Over on Anchor Rising, I've posted a piece that I wrote a while back but that somehow slipped through the cracks between publication and posting. It's about the red and blue sections of the country and the federal tax dollars that they give and receive.
Lately, I've been spending my commutes (which aren't anywhere near as long as they once were, but not nearly as short as working from home) switching back and forth between NPR and the local conservative-ish talk radio station, 630 WPRO. Highlighting the "ish" is that the station's news comes from ABC News, which does not, as far as I've been able to tell, tailor its output to suit likely WPRO listeners.
On Monday morning, the two sources of information actually made me feel nauseated with the emergence of the "impeachment" word so quickly with reference to this wiretapping mess, based largely on the guesswork of commentators about what the circumstances might or might not be. Sickening, the knowledge that political actors are leveraging the fact that a wall marked "Classified" hides the best conflicting arguments to make demagogic declarations, and the knowledge that people are almost certain to die as a result. Comparisons to the treatment of intelligence policies that preceded 9/11 are inescapable — as is the suspicion that another decade and another terrorist attack on our soil will spark further incredulous demagoguery that not enough was done to gather intelligence.
Unsurprisingly, nobody who gets their news from only the usual sources, at least those that I've heard, would know of the existence of analyses such as James Robbins's and Byron York's. The former, through the novel strategy of actually reading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), concludes that the President's actions were legal. The latter refutes those multiple scholars and experts whom I've heard on the radio claiming that the process of acquiring a FISA warrant couldn't possibly be considered arduous, even when addressing the fast-moving threat of terrorists utilizing modern communication methods.
I haven't been able to muster much interest in the whole Wilson/Plame thing since the post — from over two years ago — in which I noted that Wilson had named his wife in his own online biography. Frankly, I'm surprised and disappointed that these names are still floating around the public consciousness. But some wild speculation from John Podhoretz has added an interesting wrinkle to the story (as wild speculation is apt to do):
What if she then went to Google to look up stuff about Wilson and found his bio online at the Middle East Institute? That bio (which is no longer available on line--gee, I wonder why) featured the line: "He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has two sons and two daughters."As I recall, the type on that bio was incredibly small and in sans-serif type. She may simply have misread the surname "Plame" as "Flame."
What if, therefore, she learned about Valerie Plame in part because of Wilson's own efforts to publicize his story from his own bio -- and then, as she was talking to Scooter Libby, threw the name "Valerie Flame" at him? Evidently he did not react to the name, either because he was being discreet or because he had never heard her referred to as anything other than "Wilson's wife."
What if, therefore, Judy Miller's source for the name "Valerie Plame" was....Google?
The small font recollection sounds familiar, so I thought I'd check the WayBackMachine cache for that page. As you can see, the font is perfectly legible. Of course, a lost or changed style sheet could account for that. You'll observe, too, that the same bio on the Corporate & Public Strategy Advisory Group's Web site is also legible. It may be, though, that the bio (of which Mr. Wilson was apparently fond) once appeared elsewhere, in the bumbling design of a novice Webmaster. It may also be that Ms. Miller's browser or monitor settings rendered any one of the bio's reprints poorly. So the Google theory needn't be discarded, if it helps the reader to make it through another round of press coverage.
As for me: back to ignoring this flickering Plame thing.
Nobody — not one single pundit — with posting rights to NRO's Corner could muster a defense of "compassionate conservatism"? Forget naked partisanship. Forget (for just a moment) principle! Not one NRO writer is willing to step into the fray simply for the sake of offering contrast to John Derbyshire's self-refuting, faux defense?
It is a fixed belief among millions of the stupider sorts of Americans -- college Humanities professors and the like -- that the Dems are the kind party, while the GOP is the unkind party. If you talk to ordinary citizens much, this comes through all the time. ...Philosophically, intellectually, and metaphysically, "compassionate conservatism" is of course turkey poop. But this is p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s.
Perhaps what so irks me about this commentary's being left to stand for eleven hours (and counting) on conservatism's online hub is that the act of disagreeing would, in itself, accord with the points begging to be made in response: that there are indeed stark differences among those who are, on a mainstream scale, considered to be "conservatives." Moreover, if (as I, for one, believe) the liberalism of recent history is on the wane, then the next rift to define the culture wars will derive from those stark differences.
Whether libertarians renovate and restock the fallen strongholds of liberals or social conservatives grudgingly admit that they are the left-most side in a battle with Paleos, "compassionate conservatism" surely offers an early marker of the sides. It is not fowl feces to stake out ground on the field of sensibilities. Put differently, it is not necessarily a cynical ploy when a politician correctly identifies a space for which there is a constituency. This holds even if the catch phrase is not immediately associable with any particular initiatives; in "p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s," rhetorical constructions themselves have force.
Derbyshire's fellow citizens don't share his emphasis on Reason versus Unreason (with the latter covering both the hateful Amiri Baraka and some unspecified segment of intelligent-design advocates), his classification of such pursuits as English studies as "spurious academic disciplines," or his belief that science will triumph over "our instincts and preferences and faith" to prove that "our cherished beliefs about the Self are largely illusions," free will among them. Many Americans cherish those beliefs more than they cherish science; many prioritize helping others over being rational. And some among them require explanation of why particular solutions are more rational means of helping others than are alternatives that seem more direct.
Conservative solutions can be understandably counterintuitive to those not disposed or at liberty to follow political issues closely: guaranteeing fewer Social Security benefits to ensure more, restricting marriage to protect families, and going to war to secure peace, to name a few. Perhaps when one intends to advocate such things, it helps to create a perception that ensures more than two words of explanation before distrust kicks in. In a word, compassion.
It is without question that conservatives and (distinctly) Republicans have only recently begun to break the fog of stereotyping that places an undue burden on their visions for improving our mutual lot. But if impressions of a stupider sort still come through "all the time" in conversation with ordinary citizens, I can't help but feel that appeals to compassionate conservatism are more rational than the condescension that casts "a couple hundred thousand" ordinary citizens as dupes of "a snappy, easily-remembered slogan" or, worse, "pork wrapped up in schmalz."
If Jonah Goldberg isn't alone in synonimizing compassionate conservatism with "runaway spending and some of the worst lurches to the center of the Bush years," then I suggest that we expend some effort in explaining what the phrase ought to mean — not the least because the forces of dehumanization have already begun eyeing the banner of compassion for their own causes.
Apart from qualities of intellect and literacy, what makes Andrew Sullivan so interesting to address is the fact that he's an excellent debater and, as such, is willing to take risks with his rhetoric. As when he approaches statism to declare the Constitution a "workable civil version" of religion, he's willing to give glimpses of cards that a more cautious man with his objectives might keep obscured.
The downside is the frustrated reaction that he can inspire in those who sense that his emphasis is on debate rather than intellect — that the principles under consideration aren't really open for discussion. Consequently, the statements that make up his arguments periodically give the impression of boxing steps rather than exposition. Once frustration has subsided, however, one can look to the areas around which Sullivan has danced to discover the heart of the matter. (Whether his contradictions and avoidance are deliberate or instinctive is a question of how much credit the reader wishes to give him, and it is one on which I vacillate.)
For example, in a recent response to Jonah Goldberg, Sullivan defines fundamentalism in relation to politics and dogma:
Just as Oakeshott very carefully allows a place within Western political thought for the politics of faith, so do I within what might be called conservatism. My worry is when that faith becomes fundamentalist, i.e. less interested in political arrangements than divine imperatives.
Yet, in the subsequent paragraph, he decries neocon cynicism as follows:
I have to say I'm not too enamored of outsiders backing fundamentalism in faiths they do not share for political purposes. But, hey, that's been the neocon position on religion for a long time: we don't believe it, but it's good for the masses.
In one breath, Sullivan worries that public faith is drifting from the political realm to the religious. In the next, he complains of those who treat religious groups as factions with which they may or may not be able to join for political purposes. But if the proper role of religion in the public sphere is to make "political arrangements" (a vexingly vague term in Sullivan's usage), then why would it be inappropriate for outsiders to encourage arrangements that suit them? Or, as Goldberg puts it, "Would Andrew support outsiders backing 'reform' in these faiths?"
The curiosity is that Sullivan — who believes that "it's best to leave religion out of" political questions of morality to maximize a freedom characterized by radical individualism — handles individuals strictly according to their roles within his political framework. Neocons "don't believe [in religion], but it's good for the masses." There are neocons, and there are religious people. Folks who fall within religious segments of the broader neocon category, as I probably do, will find Sullivan's analysis particularly discordant.
Because this separation is untenable beyond a very narrow range of argumentation, Sullivan must chase it across the boundary of religion, where it renders thus: The "central tenets" of religious groups involve faith in particular facts (e.g., that Jesus was the Messiah), but drawing social and political conclusions from those facts is "Evangelical fundamentalism and the creeping infallibilism of Wojtyla-Ratzinger." Apparently, it can be a matter of religious Truth that Jesus was the Word of God, but the implications of what He actually said must remain ever open for debate — within and outside of a particular "religious tradition."
Observers of modern society, generally, and Andrew Sullivan, specifically, understand that this distinction transfers all too easily to people's personal worldviews. What they believe is one thing; what they do is another. There are religious creeds, and there are personal preferences, and the former can only be said to be true to the extent that they do not infringe on the latter.
And here we reach the heart of the matter. Sullivan professes that his "first concern with any religious argument is: is it true? Not: is it useful?" What he does not explain is how one determines whether a religious argument is true or false. Long familiarity with his work leads me to think that his determination of Truth ultimately flows from his intuition and desires. Although I would join him in arguing that the faithful must incorporate these factors into their searches, I would suggest to Andrew Sullivan — as I would to the secular neocons whom he describes — that a religion's utility toward good ends is also evidence of its truth.
One point that Christians put forward in support of Jesus' divinity is His wisdom — that His teachings ring true, that His parables apply to our lives, that His instructions effect what He promises when followed. There is certianly space in this for ecumenism and "political arrangements"; others can act in accordance with the Truth of the Word without knowing (or admitting) that they do so.
There is also, we should all agree, room for the truth in politics. If a religion's prescriptions increase the measure of good in the world, then a rational society may very well be able to trace their functions in non-religious terms. Furthermore, a rational society founded in an ideal of pluralism can properly require advocates of one policy or another to do the work that such tracing entails. Only an irrational society would mark as invalid any policies that people of faith claim to be in accordance with God's will simply on the grounds that others disagree.
It's mildly embarrassing to admit it, but while heaving 4 x 8ft. sheets of three-quarter inch plywood up two ladders and out onto a newly framed roof, today, I was very much looking forward to relaxing with my Long Trail Blackberry Wheat beer and seeing what happened on Survivor following a dramatic upset at the end of last week's episode. From that perspective, I can't help but wonder how much of a political hit the President's handlers calculate into their decision to disrupt folks' relaxation routines absent an Earth-shaking announcement.
Some may see it as an indication of the political disengagement that plagues our country, but I could live without the last-minute preemption of my daily mindless time. Oh, well. Television off. Back to work. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll look into what the President actually said.
ADDENDUM:
Well, Survivor was merely postponed until 9:00, so although the sit-down didn't coincide with my beer, I guess it all worked out for the best. At least I got my work done.
ADDENDUM II:
As they so often do, the folks on Survivor acted in their own self-interest rather than in harmony with the plot thread that had ensnared me for a few weeks. Guess I don't have to watch anymore. If the President would like to have another 8:00 p.m. press conference next Thursday, he has my permission.
You know what I find to be the saddest thing? It is certainly saddening that Terri is dying in the way that she is, while her life could have continued filled with love, no matter how dimly she felt it, but that's not the saddest thing. Once all has been done, after all, Christians can return to our deepest beliefs, as are especially poignant today, and find comfort in the likelihood that her suffering will soon be exchanged for something immeasurably better than nothingness. More saddening is that we must continue on in the tempest that her ordeal helped to make so plain.
I mean absolutely no disrespect — quite the contrary — to the following bloggers, but in reading their posts in succession, it struck me how easily we make such matters all about our own preferred battles. The thought consolidated upon reading the following from Michele Catalano:
Who's behaving badly here? Who is making death threats to judges, throwing their kids out to the wolves to get arrested, sending horrible emails to people who disagree with them, calling us nazis and Hitlers and killers, claiming that we want to kill the disabled and meek and that only good Christians can understand what's at stake here? Or that if we disagree with you that means we must be ugly liberals at heart or you start attacking us in other ways, dragging people's sexuality into the fight?
Surely there are excesses even on the side of righteousness; that reality fits the pop storyline, as the word's nearly habitual combination with "self-" makes clear. Still, fairness requires that we take into account the side that's on the defensive, here. Would there be more obvious extremes on the other side if Governor Jeb Bush did in fact use his executive authority to flip the momentum? I don't know, but we have to add in, too, the possibility that it is an indication of a healthy society that those who believe an unjust killing is taking place are a bit more emphatic than those who believe that a questionable life is continuing.
But it's that last question from Michele that really highlights the quick sprint to be on the right side of the aggressor/victim line. Who's "dragging people's sexuality into the fight"? I apparently missed something that Michele has read, but I do hear an echo of Ol' Reliable Andrew Sullivan's approach:
What this case comes down to is the right of a spouse to determine his or her incapacitated spouse's fate in the absence of a living will. Civil marriage is indeed a unique and special legal bond. The social right believes this. But they only believe it when it suits them. If it can be used to marginalize and stigmatize gay couples, they are insistent. If it is an obstacle to their absolutist views on feeding tubes for human beings who have ceased to be able to feel, think or emote, then they discard it.
Writes Glenn Reynolds, in the post in which he links to Michele:
We've seen what the you're-the-enemy-if-you-don't-agree-with-me-on-everything approach has done for the left. It's disappointing to see people on the right imitating it.
Indeed it is, and I don't exempt myself from having had such thoughts and perhaps mildly (somewhere) having voiced them, but let's not pretend that only one faction of the right is thus infected. A post by John Cole comes to mind:
Sick bastards- defining losing your wife as a 'gain,' but all is fair in politics, right? And that is what this is- politics and symbolism on the right to life battlefield. I have said it before- this is jihad for these folks. They don't give two hoots in hell about Terri Schiavo- this is about abortion, religion, and most of all, about power and control. Their concept of morality is king, you see- your behavior in the bedroom, your choice in sexual partner, your desires about end of life decisions, abortion, even the medication you use to ease the pain when you are dying of terminal diseases- their religious text should have authority over you, and if all these 'small-government strict constructionists states right's advocates' have to attain that through government proxy, so be it. ...As I write this, the Supreme Court has ruled against the reactionaries, adding yet another legal defeat (if these guys were a basketball team, they would be the LA Clippers), but I believe they will remain undeterred. God is on their side, you know, and they know what is best for all of us.
Bill Quick is beginning discussion of ways to neutralize or leave behind his socio-religiously driven co-partisans. And, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, derailing the Republican coalition is a recurring threat among moderates/libertarians. Furthermore, if I may throw in a tangential tidbit: my previous post, which noted similarities between a particular historical inquiry and details in a particular movie, drew a barely related attack on my religious beliefs.
The saddest thing, then, is that this particular issue, the life of Terri Schiavo, which touches deeply in many ways, has touched such vitriolic lines in modern politics. I don't know, frankly, that any current events issue — win or lose — has ever left me with such a feeling of distaste, perhaps mostly because the causes are in every direction. (The fact that Rev. Donald Sensing has been implicated as he has proves my side's culpability.)
My father — who stands back a bit farther from issues, emotionally, than I do — assures me that the political scene has always been thus, and he may be correct. When it reaches the pitch that it has during the past week, however, it becomes difficult to stomach. The Schindlers have apparently resigned themselves to loss, and I imagine that a great many of us, who invested ourselves emotionally in this issue years ago, are in the process of doing the same. I hope those who've landed on the other side in recent days, weeks, and months will, before writing or speaking further, take into account our long investment.
And I pray that I'm not alone in my distaste. That few will manage to hide behind a belief that the fault lies entirely elsewhere. That, whatever our positions, we can recognize that something pernicious has entered our collective discussion on all sides. And that those who've had the misfortune of providing the names and faces that the rest of us have pinned to our tempers — Terri, the Schindlers, and (yes) even Michael Schiavo — will find peace, perhaps even recompense.
We all believe ourselves to be reasonable and on the side of right. May we learn from the turmoil now roiling toward the horizon that focusing too intently on the light that we perceive can sometimes disguise the darkness to which we hold it in contrast.
If this doesn't furrow your brow, well, it should:
"It was an unintended consequence of McCain-Feingold. Instead of going to the parties, rich people are putting money into these 527s in the dark of night," Lott told the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss.In other words, some of those rich people might be trying to throw out incumbents.
McCain is even more blatant about the incumbent-protection angle. As The Washington Times reported last week, "McCain said lawmakers should support the bill out of self-interest, because it would prevent a rich activist from trying to defeat an incumbent by directing money into a political race through a 527 organization."
"That should alarm every federally elected member of Congress," McCain said.
Indeed, it certainly does.
Subsequent to these catches, Ryan Sager raises an important point: grouping citizens under a "shadowy and devious" number — 527 — doesn't remove their guaranteed right to free speech. Now that all three branches of government have abandoned the Constitution in this respect, there's little incentive among our legislative rulers to correct their error.
Although Sager doesn't make this point, his closing hopes that a future Supreme Court will revisit the issue hint at a broader concern about that branch. In recent decades, SCOTUS has been better known for finding new rights in the Constitution. With its rubber stamping of "campaign finance reform," the court has effectively ignored a right.
The time may not be far off that American citizens have to reclaim their own government. Let's hope that it can be accomplished from within the system.
From blog comments on a panel discussion on another continent, Americans can read two accounts of the same moment, perhaps in such a way as to give us hope (however fleeting) of civil discourse and even partial agreement (or at least amiable disagreement) within our own borders. The first account comes from Jay Nordlinger, in the second installment of his journal from Davos:
[Rep. Barney] Frank is very gung-ho on the protection of Taiwan, and on basic rights for the Chinese. He makes no bones. And he won't let anyone get away with talk about "different styles of democracy." Democracy is democracy, he says, essentially — sure, there are variations, but there are common elements, too, and if you don't have those, you don't have something worthy of the name: democracy.I have noted this before, in my Davos jottings over the years: In this atmosphere, such Democrats as Sander Levin, Joe Biden, and Barney Frank can come off as John Foster Dulles.
Alyson Bailes, at one point, says that she is not worried about China or Iran, as some of the rest of us are. Oh? says Frank. About whom are you worried, then? She answers, "Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Israel." (At least she said Syria.) Really, says Frank — you're more worried about Israel than about Iran or China?
And then from the congressman himself:
... as I listen to criticisms of the U.S. from some others, the degree to which I support American policy in the broadest sense, and the values I believe we embody, becomes clear to me intellectually and emotionally.For example, when a Chinese representative essentially dismissed the notion that there are fundamental democratic precepts by which China's governance can be measured, and talked of an alternative form of democracy - apparently unlike any the world has ever known - I had to voice my complete skepticism and support for the western-type of democracy she denigrated.
Even more strikingly, when a British speaker expressed the idea that China and Iran were admirable countries as sources of regional stability, I had to ask her what countries she considered bad ones. When she responded with a list of negatively-rated nations consisting of Syria, Iraq and Israel, I was jolted by the gap that existed between me and someone whom I first saw as something of an ideological ally.
If only our representatives (in the general sense) around the world could bring back to all Americans the outside perspective — the experience that we've more in common with each other than internecine battles might lead us to believe. Although, from reading Nordlinger's other journals, I wonder whether Frank isn't unique among his own.
Still perplexed by the fact that folks now apparently think it indicates corruption for unabashed advocates of particular causes to simultaneously further their ends through writing and consulting, I'm merely going to offer the suggestion that writers, even pure bloggers, ought to be very careful about how much ground they put between themselves and the accused. First the details of the two latest incidents to spark the trend, as provided by Eric Boehlert of Salon:
... HHS had paid syndicated columnist and marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher $21,000 to write brochures and essays and to brief government employees on the president's marriage initiative. ...... [Michael] McManus, who could not be reached for comment, was paid approximately $10,000 for his work as a subcontractor to the Lewin Group, a health care consultancy hired by HHS to implement the Community Healthy Marriage Initiative, which encourages communities to combat divorce through education and counseling. McManus provided training during two-day conferences in Chattanooga, Tenn., and also made presentations at HHS-sponsored conferences.
We can argue about the appropriate degree of disclaimers that opinion writers — opinion writers — must make about consulting work, speaking gigs, and organizational picnics either within or appended to related columns. Kate O'Beirne thinks that, by disclosing her work, Gallagher "wouldn't have looked conflicted, she would have looked even more credentialed as a recognized expert on marriage." Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber think, in the words of the latter, that "failing to disclose you're being paid to push a 'product,' with taxpayer's money, is the problem, especially when readers value your opinion and 'independent' viewpoint."
Although the columns were not the "products" for which either Gallagher or McManus were paid, that's a worthwhile sentiment. But I encourage those who share Malkin and Barber's reaction to consider this aspect of the Salon piece very carefully:
Responding to the latest revelation, Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at HHS, announced Thursday that HHS would institute a new policy that forbids the agency from hiring any outside expert or consultant who has any working affiliation with the media. ..."We live in a complicated world and people wear many different hats," he says. "People who have expertise might also be writing columns. The line has become increasingly blurred between who's a member of the media and who is not. Thirty years ago if you were a columnist, then you were a full-time employee of a newspaper. Columnists today are different."
Those lines are indeed blurring. In fact, it is increasingly the case that one can be a "columnist" without actually writing a "column." A few controversies down the road, and experts who wish to be eligible for government contracts will be well advised to abstain from blogging.
That wouldn't represent a tremendous loss to society (yet), although it would surely diminish one of the most beneficially revolutionary aspects of the blogosphere. What it illustrates, however, is that, as with the new HHS policy, public experts are being corralled back behind their closed office doors. That's not a step toward the open contextualization of experts' and writers' work that has become increasingly desirable.
At least for we on the right, who've only recently begun to find ways around a mainstream media that has largely shut us out, unblurring those lines would be a step backwards. Folks such as Gallagher and McManus will still be able to take government jobs, they'll still be able to promote their causes, but when it comes to regularly reaching a mainstream audience, they'll have to be filtered through the ink of professional journalists.
That's not the only retrenchment lurking between the lines of the Salon piece:
The problem springs from the failure of both Gallagher and McManus to disclose their government payments when writing about the Bush proposals. But one HHS critic says another dynamic has led to the controversy, and a blurring of ethical and journalistic lines: Horn and HHS are hiring advocates -- not scholars -- from the pro-marriage movement. "They're ideological sympathizers who propagandize," says Tim Casey, attorney for Legal Momentum, a women's rights organization. He describes McManus as being a member of the "extreme religious right."
Cutting through various pretensions, the essential difference between experts who are "advocates" and experts who are "scholars" is that scholars remain "objective" nonparticipants, while advocates draw on what they've learned about important topics and work to apply it. As with journalism, exposing the deceit of "objectivity" has been one of the successes of the growing ethos that has — perhaps taken to an extreme — tripped up Gallagher and McManus.
Indeed, many of us have rightly argued that it is better to have our experts and our columnists completely open about what it is they advocate, and without regard to payments from the government, there has been absolutely no question about what that means in the cases of Gallagher and McManus. I happen to agree that somebody who has worked, for pay or gratis, for a group or on a policy ought to note as much when writing about that group or that policy.
But while conservatives argue at that specific level, everybody else is rushing right past it, as the Nashua Telegraph proves in an editorial to which Malkin links:
[Armstrong] Williams and Gallagher, if they prefer government service, could quit their jobs as commentator and columnists, and start up their own advocacy agency on behalf of federal programs.
In Gallagher's case, she's already such an advocate, and nobody who pays any attention can fail to know that. We all suffer — in my opinion — if we return to the day of the ostensible purity of the "independent commentator" and the "objective" scholar. So let's be careful about how much we concede in our rush to insist on footnotes.
ADDENDUM:
Marriage Debate Blog has an interesting roundup of commentary.
Joe Gandelman, linked on Instapundit, points to a Washington Post article, about reaction to the inaugural address and some response from the White House, and asks:
Did Lincoln's, JFK's, FDR's, Ronald Reagan's, Dwight Eisenhowers, Bill Clinton's advisors have to do this?
I'd wager that similar pieces could be found (albeit lacking this revolutionary Internet thing to take the spin and run with it), but I'll leave it to others to answer the historical question. In fact, I'll add my own question to willing researchers' list: Did Lincoln, JFK, FDR, Reagan, Eisenhower, and Clinton face a media environment in which one of the country's by-far most significant newspapers would actually print a sentence such as the following?
In the 21-minute speech, Bush mentioned neither Iraq nor terrorism but defined what he called a generations-long struggle to encourage democracy to make America safe from terrorist attack.
One hears the echo of that clamorous parsing whereby Bush was found to have somehow conveyed that attack from Iraq was "imminent" even as he argued that we shouldn't wait until attack was imminent. Now, apparently, that wily Texan can somehow fail to mention terrorism even as he defines a policy "to make America safe from terrorist attack."
I may be predisposed to side with the President, here, but it seems a bit harsh to decry "a failure of... clear communication of a message," in Gandelman's words, when advisors find it necessary to explain that statements do not mean the opposite of what they say.
Lane Core reports that "the president of the United States laughed & joked — all smiles! — while US soldiers were dying in battle overseas." Not only that, but the Commander in Chief prayed on behalf of the "struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization" (emphasis added).
Wait until the dour media and the ACLU get wind of this!
PROEM:
For a layout that you may find easier to read, click "Turn Light On" at the top of the left-hand column.
Responding (at least in part) to a question of mine that Jonah Goldberg conveyed in the Corner, another reader emailed him:
The stories on the FBI documents were front page news in every major paper. It is somewhat astounding to me that the folks at the Corner seem unaware that they exist.
Partial defense of my astounding unawareness can be found right at the beginnings of the first two articles to which the emailer links. One:
FBI Agents Complained of Prisoner Abuse, Records Say
* Documents obtained by ACLU show continued reports of mistreatment in Iraq and Cuba. ...WASHINGTON — FBI agents have lodged repeated complaints of physical and mental mistreatment of prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, saying in reports that military officials have placed lighted cigarettes in detainees' ears and humiliated Arab captives by wrapping Israeli flags around them, according to new documents released Monday.
The FBI records, which are among the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government, also include instances in which bureau officials said they were disgusted by military interrogators who pretended to be FBI agents as a "ruse" to glean intelligence from prisoners.
Two:
At least 10 current and former detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have lodged allegations of abuse similar to the incidents described by FBI agents in newly released documents, claims that were denied by the government but gained credibility with the reports from the agents, their attorneys say.
Jonah puts it perfectly: "I don't think folks at the Corner were unaware of such reports, just that anecdotes seem to be translated into data pretty easily." Anybody who's paid attention has seen the various news reports about detainee allegations, NGO indignation, and accusations–cum–turf battles. (Although, it was entirely possible to miss one or the other amid the flooded zone of torture-related Bush hunting.) My question was in response to this from Andrew Sullivan's blog:
Many innocent men and boys were raped, brutally beaten, crucified for hours (a more accurate term than put in "stress positions"), left in their own excrement, sodomized, electrocuted, had chemicals from fluorescent lights poured on them, forced to lie down on burning metal till they were unrecognizable from burns - all this in Iraq alone, at several prisons as well as Abu Ghraib. I spent a week reading all the official reports over Christmas for a forthcoming review essay.
Rather than sift through myriad exercises in spin scattered over many months in order to find the details to which Sullivan does not point, I thought I'd ask whether the well-read folks at the Corner knew of something recent and/or comprehensive. Let's recall that Sullivan had quite a reaction when the Abu Ghraib story was new, and that he placed it right at the beginning of his May 12 New Republic piece, "That's the Ticket: The Kerry-McCain Dream."
Given the various reasons for careful parsing, I was asking for an "official report" of the sort to which Rich Lowry linked:
Since the beginning of hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. military and security operations have apprehended about 50,000 individuals. From this number, about 300 allegations of abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo have arisen. As of mid-August 2004, 155 investigations into the allegations have been completed, resulting in 66 substantiated cases. Approximately one-third of these cases occurred at the point of capture or tactical collection point, frequently under uncertain, dangerous and violent circumstances.
It is not moral callousness to suggest that it makes a difference whether the anecdotes about deformation via hot metal are to be found among the 145 incomplete investigations, among the approximately 44 substantiated incidents that did not occur under extreme conditions, or in some other status category. This is especially true when the discussion is taking place in the context of a contentious confirmation battle, which is itself playing out under extreme political conditions.
I wish this additional information about the Rumsfeld's Armor Record controversy were surprising:
Q At the time of the question -- summarize this, now -- that unit that the kid was complaining about was mostly armored?GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked.
Q If he hadn't asked that question, would the up-armoring have been accomplished within 24 hours?
GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. This was already an existing program.
Simply stunning. Shouldn't exact numbers have been in the very first articles about the armor-question incident? I don't imagine it would have been too difficult to track them down, and that is, after all, what journalists are supposed to do. It's almost as if there's an agenda involved that supercedes the truth and the presentation of an accurate perspective.
via Instapundit)
Like Mark Levin, I'm unimpressed with Bill Kristol's Washington Post attack on Donald Rumsfeld:
Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It's performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has. President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn't want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term.Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld.
One gets the sense that he's got somebody already picked for the slot from which he would dislodge Donald Rumsfeld. Kristol is, after all, somewhat more than a mere pundit; he's a political player. It will be interesting to see who he believes would do a better job (assuming he feels it prudent to reveal the information).
John Derbyshire has posted two ten-reasons lists, one for Bush's reelection and one for Kerry's failure to be elected. I don't know how relevant this is, but the lists reminded me to post a thought that I had last night.
Because I hardly ever have time to sit in front of a television, these days, I've never watched the show American Dreams, which is set during the Vietnam era. Last night's episode, however, sucked me in. While the elder son — MIA and presumed by some of his family to be dead — limped his way through the jungles of Vietnam, his sister Meg accompanied her boyfriend to the local recruiting office to do some middle-of-the-night war protesting. To Meg's surprise, the boyfriend's pals began spreading gasoline around the place. After she'd stormed away, he threw a Molotov cocktail into the building.
The following day, Meg's uncle, a police officer, informed her that the boyfriend's pals' van was spotted at the scene, and that a snoozing janitor had been badly hurt in the fire. When confronted by Meg, the boyfriend lied about the extent of his involvement; when confronted by the uncle, he snidely brushed him off — the picture of malicious and recklessly superficial rebellion. Well, the thing of it was, throughout the scenes of this subplot, I kept thinking of John Kerry. (Here's a picture of Meg and the boyfriend; here's a picture of Kerry and John Lennon.)
Before the election, I read somewhere that the character of Jenny's abusive anti-war boyfriend in Forrest Gump was based on John Kerry (picture). Whether or not that's true (and I place no significant trust on its being so), it's certainly a connection that comes quickly to mind. Not so much based on character, because I know only Kerry's public persona of the time, but on the dress, the facial carriage, and the demeanor. Indeed, if the Forrest Gump character drew from Kerry at all, it was probably just the image, fleshed out with the author's own creative characterization, filling a necessary role in the plot.
However much some Americans like to reminisce about those times, I think all but the most jaded realize that there was a vicious dark side to the youth revolution. One need only see a picture of the young John Kerry for him to slip right into the script, fairly or not.
Anybody daydreaming about the world of high-profile political appointments ought to read Tony Blankley's take on the audacity that President Bush has shown in appointing people who actually support his vision:
On the day after Gonzales' nomination, an old Justice Department hand told me that they were going to "eat Gonzales alive."I know these people. They mean it. He better go over there with a battle-hardened Washington team. The only thing those senior 'crats respect is the cold-hearted exercise of brutal power by their political master. The battle at Justice will be similar to our battles in the Middle East. Any gestures of goodwill or cooperation by Gonzales will be seen as weakness and will have the same effect on the bureaucrats that blood has on the nostrils of a shark.
And please forgive this wordsmith his chuckles; I couldn't help but wonder whether the misspelling in the following paragraph is a sly effort to make a mildly vulgar metaphor somewhat dirtier:
Every entering secretary has a binary choice to make. Either turn over your manhood (or the female equivalent if the secretary is a woman) to the bureaucracy, in which case they will make you look good in Washington (so long as no one gets a peak at the vacancy in your nether parts); or prepare to be undercut by your own employees -- from the janitor to the senior civil servant in your building.
Michele Catalano is hosting a post-election limerick contest. Here's my entry:
Kerry gained fans through concession,
And learning the truth of depression
Let his stone visage crease —
Bet his bishop and priest
Both wish he'd concede at confession!
(So far, by the way, George is the poet to beat.)
At least in my liberal neck of the woods, there's a whole lot of talk about the electoral college and abolishment thereof, both on talk radio and by the water cooler, so to speak. If that indicates anything, I'd say, it's a complete bafflement among Democrats about what to blame: Bush won the popular vote, too.
I'm a bit astonished that the country's still this divided. At this moment, C-SPAN has Bush with 246 and Kerry with 196 and undeclared states as follows (leaving out Alaska [Bush] and Hawaii [Kerry]):
New Hampshire: Bush down 2%
Ohio: Bush up 3%
Michigan: Bush down 3%
Wisconsin: Bush down 1%
Minnesota: Bush down 7%
Iowa: Bush down 1%
New Mexico: Bush up 4%
Nevada: Bush down 1%
Washington: Bush down 5%
If counting were declared over now, Bush would win with 274 electoral college votes. But any one of these states could flip.
(Incidentally, I notice that C-SPAN called Cali before a single precinct was listed. At this moment, those 55 EC votes come down to a span of merely 7%, with only 14% of precincts reporting... ugh.)
As of this writing, the C-SPAN map has 97% of Florida precincts reporting, and Bush has a 5% lead. Why can't they call it?
I just voted; there was actually a line, which I thought odd, because my polling place is just a little out-of-the-way spot. (The line gave a few folks the opportunity to discuss loudly their reasons for hope that Kerry will win.) However, I remembered today that this is only my second time voting — and my first vote for President.
Blogging has made me feel as if I've been following politics for a long time, but it's an illusory sense. I registered to vote shortly after September 11, 2001. Can't help but wonder how many folks like me there are out there, who've spent the past three years planning to cast their first Presidential votes for Bush.
As Tim Cavanaugh points out in Reason, some liberals who looked likely to vote for Bush have had ample time to talk themselves out of doing so. Are such people representative? I'm not sure.
On my way home, I listened to talk host Dan Yorke on the radio, and he was making a big deal over the vote of one of his call screeners. Jeff Wade was undecided as late as yesterday. Almost exactly a year ago, Jeff came on the air during a morning-show discussion of same-sex marriage:
Kass's call-screener, a young guy named Jeff, came on the air and ranted about how he's sick of sitting there listening to "crazy" people quote from the Bible. "Just go away," he said. "Go live in Bibleland."
Well, with the ballot in hand, Jeff went for W. I won't even hazard a guess as to how common such votes will be, but my gut tells me that they'll number more than the libs-gone-limp whom Cavanaugh highlights. Add another layer: a member of my wife's family who is generally a reliable vote for the Democrats (tending to take the party-line option, as I recall) decided to stay home today because he didn't know for whom to vote.
I know these are just extremely limited anecdotes, but they are in Rhode Island. I guess we'll find out whether they echo in less solidly blue states.
It is increasingly clear that the election will have come and gone before I manage to find time to offer substantive commentary on the links that have been accumulating in my bookmarks. So, while the fever is high, I thought I'd just unload them all in one post.
The Command Post is going all out to define election coverage, blog-style.
You've surely seen it already, but Mark Steyn's piece predicting (banking on) a Bush victory is truly must-reading. (By the way, what's up with the "contains nuts" cartoon that accompanies it?)
As I noted on Into the Ether in the left-hand column, I recall reading somewhere that John Lennon, as radical as he was, often voted for the conservative candidate — or whichever would allow him keep more of his riches. I thought of that while reading Jay Nordlinger's continuing ponderation of the likelihood that some proportion of Kerry/Edwards-button wearers will actually be voting Bush/Cheney. Jonah Goldberg wondered something similar the other day; maybe people are just uncomfortable talking about their Republican intentions, even to anonymous pollsters. Jonah also reminds readers of the roar that never came from Howard Dean's legion of young voters. (Wouldn't it make your year, though, to catch Kerry in a similar primal scream to Dean's?)
On the lighter side, two more links that you've probably come across and should click if you haven't yet are the Daily Recycler's Bush v. Edwards hair-styling video and Frank J.'s illustrated argument for Bush.
The Providence Journal backs Bush! All that really matters is the War on Terror, and as Glenn Reynolds points out it's simply wrong to see the Bush administration as a failure and/or a potential Kerry administration as a likely success in this regard.
On the Bush side, Charles Krauthammer argues that U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq were the top two "most astonishing geopolitical transformation[s] of the last four years." Difficulties and errors are inevitable when you're trying to change the world for the better, because such a change isn't agreeable to those who profit from the pain of others.
On the Kerry side, Jeff Jacoby describes the sparkling mirror that is John Kerry's character.
I can't help but wonder what the conversation and the polls might be like, right now, had the Democrats put forward somebody like Gephardt or Lieberman. What they seem to have tried is to put forward a Howard Dean who could fit into Lieberman's rhetorical wardrobe. I don't think it's going to work.
I loved this AP headline a few days ago: "Bad News Dogs Bush As Election Nears." Gee, I hadn't noticed. Wonder why that is...
For a little media assistance, James Robbins suggests some good stories that are there for the taking in Iraq, specifically. I like the one about "the Iraqi contractor who brought his irrigation project 25-percent under budget and returned the unused money."
I agree with Lane Core; despite all hopes and prayers to the contrary, I'm not confident that a Democrat/Leftist hoard that has stoked its own flames to the heights that they've currently reached will be in a mood to wait out another presidential term when they lose:
Physical violence and outrageous lies: those are not the tactics of people who are confident they're going to win. Nor are they, I think, the tactics of people who are concerned that it's going to be a close race. They are the tactics of people who are pretty sure they're going to lose.And they are not, most importantly, the tactics of people who drop such tactics and go back to work or school when they have lost.
There's only a split-second hair's breadth of delusion between aiming a car at a politician and doing so without swerving at the last minute. It may be that electoral defeat will deflate the passions, but I tend to doubt it. Violence is more likely. Wild political attacks and unsubstantiated attempts to impeach President Bush would seem a safe bet. With so many people having hammered references to Nazis and the end of civilization into desperate, immediate rallying cries, they couldn't all just throw up their hands and go back to a low simmer.
ADDENDUM:
It seems to me this represents another warning against voting for Kerry in the hopes of changing the Democrats and their supporters. A victory will vindicate the anything-goes campaign strategy and will add a juicy reward for the years-long hatred high of the liberal rank and file. As seems usually to be the case, appeasement is not a long-term solution.
Be sure to check out Rhode Islander Carroll Andrew Morse's TCS response to Sullivan and Hitchens:
Sullivan and Hitchens are correct in their assertion that winning the Presidency will give John Kerry and the Democratic Party a renewed seriousness about dealing with the security of the United States. But they are mistaken in assuming that a renewed seriousness will automatically translate into the pursuit of victory over terrorism. The office of Presidency did not make Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter, leaders honestly concerned about the security of the United States, serious about winning the primary global conflict of their era. John Kerry is the heir to that tradition.
Hitchens may be another matter, but I still think Sullivan's argument is getting much more serious treatment than it deserves.
A couple of weekends ago, my wife, daughters, and I met with her brother's family, including two more children who never knew the 1900s, as well as two of my sister-in-law's friends to traverse a jack-o'-lantern trail in Newport. As we crossed the street to the entrance, whom should I spot heading our way but Patrick Kennedy. Almost to himself, he said, "Oh, little ones"; the utterance was followed by a momentary blank look, as if his brain was loading the script for dealing with toddlers.
In that moment, I looked toward my wife, and her expression asked, "You don't have to say anything, do you?" I smiled.
But when I turned back toward my district's representative in the United States Congress, he was gone. Apparently, he'd spotted my sister-in-law's friend's W. hat and decided it prudent to veer away.
In today's Impromptus, Jay Nordlinger shares some notes from his emailbox regarding political buttons, and while some allude to dirty looks, nobody has mentioned political accoutrements' use as congressman-bane. For some wry bloggers, of course, that might be a reason not to wear any.
ADDENDUM:
Just to highlight one of Mr. Nordlinger's shared emails (brackets his):
"Jay, I live in the East Bay suburbs of San Francisco — Walnut Creek, to be exact. The Kerry-Edwards clipboard patrol is often soliciting donations at the local supermarket. I ignore them, except this one time. A very young, very pretty college-coed type asked as I passed by, 'Will you help defeat Bush with a donation?' I replied, 'No thanks, but I am glad to see some younger citizens getting involved in politics.' Since I'm over 50, I felt it was an okay remark, without condescension. Her reply was quick and chilling: 'Bush's concentration camps will be filled with the Jews, then the blacks!' Her eyes had become dark flint and her expression was pure malevolence. For only the third time in my life, I was left utterly speechless. [The letter-writer does not say what the other two times were.] I shook my head and walked slowly to the car. What in G*d's name had been poured into that young lady's head? Did she even know what she was saying?"I'm voting (for Bush) like my life depends on it, and sending the NRA another donation."
I realize I'm being a little unfair to David Morrison by not emphasizing his subsequent comments about the death penalty. However, the following paragraph, from a post decrying the uneven religiosity of political candidates, struck me as pretty typical of this sort of equivalence:
Kerry: I believe abortion is wrong but I will press a pro-abortion agenda as President. Bush: As a society we have obligations to our poorest citizens and our senior citizens but I am not going to oppose a federal law that forbids the Medicare program from negotiating with drug companies for more affordable drug prices.
The Kerry line is clear: abortion is wrong, but not only won't I fight against it, I'll fight for it. The Bush line, on the other hand, dives into the mire of healthcare policy. Allow me to rephrase it in accordance with my considered conclusion about that particular matter:
As a society we have obligations to our poorest citizens and our senior citizens, so I am not going to oppose a federal law that forbids the Medicare program from making the pharmaceutical industry an all-or-nothing business and/or driving the prices so low that companies will exit the market.
As I understand, the law to which David refers still allows regional subdivisions of Medicare to negotiate as desired — just not as a single, government-created behemoth in the market.
Catholics, in particular, seem to have an underlying desire to see their moral sense as transcending politics, and one relatively simple way to enable that self-impression is to split the difference between any two parties or candidates. Unfortunately for that strategy, it will sometimes happen that one side is overwhelmingly preferable to the other. When that's the case, we might find it easier to insist on the existence of substantial disagreement, rather than wonder whether isolated incidents of conflict mean we've misjudged specific issues.
An inclination to equate clear and dire contradictions with intricate policy judgments ought to give us reason for pause.
ADDENDUM:
I didn't delve into the death penalty aspect, here, because it raises far more difficult questions, having to do with differences between various branches of Christianity as well as uncomfortable comparisons of magnitude and guilt with respect to death. Still, although I move further from support for the practice the more I consider it, some form of legalized death penalty still seems to me a matter of judgment — far more so than abortion, at any rate.
After all, when the second criminal rebukes the other that they had been "condemned justly, for the sentence [they] received corresponds to [their] crimes," Jesus did not contradict him.
The reference in this post's title is, of course, to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The impression of Kerry as the King and Edwards as the Duke only grows stronger with each passing week — a couple of old-pro con men taking advantage of the young and a frightened minority as they endeavor to fleece rich and poor alike out of their money. You've surely seen it, but the hefty rotten vegetable that Charles Krauthammer tossed onto the stage today is worth another look:
This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
Even if you're inclined to overlook any number of outrageous comments from the Democrats, don't we have, here, some indication of what sort of leaders — what sort of diplomats, what sort of executives — this pair would be once in office?
Sorry, folks. I take some comfort in a belief that my blog persona isn't such that readers consider commentary on events like these debates obligatory, but I still should confess that I've turned the television off. I watched the first half, but then my daughter distracted me, and when I returned fifteen minutes later, I just couldn't pick up the thread.
In part, I'm just plain busy; Wednesdays have bad nights for me. More importantly, though, the candidates have slipped into predictable mode. Kerry can't hide behind false hawkishness in a domestic debate. I guess it became an option not to watch when Kerry's answers began giving me flashbacks of Clinton's SOTUs.
Frankly, I hit the off button feeling optimistic. Political business as usual will benefit the President, I'd say, whether or not the average viewer can clear his or her head from all the cha-ching-cha-chings underlying Kerry's every word, whether or not they smirk at Kerry's strange insistence that increasing government involvement in healthcare isn't "government healthcare" because the government doesn't force you to take a cheaper program. (It's the magical health insurance program! The government just gives you more choices. Other programs won't do that, you see; mean companies insist that you not have choices because, well, because... did Kerry mention that he's going to cut taxes and increase the minimum wage?)
Jay Nordlinger reminds us of the stakes of this election:
This is how it could happen next month. Americans may vote for this tough-minded, articulate hawk we see in the debates — the guy who looks uncannily like Senator Kerry, the longtime senator from Massachusetts. And then, when he's in, that whole crowd will be in: Charlie Rangel, the Deaniacs, MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, all of them. It'll be their victory.Yikes.
Yikes is right.
Jonah Goldberg posted an email earlier today posing a question that, as Jonah mentions, one hears often from homosexuals with some conservative leanings on particular issues:
What's a gay conservative to do? See, I agree with republicans on things like low taxes, free market reform, privatization, smaller government, foreign policy, and the war on terror. Unfortunately. the party caters to a constituency that pretty much defines me as an abomination and takes every effort to cast the "homosexual agenda" as anti-family and anti-american. In election years, this rhetoric becomes even more hateful, and now there's an entire constitutional amendment trying to keep me in my place.
Upon taking a moment to notice that the emailer is pretty much defining religious/social conservatives as hateful and bigotted, it becomes clear that he wishes to play the guilted compassion card in such a way as to marginalize an opposing, but larger and more historical, Republican constituency. It's not an argument from principle; it's an argument from emotional pressure. Granted, that's an approach that has accumulated undue force in modern times, but how does one respond to the following except with a wry "boo hoo":
They make it crystal clear they don't care about my vote under any circumstances. It's like the republicans labor under the illusion that we will all eventually go away and not have to be dealt with.
That's an intriguing construction. The first sentence is flatly untrue; Republicans would welcome "the gay vote" — as long as it is based on shared principles rather than capitulation to demands that the party simply cannot afford politically. Then, contrasting with the woe-is-me appeal, the second sentence offers a veiled warning. That implicit refusal to compromise isn't the only thing that's veiled; note what also lies behind the gay rhetoric:
On the other hand, I disagree with almost every "non-social" policy (I agree on abortion, death penalty, gay rights, and school vouchers with the democrats; pretty much whatever the religous wing of the republicans is for, i oppose) on the democratic platform.
The parenthetical at first caught my attention because it made me muse at the complete social platform with which the "gay thing" seems so often aligned. But there seems to be a deeper current, here. The complaint is of gay conservatives' political homelessness, and the plea is to treat homosexuals as people — as people who matter enough to address. However — if I may disassociate a word from a cliché — the homosexuality appears to be a wedge to open the way for an entire worldview that is wholly incompatible with the religious conservative perspective. Since the orientation is taken as immutable, it follows that the opposing perspective must go.
This factor plays in multiple directions, but it very often seems that sexual matters have this effect. Encouraging a narrowly linear way of thinking that accords with strong urges, they allow fundamental shifts to pass as a matter of course, the gathering earthquake unnoticed beneath the rocking of the bed.
Well, the President was obviously much better today than he was in the last debate. What difference it'll make, I'm not inclined to guess. The folks on Fox News seemed to lean toward calling another tie. For my part, I continue to believe picking a winner on some sort of scoring scale misses the point. The question that I wish the pro pundits would begin to ask and answer is how much of the nonsense and maneuvering, obligatory and not, citizens are apt to see through.
Right at the beginning of the debate, I told my wife to look for a single question having to do with Senator Kerry's record. The President brought it up, to be sure, and there were a couple of questions that put Kerry on the (somewhat) defensive, but his record in government was apparently not an issue of concern.
The most egregious decision by the moderator — ABC's Charlie Gibson — was that final question: "Name three mistakes that you have made." It meant that John Kerry had the last word of the questioning phase specifically to talk about "three things" that the President had done wrong. What an opportunity! (I wonder if realizing how that looked inspired Gibson to ask Senator Kerry to offer his closing statement first.)
Depending on viewers' take on the whole debate, however, perhaps the question wasn't such a gift to Kerry. Even making every effort to correct for my partisanship, I have to say that Kerry's negativity seemed relentless throughout. Surely, some commentators will say that the dynamic that I'm noticing is that Kerry kept Bush on the defensive. But there were times when the questions were explicitly tailored for a positive answer — a "what will you do" — and rather than offer his position and then contrast it with the President's, he went on the attack and tagged some talk about "a plan" (again with the "plans") at the end of his response. We'll just have to wait and see how well that plays with the American people.
ADDENDUM:
By the way, just so's I can confirm what I thought my ears picked up: did John Kerry say that Americans have a right to have other Americans fund the murder of their preborn children?
ADDENDUM II:
Just a thought: if 2005 finds Republicans controlling the government again, Senator Chuck Hagel ought to suffer hugely. (Yes, I mean politically.)
Last week, Providence Journal blogger Sheila Lennon linked to a piece by novelist E.L. Doctorow that struck me as among the most despicable bits of commentary that I'd yet read in this election season. However, my time is limited, and I decided that it was too limited to spend much of it worrying about every instance of a member of the cultural élite trying to get in on the completely repercussion-free bandwagon of declared moral superiority to the President and his drooling followers.
Well, the equation between the importance of commenting and the brevity of life began to shift when I received Doctorow's rant as an email forwarded by a friend and fellow local writer. Although the act will not very likely be repercussion-free, I simply couldn't shrug off my responsibility to reply, and I did so as follows:
To all,I hesitate to reply to such things because, more often than not, the risk is of lost opportunity and (worse) of lost friendship. Still, on this one, I can't let it slide by without comment. As it happens, I thought to mention Doctorow's piece on my blog when the Providence Journal first put the novelist's words online, but neither time nor constitution allowed. Please, everybody, remove the following paragraph from all of Doctorow's flowing prose and consider its message:
"He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the thirty five million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the forty percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of he chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills — it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does not feel."
What a purely despicable thing to write. Is it among author/editor/professor Doctorow's talents to see into another man's soul? Is it in yours? If anything, I'm politically to George W. Bush's right; am I even worse in not being able to feel for the "million of us [ha!] who live in poverty"? Is it amazing for how many people in this country I do not feel? Am I spitting on the graves of the dead by intending to vote contrary to Rhode Island's laughable conformity and at least get W. on our state's tally?
You'll conduct yourselves toward me and toward the President however you're inclined. If you choose to follow the self-righteous chants of such as our friend E.L., then there's little that I can say to persuade you to see those of my inclinations as people rather than heartless warmongers and -profiteers. But were it not for the last-minute good graces of God, followed by 80-hour weeks of variegated work, my family — wife, husband, toddler, baby, and dog in a just-bought fixer-upper — would have lost all this month, and for MY children's sake, I'm voting for President Bush, not the truly horrid Anyone-But candidate.
I urge you to do the same. If you wish to discuss policies and principles, you'll find an eager disputant in me. But please do not further the fear mongering rampage of the Left. Please, also, those of you who know me, give my words the benefit of whatever good will I've managed to procure with you, and please know that I would greatly lament my opinions' making me beyond the bounds of conceivable friendship.
With deepest sincerity and hope,
Justin Katz
You know, there were moments during the VP debate when I thought to do the live-blogging thing, but, well, the exchanges moved along. Moreover, I'm more of a big-picture guy, and I didn't want to miss something important while commenting about something interesting but ultimately inconsequential.
Both candidates behaved as would be expected; both have the strengths and weakness that one would expect. Therefore, it's difficult to know how those who haven't followed the whole shebang so closely will react. The after-debate commentary — which, from what little I've watched — confirms that the debate didn't throw any curves into the politics of the campaign: the commentators were able to layer their own spin.
What all this means in practical terms, I'm not sure. Some of the folks on Fox News just said that the debate means almost nothing. If it means anything, and if it does anything, perhaps it managed to help catch some voters who are just beginning to tune in up in their understanding of the dynamics of the race. They either agree with the administration's approaches, or they don't. They either began to smirk after John Edwards's twentieth usage of the phrase "we have a plan," or they didn't.
ADDENDUM:
On the moderator, I agree with Michael Graham that Gwen Ifill — despite some stutters, some questions too catered to her own interests, and a couple of flubs (e.g., giving Edwards an extra round of response on one exchange) — really showed how the questions should be structured in a debate: putting each participant on the defensive.
Nonetheless, I can't help but wonder why Brit Hume isn't mediating one of these things. Wouldn't that be simply [pause] fair and balanced?
Debates... I don't know. You'll hear a whole lot of analysis, but if nothing else during the past four years, President Bush has helped me to learn one thing about myself, and it's something that is probably true for more people than not: I'm too eager for my guy to come out swinging, when knocking down the other guy relentlessly doesn't really win the room. The debater who lists the most unsubstantiated facts and/or who most effectively belittles his opponent may win the debate, but it just may be that the other guy is taking a broader view of the performance: not as a competition, but as a discrete, contrived event amid the rest of life.
When the President spends almost half of his allotted time answering a question about his opponent's character by complimenting him, and then the opponent tries to tiptoe around actually returning the favor without seeming like a jerk, people notice. Kerry's response was almost comical. Something like: "I, too, think very highly of... the President's daughters. And I have a great deal of respect for... the President's wife."
A politician's supporters always want the quick jibe, the killer line, but the reality is that the process of filling the presidency is less a structured intellectual match than a popularity contest. And it is this point of politics — of life — that President Bush has schooled me on again and again. In this debate, he came across as a good guy. He drew his opponent not into rants and raves, but into uncomfortable efforts to claim the good mantle without actually reciprocating goodness. He out-gooded him.
Which brings up a major disagreement that I have with the professional commentators. You'll hear repeatedly over the next hours and days that the President looked too tired and impatient, that Kerry knew how to tweek him in ways that stung, and that Bush let the sting show on his face. What I saw in those looks — and (more importantly) what drew the only comment from my non-political wife throughout the entire debate — was the difficulty of standing there and listening to the other guy say bent and spun things to put you down.
Bush's looks said to me that, with so much of importance going on in the world, he was almost pained that politics must always be politics. With a set of issues involving so many variables and life-and-death decisions, soundbite summaries of the opponent's missing context would be futile.
"That's not what a Commander in Chief does," he said over and over. He's "working hard" to strike the difficult balance — as crystallized in his comments about Vladamir Putin — between diplomacy and action. At one point he even said something to the effect of: "That's just not how the world works." You don't lead by giving those whom you would seek to lead a veto over actions that are necessary for you but perhaps less so for them.
From the other angle, you don't lead by insulting any players, large or small. One point that I, as a non-candidate, would have loved for Bush to make could have come when Kerry essentially said that diplomacy means giving reluctant parties what they want in order to get them onboard. The President could have noted that buying off allies isn't so easy when they've got billions of dollars invested in the government that you're planning to overthrow. Unfortunately, the guy who's actually in office, at the moment, must worry about how his comments in the debate will affect real-world diplomacy.
My bottom line review: Kerry did much better than I expected, particularly in asserting that his positions have been consistent. But Bush, no matter how many people say he "succeeded by not losing," won beyond the game.
(Oh, and watch for ads in the near future that draw on Kerry's performance in ways that might be unexpected. Bush also looked like a guy setting out for a particular task, and his confidence in finishing answers with time still available toward the end suggests that he thought the job done.)
ADDENDUM:
Here's Kerry's response on the character question, although the transcript doesn't convey the comedic timing of his pauses after "acknowledge" and "admiration":
KERRY: Well, first of all, I appreciate enormously the personal comments the president just made. And I share them with him. I think only if you're doing this -- and he's done it more than I have in terms of the presidency -- can you begin to get a sense of what it means to your families. And it's tough. And so I acknowledge that his daughters -- I've watched them.KERRY: I've chuckled a few times at some of their comments.
(LAUGHTER)
And...
BUSH: I'm trying to put a leash on them.
(LAUGHTER)
KERRY: Well, I know. I've learned not to do that.
(LAUGHTER)
And I have great respect and admiration for his wife. I think she's a terrific person...
BUSH: Thank you.
KERRY: ... and a great first lady
ADDENDUM II:
The RNC's already rolling with the first reaction to something that President Bush drew out of Kerry by being so cordial.
Over in the Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru wonders, while considering the truism that "blue states subsidize red ones," whether part of the reason is that "a significant military presence reddens an area," thus bringing both federal funds and Republican voters to it.
While Rhode Island is hardly representative for military states, we do have a rather significant Naval presence, particularly on the island on which I've spent most of my time as a citizen. (For example, National Review writer Mackubin Thomas Owens teaches at the Naval War College, which is attached to a large base.) Yet, ours is among the most liberal states in the nation, and even those employed by the military, with a material interest in the military bent of the country's leadership, often vote with their region rather than their occupation.
I'd say that military presence and redness represent one of those intricate relationships involving a web of causes and effects. Rugged, open land breeds a rugged individualism, and rural areas lend themselves to community activities, often involving religious organizations; in this day and age, both of these tendencies translate into Republican voters. More generally, the country attracts and forms a certain sort of worldview, part of which is the devotion to one's own group. Hubs for international communication, interaction, and travel seem about as far away as the other countries, themselves.
Simultaneously, rugged, open land is particularly attractive to several branches of the military. This is true, first, in a geographic sense: the landscape assists in military operations, for both training and strategy. It is true, second, demographically: likely recruits are nearby and will feel at home in rural settings.
Ramesh concentrates on political explanations, which certainly play a role, but I'm not sure the political, cultural, or anyotheral considerations can be teased out of the reality, here. Somehow — but not surprisingly — I find myself recalling something from his journal that Peter Robinson posted in the Corner back in June:
Journal entry, May 2001: Ever since my talk with Judge Clark, I've found, a picture keeps coming to mind. Ronald Reagan is on horseback, riding along the exposed ridge at the southwestern corner of his ranch. When he reaches the high point where the helicopter pad once stood, he reins in his mount. He gazes up at the enormous vault of the sky. He feels the rushing wind against his face. He looks east, following the shape of the land as it tumbles down and away, spreading to form the green bowl of the Santa Ynez Valley. Then he shifts in his saddle to look west, taking in the endless, dazzling ocean, the Channel Islands misty in the distance. And then he whispers, "Glory to God."
That's a pretty apt (if oblique) summary of the dynamic in question.
A juxtaposition of two sentences from statements of the two main candidates for President of the United States is instructive. Here's President Bush, from his radio address:
So we will not relent until the terrorists who plot murder against our people are found and dealt with.
And here's John Kerry, from his own radio address today:
And we are one America in our unbending determination to defend our country – to find and get the terrorists before they get us.
"Will not relent" versus "unbending determination"; the first implies offense, forward attack; the second implies standing stiff in defense and inherently raises the specter of "bending determination." "The terrorists who plot murder against our people" versus just "the terrorists [who seek] to get us."
But what's more interesting, at least from my perspective, is the difference that the speaker makes to the meaning of the language that he uses. Ordinarily, I'd suggest that "found and dealt with" is a weaker, less determined phrase than "find and get them before they get us." Not only is Bush's phrase in the passive voice, but "dealt with" is vague and indecisive. Pulling the microscope back a bit, however, confirms that the immediate context conforms with the context of each speaker's persona. Here's Bush:
The United States is determined to stay on the offensive, and to pursue the terrorists wherever they train, or sleep, or attempt to set down roots. We have conducted this campaign from the mountains of Afghanistan, to the heart of the Middle East, to the horn of Africa, to the islands of the Philippines, to hidden cells within our own country.More than three-quarters of al Qaeda's key members and associates have been detained or killed. We know that there is still a danger to America. So we will not relent until the terrorists who plot murder against our people are found and dealt with.
Staying on the "offensive." The reference to where the terrorists "sleep" evokes images of them trembling in bed. "Roots" are for ripping out. And of course, the first sentence of the paragraph that ends with "dealth with" has the word "killed." Now, here's Kerry:
I know that for those who lost loved ones that day, the past three years have been almost unbearable. Their courage and faith have been tested in a way they never imagined. But day after day, they have held on. And day after day, they and we have found hope and comfort and strength by the quiet grace of God.We are one America in our prayers for those who were taken from us on September 11th and for their families. And we are one America in our unbending determination to defend our country — to find and get the terrorists before they get us.
Loss, pain, holding on through "quiet grace." Courage is the daily struggle to go on living. Bush is on the offensive; Kerry is determined to play defense, separating the aggressive method of that defense with an em-dash — a tagged-on subordinate clause. Note, too, whom Kerry disguises in the passive voice: whoever it was who took our loved ones away.
To Bush, the terrorists are an active enemy, requiring an active response. From the above two paragraphs and his overall image, we can tell that we — the United States — are going to pursue those who would murder us as we go about our lives wherever it might be that they slither to hide. Against that background, his use of the passive voice is a discreet turn of phrase, a sly smile reassuring us that we can trust in what's going on behind the necessarily vague public statement. "Don't you worry. They're, ahem, being dealt with."
To Kerry, the United States is acted upon passively, and given the above two paragraphs and his overall image, we have ample reason to fear that his leadership would act passively upon those faceless actors.
I'm truly sorry not to have been able to follow the anti-Bush National Guard memo-forgery scandal as it unfolded throughout the day. Such are blogs that a highly visible mainstream media report is minutely proven (in my opinion) to include forged documents before the average man on the street had even heard the reports. (If pro newsies stay true to form, the story will run a bit longer in the mainstream before petering out without correction.)
You've probably seen the debunking all over the place, but I'll provide a few good places to start, if you haven't. I came across the story in the Corner (up from here). There, Jonah Goldberg links to Powerline's thorough coverage. An ill Glenn Reynolds has a roundup, and for the truth seared — seared — with humor, see Scrappleface.
Amazingly, although I've come to the pile-on late, I've found a point that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. Powerline notes a comparison of the Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's actual signature with one from one of the documents.
What's striking about this is that I had intended to mention that the two Killian signatures on the (probable) forgeries don't match, either (even accounting for the fact that one is just initials). Here's the full signature from the May 4, 1972 memo that CBS has on its Web site (PDF), followed by the initialed signature from the August 1, 1972 memo from the same set (PDF), followed by Lt. Col. Killian's signature on Bush's discharge papers (PDF):
Although I would tentatively suggest that the second one is a forgery of the first — Doesn't the "J" have the same wobbly, too-careful look as "dad's" signature on that third grade test that you failed and had to have signed? — what they have in common compared with the actual Killian signature is perhaps more noteworthy.
Note the delicacy of the "K," in the first two images, with the right-hand line starting with an inward hook at the top, curving toward the middle and then bouncing back into a downward curve. Although the two are visibly different, they are both entirely different from the sharp, barely curved lines — with an extra pen stroke for the bottom leg — in the actual signature. Consider also the utter lack of a bottom loop on Killian's actual, angular "J."
Not knowing much about typical office structures in the military, I don't know whether Lt. Col. Killian would have had a secretary whom he might have had sign his memos. (Although that might offer some justification for his using his "sloppy version" on somebody's discharge papers, while reserving his elegant signature for quick notes.) Even if he did, however, have such assistance, we've got three signatures that don't match, not just two.
ADDENDUM:
Do you suppose there's at least one each of a Kerry ally and a CBS employee compulsively checking the blogosphere today wondering just how much we'll manage to observe and dig up?
ADDENDUM II:
An expert whom Stephen Hayes cites for a Weekly Standard piece on the subject offers an alternate explanation:
So can we say with absolute certainty that the documents were forged? Not yet. Xavier University's Polt, in an email, offers two possible scenarios. "Either these are later transcriptions of earlier documents (which may have been handwritten or typed on a typewriter), or they are crude and amazingly foolish forgeries. I'm a Kerry supporter myself, but I won't let that cloud my objective judgment: I'm 99% sure that these documents were not produced in the early 1970s."
That might explain why the second signature above — which is from the most damaging of the forged memos — looks like a forgery of a forgery: the first signature being from a transcription, and the second attempting to copy it. But that's about it.
Having not read the relevant column, I don't really have anything substantive to say about a letter to the Providence Journal lambasting one of its regular opinion writers. But I just love the name of the group to which Edward Brennan, of Cranston, makes reference therein: the Sakonnet Peace Alliance.
I'm beginning to think that Susan Estrich is a very well placed, long left fallow mole for the Republicans:
Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up? (Bush's Texas record has been sealed. Now why would that be? Who seals a perfect driving record?)After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment. Could Dick Cheney get a license to drive a school bus with his record of drunken driving? (I can see the ad now.) A job at a nuclear power plant? Is any alcoholic ever really cured? So why put him in the most stressful job in the world, with a war going south, a thousand Americans already dead and control of weapons capable of destroying the world at his fingertips.
It has been said that in the worst of times, Kissinger gave orders to the military not to obey Nixon if he ordered a first strike. What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?
Go for it! I can't wait to see the commercials! And then I can't wait to see President Bush convince a few more million (or tens of million) people of what is already obvious to anybody paying attention: that the Republican Party is now the proper home for compassionate people who believe in renewal and forgiveness and who abhor the rabid victimizer. As Lane Core has said (CCCLXVI times), the Democrats are in self-destruct mode.
ADDENDUM:
Incidentally, Lane's mention of Dick Cheney's five deferments from enlistment during Vietnam brings to mind a point that I haven't seen anybody make. (What that says about the merits of the suggestion, I'll leave for others to decide.)
A while back, I bit my lip through a brief session of some liberal writer friends' mocking Dick Cheney's health (mostly passing along fifth-person knowledge of how closely to death Cheney lives each day). Well, perhaps that's why even those who might be inclined to think his draft avoidance 30 years ago to be proof of hypocrisy won't get incensed about the vice president's actions as a younger man: because it's impossible to envision him as a younger man.
Clinton still looks young (and even more so in the early '90s). It's easy to picture him as a strapping youth, dodging Uncle Sam, though he was more than fit to enlist. Cheney, not so much. However inaccurate that impression of Cheney as a young man might be, I think it still plays a role.
ADDENDUM II:
Take a moment, too, to consider Lane's discovery that Propaganda 101 was not wasted on the graphic designers over at Time magazine.
Earl Appleby has continued his convention coverage with daily posts related to the Republican national convention. Day 1 focused on the official convention bloggers, day 2 shifted toward the Catholic blogging world, and day 3 turns to face the DMC (dominant media culture).
Earl also has a post about the comments from Vice President Cheney regarding same-sex marriage. To be honest, I think the most concrete thing that can be said about those comments is that they've provided yet more evidence of news media bias. For example, the AP piece in the Boston Globe to which Earl links, "Cheney says he, Bush, at odds over same-sex marriage: Wants issue left up to each state rather than a new amendment," clearly plays up and exaggerates the explicitness of any disagreement. It needn't even be deliberate partisanship; for a class of people who believe that opposition to same-sex marriage is just veiled support for locking up homosexuals, a direct statement that, in the VP's words, people "ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to" does sound like a contradiction.
As the White House transcript shows, Cheney was at best ambiguous about where his opinion ends and the President's begins. Peculiarly, that transcript ends at about the most crucial part, but CNN provides the missing text:
Most states have addressed this. There is on the books the federal statute, Defensive Marriage Act passed in 1996. To date, it has not been successfully challenged in the courts and it may be sufficient to resolve the issue. But at this point my own preference is as I've stated but the president makes basic policy for this administration, and he's made it clear that he does, in fact, support a constitutional amendment on this issue.
Reading the preceding points, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a confident answer about what Cheney's specific policy "preference" would be. I, for one, have argued that the Federal Marriage Amendment is the best bet to grant the states — meaning their voters and elected representatives — the most room to maneuver. A particular stumble on Cheney's part — "And I don't think -- well, so far [the FMA] hasn't had the votes to pass." — is interesting, too.
Many people see Dick Cheney as a consummate politician, so I wouldn't discard the possibility that his spiel, which managed at the same time to illustrate a thorough knowledge of where the issue stands and to offer naught but innuendo for predictions and preferences, was designed to give some not-quite-lost gay Republican voters a tiny bit more room to come back into the fold.
That doesn't mean that we who oppose same-sex marriage oughtn't keep an eye on the VP. It could be that he's fallen victim to the principle that Ben Shapiro terms "blood is thicker than morality." Given his social class, it wouldn't surprise me if Dick Cheney actually did support same-sex marriage. Given his secure adherence to principles, it also wouldn't surprise me if he were the type of man who could tell his homosexual daughter that his love and support for her does not extend the support for the redefinition of a bedrock institution.
If it weren't for the war against Islamofascism,* this sort of stuff would keep me home in November:
President Bush's campaign asked a court Wednesday to force the Federal Election Commission to act on its complaints against anti-Bush groups spending millions of dollars in the presidential race, arguing that the FEC is failing to do its job.In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the campaign argued that the FEC is taking too long to address what the campaign calls illegal spending of corporate, union and big individual donations to influence the presidential race. Its lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction that would force the commission to act on its March complaint within 30 days. After that, the campaign could sue to block the groups' activities through court action rather than relying on the FEC.
I'm sure it's purely a political consideration — taking the opening that circumstances and the opponent have provided — but that doesn't mean it's right.
* ... and abortion and same-sex marriage and tax cuts and... alright, alright, I'm just griping about the FEC suit. That doesn't change the sorry state of affairs emerging, in which neither party cares to take up the obvious political winner of First Amendment rights and no branch of government will defend them. The nation will have to be far less polarized on major issues before the problem can be remedied, I suspect. Hopefully it won't come too late, with polarization defused by dictatorial command.
Honestly, I might have missed it, but I don't recall seeing a similar introduction for a piece about the Democrats' convention as to Scott MacKay's piece about the Republican one:
Forrester Adams went to Ground Zero yesterday afternoon for the first time. He left shaken, as does almost everyone who views the ghastly concrete scar in lower Manhattan and remembers the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001."At first I felt quiet and somber and all," said Adams, of Columbia, S.C., as he thought about the horrors that claimed the lives of 3,000 [people] when hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center towers. "Then I really started feeling ticked off, defiant.
"I hope they build it back bigger than it was before," said Adams. "I feel we need to make a statement. I think that is so important, to show that these people can't break our spirit."
Adams is voting for President Bush.
Minutes later, Susan Brennan of Stony Brook, N.Y., on nearby Long Island, walked away from Ground Zero. She saw the same barren construction site, the same cross of rusted steel girders, experienced the same eerie silence in the middle of one of the world's noiseiest cities. She remembered the televised images of the twin towers engulfed in smoke and flame.
Brennan is voting for John Kerry.
"I feel much less safe now than after 9/11 ," said Brennan, adding she had purposely stayed away from the scene until yesterday. "We are just creating more terrorists every day with this war in Iraq. Bush is a madman . . . he is just so belligerent."
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, the long shadow of the Sept. 11 attacks hangs over the confab and the 2004 presidential election. As go the people walking away from the site in yesterday's scorching New York heat, so goes the nation's voters.
One would think that long shadow would reach the liberal, indecisive, and relatively dovish John Kerry, as well.
I'm a little slow to note it, but Carol Andrew Morse's piece about the "gated community" approach to foreign policy that the Democrats revealed at their convention is worth a read:
Perhaps the plan was to make the Presidential nominee appear strong by allowing him to be the one to articulate a plan for the war on terrorism beyond America's borders. If that was the plan, John Kerry failed to deliver. Like [Hillary] Clinton, Kerry talked of adding troops. He went further, acknowledging that he would use force in response to an attack, and saying that the elements of so-called "soft power" would be deployed outside of the fortress walls. ...In this vision of a world divided, the keepers of Fortress America regard meaningful democracy as an absolute necessity for themselves. They understand that their democracy is at the root of their prosperity. At the same time, they dismiss democracy as an unnecessary luxury for those living outside of the fortress, cutting the outsiders off from the prosperity that democracy provides. They believe that the individuals outside the fortress should be satisfied with mere stability -- and like it.
The vision that Andrew describes brings to mind an image of the future that Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray suggested in their much-vilified tome, The Bell Curve. The authors warned of a world in which an intellectual elite, insulated in standing and potential through policies that refused to honestly address factors (such as IQ) affecting economic status, had retreated to gated communities, while everybody else was effectively shuffled into cities for the sake of efficiently handling them as wards of the state (handing out healthcare services, for example). Because the foreseen underclass would consist largely of minorities, reaction to the book illustrates how a statement
