally inconsistent. The initial argument is that there can be sincere disagreement over whether certain practices constitute torture. But rather than advancing that argument, Goldberg switches to one of degree -- that certain techniques only become torture if they're applied in a repeated or prolonged manner. Goldberg's on the record here. If he has scruples, they're newly discovered:

Within this broad range, arguments over what is or is not torturous are to be had. The most debated technique is “waterboarding,” which terrifies its recipient into believing he is drowning. Apparently, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded until he gave us a bounty of information. Technically, the McCain amendment would ban such treatment.

Goldberg knew at that time that Mohammed was waterboarded repeatedly, yet he had no problem suggesting that waterboarding might not actually be torture and that it should not be prohibited. Goldberg also displayed an inability to comprehend the moral and legal issues behind torture:

But, as Charles Krauthammer notes in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, there’s reason to believe even McCain would endorse a “sliding scale” that would allow the Khalid Mohammeds to get roughed up under certain circumstances. In other words, McCain makes the sorts of distinctions mentioned above–he just doesn’t want them written into law. Indeed, under the “ticking time bomb” scenario, McCain believes the president should willfully break the law McCain has authored. That’s a pretty Kerryesque position: He’s for it, except when he’s against it. So much for absolutism.

Krauthammer proposed banning torture but with exceptions that would subsume the rule -- he would allow for torture in the "ticking time bomb" scenario, and for what he calls "slow fuse" suspects such as Mohammed. Even if you don't follow Krauthammer's definition of "ticking time bomb" so broadly as to include a situation where the enemy has captured a soldier, the difficulty of its implementation should be obvious: If you don't know what information a suspect has until after you torture him, you're going to end up torturing people who have no information, who may have been deliberately fed misinformation for you to elicit, and who you presuppose are going to lie to you. You, as a torturer, also don't know either if or when the lie becomes the truth.

You risk getting an avalanche of information that buries the truth. You risk getting several versions of the truth, with amendment or new "details" added at every turn simply to get the torture to stop. In a non-ticking time bomb scenario, such as a soldier's being held hostage, you may have the luxury of repeatedly returning to your suspects to torture them again and again, until they give you better information... assuming they have it. But in an actual ticking time bomb scenario, you won't know if you have the right person, you won't know if you're getting accurate information, and you may in fact end up chasing red herrings of your own creation rather than following valid leads.

It's not clear that Goldberg accepted, or even understood, Krauthammer's distinction between the "ticking time bomb" and the "slow fuse". Krauthammer endorsed torturing somebody like Mohammed on the assumption that he's going to have useful information that he won't otherwise provide to interrogators -- and because he doesn't believe that suspected terrorists are deserving of basic human rights or dignity. Krauthammer's exceptions are so broad that his proposed limited prohibition of torture would not prevent any torture. His conception of the "ticking time bomb" is so broad as to encompass pretty much any possible, future terrorist attack or the location of a captures soldier. It's difficult to believe that he would object to the use of torture to find arms stashes, or to find people higher on the food chain, all in the name of preventing imminent terrorist attacks -- because terrorists are always plotting the next attack. Any detainee is thus reasonably treated as a "ticking time bomb" -- and if, for some reason, you can't make that case, you can simply apply the subjective measure that you think the person is "high value" and can be tortured to obtain whatever information he holds.

Although it seems obvious, Goldberg was completely unable to grasp the distinction between the positions of people like McCain and Kerry, and the unprincipled arguments of somebody like Krauthammer. Kerry and McCain were prepared for the possibility that the mythic "ticking time bomb" might actually be found, with the President being called upon to authorize torture in violation of the law. A President who could not make the case would be subject to impeachment, and he and those following his orders could face criminal charges. Such an approach should all-but-eliminate the possibility of a Bush-Cheney torture regime, as their programs would be plainly unlawful. Krauthammer, on the other hand, would have been perfectly happy to give that regime the full blessings of the law.

Goldberg is upset with the idea that once something is identified as torture, it should be deemed off-limits:

One of the great problems with the word “torture” is that it tolerates no ambiguity. It is a taboo word, like racism or incest. Once you call something torture, the conversation is supposed to end. It’s a line no one may cross. As a result, if you think the enhanced interrogation techniques are necessary, or simply justified, you have to call them something else. Similarly, many sincere opponents of these techniques think that if they can simply call them “torture,” their work is done.

Pierce points out the stupidity of Goldberg's points of comparison:

This is a guy who has made a comfortable career out of the notion that liberal fascists use "racism" as a club to bludgeon conservatives into silence when those conservatives are only trying to have a discussion about values and the public schools. Is he implying here that people use the words "incest" and "torture" in the same way? Do liberals cry "incest" when conservatives are only trying to talk about the gene pool out of which have emerged their hot cousins?

But more than that, Goldberg again displays the same sort of cowardice that plagues not just his musings on torture, but most of his work. He just told us that he was tremulous of using the word "torture" to describe torture, yet he's now suggesting that all it takes to get us back to where we were a few years ago is a properly applied euphemism. There is no similarity between suggesting that torture should be illegal, and using a euphemism to describe acts you know to fall under the definition of torture in order to try to sidestep legal and moral issues. Beyond that, Goldberg knows that torture opponents are not simply articulating a definition and declaring their job to be done:

The problem is that the issue isn’t nearly so binary. Even John McCain — a vocal opponent of any kind of torture — has conceded that in some hypothetical nuclear ticking-time-bomb scenario, torture might be a necessary evil. His threshold might be very high, but the principle is there nonetheless.

As previously explained, McCain would have the torturer and those who authorized his acts face possible prosecution, defending his breach of a torture prohibition based upon a strong argument of necessity. McCain would have the torturer clearly demonstrate courage in his convictions, a concept that appears to be outside of Goldberg's comprehension.

And nearly everyone understands the point: When a greater evil is looming in the imminent future, the lesser evil becomes more tolerable. This is why opponents of the interrogation program are obsessed with claiming that it never worked, at all.

Here, again, Goldberg is unable to maintain internal consistency. He cannot simultaneously hold up John McCain as the iconic opponent of the torture program, while pretending that McCain is "obsessed with claiming that it never worked." While some do take the position that torture "never" works, most opponents of torture recognize that you may be able to gain useful information from torture -- but with much of that information subject to being elicited through rapport-based interrogation without the moral issues of torture, or the confounding problem of useful facts being buried in an avalanche of lies and misinformation pouring out of a suspect who will say anything to make the torture stop.

Goldberg also steps right past the obvious, that proponents of the torture program have a very long history of lying about the program and the intelligence they gathered. They lied about the scope of the program. They lied about its effectiveness. They lied about the utility of information they gathered. Knowing that their actions would shock the conscience of the nation, they systematically destroyed the evidence. You would not expect that level of deceit, exaggeration and cover-up from people who sincerely believed in their program.

Lt. Col. Douglas A. Pryer, U.S. Army, wrote an essay for Foreign Policy, entitled, I don’t believe a word of what torture advocates say—and neither should you.

Predictably, torture’s acolytes are already responding: The report was a Republican witch hunt led by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. Facts were selectively culled by partisan staffers in order to paint the program in the worst possible light. Other staffers could’ve selected different facts and reached completely opposite conclusions. Sure, there were problems with the program, but these techniques really did “work.” They saved lives. Someday, the truth will be revealed, and the men and women who performed this “hard, dirty work” for good ends will be lauded as the true heroes they are. In the mean time, trust us regarding this program’s success. WE KNOW.

Hogwash. I’ve never believed a word of what torture’s advocates say, and neither should you.

The author, who managed interrogation operations for the 1st Armored Division (1AD) in Baghdad from Jul-Nov 2003, asked that several of his prisoners be "re-interrogated" at Abu Ghraib,

Now, this is important: not once during this period did my Division receive any useful intelligence from Abu Ghraib. We received a few reports that Abu Ghraib interrogators seemed to think contained useful intelligence, but they contained nothing of substance that wasn’t contained in earlier reports. It was a mystery to me then why our interrogators in Baghdad produced actionable intelligence nearly every day but those at Abu Ghraib produced nothing of value—not little of value, NOTHING of value.

He opines,

But while trying to make sense of my own experiences, I’ve also read extensively on the subject, and all that I’ve read reinforces the same conclusion: torture is an immensely impractical intelligence-gathering tool. Professional interrogators who have become truly expert at employing rapport-based approaches decry torture’s effectiveness as an intelligence-gathering tool. Yes, you sometimes get the truth, but this truth is rarely substantial and is typically buried in what I’ve heard professional interrogators call “the longest list of lies in the world.”

Those who claim that torture has more chance of success than rapport-based approaches have limited (if any) direct experience with these approaches. They’re rarely real interrogators....

When the 9/11 attacks took place, nearly 3000 Americans lost their lives, and so many Americans lost their minds, U.S. Army interrogation doctrine (as expressed in the 1987 Intelligence Interrogation manual) had it right: “Experience indicates that . . . the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” Unfortunately, this doctrine—which reflected the practical experience of generations of interrogators—was thrown away by arrogant amateurs who thought they knew more than the professionals.

He points out that there's more to the debate than "does it work",

The question of "does it work" aside, there are HUGE strategic drawbacks to torture, such as how it undermines the rule of law, corrupts those who use it, undercuts military training, cedes moral high ground to our nation’s enemies, creates distrust among allies, sows dissension at home, serves as a source of recruits and donations for our nation’s enemies, creates irreconcilable enemies, and makes the ultimate goal of any conflict—its peaceful resolution—increasingly difficult.

Quite simply, for a mature democracy in the information age, there may be no surer tool for prolonging conflicts and shaping defeat than employing torture.

By pretending that opponents of torture begin and end their argument with, "It's wrong", Goldberg conveniently avoids addressing any of the more difficult arguments against torture.

Goldberg then brings in the false analogy:

And this suggests why the talking point about drone strikes has such power. Killing is worse than torture. Life in prison might be called torture for some people, and yet we consider the death penalty a more severe punishment....

It’s odd: Even though killing is a graver moral act, there’s more flexibility to it. America killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in World War II, but few would call that murder because such actions as the firebombing of Dresden were deemed necessary to win the war.

In other words, we have the moral vocabulary to talk about kinds of killing — from euthanasia and abortion to capital punishment, involuntary manslaughter and, of course, murder — but we don’t have a similar lexicon when it comes to kinds of torture.

It would be interesting to hear Jonah Goldberg's description of the military justification of the firebombing of Dresden, which I expect would be about as deep as his understanding of Mussolini's connection to fascism -- "Oops, I forgot Mussolini was a fascist".¹

Goldberg is obviously no student of history, but if he were he might have learned that the allied commanders who ordered such acts as the firebombing of cities in Japan knew that their acts were legally dubious and knew that they would likely result in war crimes charges if the Allies lost the war. That is the very sort of accountability that John McCain wishes to bring to torture -- to have the person making the order do so in contemplation that his decision could result in his spending many years in prison (or, in the case of war crimes, the hangman's noose), something that also likely plays into the public acceptance of the necessity defense.

Also, in war the question is almost never going to be, "Should we fire a missile or should we conduct a precision raid to kill or extract an enemy leader or terrorist". While it may be true that, in hindsight, a terrorist might prefer to be tortured and imprisoned over being blown up by a drone, perhaps along with members of his family, that only becomes relevant if the putative target of a drone strike decides to turn himself over to U.S. forces.

Goldberg is essentially arguing that, having accepted that torture is wrong, we need a new euphemism for torture, or at least for the modest amount of torture that Goldberg would have us see as something other than torture. Actually, the issue of whether or not an act constitutes torture can be made reasonably clear, using a definition such as Lt. Col. Pryer's, "Today, I judge any tactic designed to inflict physical or mental pain severe enough to 'break' someone to be 'torture.'". Goldberg might want us to believe that offering a criminal suspect a cup of coffee during an interrogation is an insidious form of sleep deprivation, tantamount to making him stand without sleep and forcibly waking him every time he dozes off, but I suspect that most others can see the difference between an interrogation that goes on arguably past the point when a suspect should be allowed to sleep and intentional sleep deprivation.²

Moreover, in the former case the suspect can argue in court that the circumstances of the interrogation became unduly coercive -- and that is made easier if it's clear that interrogating officers were intentionally depriving the suspect of sleep in order to continue the interrogation of a suspect whose mental faculties were breaking down. There is no point to trying to use Goldberg's "little bit of torture" approach, as torture is only useful if the suspect breaks. Once you make the decision to torture, there's no level at which your actions do not constitute torture.

I don't want to overstate things here. Sometimes a suspect can be inspired to provide self-incriminating information based upon threats or statements that are coercive, but are not deemed to be torture. The federal government has a reputation for threatening to bring charges against a primary suspect's spouse, or possibly other family members, when pressuring a suspect to confess to a crime or to accept a plea bargain. Suspects detained for interrogation may be told that a co-defendant is making a confession that implicates them, and that if they don't confess they'll get a more severe penalty. I don't think that Pryer is referring to causing a suspect to break his silence, or break from a prior narrative, when he speaks of "mental pain severe enough to 'break' someone" -- but I would not be surprised if he argued that you would be much more likely to get reliable information from criminal suspects if you successfully use rapport-based techniques, particularly if he's familiar with false confession cases.

Goldberg then presents the argument, "Our torture is different, because our motives are pure,"

When John McCain was brutally tortured — far, far more severely than anything we’ve done to the 9/11 plotters — it was done to elicit false confessions and other statements for purposes of propaganda. When we tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it was to get actionable intelligence on ongoing plots. It seems to me that’s an important moral distinction. If I torture a fiend to find out where he left a child to suffocate or starve in some dungeon, that’s a less evil act than torturing someone just to hear them renounce their god or country. Also, KSM was not some innocent subjected to torture to satisfy the grotesque desires of some sadists. He is an unlawful combatant responsible for murdering thousands of innocent Americans.

This may sound like nothing more than a rationalization. But that is to be expected when you try to reason through a morally fraught problem.

What it sounds like is both an oversimplification and a rationalization. While it is true that torture states use torture in order to obtain statements useful for propaganda purposes, as well as to generally intimidate the public, it is not true that they thus never use torture to gain intelligence about criminal, dissident, or terrorist activity, or to try to obtain useful intelligence from enemy soldiers. I suspect, also, that their torturers are every bit as good at rationalizing their conduct as is Goldberg when it comes to his insistence that when Americans torture they have only the purest of motives.

Here, again, Goldberg avoids addressing the actual positions of torture opponents. People like John McCain fully embrace the idea of American exceptionalism, and are going into this debate with the assumption that our motives in using torture will be pure. Unlike Goldberg, however, he has enough understanding of both history and the realities of torture to recognize that the use of torture should nonetheless be extremely rare, and that the legal framework for the use of torture should force decision-makers to consider both the need for torture and all reasonable alternatives before authorizing its use.

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Footnotes:

1. Goldberg's actual statement,

Mussolini was born a socialist, he died a socialist, he never abandoned his love of socialism, he was one of the most important socialist intellectuals in Europe and was one of the most important socialist activists in Italy, and the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I.

Goldberg's defense of his error is that he "misspoke", a claim that may be true but, if so, is akin to somebody professing to be an expert on the Middle East conflicts while forgetting, even momentarily, about Mohammed's connection to Islam. Actually, given that Mussolini railed against socialism, it would be a bit like such an "expert" arguing that Mohammed unsuccessfully tried to stop Islam.

2. One wonders what distinctions Goldberg would draw that would render the techniques of torture to be, in his view, non-torture. Is there actually a degree of waterboarding that could be deemed anything but torture? Would he defect rectal feeding -- "As long as you don't use any more hummus than you get in one of those airline snack packs" -- or would he concede that some techniques are always torture even if used only to a limited degree?

The Fantasy of Arming Secular Syrian Dissidents

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

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

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

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

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

The Fantasy of a Residual Force in Iraq

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

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

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

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

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

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

John McCain's Thoughtless Militarism

I was reading about John McCain's views on whether or not we should intervene in Syria and couldn't help but note that he simultaneously wants to launch a massive military assault on Syria to remove the Assad regime, but without putting boots on the ground. Never mind that the Assad regime has distributed caches of chemical weapons throughout the nation, and to bomb them (assuming we can even locate them) would almost certainly involve the release of chemical clouds, causing deaths on top of those of the civilians who would be killed in the bombing raids themselves. I have no doubt that Assad has placed weapons caches in locations that all-but-ensure that a bombing raid would cause civilian deaths. I also suspect that Assad might take the opportunity to set off some explosions and chemical releases of his own, and blame them on a U.S. raid. And if we topple Assad, all those caches are up for grabs - and some very nasty weapons could end up in the hands of factions allied with Hezbollah or Al Qaeda in Iraq, among other anti-U.S. groups.

McCain's recent grandstanding, through his surprise trip to Syria, also highlights both his ignorance of the region and its actors - he wants the Obama Administration to arm "good" Syrian rebels, but didn't know the history of the factions he met with, and doesn't seem to understand that the majority of rebels want to create an Islamist state. He also doesn't seem to be aware, or perhaps doesn't care, that a rebel victory is almost certain to be followed by atrocities or (at best) ethnic cleansing of Alawites. It's also worth noting that the groups he wants to support are not uniformed forces - they're the type of forces he would eagerly label "unlawful combatants" if they were fighting the U.S. or its allies. I'm reminded of this:

I think McCain's heart is in the right place, which is to say that he's in the "peance freeance" faction of the Republican Party - those who think that the U.S. military takes the form of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and, once they defeat the evil overlords and their minions, peace and democracy will break out all over. The problem is, he has no apparent interest in non-military solutions, or at least doesn't seem to deem them worthy of consideration or discussion, nor does he have any particular interest in the region or its actors. Why does he confuse Sunni and Shia, why doesn't his staff ensure that he doesn't meet with factions that are opposed to U.S. goals and interests when he grandstands, why does he seem to think that if you decapitate a despotic regime the people will immediately clamor for Western-style democracy? Because, to the extent that the subject matter doesn't make things go "boom", he appears to have given very little thought to pretty much any significant foreign policy issue. His mistakes suggest that he's not even interested, even as he plays the elder statesman and lobbies for war. He shows no sign that he's willing or able to learn from our nation's history, no matter how recent and no matter what role he played in that history.

When I look back at the Bush Administration, and its colossal incompetence on foreign policy issues, I'm reminded of the opportunities George W. Bush squandered in the early months of his regime. That would have been a time to reach out to nations like Egypt (with its aging leader) and to Syria (with its new leader), to try to move the region toward democracy, encourage economic development, and push for the development of institutions and policies that would make those states less oppressive and better able to eventually transition to democracy (e.g., driving corruption out of the civil service, ensuring independent courts, pushing for better respect for human rights). But for all of the talk of Bush's "Freedom Agenda", his actions suggested something else. The "Freedom Agenda" was a cloak for realpolitik - leaders that the Bush Administration wanted to keep in place knew that they were safe, and Bush had no apparent interest in pushing for changes that might upset those leaders or in trying to create bridges to leaders of traditionally hostile nations. That is, when it involves serious diplomatic effort, developing an understanding of the region or its players, or getting up to your elbows in difficult, long-standing factional conflicts, neither Bush nor McCain have much visible interest in advancing democracy. But if you can drop some bombs and call it a "Freedom Agenda", the're all in.

Grandstanding over Syria isn't helpful, because there's no good path forward. If the U.S. intervenes and things don't improve - or worsen - it will be deemed necessary to escalate our involvement. Once we're in, we'll yet again be in a situation where our departure is all but certain to be followed by a civil war or atrocities, but those issues will likely be even harder to resolve than they were in Iraq. So we pour hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps a trillion or more, into yet another war in the Middle East followed by another indefinite occupation. It's not enough to say "Let's do something, but not put boots on the ground", even if it plays well on Fox News. And it's never enough to view the entire world as a military target, because the only tool in your toolbox is the military. But it seems, that's about all McCain has to offer.

Romney Leads a Revival of Domestic Manufacturing.... Sort Of

For four years his party's factories have been sputtering, but Romney came along, tuned them up, and we're now the world's leading exporter of manufactured outrage! Sure, you can argue that he's making the same mistake as the "The Change Bank",¹ and perhaps confuses "volume" with "amplification", but he's hoping for a different type of profit.

John McCain, for example, is outraged that the President mocked Romney's talking point about Naval strength. And being a naval aviator himself, and thus presumably aware of the advent of aircraft carriers, and the son and grandson of admirals, who better than McCain knows how little has changed in the Navy over the past century.

"Frankly, I don't understand why the president wants to take these kind of cheap shots -- bayonets and horses, what's that all about?" he said. "You know, when I debated then-Senator Obama I didn't criticize or belittle his lack of experience on national security issues. And he seemed to take these kind of cheap shots. ... I kind of resent it."

He resents it? Because he never took any cheap shots and the prima donna celebrity lightweight during his own campaign? He and his campaign argued that Obama was weak, inexperienced, wrong and dangerous, and has been continuing to push the "Obama is weak" line through the present, but no cheap shots... on that subject during the actual debates? [Added: "I didn't criticize or belittle his lack of experience on national security issues"... not so true.]

Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America's veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge.

I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.

Hm. Those sounds like a cheap shots to me. Maybe McCain means "I made no cheap shots on that subject during the debate, just before, after and by proxy."

McCain would have been better served by pointing out to Romney that his talking point was really, really weak, even if it got laughs or applause when tossed out like red meat to low-information Republican voters, and that when you carry a weak talking point into a debate you should expect your opponent to be ready for you. Or, if McCain suddenly prefers rational, reasoned debate, being in a position to defend Romney's claim on its substance. Would McCain dispute this: In a theoretical sea battle, if you put the U.S. Navy on one side and all of the other navies in the world on the other, the U.S. Navy would prevail?² Does McCain think it's good for the U.S. and its projection of power to pretend that the Navy is weak?

If something truly is a "cheap shot", it should be easy to refute on the facts. The "weak navy" cheap shot is easily refuted on the facts - Obama's response was shorthand for what, to somebody like McCain, should have been obvious from the day Romney started reciting that line. John McCain should be in an excellent position to explain why Romney's point holds.

The fact that McCain, like so many Republican partisans after the past three debates, is resentfully pounding the table about "cheap shots" and the like rather than explaining how Romney's claims make sense comes pretty close to an a collective admission of Romney's substantive weakness. Romney and Ryan do best when they are reciting poll-tested claims that they believe will sound good to his intended audience, despite having little to no relation to fact, calculated to make the President look weak or ineffectual. I'm surprised that McCain still needs this explained, but sometimes your opponent fights back - and when you telegraph your punches, sometimes you make that easy.

In fairness, if you are of the school that the best defense is a strong offense, sputtering rage about how unfair things were to your candidate may seem like a reasonable response to his having lost two consecutive debates.
---------------
1. The gist of the skit:

Change Bank: "We make change for you. You got a $1, we can give you 20 nickels. Or we can give you 5 dimes, a quarter, and 25 pennies - its all up to you."

Customer/Narrator: "How do you make money?"

Change Bank: [deadpan] "Volume".

2. That's not what the modern Navy is designed to do, so I'm not putting that forth as a definitive test of naval strength, but if you want to compare "then and now", it seems like a fair measure of relative strength.

The Latest News from Planet Douthat

When it comes to politics and political commentary the "fools or frauds" question often arises. When somebody makes an assertion that reflects badly on their intelligence, you have to wonder are they truly that foolish or are they knowingly advancing a fraudulent argument. Some columnists appear to believe that "fool or fraud" is a false dichotomy, far too constraining - you don't have to be one or the other when you can be both? And then, alas, you at times see somebody who is attempting a fraud so clumsily that he reveals himself to be a fool.

For some reason my thoughts now shift to Ross Douthat. Douthat opens by assuming that last week's debate was between "the flaws in contemporary conservatism" and "the weaknesses in Obama-era liberalism", and suggests that flawed contemporary conservatism carried the day. I am wondering at this point if Douthat watched the same debate I saw, but alas, he offers no analysis to support his conclusion. We then move into fantasy land:

Four years ago, the Obama presidency was hailed as the beginning of an extended liberal renaissance – a new New Deal, a resurrected Camelot, a return to the glory days of Lyndon Johnson before Vietnam wrecked his presidency. Health care reform was the highest priority, but it was only supposed to be the beginning.

The glory days of Lyndon Johnson.... wasn't that the Obama team's tag line going into the election? Seriously, other than a handful of first time voters already exhausted by eight years of Bush ineptitude, few of whom would get the "Johnson/Vietnam" reference, who does Douthat imagine he is describing?

The most common reaction I was hearing from Democrats was, "I hope the Democrats in Congress don't **** this up." A close second place went to, "I wonder how the Democrats in Congress are going to **** this up?" Perhaps Douthat is confused and believes that Democrats live in opposite land, and if he and his circle of confederates were crying about how Obama was going to ruin the world it could only mean that Democrats believed the opposite. It appears that he needs a bit more grounding in what the Bush Administration deemed "the reality based community."

He goes from there to worse:

With the Democrats enjoying huge congressional majorities, everything seemed to be on the table: Immigration reform, a program to combat climate change, card-check legislation, a wave of trust-busting in the banking sector – and at the least, the very least, a return to Clinton-era tax rates.

Immigration reform. You know, that ridiculous "liberal" concept that George W. Bush wanted to make part of his first term agenda, and that "liberals" like John "DREAM Act" McCain used to champion.

A program to combat climate change. You know, like the cap and trade approach that John McCain guy used to advance, in the past also endorsed by that other ridiculous, naive liberal, Newt Gingrich.

Advocacy for "a wave of trust-busting in the banking sector"? Earth to Planet Douthat? Where did he get the idea that President Obama supported whatever he imagines "trust-busting in the banking sector" to mean? Perhaps Douthat has President Obama confused with Teddy Roosevelt? In the real world, Obama was praising Jamie Dimon while letting Larry Summers and Tim Geithner spearhead financial industry reforms.

A "return to Clinton-era tax rates"? Republicans continue to feign concern about deficit spending and the need for lower deficits and balanced budgets, so it would not be unreasonable for Obama to allow the "Bush-era tax cuts" to expire. I am sure Douthat has erased the facts from his memory, but the cuts passed through reconciliation and were scheduled to expire after ten years. But I digress. No member of the Democratic Party advocated "", and in fact taxes were cut. There is talk about "a return to Clinton-era tax rates" for the wealthiest wage earners, but that's entirely different from what Douthat is pretending to have been Democratic Party policy.

Card check legislation? Well, obviously the modern Republican Party isn't going to help labor unions, so at least he is correct in terms of associating it with the Democratic Party, but it was not the priority Douthat would have us believe. Why pull it out of mothballs? Because it remains a Republican talking point.

In other words, Douthat complains that the Democrats wanted to pass a "weak" form of "liberalism" which, for the most part, had previously been at the core of campaign rhetoric and policy proposals of the prior President and Obama's 2008 election opponent. Well, yes, adopting Republican policies can reasonably be described as a weak form of liberalism, but that's obviously not what Douthat meant.

And... whoah... we're only too paragraphs into Douthat's foolishness.

Douthat pontificates,

Sometimes Obama-era liberalism has disappointed because it has failed outright. The defeat of cap-and-trade legislation and the stillborn push for immigration reform exposed the deep fissures within the Democratic party, and particularly the divide between the enlightened do-goodism of the party’s upper middle class supporters and the economic interests of its remaining blue-collar constituents.

It should be unnecessary to say this, but McCain/Gingrich style "cap and trade" measures, and McCain/Bush-style immigration reform aren't the best examples of "Obama-era liberalism" or its failure. Immigration reform failed because of right-wing demagoguery, a strategy of xenophobia that remains remarkably effective at scaring and dividing people. John McCain could have demonstrated some backbone and picked up at least one of his old causes, rallying the tiny number of Republican votes it would have taken to see his dreams (no pun intended) become reality. But no, politics were more important, and as Mitch McConnell said, their number one job was to beat Obama in 2012.

How about that little sneer at the Democratic Party's elites who are out of touch with "the economic interests of its remaining blue-collar constituents"? Because, you know, 95% of Democrats are rich, urb9o0anites, doing something other than working in the financial industry but, you know, otherwise that rich and out of touch. Were Douthat an honest man, he would admit that he's using a euphemism here for "working class white males who have not attended college", but... he's not. Even if we assume that there remains no lingering effect of the Republican Southern Strategy, which we should not, the Republican Party has engaged in shameless demagoguery on a wide variety of issues to keep that group of voters largely in its corner. And yes, it reached the point where John McCain had to scamper away from his own long-held beliefs in support of policies that Douthat purports to be "Obama-era liberalism".

Douthat next launches into the standard Republican double message on Obama's first year in office - having just told us how the President should have been able to resolve pretty much every major, unresolved issue facing the country, we get "but he simultaneously should also have tried to do less".

Then came the White House’s failure to sell the public on its health care bill, which exacerbated the stimulus’s underperformance – by leading to months of wrangling when Washington should have been reckoning with the economy instead – and then cost the Democrats dearly at the polls in 2010.

You see, there was no issue with Republican obstructionism and demagoguery, the whole "death panels" thing never happened, Republicans didn't (and don't) criticize the President for supposedly cutting Social Security (to give money to undeserving people who haven't "paid for" Medicare), and the like. No, all the President had to do was give speech and the nation would have magically understood the entire bill. You have to ask, why didn't he think of that. Oh yeah, because he doesn't have the good fortune of living on Planet Douthat.

This failure of salesmanship doesn’t in and of itself discredit the bill’s provisions.

That's an interesting admission, Ross. Funny how you didn't have enough space in your blog post (which does not have any limitations on its length) to better explain that one.

But at the very least it demonstrates that the redistributive policies liberals favor will only be accepted if they’re founded on a secure base of economic growth – growth that Obama’s policies, unlike F.D.R.’s or L.B.J.’s, have conspicuously failed to produce.

And just like that, we're beamed back up to Planet Douthat. The planet where seniors won't take a penny of Social Security or Medicare unless they're sure they paid for everything they receive (and more!) over their working lives. The planet in which Medicare Part D, a gargantuan, unfunded expansion of Medicare wasn't spearheaded by a Republican President, passed by a Republican Congress, and eagerly accepted by a panoply of senior citizens who vote Republican. With Paul "Mr. Fiscal Responsibility" Ryan himself voting for the expansion. Because... redistribution. Ew.

Not being big on internal consistency, Douthat explains the biggest fault of "Obama-era liberalism" - it's designed to advance the ends of powerful interest and industry groups, instead of the people.

More broadly, all of Obama’s signature accomplishments have tended to have the same weakness in common: They have been weighed down by interest-group payoffs and compromised by concessions to powerful insiders, from big pharma (which stands to profit handsomely from the health care bill) to the biggest banks (which were mostly protected by the Dodd-Frank financial reform).

One wonders how Douthat defines "conservatism", or if he has ever heard either the expression, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" or "business as usual". He can't possibly be that clueless about how Washington works.

A small dose of reality: The legislation the President passed could have been made significantly better had a handful of responsible Republicans signed on. The President would have been able to avoid making unseemly deals with the likes of Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, the nation would have been better served, the special interests might have been pushed back at least a few inches. But no, Mitch McConnnell was focused on creating a context for Obama's defeat, and it makes for much better demagoguery to whine about "The Louisiana Purchase" than to admit that one responsible Republican could have voted in favor of the bill and obviated the need for that deal.

It may have been an empty rhetorical gesture, but the fact that Romney could actually out-populist the president on “too big to fail” during the last debate speaks to the Obama-era tendency for liberalism to blur into a kind of corporatism, in which big government intertwines with big business rather than restraining it.

The President was, of course, handicapped by the facts. Romney can do his usual, embracing both sides of the issue: "I love Dodd-Frank, except for the parts that I hate and will repeal, and no I'm not going to tell you what parts I'm taking about," and pretend that he would do more than the President to take on the financial industry. May have been an empty rhetorical gesture? Once again, "Earth to Planet Douthat...." The financial sector is openly seething about what they see as an attack by the President. Bailing them out so that they could pay their bonuses with taxpayer dollars and borrow for next to nothing, and get right back to business as usual? You can only imagine their horror. You can rest assured that Romney is presenting a very different message behind closed doors. Those are, after all, his people.

And hm... what word is it that anti-Obama demagogues like to use to describe Obama, and what does it have to do with "big government intertwine[d] with big business"? (Something that Douthat has apparently never noticed before. Seriously?) Perhaps he's been hanging out with Jonah Goldberg. Yeah, Obama's that brand of socialist-communist-fascist that is always ignoring the needs of the people in favor of serving powerful industries.

How can you follow up on such a wonderful analysis? How about by... lying?

But what we don’t see in this campaign cycle is much soul-searching from Democrats about the ways in which their agenda hasn’t worked out as planned.

Instead, in a country facing a continued unemployment crisis and a looming deficit crunch, liberals have rallied behind a White House whose only real jobs program is “stay the course” and whose plan to deal with long-term deficits relies on the woefully insufficient promise to tax the 1 percent.

You know, job bill? Blocked by Republicans? Because they want Obama to lose? Apparently no similar effort was made on Planet Douthat? You can criticize it on substance - Matt Taibbi thinks it's a handout to Wall Street, Richard Epstein thinks it would create a socialist nightmare - but you cannot pretend it does not exist. What does Mitt Romney promise to do, again? Oh, that's right... "create" the exact number of jobs that are projected to be created if we vote a turnip into the White House.

It’s not that Romney offered some detailed, brilliantly persuasive alternative. He didn’t, and couldn’t, because his party has at best a sketch of a policy agenda rather than a blueprint.

Actually, as Douthat knows, if Romney's party thought Romney believed half of what he said in the debate they would pull the plug on his campaign. The same interests that Douthat whines are too influential in the Obama Administration consider Romney to be bought and paid for.

But Romney isn’t running for re-election, and this was a case where merely seeming forward-looking, energetic and reassuring was enough to remind Americans of all the ways that the Obama era has disappointed them – and in so doing, sent shivers down liberalism’s glass jaw.

Wow. For mixed metaphors of that caliber I usually have to read Thomas Friedman.

Frankly, if a Republican presidential nominee can win an election by serving up a steaming dose of Rafalca leavings, but doing so in a "forward-looking, energetic and reassuring" manner, we have bigger problems than trying to figure out how to make glass jaws stop shivering. Douthat may come to realize that, should he ever move back to Planet Earth.

Should Douthat venture beyond his peer group and into the world at large, he will find that Democrats are very concerned about what might happen in a second Obama term. That they're aware of the institution impediments politicians like McConnell are happy to utilize to damage the President, even when he knows he's also harming the country, because power is more important than policy. But I suspect I"m now getting into stuff that's beyond Douthat's ability to grasp, harder and nowhere near as much fun to write as a blog post that echoe's Republican talking points, and not at all likely to fill Douthat's pockets through speaker fees and book contracts.

Update: Ethan Gach is far more charitable to Douthat than I. Responding to Douthat's claim that "liberals" have "rallied" behind the President and his lukewarm second term agenda, Gach comments, "What makes Douthat’s chiding so unbearable isn’t that it’s untrue: it’s that it completely misses the point."

When Douthat complains, "we don’t see in this campaign cycle is much soul-searching from Democrats about it seems that he missed his own political party's inability to "soul search" following various election losses. But more than that, he's presenting a hollow man argument. In his bifurcation of society, Douthat whines about "liberals" as if there's a single, unified "liberal" mindset, and that "liberals" are all cheering for the President. He can only believe that if... he never ventures outside and limits his media exposure to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. It would be more true to accuse conservatives of mindlessly cheering for Mitt Romney despite his offering what Douthat charitably describes as "at best a sketch of a policy agenda rather than a blueprint". Seriously - Douthat defends that on the ground that Romney is not the incumbent, but it's much easier to run on a fantasy when your campaign is not firmly grounded in facts on the ground.

Gach believes that Douthat is expressing a clever form of contrarianism, that "The very thing that liberals love to accuse Romney of being, well, it’s actually true of their guy". Except the concern about Romney is not that "his agenda going forward is insubstantive" - the concern about Romney is that he has an agenda that he refuses to disclose, but that he may nonetheless be elected.

Gach continues his charity work,

I can understand why Douthat doesn’t want to look at the entire context in which the people, philosophies, and political parties he’s discussing are operating. That would be difficult, complex, and inconclusive. It certainly would not lend itself to the kind of “actually THIS is what’s going on” blogging that professional pundits are expected and encouraged to turn out.

If you say, though, that Douthat "doesn’t want to look at the entire context" you have the choice of stating that his blindness is not willful (fool) or that he's deliberately omitting the context in order to present an argument he knows to be deeply flawed if not false (fraud). Yes, if you can see through the charade this approach "makes what he says kind of silly", but his pontifications weren't intended for somebody like Gach who can see through the charade.

Looking for Proof of Intelligent Life in the Political World....

Sometimes political events bring to mind the classic Ronald Reagan SNL sketch, in which whenever cameras were rolling or members of the public were around he would play the part of an affable grandfather, but the moment they were gone he turned into an energetic, detail-driven dynamo. There was probably some truth to it, that we never got to see the "real" Ronald Reagan who was concealed by a carefully contrived cowboy persona. Whatever his actual behind-the-scenes persona, Reagan was comfortable with his public image.

A few decades later, G.W. Bush offered the public a similarly contrived public persona, that of a Texas rancher who liked to drive around in a pickup truck and clear brush in his spare time. No pictures of G.W. on horseback - to put it mildly, he was not that much of a rancher. And never mind that the ranch was purchased as a campaign prop and sold pretty much the minute G.W. retired from the White House. But the public image worked... to a degree.

Bush apparently chafed at the public's perception that he was not very bright. So, during his presidency he arranged for some meetings with authors and other prominent individuals in which he would attempt to wow them with his deep understanding of their work, before ushering them out to share the news of how brilliant he was. The principal tool appears to have been flattery - convince the participant in the meeting that the President had read their work, thought about it, compared it to other ideas, and found it compelling. Flattery will get you... a lot of places.

I suspect that the campaign didn't succeed - at least, not to the degree the White House had hoped. That is, although I do recall hearing a number of people, some of whom were unquestionably intelligent, claim that the President was very impressive in their meetings, the formula was pretty obvious. But more to the point, it raised the question of why a man who is so impressive in a controlled meeting behind closed doors demonstrated none of the same brilliance and insight in any other context.

All presidents have aspects of their personality that they would prefer to hide from the public, and often they are quite successful in managing their public images. No matter how it is created, once a public persona is firmly established it can be difficult to overcome. John McCain seemed like something of a maverick until he fully embraced G.W., and some who scrutinize his record question the extent to which the label ever truly fit, but the image was strong enough to carry him through his presidential campaign. At the time, the public would have been shocked by some of the behavior attributed to Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and while we now view Watergate as consistent with Nixon's personality, the Nixon you hear on tape is not the Nixon people thought they elected.

Negative images can stick, as well, which is no small part of the reason why political campaigns work so hard to tar opponents before they're known to the public. "Dukakis in a tank". Gerald Ford was probably less clumsy than the average president, but a few prominent incidents led to him being regarded as somewhat accident prone. Al Gore was not the dissembler that his detractors claim, but any number of myths persist about supposed false claims or exaggerations that made for good headlines but turned out to be misrepresentations of what Gore had actually said.

In G.W.'s case, it's difficult to believe that we were simply talking about stage management. That is, once his team made the decision to play up his intellect, it should have been possible to modify his public persona to better display his intellect. Once the decision was made to push his intellect, it should have been possible to demonstrate publicly what was reportedly being demonstrated in private. The fact that G.W.'s P.R. team failed in that effort suggests that the public persona was more genuine than what was going on in controlled, private meetings.

Here's the thing: Yes, the President and his team have enormous power to craft a public image and push that image forward. If it resonates with the public, it can be difficult to overcome, even with facts. By virtue of his intellectual incuriosity and desired "blue collar, man of the people", Bush was able to convince people that he was less intelligent than he actually was. But when he became uncomfortable with that persona, the public simply knew too much about him for him to take it to the other extreme. Had he settled for the middle, where by all appearances the truth most likely would have been found, he might have achieved at least that much.

In contrast with G.W. or Reagan, some candidates want to be seen as intelligent, even brilliant, and work to advance that perception. Sometimes they don't have to work very hard at it - our nation loves dynasties, business and political, and it also associates wealth with intelligence. So if you're rich and have a strong family name, you are 90% of the way to selling yourself as brilliant.

Even if you turn out to be Donald Trump, crass, boorish, prone to making absurd claims and statements, you are likely to maintain your reputation as a business genius simply by virtue of your claimed wealth, no matter how many failed ventures, bankruptcies and dubious licensing schemes you leave in your wake. Frankly, you can see why somebody like Trump would seethe at the "you didn't build that" misquote, because at this point there's little left to the myth behind his fortune - he looks like a narcissist of middling intelligence who learned the building trade (and got some very important connections) through his father, then got very lucky gambling with his inherited fortune.

But the fact is, when somebody is brilliant you can usually find evidence of that. Not in nebulous, Chauncey Gardener-type statements that require you to either defer to the speaker's brilliance or invite you to read into the statement the "brilliant" insight you are hoping to hear (yes, I'm talking about Alan Greenspan). But in documented, public actions, statements and writings that demonstrate the claimed level of intellect. When somebody tells you, in essence, "Trust me, when he's alone in private he says smart things," tell them, "I'll believe you when I hear the tape."

Romney's Need to Define Himself

Ross Douthat shares a thoughtful perspective on the struggles Mitt Romney faces as the Republican Convention and presidential debates approach. I'll note, though, that he falls prey to the tendency of the political junkie to obsess, months ahead of the election, over slight movements in the tracking polls as evidence that one candidate or another is likely to win. Douthat sees the lack of movement as reassuring,

So Obama isn’t actually being borne upward by the Bain contretemps any more than he was actually dragged down by his own “the private sector is doing fine” facepalm moment. Instead, public opinion has been remarkably stable since the spring, with both candidates moving up and down between the mid and high 40s, mostly within the margin of error.

I think he's mistaken, though, to suggest that the criticism of Romney on Bain, and the increasing number of Republicans who are calling on Romney to release his tax returns, can be dismissed based upon those poll results. They tie directly into what Douthat tells us Romney must do: Define himself in positive terms. He has abandoned his tenure as governor as a qualification for the White House, his tenure at the Olympics isn't really something he wants scrutinized, and that leaves Bain.

Romney's political opponents are aware of that. Four years ago we saw John McCain complain about Bain's outsourcing and dismiss it as a qualification for the presidency. Four months ago we saw Newt Gingrich accusing Romney of "vulture capitalism". If we use the words of Romney's surrogates, that pretty much means that Gingrich and McCain are socialists who don't even know what it means to be American.

Although Romney has devoted the past two decades attempting to position himself for the White House, and the past six years to actively campaigning, as Douthat observes, he has yet to define himself. He seems to be premising his entire campaign upon two things: 1. He's not Obama, and 2. rich people need more tax cuts. Did I leave anything out? Douthat seems to agree,

For Romney to accomplish the same feat, he will need to reassure voters that he represents something more than just a rubber stamp for the interests of the wealthiest Americans.

It's not as if Romeny's failure to "introduce himself" is new news.

When the press is all punched out, Romney will have $100 million and his own formidable political skills available to make his rebuttal. ... The fact is, Mitt Romney will have enough money and enough political skill to define himself when the time is right.

Update that to about a billion dollars and you might not realize that's what a Romney supporter was arguing five years ago. The same guy supporter, four years ago:

I hope Mr. Romney does well enough in Michigan today that he gets the opportunity to introduce the public to the real Mitt Romney.

Here we are, four years later, and it has become a joke:

Douthat believes that Romney should watch a few Reagan speeches and... emulate? Imitate? That Romney should articulate even a weak tea vision for America,

They would involve supplementing his critiques of the Obama White House’s crony capitalism with an acknowledgment of the financial sector’s sins as well. They would involve supplementing his promise to repeal the Democratic health care legislation with a vision of what might actually replace it. They might involve returning to a theme that he struck in April, when he suggested that this election will come down to “jobs and kids,” and offering more to struggling middle class parents than just a tax cut on their (meager) capital gains.

It tells you something, though, doesn't it, that we're almost four years past the collapse of the financial sector, and it's still necessary to ask Romney to acknowledge a problem? That the Governor who signed Romneycare into law demagogues against a federal law that, for all intents and purposes, is the same as the one he passed - and, despite claiming to have solutions and having previously suggested that he was the man to bring health insurance reform to the nation - has nothing to offer?

Douthat should note that Romney has offered "struggling middle class parents" more than "a tax cut on their (meager) capital gains" - he's offered to make it harder for them to get and keep health insurance, and to cut government programs that benefit them. I suspect that's not what Douthat has in mind. Douthat imagines that Romney could promise to get government off of our backs, Reagan-style? The man who can't utter a word of criticism for the financial sector, who pays lower taxes on his fortune than most working Americans, who has a $100 million IRA (based upon supposed $6,000 annual contributions), who has six houses, friends who own NASCAR teams and have private back yard golf courses.... Yeah, the government has crushed him.

Douthat's invocation of Reagan brought to mind the fact that, love him or hate him, the man had fantastic delivery. He cultivated an image, style of presentation, style and wit that was highly effective. Douthat inspired an image of Reagan, at my door, apologizing for running over my cat - and that by the end of his apology I would probably both like him and feel sorry for him. Romney? Why is it I'm picturing a stammering explanation punctuated at some point by the emergence of his checkbook?

Romney does need to define himself, but he needs to define himself credibly. I suspect that the reason we haven't been introduced to "the real Mitt Romney" is that his advisors have been trying out various costumes and personas, and are discovering that Romney really is the businessman in a suit, staid, boring, gray at the temples, and yes, self-interested, we've been seeing all along. Romney trying to be Reagan would likely seem as genuine as Dukakis in a tank.

When You've Already Been Elected....

What does it matter if your constituents aren't "good followers"? Cynical though they may be, they voted you into office and, if you're lucky enough to be holding federal office, odds are you're not in any great danger of losing your seat.

Why would the onus be on your constituents to assume that you are an honest, well-intentioned person who will work hard to protect their interests and to do what you truly believe to be best for the country? Why shouldn't your constituents, and others across the nation, judge you by your actions?

President Obama earned some deserved criticism for making up-front deals, behind closed doors, with powerful factions within the health industry in order to help pave the way for a healthcare reform bill that could get through Congress. But as unseemly as that was, his actions were made necessary by the fact that Members of Congress are susceptible to lobbying, and when you're up against monied, powerful interests it's difficult to maintain the necessary majority if the lobbyists start peeling away necessary supporters. Obama cut the deals, sure, but it was the habits of Congress that made it necessary to do so.

Why is the average voter expected to believe that political elites are good men, as part of a just authority, when those same elites are tearing each other down, questioning each other's motives, engaging in base pandering and prevarication? What is to admire when a slate of would-be Presidents, lined up for a debate, overwhelmingly rejects basic facts of science? What is to admire when they suggest that the incumbent President is a socialist, out to destroy our way of life?

Four years ago, John McCain attempted to correct some voters about his opponent,

I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.

That, of course, is not a message those voters had been receiving from other Republicans, from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, from the talking heads on Fox News... so they jeered.

Does that make them bad followers? Hardly. They were following an orthodoxy that had been engineered and fed to them by any number of elites, albeit not elites that I would consider to be men of good will. Elites who don't care if they cause four years of gridlock at a time when the public needs Washington to be responsive and effective, because at the end of the day that will bring them more power. Those voters needed to question authority - not McCain's, not the possibility of Obama's, but the authorities that were and are intentionally misleading them.

When John McCain was able to cultivate his maverick persona, the people liked him. When he appeared instead to be abandoning principle in the pursuit of power, he lost a lot of credibility with voters. Yes, a good case can be made that McCain's reputation as a maverick was a product of good public relations, more than of standing up for principle. But at the aforementioned town hall, he did stand up for principle. Other politicians looked on and apparently asked, "... and what did that get him," because the public expression of similar sentiments is exceedingly rare.

One of the favorite tests of "seriousness" among Beltway pundits is whether a politician is willing to "fix" Social Security. A fix is easy - it's been done before, and there's every reason to believe that if the Republicans were willing to do so the two parties could easily fashion a reform bill that would tweak FICA taxes and retirement ages and balance the books (at least by CBO projections) for 75 years or more. But that isn't happening. Is it not fair to say that it's not "men of good will" who are preventing a fix? That hidden (and sometimes not-so-hidden) agendas are at work?

Seriously, an elected politician has only two things to lose if he votes his conscience - if he chooses to be honest, reject demagoguery, and try to do what's best for the country - namely (a) lobbyist money (and invitations to their parties), and (b) reelection. The joke, "What's the first thing a politician thinks about when he wakes up in the morning?" (Reelection), may be cynical, but it also happens to be accurate. If it weren't, Congress would be a lot more productive and the public would be a lot less cynical.

Is everybody in Congress a bad person? Far from it. The unfortunate mindset seems to be that if you don't learn to play the game you're "ineffective" - yet if you play the game you're part of the problem. All it takes for Congress to be a dysfunctional institution, suited more to serving special interests than to advancing the public interest, is for a sufficient number of its good men to do nothing. While the good men (and women) who are trying to do the right thing, and those who arguably want they could do the right thing but have decided to "go along to get along", probably do wish that the public were less cynical - but it's perfectly fair for the public to judge our elected officials by their actions, and on the whole their actions (and inaction) justify cynicism.

We're not living in a performance of Peter Pan, where if we clap our hands and repeatedly declare our belief in Congress's good intentions they'll suddenly end their antics and start solving the nation's most serious problems. They already have our votes. If they're willing to give up the lobbyist money and take a chance on having to find another job in a couple of years, they can do the right thing, right now.

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.

Republican Concern Trolls on the Afghanistan War

"But if the war in Afghanistan is winding down starting next July, we won't be able to use it as a campaign issue when attacking President Obama."

After all, whatever the facts on the ground and despite the Republican Party's history both of abject failure and lack of ideas on how to do better, it's better to have war forever, at immense cost to both Afghanistan and our own nation, than to have one less issue with which to attack the incumbent President.

Being Used Isn't The Problem....

... It's being used but not getting paid.

Because He's Such a Serious Man....

John McCain isn't bothered by Sarah Palin's scribbling his name off of a visor she wore during her Hawaii vacation.

Sen. John McCain brushed off the semi-controversy over his former running mate's visor Sunday, attributing the blog and talk show chatter about Sarah Palin's vacation attire to "hysterical attacks" from the left.

Yeah, which is why you only get coverage of the "story"....

Finally former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential and presidential nominees Sarah Palin. Made a potential political fashion faux -- while vacationing with her family in Hawaii. Palin was photographed wearing a visor from John McCain's failed presidential bid with the words McCain for president blacked out apparently and magic marker.

from left-wing sources like Fox News.

McCain, though, isn't very good at deciding what is or is not a "hysterical attack". I mean, if you're going to make a hysterical attack over somebody's vacation in Hawaii, you couldn't do much better than McCain's own campaign team and party.¹ McCain also doesn't seem to understand that his recent false, hypocritical attack on Senator Franken qualifies.
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1. That is, unless you're Cokie Roberts.

Mavericky Goodness on "Cap and Trade"

How long ago was it that we had a guy named John McCain, along with a running mate named Sarah Palin, proposing how to address carbon emissions? What did he call his plan, again... could it have been cap and trade? And he's been proposing various "cap and trade" schemes since... 2003, if not earlier? The conflict with Obama's plan appears to focus on how permits are allocated - Obama supports an auction, while McCain proposed a giveaway to the nation's biggest polluters.

For quite some time, opponents of caps on carbon emissions have been trying to come up with a catchy way to make fun of "cap and trade". Their problem seems to be that the term "cap and trade" sounds innocuous, but at the same time is very difficult to understand. (So we have McCain arguing for years in favor of "cap and trade", but now arguing that it's bad if permits to pollute are obtained through auction as opposed to being distributed, for free, to big polluters who (presumably) would then profit handsomely by selling permits they did not actually need to smaller companies. The "best" term they've come up with so far is "cap and tax", which is also "clear as mud" to anybody who isn't familiar with the concept of "cap and trade". It's policy formation on the level of Beavis and Butthead ("Heheheh. He said 'tax'. Heheheheheheh.) The sad part is, such "rebranding" has been quite successful at times in the past - just ask Frank Luntz.

Whatever it's merit, "cap and tax" is now part of the Republical lexicon, to be used at all times - even by erstwhile supporters of "cap and trade" like John McCain. I would like to see him explain how his "cap and trade" proposal would limit pollution without imposing any cost on anybody, but... what sort of self-respecting reporter would ask such a direct and relevant question to a maverick? Oh, the horror of imposing a tax on business during a recession. We should instead... impose a massive tax increase on middle class wage earners who receive employer-sponsored health care, right? (Starting with McCain, there appears to be huge Republican support for that tax increase, but they are quite coordinated in their refusal to acknowledge it as such.)

In any event, somebody handed Sarah Palin the party memo on "cap and tax" or, perhaps more realistically, handed her a completed editorial and said, "Hey, why don't you submit this to the Washington Post?" And sure enough, now the Post offers a platitudinous regurgitation of the anti-"cap and tax" talking points under Palin's byline. She offers claims like this:

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.

Okay, let's assume that Obama's "cap and trade" will "destroy the economy", while the McCain/Palin model will not. Palin is clearly depicting herself (somebody ignorant of her own state's energy production) as an expert on the issue. She is being given a grand opportunity to make her case to the American public right on the pages of the Washington Post. As you have probably already guessed, she offers up plenty of nothing.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

Oh, what a cute little dig at "liberals". From somebody whose running mate used to unabashedly admit that he didn't understand economics, and who has little apparent understanding of economics herself. Pot, kettle, and all that.

All Palin manages to do in the article is shill for existing energy interests - Alaska's oil and gas industry, and coal producers - and impliedly for major polluters. Not one idea on reducing carbon emissions. Not one suggestion of how Obama's plan could be improved. Her intellectual gas tank, it seems, is empty.

Lies, Lies and More Lies from Palin

It's a wonder she was supposedly worried about ethics investigations, given that she apparently has none. At least judging from this WSJ stenography of her lame excuses and fabrications for quitting:

"Attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration," someone close to the governor told me.

Well, the Wall Street Journal qualifies as "national media" and John Fund, the author of this puff piece, was giving Palin's anonymous drones his undivided attention, so how about a "for instance"? I didn't think so....

This situation developed because Alaska's transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy. Since Ms. Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, some 150 FOIA requests have been filed and her office has been targeted for investigation by everyone from the FBI to the Alaska legislature.

The author is conflating two entirely separate issues - FOIA and ethics investigations. Given Palin's run for Vice President, it's no small wonder that there were FOIA requests, and frankly 150 seems like a low number. Further, there would be no need for Palin to personally involve herself in any of those requests. But I guess there is a tie-in to Palin's ethics (or lack thereof) - she (or someone on her behalf) did involve herself in FOIA request in order to obstruct the release of information.

For ethics investigations, Palin should make a video of herself like GW's search of the oval office for WMD's. "Ethics? Not in the closet... not under the desk... nope, no ethics here." But there's another conflation going on. The FBI doesn't investigate "ethics violations", and doesn't initiate investigations based upon Alaska's "easily triggered" laws. It investigates federal crimes. Also, let's not forget that Palin herself built her career on challenging the corruption in Alaska's politics. What's sauce for the gander....

Oh, and let's not forget that Palin filed an ethics complaint against herself over Troopergate that cost the state $187,797 to investigate. That is well over half of the $296,000 the state has spent on all ethics investigations of her.

In the process, though, she accumulated $500,000 in legal fees in just the last nine months, and knew the bill would grow ever larger in the future.

How much of that has come out of her pocket? Any? I thought her legal defense fund was pulling in huge numbers.

Family considerations also played a role. Ms. Palin gave birth to a baby with Down's Syndrome in 2008, and also has a six-year old. Everyone in the family was weary of endless personal attacks, including mean-spirited suggestions on liberal blogs that all of her children should have been aborted and that she would run on a presidential platform promoting retardation.

Bad stenographer, bad editor. It's Down Syndrome.

It's not credible that Palin is withdrawing from politics due to the sudden realization that she has children. She had children when she entered politics. She had children when she ran for VP. Trig was born in April, 2008. She decided to run for VP in August, 2008. It's July, 2009. Give me a break.

As for the personal attacks, last time I saw Palin speaking out about them she was reveling in them, inflating them, claiming a (bad) joke about her adult daughter was about her young teen - a choice that inappropriately put her 14-year-old at the center of things - and all but accusing David Letterman of being a pedophile. Her supporters were rallying to her, declaring what meanies her critics are. So that doesn't ring true, either.

As for "mean-spirited suggestions on liberal blogs", the easiest thing to do if you find a blog where people say things you don't want to read is... not to read them. But that's giving the allegation more credibility than it deserves. A simple question: Which blogs? How about a "for instance"? I didn't think so....

Karl Rove acknowledges the unusual battering Ms. Palin has endured in recent months, but told Fox News that GOP leaders are still puzzled by her decision. "If she wanted to escape the ethics investigations and save the taxpayers money, she's now done that," he said. Unfortunately, he added, her decision "sent a signal that if you do this kind of thing to a sitting governor like her, you can drive her out of office."

Unusual how? Unusual in the sense that it wasn't orchestrated by Rove? If I were to compare the treatment of Palin to the treatment of the Clintons, or the treatment of her children to the treatment of Chelsea Clinton, it actually seems like Palin got off easy. If I compare her to the guy Rove allegedly accused of pedophilia, or the smear campaign Rove allegedly ran against McCain in 2004, again....

But Palin friends say such commentary misses the real point.... The real issue that should be asked is why a mean-spirited system has to treat people who run like that, instead of why someone may choose not to go through it."

The author of this piece had Karl Rove on the phone, and didn't ask that question? Go figure. He could also have asked Palin, herself.

In law, there's a practice disdained by experienced lawyers, that particularly on appeal can undermine you with a judge. The "kitchen sink" / "throw spaghetti at the wall" approach. When you're trying to make a compelling case, it's usually counter-productive to throw everything at the judge to see if something sticks. The strong arguments get lost among the weak.

But sometimes you only have weak arguments. Assuming you made the mistake of accepting a weak case and don't want to cut your losses, you then must try to pick the strongest of the weak bunch, make a desperate "spaghetti throw", or recognize that your case may be better made in the future when more facts or evidence are available. If this truly is the best Palin's camp can come up with, she should resist the temptation to have WSJ stenographers prattle about how unfair the world is. She should decide for herself why she quit, make that her story, and stick with it. I'm not expecting the truth, but any plausible reason would be better than a spaghetti throw.