Monday, April 28, 2008
Alan Keyes does not garner the USCP Nomination
Ha ha! No, not that USCP--the Constitution Party, of course. Okay, that's really all I've got. The story is here, just don't scroll down to the comments, as many of the commenters over at The Nation seem to be, well, unhinged.
Greatest/Worst Presidents
Ross Douthat gives his opinions on the most overrated and underrated presidents in the 20th century. His conclusions: Wilson, Kennedy, and Truman (to a lesser extent) are overrated, and Ike, Bush 41 and Harding as underrated. I'm with him on most of these (though there does seem to be a clear partisan current at work here) though I do think that Wilson and Truman generally deserve their places in history despite some high-profile failures. Wilson's domestic agenda was a stunning success during his first term in office, and he did win World War I, and his foreign policy ideas were extraordinarily influential. He didn't get his League of Nations, but he was pretty darned successful overall. And Truman did preside over the ending of WWII, the beginning of the postwar boom, and the Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine, and so on, all of which were signal achievements. He had his missteps--cronyism comes to mind, and possibly some lax standards on communists in the government--but I'd say his big ideas, like Wilson's, prove right in retrospect. I'm with him on Ike and Bush 41, not so much on Harding, who said and did a few good (though minor) things, but left little mark on the country, aside from having presided over one of the biggest corruption scandals in American history.
My picks, I suppose, would be as follows: I think that Reagan, Kennedy, and Clinton are probably the three most overrated 20th century presidents, and Eisenhower, Carter and Ford are the most underrated. This does go against my partisan leanings a bit, but that's what I think. Reagan is such an obvious case that it almost needn't be argued--virtually everything that he's beloved for he didn't do, and virtually everything he actually did has been forgotten. Yes, he cut taxes, but then he raised them a half-dozen times to balance the budget, and then he just decided not to bother balancing the budget, thus virtually ending the (good) conservative tradition of balanced budgets. Yes, he beat the Soviet Union, but not by the force of personality or standing tall or whatever he was supposed to have done with Khadaffy, but largely by adept diplomacy. Reagan was effective, no doubt, but the messiah mythos that has developed around the man is not really earned. Kennedy isn't a hard case either: he was no liberal, indifferent to organized labor, extremely hawkish, and whose commitment to things like ending poverty (unlike his brother's) seemed little more than a political calculation. And Clinton's presidency, though well-run in most respects, was a parade of missed opportunities and personal failures.
As for the underrated ones, Ike was simply too good, and far craftier than people realized. Great on foreign affairs, and good on most domestic issues as well. Perhaps his greatest failing was putting Dick Nixon on the ticket, thus subjecting this nation to that man for decades, but nobody's perfect. Carter is generally believed to be a bad president, which is not entirely untrue, but things only really started to spiral downward during his last year in office. He was every bit as effective a peacemaker as Nixon, and were it not for the perfect storm of stagflation, the hostage crisis, and the conservative tailwinds in the country at the time he might well have won in 1980. Maybe. He wasn't great but he wasn't a bottom-five president either. And Jerry Ford wasn't too bad a president, all things considered.
The worst president of all time, though, had to be Grant. He was a pretty bad general, too. Sure, he was better than McClellan if for no other reason than that he would fight the rebels, but his tactics were no more sophisticated than just throw my guys at your guys, on the theory that I can sustain more losses than you. One wonders whether the Army of the Potomac wouldn't have been better off under Meade--who beat Lee at Gettysburg, something that Grant never really managed to do--or maybe Hancock. The Union army had worse leadership, to be sure, but someone with more imagination and talent than Grant might have ended the war sooner, I think. And as for his presidency, it's best left to H. L. Mencken, who sums it up nicely:
My picks, I suppose, would be as follows: I think that Reagan, Kennedy, and Clinton are probably the three most overrated 20th century presidents, and Eisenhower, Carter and Ford are the most underrated. This does go against my partisan leanings a bit, but that's what I think. Reagan is such an obvious case that it almost needn't be argued--virtually everything that he's beloved for he didn't do, and virtually everything he actually did has been forgotten. Yes, he cut taxes, but then he raised them a half-dozen times to balance the budget, and then he just decided not to bother balancing the budget, thus virtually ending the (good) conservative tradition of balanced budgets. Yes, he beat the Soviet Union, but not by the force of personality or standing tall or whatever he was supposed to have done with Khadaffy, but largely by adept diplomacy. Reagan was effective, no doubt, but the messiah mythos that has developed around the man is not really earned. Kennedy isn't a hard case either: he was no liberal, indifferent to organized labor, extremely hawkish, and whose commitment to things like ending poverty (unlike his brother's) seemed little more than a political calculation. And Clinton's presidency, though well-run in most respects, was a parade of missed opportunities and personal failures.
As for the underrated ones, Ike was simply too good, and far craftier than people realized. Great on foreign affairs, and good on most domestic issues as well. Perhaps his greatest failing was putting Dick Nixon on the ticket, thus subjecting this nation to that man for decades, but nobody's perfect. Carter is generally believed to be a bad president, which is not entirely untrue, but things only really started to spiral downward during his last year in office. He was every bit as effective a peacemaker as Nixon, and were it not for the perfect storm of stagflation, the hostage crisis, and the conservative tailwinds in the country at the time he might well have won in 1980. Maybe. He wasn't great but he wasn't a bottom-five president either. And Jerry Ford wasn't too bad a president, all things considered.
The worst president of all time, though, had to be Grant. He was a pretty bad general, too. Sure, he was better than McClellan if for no other reason than that he would fight the rebels, but his tactics were no more sophisticated than just throw my guys at your guys, on the theory that I can sustain more losses than you. One wonders whether the Army of the Potomac wouldn't have been better off under Meade--who beat Lee at Gettysburg, something that Grant never really managed to do--or maybe Hancock. The Union army had worse leadership, to be sure, but someone with more imagination and talent than Grant might have ended the war sooner, I think. And as for his presidency, it's best left to H. L. Mencken, who sums it up nicely:
"His belief in rogues was cogenital, touching and unlimited. He filled Washington with them, and defended them against honest men, even in the face of plain proofs of their villainy."Well put, characteristically.
Clinton: Globalization = The Holocaust
I am something of a free trader, so this little bit of Clinton's is not only amusingly over-the-top, but more than a little offensive--playing off of a well-known quote about the Holocaust:
Mrs. Clinton’s version went like this: “They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything,” she intoned. “They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced and nobody said anything. So this is not just about steel,” she finished.I'm through being anything other than bemused at Hillary Clinton's campaign. Seriously, though, she needs to stop with this sort of thing: the GOP is far better at conspiratorial analogies than the Democrats. It's bizarre. Who is the they here? Free traders? Republicans? Nazis? At least when the GOP goes off about Islamofascism we know who the "they" is. As with everything else--race, gender, class--the Holocaust is just another thing to be deployed for political gain. Has the woman no shame? Okay, need to revert back to bemusement. Obviously, I'm one of HRC's Nazis as a free trader, but what is Clinton in this analogy? That's right, she's got to be Oskar Schindler (pictured above), the man who saved thousands of Jews in the film Schindler's List. I suppose George W. Bush is Amon Goerth (or Hitler, maybe McCain is Goerth)? Clarification, please! Who is supposed to be Goering? Bill Richardson? Inquiring minds want to know!
Just as a public service, I'll toss around a few other great, great, tasteful historical analogies for Clinton to use:
- Clinton as Moses leading the children of Israel out of a free-trading Egypt. Rule of thumb: always good to have a mental image of Charlton Heston associated with one's self. Then again, he was a Republican. One of Pharaoh's minions. That will never do.
- Clinton as Iggy Pop, blasting the ears of free-traders with a new kind of music about fair trade. Iggy's awesome (well, at least during the Stooges era), but it might be too esoteric. Could also try the Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, etc., but Clinton probably doesn't want to seem too out of touch with the boomers, with their Eagles and Beach Boys and whatnot. Even though I'm sure one or two boomers had to have listened to the Ramones they've long forgotten that period. And I don't think America's quite ready for a punk rock president just yet.
- Clinton as Terry Malloy, the protagonist of On The Waterfront, bravely ratting on corrupt free-trade union racketeers. Okay, so this doesn't sound good, but maybe it could work? Okay, so it makes no sense, but saying free-traders are Nazis does?
- Clinton as John McCain, surviving years of torture at the hands of sadistic free-traders, for America. Well, why not.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Useful Idiots
Over the past several weeks, especially in the lead-up to the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, it became clear that there was a concerted effort to destroy the candidacy of Barack Obama for the office of President of the United States. We know enough now to definitively state the particulars of this onslaught. We know what the goal of this strategy was: to portray Obama as, by parts, ultra-radical, ultra-liberal, ultra-elitist, and ultra-lame, just for good measure. This is all easy to verify with the sorts of attacks one sees levied: from the trivial, like a flag pin or a bowling score, to the more serious, like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres, people whose statements have been utilized to make Barack Obama seem guilty just by virtue of having associated with some potentially shady characters. To some extent, this is acceptable: looking at past associations in an individual's life can reveal details about said person's character, though this theory only goes so far. By this criterion, Jesus Christ, a man who hung out with lepers, dishonest tax collectors and weird cultists like John the Baptist would probably be tarred and feathers in absentia. Associations matter but are not always the sum of an individual's character.
However, as the primary came closer, such questions became the sum total of the media's coverage of the campaign. Scandals that had long since been put to rest that nobody had much cared about came to light once again. The media found itself, as it seemingly prefers to, in the business of gossip peddling and tabloidery rather than in investigating policy and reporting facts. This became starkly apparent in the ABC debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which featured nearly an hour of "character" questions (how again does wearing a flag pin indicate one's character?) out of a two hour debate. It eventually became known that Fox News's own Sean Hannity had fed George Stephanopolous a question to as of Barack Obama about Ayres, a former terrorist whose connection with Obama was tangential at best. I wasn't wild about the Wright controversy, but I was willing to concede that asking some questions was appropriate because of the deep, long-standing relationship between the two men. The Ayres question, though, is manifestly silly, especially when one considers how quickly John McCain and Hillary Clinton, both of whom have had to deal with huge scandals involving campaign finance-related issues, jumped on board this particular train.
It should come as little surprise that the Hannity wing of the GOP was behind this strategy. It's disgusting, of course, but understandable: they want to win, and the formula they are using is old and has often proven effective. I have found Obama's campaign refreshing because of his unwillingness to resort to such measures, but at some point you can't get alarmed by a leopard's refusal to change his spots. Hannity and his ilk are doing what they do.
What has come as a surprise is how willingly the mainstream media and the Clinton campaign have gotten on board this particular crazy train. One understands the motives at play here: the right wants to win in November, the media wants big ratings, and the Clinton campaign wants to win the nomination and then win in November. All three groups have converged on this strategy because it suits their particular needs. Ultimately, though, not all three groups can have their goals met. The media will win higher ratings in the short term regardless of what happens, although one wonders if their defenders on the left will continue to defend them after Charlie Gibson's capital gains tax question, among other things. In the long term, the MSM will continue to lose its legitimacy, and viewership, and will continue to breathlessly complain about how nobody in America reads newspapers or watches the news without thinking to realize that its more the result of an inferior product than anything else.
What is striking is the Clintons' willingness to hop on board. We've seen this so often this cycle it isn't funny: from Bill Clinton going on Rush Limbaugh to implore Republicans to vote for Hillary, to Clinton herself buddying up with Dick Scaife, to Clinton surrogates like Ed Rendell and Terry McAuliffe praising Fox News's coverage of the race. High-information Democratic activists and voters have been rightly appalled by the convergence of these two forces, and it has only made such people more likely to support Obama. Unfortunately, Obama's base is heavy on these types of voters at this time. Low-information voters who support the Clintons based on residual good feelings from the 1990s (which must inevitably be based on a revisionist account of that decade) have not heard about this stuff, and thus the biggest story of the cycle--and one that validates Obama's entire message--has made zero impact.
Some have speculated why this convergence has occurred. Some might say that the GOP is supporting Hillary because they think she'd be easier to beat (indeed, this is Rush's stated reason for interfering). Some others wonder if the right wouldn't prefer Hillary in office because she makes a better foil, is more polarizing and more suceptible to being demonized. My opinion is that the GOP is tacitly supporting her because they want to bloody Obama, just like they professed love for Obama when Clinton was the favorite. Then again, maybe they just think Clinton would be a better president. I don't know. But I do know that, ultimately, both the right wing and the Clinton campaign are comfortable with the blue-red paradigm. They're comfortable with the tribal politics we've seen in America the past few decades. And they're going to fight like hell to keep the status quo, because that's what they know. I got caught up in the euphoria of the Obama campaign without thinking about how hard the task at hand was going to be. Little did I know...
Still, all of this nonsense is no reason to abandon the cause. In fact, it underscores the urgency of what Barack Obama is trying to do. For too long we've been electing presidents based on things like flag pins, or whether or not they "looked French", or based on whether or not one might want to have a beer with them, and so on. It's about time that we as a country grew up. I still support Barack Obama for President, now more than ever. This battle is going to be harder than we ever thought it would be, but it is still a battle I believe we can win.
However, as the primary came closer, such questions became the sum total of the media's coverage of the campaign. Scandals that had long since been put to rest that nobody had much cared about came to light once again. The media found itself, as it seemingly prefers to, in the business of gossip peddling and tabloidery rather than in investigating policy and reporting facts. This became starkly apparent in the ABC debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which featured nearly an hour of "character" questions (how again does wearing a flag pin indicate one's character?) out of a two hour debate. It eventually became known that Fox News's own Sean Hannity had fed George Stephanopolous a question to as of Barack Obama about Ayres, a former terrorist whose connection with Obama was tangential at best. I wasn't wild about the Wright controversy, but I was willing to concede that asking some questions was appropriate because of the deep, long-standing relationship between the two men. The Ayres question, though, is manifestly silly, especially when one considers how quickly John McCain and Hillary Clinton, both of whom have had to deal with huge scandals involving campaign finance-related issues, jumped on board this particular train.
It should come as little surprise that the Hannity wing of the GOP was behind this strategy. It's disgusting, of course, but understandable: they want to win, and the formula they are using is old and has often proven effective. I have found Obama's campaign refreshing because of his unwillingness to resort to such measures, but at some point you can't get alarmed by a leopard's refusal to change his spots. Hannity and his ilk are doing what they do.
What has come as a surprise is how willingly the mainstream media and the Clinton campaign have gotten on board this particular crazy train. One understands the motives at play here: the right wants to win in November, the media wants big ratings, and the Clinton campaign wants to win the nomination and then win in November. All three groups have converged on this strategy because it suits their particular needs. Ultimately, though, not all three groups can have their goals met. The media will win higher ratings in the short term regardless of what happens, although one wonders if their defenders on the left will continue to defend them after Charlie Gibson's capital gains tax question, among other things. In the long term, the MSM will continue to lose its legitimacy, and viewership, and will continue to breathlessly complain about how nobody in America reads newspapers or watches the news without thinking to realize that its more the result of an inferior product than anything else.
What is striking is the Clintons' willingness to hop on board. We've seen this so often this cycle it isn't funny: from Bill Clinton going on Rush Limbaugh to implore Republicans to vote for Hillary, to Clinton herself buddying up with Dick Scaife, to Clinton surrogates like Ed Rendell and Terry McAuliffe praising Fox News's coverage of the race. High-information Democratic activists and voters have been rightly appalled by the convergence of these two forces, and it has only made such people more likely to support Obama. Unfortunately, Obama's base is heavy on these types of voters at this time. Low-information voters who support the Clintons based on residual good feelings from the 1990s (which must inevitably be based on a revisionist account of that decade) have not heard about this stuff, and thus the biggest story of the cycle--and one that validates Obama's entire message--has made zero impact.
Some have speculated why this convergence has occurred. Some might say that the GOP is supporting Hillary because they think she'd be easier to beat (indeed, this is Rush's stated reason for interfering). Some others wonder if the right wouldn't prefer Hillary in office because she makes a better foil, is more polarizing and more suceptible to being demonized. My opinion is that the GOP is tacitly supporting her because they want to bloody Obama, just like they professed love for Obama when Clinton was the favorite. Then again, maybe they just think Clinton would be a better president. I don't know. But I do know that, ultimately, both the right wing and the Clinton campaign are comfortable with the blue-red paradigm. They're comfortable with the tribal politics we've seen in America the past few decades. And they're going to fight like hell to keep the status quo, because that's what they know. I got caught up in the euphoria of the Obama campaign without thinking about how hard the task at hand was going to be. Little did I know...
Still, all of this nonsense is no reason to abandon the cause. In fact, it underscores the urgency of what Barack Obama is trying to do. For too long we've been electing presidents based on things like flag pins, or whether or not they "looked French", or based on whether or not one might want to have a beer with them, and so on. It's about time that we as a country grew up. I still support Barack Obama for President, now more than ever. This battle is going to be harder than we ever thought it would be, but it is still a battle I believe we can win.
Friday, April 25, 2008
The Next Governor of California...
If there is any justice, of course. I can't tell you how unimpressed I am with Newsom, Villaraigosa, etc. Debra Bowen is smart, and she seems like a great person. Here's hoping we CA Dems actually get our acts together and don't nominate someone incredibly lame this time around.
Orrin Hatch, Songsmith
Slightly bemused. I think Rick Astley might want to take legal action over the title, however...
Diabolical Thought of the Day
Clinton is being as divisive as possible so that she will have to be on the ticket to "unite" the party. I sure hope Obama doesn't take the bait. (Thanks to this Marc Ambinder post--it inspired the diabolical thought.)
Syrian Nukes
Kevin Drum provides a really good walkthrough on the Syrian nuclear situation. In essence, it looks like North Korea provided Syria with the material to build a plant which is really only for making nuclear weapons, but it doesn't appear that they're close to actually having nukes, and the plant alone isn't enough to make nukes. I don't suppose that the Kristol wing of the GOP will look closely at the salient details, however.
Indiana
I find this primer on Indiana to be pretty fascinating. It asserts that the state's Republicanness means that there is no Democratic machine that Clinton can coopt (viz. Rendell's in PA) and that Obama is really, really good at building organizations in red states (just check out his wins in the interior west and Rocky Mountain states). Cause for hope. There's some of the rust belt dynamic in play in Indiana (in Gary, for example) but from what I understand it's muted there. And the polling so far seems moderately favorable. Clinton does not seemed to have gotten a polling boost out of Pennsylvania, either in Indiana or nationally. Too bad for her.
I'm ambivalent, but leaning toward saying that the long primary is not good
Well, I'm inclined to skepticism on whether the long primary is helping Democrats. On one hand, it is increasing voter registration and capturing the public imagination, and choking John McCain by sucking all the air out of the room. On the other hand, it is wasting precious time that could better be spent taking on McCain directly. On the first hand, McCain seems unable to capitalize on the expanded primary season and has been totally unable to increase his standing against Obama and Clinton in head-to-head matchups. On the other hand, the ceaseless attacks (mostly by Clinton) serve to give McCain's team pre-made attacks for the Fall with a bit of proof of effectiveness behind them. But, then again, the general election opponent using attacks from his opponents' primary challenger scenario rarely happens, and couldn't Obama now sluff off questions about Bill Ayres in the fall as old news instead of being Willie Horton-ed by them? Would they have happened in the general had the primary campaign not taken forever?
So I don't know. Plenty of grist for both mills. I do know that this campaign has lasted, well, forever, and tired people make more mistakes--mistakes that would otherwise not have happened. I'm pretty sure that's what the "bitter" comments were. And I don't really see the point of keeping the campaign going, since Obama has already won and the Clintons aren't being constructive by holding Obama's feet to the fire on issues, or just hanging around like Mike Huckabee. They're actively trying to undermine Obama's candidacy, which would be acceptable if he weren't overwhelmingly favored to be the nominee, largely because they think he's too liberal. The Clintons came of age politically in a time where liberalism couldn't win, and they don't realize that the country has changed a little bit. They still think you need to do things like Sister Souljah and gay-baiting that are ugly but necessary to show that you're not one of those liberals. In essence, the Clintons still believe that this is Reagan's America. Obama has no such baggage. So they solipsistically assume that Obama cannot win.
If they were actually trying to keep Obama honest (oh, the irony!) I'd fully support their continued presence in the process. But they aren't. They're just hitting Obama with any right-wing meme they can get their hands on, and the distinction between the "vast right wing conspiracy" and the Clinton campaign is rapidly losing any sort of meaningful difference. When you have Clinton surrogates like Ed Rendell and Terry McAuliffe praising Fox News for their balanced coverage, there's a problem there. When you're cozying up to Dick Scaife, there's a problem there. When your supporters circulate "Obama is a Muslim" emails, there's a problem there. Thankfully, most voters have realized these tactics and give Clinton low marks for honesty and character, which is as it should be. But having the right's attacks validated by Clinton gives them added credibility. Will it matter? I don't know, but imagine if Mitt Romney had, after Florida, started critiquing John McCain ferociously from the left, jumping on the bandwagon of that story about the potential affair McCain might have had with a lobbyist? He would have been a laughingstock. Yet evidently we Democrats (the party of the left, I was led to believe) don't really have much of a problem with one of our leaders cozying up not just with conservatives but right-wing extremists whose only goal is to tear down the Democratic Party. Either the Clintons are stupider than we think, or they think they can use the right wing as useful idiots, and vice versa. Can they both be right? We'll see.
So I don't know. Plenty of grist for both mills. I do know that this campaign has lasted, well, forever, and tired people make more mistakes--mistakes that would otherwise not have happened. I'm pretty sure that's what the "bitter" comments were. And I don't really see the point of keeping the campaign going, since Obama has already won and the Clintons aren't being constructive by holding Obama's feet to the fire on issues, or just hanging around like Mike Huckabee. They're actively trying to undermine Obama's candidacy, which would be acceptable if he weren't overwhelmingly favored to be the nominee, largely because they think he's too liberal. The Clintons came of age politically in a time where liberalism couldn't win, and they don't realize that the country has changed a little bit. They still think you need to do things like Sister Souljah and gay-baiting that are ugly but necessary to show that you're not one of those liberals. In essence, the Clintons still believe that this is Reagan's America. Obama has no such baggage. So they solipsistically assume that Obama cannot win.
If they were actually trying to keep Obama honest (oh, the irony!) I'd fully support their continued presence in the process. But they aren't. They're just hitting Obama with any right-wing meme they can get their hands on, and the distinction between the "vast right wing conspiracy" and the Clinton campaign is rapidly losing any sort of meaningful difference. When you have Clinton surrogates like Ed Rendell and Terry McAuliffe praising Fox News for their balanced coverage, there's a problem there. When you're cozying up to Dick Scaife, there's a problem there. When your supporters circulate "Obama is a Muslim" emails, there's a problem there. Thankfully, most voters have realized these tactics and give Clinton low marks for honesty and character, which is as it should be. But having the right's attacks validated by Clinton gives them added credibility. Will it matter? I don't know, but imagine if Mitt Romney had, after Florida, started critiquing John McCain ferociously from the left, jumping on the bandwagon of that story about the potential affair McCain might have had with a lobbyist? He would have been a laughingstock. Yet evidently we Democrats (the party of the left, I was led to believe) don't really have much of a problem with one of our leaders cozying up not just with conservatives but right-wing extremists whose only goal is to tear down the Democratic Party. Either the Clintons are stupider than we think, or they think they can use the right wing as useful idiots, and vice versa. Can they both be right? We'll see.
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