Perhaps Kathleen Parker's Problem is That She Doesn't Understand Honesty

At least if you're a Republican. Penning yet another childish screed about President Obama, Parker whines,

Moreover, people don’t like being insulted and misled, as many feel they have been by this administration. This is not just a feeling but a demonstrable fact, especially vis-a-vis the Affordable Care Act. And it’s not just the far-right fringe who object to the strategic misrepresentations along the way.

If Parker thought you had even a smidgen of intelligence, her next paragraph might cover some of the most outrageous lies about the PPACA. You know... like death panels. Or even some of the lesser Republican lies, like arguing that Obamacare would cover illegal immigrants, cause massive budget deficits, cause massive increases in insurance premiums, or involved the government taking over the insurance industry. Heck -- she, herself, is lying even as she writes about public sentiments toward the PPACA -- she knows that the key elements of the law, save for the mandate, are in fact supported by clear majorities of Americans, that it's the label that drags the law down. She probably giggles about the voters in Kentucky who praise Kynect and express their gratitude that it's not Obamacare, even though... it's simply the name Kentucky gives the exchange through which its residents can enroll in Obamacare.

What are the horrible lies that Parker attributes to Obama?

These obfuscations include telling the American people that they could keep the insurance they had if they liked it and also writing the law in such a way that the ACA’s mandate to purchase government-approved insurance was not a “tax,” despite the Internal Revenue Service’s role in policing its compliance.

Oh, the horror. An overstatement that was made in good faith, and run-of-the-mill machinations designed to get a better CBO rating. Politifact, the "fact-checking" outfit that made the declaration upon which the "lie" accusation is premised initially rated the statement as "true", making me wonder if they're producing a reliable analysis or if they're channeling an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Dean Baker has capably responded to those who want to hang their hats on the third (yes, in between declaring the statement "true" and "false", Politifact also rated it as half-true) analysis of the statement.

If Obama's pledge was understood as ensuring that every plan that was in existence in 2010 would remain in existence, then it would imply a complete federal takeover of the insurance industry. This would require the government to tell insurers that they must continue to offer plans even if they are losing money on them and even if the plans had lost most of their customers. This would at the least be a strange policy. It would be surprising if many people thought this was the meaning of President Obama's pledge....

On closer inspection, the claim that President Obama lied in saying that people could keep their insurance looks like another Fox News special. In the only way that the pledge could be interpreted as being meaningful, the pledge is true. The ACA does not eliminate plans that were in existence at the time the bill was approved.

Parker, of course, knows all of this, but anticipates that her intended audience does not.

Similarly, anybody who was following the debate over the PPACA knows that there was an absurd insistence that the law be revenue-neutral. They know that many compromises were built into the law, including significant delays in its implementation, to keep the books nominally balanced. Parker knows that the Republicans she serves would have shrieked like banshees had the mandate been explicitly enforced through a tax, as opposed to a penalty. Parker knows that the penalty is based on income and enforced by, you guessed it, the IRS. Within that context, her feigned surprise that the penalty could be characterized as a tax is quite revealing.

But wait -- there's more. Parker knows that her party and its supporters spent two years and spent vast sums of money litigating against the PPACA, and insisting through that litigation that the penalty was not a tax. If it was so obvious to everybody that the penalty was a tax, why spend years litigation the case, causing taxpayers to pour millions of dollars into its defense, only to reach the inevitable conclusion that it is a proper exercise of Congress's power to levy taxes? Why did the political right attack and vilify Chief Justice Roberts for joining the majority on that issue? What are we supposed to make of the refusal of Scalia, Alito, Kennedy and Thomas to join what Parker tells us was, at all times, a known and obvious fact? Parker later lectures,

This ruling, indeed, was the reason the ACA was able to go forward, which is why so many Republicans were apoplectic with Roberts’ siding with the liberals in a 5 to 4 ruling. In other words, Obama’s obfuscation was simultaneously revealed and rewarded by the court. And the American people were smacked with a health-system overhaul many more would have rejected had they known the truth.

If it is so blindingly obvious that the penalty is a tax, and if Parker truly believes that lying by politicians is a bad thing, why does she implicitly applaud the Republicans for lying about the mandate in order to perpetuate costly and divisive litigation? Why does she implicitly defend attacks on Roberts for accepting what she tells is is an obvious truth, rather than embracing a partisan lie in order to take down the law?

What inspired Parker's attack on the President? If you've been following the headlines, you already know. An economist who worked with the Obama Administration in developing the PPACA made an off-the-cuff comment that has been demagogued into the suggestion that the Obama Administration thinks voters are stupid. As a reference, Parker links to an idiotic screed against the PPACA, but fastidiously avoids introducing the facts -- that the statement she wants to attribute to "the White House" was made in an off-the-cuff manner by economist Jonathan Gruber, a non-politician who is long out of the Obama administration, and who most people wouldn't know from Adam.

Parker follows that absurd attribution with a sentence that starts, "Punditry aside...." It would appear that Parker believes that "punditry" and "demagoguery" are synonyms. Incredibly, after having linked to a diatribe that relies upon Gruber to suggest "", Parker then explicitly invokes Gruber,

Those who feel defrauded by their own government got third-party confirmation recently when remarks by one of the ACA’s chief architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber — invoking the stupidity of voters and lauding the political advantage of a lack of transparency in government — went viral.

Parker appears to believe that her readers are too stupid to click the links and find out that there's only one story.

Now, it is no surprise that Parker and her ilk feign deep offense at the most trivial impropriety, real or imagined, by a Democratic President. But really?

We also know that once trust is gone, it’s very hard to restore. Over time, and not just during this administration, we have lost trust in one institution after another. But when we have lost faith in our government, we have lost faith in ourselves.

At their core, the midterms were really about restoring that trust.

To Parker, it seems, having somebody once associated with the Obama Administration suggest that, as many voters aren't always informed on the issues and are inclined to latch onto labels instead of substance (you know, like "death panels"), it can be necessary to construct legislation that avoids certain "trigger words", is on par with Watergate. Parker, it seems, has no problem with such robust honesty as proposing something as a Social Security privatization plan, then objecting to any use of the term "privatization" as an unfair distortion. Or proposing a Medicare voucher plan then objectin to any use of the term "voucher" as an unfair distortion. Because, you know... that's her party. Let's ignore the $millions earned by Frank Luntz, coaching Republicans on how to mislead voters on issues ranging from the "death tax" to "climate change". When it comes to healthcare reform, Luntz kind of takes us full circle:

In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul America's health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a "government takeover."...

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen "government takeover of health care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections.

Yeah, that Kathleen Parker is horrified by dishonest politicians, and does nothing but overestimate the intelligence of her readers.....

Kathleen Parker and the War on Women

Kathleen Parker is one of those people who appears to have an amazing ability not to blush, at least on paper. Take for her example her screed about "The silly, selective ‘war on women’":

Let’s be clear. The war on women is based on just one thing — abortion rights. While it is true that access to abortion has been restricted in several states owing to Republican efforts, it is not true that women as a whole care only or mostly about abortion.

Well, no. The Republican war on women is about women's reproductive rights in general, and notably includes sex education, access to birth control and insurance coverage for birth control. More than that, it includes no small amount of "slut shaming", and a huffy dismissal of the notion that women haven't achieved wage equality with men. If you don't believe me, take a look at this column by a person named "Kathleen Parker" in which she admits that the "war on women" includes insurance coverage for birth control. Parker makes a fascinating argument,

The alleged war on women was based essentially on the notion that people who think abortion is a bad idea — or who don’t think the government should mandate insurance coverage for birth-control coverage — are anti-woman. Democrats point mainly to new state laws that have limited access to abortion, not to mention the unforgettable observations of a few Republican men about “legitimate” rape and so on.

Whatever one’s own position, Republicans could be characterized as waging a war on women only if no women agreed with the premises mentioned above.

That sort of illogical and narrow thinking is mirrored by those who defend the practice of female genital mutilation by arguing that the arrangements for mutilation are made by mothers, for their daughters, and the procedure is performed by women. If even one woman is involved in the practice, under Parker's logic, the practice cannot be deemed oppressive toward women. Would Parker argue that slavery in the U.S. cannot be said to be oppressive to the slaves because there were black slave owners? I would hope not, but that argument would be completely consistent with her logic.

Next take a look at this column also by somebody named "Kathleen Parker" in which she whines that evil liberals want small children to have access to the "morning after pill". Parker's concern is, of course, not about safety or whether one over-the-counter medication should be treated differently than others based on objective concerns -- her concern is that a minor might be able to go into a pharmacy and purchase a medication that is safer than a lot of the other OTC drugs the same minor is free to purchase, without having to tell an adult that she's sexually active.

Fundamentally, though, she's making a "What about the children" argument in order to distract us from the fact that she's defending people who want to keep certain forms of birth control (and in some cases, all forms of birth control) out of the hands of women of any age. But even if we ignore that fact, contrary to Parker's pretense, the issue is not one about the role of government in relation to the family. It's about the relationship of parents and their daughters, and whether the government should stick itself into the middle of that relationship by imposing nanny state rules to keep certain OTC medications out of the hands of minors. Parker also pretends that she has safety concerns about the morning-after pill, never mind that pregnancy and childbirth are vastly more dangerous to young women than the pill she hopes to keep out of their hands.

Next take a look at this column, also... wow... by somebody named Kathleen Parker,

With each generation, the question becomes more declarative and querulous. Recent demographic shifts show women gaining supremacy across a spectrum of quantitative measures, including education and employment. Women outnumber men in college and in most graduate fields. Increasingly, owing in part to the recession and job loss in historically male-dominated fields, they are surpassing men as wage-earners, though women still lag behind at the highest income and executive levels.

So you see, women are doing just fine, thank you very much, and what you really need to focus on is how terribly men are doing -- "If we continue to impose low expectations and negative messaging on men and boys, future women won’t have much to choose from." Except it's implicit in Parker's argument that, at least outside of college enrollment numbers, men are doing as well as or better than women.

For more evidence of my point, you need only read further into Parker's column about the "silly" war on women,

Yet Sandra Fluke, whose appeal for insurance coverage of birth control prompted Limbaugh to call her a “slut,” was elevated to martyr status and perhaps a political career.

I suspect that most people had forgotten about Sandra Fluke before Parker brought her up, but she's a great example of how Republicans engage in anti-birth control rhetoric and slut shaming.

After telling us that her column is not about abortion, then proceeding with what I guess she expects her audience to view as some sort of ironic humor by writing a paragraph-long screed against abortion rights, Parker gets to her real target: The fact that on occasion she can identify a Democrat who says stupid or sexist things about women. As if we needed to be told? Needless to say, though, she's nutpicking -- selecting isolated examples of people saying silly things -- and conflating them with her party's problem, the fact that its politicians have established a clear pattern of making sexist comments -- one that makes columnists like, you know, Kathleen Parker regret that Republicans have not yet learned to talk to women.

Parker reminds us in her column that Bill Maher, a left-leaning comedian who is not a Democrat but is presently supporting the Democratic Party, is a sexist.

Sarah Palin, whose potential vice presidency I politely opposed for legitimate reasons that are now widely embraced, has been outrageously abused in the vilest terms — by Maher among others — and left to twist in the wind.

Twist in the wind? Try "laugh all the way to the bank." So why bring Bill Maher, a man she sees as inclined to make vile, sexist remarks, into the column at all? Because he offers a useful distraction from domestic concerns:

On the latter’s offense, and the silliness of the so-called war in general, I defer to Bill Maher, who recently chastised liberals for their selective outrage regarding women’s rights.

“We hear a lot about the Republican ‘war on women.’ It’s not cool Rush Limbaugh called somebody a slut. Okay,” said Maher. “But Saudi women can’t vote, or drive, or hold a job or leave the house without a man. Overwhelming majorities in every Muslim country say a wife is always obliged to obey her husband. That all seems like a bigger issue than evangelical Christian bakeries refusing to make gay wedding cakes.”

One could easily turn that around -- why is Parker obsessing over whether the Republicans are fairly being accused of a war on women, when so-called honor killings occur in parts of the world, and where rape victims can even be killed in the name of protecting the honor of their families? If Parker were better at logical thinking, she might realize that it is possible to be opposed to discrimination against women at home and abroad. If she were a better thinker she might realize that U.S. voters have a better chance of effecting policy change in this country than they do of convincing Saudi Arabia to grant women full equality. On an international scale, the mistreatment of women in many other nations is a larger issue than the mistreatment of women in the U.S., but when you live in the U.S. you actually are allowed to comment upon and even prioritize domestic policy concerns, as well as those issues that you could actually affect through your speech and votes.

Parker then moves on to her penultimate attack -- the statement of a single Democratic politician about his female opponent,

A more recent example of a war-on-women event occurred in Virginia’s closely watched congressional race between Democrat John Foust and Republican Barbara Comstock. This time it was a Democratic male attacking a Republican female in, shall we say, the most clueless of terms. Lacking facts or finesse, Foust mused to an audience that Comstock hadn’t ever held a “real job.”

Meaning, what, that she’s just a mom?

Probably not. It sounds like an echo of Republican attacks on President Obama during his first campaign. I don't recall that Kathleen Parker leapt to Obama's defense, "How dare my party suggest that being a father isn't a 'real job'" -- recall the column linked above where Parker claimed deep concern over the marginalization of fathers. I'm not sure that Parker mouthed those exact words about Obama, but she certainly embraced the sentiment:

The faith of the American people may not have been misplaced in Obama. But the young senator from Illinois became a president overnight, before he had time to gain the confidence and wisdom one earns through trials and errors.

Parker then whines,

Even if this were so, and it is not, why should Foust get a pass for such an ignorant, sexist remark? Is any Democratic male — even one who manages to insult while pandering — better than any Republican female? In my experience, a woman who can manage a household and juggle the needs of three children while obtaining a law degree from Georgetown University, as Comstock did, can run a corporation or a nation.

Foust is getting "a pass"? Then Kathleen Parker's criticism of him in a column published in one of the nation's leading newspapers and syndicated across the country must be a figment of my imagination.

Never mind Parker's criticism of Obama's lack of experience -- or, for that matter, her disdain for Sarah Palin, mother of five. When Parker is not pretending to be offended, and not pretending to be a sudden believer in the power of motherhood, she is actually willing to acknowledge that knowledge of foreign policy and economics are important, even in a vice president. Parker's able to recognize that it's possible for somebody to be a mother and to have held conventional employment or elected office on top of it, yet be woefully unprepared for a position of responsibility. Parker is simply playing the game of gotcha politics -- her concern is not actually the sentiment that the Republican candidate is unprepared -- a type of criticism she, herself, has made in different words -- it's that the Democrat used the wrong words and made himself a convenient target, whatever he in fact meant.

Parker takes a momentary step back from her feigned outrage to inform us,

[Comstock's] résumé includes such non-cookie­baking activities as serving as a senior aide to Rep. Frank Wolf, whose congressional seat she is pursuing. She currently is serving her third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where she has advanced legislation to thwart human trafficking and supported several conservative positions related to health-care and tax reform.

It's interesting to me that Parker conveniently sidesteps the discussion of Comstock's actual job experience in order to pretend that her opponent's comment was intended to diminish motherhood, as opposed to being an echo of the refrain of the political right, that work in politics or as an elected official... or for a non-profit, or as a college professor, or for the government (other than the military)... doesn't count as a "real job". Parker could have pointed out the obvious -- that being a senior aid to a politician is a "real job", and that serving as an elected legislator is a "real job". But to acknowledge those facts would be to acknowledge the probability that the criticism of Comstock's résumé was an echo of the criticism directed at President Obama, not a commentary on motherhood.

Parker still isn't done....

When a Comstock ad recently called Foust’s comments “sexist, bizarre, insensitive, ignorant,” the 10th District’s Democratic Party tweeted, “If @barbaracomstock were a man, she’d be down 20 pts w women. Her record & policies are horrible for women.”

No, if Comstock were a man, she wouldn’t have to counter such slander.

Wait a second.... What's the "slander" here? If it's "slander" to suggest that a candidate who is a parent has never held a real job, the record is replete with that type of attack on President Obama. If it's that a candidate who has actually held real jobs has never held a real job, see also the résumé of President Obama. If it's that it's a slander to say that taking pro-life positions is bad for women, that's certainly not a criticism that has never been raised against a male candidate. What slander are we actually talking about?

Further, if we really want to get into scurrilous, unfair, gender- and implicitly race-based attacks on candidates, we need look no further than a columnist... whose name momentarily eludes me. No, wait, I remember now: Kathleen Parker, and her attacks on Obama as not being a full-blooded American, his being effeminate (or at least low on testosterone) for his supposed use of the passive voice, or of being a (pussy) cat.

At this point, surprisingly, Parker still finds room for another bad argument,

Virginia voters who oppose Comstock’s legislative record have a clear alternative. But if they cast their ballots for Foust, they’ll be electing a man whose disrespect toward women and the single job only women can do — mothering — is at least as offensive as Limbaugh’s name-calling.

Alas, those poor voters. They have no choice but to accept Parker's position that any suggestion that a candidate who happens to be a mother has never held a "real job" completely disqualifies her opponent from office, or they may as well be calling defenders of women's reproductive health "sluts". Don't bother looking for the logic -- it's not there.

Things That Never Happened

Kathleen Parker prevaricates,

When Jindal ran for governor in 2007, opponents frequently noted that his first name is Piyush. Democrats mentioned “Piyush Bobby Jindal” as often as Republicans brought up “Barack Hussein Obama” the following year.

But hey, at least she's not calling President Obama a half-blooded girlie-man, this time around.

Engage in Mindless Obstruction of Congress and Win a Dinner With the President

Kathleen Parker is skeptical about the President's "charm offensive".

Not to be cynical, but does anyone really suppose that a Republican representative or senator is going to go against the party because Obama gave him a call? The president is charming, all will concede. And his smile, such a delightful reward, tempts one to, well, give a thumbs up. It was fun. It was delicious. But read my wine-stained lips: No new taxes.

“It was nothing but a PR move,” says one seasoned insider. “Obama wants to run against obstructionist Republicans. The fact of the matter is, unless something really bad happens, there’s no reason for [Republicans] at this point to cave on taxes. Why would [House Speaker] John Boehner ever cave on taxes at this point?”

Parker had to quote a "seasoned insider" to make that point? The "seasoned insider" didn't want to make a point that banal on the record? And Parker is so intent on accuracy that she uses editorial brackets, lest this anonymous person... protest? She lives in an odd world.

Okay... so why would the President think such an obvious P.R. move were necessary? Perhaps it has something to do with the vast number of her peers who keep talking about "likability" and suggesting that the only reason more isn't getting done on Capitol Hill is that Obama doesn't treat legislators to enough lunches and dinners. (Parker can't pretend she hasn't noticed that phenomenon.) I expect that part of what the President hopes to accomplish is to get that particular faction of beltway pundits to stop droning on about invitations to dinner parties, and to start covering the facts.

Back to Parker's rhetorical question, "does anyone really suppose...", a few column inches away Ruth Marcus supplies an answer:

It is hard to imagine a breakthrough without intensive presidential involvement, which makes the new outreach so welcome. I know Republican senators, prospective members of Obama’s common-sense caucus, who have waited in vain over the past few years for a call from the White House chief of staff, never mind the president himself.

So there you go.

Kathleen Parker Introduces Romney to the Horrors of the Comfy Chair

If this is what it's like to be pilloried, I expect most politicians who have made significant non-forced errors will happily sign up.

Kathleen Parker attempts something of a David Brooks act, presenting herself as detached and offering what she would claim is a serious criticism of Romney's mendacious comments about the attack on the Cairo embassy:

His comments condemning President Obama’s “apologist” foreign policy were premature, inappropriate and too politically motivated to be effective either as proper criticism or as a campaign maneuver.

The word "false" isn't in her vocabulary? The problem was not one of timing - it was that Romney's attack had no basis in fact.

It's telling that the first half of Parker's column is devoted to describing anti-U.S. protesters in the Muslim world, along with the filmmaker whose anti-Islamic film ostensibly triggered the protests, as "imbeciles". Never mind the fact that the protests are a symptom of a larger problem. Never mind that the assumption that the "imbeciles" who "killed perhaps their bravest advocate in the Western world" don't necessarily share Ambassador Stevens' goals. Parker disregards those in Libya who have publicly deplored the attack and murder, as her case depends largely upon her painting with the broadest possible brush.

Parker knows that the suggestion that the protests and killing were a reaction to the film may be false:

The storming of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 may have been a planned attack, possibly orchestrated by al-Qaeda and possibly having nothing to do with the movie.

If that's the case, then Parker's lament about how demonstrators are overreacting to a movie, or that the attackers were undermining their own interests, is misplaced.

But internal inconsistency is not her worst sin. Parker's "critique" of Romney is offered, it seems, to prop up the larger structure of Romney's narrative. Parker claims,

First, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued what amounted to an apology to the mobs for any hurt feelings they may have suffered because of the film in question.

Parker knows that is not true.

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

Nothing in that statement can be construed as an apology. It does not "amount[] to an apology" - it apologizes for nothing. Parker continues her prevarication,

The film was idiotic and not worth the attention of our president or secretary of state. The response has made clear that an apology doesn’t work, which is why both the White House and the State Department initially distanced themselves from the embassy’s statement.

First, it was not the film that drew the attention of the President and Secretary of State, it was the protests that the film inspired, the attack on a U.S. embassy and murder of an ambassador, and serious security issues at the Cairo embassy, that inspired their reaction. Even in Parker's world, those events should be sufficient. Second, note how Parker doubles down on her false that the Cairo Embassy's statement "amounted to an apology" to now say that it was an apology. Third, the distancing came from the false suggestion that the Cairo embassy had apologized for something - less the statement itself and more the false spin that opportunists like Romney and partisans like Parker advance in lieu of the facts.

Having completed her effort to buttress Romney's latest fabricated claim of an "apology" by the Obama Administration, Parker argues,

Obama critics have long held that his post-exceptionalist, lead-from-behind model invites only contempt in the Middle East.

Does Parker consider herself to be an Obama critic? If so, I would like to hear her explanation of what she means by "post-exceptionalist". I expect she is implicating Tea Party rhetoric that the President does not view this country as exceptional - who cares what the President actually says on the subject - that she's rebranding her "he's not a whole-blooded American" argument of years gone by.

Parker then alludes to "leading from behind", a poorly chosen phrase that (allegedly) originated with one of Obama's advisers in relation to Libya, as an explanation for how the U.S. might avoid taking the lead role in every minor conflict in which it becomes involved - of how the U.S. might support NATO and assist its allies, advancing its goals at a lower cost - both financial and human. The adviser who allegedly made the statement has never been identified. Parker knows that the President has never expressed that he "leads from behind", nor does she offer any substantive criticism of the intent behind those words. Instead she simply repeats a right-wing talking point without any concern for the facts.

It's fair to ask - what about the Obama Administration's actions in Libya does Parker believe "invites... contempt in the Middle East"? What would she and her fellow critics have done, instead? Parker's best answer,

Since no policy thus far seems to have been very effective, we’ll have to rely on history for more information.

No, really, if you're going to regurgitate that sort of innuendo you need to do better than, "But who knows what might work?"

Parker closes by reinforcing her fabrication of an "apology", her pretense that the Administration was reacting to a film as opposed to riots, the burning of an embassy and the murder of an ambassador, and suggests that the response "lent unnecessary gravity and impetus to the conduct of imbeciles" - the people she pretends are motivated to protest only by this one movie, and whom she admits may not have had anything to do with the murder.

Ask yourself, had the Secretary of State and President issued no statement in response to the attack, would Parker be congratulating them for refusing to acknowledge the "imbeciles" or condemning them for their incompetence? I would hope she would be doing the latter, as it's beyond obvious that any nation must condemn attacks against their embassies and diplomats, but if so... talk about wanting to have it both ways. Now ask yourself, had the President issued a statement that deported the attack but omitted any mention of its context, would Parker be congratulating the President for refusing to acknowledge the "imbeclies"? Perhaps, she would, but if so she would be betraying something of a tin ear for diplomacy. (Romney for President and John Bolton for Secretary of State, a Kathleen Parker dream team?)

How the Republican Party Can Appeal to Minority Voters

In her "What if Barack Obama had been a Republican" column, Kathleen Parker, well, doesn't quite get it. She claims,

Obama was elected not only because of his attractive eloquence but because we are fundamentally a good people who value fairness and equality. Electing Obama was part of our reward to ourselves. It allowed us to feel that we were this good and this big.

She credits the President with devising a campaign "message of hope that felt like honey after eight bitter years of terrorism and war" and of appealing to "our best instincts" and desire to "become a purple, post-racial nation, never again to be divided", concluding with the rhetorical question,

Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

Perhaps she's speaking for herself, but I'm recalling a bitter, partisan election fight in which Obama was attacked and ridiculed, called a lightweight, a celebrity, and in which (shocker) his supporters were accused of only voting for him because they got some sort of thrill out of voting for an African American President (and you know those African Americans - they always vote on race, right?) The notions that Republicans pushed during the campaign - that Obama wasn't a "whole-blooded" American, that he didn't get our values, that he didn't understand business, that he was a socialist, possibly a Muslim, if not a terrorist himself certainly a guy who "pals around" with them, coalesced into the nastiness that is encapsulated by birtherism - with our reaching the point where one Republican candidate for the presidency was a birther, and the guy who came out on top attempted to rally his supporters with a birther joke (his after-the-fact attempt to explain it away being wholly unconvincing). Some people, Dinesh D'Souza comes to mind, are continuing to rake in millions by launching scurrilous, fabricated race- and ethnicity-based attacks on the President, who cares about the facts. A Member of Congress felt at liberty to break more than two centuries of comity and screech, "You lie" during a State of the Union Address - and became a Republican Party hero.

For that matter, has there ever been an incident analogous to Jan Brewer's disgraceful finger-jabbing at the President of the United States? For Justice Scalia's embarrassing rant from the bench, not over the case he was deciding but over the President's role in current events in the political world? What of all of the yammering about teleprompters, flag pins, not knowing how to behave in the Oval Office, bowing, fabricated stories about "apologizing for America"?

How does Parker summarize that history?

Republicans were certain that Obama was all style over substance, but their criticisms quickly were interpreted in some quarters as racial animus.

Calling the attacks on Obama an accusation that he puts style ahead of substance is... a rather disingenuous summary of what actually occurred. And while Parker's acknowledgment that "some who call themselves Republicans also can be called racist" is true, that would be an example of what is called "soft-pedaling". This goes way beyond the parameters of "racist content of some political dialogue" that is "out there" "on the Internet".

Parker attempts an artful dance around race issues, but her column is consistent with the right-wing trope that President Obama managed to be elected not based upon his skill as a politician but because white people felt guilty, and ignores the fact that, whether you like or hate those accomplishments, his first term accomplishments stack up impressively against pretty much any modern President. And that, despite inheriting a disastrous recession and a Republican Party that perceived great reward in trying to damage the President and obstruct his agenda - and reaped that reward in the midterm election. It's also more or less what Karl Rove is presently arguing, not a racist argument as such, but,

[S]peaking about racial politics clinically, astringently, the way political professionals do -- it is a shorthand that, as his audience's knowing laughter suggests, all these politicos comprehend. The same sort of analysis leads operatives of all stripes to make recommendations about how to energize target groups by exploiting race and class divides. That's the campaign we're all experiencing.

More directly, compare Parker's argument to Rove's description of North Carolina:

There, he said, in 2008 "New South independents" (meaning, I think, white independents) who were "racial moderates, economic conservatives" had supported Obama in the belief that "this will be really good for the country -- let's put the issue of race behind us." But now they are disappointed in Obama because he's "done a lousy job on the economy, and he's not a fiscal conservative." This analysis tells a story that Obama was elected, in the first place, because of his race, but that whites now think this was a failed experiment. The echo is pretty hard to miss: We gave a guy a boost he didn't entirely deserve in order to correct a historic wrong; too bad he wasn't up to it. Are white voters ready to conclude that Obama is an affirmative-action president

Although I think both of them know better, neither Parker nor Rove are willing to publicly articulate a theory under which the 2008 election was simply another election in which the better politician won. And no, I don't think it's a coincidence that Parker and Rove are simultaneously advancing the argument that "Obama's really an affirmative action President", an argument that has previously been raised less artfully by others, just as we enter the last few months of the 2012 election campaign.

Parker offers a, dare I say, whitewashed history of how the Republican Party found itself at a disadvantage with minority voters:

Republicans can honestly boast of having once been the party of firsts. The first Hispanic, African American, Asian American and Native American in the Senate were all Republicans. But that was before the GOP went south, banished its centrists and embraced social conservatives in a no-exit marriage.

Actually, through the Reagan Presidency, the Republican Party included a great many centrists. While Parker is correct that most of them would be purged from the modern party in the name of "social conservatism", the fact is that many (using Parker's phrase) "blacks and other minorities" are both socially conservative and deeply religious, so the realignment of the party in that direction would not of itself create a race issue. The unmentioned history? The Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights, and the Republican Party's conclusion that it could rise on the basis of its "Southern strategy". Parker knows this:

African Americans are not a monolithic group, obviously, and many likely would find comfort in the promises of smaller government, lower taxes, balanced budgets, school choice and so on that Mitt Romney put on the table Thursday night.

Parker notes that "appearances matter", but the problem is much less one of appearances and much more one of policy. The transformation of the Democratic Party to the adaptive, inclusive party that Parker describes was the product of a policy change. In terms of elections, it was a mixed bag - had the Republicans not pursued the Southern strategy and instead embraced the civil rights movement, Parker would not be writing this column and her fantasy of having an inclusive Republican Party might be our reality. She would not have to be brushing off dog whistles as "exaggerated sensitivity", for the same reason that Republican attacks on Joe Biden's "chains" comment failed - the Party of Lincoln needs to recall this political insight: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

The solution to the Republican Party's conundrum is not to invite people of color to its convention, then declare,

The impression that Republicans don’t welcome blacks and other minorities is, however, demonstrably false. Note the number of minority Republican governors recently elected: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

The solution is to declare that the Southern strategy is an artifact of the past, that overt racist acts and statements are career-ending, that speaking in code on racial issues will not be tolerated, that there is to be no more assumption or argument that anybody of color on the other side's team succeeded only because of white guilt and affirmative action, and that the party's official platform will explicitly embrace civil rights and equality.

Are any of my suggestions difficult to implement? I don't think so. Costly? In dollar terms, they're cheap. Controversial? They certainly shouldn't be. So let's give 'em a try and see what happens. Deal?

Update: Via Atrios, a quote from Lindsey Graham that echoes Parker's sentiments:

“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

I'm surprised Graham was so candid, even more so that he was that candid on the record. The line about "generating enough angry white guys" sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek, but Graham might be well-served to reflect on how the GOP's efforts to manufacture outrage among white males play into their problems attracting minority votes.

What if Barack Obama had been a Republican?

That's a question Kathleen Parker asks. Reading her question, I couldn't help but imagine a Republican convention at which President Obama was cheered for his many first term accomplishments - and that G.W. would have played a much larger role, rhetorically if not physically, than he did at the actual convention. Possible applause lines:

• Graceful in defeat, my colleague Mitt Romney volunteered to serve as my healthcare czar, donating his entire salary to charity. Together we fought back against socialized medicine, built on his fine work in Massachusetts, and brought to the nation a market-based health insurance policy that will protect your right to keep the insurance and doctor you have right now, while helping millions of Americans get affordable health insurance from private insurance companies. And we did so with incredible bipartisan support, winning over most Democrats to our conservative, market-based model of reform.

• We brought reforms to Medicare that will save billions by cutting waste and removing market-distorting subsidies, and will leave the quality of care unaffected.

• We saved the American auto industry from collapse, and helped usher in efficiencies previously prevented by unions and lobbyists, creating a context in which our auto manufacturers are once again profitable and producing cutting-edge vehicles.

• Due to the depth of the recession we bit the bullet and passed a bipartisan stimulus bill, but we quickly returned to restraint. That one-time stimulus helped get us through the worst of the recession, and we have since seen our trust in the markets rewarded with steady job growth and continuing recovery, and the markets have been slowly doing their job.

• We have kept America safe for another four years. We have prevented Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. We have toppled a tyrant in Lebanon. We got Bin Laden! We ended the war in Iraq, and are preparing Afghanistan to stand on its own.

• We implemented reforms that will prevent another financial industry collapse and protect consumers from the irresponsible lending practices that helped contribute to the housing bubble. George W. Bush put his reputation on the line when he decided that bailing out the banks was the best way to save our economy, but he was right. We saved the banks with minimal government intervention. And thanks to our reforms, achieved with broad bipartisan support, never again will we have to bail out banks with taxpayer money.

• We have made our party inclusive and have worked hard to make sure that everybody in this country is treated equally. We have implemented sensible immigration reforms by executive order, and Senator Rubio has taken the lead in getting the Democrats to join us in long-overdue immigration reform in my next term. We are the Party of Lincoln, and are proud to be the Party of Lincoln. We have put to rest the false notion that our party is anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-civil rights. We are the party of America!

• I continue to believe that money can be a corrupting influence in political campaigns and Vice President McCain continues to work with Congress to try to fashion new campaign finance transparency laws that will restore the common sense of the McCain-Feingold Bill, so the poeple can clearly see when special interests are trying to buy votes and influence elections.

• Private industry is the engine that drives America, and subsidies interfere with competition and innovation. Our nation will save hundreds of millions of dollars through the elimination of Medicare's subsidies to private insurance companies, and through the elimination of subsidies to banks that provide student loans. We have a lot more work to do, but our trust in free markets and competition will prevail over the culture of the handout.

• With the help of rising star Paul Ryan we came within inches of a "grand bargain" on the deficit that would have preserved Medicare and Social Security for generations to come. We will continue to work, to build on the atmosphere of bipartisanship my administration has restored to Congress, to complete that process, to cut the flab from government and keep our nation strong, while maintaining tax rates that are fair for everyone.

Lot's of spin, of course. Conventions are multi-day one-sided informercials. But the fact is, had Obama been a Republican many of his accomplishments that the Republicans presently ridicule, diminish or ignore would be touted as enormous accomplishments that make him a giant among presidents, they would tout the Republican history of many of Obama's reforms and accomplishments, and as they were enumerated the throng of life-long partisan Republicans would cheer.

Kathleen Parker Does a Little Dance

After asking a rhetorical question she answered four years ago,

Question: "How do you win an election when you are trying to distance yourself from... yourself?"

(Answer: Race baiting.)

Kathleen Parker does everything she can to avoid applying the dreaded "l" word to the false rhetoric of her party of choice:

Ryan has been called out on some of his statements that were not-quite-true, or at least not complete. These were simple, factual misrepresentations that could be easily checked — and were — or that were well known to those who know a little about recent history.

Okay, let's accept Parker's dance around the facts and shuffle around the vernacular and call them "statements that were not-quite-true" instead of "lies". If the "statements that were not-quite-true" were as transparent as Parker suggests, why did Ryan build his case against President Obama from a stack of them? Parker believes that even what she sees as Ryan's lesser "statements that were not-quite-true", his "statements that were not-quite-true" by omission about, for example, his vote against the Simpson-Bowles commission report or his own advocacy for cuts to Medicare, are harmful to the ticket.

Why not acknowledge this? Everyone knows it — unless Ryan believes that his audience isn’t really up to speed — so why not set the record straight?

It's fair to say that, according to the polls driving the Romney-Ryan rhetoric, many people do not know the facts and thus are persuaded by the falsehoods. Parker knows that - I suspect her actual concern is that the "statements that were not-quite-true" won't hold and thus make a very poor foundation for the last few months of the Romney-Ryan campaign.

Parker then channels David Brooks, lecturing us about Mitt Romney's immeasurable superiority to the rest of us:

He is a man of immaculate faith. He is a wildly successful businessman whose company outsourced jobs, as most did, not to rob Americans but to provide profits to investors and to keep prices down for U.S. consumers who, despite their moaning, still want the cheap jeans.

You see? If anybody lost a job due to Bain's actions it was your fault, because you like "the cheap jeans".

How many Americans know that Romney gave away his inheritance? Or that he has worked several jobs, including the governorship of Massachusetts, for no pay? Or that he has given to and made millions for charities? These are all on his personal résumé, but he doesn’t want you to know. Because?

It would be bragging, and men like Romney don’t brag.

I've previously addressed this, and Parker simply reinforces my point. Romney doesn't brag about his personal record because he would be called on his exaggeration. He brags by proxy about his personal life, and Kathleen Parker is his willing (if not eager) proxy. ("No pay"? Romney reportedly spent more than $50 million trying to defeat Ted Kennedy in his 1994 Senate race. Giving up a few hundred thousand in gubernatorial pay on his continuing quest for the White House is, comparatively speaking, pocket change.)

It's also fair to observe that Parker's thesis is false, at least in relation to Bain, the Olympics, his signature accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts (before RomneyCare became a liability).... Who hasn't heard of his brag that he created 100,000 jobs, mostly in his sleep following his retroactive retirement from Bain? And we're back to why Romney's better served when he brags by proxy - he can distance himself from the exaggeration and hyperbole, and doesn't have to risk being hit with follow-up questions.

If Romney wants to do something impressive, something that would give meaning to Parker's assertion that,

There’s no dishonor in giving or accepting credit (or blame) where due, but you can’t win voter confidence if you lack it in your own record.

He would stop lying. He would instruct Paul Ryan to stop lying. He would apologize for lying. And then he would run an honorable campaign. Pointing to his past charitable donations is not sufficient to overcome his present, deliberately dishonest campaign. If indeed Romney is the great person Parker would have us believe (not the more cynical liar in the name of self-advancement category into which Marc Thiessen seemingly places all politicians and which he seemingly believes excuses all "statements that are not-quite-true"), the best way to sell this notion of his greatness is not to tell us about past charitable contributions. It's to be something more than a man who will say absolutely anything to get elected - something more than the man we see before us.

Mitt Romney's Poor Character On Display

Are you skeptical of my take on Mitt Romney? If so, lucky me, Romney is intent on illustrating my point about his character:

"I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where but the both of us were born," Romney said after introducing his wife, fellow Michigan native Ann. "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised."

Romney knows that the reason people wanted to see Obama's birth certificate - and kept demanding to "see" it even after various copies hd been released - has nothing to do with Obama's character. His "joke" not only gives implicit support to the "birthers", it also support for thinly veiled racism. Nobody asked to see John McCain's birth certificate, either, and he wasn't born in the United States.

At best Romney is engaging in the type of race baiting pushed by people like Kathleen Parker, that something about Obama (now what could it be...) keeps him from being a "full-blooded American" and understanding America the way we wh...ole-blooded Americans do. At worst, like his continuing lies about welfare, it's outright race-baiting.

Either way, it's not a joke you would expect from a man of virtue.

Update: More evidence of the character of Romney and his campaign:

[Top Romney adviser Kevin] Madden said Romney did not need to apologize because he was simply drawing attention to the fact that Michigan, where he was campaigning, was the state where he himself was born and raised....

Madden said Romney wasn't intentionally making a reference to the questions about Obama's birth certificate.

Did somebody expect Romney to apologize? No, this approach of slathering on another layer of mendacity is much more in-character.

Update 2: Romney has now spoken in his own defense:

“I’ve said throughout the campaign and before, there’s no question about where he was born,” Romney said in the interview. “He was born in the U.S. This was fun about us, and coming home. And humor, you know — we’ve got to have a little humor in a campaign.”

The thing is, if it was a joke about "coming home" and not about Obama, it's not funny. It's not a joke. It would just be a weird comment that would leave his audience scratching their collective heads. It's only a joke if it's a nod to the birthers, and its difficult to think of anybody but a birther who would find that type of race-baiting to be funny.

A parallel would be if the President were to joke about Romney's "magic underwear Which, of course, won't happen because, for all of his faults, the President has more character than that.

Kathleen Parker's Continued Embrace of Race-Baiting

It's good that we have Kathleen Parker around to remind us of the fine distinction between racism and race-baiting. As we all know, Obama's race makes it more difficult to frame attacks on him despite his shortage of (as Parker puts it) "blood equity". The shame, apparently, is that the proponents of the ad aren't doing something more respectable, like offering insipid arguments that question the President's testosterone levels or imply that he's a (pussy) cat.

Parker argues,

Raising Wright now would have been a serious miscalculation and would have been interpreted as attempting to inspire racial animus. But it is unfair to smear Davis as a racist, as some have suggested. He obviously created a proposal based on his sense that this would appeal to Ricketts, who said upon viewing the rejected ­McCain ad: “If the nation had seen that ad, they’d never have elected Barack Obama.”

By the same token, a politician who cynically embraced the Republican "Southern Strategy" cannot be assumed to be racist by virtue of his actions. It's all but a given that many of them were cynical opportunists. Parker argues, Parker's editorial neatly elides any reference to the proposal's description of the President. Charles Blow is not as charitable:

“The metrosexual black Abe Lincoln has emerged as a hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal, elitist politician with more than a bit of the trimmer in him.”...

The proposal was racially charged, and its authors knew it. So they called for the enlistment of “an extremely literate, conservative African-American” as a spokesman to defend it. This should raise the hackles of black Republicans. There is a base that sees them as able to do racial damage while protecting the party from racial blame.

Given her own history of attacks on the President's masculinity, Parker can be presumed to be fully on board with trying to characterize him as a metrosexual. I am not sure if the President's blood is "full" enough, though, for the Lincoln comparison - we can only hope Parker shares her thoughts on that point. But here's the thing: if this isn't about race and race-baiting, what's the word "black" doing in there?

Parker whines,

The leaking of the document and the prominent display of the story have been a boon to Obama. They provided yet another welcome distraction, as well as a helpful fundraising tool, and smeared Romney by association.

If Romney is correct, the hurt from the leak of the plan is far less than that which he would have suffered from its execution. And as for guilt by association, although you and I might hesitate to make that argument, didn't Parker just get through telling us that in her view it's fair game?

The Un-Exceptionalism of Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker has launched another insipid attack on President Obama - he doesn't use the word "exceptional" enough to satisfy her. No, not that he doesn't use it - she things he "studiously avoid[s]" using the word. Much like "the left" supposedly "demonizes" wealthy people by using words like "wealthy" to describe them, or her suggestion that use of the "passive voice" in a speech means that you're a passive person... let's just say "Mistakes were made" in that abysmal column.

This also reflects Parker's tiresome tendency to try to jump on a bandwagon that seems to have already passed her by. Perhaps she's simply trying to revive a tired, old attack. Perhaps she's just plain out of ideas, so she has to flip through her "2009 Washington Times Thought of the Day" calendar for inspiration. Yes, the roots of Parker's nonsense appear to lie in right-wing attacks that deliberately take out-of-context and distort a 2009 speech.

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don't think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.

Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we've got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we're not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.

And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.

If we reject the conclusion that Parker is stupid, that leaves lazy, dishonest or some combination of the two. I'm putting my money on "some combination of the two". We don't have to question the dishonesty part - Parker devotes about a fifth of her column to regurgitating right-wing calumnies about that speech.

Parker actually gets worse from there:

On the right, the word "exceptional" - or "exceptionalism" - lately has become a litmus test for patriotism. It's the new flag lapel pin, the one-word pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution. To many on the left, it has become birther code for "he's not one of us."

By "on the right", she presumably means "with right-wing columnists who push the same nonsense I'm pushing" - there are plenty of examples of that. Beyond that it's not clear what she's talking about. She, of course, provides no context for or example of this supposed tendency of "the right". As for her comical assertion about "the left", that's pure fabrication. A hollow man. After all, it's easy to fabricate an opponent, put nonsense into his mouth, then say, "That position is nonsense." Identifying the actual positions of your opponents and responding to them honestly and substantively? Not something that Parker is particularly good at....

Parker knows the reality, which is that there are people on all points of the political spectrum who take knee-jerk exceptionalism with a grain of salt. Why? Because they know enough history to understand how exceptionalism can be abused by political parties to lead the nation into self-destructive actions and policies. Because they read Ozymandias in high school and understand that you can be pretty damn special at a particular point in time but fade into oblivion if you don't do the hard work necessary to maintain and build upon the things that make you special. This doesn't mean that they don't tear up when they hear the National Anthem or enjoy a good 4th of July parade. It means that they understand that there's more to being exceptional than saying "I'm exceptional". That's the sort of self-esteem exercise that, in any other context, conservatives are supposed to make fun of.

Parker's prevarications continue:

Between left and right, however, are those who merely want affirmation that all is right with the world. Most important, they want assurance that the president shares their values. So why won't Obama just deliver the one word that would prompt arias from his doubters?

Okay, we can start out with the statistics Parker presented earlier in her column - that 58% of Americans "think Obama believes that the 'U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world,'" while 37% do not. That figure suggests that, to the extent "independents" are involved, we're largely talking about people who already lean to the hard right or are Tea Party-style "independents" - Republicans + Right-Wing Independents = 37%. Parker's column (and those like it) is penned for a population of readers who uncritically accept attacks on the President and the political left.¹ I suspect that, to Parker, the only thing that mattered out of the poll was the following "implication":

Given that Americans already believe that the U.S. is exceptional and that its status as the greatest nation in the world is at risk, Republican candidates' political challenges would be to convince voters that Obama's policies and actions on the world stage are to blame, and that he does not share their values on this issue.

Who cares about the truth, right?

Beyond that, as Parker is not stupid, she knows that the central thesis of her column depends on a false premise. Nobody was hovering over the State of the Union Address waiting to hear a specific, talismanic word drop from the President's lips. No, what Parker knows is that it's the media coverage of a State of the Union Address that shapes the public's reaction. By penning a column like this she all-but-admits that her goal is to advance the Republican Party's effort to make the speech a negative, and that when it comes to helping her Republican allies or attacking President Obama she has no scruples.²

Update: If you're not looking for a talismanic word, it's easy to find references to American exceptionalism in the President's speech.
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1. It's a natural human tendency to be less critical of arguments with which you agree; this isn't unique to the right.

2. By my count, in his various State of the Union Addresses, G.W. referred to the United States by the talismanic word, "exceptional," a whopping zero times.

Another Moment of "Duh" from Kathleen Parker

How does she come up with stuff like this:

Democrats are equally guilty of obfuscation through language distortion. How many times throughout the tax bill debate have you heard some variation of the following? Giving tax breaks to the rich will add to the deficit.

Pardon? How does money in someone's own pocket add to another's debt? This sort of logic is possible, of course, only under confiscatory rules of wealth redistribution.

Actually, Kathleen, it's called "math". You see, if you have a deficit and you cut taxes without offsetting spending cuts, your deficit gets larger. And unless your spending cuts are sufficient to erase the current deficit and produce enough of a surplus to offset the impact of the tax cut it's still fair to say that the tax cut adds to the deficit - because that's how the math works.

Let's try it like this. Jimmy, Kathy and Bobby have committed to giving Granny Smith ten applies to make a pie for the bake sale. Jimmy doesn't have many applies, so he's contributing one. Bobby has more applies, and he's contributing two. Kathy has lots and lots of apples, and she's contributing three. That means that they have six apples, but need four more in order to give Granny ten.

Kathy whines, "It's not fair that I have to share three apples - that's wealth redistribution." But Granny Smith explains that she can't make a pie with less than ten apples and even after spending dozens of seconds thinking about it the best solution Kathy can come up with would take a tiny slice or two of apple out of the pie - so they still need all ten apples. If Kathy's contribution is reduced to two apples, the apple deficit rises from four to five - that is, in order to keep their commitment to Granny Smith, Kathy, Bobby and Jimmy must borrow five apples instead of four.

Let's say, instead, that Granny Smith says, "You know what? You only have six apples. I can make a smaller, dryer, less satisfying pie, but it will be a pie nonetheless," wiping out the apple deficit. Kathy nonetheless whines, "This is still wealth redistribution" and refuses to contribute her third apple. The apple deficit goes from zero to one. Yes, Kathy, the number one is bigger than the number zero - that's because the deficit went up.

So how does Kathleen Parker avoid basic math facts? By... using an irrelevant analogy:

Let's say Joe is $100 in the hole and yet continues to spend money like a drunken fool. Mary has five bucks, which she declines to share because she has to buy food. Joe is insistent. His debt will get worse if Mary doesn't help out. This may be true, but Mary isn't convinced that helping Joe pay down his debt will do any good as long as he continues to spend. She's betting that Joe will just dig a deeper hole, and she will have less security of her own.

So we're going to pretend that the nation's budget and debt are analogous to Kathy's drunk uncle Joe trying to bum a five spot that Kathy... er, sorry, Mary, whose AGI in this analogy is over $250K/year, desperately needs to feed her family? Come on.

The analogy works better if Joe and Mary are married, Joe's a drunken spendthrift and Mary's trying to hold the household budget together. Joe says, "Can you give me $5?" Mary says, "No, I need it for groceries." Joe says, "Fine," and uses the family's credit card to spend the $5. Mary may have kept the $5 bill in her pocket, but as a result the family debt rose by $5.

Maybe we could imagine Joe, sober and more responsible, complaining to Mary about her grocery bill. "You're spending too much money - what can we cut?" "If you want three meals a day for yourself and the kids, we can't cut anything. At least not unless we cut out the extra money you insist we spend for corn, sugar, beef, and those fancy preparation tools you insist we need in order to have the best prepared food in the world." "Oh, I don't want to cut any of that. What else can you cut?" "Breakfast?" "No, I like eating breakfast. But maybe you could remove three oat grains from each serving." "That wouldn't affect the spending by even a penny." "It wouldn't? Well, I see on your shopping list you've 'earmarked' romaine lettuce instead of head lettuce." "They cost the same at our grocery store - that doesn't change the total budget." "Well, I'm not willing to earn more money in order to contribute more to the family budget, and I'm not willing to give up any of my personal luxuries, so I think the solution is that I personally contribute less to the family food budget." "But that will mean we have to borrow money to buy food." "Not my problem, I'm not into wealth redistribution. Just make sure I have three hot meals each day, the way I like them."

Yet, the effect of this oft-repeated trope has been to demonize "the wealthy," as if they somehow have wronged their fellow citizens by working hard and achieving what everyone else wants.

Merely by referring to wealthy people as wealthy, it seems they're being "demonized." Mind you, if you're not wealthy it's not "demonizing" you to call you "poor" or analogize you to a "drunken fool." Also, without diminishing the fact that the majority of wealthy people "worked hard", for roughly a third is it not reasonable to say that the "hardest" thing they did in life was to be born to a wealthy family?

You see the problem. It isn't the money. It's the dishonesty of the argument.

As I see it the problem is both one of money - we are talking, after all, about a budget deficit - and the dishonesty of arguments like the one presented by Ms. Parker to mask her unwillingness to address the issue or to contribute toward a solution that might involve her giving up... pretty much nothing she would notice.

When Table Scraps Are No Longer Good Enough

Kathleen Parker appears concerned that Sarah Palin may damage the Republican Party in the 2012 election.

But [Rep. Spencer] Bachus [who alleged that Palin cost the Republicans control of the Senate], possibly the highest-ranking member of Congress to confront the obvious, or to tempt the fates that now await him, was brave to speak foul of the princess party girl as he now invites the considerable scorn of the new and improved GOP base.

Although Tea Party members tend to be over-45 white men - no implication intended regarding Palin's popularity, but infer at will - there is considerable overlap with the demographic formerly known as the GOP base, a.k.a. white Southerners and social conservatives, libertarian streak notwithstanding.

A year ago, Sarah Palin appeared quite content to be part of the Republican Party, and to want to bring the Tea Party movement into the party. Now she appears to be on the verge of war with that faction of the Republican Party that prefers to serve the business and financial elite, and which increasingly appears to view Palin as a detriment to the party and a likely catastrophe as its Presidential candidate.

This highlights one of the difficulties the Republican Party has, in effect, made for itself in trying to bring together three factions that have little in common - in simple terms, the wealthy, libertarians/small government conservatives, and social/religious conservatives (a/k/a "the base") - and to hold that coalition by feeding the rich while appeasing the other two factions. Sarah Palin's supporters may not like the Democratic Party, but they appear almost as distrustful of establishment Republicans. Palin appears to have the present intention of maximizing her personal fortunes based upon her popularity with social/religious conservatives, but it appears that she also wants to be respected within the party both as a politician and a power broker. Or, as Parker says,

Not only would Palin the presidential candidate drive away other Republican candidates, but she would most certainly lose a national election. Thus, the GOP finds itself in a pickle: How to shed itself of this attractive nuisance?

Embrace her, and they may have to live with her as their candidate. Push her away, and they may have to deal with her as a third party candidate - and, unpopular though she may be with the public at large, it's nonetheless possible that she would be a spoiler extraordinaire, and that she would outpoll the Republican presidential nominee. Because the Tea Party movement has tasted power and, assuming somebody like Palin decides to peel the scales from their eyes, there's no reason to believe that they're going to knowingly settle for the usual table scraps while the Republicans serve the wealthy. ("Just don't look... Just don't look" - But you can't stop yourself, can you....)

The Increasingly Credible Anita Hill

Kathleen Parker shared a reproachable take on the controversy - a "Clarence Thomas may have lied - but what's the big deal?" Ruth Marcus sets her straight.

Thomas Friedman on Competition with China

Sometimes you have to wonder where Thomas Friedman's head is....

To visit China today as an American is to compare and to be compared. And from the very opening session of this year’s World Economic Forum here in Tianjin, our Chinese hosts did not hesitate to do some comparing. China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children — one wearing the Chinese flag, another the American, another the Indian, and another the Brazilian — getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the American child, “Anthony,” boasts that he will win “because I always win,” and he jumps out to a big lead. But soon Anthony doubles over with cramps. “Now is our chance to overtake him for the first time!” shouts the Chinese child. “What’s wrong with Anthony?” asks another. “He is overweight and flabby,” says another child. “He ate too many hamburgers.”

That is how they see us.

Here's the thing, Tom: When a state-run organizaton presents a state-approved, state-sponsored caricature of how its own citizens compare to those of other nations, even before you take notice that it's a communist, totalitarian state, the idea is not to convey "Here's what you already think." It's to convey, "Here's what you should think." In the context of the film at issue, if a chubby American whose idea of exercise appears to be putting on his Rolex in the morning or getting in and out of his Lexus SUV happens to be in the audience, nodding in vigorous agreement, all's the better.

You know what else? You don't have to go to China to hear that story. More than two thousand years ago Aesop wrote a version, the Tortoise and the Hare, which (believe it or not) was not intended as a wake-up call to us. (Granted, Ancient Greece did fall.) In terms of "Wow, look at those really big buildings," China's not the first totalitarian state to want to show off its prowess through massive building projects and it won't be the last.

That's not to discount China's role as a global economic competitor, or the problems we face at home. Friedman highlights problems faced by both nations,

The Chinese system is autocratic, rife with corruption and at odds with a knowledge economy, which requires liberty.

and

There is absolutely no reason our democracy should not be able to generate the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things — democratically — that China does autocratically. We’ve done it before. But we’re not doing it now because too many of our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class are more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country.

Friedman brings out his inner G.W. Bush ("If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator"), suggesting that China's system of government has resulted in the "average senior official [being] quite competent". His thesis, however, is internally inconsistent - in his own words there is a reason we can't "do it now" - our flawed and corrupted political system.

Friedman also quotes an Indian entrepreneur. Although it's not clear, I believe he's referring to an entrepreneur who is developing businesses in India, as opposed to the United States. And that entrepreneur sees democracy as part of the problem,

For democracy to be effective and deliver the policies and infrastructure our societies need requires the political center to be focused, united and energized. That means electing candidates who will do what is right for the country not just for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money. For democracies to address big problems — and that’s all we have these days — requires a lot of people pulling in the same direction, and that is precisely what we’re lacking.

But that's not really, true, is it. India had a business boom based neither on those aspects of democracy nor upon a broad sharing of its new wealth with the public at large. As compared to the United States it has a serious problem with corruption and success in business can mean bribing a lot of people. Not so long ago, Friedman was lecturing us that we needed to prepare for our flat-Earth race against India, now it's apparently the U.S. and India against China. When you're in a race to the bottom for who can hand out the best business environment for sweatshops - no worries about labor laws, western-style environmental regulation, or paying taxes sufficient to help support a fully developed city or state - democracies will always lose to totalitarian states.

There are a couple of points worth making about what Friedman sees as our corrupt political culture. First, as bad as things are right now, they've been worse at various points in our nation's history. Second, if everybody pulled together and decided, "The government must have sufficient revenue to build quality infrastructure that will carry us through to the 22nd century, must reinvent higher education, must make large, bold investments in research and innovation," we would be left with a big question: How do we pay for all of that? It's easy if you're China - as long as the money keeps rolling in, the government can skim what it wants right off the top. Here it would require tax increases - and let's be blunt, the hyper-wealthy elites of our nation, people like Thomas Friedman, simply won't get on board with that.¹

Sure, Tom's willing to pay an extra 50 cents per gallon to fuel up his hybrid SUV, but only if everybody in the nation also has to pay the new tax. He's not shown any inclination to offer up any of his extended family's wealth, or to scale back his own lavish lifestyle. Not that Friedman's hypocrisy makes him any less correct than, say, carbon-burning, mansion-dwelling Al Gore; but I would be more enthusiastic when he made this type of argument if it didn't smack of, "Now everybody pull together - pick me up and carry me across the finish line before the burgers get cold."

I would suggest that for his next column Friedman approach this issue from a different angle. Rather than telling us what we need to do - things that, frankly, would likely get massive voter approval if funded, he should do us the favor of telling us exactly where the money will come from.

Update: Harold Meyerson makes some observations about China, and the role of large U.S. companies in both its growth and its status as a competitor, that Friedman appears to consistently overlook:

Consider the debate in Congress about whether to impose tariffs on Chinese imports if China continues to depress the value of its currency. Roughly 150 House members, including 45 Republicans, have authored a bill to do just that, and the Ways and Means Committee will take up the bill on Friday. Unions and some domestic manufacturers support the bill. But a large number of American businesses, in a campaign coordinated by the U.S.-China Business Council, oppose it.

Now, there's nothing un-American in opposing the legislation as such -- far from it. Support for and opposition to tariffs are both as American as apple pie. The question here is whether the 220 corporations that belong to the council -- household names such as Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Ford, GM, Wal-Mart, Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Boeing -- are already so deeply invested in China as manufacturers, marketers or retailers that buy goods there to sell them here that their interests are more closely aligned with China's than with America's. Revaluing China's currency would be helpful to domestic U.S. manufacturers, their employees and the communities where those employees live and work, but America's largest companies have long since ceased to be domestic.

Given the explosive growth of the Chinese economy, it's a safe bet that every major U.S. corporation will devote greater resources to building, buying and selling there. But China, unlike the Obama administration, truly is guided by an ideology alien to most Americans -- Leninism -- and wields far greater control over what U.S. corporations can and can't do there than the U.S. government does over what corporations can and can't do here. Our leading companies' economic interests, and those of their Chinese hosts, whom they cross at their peril, are increasing likely to pit them against proposals that diminish China's edge, however obtained, in global competition.

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1. As a member of the Pulitzer Committee, did Friedman vote in favor of Kathleen Parker's award? Because, it should be noted, she's presently endorsing propaganda of a different sort, applauding the notion that we can have "smaller, more caring government, one that remembers us". Why am I instead reminded of the television edit, "Forget you."

Masculinity and Temper Tantrums

There's a concept known as sang-froid, the maintenance of composure, level-headedness, and coolness under stressful or difficult circumstances, that is often depicted in movies as the height of masculinity. Think Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now - sure, he may be under live fire in a war zone, but that's not going to stop him from surfing. Think of pretty much any action movie - the hero faces adversity and gets mad, but keeps his cool - there's no point in a tantrum. It doesn't look good on camera and does nothing to even the score. This is anything but a novel or rare interpretation of masculinity.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too; ...

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

When most people are responding emotionally to a situation, a commonly invoked idiom is, "Let cooler heads prevail."

President Obama has sang-froid. In spades. His coolness has resulted in any number of right-wing attacks on him for "not showing enough emotion". As if he would seem more Presidential if he were displaying barely-controlled rage. Me? I got enough of play-acting under G.W. Bush, and I'm perfectly content to have a President who both acts like a grown-up and treats the electorate as if it's comprised of adults.

Parker apparently sees herself less as an analyst, taking facts, creating novel arguments and presenting them to the public in her bi-weekly column, and more as part of an echo chamber:

Many people seemed to have a hankering for one particular emotion: Not the Bill Clinton "I feel your pain" kind but the "Take-BP-Behind-the-Woodshed-and-Make-Them-Pay" kind. They wanted an action figure in the hyper-masculine mode, not George W. Bush but the Terminator.

In fits and starts, Obama had given it to them. He wanted to know "whose ass to kick," he told us. He wanted them to "plug the damn hole." Press secretary Robert Gibbs assured us that in discussions with Obama he, indeed, had "seen rage from him."

Then the president gave his Oval Office speech. And the collective reaction was, "That's it?! Where's the outrage?!?!"

Arnold Schwarzenegger was well-cast as The Terminator because he was big, intimidating, and had not yet learned to convey on-screen emotional range. Earth to Kathleen Sullivan - The Terminator is an android. The Terminator has no emotions. In Terminator II, the android was frozen by liquid nitrogen - you don't get much colder than that - and yet he managed to (dare I say) keep his emotional cool (because he didn't have emotions). You could hardly ask for a better illustration of sang-froid as evidence of masculinity, yet Parker's not sufficiently self-aware to recognize the contradiction. Meanwhile, back in the real world where the real Arnold Schwarzenegger is actually in politics, how often does he engage in public blow-ups or tantrums when things aren't going his way?

With due respect to Kathleen Sullivan's yearning for the "boil" of George W. Bush, it seems that President Obama's ability to keep his cool is more consistent with Presidential tradition. Sure, we have stories of past Presidents who would explode into anger at their aides - behind the scenes - but that wasn't the face they put forth to the public. Which presidents in recent history didn't present a calm public face in response to crisis? Bill Clinton? George H.W. Bush? Ronald Reagan? Gerald Ford? Jimmy Carter? I'm not sure that Parker's either presenting the vindication of G.W. or the condemnation of Obama that she imagines when she, in effect, holds G.W. and Richard Nixon out as paragons of the appropriate display of anger.

If we're honest about perceptions of public displays of anger, as a society we tend to recognize a male form - the inner beast escapes and wants to "break something" - and a female form - "hysteria", "histrionics", the "hissy fit" - etymology, L. hystericus "of the womb". It's sexist, and truth be told the biggest difference often appears to be that men are for the most part more capable of outwardly directed violence. But in the context of Presidential behavior it's all spin.

Had Obama been reacting to things more angrily, you can fully expect that the very same voices that have been demanding "more anger" would be denouncing him as excessively emotional, unbalanced, out-of-control. And you can expect that columnists like Kathleen Parker would pick up on those themes to argue that the conduct she presently contends evidences a "testosterone deficit" would in fact make him more masculine than his "inability to control his anger". Sang-froid would once again be a masculine attribute, while the "boil" of G.W. would be pushed into the background as somehow different or irrelevant to similar behavior by Obama - but I would not be surprised by comparisons to Nixon.