Got to Give it Up

In my last post, I talked about the hypocrisy of Republicans who are setting a timeline in September after dragging every other proponent of a timeline through the mud for years. Well, this may shock you, but I found some more Republican hypocrisy since then. This time they're trying to harass the Iraqi politburo, or whatever joke of a legislative body "runs" their country, into giving up its two month summer vacation.

In order to think this is an important problem, you have to assume that the legislative body there actually controls anything about the country. But from the violence and failed infrastructure, combined with the foreign military occupation and mass resignations, I would say they don't.

But Dick Cheney says they do. Specifically, he was scheduled to say that on his visit today. At the press availability this morning, the US Ambassador to Iraq mentioned that Cheney would talk about the vacation:

"The reality is, with the major effort we’re making, the major effort the Iraqi security forces and military are making themselves, for the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month vacation in the middle of summer if [sic] impossible to understand," [US Ambassador Ryan] Crocker said.

I would have to say I agree with that. But I'm quite surprised to hear about it coming from this party. The 109th Congress (last term's; dominated by Republicans) worked the fewest days AND failed to even complete its most basic legislative duties. Bush set the record for laziest President ever (measured by vacation days) almost two years ago. Most famously, Bush insisted on prolonging his vacation while thousands died in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

But this problem of vacations just dovetails with the larger Republican problem of connection with reality. Guys: it's too little too late. Sing it with me now: you got to give it up. If working on this pressing problem (so pressing that approximately 3,400 Americans are dead because of it) was so important to you, why did you take all those vacation days? And that brings us to Cheney's other statement. Apparently today he was scheduled to say, among other things, that:

We’ve got to get this work done. It’s game time.

As others have pointed out, what is it about a war ravaging through the Middle East for the last four years that makes it "game time" only just now? Was there a time when this was not important? Were you only giving this partial effort before, since it wasn't game time? Up til now, have we just been talking about practice?

Tenet and Iraq

Former CIA director George Tenet was in the news last week for his new book on the build up to the invasion of Iraq. Basically no one is buying the premise of the book (although people appear to be buying the book itself, which ranks #11 on Amazon as of this writing). In the words of Wonkette, the premise can be expressed thusly: George Tenet's Book Absolves George Tenet.

Basically everything I've read about the book (although I have not and will not read the book itself) agrees with Wonkette: it is a self-serving pile of crap. Conservatives think he is rewriting history to make the Administration look bad, and just about everyone else thinks he is rewriting it to make himself look good. If he really felt so uncomfortable with the invasion, one might note, well, he was pretty much the one person in the best position to stop it.

But instead, he marched along to the invasion drumbeat when that's everyone else wanted, and, now that everyone else wants out of Iraq, he has a book saying that's what he always wanted too. Many people have seen the Medal of Freedom Bush gave Tenet as a sort of quid pro quo for (a) not blowing the whistle on the bogus WMD intelligence and (b) stepping down to take the fall for the failure to actually find any. Of course, despite all his righteous indignation, Tenet has announced that he will not be returning that particular medal, thank you very much.

As luck would have it, yours truly 'got' to hear a speech from Tenet himself a couple years back. I and several hundred of my classmates got to hear Tenet on May 17, 2003. George W. Bush had just steamrolled us into Iraq, and the invasion was already a mission accomplished. War opponents such as myself had essentially no representation around Washington, whether in government or my classrooms. When the speech concluded, I swallowed the bile building up in the back of my throat long enough to clap, but I was the only one I could see who wasn't standing. I was grateful and proud when I found out that the only people in the family section who didn't stand were in my family.

Anyway, said Tenet (emphasis added).

International politics is all about "being true to your values. About having the spine to stand up for what is right. About making choices that are not simply practical or clever, but good and beneficial."
[...]
"[W]hile we must work to make things what they can be, we must never lose sight of what they should be."
[...]
Culminating his list of 8 secrets to his success:
"Seventh: Pray. Ask God for the guidance and strength to meet the challenges of life. Put on His armor to face the forces of evil. Manifest His goodness in caring for those who are weak and in need, showing love for others each and every day.

Finally, I would say to all of you-it is a little old fashioned, but you need to hear it: Love and serve your country."

That's right. We should focus our lives on praying to defeat terrorism. But more to the point, if there's any single thing that you could now say about Tenet, it is that he had anything but the spine to stand up for what was right.

As a postscript, let me just briefly mention a couple recent developments on Iraq. One of the favored tactics of Republicans trying to keep us in Iraq is the reassurance that in just a couple months things will be better and/or Republicans will bolt. Minority Leader John Boehner was the latest to use the line this weekend, but it's not new (and probably no more accurate than it was before).

On the Democratic side, the Washington Post reported last week that Democrats were all set to abandon all their principles on Iraq. It made for a great page one headline and fit right into the typical narrative that Democrats can't stand for anything they believe in. That's why it's such a shame that the story was a sham. Oh well. Maybe we'll just have to see how the debate unfolds after all!

What do we remember?

Well, it's May 1st. There are a whole bunch of things traditionally celebrated on May Day, but I usually think of International Workers' Day. Most industrialized countries celebrate their Labor Day today, in memory of the workers who were brutally suppressed at Haymarket Square right here in Chicago back in the 1880's. The raw emotions so many people attached to that event in the United States led President Cleveland to put US Labor Day in September. But people still remember. For example, immigrant laborers remember. They took to the streets of Chicago in a peaceful demonstration one year ago today:

Cleveland failed to make people forget about Haymarket just by moving the holiday. Ironically, George W. Bush, the most anti-labor President since the Great Depression, has distracted people from that tragic day without doing anything labor-related. You see, Democrats remember May 1st, 2003 as the day Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Democrats sent the supplemental funding bill to Bush today as a means of commemorating that great speech.

The Bush camp has denied having anything to do with the infamous banner, but it's a powerful image nonetheless. And, not surprisingly, the denials also happen to be a lie:

White House press secretary Scott McClellan later acknowledged that the sign was produced by the White House.

Part of remembrance is using it to help guide you in the future, so it is fair to ask, what is our current mission? both in Iraq and generally?

Some have argued that our new mission should be energy independence. The Apollo Alliance has teamed unions up with activists to push for creation of a lot of new skilled jobs, ripe for unionization, by ramping up alternative energy. But what chance do a bunch of panty-waist liberals have of getting something like this going? Those sissies that care about things like jobs and planets--who cares what they think?

Well, it turns out the most macho organization on Earth, the US military, needs to care about it, too. You'd think the strategic costs alone would have made energy independence obvious to the military long ago, since getting fuel to troops in the field has become extremely problematic. And the troops in the field need nothing like they need fuel: an Abrams tank gets a whopping 0.6 miles/gallon!

But now the military officially knows the obvious, as the Boston Globe revealed today that the Department of Defense has received a report telling them about it:

A new study ordered by the Pentagon warns that the rising cost and dwindling supply of oil -- the lifeblood of fighter jets, warships, and tanks -- will make the US military's ability to respond to hot spots around the world "unsustainable in the long term."

The study, produced by a defense consulting firm, concludes that all four branches of the military must "fundamentally transform" their assumptions about energy, including taking immediate steps toward fielding weapons systems and aircraft that run on alternative and renewable fuels. It is "imperative" that the Department of Defense "apply new energy technologies that address alternative supply sources and efficient consumption across all aspects of military operations," according to the report, which was provided to the Globe.
...
The Department of Defense is the largest single energy consumer in the country. The Air Force spends about $5 billion a year on fuel, mostly to support flight operations. The Navy and Army are close behind.

Of all the cargo the military transports, more than half consists of fuel. About 80 percent of all material transported on the battlefield is fuel.
...
The costs of relying on oil to power the military are consuming an increasing share of the military's budget, the report asserts. Energy costs have doubled since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it says, and the cost of conducting operations could become so expensive in the future that the military will not be able to pay for some of its new weapon systems.

Creating three million new union jobs in alternative energy production, as the Apollo Alliance wants, seems to me like the perfect way to remember appropriate parties while moving forward with a new mission. In a few years, hopefully we can remember the days when labor was on the decline in America as income inequality was on the rise. And hopefully we can likewise look back on the days when we fought wars half-way around the world over oil.

Told Ya So

On Monday, gunman Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, plus himself. On Wednesday, bombs killed 178 people in Baghdad. In 1993, some guy killed 8 people in San Francisco. More children die in swimming pools each year than die from guns. How do we talk about tragedies? And what do we say when we do?

On Tuesday, there was a vigil for the fallen 32 at Virginia Tech, which politicians tripped over themselves to appear at. President Bush was there, within one day of the event itself. On a side note, it took him 4 days to even show up in New Orleans after Katrina, which killed over 1,300.

So where was the vigil for the 178 killed in Baghdad yesterday? Or the 650,000 needlessly killed there since the ill-conceived invasion began? That question is obviously rhetorical, since there are some pretty big differences in the two situations. (a) It's different having a tragedy in your own community instead of half way around the world, and (b) it's not like 650,000 have to die before you can call something a tragedy.

But another difference between Iraq and Tech is how we talk about them. On Iraq, we are told that anything we say or do that contradicts the Administration is hurting the troops. It's a pretty ridiculous claim, not unlike Walter's claim that little Larry is killing his father:

Even worse is the claim by conservatives that we shouldn't say anything about how our every endeavor in Iraq is a failure (it is), since this would make the families of fallen soldiers feel bad for having lost their loved one in vain. I'm sorry, but this is a classic instance of the blame the messenger mentality, and it doesn't hold up. Eventually these families are going to have to face the fact that indeed they did lose their loved one for George W. Bush's vanity war.

To pretend otherwise is deeply dishonest and counterproductive. It's like knowing your friend's boyfriend cheated on her and not telling her about it. When she finds out, it's going to really suck for her, and she's going to be really mad. But she's going to figure it out eventually, and whatever you say about it doesn't change what it actually was. It may seem like something that's not very respectful to say, but it has to be said. (Note to all my attached female friends: this example is purely hypothetical.)

Fortunately, we haven't seen the same kind of timidity from gun control advocates in the wake of Monday's shootings. The right wingers usually love to trash anyone who disagrees with them on anything. But Bush merely used the vigil to talk about something near and dear to him (but irrelevant to public policy): prayer. The usual conservative hit men don't seem to be stepping in to call the gun control advocates any names this time. However, gun control has more or less disappeared from the Democratic agenda since 1994, the last time meaningful legislation was enacted.

In 1993, Gian Luigi Ferri went to the 34th floor of the 101 California Street office building in San Francisco and opened fire with a pair of TEC-9 handguns. Then he took the elevator down to the 33rd floor and opened fire there. It is extremely fortunate that in the end only 8 people died. But it's also fortunate that the specter of anonymous gunmen spraying bullets around office buildings provided enough legislative momentum for a ten year ban on assault weapons, which Democrats forced through Congress in 1994.

Democrats went on to be routed in historic fashion in the 1994 midterms, and gun control has basically been regarded as a politically untouchable bogey man ever since. I was a little young, but I remember when 101 California happened. I remember more clearly gazing out at the 101 California building from the windows of the downtown San Francisco firm where I worked in 2004, thinking about the Republican Congress letting the assault weapons ban expire on September 13th of that year.

The shooter at Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui, reportedly used a couple of basic sidearms, rather than the powerful killing machines favored by Ferri and the Columbine shooters. Nonetheless, unlike that other notorious killer--swimming pools--all guns are designed for one purpose only: killing things. You just can't say that about swimming pools or really anything else. I'm not taking a position at this point on swimming pool policy, but it seems fairly clear that we don't have anything to lose by restricting gun sales.

Conservatives are fond of making the argument that if only more people had guns, we could just shoot everyone who tried to start something, and then he wouldn't be able to kill 32 people. They call it "self defense". Some conservatives are even saying that if only all those Tech students hadn't been so cowardly, things would have turned out better. This canard is easily disposed of, since tales are emerging of the brave and heroic things many of the victims and would-be victims actually did do.

No one likes to politicize tragedy, but the fact is that politics is designed to respond to tragedy. I'm sure no one at the vigil on Tuesday wanted to hear every politician using the occasion to grind whatever political ax he's always had. And no one wants the sacrifices our nation's families have made in Iraq to be cynically exploited for votes. But we need to talk about gun control, and we need to be honest about the situation in Iraq. To do otherwise won't help anyone in the long run.

Brinkmanship

One of the things you can always count on Republicans doing is sticking to their guns, no matter how misguided. George W. Bush didn't spend the last six plus years ignoring reality just to start acknowledging it now. That's why it's so important for Democrats to be firm in their opposition to Republicans. On two crucial issues, taxes and Iraq, the Democrats will have prime opportunities to make their stand.

Taxes
The elephant in the room, as it were, when it comes to taxes is the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The AMT was instituted in the late 60's to stop millionaires from taking advantage of so many loopholes they ended up not paying any taxes at all. One potential solution would have been to close the loopholes, but instead this crazy, complicated parallel tax system was invented. The problem is, no one ever indexed it to inflation, so next year it is set to affect way more people (middle class people, specifically) than it was ever intended to. There is bipartisan agreement that this is a bad state of affairs, but no agreement has yet been reached on how to fix things.

This article from the NYT details Democrats' intention to overhaul the AMT so that it once again only affects the truly rich. The problem is that by doing so, billions of dollars of currently projected government revenue will dry up. The article has what I consider to be a fairly limited view of the range of options Democrats face:

House Democrats see multiple political benefits from seeking a permanent fix. Some are eager to position themselves as tax cutters. Others want to show their ability to tackle a big and difficult initiative. Last but not least, the alternative minimum tax has a disproportionate impact on states with higher average incomes and high state and local taxes — like New York and California — which tend to vote Democratic.

“It’s a tax cut to the 23 million American families who have no concept that they’re going to get hit with this tax increase,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Rahm's comment at the end there demonstrates the political peril of the AMT situation. Politics is NOT an arena in which, as the saying goes, "when you've done your job right, no one will be able to tell you've done anything at all. " In politics, when you do something right, you hit the road and the airwaves to make sure everyone and his sister knows. Fix the AMT now, and no one will really know you helped them because they will simply continue not paying a ridiculously high AMT. Don't fix it, and everyone will be mad at you for not having fixed it. What to do?

If the Democrats can stomach the brinkmanship, this could be a prime opportunity to reverse a core piece of Republican ideology. You see, for the last 25-30 years, it has been political poison to suggest raising taxes. But the sentiments that drove that political reality look like they may be fading, and fixing the AMT might be a good opportunity to get the ball rolling on our counterattack.

John Edwards, the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, has already announced that his universal health care plan will have to involve some higher taxes. Even some supply-side conservatives are now admitting that it is unrealistic to constantly lower taxes without ever raising them. As Mark Schmitt wrote in Washington Monthly recently, taxes will have to go up soon if we are to retain a government that can act on behalf of its people, but it's going to take some smart political planning to get us there. Schmitt goes on:

But the truth is that we are heading down a path toward fiscal crisis that will inevitably require a major increase in revenues. In case that sounds like a euphemism, I’ll say it plainly: Taxes must go up. If Democrats try to avoid that fact, they’ll become mired in trench warfare with Republicans over small-bore increases that will cost them political support and won’t really address the problem. But if Democrats seize the opportunity to define a new era of the politics of taxes, as Republicans did 30 years ago, they can shape the debate in a way that may actually help them to achieve some of their most-cherished policy goals.
...
[T]o make it possible to talk about revenues when the opportunity arrives to actually do something about revenues, Democrats and anyone else who is serious about avoiding economic crisis must spend the next two years thinking and planning how to condition the political environment so that politicians can move with courage. That will require, first, establishing the idea that taxes must increase as a non-debatable fact; second, fixing the political process that has greased the way for tax cuts; and, third, setting the framework in which we talk about taxes.

Fixing the AMT could be the opportunity to lay some effective groundwork for a new era in which taxes can actually be raised when appropriate. Democrats should use AMT debates to highlight the enormous loss of revenue that fixing the situation will cause. They should frame a choice between continuing popular programs and letting government wither away. They can offer Republicans the chance to work with them on overhauling other parts of the tax code to make up for the lost revenue. After making this offer, though, it gets tricky.

The Republicans will hear the offer, and their knees will jerk, and they will reject any form of increasing government revenue, no matter if the net effect keeps revenue constant. Republicans will offer their usual style of compromise (see below): you give up on your position and we get everything we want, in this case rolling back the AMT without doing anything about replacing revenue.

At this point in the process, there will be enormous pressure on Democrats to cave and do what the Republicans want. Instead, they must have the courage to let people get hit with a year's worth of really high taxes, if necessary. People will be furious. But, if Democrats have done their job right, they will have made sure everyone knows that they are paying more as a result of Republicans refusing to come to the table. Once a precedent like this has been set (that sane debate over revenue can and should take place), Congress' budget talks might start taking place in a whole new paradigm.

Iraq
The Democratic-controlled House and Senate recently passed supplemental funding bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that set dates for American withdrawal from Iraq. Since that isn't precisely what Bush wanted, he's naturally kicking and screaming a bunch of nonsensical BS about how Democrats hate the troops. In times gone by, Democrats would have immediately run away with their tails between their legs at the very invocation of troop support.

One such bygone time was two weeks ago, when Barack Obama did precisely that. Obama was busily admitting that after Bush vetoes the Democratic supplemental bill, Congress will go right ahead and give him the money with no strings attached anyway. The best part was when he said that no one "wants to play chicken with our troops," which is such a great Republican talking point it might as well have been said by Karl Rove.

In times gone by, Democrats would have been sensitive to calls for compromise with Republicans. Such calls would lead to some very earnest press conferences and meetings, at the end of which Republicans would have everything they wanted and Democrats would have done all the compromising. This is Joe Lieberman's idea of compromise, and it's what snarky bloggers call "date-rape bipartisanship". It's also what the insider's insider (and noted U of C alumnus) David Broder thinks of as compromise.

Fortunately, the Democrats look like they are going to abandon Obama's idea of negotiating and Broder's idea of compromise in favor of principled action. (To be fair, Obama apparently improved his post-veto rhetoric this evening.) When Bush accuses Democrats of playing political games with troop safety, the correct response is what it looks like Dems might actually do: point out how we passed the damn bill already and now he's the one playing the games.

In particular, Harry Reid's statement hits all the right notes. Quoth Reid (emphasis added):

"The American people want the President and the Congress to work together to bring a responsible end to the war in Iraq. Congressional Democrats are willing to meet with the President at any time, but we believe that any discussion of an issue as critical as Iraq must be accomplished by conducting serious negotiations without any preconditions. Our goal should be to produce an Iraq supplemental bill that both fully funds our troops and gives them a strategy for success.

"With his threat to veto such a plan for change in Iraq, President Bush is ignoring the clear message of the American people: We must protect our troops, hold the Iraqi government accountable, rebuild our military, provide for our veterans and bring our troops home.

"The President is demanding that we renew his blank check for a war without end. Despite the fact that the President persists in trying to score political points at the expense of our troops, congressional Democrats have repeatedly reached out in the spirit of cooperation. We renew our request to work with him to produce a bipartisan bill that provides our troops and our veterans with every penny they need, but in turn, demands accountability."

In a way, Obama's right: no one truly wants to throw our troops out on the curb. But the solution to that problem is not to cave to Bush, especially when we can fund the military through July without passing the supplemental funding bill. The correct solution is to stand our ground as long as we can and keep making sure the American people realize this is Bush's mess, and he's the one who is refusing to get us out of it.

Conclusion
Cautious observers are partly right: it is a dangerous game of brinkmanship for Democrats to call Republican bluffs on taxes and Iraq. But these are very dangerous times. The last twelve years of Republican Congressional dominance have proven there is nothing for Democrats to gain from timidity. I am encouraged by their refusal to blink on Iraq so far, and I hope they can bring that same resolve to our fiscal mess.

Leadership Vacuum

In the previous post, my colleague Benediktion writes about the difference between moral high ground and action in the context of divesting from Darfur and stopping the Iraq occupation. Although I disagree with several of the things he says, I'm glad he brought it up. These are vitally important issues, and the context in which we deal with them lends itself well to Sartre's analysis of man: his identity is constructed by his actions, not his words.

Last November, Americans came out and took action en masse, giving form to their dissatisfaction by kicking the Republicans out of power in Congress. But outside of elections, the people in a representative democracy retain their ability to speak while delegating their ability to act. So, despite the fact that there are various issues on which the people demand action, the beltway politicos are content to make sure their demands stay mere words.

First case in point: Iraq. Three quarters of respondents to the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll thought things were going badly or very badly in Iraq. Iraq was clearly a major factor in the 2006 elections. Yet so far, the Democratic majority has responded by letting Bush's escalation go forward, not supporting measures with teeth to bring an end to the occupation, and letting Joe Lieberman give the weekly radio address. The Administration promised the escalation would be different because this time we were seriously going to hold the Iraqis to some benchmarks. Now that benchmarks have already been missed, no one is pressing the administration on it.

Second case in point: health care. A stunning poll was released last week that was basically ignored by most media. It turns out Americans support single payer health care. Big time. Health care is the most important issue for a majority (not just a plurality) of the respondents, 64% think the government should guarantee coverage, and 60% we would be willing to pay more in taxes so that everyone could have guaranteed coverage. A popular mandate for the best solution to the preeminent domestic policy problem of our day would seemingly translate to major action by the government, right? So why haven't the Democrats jumped at this opportunity to help people and make themselves look good?

As Michael Tomasky notes,

What we don't know about the Democrats at this point is whether the party has an interest in summoning Americans to think about the world from a broader perspective than how a given issue affects them directly.

Because that's what health care and Iraq are about. Sure some people are directly affected by the health care crisis or Iraq, but most people aren't. Or at least they don't feel like it. But people recognize that these are the important issues in America today. People want them solved. Visionaries are those who solve big issues, not those who solve easy ones.

Visionaries are what we need, and it is easier to be a visionary from the White House (or at least a presidential campaign) than it is from the halls of compromise (read: Congress). Fortunately, Democrats currently have a bumper crop of great presidential candidates, at least so goes the conventional wisdom. Edwards, Clinton, and Obama are considered to be form an unusually strong field for Democrats.

Unfortunately, all these great candidates are taking equally cowardly approaches to substance. Obama, especially, has "decided to run--à la Gary Hart in 1984--on the notion of new ideas without actually offering any." Establishment Democrats clearly need more encouragement to start acting on the values they sometimes seem to have. We spent a really long time (from 1994 to present) in this defensive crouch, so I guess it's too much to expect one little election to immediately break the bad habits. But it's frustrating - our people are finally in office, so why aren't they doing the things we want? For now, all we can do is keep the pressure up on our representatives. Hopefully sooner or later one of these great candidates will emerge to make Democrats do what they must know they need to do.

Triangulation: The Strategy I Love to Hate

[If] deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray--by the subtle signs of self-knowledge--the deception being practiced.

Robert Trivers wrote this sentence in the introduction to Richard Dawkins' influential The Selfish Gene, and it gives a genetic excuse for every earnest promise that has ever gone unfulfilled. Ladies, this is why that gentleman was able to say he loved you and then slept with your sister anyway - people have a capacity to mean things only when they say them in order to convince other people they believe them.

Casting around completely at random for an example to illustrate this, we could take a shot in the dark and hit Hillary Clinton. Clinton has a major problem admitting that her vote for the Iraq war was a mistake. Primary voters in New Hampshire seem to be especially displeased by this, as well they should.

So why won't Clinton just repudiate her stupid vote already and move on to enjoy her enormous structural advantage on the campaign trail? Apparently she thinks apologizing would be "a gimmick".

OK, fair enough. If she doesn't mean it, she shouldn't apologize. Such an apology would sound like the apology for resting your french fries on your brother's side of the back seat. But just as in the back seat, it's not that we want to hear her say "I'm sorry", it's that we want her to be sorry.

Quoth Clinton, “If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from.” As Kos trenchantly remarks, "Thank you, Hillary. I think I will."

There are plenty of ways for Clinton to get out of this situation without saying she's sorry. For example, she could use her genetically programmed excuse and say that it seemed right at the time but it was actually wrong. There, problem solved.

Trotting out her usual laundry list about why and how she was misled and did the right thing given the situation and blah and blah isn't going to cut it. Voting for the invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake. I opposed it from Day 1. So did Barack Obama. It was obvious (to me at least) that Bush and his cronies really had deceived themselves into believing that Iraq had to be invaded, but erasing the subtle signs of self-knowledge wasn't enough to convince me that the invasion was worth supporting.

What really nags at me about Clinton's refusal to say something straightforward is the presence of some subtle signs of self knowledge in her persona. One suspects that she knows that voting for the invasion was wrong, and she was just intimidated into going with the crowd by the jingoistic atmosphere and Bush's high approval ratings. But she won't admit it.

Even though John Edwards voted for the war resolution, he has completely and humbly retracted that vote. This tells me that if chose him from the other candidates, as Clinton would have me do, John Edwards would use better judgment next time. I don't see that from Clinton.

Shifting to the other side of the aisle, conservatives still hold Clinton to be public enemy #1. Her current position on the war, moderate as it is, simply isn't ludicrous enough to convince any right winger that the sexual threat she represents can be overlooked. To wit, the smash and grab artists who were behind the bogus swift boat attacks on John Kerry are now trying to figure out how they can baselessly smear Clinton the same way.

Clinton is a strong girl who can take of herself, and she's been public enemy #1 for so long that there isn't going to be any new dirt on her. Without new dirt, the same old attacks will (a) not pique much media coverage and (b) fail to turn anyone against her who doesn't already hate her. So whatever further conservative attacks she suffers, she has nowhere to go but up. But the conservative opinion thus identified underscores the larger problem: triangulation.

Clinton is taking two very distant ideological points and creating a third point in the middle. The assumption of this strategy is that public opinion will be distributed maybe 20% strongly left and 20% strongly right with the two sides fighting over the 40% in the middle. Therefore, says the strategy, if any one candidate could appeal directly to that middle, he or she would have an instant plurality.

But in the case of Iraq, strong majorities oppose the occupation under every formulation. And here the main problem with triangulation emerges: by trying to appeal to some sort of middle, Clinton is left with no friends. People on the left hate that she won't own up to her misjudgments, and people on the right hate her because they're bitter, hateful people.

Some centrists might conclude that they like her style, but passionate people, the kind of people who will really go to bat for you, believe in things. They won't accept "maybe" for an answer.

I Gotcha Politics Right Here [gestures]

Have you noticed how people keep using this phrase "play gotcha"? (You may have noticed it here, here, here, here, or here, for example.) Sometimes it's even varied as "gotcha journalism". Using this term is basically a defensive tactic for when you believe your side is not getting a fair shake. For example, you could accuse Tim Russert of playing gotcha when he asks deceptive and irrelevant questions that he knows Howard Dean won't have an answer for. In this sense, it expresses the frustration of being marginalized by someone who isn't playing fair but controls the discourse anyway.

However, there is a much more insidious use of the term. And wouldn't you know it, our old friend Joe Lieberman is at the forefront. Lieberman recently used the term in response to a heckler. Seems this gentleman was disappointed that Lieberman promised so earnestly to investigate the Administration's response to Katrina during his campaign, only to refuse to do anything about once he had won. GOP Joe, I mean 'independent Democrat' Joe, seems to think Congress has no role in placing blame. Quoth the slimeball,

"We don't want to play `gotcha' anymore," Lieberman said. "We want to get the aid and assistance to the people of the region who need it."

Now, no one is here to say that aid and assistance should not go to the people of the region who need it (sic). But decrying gotcha politics when you're Joe Lieberman is like decrying the need to know how the nation was misled into war when you're Tony Snow. The Administration has been pretty consistent in wanting to talk about how we're going to win in Iraq instead of talking about why we're there, which makes sense because they look really bad when the conversation shifts that direction.

Gotcha politics, focusing on the present, looking forward. Whatever you want to call them, these terms all denote the tactics of people who wouldn't look so good if we focused on the past. But, as Josh Eidelson points out, gotcha politics is a pretty good thing for Washington because of one simple virtue: accountability.

If no one ever played gotcha politics, no one would ever be calling anyone on their mistakes. Entrenched beltway insiders like Lieberman would be free to make mistakes all the time, constantly undermine the fellow members of their party, and generally behave in the most selfish ways possible without ever having to answer for it. W would be within reason when he asks us to trust him on Iraq. I hope I don't need to flesh out this nightmare scenario any further.

This is where politics starts to seem like a mutual fund. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, we are constantly told. And while technically that is true, it's also pretty much the only thing we have to go on when choosing mutual funds, unless we have inside (and idiosyncratic) information on how some of the stocks in the fund will be performing. So, Joe and George, I'd love to not bother assigning blame, but you guys just keep screwing up. I personally don't have any reason to think your future results will differ greatly from your past performance.

I agree that it would be nice not to have to play gotcha politics all the time, but the solution to the problem is to stop people from screwing up. Running around whining about how much we dislike it is a deceptive, ad hominem, disingenuous tactic that ends up hurting productive political discourse more than it helps. Therefore, here here for gotcha politics.

Pizza and Politiks 2: War Criminals

Join us in Bartlett Lounge next Monday at 7 PM for another exciting

Pizza and Politics!

We'll be watching the "War Crimes" (Not sure if its that title) Episode of West Wing and discussing American War Crimes and what should be done about them (ICC and the like) afterwards.






Pizza and Politics, where Hmmmm meets Mmmmm.

Ford-Lincoln-Mercutio

ROMEO: I dream'd a dream to-night.
MERCUTIO: And so did I.
ROMEO: Well, what was yours?
MERCUTIO: That dreamers often lie.

It is truly bizarre how despite the fact that most Republicans in Congress and around the country have turned their backs on Bush, some just can't be cured of their Bush fetishes. They seem to see him as some sort of visionary, a dreamer who is misunderstood by the world. Dispiritingly delusional, this group includes Rudy Guiliani, the would-be Republican presidential nominee.

Holding up as examples the top two presidents in the Republican pantheon, Lincoln and Reagan, Giuliani explained their leadership qualities.

“I don’t imagine that they had those favorable/unfavorable things back during the Civil War,” but Lincoln would not have fared well, Giuliani said.

Seeming to draw present-day comparisons, Giuliani noted that Lincoln even faced riots in New York City because people were unhappy with the war. “They wanted to quit because it was getting too tough.”

There were extensive casualties, the conflict dragged on and Lincoln had to fire many of his generals, Giuliani reminded the salad-eating crowd.

For right-wing crackpots, the comparisons go (or at least ought to go) beyond simply presiding over tons of casualties and firing generals. Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus, as has Bush. Both Bush and Lincoln thought they were engaged in existential struggles over the very fiber of our nation. Comparing Bush to Lincoln also provides the convenience of the fact that today just about everybody thinks the Civil War was worth fighting, whereas just about no one thinks that about Iraq. This comparison does not hold up very well overall, of course.

For one thing, as opposed to Iraq, the Civil War actually was an existential struggle. If the Union had lost, the country would have been literally ripped in two. The struggle today is nothing like so serious, since Bush says the only way we can lose is to withdraw from Iraq. (Sounds fine to me.) And I don't think the reason Lincoln is popular today is the huge death toll he racked up. To tell the truth, I think it's disgusting how many people died during the Civil War all for the sake of making sure I still get to be in a country that includes Alabama. But Lincoln's rationale was more that the states cannot opt in or out of the Union at any time, forcing us to stick together whether we like it or not. In the long run, I believe this has been a healthy precedent to protect.

Another difference between Bush and Lincoln is that Lincoln didn't really have to worry that much about economic ennui. The country secession of half the country was a substantial economic disruption that had a clear military solution, and the nature of the sacrifice must have been clear to the citizen of the day. Bush, on the other hand, expressly requires no sacrifices of Americans during our present existential struggle, preferring that they just keep buying stuff. So today no one really cares what Lincoln's economic policies were, but I think a lot of people are going to keep caring about Bush's.

And the number one thing I think of when Bush and the economy come up together is his support for the plutocratic corporate order. In an excellent article, William Pfaff provides the key to explaining both Bush's foreign policy blunders and his economic blunders. An overinflated sense of American exceptionalism is probably to blame both for quixotic quagmires overseas and
the unacceptable injustice all around us. As Pfaff says,

American efforts to deregulate the international economy and promote globalization, whatever its benefits, have been the most powerful force of political, economic, social, and cultural destabilization the world has known since World War II, providing what closely resembles that "constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation" forecast by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto.

For an example of the destabilizing injustice of the corporatist plutocracy, let's look at Ford Motors. Not because Ford is unique, but because it is recent and oh so typical. As Devilstower points out over at Dailykos, Ford posted its worst loss ever last quarter. This was because of short-sighted planning and market positioning by top brass, not because guys on the assembly line weren't working hard enough. The solution? Fire 40,000 and give bigger bonuses to the top brass!

This is the kind of system we get under Bush, and, for that matter, under Clinton. As Devilstower notes, though, Democrats like Jim Webb are not on board with this system; to Webb I would add other freshman Democrats like Sherrod Brown and old salts like Barney Frank. With sensible leaders like these, hopefully we can start to fix some of the worst injustices to the middle class at least and ideally to the poor as well.

Just for the sake of fairness and balance, let me tell you about a couple of Democrats who don't appear to have received the memo on making life more fair: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton we always knew about, since she has the backing of all the elites and is so deeply allied with the DLC.

Since election to his Senate term, Obama has basically coopted the DLC playbook of valuing bipartisanship above all else. This is as self-serving and defeatist as it's ever been, but Paul Krugman is also right to point out that Obama's rhetoric about rhetoric is missing the point. A lot of people attack Obama for having a thin Senate record and wring their hands about his lack of experience, but his substance problem doesn't have that much to do with his record. Having been a civil rights attorney and spent some eight odd years in elected office, he has more substantive experience than Bush had when he became president. No, the substance argument against Obama is boils down to the fact that he thinks it's more important to establish a polite tone than to fix problems.

While Bush may be a dreamer, he is certainly no Lincoln. Neither is Clinton or Obama (who plans to officially announce his campaign around Lincoln's birthday in scenic Springfield, IL, hometown of Honest Abe himself). The next most admired leader we have will match Lincoln's courage in pursuing a dubious war with today's economic problems. In other words, we don't need a Lincoln to solve our war, we need FDR to save ourselves.