Politics

[warning: new york attitude ahead]

I will always hold a degree of respect for Rudy Guiliani for the courage he displayed in the days after 9/11. He was a true Hero, and many New Yorkers’ opinion of him changed overnight, much to the shock of those who had truly despised him just the day before.

That’s why I was sincerely saddened to watch his speech last night. I was expecting to be inspired or, at least, impressed, but in less than half an hour Rudy went from hero to partisan hack in my esteem. This is all the sadder, because although I loathed him before 9/11, I never thought of him as merely a mouthpiece for the party.

Rudy’s speech—in stark contrast to McCain’s, which (although I disagree with much of it) was measured and respectful—was a laundry list of cheapshots, factual errors, jokes that just died, and outright hackery.

Here’s a sample of the “you-just-made-that-shit-up” nonsense he was spewing:

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In an earlier post about the clandestine changes the Bush administration is making to federal regulations, bypassing Congressional oversight, under the cover of war, one reader noted in response to the list of controversial shifts:

More to the point, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing that should have been expected from GWB in 2000 and up to Sept 20, 2001.

I’ve encountered arguments like this before. They seem to imply the nation got what they voted for, even if all of them didn’t bother to read the fine print. However, given the controversial way Bush was elected, with at least one clear indicator of what the nation wanted (or didn’t want) found in the popular vote disparity, the assertion that Bush is simply giving the people what they want is beyond disengenuous.

Now, the moderates in the GOP, like Senator Collins from Maine who appeared on PBS last night, will tell you they’re working to curb the more extremist ideas in the party. This is meant to make moderates worry less about those troublesome parts of the GOP platform. Should they fail to curb them, however, here’s what you can expect in the next four years: Some of the fine print of the GOP platform (pdf file).

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(Crossposted to Redstate)

That was my rather belated reaction to the secondhand recounting of whatever it was that Mary Anne Marsh said last week on Hannity and Colmes. I say secondhand because I originally got it from Jeff Goldstein: for that matter, the show hasn’t posted a transcript. Jay Nordlinger noted it later on: no transcript there, either, so for all I know there’s a context* issue.

Read on.

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In an effort to provide counterprogramming for the Republican National Convention, I will be writing a short series of posts on what I take to be the most important reasons not to vote for Bush. Three preliminary notes:

First, I am not reflexively anti-Republican. Until about a year ago, of all the Presidential candidates I’ve supported over the years, the one I was most excited about was a Republican (Anderson, 1980.) I try not to be reflexively anti-Bush, though he has long since worn out the benefit of the doubt that I gave him after the decision in Bush v. Gore, and again after 9/11. There are, I think, very good reasons to oppose him; thus this post.

Second, I describe myself as voting against Bush for a reason. I think John Kerry will make a perfectly good President. Nonetheless, he was not my first (or second, or third) choice in the Democratic primaries, and if he was running against someone else who I thought would make a perfectly good President, I might have to think seriously about who to vote for. But since, in my judgment, Bush has not been anywhere near a perfectly good President, I have no such difficult choice to make.

Third, I do not hold Bush responsible for every silly thing that anyone in his administration has ever said. But I do hold him responsible for his administration’s policies, and also for his response to things that members of his administration do, whether or not he himself has ever spoken about the topics in question. He is responsible for hiring and firing his people; for making sure that they do the job he wants them to do; and for exercising oversight over them. The buck stops with him.

That said, on to topic number one: the Constitution.

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An estimated 500,000 people gathered in lower Manhattan yesterday to participate in the largest Focus Group the city’s seen since 1982’s antinuclear rally in Central Park (with some saying even more participants showed up yesterday).

The messages they hoped to convey ran the gamut from A to Z (with each at least partially geard toward stopping W). Here are a few of the more memorable comments participants made:

From totally misguided,

Support the Iraqi Resistance. US Troops out of the Middle East

to faithful, but somewhat deluded

Remember if Gore had been president, the Twin Towers would still be standing.

to theological

What Would Jesus Bomb?

to literary

George Orwell Predicted

to poetic

Bush is Scary. Vote for Kerry

to pop cultural

What would Scooby Do?

One Nation Under Godzilla

to the purely visual:

(Via Kos)

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Via Steve Clemons: Did you know that there is a sitting member of Congress who has:

Said the Congressional Leadership (in 1992) “ought to be lined up and shot”

Said, of protesters against the war in Vietnam, “I would have no hesitation about lining them up and shooting them,” he said. “Those people should be shot for what they did to us over there.”

Said that Bill Clinton was a KGB dupe

Said that some members of Congress “will tell you openly that they’re both Communist supporters and socialist supporters” who want “your kids and my kids … to fall under a socialist, Communist regime”

Said that a rectal procedure he had undergone was “just not natural, unless maybe you’re Barney Frank.”

Besides all this, this Representative — Randy Cunningham of California’s 50th District — was on the board of the Tailhook Association in 1991, the year of the Tailhook Symposium at which 83 women and 7 men were sexually assaulted. In the aftermath of the scandal, the armed forces undertook various efforts to combat sexual harassment; at a House Subcommittee hearing in which the acting Army Secretary described these efforts, “Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham called the efforts “B.S.” and asserted that “our kids don’t like . . . political correctness.”” What makes this particularly relevant now is that, as a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, one of the Committees that might investigate the abuses at Abu Ghraib. As Steve Clemons asks, “How can a guy who thinks Tailhook was just all good fun be counted on to responsibly legislate or investigate matters related to Abu Ghraib?”

As I’ve said before, there are jerks and idiots in both parties, and we shouldn’t criticize either party for the views expressed by their more, um, peculiar members. That being said, however, we should also try to make sure that such people don’t end up as members of Congress. I have voted for Republicans with whom I deeply disagreed when their Democratic opponents seemed to me to be out to lunch, on the grounds that it was better to be represented by someone who was wrongheaded but sane than by someone who seemed to live in an alternate universe. If the universe you live in is not one in which it’s OK to line your opponents up and shoot them, and in which preventing sexual assault is not just “B.S.”, take heart: Cunningham is not running unopposed.

On the subject of the GOP’s fringe: Vernon Robinson, who put out the amusing Twilight Zone ad, lost his runoff in North Carolina. The Republican voters of North Carolina’s 5th District deserve our gratitude.

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I actually got out of the hospital several days ago (surgery went amazingly well), but I couldn’t bring myself to write anything until now. On the one hand, I didn’t see what I had to add to the Swift Boat Vets controversy: everything I had to say had already been said far more eloquently by other people. On the other hand, I couldn’t really write about anything else. On reflection, however, I think I have one thing to add to this topic.

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Matthew Yglesias has an article in The American Prospect about why George Bush’s intellect ought to be a serious political issue. The punchline:

“That the country should be secured against terrorist attacks, that deadly weapons should be kept out of the hands of our enemies, or that it would be good for a wide slice of the world to enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy are hardly controversial propositions. But these things are easier said than done. Even a person of goodwill is by no means guaranteed to succeed. Yet succeed we must. And if we are to do so, the question of intelligence must be put back on the table. The issue is not “cleverness” — some kind of parlor trick or showy mastery of trivia — but a basic ability to make sense of a complicated, fast-changing world and decide how to confront it. Any leader will depend on the work of his subordinates, but counting on advisers to do the president’s heavy lifting for him simply will not do. Unless the chief executive can understand what people are telling him and follow the complicated arguments they may need to make, he will find himself paralyzed at every point of disagreement, or he will adopt the views of the slickest salesman rather than the one who’s gotten things right.

The price to be paid for such errors is a high one — it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Already we’ve paid too much, and the problems confronting the country are growing harder with time. Unless the media, the electorate, and the political culture at large can shift their focus off of trivia and on to things that actually matter, it’s a price we may pay again and again.”

I think that Yglesias is right, not just in his basic point but in the examples he cites — e.g., US policy towards North Korea, trade policy, and the like. However, I have two minor quibbles. First, I am not sure that Bush’s problem is that he’s not intelligent. I don’t really know what to make of him in this regard; my best guess is that a lifetime of intellectual disengagement will produce the functional equivalent of stupidity, just as a lifetime of being a couch potato will produce the functional equivalent of a lack of athletic ability; and since Bush has led such a life, it may be impossible to tell how smart he is underneath it all. But the problem Yglesias is getting at is an apparently complete lack of intellectual curiosity, of interest in actually thinking through the implications of various policies, assessing their pros and cons, and deciding accordingly. Given some level of intellectual engagement, intelligence is of course an asset; but in its absence, intelligence in itself will get you nowhere. (To be fair, Yglesias sometimes describes the problem he’s getting at as a lack of intellectual curiosity and/or engagement; my point is that the lack of these things is distinct from a lack of intelligence, and that it, rather than a low IQ, is Bush’s problem.)

Second…

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Many moons ago I wrote in a thread on another blog that wars and bad economies come and go. The reason Americans should not re-elect George W. Bush is because he is quietly, systematically, and admittedly doing so aggressively, changing federal regulations in pro-business directions with no Congressional oversight:

Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others.

When the war on terror is over, many Americans are not going to recognize their nation, and it has nothing to do with the PATRIOT ACT:

Some leaders of advocacy groups argue that the public preoccupation with war and terrorism has allowed the administration to push through changes that otherwise would have provoked an outcry. Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, says he does not think the administration could have succeeded in rewriting so many environmental rules, for example, if the public’s attention had not been focused on national security issues.

“The effect of the administration’s concentration on war and terror has been to prevent the public from focusing on these issues,” Mr. Pope said. “Now, when I hold focus groups with the general public and tell them what has been done, they exclaim, ‘How could this have happened without me knowing about it?’ “

With all sincerity: WAKE UP FOLKS! Here’s just a few of the things being changed while we’re distracted by Iraq:

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I actually like the idea President Bush threw out there yesterday of a US value-added tax (VAT) or national sales tax replacing our federal income tax.

“It’s kind of an interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously,” Mr. Bush said in response to a question during an “Ask President Bush” session in Niceville, Fla.

Though the president’s remarks were informal, he made them at a time when some of his advisers, though by no means all, are urging that his speech at the Republican National Convention include a proposal for a vast overhaul of the federal tax system.

Mr. Bush’s comments were followed Wednesday by a conference call with reporters, arranged by the Bush-Cheney campaign, in which the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California, said that he favored looking at “well-thought-out alternate tax structures” and that the committee planned to do so.

“We have one of the more regressive tax structures in the world today that basically is a 19th-century concept,” Mr. Thomas said, adding, “We should get that revenue from people in the least destructive way possible.”

Critics, including John Kerry, argue that such a national sales tax would “punish the poor and the middle class, who typically spend a larger share of their income than the wealthy on consumption.” Supporters argue that it’s simpler and fairer than our traditional income tax “because it would not provide the opportunities for loopholes and sophisticated tax-reduction schemes that tend to favor wealthy taxpayers.” If you buy a humungous SUV or a Hummer, you’re taxed on it fully, no loopholes.

As an anti-materialist, this suits me fine. Anything that encourages Americans to spend less money on frivilous products, many of which are only partially consumed before discarded, strikes me as a step in the right direction. Only problem being, our economy’s recovery is supposedly dependent on consumer spending:

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If I could have one moment with President Bush, just one conversation about the way he’s running the government, I’d ask him to take one very simple step that would improve the performance of the federal agencies under his control: read the agencies’ pre-existing mission statements and follow them. It ain’t rocket science. In fact, the statements are usually right there on the agency/department website.

Take for example, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration. Their mission statement reads:

The mission of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is to administer the provisions of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 (Mine Act) and to enforce compliance with mandatory safety and health standards as a means to eliminate fatal accidents; to reduce the frequency and severity of nonfatal accidents; to minimize health hazards; and to promote improved safety and health conditions in the Nation’s mines. (emphasis mine)

In choosing who to head up this office, Bush only needs to read the mission statement to potential candidates and ask whether they believe they can fulfill that mission. Anyone who has a track record suggesting they don’t believe in that mission should be considered an unwise choice for the job.

Take for example David Lauriski. Back in 1997, as an executive of a mining company, he wanted to allow much* higher levels of coal dust than current federal regulations allow. I assume this would save coal mining companies money. It would also put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.

It would seem to make sense that anyone willing to put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease might not be an ideal choice to “to promote improved safety and health conditions in the Nation’s mines.” But Bush made Lauriski the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration anyway.

Now, as the New York Times is reporting, in direct opposition to the MSHA’s mission, Lauriski has revived his higher coal-dust levels idea.

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In today’s New York Times, David Brooks complains that neither Bush nor Kerry really talks about the issues confronting us. Here’s his evidence:

“John Kerry and the Democrats spent their convention talking about broad values like unity and military service and almost no time talking about specific proposals. And if you peek in at a Bush campaign event, it’s like a traveling road show of proper emotions. Bush will remind the crowd of the feelings we all experienced on Sept. 11. Then there will be several paragraphs on the importance of loving thy neighbor, and several minutes spent reciting the accomplishments of Term 1.

No offense, but where’s the beef?”

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(Crossposted, as usual)

…that would be the Democratic hawks, you understand. Peter Beinart over at the New Republic is still swinging, at least:

Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention drew rave reviews. So did Bill Clinton’s. But my nominee for best oration of the week goes to Senator Joseph Biden. On Thursday night at about eight o’clock–long before the networks began their broadcasts–Biden laid out the most compelling Democratic foreign policy vision I have yet heard. I just wish more of it had found its way into John Kerry’s acceptance speech two hours later.

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