Brooks on Spitzer

Without "naming names," David Brooks has written what is obviously intended as an armchair psychoanalysis of Elliot Spitzer. I wonder, though, if it isn't more of an introspective essay - where Brooks might find himself but for his preternatural ability to resist marshmallows.

They go through the oboe practice, soccer camp, homework marathon childhood. Their parent-teacher conferences are like mini-Hall of Fame enshrinements as all gather to worship at the flame of their incipient success. In high school, they enter their Alpha Geekdom. They rack up great grades and develop that coating of arrogance that forms on those who know that in the long run they will be more successful than the beauties and jocks who get dates.

Then they go into one of those fields like law, medicine or politics, where a person’s identity is defined by career rank. They develop the specific social skills that are useful on the climb up the greasy pole: the capacity to imply false intimacy; the ability to remember first names; the subtle skills of effective deference; the willingness to stand too close to other men while talking and touching them in a manly way.

Is it just me, or did that get a bit weird toward the end....

Oh, I suppose Brooks paints one path to narcissism. (Mike at Crime and Federalism seems more inclined to see this as sociopathy.) The high school geek, certain of his own superiority, reinforced by family members (but not by peers), who gains a position that vest him with money and power. But at the end of the day, it's the destination that matters. Some of the more common manifestations of personality disorder:

Narcissistic personality disorder

• Inflated sense of - and preoccupation with - your importance, achievements and talents


• Constant attention-grabbing and admiration-seeking behavior


• Inability to empathize with others


• Excessive anger or shame in response to criticism


• Manipulation of others to further your own desires

Brooks himself knows that the narcissistic geek is the exception, not the rule, in positions of leadership. How did he put it?

The only real shift between school and adult politics is that the jocks realize they need conservative intellectuals, who are geeks who have decided their fellow intellectuals should never be allowed to run anything and have learned to speak slowly so the jocks will understand them. Meanwhile, the geeks have learned they need to find popular kids like F.D.R. to head their tickets because the American people will never send a former geek to the White House.

Also, if history tells us anything it's that there is no single personality type that is inclined toward a Spitzer-type fall from grace. The "jocks, cheerleaders and preps" are more likely to get a position of fame and/or fortune from which to fall, but maybe that makes no difference to Brooks, who states that in high school:

... all prestige goes to jocks, cheerleaders and preps who possess the emotional depth of a cocker spaniel.

Does Brooks see anybody as having emotional depth? Other than possibly himself?

I'm left with the question, why does Brooks focus on lust, and not the other deadly sins? Does he believe that a hyperachieving nerd is more susceptible to this type of scandal? That Gary Hart and Bill Clinton were unpopular nerds in high school? (What about JFK and Lyndon Johnson?) That Charlie Sheen, Eddie Murphy and Hugh Grant are nerds at heart, involved in prostitution scandals due to their "rank-link imbalances"? Or is it that he's trying to find a way to wag his finger at Spitzer without acknowledging the fallen heroes of the right - Newt Gingrich, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Larry Craig, Tom Delay, George Allen, Bernie Kerik, etc., likely to soon be joined by Don Young and Ted Stevens? Because when you broaden the context and include the more typical cases, you can really see how Brooks missed the mark.

"My Favorite Philosopher Is Thomas Sowell"

A number of years ago I wrote an entry, "My Favorite Philosopher Is Jesus", that took a jaundiced view of Thomas Sowell's In A Conflict of Visions, an effort to categorize political philosophies into two categories, "constrained" and "unconstrained". As is typical of this type of work, that really translates into "people like me," and "everybody else", with "everybody else" being wrong. Oh, I know, Sowell's proponents argue that he avoids saying, "all those who adhere to an 'unconstrained vision' are wrong," but how dumb would you actually have to be not to discern that message?

The title to that post is, of course, alluding to the conservative's conservative, George W. Bush, describing Jesus as his "favorite philosopher". If G.W. reflects the "constrained vision" to which Sowell would have us aspire, may his favorite philosopher help us.

The other day when I was browsing weblogs, I saw a post on Talking Points Memo,

David Mamet: Why I am no longer a 'brain-dead liberal.'

Okay, I thought, I'll bite.¹ And at the other end of the link I found an intriguing essay written by a man who, although unquestionably bright, has spent sixty years on the planet without spending any discernible time contemplating politics. It's an analysis I might expect from an undergraduate student, who for the first time has come to realize that there is a lot of nuance in the world around him (but better written).

None of the other weblogs I read mentioned this essay. That's perhaps not surprising, given that there's really not much to it. So I did a blog search to find out what others were saying. The first thing I learned was that the essay was given prominent treatment by the Drudge Report - that explains the original link, and also explains the second thing I learned. It's all over the right-leaning blogosphere, with typical expressions being that it is a "brilliant piece of writing", "welcome to the real world", and "liberals are going to hate you for this."² And thus David Mamet is welcomed into the world of shallow politics, a world in which he presently belongs.

I don't mean that as an insult of David Mamet, but it is his own admission that he spent sixty years on the planet without reconsidering political assumptions that were self-contradictory³, at odds with each other⁴, at odds with his body of work⁵, and at odds with the way he lives his life⁶. If he truly believed himself to be a "liberal" throughout those sixty years, he deserves his self-applied label. And while his "awakening" may put him on par with the right-wing bloggers who gush over his essay, I don't think you can read it without the sense that when it comes to political philosophy he is not only far from the deep waters - he is still splashing around in the kiddie pool. A high school student could shred his facile comparison of George W. Bush to J.F.K.

The line that told me exactly where Mamet is coming from was this:

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.⁷

I doubt I would be the first to point out to him that you can have a profound understanding of economic theory and still be an unabashed liberal. Or maybe I would. But his comment on Sowell provided a context for his entire piece - he read In A Conflict of Visions and, without a second thought, swallowed the theory of "unconstrained" versus "constrained" visions.

This also gives me something of a chuckle, in terms of the warm embrace Mamet is receiving from the right-wing blogosphere. How many among them have read Sowell? How many of that tiny group would describe Sowell as "our greatest contemporary philosopher"? Sowell has written some very good stuff during his career, but his brand of (paleo-)conservativism isn't particularly fashionable. And more to the point, perhaps out of a newfound awareness of the limitations of his understanding, Mamet does not actually embrace a new political label. His conclusion, which like the endings of many of his plays leaves many questions unanswered, is,

The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler.

That is to say, he seems to be categorizing himself as some form of centrist - somebody who is now sufficiently politically aware to know that everybody else is "mooing" but not quite sure where to stand (other than by the water cooler). Perhaps after a bit more reading and a bit more thinking, he'll realize that his reluctance to join one or the other of Sowell's political camps results from the fact that Sowell has it wrong, and that political thought is a multi-dimensional spectrum.

---------------
Footnotes

1. I was tempted to write a piece about Mamet's early work being performed the Organic Theater and, well, basically drawing as many parallels I could between Mamet's background and Jonah Goldberg's notions of a "liberal fascist." Such a piece would be entitled, "I used to be a liberal fascist, but it turns out I was a conservative the whole time." That, of course, would be intended as a poke in the eye of those who gush over both this essay and Goldberg's book, but they wouldn't get it and everybody else would be bored.

2. Would Mamet fear small audiences? Probably about as much as he fears having somebody say, "That dialog wasn't realistic." But really, he's in the Kelsey Grammer category of, "respected for his work," not in the Dennis Miller category of, "Overdone schtick that can't even survive on Fox." Either way, it's not his politics that matter.

3. Mamet admits this, "I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart?" But that's why he presents his cutesy self-appellation, "brain-dead" - he wasn't thinking.

4. A contradiction he highlights is his former belief that governments, composed of people, are the solution to our problems while businesses, composed of people, act only in self-interest. Now it's pretty much the opposite, perhaps with the qualification that he relishes his own materialism, but somehow he no longer sees the contradiction.

5. It is hard to imagine Oleanna - in which a young woman plays the sexual harassment card and destroys her professor - as advancing a liberal philosophy. Mamet's new play, November, that supposedly inspired this political awakening is about interplay "between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter" - in other words, the "liberal" is a caricature, and an easily defeated straw man. And his views on race?

Races, as Steven Pinker wrote in his refutational The Blank Slate, are just rather large families; families share genes and thus, genetic disposition. Such may influence the gene holders (or individuals) much, some, or not at all. The possibility exists, however, that a family passing down the gene for great hand-eye coordination is likely to turn out more athletes than without. The family possessing the genes for visual acuity will likely produce good hunters, whose skill will provide nourishment. The families of the good hunters will prosper and intermarry, thus strengthening the genetic disposition in visual acuity.

Bambi v Godzilla, Pantheon (February 6, 2007). The purpose of the essay is to explain the high representation of Ashkenazim (and possibly Asperger's Syndrome) among film directors; but what's the implicit statement about other races?

6. "The observed rule in Hollywood is ‘feel free to treat everyone like scum." Did he believe that the peons who fetch him his lattes every morning do so because of their "inherent goodness"? "I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as 'a brain-dead liberal,' and to NPR as 'National Palestinian Radio.'" If he truly believed those expressions to be charming (or clever), I'm at a loss for words.

7. Mamet later elaborates, "I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow." Mamet is an unabashed Zionist. It shouldn't take him very long to think of one good thing that resulted from government intervention. But should I assume that he believes environmental laws, child labor laws, Medicare, Social Security, food inspection, drug inspection, public highways, etc., all stand in the way of great filmmaking, and are thus social detriments? More to the point, he's a playwright - a profession that could scarcely exist but for government grants, publicly funded education, charitable donations and tax exemptions.

Is It About Race, Or About Getting Noticed

It's tough to be a white man who wants to run for President. To be taken seriously you need an impressive résumé. Unless you're wealthy. Or your dad was President (and you're a wealthy heir). Or you're really wealthy. Or you're filthy stinkin' rich. Or your name is Kennedy. Or to have played the President on the teevee. There's also something about "being in the right place at the right time" - something that could never happen to a white guy.

So let's look at the remark that got Geraldine Ferraro into so much trouble.

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship," Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. "Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."

Ferraro is sticking to her words, while the Clinton campaign "disagrees". Maureen Dowd (of all people) provides some additional context:

Geraldine Ferraro, who helped Walter Mondale lose 49 states in 1984, was clearly stung at what she considered Obama’s easy rise to celebrity and electoral success. Last Friday, Ms. Ferraro, who is on Hillary’s national finance committee, told The Daily Breeze, a small newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Obama acknowledged when he arrived in the Senate that he got more attention, his big book deal and his celebrity, because he is not white. He was only the third black senator elected since Reconstruction.

But as he campaigned here Tuesday, he was outraged at Ferraro’s comments. “They are divisive,” he said. “I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd.”

Here's the deal. Getting noticed, for the most part, isn't enough to get you taken seriously. The insulting part of Ferraro's comment is not so much that Obama's race helped him get noticed; it's the implication that it's the only reason he was noticed, and that it's the only reason he remains a serious contender in the race. Beyond that, as Josh Marshall asks, "Can anyone seriously claim that it's an asset to be an African-American in a US presidential race?"

The same can be asked of gender - look at the media coverage of Clinton. And I suspect that Ferraro is correct that were Obama a female of any race, with all else being equal, he would not have been taken seriously as a Presidential contender. Within the right context, being African American or being female can help you "get noticed", but it's no free pass.

Putting political beliefs aside for the moment, were he to have tried to run as a Democrat this time around how many days do you think G.W. Bush's campaign would have lasted? Both Clinton and Obama are far superior candidates as compared to our sitting President. Stripped of his family name and fortune, a candidate as mediocre as Bush wouldn't have lasted a day.

Using Gmail As A Spam Filter

I have no love of web-based email. Years ago when I had MSN dial-up, Microsoft made the anti-consumer decision to block POP Mail and force its users to use Hotmail instead. I had about eight more months on my MSN contract, and Microsoft indicated that the fee for early termination was, well, almost as much as the balance of the contract. (If you want to know the point in time when I decided to give Microsoft as little of my money as humanly possible, that would be it.)

I also used Yahoo! mail for a number of years, particularly when I was on vacation. I would use it to pull email from my POP server, without deleting the originals such that they could be downloaded when I returned home. But its atrocious spam filtering led me to abandon that idea. The idea of paying them a premium to (possibly) keep a web-based email account usable, with a spam filter of unknown quality? Not appealing.

I haven't been paying much attention to Gmail, beyond noting that it does have decent spam filtering, but I read something today that may cause me to take a second look - apparently I can route my email through Gmail, taking full advantage of its spam filter, while continuing to download my email and continuing to use my own email addresses.

Running Against McCain

E.J. Dionne suggests,

So what's the path of integrity for one-time McCain fans in the center and on the left? It would be to base our judgments on the extent to which the rebellious McCain we admired has given way to the McCain who is as conservative as he always said he was - even if many liberals (and, for different reasons, many conservatives) didn't want to believe him.

Is there a need for a special "path of integrity"? I don't think that a Democrat who would have preferred McCain to Bush in 2000, or again in 2004, to note, "I thought he would be better than G.W. Bush, but that doesn't mean I think he's better than anybody." Or to observe, "He has done some good things, and to me that puts him head and shoulders above the other Republicans who he defeated in the primaries, but I now have to compare him to the Democratic nominee."

What gives me the most pause about McCain? His retreat from his own historic positions without regard for whether he is followng a "path of integrity". The positions where I found him historically most impressive, such as fiscal conservativism, willingness to stand up to intolerance? When he decided to run for President again, they were the first to go. Where he is the most consistent as a "conservative", it seems, is when he advocates against abortion rights or flag burning. To the extent that it is even fair to call it "conservative," that platform doesn't inspire me.

Meanwhile, Richard Cohen is telling us that McCain could win based on the one issue where he has been consistent - to maintain the Iraq War as a war without end.

John McCain lacks Nixon's raw talent for hypocrisy, so I don't think he'll go that far. But he will make his stand on the surge, and it will be, for him, the functional equivalent of Nixon's secret plan. His plan, McCain will say, is to win. The Democrats' is to surrender, he will say. The issue, if he frames it right, will not be the wisdom of the war but how to get out with pride.

But that's not what's going to happen, is it? The Democrats will be asking, "How do we get out with pride, while maintaining stability in the region," and McCain will be arguing, "Get out? Why would we ever want to do that?"

McCain, of course, owns the surge. He advocated putting additional troops in Iraq way back when President Bush, deep in denial, was proclaiming ultimate faith in Rummy and his merry band of incompetents.

McCain only "owns" the surge because the mainstream media lets him. Why doesn't he own the entire war? ("Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.") Why doesn't he "own" the catastrophically bad plan that he endorsed, up to the date it should have been obvious to a sack of hammers that more troops were needed? McCain argued,

Many critics suggest that disarming Iraq through regime change would not result in an improved peace. There are risks in this endeavor, to be sure. But no one can plausibly argue that ridding the world of Saddam Hussein will not significantly improve the stability of the region and the security of American interests and values.

That argument was being plausibly made at the time. It proved correct. But Mr. "Straight Talk" - Mr. "National Security" - wasn't listening. And McCain's enduring embrace of Chalabi is evocative of Bush's deep stare into Putin's eyes - how wrong can you be?

So when Cohen gushes, "McCain, in fact, oozes national security", the question is legitimately raised, why are so many in the mainstream media unwilling to point out that, on the whole, McCain's judgment on the war has been terrible? (And what else is there?)

The ABA Journal on Macs v PCs

The ABA Journal has a cute "debate" between two lawyers who "advise on the use of technology in the law office", one advocating for Macs and the other for PCs. There's not much new to the debate - you can read it yourself here. I did find it amusing, though, that the PC advocate frequently resorted to misinformation.

My first Mac was an SE/30. I needed a new hard drive. Did I call Apple? No. Did I find a third party vendor, order a third party hard drive (Apple, after all, doesn't actually make hard drives), and install it myself? Sure did. When I wanted to expand the memory, same story. And this was how long ago? Seventeen years ago - 1991. Has this changed? Hardly. My external hard drive has the word "Maxtor" on the side, not "Apple". My scanner and printer say "HP". My memory card reader says "Lexar". My FireWire hub says "Belkin". My wireless hub says "Linksys". So when I read,

As far as worrying what components are in my PC and worrying about the company I buy from, I have always objected to Apple's proprietary mindset: If you want a new hard drive, you must buy it from us, and you will pay what we want.

I cry "shenanigans". And when I read,

I like competition, and I like the fact that I can open up a PC and change out the hard drive with an inexpensive product that is the result of a lot of competition.

Well, welcome to 1991. No, even then he would be late to the game.

I do grant that many Macs aren't meant to be opened. As with PC's, Mac notebooks aren't meant to be serviced by the end-user. The iMac and Mac Mini are also not meant to be casually opened and self-serviced. Which, frankly, is fine for most users, even if the gearheads would prefer a Mac Pro.

His "last word" on the PC/Mac debate is this:

For all the positive hype about the “cool” Mac, a Web developer/ Mac convert has posted on his blog a 33-item complaint about why he has thoughts about going back.

Slow operations, bugs and crashes, useless functions, high expenses—sounds like the cost of an Apple is nearing its weight in gold.

Even though there is no follow-up to suggest that the developer actually switched back, that might be a little bit more compelling if, you know, the blog entry weren't dated September 22nd, 2005. (This would be more current - and the complaint, "Seriously, Steve - want more people to buy Macs? Just let them get the software", is valid, as you might expect from a seven-day-old post.)

That's not his first effort to oversell the PC, either.

In its zeal to be cool and proprietary, the new Apple ultralight, the MacBook Air, costs more than $1,700. Comparable specs are available on Windows machines for less than $1,000.

Comparable specs are available on cheaper Macs as well. I do agree that Wintel machines still have a price advantage in the portable market, which is why my portable is a Dell, but the proper comparison would be to a standard MacBook. In terms of performance? Let's just say, Vista is pretty but slow - I suggest investing in extra RAM. And Vista seems quirky - sometimes when I try to "wake up" my Dell, it shuts down - that's annoying.

My take on the debate is this: Despite the hype about how hard it is to learn a "different" system, it's really not. There are some significant differences between OSX and Vista, particularly if you use keyboard shortcuts, but you get used to them. I frequently switch back-and-forth between systems with only an occasional slip.

PC's have a lead in software, and have held that lead for years. As more software is browser-based, this lead will become less significant in the future. But if your office runs on a PC-only case management program, or you have a ton of money invested in HotDocs, you need to be careful. You can run both OSX and Windows on the current generation of Macs, but if you're going to be booting up in Windows mode as a matter of course it isn't sensible to spend the extra money (a Mac plus a Windows license) for functionality you will not use. If you run an emulator such as Parallels, so that you can run Windows in a window while running OSX, don't expect it to be fast.

If you are really just looking for basic functionality - Microsoft Office, and browser-based access to Lexis or WestLaw, you can go either way. In my opinion, right now Macs are much more pleasant to use. But there is a short learning curve if you switch.

After I graduated from law school I produced many legal documents on a Mac desktop computer, as that was what I owned. After owning several Macs, I switched to Windows because at the time it was a better option. When my last Dell desktop was groaning under the weight of modern applications, I switched back to a Mac desktop, because OSX offers many advantages over Windows. (XP was a resource hog. Vista is worse.) I have an emulator for programs that only run on PC's - I rarely use it. As I mentioned, my notebook is a Dell. Not that my saying so will make either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs happy, but my loyalty is to my own needs, not to a computer manufacturer.

"Why They Hate Us"

It's a throwaway line in a rather silly editorial, but hasn't this one worn itself out?

The United States went into Iraq because, even if mistakenly, it wanted to rid the world of a menace. For this, the world hated it.

I would challenge Sebastian Mallaby to find me somebody who hates the United States because it toppled Saddam Hussein, except there is a possibility that if he looks hard enough he'll find... one.

Is Mallaby trying to get invited to a White House dinner?

Prisons, Mental Health Policy and Incarceration Rates

At Lawyers, Guns and Money, we're reminded of this prison's extremely high incarceration rates and the resulting costs to states. The Detroit Free Press explains the cost to Michigan:

Before the nation hits two in 100 behind bars, which seems inevitable, it's time for a national debate on corrections and criminal justice policies that will lead to a more rational, humane and cost-effective system. The nation has gotten far too little for its enormous investment in locking people up. Violent crime rates are higher than they were more than three decades ago, when tough-on-crime policies, including mandatory sentencing laws, created a prison-building boom.

States can no longer afford to divert so many resources from education, health care and other pressing needs. Michigan, for example, with one of the nation's highest incarceration rates, spends $2 billion a year on corrections, or 20% of its general fund. It is one of four states spending more on corrections than higher education. In today's economy, spending more on prisons than college is a recipe for failure.

If you've been reading this weblog for a long time, you have a sense of my position on this - "... before we get "tough" on them by throwing away tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on their repeated stints behind bars, perhaps we should take a long and hard look at what we are doing and, for those cases where it isn't working, what we can and should do differently." Our nation's legislators irresponsibly toss billions of dollars at prisons without any sense of whether incarceration works, or whether there are more effective or more cost-effective alternatives.

A while back, an interesting graph was put up at the Volokh Conspiracy, illustrating our nation's prison and mental institution incarceration rates. Short of saying "correlation is causation", the illustration makes it hard to miss a connection between the closing of state-funded mental hospitals and the exploding incarceration rates in jails and prisons. I'm not arguing for reopening state mental hospitals and mass "mental health" incarceration as an alternative to prisons. But I am saying this: We had a lousy mental health policy that was followed by a paradigm shift (community-based mental health, self-determination) that was not adequately funded and supported, followed by misguided budget-slashing in states like Michigan which closed many of the state's remaining mental health facilities, followed by a willful blind eye to the fact that jails and prisons were filling up with people who were mentally ill, and otherwise untreated or given a lot less community-based support than they need.

I'll renew my call for evidence-based public policy.

Popularity

His editorial deserves greater ridicule, but I don't have time to keep up with all of Gerson's nonsense. Let's focus on this:

The real lesson in the years since Sept. 11 is different from what the Democratic candidates imagine: It is easy to be loved when you are a victim. It is harder to be popular when you act decisively to protect yourself and others.

Well, first of all we have a false dichotomy - our choices are either to "be a victim" or to "act decisively to protect yourself and others". Obviously, between the two, people are going to choose the flattering depiction - "Of course we want to be decisive! Of course we want to defend ourselves! Of course we defend others as well." Never mind that Gerson's "lesson" is not even close to reflecting reality. If Gerson were writing about the two World Wars and adhered to this style, he would elide the gratitude received by the nations the U.S. helped liberate, and would write something along the lines of, "Twice now, we have fought to free Europe, and both times Germany hated us for it."

If anybody has been playing the "victim" card since 9/11, it would be the Bush Administration. Being a "victim" is its excuse for everything, from secret detentions, to torture, to limiting habeas corpus, to warrantless spying, to entering into a massive war of choice despite the doubts and, in some cases, opposition of our allies. And the rift with the world did not start with a war in the defense of ourselves or others - it came by virtue of Bush's war of choice with Iraq. His decision that he was going to reinvent the region by war, whatever the doubts of our allies. What happened? He proved to be wrong in his professed rationale for the invasion and, despite an extremely competent invasion by the U.S. military, he proved to be beyond incompetent in the aftermath of the invasion.

Had Bush listened to "old Europe", he may well have learned within months that there were no "WMD's" in Iraq. But then, that was a pretext - he didn't want confirmation that Iraq had abandoned its weapons programs before the war, as it might have cost him the opportunity to start the war. Had he listened to "old Europe", or even to experienced voices within his own Administration, the military, or the State Department, he would have heard that successful occupation is difficult, requires a massive troop commitment, and that democratizing a nation and introducing market principles into a controlled economy is a touch more complicated than, say, growing a Chia Pet. Instead he sent in a band of incompetents like L. Paul Bremer to reinvent the nation, whatever the will of the people. And he decided to disband the Iraqi military, sending hundreds of thousands of armed, unemployed young men off to joblessness (i.e., to engage in street crime, join the "insurgency", or both.) What's not to love?

You can argue that once he got past his "The Pet Goat" moment, Bush started to act "decisively", sure. But decisive or not, you don't earn anybody's respect when every major decision you make is wrong. (I know that some people will choose to give him respect despite his incompetence, but let's not pretend that he earned it.) A half-competent President could have used his post-9/11 popularity boost, combined with the enormous "benefit of the doubt" initially afforded by the rest of the world, and could have embarked on a plan to eliminate Al Qaeda and to press for reforms in the Middle East. Bush had other plans.

Gerson follows his standard mendacious line that when the Democrats speak of improving our reputation in the world, it can only mean that we want to make this nation's enemies like us more. He is contemptuous of "old Europe" - "pacifists" (like the French in Chad?) who fought alongside us in the First Gulf War and Afghanistan.... er., I mean, who thought invading Iraq was a really bad idea. Gerson illustrates this idea by arguing that even when we're popular in other countries, they still may oppose our policies and pursue their own self-interest... well, duh. And even more idiotic, his notion that improving our international reputation will inevitably mean rolling over and giving our enemies everything they want. While this type of idiocy may be mistaken for brilliance during Bush Administration speechwriting sessions, it's unfortunate that Gerson's White House experience has apparently left him unable to write anything more than bad fiction.

Free Trade

McCain backer Dan Schnur has an editorial in the Times in which he ridicules Clinton and Obama for pandering on free trade.

Barely a footnote in the Democratic debate throughout most of 2007, trade has emerged more recently as perhaps the key defining policy distinction in Tuesday’s Ohio primary. One of the most important Democratic gains in recent years has been among financially secure and highly educated voters, most of whom understand the benefits of a global economy. A prolonged argument on trade policy between Senators Clinton and Obama could put those voters in play again in the fall.

Well, probably not. Because well-educated, financially secure people understand the difference between campaign trail hyperbole and what will actually happen when either candidate, if elected President, assumes office. I don't much care for the pandering, but it probably resonates with targeted voters better than is McCain's admission, "globalization will not automatically benefit every American". (They already know that.)

The danger for a protracted struggle between Senators Clinton and Obama is not that the party will fail to unify. Rather, the real threat is that the two candidates will continue to move leftward to try to win over voters in the remaining primary states, not just on trade policy but on other issues as well.

It's always good for a Democrat to follow the advice of a Sicil... er, McCain backer.

Had John McCain lost the Texas primary to Mike Huckabee on Tuesday night, he would still eventually have become the Republican nominee for president. But after another month or two of competing with a fundamentalist minister for primary votes, Senator McCain probably would have had to put James Dobson on the ticket with him and give his convention speech in tongues to turn out conservatives in the fall.

Actually.... Dobson has already declared that he would rather sit out the election than support McCain and, with nothing to fear from Huckabee, McCain has chosen to embrace Hagee. I doubt McCain will speak in tongues at the convention, but if he thinks it will make the difference he needs....

I don't argue with Schnur's (professed) hope that Clinton and Obama avoid escalating their "anti-trade sentiments", but I have to wonder¹ if his real fear is for them, or is it concern that their continued emphasis will highlight McCain's competing stance of, "Many workers will suffer and good jobs will continue to disappear, but free trade is good for everyone else."
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1. This is a rhetorical flourish. I think we can reasonably infer Schnur's intent. Paul Krugman highlights the real risk to the Democrats, and perhaps especially Obama - that anti-NAFTA talk will be viewed as disingenuous.

Obama On The Attack

David Brooks believes that if Obama goes on the attack, his campaign will disappear in a puff of smoke.

In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal. Barack Obama doesn’t have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he’s got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him.

Let's see.... On the one hand, we have hardcore Barack Obama supporters, who often seem to be out for Hillary Clinton's blood. On the other hand, we have those of us who never thought of Barack Obama as something special or transcendent. Which of us will be turned off if Obama "goes negative" on Clinton or McCain, particularly if he does so in a dignified manner? (There's no need for swiftboating, "Willie Horton" ads, or similar abrogations of honor and honesty.)

Senator Clinton says that she has a longer history of service in the Senate than I do. She says that Senator McCain has a longer history in the Senate than I do. I don't dispute their distinguished careers as Washington insiders. Yet Senator Clinton claims this means she and Senator McCain have "a lifetime of experience" that they will bring to their campaigns. Take a look at their votes, their foreign policy decisions. Having a long record of bad judgment on key issues of national security and defense is not a qualification to be President.

Here's my challenge to Senator Clinton. Identify the foreign policy decisions where we've disagreed, the Senate votes where we were on opposite sides, and explain why in every case my judgment proved to be better.

Would that approach be so offensive? (It works on McCain, as well.)

The Clinton Tax Returns

There's a silly back-and-forth right now over Hillary Clinton's refusal to release her tax returns before April 15th. If it were just this year's tax return, that might be reasonable, but of course it's not.

The reasonable inference is that Clinton has something to hide. If it would hurt her in the primaries against Obama, it will hurt her in a general election against McCain. Come on, Senator Clinton - Rip off the Band-Aid and get it over with.

The Reverse Pottery Barn Rule

"We broke it, you buy it." That seems to be what the Washington Post wants to impose on the Democratic Party.

Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama have repeatedly discussed the positions they held on the war in Iraq before it began and their pledges to withdraw most American troops, but neither has explained how the dramatic improvement in security in Iraq during the past year would be preserved if their proposed withdrawals went forward.

You mean, if we disregard the fact that we have a "surge" that is supposed to create a security situation that can be sustained with lower troop levels, and simply treat it as an escalation? Of indefinite duration?

They've promised to improve U.S. relations with the rest of the world, but they haven't said what that would mean in such regions as Africa and Latin America.

Does the Post really mean, "what that would mean"? It would mean "improved relations". Does the Post means to ask, "How would they do that?" Well, sure, we could get into specifics - as if voters really want specifics. (But the media likes to complain about how boring debates are when the candidates discuss policies of immediate relevance to voters, like health care.) Also, were our relations in Africa and Latin America so bad before Bush II?

They haven't said what they would do with critical Bush administration initiatives, such as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process or negotiations with North Korea, that are unlikely to be wrapped up by January.

The Post finds it unlikely that there will not be an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in place by January? It's such a simple, short-term problem, and Bush has been so effective in the Middle East so far, right? And we can remain optimistic that Bush will be able to roll back the North Korean crisis to the point it was at when he took office (and ridiculed the compromises Clinton had made up to that point)?

Oh, come on.

This also presupposes a responsible media. One that won't attack Mondale for proposing new taxes, but will criticize Reagan for making what everybody believes to be a false promise. Like that'll happen. Any commitment or plan proposed on the "tough issues" will be used as a basis for attack, with media pundits leading the charge.

In Defense Of The Bush Administration (Sort Of)

Vanity Fair points out that after making the imbecilic decision to press for elections in the Palestinian territories, resulting in a Hamas parliamentary majority, the Bush Administration made yet another imbecilic decision, supporting a failed civil war in Gaza meant led by Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan. But the idea that Dahlan could be imposed as a strongman ruler in Gaza is far from new. Here's a prior example of that idea, courtesy of Robert D. Kaplan in 2002:

The post-Arafat era could usher in "Rajoubistan" and "Dahlanistan:" warlordships in the West Bank and Gaza respectively, controlled by Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan. Notables such as Hannan Ashrawi have no power bases of their own, and their job will be, as before, merely to perform for CNN. Rajoubistan will rely on King Abdullah of Jordan, and Dahlanistan on Mubarak's Egypt. Thus, a variation of the pre-1967 reality might take hold. That would be the optimistic scenario: Hobbesian warlordships with which the Israeli security services can make deals and thus manage a cessation of hostilities.

And no, Kaplan didn't originate the idea (or the terms, "Rajoubistan" and "Dahlanistan"), either. I can fault Bush for grabbing this idea and running with it, but it's been kicking around for a very long time and did not, as the article suggests, originate with Bush.

Making Dahlan the warlord in charge of Gaza is fundamentally an anti-democratic idea, but that shouldn't surprise anybody who looks at what Bush does as opposed to what he says. Dictatorships can be much more compliant than democracies, particularly when headed by people far more concerned with their own wealth and power than with the welfare of their people, and who have no particular concern with such niceties as "human rights". Within that context, what's not to love about Dahlan?

In 2001, President Bush famously said that he had looked Russian president Vladimir Putin in the eye, gotten “a sense of his soul,” and found him to be “trustworthy.” According to three U.S. officials, Bush made a similar judgment about Dahlan when they first met, in 2003. All three officials recall hearing Bush say, “He’s our guy.”

Does that surprise anybody? Is Bush truly an atrocious judge of character, or is it instead that he goes weak in the knees when he stares into the eyes of tyrants?

Hitchens And The Dreaded "Islamist Menace"

Does Christopher Hitchens simply make stuff up, or is there something behind this seeming nonsense?

Two things, in my experience, disable many liberals at the onset of this conversation. First, they cannot shake their subliminal identification of the Muslim religion with the wretched of the earth: the black- and brown-skinned denizens of what we once called the “Third World.” You can see this identification in the way that the Palestinians (about 20 percent of whom were Christian until their numbers began to decline) have become an “Islamic” cause and in the amazing ignorance that most leftists display about India, a multiethnic secular democracy under attack from al-Qaida and its surrogates long before the United States was.

It's the political left who characterizes Muslims as dark-skinned and backward? It's the political left who was (and is) unaware of Palestinian Christians? And I'm not sure how he came up with his prattle about India. But it gets better....

And you can see it, too, in the stupid neologism “Islamophobia,” which aims to promote criticism of Islam to the gallery of special offenses associated with racism.

I only occasionally see reference to the term "Islamophobia", but I do see frequent use of the similar "stupid neologism", Islamofascist. What would Hitchens make of that....

Why are people like Hitchens so eager to scrap every value and principle of the West in order to save it from a perceived Islamic menace?

Meanwhile, we should insist on reciprocity at all times. We should not allow a single Saudi dollar to pay for propaganda within the U.S., for example, until Saudi Arabia also permits Jewish and Christian and secular practices. No Wahhabi-printed Korans anywhere in our prison system. No Salafist imams in our armed forces.

Right. Because the propaganda is so convincing, that it's worth throwing away such conceits as free speech and the First Amendment in order to protect Hitchens' sensitivities. And there's no better way to demonstrate the freedoms and resilience of Western culture than by engaging in censorship and speech bans.

A declaration at the UN of our solidarity with the right of the Kurdish people of Iraq and elsewhere to self-determination as well as a further declaration by Congress that in no circumstance will Muslim forces who have fought on our side, from the Kurds to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, find themselves friendless, unarmed, or abandoned. Partition in Iraq would be defeat under another name (and as with past partitions, would lead to yet further partitions and micro-wars over these very subdivisions). But if it has to come, we cannot even consider abandoning the one part of the country that did seize the opportunity of modernization, development, and democracy.

By what definition does "self-determination" mean, "You need to be a permanent minority population in a state that probably won't be particularly respectful of your rights, except while it remains under the point of our gun"? Ah, but true self-determination would be "defeat under another name", so sorry Kurds, Hitchens wants you to settle for this false kind, but wants you to rest assured that if you end up landlocked in the midst of hostile neighbors, and potentially excluded from your former nation's oil wealth, the U.S. will defend your borders.

Energetic support for all the opposition forces in Iran and in the Iranian diaspora. A public offer from the United States, disseminated widely in the Persian language, of help for a reformed Iran on all matters, including peaceful nuclear energy, and of assistance in protecting Iran from the catastrophic earthquake that seismologists predict in its immediate future.

Should we assume that Hitchens believes it is the political left that would ridicule his ideas for rapprochement with and massive aid to Iran?

A commitment to buy Afghanistan’s opium crop and to keep the profits out of the hands of the warlords and Talibanists, until such time as the country’s agriculture - especially its once-famous vines - has been replanted and restored. We can use the product in the interim for the manufacture of much-needed analgesics for our own market and apply the profits to the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Sorry, Hitchens, that sounds like a... pipe dream. Which pharmaceutical companies are complaining about a shortage of opium poppies? (I will grant, if we turn the opium into medications which we then provide at bargain prices to the developing world, supply might not outstrip demand - but it'll cost us at both ends.) As Hitchens supposedly wants to support India, what would this policy do to Indian opium farmers who presently supply much of our legal demand? What will we pay for the poppies, and will that truly match what the drug cartels will pay? Will we hang around the farms afterward to provide an armed defense to the farms, whose sales will surely anger the "warlords and Talibanists" who receive money from the illicit market? How will we ever get out of this business - what legitimate crop is going to provide farmers with even a tenth of the revenues of opium poppies?

It's not that Hitchens has no valid points in his essay. But, as usual, he buries them in claptrap.

Housing Demand

Today Robert Samuelson assures us that there is no oversupply of housing - it's just that there's not enough demand. And that, he's confident, will stop being a problem as soon as housing prices drop "to a level where housing can escape its present stagnation".

It's elementary economics. Pretend that houses are apples. We have 1,000 apples, priced at $1 each. They don't sell. We can either keep the price at $1 and watch the apples rot or cut the price until people buy. Housing is no different.

If we have a few million customers, that's true. If we have 1,000 customers, that may be true. If we have one customer, cutting the price per apple to a penny probably won't convince the customer to buy them all, save perhaps if he owns a cider mill. But that's an aside from Samuelson's argument - yes, if you cut prices low enough, you will find buyers for all homes presently on the market. If Toll Brothers started selling McMansions for $1, the demand would outstrip anything they could reasonably supply.

Samuelson is correct that, as exemplified by the guy building the huge house in his neighborhood, there remains demand for housing and even for McMansions. But isn't there a bit more than that to the picture?

Builders want their profits - and some may go bankrupt or go out of business if they immediately cut prices to the point where supply and demand curves cross. Lenders who have foreclosed on houses want to cut their losses. Homeowners who are upside-down on their mortgages don't want to have to pay back the difference when they sell their homes, or hope to stay in their homes until they can find a buyer who will pay what their house is "really worth". A lot of people who aren't upside-down still want to hold onto their homes until they can get what it's "really worth". Oversupply in some pockets of the nation is real - where high-end houses were being snapped up by speculators, not by people intending to make the houses their homes, and few people presently even qualify to buy the homes.

I don't argue with Samuelson's belief that the sooner all of this shakes out, the sooner "housing can escape its present stagnation".

The understandable impulse to minimize foreclosures should not be a pretext to prop up the housing market by rescuing too many strapped homeowners. Though cruel, foreclosures and falling home values have the virtue of bringing prices to a level where housing can escape its present stagnation. Helping today's homeowners makes little sense if it penalizes tomorrow's homeowners. An unstoppable free-fall of prices seems unlikely. Slumping home construction and sales have left much pent-up demand. What will release that demand are affordable prices.

The problem for the economy and housing market is, with or without intervention, that process is likely to occur over a period of years.

An Imaginary Obama's Imaginary First 100 Days

It's Michael Gerson, so I can't tell up front if he is being mendacious or if he truly is "that stupid".

But John McCain could. As a thought experiment, consider the foreign policy achievements of Obama's first 100 days in office.

Redeeming his inaugural pledge to "pay any price, bear any burden, fly any distance to meet with our enemies," Obama's first major international meeting is with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. National security adviser Samantha Power does her best to talk tough on human rights in preparation for the meeting. But, as Henry Kissinger once said, "When talks become their own objective, they are at the mercy of the party most prepared to break them off." Having made Iranian talks "without precondition" his major foreign policy goal, Obama is left with little leverage to extract concessions, and little choice but to move forward.

And it goes on like that, but gets even sillier. In other words, we get an imbecilic caricature of a theoretical "first 100 days", that nobody with any sense or an honest bone in his body would propound. How typical of Gerson.

In Gerson's imaginary scenario, as there has been zero progress (none, nada, zilch) in the war between now and his Inauguration, Obama announces a phased withdrawal of forces.

But the next day, The Post reports stunned disbelief among the troops. A high-ranking officer observes, "The surest way to break the morale of the military is to undo its achievements and humiliate it on the verge of success."

Gerson, of course, imagines us "on the verge of success" in Iraq - he has no plan for us to get past the "verge" and actually achieve success, but he imagines that any change of course will take us away from the "verge" we've supposedly been on since 2003. It's a fundamentally dishonest argument presented by people, like Gerson, who have no idea what they are talking about, have no actual plan for success, and have no honest response to the question, "Why shouldn't we cut our losses." As is his wont, he ignores the many military leaders who have cautioned us that our continued deployment in Iraq is degrading the armed forces. Who cares about that or their ability to defend the nation, after all, if maintaining troop levels will help the Republican Party save face?

Gerson concludes,

Obama's 100-day agenda would be designed, in part, to improve America's global image. But there is something worse than being unpopular in the world - and that is being a pleading, panting joke.

Well, it's hard to argue with that. And who would know better than Gerson?

McCain Probably Would Prefer Obama, But....

Stanley Fish analyzes the presidential race and concludes, "I would bet that if McCain were pulling a lever in the Democratic primaries in Texas and Ohio, his vote would go into the Obama column." I think he's correct. But I think he oversells the reasons why that's the case and, in analyzing McCain's advantages over Obama, overlooks some key aspects of how they both came from the rear to their frontrunner positions. He speculates that McCain's position(s) on the war will transform it into a "Republican plus."

The reason is that McCain’s position on the war, as on so many other issues, looks in (at least) two directions.

On the one hand, he voted to authorize the invasion. On the other, he consistently disagreed with the administration’s prosecution of the war in general and with the judgment of defense Secretary Rumsfeld in particular. And on the third hand, he advocated for a course of action that was at last implemented in the so-called “surge,” and with some success.

I'm not sure why that argument would apply to Obama and not Clinton, but let's take it at face value. Survey after survey shows that, whatever fruits the surge may have produced, the American public wants out of Iraq. There is no sign that we're going to further escalate "the surge", and at this point we seem to have reached something of a plateau. It is not apparent that we can withdraw "surged" troops without backsliding. There is a very real concern that our commitments in Iraq are degrading our military, and there is plenty of evidence (such as the relaxation of restrictions on recruitment of people with medical ailments and criminal records) that suggests this to be the case.

But perhaps all of that is too nuanced for an election campaign? Fish imagines,

McCain can ask, Don’t you see that the situation has changed in recent months, and shouldn’t a responsible leader adjust his or her stance according to the facts on the ground?

The obvious response to this is that (a) things changed after the surge, but have not changed in recent months, and there is very little sign that Iraq is headed toward a form of stability that can be maintained without the continued presence of 100,000+ U.S. troops, and that the McCain "We could be there for 100 years" policy is a post-surge policy. As I see it, McCain does not benefit by introducing an argument that only highlights that "improvement" at best means "we're no longer losing ground", but that he has no strategy for either winning or cutting our losses. His hyperbolic overstatements that helped lead us into the war won't help him - contrast an early clip of him raving about how easy and cheap the war will be with his more recent "100 years, maybe forever" commitment to the war, and you have a powerful anti-McCain campaign ad.

And he can add, I too had my doubts about the conduct of the war, but now a policy I long advocated has been put in place with good results.

And that can be contrasted with all of the promises, "Things will be better in a few months; we'll know by the fall; we'll know in six months...."-type statements by pretty much every supporter of the surge. How does McCain respond to, "Your strategy bore some initial fruit, but we've not seen any substantial improvement for more than a year - what's your next move?" We already know his answer - I don't think it makes him electable.

The parts of McCain’s story, even with one or two twists and turns, fit nicely into a coherent narrative that brings credit to him in every chapter. I was resolute in the beginning, I demurred for a while but for good reasons, and now I am resolute again, and you can trust me because, in this area especially, I know what I’m doing. He can rehearse this narrative without apologizing for anything and then turn around to Obama and (borrowing from Clinton’s attacks on him), declare: You, on the other hand, don’t know what you’re doing, as everything you say, not only about the war, but about the conduct of foreign policy, proves. (He and President Bush are already pushing this line in anticipation of Obama’s nomination.)

And Obama can respond, "Being resolute in one failed policy or another is neither a sign of experience nor good judgment." (Perhaps Obama's ad can mention how McCain embraces one failed Bush policy after another. The Bush-McCain plot has already run off-course with the Bush Administration adopting what had to that point been depicted by McCain (and Clinton) as one of Obama's naive, silly ideas.

Fish goes on to surmise that on the issues, McCain is too much like a Democrat to inspire voters to vote for Obama instead of him.

The criticisms of McCain made by his primary opponents – he twice voted against Bush’s tax cuts, he cooperated with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform and with Russ Feingold on campaign-finance reform, he said that waterboarding was torture and should not be used, he scorned fundamentalist Christian leaders, he supported stem cell research, he opposed a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, he expressed doubts about Samuel Alito – cannot be appropriated by Obama because these are his positions, too.

Ah yes, the various issues which cause some right-wingers to become apoplectic and call McCain a "liberal." I've already mentioned how common ground can be used to positively camaign against McCain. Ads in the states most concerned about border security describing how President Obama will be able to work with Republican leaders, such as John McCain, to break through the gridlock on immigration reform. And 527's can have even more fun, running ads about how McCain will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire so we can get back to balancing the budget - something that will likely inspire fierce denials from John "I was against tax cuts and budget deficits before I was for them" McCain.

And if you want to go negative, whatever McCain's history of distancing himself from "agents of intolerance", he's currently doing his best to embrace as many as he can reach. One set of ads can work to undermine him as a hypocrite who actually opposes religion, and wants the government to pay for stem cell research and recognize same-sex marriage; another can depict him as a hypocrite who will abandon any sense of principle or ethics to embrace hateful religious leaders, as long as it brings him votes. Without too much difficulty, he can also be forced to take a clear position on abortion rights - he's against them, but many people don't seem to realize that.

I suspect that the Bush Administration will coax the Iraqis into trying to demonstrate "progress" by passing legislation or taking other nominal steps that do not actually do a thing to improve the situation on the ground; Obama will have to deal with that type of "progress". But I also suspect that absent real progress in Iraq, McCain has nothing to offer on that issue and his commitment to indefinite war will weigh down his campaign. Whether or not Obama manages to maintain the same level of enthusiasm behind his campaign, I don't sense that there is much (if any) enthusiasm behind McCain. Am I missing something? Pretty much everything McCain could historically offer to the political center is either undermined by his more recent flip-flopping or by its alienating him from voters on the political right.

One thing that is clear from the campaign to date is that many people (myself included) underestimated Obama as a political candidate. One of the things that has impressed me about Obama is how fast he is to respond to even modest attacks, and find ways to defuse them. McCain has made himself very vulnerable to counterattack.

Let's Not Overrate Bipartisanship

David Ignatius is much more comfortable with McCain's record on "biparisanship" than with Obama's:

The Obama campaign sent me an eight-page summary of his "bipartisan accomplishments," and it includes some encouraging examples of working across the aisle on issues such as nuclear proliferation, energy, veterans affairs, budget earmarks and ethics reforms. So the cupboard isn't bare. It's just that, unlike McCain, Obama bears no obvious political scars for fighting bipartisan battles that were unpopular with his party's base.

A couple of reactions....

Bipartisanship is a great concept when your party doesn't control the government. "They may have the power and control, but wouldn't it be better if they tossed us a bone from time to time?" It's necessary when no party is in control, as otherwise you can have gridlock. But if you do have control, what's your incentive for tossing the other side that bone? The vain hope that in the future, when they regain control, they'll return the favor? (What does the Republican legislative history from 2001 - 2006 tell us about that hope?)

Also, I don't believe for a second that McCain plans to run a bipartisan government, except as necessary to advance his agenda. He may be more willing to break with the Republican Party than his recent predecessors, just as they will be more likely to break with him, but that's not about "bipartisanship" - that's about their each advancing their own agendas. The spittle directed at McCain by right-wing nutters like Limbaugh and Coulter is a reflection of that reality - the problem is not that McCain is a "liberal" as some pretend, or that he belives in "bipartisanship". It's that he'll build coalitions to do what he wants.

It doesn't worry me that Obama doesn't have a long history of reaching across the aisle. He hasn't been in national office long enough to have a long history of anything, and for the first six years of the Bush Administration "reaching across the aisle" has largely meant getting a sufficient number of Democrats to acquiesce to an item on the Republican agenda. It would worry me more if he had the opportunity to advance significant legislation without compromise, but nonetheless decided to gut it in the name of "bipartisanship". (But I don't think he'll do that.)

Ronald Reagan taught the country something about the ability of a world-class communicator to create such a new political space that defies the previous categories.

I thought we were talking about bipartisanship, so why does Ignatius evoke Reagan? At present, to be transformative, McCain would have to do a lot of reaching across the aisle. Obama, not so much.

The Words Put Into Politician's Mouths

Michael Gerson tells us,

The construction of serious speeches forces candidates (or presidents) to grapple with their own beliefs, even when they don't write every word themselves. If those convictions cannot be marshaled in the orderly battalions of formal rhetoric, they are probably incoherent.

Michael Gerson? Speechwriter for G.W. Bush? Did it even occur to him that he's indicting his own work?

McCain can and should make an ideological case against his opponent. Why does Obama want to fight terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan but not in Iraq? How would it advance the war on terrorism to grant al-Qaeda's fondest wish - an untimely American retreat from the Middle East? Would Obama really devote his first year in office to a series of surrender summits with the leaders of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea?

Here's the problem. If you caricature and misrepresent your opponent's beliefs, you don't come across as a "straight talker". McCain has already stumbled when trying to confront Obama on foreign policy, ridiculing Obama's statements about striking targets inside Pakistan even as the White House was adopting the very techniques Obama proposed.

Trying to caricature Obama as intending to meet with every world leader, no matter how despotic, during his first year in office? At the expense of every single other priority, domestic or international? Let's just say that if I were drafting Obama's response to such an accusation the overt message would be "he's confused", and the subtext would be "he's senile." Obama's team may be more charitable than I, but I would suggest that McCain take a look at G.W.'s past, frequent incoherence before adopting a response endorsed by one of Bush's principal speechwriters.