Politics

The President looked confident and energetic in his State of the Union address last night. Clearly he’s enjoying the job now and ready to make his mark on history. Bully for him.

The highlight of the speech for me, as I’m sure for many people, was the hug that Iraqi Safia Taleb al-Suhail gave to Janet Norwood. It eclipsed everything else that had come before it, making all the pomp and circumstance and partisan theatrics look silly. Regardless of how one feels about the war in Iraq, this gesture put a human face on the conflict and, for me at least, confirmed what I’ve always known about our having more in common with the people of the Middle East than reasons to hate each other. I hope the entire world was watching.

There were plenty of moments when I was cursing during the President’s speech, though, none the least of which being when he once again went way out of his way to disrespect the most important relationship in my life (and just to be clear, I sincerely despise him for that). But two things he said led me to believe he’s so drunk with his own power at this point that the man is actually beginning to think the laws of time and space needn’t apply to his vision. At the very least he has serious problems with the notion of "permanence." Let me explain.

Twice in discussing reforms to Social Security, the President suggested it’s time to fix it "permanently":

Fixing Social Security permanently will require an open, candid review of the options. […] We must make Social Security permanently sound, not leave that task for another day.

This could be excused as optimistic hyperbole if he hadn’t built his case for reform in the first place on the notion that "Our society has changed in ways the founders of Social Security could not have foreseen." So the founders of Social Security couldn’t foresee the future, but George W. Bush can?

Then there was the issue of bringing our troops home from Iraq.

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I recall one of my very first posts here at Obsidian Wings. It was shortly after the Abu Ghraib story broke, and I said something like: “The Republicans have brought shame on this country.” And Moe (I miss Moe!) got very angry; if I recall correctly, his response began: I am a Republican… Now, I thought then that my post pretty clearly referred to the leadership of the Republican Party, especially since Moe and other rank-and-file Republicans were obviously not responsible for Abu Ghraib, and I didn’t exactly see the point of objecting to it. Nonetheless, it was his site, so I apologized and all was well.

Sometime around the time I was asked to join the site, I decided that I had been wrong, and that Moe’s rule (no generalizations about ‘the right’, ‘the left’, etc.) was a very good one. It avoided all sorts of pointless arguments, for one thing. It also seemed to me that making such generalizations was a form of intellectual laziness: when I was tempted to make them, I was not going to the trouble of actually figuring out who I was talking about, and it was therefore much easier for me to imagine stereotypical versions of my opponents than it would be if I had to actually say: I am talking about Sebastian or Von or Moe. I had always tried to avoid those stereotypes, but Moe’s rule forced me to.

This is all a preamble to the following question: when people talk about “the Left”, who, exactly, do they have in mind? I have no idea. And I suspect that the idea that there is something called ‘the Left’ which is large enough to be worth talking about is often simply a figment of the various writers’ imaginations, and that they can only believe this ‘Left’ to be a real, significant group because they do not force themselves to identify who they are talking about more precisely. If they were precise, they would (I think) have to conclude either that ‘the Left’ is a tiny group of people, or that much of what they say about it is not true. But because they are not, they can say all sorts of things about it without ever running the risk of being proved wrong.

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First and foremost, apologies if any Republicans feel offended by the wolf/sheep dichotomy in the title. I’m sure plenty of GOPers are perfectly docile and woolly. 😉
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Hillary’s been seen sporting a more conservative power suit lately, and it ain’t sitting too well with some of us counting on her to use her star power to promote a more liberal agenda. Not that we should be surprised. Both she and her husband  have always been more moderate than liberal in my eyes, and (like most politicians, both sides of the aisle) she’s nothing if not willing to spin her message to suit her audience, but if I wanted an Arlen Specter-esque Democrat Senator, I’d move to Connecticut.

Clinton’s strategists insist that she’s merely continuing in her efforts to paint a fuller picture of herself since leaving the White House, but the fuller picture of herself seems mostly limited to insisting she’s religious:

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A few days ago I found an AP story that I meant to write about, but didn’t:

“President Bush is readying a new budget that would carve savings from Medicaid and other benefit programs, congressional aides and lobbyists say, but it is unclear if he will be able to push the plan through the Republican-run Congress.

White House officials are not saying what Bush’s $2.5 trillion 2006 budget will propose saving from such programs, which comprise the biggest and fastest growing part.

But lobbyists and lawmakers’ aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, say he will focus on Medicaid, the health-care program for low-income and disabled people. Medicaid costs are split between Washington and the states.”

When I read this, I just didn’t know what to think. I said to myself: wasn’t George W. Bush supposed to be a compassionate conservative? Didn’t he just tell us that “we know that in a culture that does not protect the most dependent, the handicapped, the elderly, the unloved, or simply inconvenient become increasingly vulnerable”, and that to prevent this he was “working with members of the Congress to pass good, solid legislation that protects the vulnerable”? Is it protecting the vulnerable to cut health care for the poor and disabled? Imagine that you are trying to raise your kids on a minimum wage job. If you are, say, a maid at a motel, you probably don’t have access to health insurance that’s remotely affordable. If you or your kids get sick, what are you supposed to do? I tried to make sense of it all, but I couldn’t; and I was so confused.

Then today I read a post by Josh Marshall, and it pointed me to a story that made everything clear.

“Bush tried to get ministers and other leaders of the black community behind his agenda in an earlier private meeting that lasted more than an hour. Attendees said Bush told them his plan to add private accounts to Social Security would benefit blacks since they tend to die younger than whites and end up paying in more than they take out. Private accounts would be owned by workers and could be inherited by loved ones after death.”

So it turns out that there’s a good side to African-Americans’ shorter life expectancy: their private personal Social Security accounts won’t have to last as long. Of course, this won’t help if they have already converted their private personal accounts to annuities, but African-Americans are also disproportionately likely to die before they reach retirement age, and so proportionately more of them will be able to pass on their private personal accounts in their entirety to their heirs, without having had the chance to spend a single cent on themselves.

Here’s where the cuts to Medicaid come in. Since African-Americans are more likely to be poor than other Americans, they are disproportionately represented among Medicaid enrollees. That means that by cutting Medicaid, President Bush will give even more of the benefits of reduced life expectancy to African-Americans. And unlike many of his proposals, this will give those benefits to the poor and disabled, who need them most. The result? More poor and disabled African-Americans will die before they have a chance to touch their private personal Social Security accounts. This means that their children will inherit the money in those accounts, and will thereby become members of President Bush’s ownership society. Of course, they will have to enter that society without their parents, but no one ever said that we could have ownership without sacrifice.

I feel so much better now.

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I’m concerned about the hawkish subtext of President Bush’s inaugural address yesterday. On one hand, as a staunch advocate of human rights, I recognize that capitalist democracies do indeed foster the sort of societies most guaranteed to ensure each person’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On the other hand, I believe the path to such government must be the choice of those involved. The "democracy via the barrel of a gun" method offends my inner individualist, as it results in the indiscriminate deaths of those it’s presumably trying to liberate, and that sacrifice should be their choice, not some outside power’s.

William Safire raved about the speech in his column today:

Yesterday’s strongly thematic address was indeed "the freedom speech." Not only did the words "freedom, free, liberty" appear 49 times, but the president used the world-watched occasion to expound his basic reason for the war and his vision of America’s mission in the world.

I rate it among the top 5 of the 20 second-inaugurals in our history.

A bit of hyperbole, perhaps, but it’s his column. Then, however, I can’t help but imagine Bill’s Cialis kicked in, because he gets a bit more than rationally excited about the implications of the speech:

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I was reading RedState, as I sometimes do, when I cam across this post, by Thomas, called ‘What It Means To Be A Republican’. Here’s what being a Republican means:

“It means a belief in ordered liberty — that human beings can reach their greatest potential with minimal government influence; but that men, never angels, still need some bare rules in which to work. It means a belief in the rule of law, not of men. It means believing that, generally, the fewer rules and taxes laid down on human enterprise, the better.

It means a belief that not only are all Men created equal, but also that it is an innate condition of human beings, not an arbitrary gift of government. It means that all humans carry within them, inseparably and without any need for government affirmation or provision, certain basic rights, not the least of which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It means that we believe America is a shining city on a hill, the last, best hope of Mankind. That though America is not perfect — and never will be — we are the best thing going. That “American exceptionalism” is a good thing, and not a slander. It means that we believe America can achieve almost anything, if it puts its collective mind to it. It means that when and if America eventually falls, the world will be a darker place — and it means that we know it.

It means remembering that Americans are not a weird mishmash of competing interest and ethnic groups, but a people bound together, not by blood, but by common dreams and beliefs and hopes, and by a belief that some truths are self-evident.

It means knowing that politics ends at some point, and the important things in life — hearth, home, faith, family, community — resume.

It means knowing that sometimes the dark and terrible things of the world can and should be allowed to die their own deaths, and sometimes, rough men must gather their arms and march into battle to defeat them.”

Now, I was a Republican back in 1980, when I registered in order to vote for John Anderson in the primaries. But I didn’t know that I was a Republican today. Apparently, though, I am — mostly, at any rate. Here’s how I see it.

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Apparently unsatisfied with how startled the world was with this Czar-like power grab, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has approved the erection of a new statue of Josef Stalin.

Moscow plans to erect a new statue of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, returning his once-ubiquitous image to its streets after an absence of four decades, a top city official said Wednesday.

Since President Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000, a number of Soviet symbols — including the national anthem and an army flag — have been restored to use, reflecting widespread nostalgia for Russia’s communist years.

But rehabilitation of Stalin, who was denounced after his death in 1953 by the Soviet leadership for encouraging a cult of personality and killing millions of real and imagined opponents, has previously been out of bounds. Statues of Stalin were removed from Moscow’s public spaces in the 1960s.

"A monument will be erected to those who took part in (leading the war against Adolf Hitler), including Stalin," Oleg Tolkachev, Moscow’s senator in the upper house of parliament, told Ekho Moskvy radio.

Eugene Volokh asks whether this means we’ll soon see statues of Hitler in Berlin.

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There is no other conclusion. Barbara Boxer is either an utter moron or bald-faced liar. Or worse, both. In her cross examination of Condoleeza Rice earlier today, it makes you wonder if she ever read the resolution authorizing George W. Bush to remove Saddam Hussein, or just happened to hear about it from Dan Rather. This…is CNN:

Rice insisted the war in Iraq was not launched solely over WMD. Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, she said, welcomed terrorists, attacked his own neighbors and paid suicide bombers in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

But Boxer said the bill passed by Congress authorizing the war in Iraq was, "WMD, period."

"Let’s not rewrite history, it’s too soon for that," Boxer said.

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With a nice backhanded swat at the man she’s replacing, Dr. Condoleezza Rice is expected to pledge to mend relationships with our allies when she appears before Congress to be interviewed for the job of America’s #1 diplomat. On one hand that’s heartening as it demonstrates she understands the position she’s acquiring, but on the other hand it’s nearly farcical:

As Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation hearing got underway, she planned to pledge to work to mend ties with allies frayed by the war in Iraq, based on prepared remarks. "The time for diplomacy is now," she was expected to tell senators.

With all due respect, Dr. Rice, the time for diplomacy was before we invaded Iraq. Before thousands of innocent Iraqis were murdered in an atmosphere allowed to get out of hand, due to a shortage of troops, brought about greatly through US ally-alienating arrogance and swagger…before you and Rumsfeld effectively ran ramshot over Powell’s efforts to work with the rest of the world, hellbent as you were to get our soldiers onto Iraqi soil on your timetable.

But a quick look back may reveal what lies ahead for the good Doctor on the fence-mending front:

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In the January/February issue of Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan wrote a devastating and eye-opening piece on Democratic consultants and their history of being rewarded for repeated failures.

Hansen and Mellman are joined by the poster boy of Democratic social promotion, Bob Shrum. Over his 30-year career, Shrum has worked on the campaigns of seven losing presidential candidates—from George McGovern to Bob Kerrey—capping his record with a leading role in the disaster that was the Gore campaign. Yet, instead of abiding by the “seven strikes and you’re out” rule, Democrats have continued to pay top dollar for his services (sums that are supplemented by the percentage Shrum’s firm, Shrum, Devine & Donilon, gets for purchasing air time for commercials). Although Shrum has never put anyone in the White House, in the bizarro world of Democratic politics, he’s seen as a kingmaker—merely hiring the media strategist gives a candidate such instant credibility with big-ticket liberal funders that John Kerry and John Edwards fought a fierce battle heading into the 2004 primaries to lure Shrum to their camps. Ultimately, Shrum chose Kerry, and on Nov. 3, he extended his perfect losing record.

On January 12th, Bob Shrum announced his retirement, the New York Times reported.  I don’t believe the timing of Shrum’s announcement was a coincidence.  It makes me wonder what the political landscape would look like had Sullivan written this four years ago.  Erick Erickson, editor at Redstate.org, is a Republican consultant and he offered some insights into this strange world.

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All too often the mainstream press will take a long, dryly written report and then distort it beyond belief.  Sadly, this is exactly what happened with mainstream reporting on the National Intelligence Council’s 123-page Mapping the Global Future, which looked at world trends and tried to peer into the next fifteen years.  The predominant meme that the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times took from the report was that Iraq is a training ground for terrorists.  OK.  Let’s test their hypothesis. 

If we want to find out the importants bits in the NIC report, the best place to start is the executive summary.  The summary even helpfully highlights in red letters what the NIC thinks are the most important issues.  None of thirty red-colored sentences in the summary contain the word "Iraq".  There is only one reference to Iraq in the whole summary:  "This revival [of Muslim identity] has been accompanied by a deepening solidarity among Muslims caught up in national or regional separatist struggles, such as Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, Kashmir, Mindanao, and southern Thailand, and has emerged in response to government repression, corruption, and ineffectiveness."  That’s it. 

The two most relevant references to terrorism in Iraq don’t appear until page 94 of the report, as follows:

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As noted in Part I of this series, long hours of driving around listening to talk radio has–if I say so myself–made me a connoisseur of this medium (or, for the French-averse, aficionado). For purposes of s***s and giggles, I developed a Ten List of talk radio programs, ranking them from worst to first. My criteria for judgment is the total package: content, presentation and entertainment value. Talk shows compete with the other stations on the dial, both against music and other talk formats. If the program doesn’t get your attention or if the presentation puts you to sleep (not a good thing for commuters), then content quality of the show is wasted.

The worst talk show fellas were covered in Part I, and this one will hit the Middle of the Pack. Another thing. If I haven’t listened to it, I can’t comment on it. I literally heard Air America for the first time just a few days ago. Al Franken was on and he was grousing about the Democratic Party not being liberal enough, and lobbying for Howard Dean as DNC chair. The next day Janeane Garofolo, in the absurdly named "Majority Report", was trying to rally the progressive troops in calling the Ohio presidential results illegitimate. While I’m sorely tempted to rank Fringe Radio No. 11, fifteen minutes of painfully listening to these harangues is not enough time to pass judgment. Other guys I haven’t listened to much or at all are Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, Oliver North, Mike Gallagher, Gordon Liddy, etc. So, without any more ado, drumroll please…

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At the risk of sounding like a wishy-washy flip-flopper, I have no choice but to change my position.  After the third recount in the Washington State governor’s race, I wrote in several comment sections in several weblogs that Dino Rossi should concede the election to Christine Gregoire, provided that an independent audit be conducted and that the state legislature enact laws that would prevent the re-occurrence of all these voting mishaps.  That position is now untenable, and now I’m firmly on the side of a revote.  Here’s why.

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Responding to this post by Andrew Sulliven, Glenn Reynolds offers what I suspect he believes is pragmatic advice on the so-called torture memos associated with AG-nominee Gonzales:

I’ve been against torture since Alan Dershowitz was pushing it back in the fall of 2001. (Okay, actually I was against torture even before Dershowitz was pushing it). But I think the effort to turn this into an anti-Bush political issue is a serious mistake, and the most likely outcome will be, in essence, the ratification of torture (with today’s hype becoming tomorrow’s reality) and a political defeat for the Democrats. And the highly politicized way in which the issue is raised is likely to ensure that there’s no useful discussion of exactly how, in terms of incarceration, etc., we should treat potentially very dangerous people who do not fall readily within the laws of war.

Sure, politicizing the "torture debate" (such as it is) will be a bad idea.  I’m sympathetic to Glenn’s "just wait a-while for the right day" concerns.  I’m been known to espouse such concerns myself, and I’m not in a mood to weaken Bush much before the no-holds-barred debate over Social Security reform.  And better to have the present bad than the future worse, and all that crap. 

But, if we cannot have the torture debate now because it’d be too political, exactly when should we have it?  If your beliefs are as you say they are, when do you plan to stand up for them? 

When will addressing the torture memos cease being an "anti-Bush" activity?  And why, if we think the memos poorly reasoned or morally bankrupt (or both), should we care about the political fallout?  If Glenn — and others who find the Bush administration’s and the ultraLeft’s positions equally untenable — stand up, maybe we’ll actually have the nuanced discussion that we want. 

Indeed, when would be a good time for this debate?  Should its timing really depend on whether it might be cast as anti-Bush?  Bush is hardly a victim or naif in this.  He knew what the memos contain, he knows what they likely contributed to, and he tacitly endorsed it all by promoting Gonzales.   He can hardly be surprised to find the torture memos among the feathering in his nest — resting next to the "buck," which stops with him.   

So, Glenn, should we wait until Gonzales is nominated to the Supreme Court for this particular fight?  Will that make it less "anti-Bush"?  Should we wait until Bush is out of office?  Silence ourselves in a bargain for political gain?  (Weren’t dodgy bargains supposed to end with the election?  Do they now continue, ad infinitum?)  Maybe we should wait for the fifty-year retrospective.  Until Godot drops by?  Maybe then it’ll be "safe" to raise our concerns and not damage Bush.

If your standard is the lowest common denominator, that is where you will find yourself.

(Sullivan has an excellent follow-up post along similar lines here.)

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In a series of smoke-and-mirror moves designed to, at the very least, leave the public confused, the House Republicans have taken a stand on the House ethics rules: they don’t care for them. This one’s a bit hard to follow for me, so I’ll outline it here before commenting.

Do – Eleven years ago, to dramatize their own higher standards (in comparison with the Democrats who had controlled the House for quite some time and were having some ethics problems themselves), the GOP set a standard for themselves that required House Republican leaders and the heads of the various committees to relinquish their positions if indicted for a crime that could bring a prison term of at least two years. This was a bit of political grandstanding, but it was also a good way to demonstrate their commitment to higher standards.

Don’t – Current Republican House Leader Tom DeLay is facing an investigation in Texas that may lead to an indictment (and if he is indicted, the above rule would require him to relinquish his position). So after the November 2004 elections, as a gift to their leader and as a sign of how pleased they were with themselves, House Republicans voted to do away with that rule. But there was a bit of public outcry about this, mostly by the Democrats, so…

Do – The public outcry threatened to become a distraction from the agressive agenda the GOP hopes to accomplish, so yesterday they announced that they were reversing course and changing back to the original rule, apparently leaving DeLay vunerable should he be indicted in the Texas investigation. In fact, they did this with a bit of self-congratulatory fanfare, with Representative Zach Wamp (R- Tenn), saying "I feel like we have just taken a shower."

Don’t – Today we learn that a clever little bait-and-switch has occurred:

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