Obama's 50 State Strategy

Obama is planning to campaign in all fifty states. With the shake-up we're seeing of the electoral map, that's sensible in a number of ways.

But whatever the ultimate electoral vote, I hope that it results in a significant win in the popular vote for Obama. That is, if he inspires voters to come out in "red states" that still end up going for McCain, and McCain pulls off a win, I hope that we see an overall 60+% of the vote going to Obama. That's not because I'm trying to have the electoral college eliminated. It's because, win or lose, a significant lead in the popular vote could put a permanent end to the tired line that this nation "isn't ready for a black President".

Hold On A Second There, Fred....

Fred Hiatt, apparenlty being unable to construct an honest defense of his own support for the Iraq war or his paper's editorializing in favor of the war, gives us a scathing attack on... bumper stickers.

Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning.

He say's it's only the beginning, but for him it's also the end - he provides no further analysis of the anti-war movement, and pretends that if it cannot be proved that Bush intentionally lied or that he had absolutely no intelligence to back up even his most outlandish claim, his case for war must be seen as fully supported by the available evidence.

In choosing not to look past the "beginning" reflected in a bumper sticker slogan, Hiatt personifies the type of dishonesty we're discussing. Focusing on the most extreme case, representing it as typical, and failing to mention overwhelming contrary data? Some people, quite reasonably, would deem that "lying by omission".

After introducing Rockefeller's conclusion,

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," [Rockefeller] said.

Hyatt proceeds to pretend that Rockefeller's own report doesn't support his own description of his own findings. From Hyatt's self-serving synopsis - and yes, his editorial is at least as much about salvaging his own reputation as it is about Bush's - you might think that Rockefeller's report found support in the intelligence for Bush's claims about an Iraq-al-Qaeda partnership, Iraq's supposedly having trained al-Qaeda fighters, or secret meetings between Iraqi intelligence and Muhammad Atta. You might think that the report found that there was support for the Bush Administration's representations about Iraq's chemical weapons production capacity, or underground manufacturing plants. You might believe that the report substantiated Bush's insinuations about an easy, cheap post-war period. To the contrary, the report found that Bush's representations were either unsupported by the available intelligence or did not reflect the uncertainty of the intelligence. And what of the suggestion that Saddam Hussein was prepared to hand WMD's over to terrorists? That was contradicted by the available intelligence. (But supported, contradicted, what's the difference, right?) The report did not explore the work of Bush's White House Iraq Group, which was devoted to spinning intelligence and propagandizing in favor of war.

This degree of deception goes well beyond what Hyatt excuses as speaking "with too much certainty" or failing "to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq". Anybody who paid the slightest bit of attention to the build-up of the war could easily see the Bush Administration cherry-picking intelligence in favor of a war that it wanted to launch, whatever the facts or intelligence. They directly attacked anybody who questioned their spin, and dispatched a slate of retired generals to propagandize in favor of war.

Hyatt wants us to pity Bush, whom he paints as having had to decide "when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security". The problem is, that's not what Bush did, and Hyatt knows it. Bush didn't weigh the intelligence to decide what response to make - he decided what he was going to do, disregarded anything that did not weigh in favor of war on Iraq, stymied efforts to complete weapons inspections and get better evidence, and employed scorched earth tactics against many who dared oppose him.

This was not a contest of good intelligence versus bad - the good intelligence never had a chance. This was a contest of good judgment versus bad, and at the end of the day Hyatt's finger-pointing at the intelligence community cannot overcome the fact that neither he nor President Bush showed good judgment on Iraq.

The Problem Isn't So Much When It Was Said....

Robert Novak is upset that John McCain hasn't finished the process of flip-flopping on every issue he has ever championed. Conflating the political desires of all conservative factions into one, Novak writes,

McCain clinched the nomination, he has not satisfied conservatives opposed to his positions on global warming, campaign finance reform, immigration, domestic oil drilling and how to ban same-sex marriages.

Novak also suggests that McCain has been unfair to John Hagee, you know, by holding him accountable for his words.

Founder and pastor of the Cornerstone megachurch in San Antonio, Hagee endorsed McCain at a joint news conference Feb. 27. William Donahue, president of the Catholic League, immediately asked whether McCain agreed with Hagee's description of Catholicism as a "Godless theology." McCain started backing away, asserting that his courtship of the pastor was "probably" a mistake.

Donahue, accustomed to no remorse by Catholic-bashers, was surprised when Hagee apologized in writing and then engaged him in a warm private meeting at Catholic League offices in New York. But Obama supporters seeking the McCain equivalent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were not done. The Huffington Post featured a decade-old video of Hagee asserting that Adolf Hitler was God's "hunter," who forced Jews to create the state of Israel as their natural home.

It was a decade old? How inexcusable. As should be obvious to any adherent of Novak, it's only fair to go back seven years when dredging up videos of pastors saying inflammatory things. Besides, Wright used the active voice rather than the more acceptable passive voice. (What sort of minister uses the active voice, anyway?)

For people who aren't Novak, and thus don't apply the bright line "seven years of video clips" rules to radical statements, the question might be, "Does he still believe what he said?" There's every indication that both Wright and Hagee stick by their words. Some people attempt to defend Hagee by suggesting that there are extremist Jewish leaders who make similar arguments. Others point to his related statements, suggesting that the anti-Christ will be a gay man and, like Hitler, of Jewish heritage, and question how far we are supposed to go in rationalizing away Hagee's injection of Jewish heritage into the most contemptible people of human experience. (You don't get more contemptible than the anti-Christ, do you?) That recording is only four years old? I guess Novak's rules for the use of audio clips are different than his rules for use of video clips.

Actually, Hagee was a founder of Christians United for Israel and the first non-Jew named "humanitarian of the year" by the San Antonio B'nai B'rith. Donahue, his former adversary, called Hagee "the strongest Christian defender of Israel I have ever met." But McCain, who held his fire when reacting to Hagee's anti-Catholic remarks, had no patience with less clear evidence of anti-Semitism.

Here's the thing. Some people have a problem with an evangelical leader who introduces elements of anti-Semitism into his theology, and endorses an ultimate theory that Israel must be defended not for the Jews, but as part of a Biblical "end of days" prophecy under which all of the world's Jews will gather in Israel to either convert to Christianity or perish in a Sea of Fire. In the eyes of some, even if you form a group called "Christians United for Israel", there's cause for concern that this is exclusively an evangelical Christian vision of Israel, not one that actually favors Jews - a people you describe as "not spiritually alive".

A prominent Christian ally of McCain's understands his reluctance to make a pilgrimage to Colorado Springs with no assurance that Dobson would endorse him or even restrain his criticism of him. But this evangelical sees the treatment of Hagee as cold calculation designed to ensure that McCain does not lose the Jeremiah Wright issue.

Let me get this straight. An anonymous, but "prominent" evangelical backer of McCain suggests what seems obvious - that McCain is walking away from Hagee and Parsley in order to preserve his ability to attack Obama on Rev. Wright? But his objection is to McCain's walking away, not to his original cynical embrace of two leaders who, only a few years ago, McCain might have decried as agents of intolerance? WWJD, indeed....

Mastering Your Demons

Ah, the good old days, which David Brooks told us were all about wrestling with sin:

The concept of maturity has undergone several mutations over the course of American history. In Lincoln’s day, to achieve maturity was to succeed in the conquest of the self. Human beings were born with sin, infected with dark passions and satanic temptations. The transition to adulthood consisted of achieving mastery over them.

You can read commencement addresses from the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the speakers would talk about the beast within and the need for iron character to subdue it. Schoolhouse readers emphasized self-discipline. The whole character-building model was sin-centric

That probably helps explain why, as the sin-centric model of maturity faded from public consciousness, the middle class stagnated and died, American industry failed, the economy collapsed, and... Oh, wait. I got that backwards. But then, this is David Brooks lecturing me about "satanic temptations" - It's unfair of me to pretend that he is being sincere.

Brooks tells us of Lincoln's inner struggle:

In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln seems to have at least vaguely thought of suicide. His friend Joshua Speed found him one day thrashing about in his room. “Lincoln went Crazy,” Speed wrote. “I had to remove razors from his room — take away all Knives and other such dangerous things — it was terrible.”

Lincoln was taking three mercury pills a day, the remedy in those days for people who either suffered from syphilis or feared contracting it. “Lincoln could not eat or sleep,” Daniel Mark Epstein writes in his new book, “The Lincolns.” “He appeared at the statehouse irregularly, hollow-eyed, unshaven, emaciated — an object of pity to his friends and of derision to others.”

Later, Lincoln wrote of that period with shame, saying that he had lost the “gem of my character.” He would withdraw morosely from the world into a sort of catatonic state. Early in his marriage, Epstein writes, “Lincoln had night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night trembling, talking gibberish.”

He would, of course, climb out of it. He would come to terms with his weaknesses, control his passions and achieve what we now call maturity.

Climbing out of that type of madness may have more to do with somebody saying, "Mr. Lincoln, perhaps you should stop taking mercury pills" than it did with clobbering back an inner beast. I'm not sure if David Brooks is aware of this, but mercury is poisonous and mercury poisoning leads to a cluster of symptoms evocative of Lincoln's melancholy - depression, anxiety, insomnia, intestinal problems, tremors, fatigue, fits of anger, loss of weight.... (The expression, "mad as a hatter"? It's about mercury poisoning.)

Let's also be honest here, Brooks did not pick Lincoln for his example because he desires a President who has struggled with and apparently overcome significant mental illness and suicidal impulses. He picked Lincoln because he's Lincoln, as part of his effort to advance the prospects of the so-called "Party of Lincoln." If a Democratic presidential candidate had in his background the type of psychological episode Brooks identifies in Lincoln, Brooks would happily join other right-wing columnists in declaring him unfit to govern. He would not be suggesting that it is somehow a "good thing" that the candidate called his wife "mother". Brooks focuses on ravages of the soul, not ravages of the body, because otherwise he would have to bring up the disease-related struggles of FDR and JFK.

There's also something utterly dishonest in this type of column, that has nothing to do with Brooks' politics. Columns like this are produced on a regular basis, declaring paths to maturity that would somehow make our society better.

In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.

The greedy, shiftless, ungiving baby boomers, finally being replaced by "young people" devoted to "service"? How nice. But why is it that these calls - mandatory military service, mandatory national service, struggles with inner demons, or even something as soft as a putting "service at the center of young adulthood" - almost always come from people who have never lifted a finger to do the very things they demand of others? And while it's nice for Brooks to part from the standard by claiming that young people now value public service, it should be remembered both that (as usual) this appears to be something Brooks made up on the fly, and also that his primary purpose in this piece is to undermine a presidential candidate who happens to be a boomer.

The column also advances an utter fantasy, that the public at large knew of Lincoln's troubles and voted for him anyway - or perhaps even in larger numbers - due to his successful battle. As if Lincoln ran campaign ads, "I used to take lots of mercury pills and wanted to kill myself, but I'm stronger for the experience. Vote Lincoln." There may well be politicians on the national stage who have struggled with mental illness, and one day we may learn of it through their biographers, but it's not going to be a centerpiece of their campaigns. Brooks' preferred candidate, John McCain, has made a point of contending that, despite six years as a P.O.W., he returned home in exactly the same state of (perfect) psychological health as the day he left. Anger problem? That's a fiction created by his opponents.

Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.

Because Brooks' entire column does just that, and doesn't invite candidates to lead him by using the sugar of his own fantasies? Did you see how Brooks elided from history the G.W. Bush narrative that he did engage in a struggle of the soul, beat back the demon rum, found God, and became a greater man for his struggle? It's only as Bush is about to leave center stage that Brooks has noticed that Bush in fact remained intellectually incurious¹ and gripped by narcissism?

All this suggests a maxim for us voters: Don’t only look to see which candidate has the most talent. Look for the one most emotionally gripped by his own failings.

Um, yeah. Because you wouldn't want to close with the impression that the whole column is a partisan jab at Obama, this generation's presidential candidate from Illinois.... Let's all vote for the candidate with the least talent!
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1. Brooks actually describes G.W. Bush as displaying "intellectual insecurity". I don't mean to misrepresent Brooks by instead referencing incuriosity, but I have yet to see any evidence that Bush is even slightly consciously insecure about his intellect.

Turn Off Your IQ At The Door

Why did Hillary Clinton lose the primary? According to Rep. Heather Wilson (R, NM), it's because she was overwhelmed by the formidable liberalness of the victor... Dennis Kucinich?

He Knows Better, But....

Ari Fleischer whines,

Among the allegations in former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's book is his assertion that the national press corps was "too deferential to the White House" and that the media were "complicit enablers" of President Bush's agenda. The press, he charges, failed to aggressively question the rationale for war. As someone whose duty it was to assume the position of a human piñata every day in the briefing room, I only wish Scott were right.

Fleischer goes on to share many examples of what he contends were tough questions, but fails to share his answers to those questions. As he knows, his answers usually ranged from evasions to outright falsehoods. The criticism is not that no tough questions were never asked - the criticism arises from the complacency of the press in accepting prevarication and deception from the White House and its mouthpieces.

The Charmas Friedhammer Gas Tax

For years, Thomas Friedman has endorsed substantial increases in the gax tax. Recently he took a different tack, suggesting a tax to the level of $4/gallon, something that is perhaps best described as a "windfall profits protection tax" or a "price control". Today, Charles Krauthammer claims, "That's my idea":

For 25 years and with utter futility (starting with "The Oil-Bust Panic," the New Republic, February 1983), I have been advocating the cure: a U.S. energy tax as a way to curtail consumption and keep the money at home. On this page in May 2004 (and again in November 2005), I called for "the government - through a tax - to establish a new floor for gasoline," by fully taxing any drop in price below a certain benchmark. The point was to suppress demand and to keep the savings (from any subsequent world price drop) at home in the U.S. Treasury rather than going abroad. At the time, oil was $41 a barrel. It is now $123.

Sure, because (as with Friedman's version) no players in the market would notice that they could simply increase their profits to the amount of the tax, and all oil companies are based in the United States.

Krauthammer complains that instead of imposing his beloved price control, the federal government attempted various forms of regulation, such as CAFE standards, that he sees as having failed to achieve their goals. It's obviously not the case that Krauthammer opposes government meddling in the marketplace, as his tax proposals and price controls do just that. Perhaps he sees taxation as the best way for the government to mold individual behavior.

Krauthammer no longer sees price controls as sufficient - now he's incorporating Friedman's call for periodic, substantial increases in the gas tax:

Want to wean us off oil? Be open and honest. The British are paying $8 a gallon for petrol. Goldman Sachs is predicting we will be paying $6 by next year. Why have the extra $2 (above the current $4) go abroad? Have it go to the U.S. Treasury as a gasoline tax and be recycled back into lower payroll taxes.

Krauthammer believes that the price of oil on the world market is pegged to the U.S. gas tax, such that oil prices will stabilize if the U.S. imposes a $2/gallon gas tax? Really? And then by recycling the money back into the hands of consumers, they'll what? Buy televisions instead of filling up their cars? Or perhaps they'll notice that public transportation continues to be overwhelmed and underfunded and wonder why, despite their enormous common ground, Krauthammer parted with Friedman on the use of gas taxes to fund and expand public transportation.

Announce a schedule of gas tax hikes of 50 cents every six months for the next two years. And put a tax floor under $4 gasoline, so that as high gas prices transform the U.S. auto fleet, change driving habits and thus hugely reduce U.S. demand - and bring down world crude oil prices - the American consumer and the American economy reap all of the benefit.

Thank you Charmas Friedhammer. And once this fantasy comes true, and the public is "thanking" Congress for setting an effective price floor on gasoline at $6/gallon, demand for an overstretched public transportation system is way past its limits, and crude oil prices have continued to climb because (as it turns out) the price per barrel isn't defined exclusively by U.S. gasoline prices, what will Krauthammer say when his "conservative" peers are blasting President Obama (or, if McCain is elected, President Clinton) for for the weaknesses of his plan? That is to say, will Krauthammer join them or will he ignore them - I doubt he would even see a third potential approach.

And am I supposed to overlook Krauthammer's timing here? He didn't propose a $2 gallon gas tax back in 2001. Back then, he claims he "only" wanted a price control that would create windfall profits for gasoline refiners. He still doesn't favor providing states and local governments with the resources they need to upgrade and update their public transportation systems. People will still be stuck driving cars, because his policies don't involve the creation and expansion of alternatives. The poorest workers who are still stuck driving will be paying $75-$100/tank to fill up their cars, and we're supposed to believe that lower payroll taxes will put that back in their paychecks? Krauthammer has an amazing ability to make pretty much any idea regressive and retrograde.