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Election 2008 Law Liberalism National Security Obama

Obama’s critics

After criticizing the Obama critics in my past few posts, let me point to a recent critic of Obama’s moves whose recent criticisms I largely endorse – Glenn Greenwald.

His most recent post criticizing certain people defending Obama was right on.

He makes sure to strike a reasonable balance between criticizing Obama and comparing him to the alternative:

I’ve written endlessly on all of the reasons why a John McCain presidency would be disastrous for this country. The entire last chapter of my book is devoted exclusively to documenting that fact. I have no doubt I will write much more on that topic between now and November. I still think that just as strongly. But basic honesty and adherence to one’s core political values compels criticism for what Obama is doing here, and it’s just distasteful and destructive – not to mention dangerous – for people to invoke patently false rationalizations in order to excuse or support what he’s doing.

Amen.

I do tend to think that Greenwald overstates the damage to the core principles of America that this current compromise will do:

…another nail in the coffin of Fourth Amendment protections and privacy rights…

…eroding core constitutional liberties…

…a grave assault on the Constitution…

All of these are true to a degree.  But – as a post I am working on now will illustrate – I think laws like this are as much an opportunity as a danger.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 History Liberalism Obama The Clintons

Krugman throws a tantrum

Paul Krugman, after defending the Clinton legacy for many long months, and trashing Obama for criticizing it, finally decides it is time to agree with Obama’s critique of Clintonism.  Of course, Krugman only does so in order to taunt Obama as Krugman demonstrates an incredibly shallow grasp of politics and recent history.

The problem with Krugman’s little tantrum here is that he confuses politics itself, especially in a two party system, with Clintonism.  It’s not as if Bill Clinton himself invented compromise.  That was invented some time before Pericles.

The problem with Clintonism was not in the fact that the Clintons compromised in order to gain power – it was that they believed the only thing needed to change America was for one of them to be in charge of the system as it was.  So they played the game, campaigned on trivialities and money, and took over, only to realize with the health care debacle and Somalia that they couldn’t force their way.

Obama’s approach is clearly different.  His campaign is less about himself, and more about a movement.  His policies are less about top-down government demands and more about adjustments that will gradually change the way the system works.

Krugman doesn’t see it. Instead, he projects from the mild events of the past week an abrupt turnaround on Obama’s part to embrace the Clintonism he rejected.  The blindness is glaring.

Categories
Election 2008 Liberalism Obama Politics

The Opinionsphere Looks Under the Bus

Finally right-wingers and left-wingers are starting to agree about Obama.

In a testament to the attention paid to the kabuki theater of the presidential campaign, the new meme spreading around the opinionsphere is that Obama is running hard to the right and “throwing under the bus” anyone who gets in his way.  As Steve Marlsberg, the wingnut and idiot would say:

First Obama threw his grandmother under the bus; ((A ridiculous take on his landmark racism speech.))
then his Reverend; ((How many chances does a guy get?))
and now General Wesley Clark! ((Those who call this “throwing someone under a bus” must have missed the Clinton years altogether.  All that’s there is a mild statement pointing out that General Clark was going off-message.))

Kate Stone channeled David Brooks’s analogy, but replaced the people being thrown under the bus with policies:

First Obama gave up on public financing; ((Although Kate didn’t mention this one, many others have.))
then he gave up on the telecom fight; ((Here, I disagree with Obama’s stand.))
then, he came out in favor of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the individual right to bear arms;
what’s next – will he throw women under the bus and the right to choose?

Now – I’m all for challenging whatever leader we have and for pushing him or her to the positions we ourselves hold.  That’s politics.  That’s the only way that a republic can work. But the hysteria evidenced by Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Kate Stone, and many others in responding to the mild replies, long-expected decisions, and minor re-positioning of Obama demonstrates more about the fears and insecurities of these individuals than of Obama’s candidacy or potential presidency.

Also, let me try to correct the record on guns and Heller v. Washington D.C.  Kate, along with many others, mis-characterizes Obama as supporting “relaxing restrictions on gun control in Washington, D.C.” This with-us-or-against-us take on Obama’s nuanced position is exactly what Obama has described as the problem with partisanship.  The judicial philosophy that Obama has been consistent in supporting is one which judges each case on the merits, individually.  Which is why, as the Heller case was before the Court, Obama repeatedly said that as he hadn’t been able to take the time to fully investigate the case because he was busy running for president.  His comments in response to the Heller decision were about balance:

I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common sense, effective safety measures.

The line, though less elegant, reminds me of his famous line about Iraq:

I’m not opposed to all wars.  Just dumb wars.

In general, Obama has made two things clear: he supports an individual right to bear arms; and he supports gun control.  This has become the increasingly common liberal position.  Whether the Court should have struck down this particular gun ban or not, the Supreme Court’s decision was historic – and Obama, as a card-carrying civil libertarian, would recognize the decision as the boon for individual rights it is.

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Election 2008 History Liberalism Obama Politics

Obama is our excuse

[digg-reddit-me]Last week, Charles Hawley, writing for Der Spiegel, declared that “The Social Democrats [of Germany] have no Obama.” This is the second article in Der Spiegel in the past month to reprise this theme.

Around the world, with David Cameron in the United Kingdom gaining strength and Gordon Brown losing it; with Silvio Berlusconi taking power again in Italy; with Nicolas Sarkozy, though struggling today, still the dominant figure in French politics; with Angela Merkel in Germany, Stephen Harper in Canada, Felipe Calderon in Mexico, Lee Myung-bak in South Korea, and Ma Ying-jeou in Taiwan – all center-right politicians – taking power in the past four years; and with Russia’s drift towards a 19th century autocracy and China’s successful resistance to liberalization, it seems that the world is drifting rightward. Since September 11 and especially since George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, most of the leading world democracies and many of it’s leading autocracies have reversed progressive trends and generally adopted a center-right course.

But the worldwide left today has one figure it can look to – standing against this tide in one of the most rightward leaning democracies – and succeeding in ways that are redefining American politics: Barack Obama.

That is why when evaluating the state of Italian politics or German politics – liberals bemoan their lack of success, their lack of inspiration by saying: “We have no Obama.”

This seems to be an attitude that Obama himself would reject. In observing the crowds thronging to his speeches, the enthusiasm that has swept him to the nomination, the excitement in the air, the sense of hope and opportunity at long last, Obama observed to Michael Powell of The New York Times:

“I love when I’m shaking hands on a rope line and” – he mimes the motion, hand over hand – “I see the little old white ladies and big burly black guys and Latino girls and all their hands are entwining. They’re feeding on each other as much as on me….It’s like I’m just the excuse.” [My emphasis.]

Although Obama’s campaign has enabled his success, he understands that the success is not his own. It is of this particular moment in history – this American moment – and he understands that he is not the cause of this movement or this moment, but merely the excuse.

Obama himself is just an excuse to allow Americans to find themselves again, to find their way again, to reclaim their nation, to restore our values to our government. ((As an aside, I can’t think of a healthier way for a leader to think of him or herself – as merely the excuse other people use to do better.)) What Obama’s campaign offers and his presidency will offer is not solutions imposed from Washington, but an opportunity for us to engage with our government, to affect our politics, to make America once again a government of the people. Obama is proposing modest steps – as the tinkerer he is – to make the deliberations behind health care public; to create a website that encourages citizens to provide suggestions and feedback about government programs; to encourage transparency in law-making; to create “a web site, a search engine, and other web tools that enable citizens easily to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with government officials”; to require “his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public” and online; and to make as much government data as universally available as possible.

He’s providing a good excuse, but we still need to do the work.

Categories
Election 2008 Liberalism Obama Politics Scandal-mongering The Clintons Videos

The Price You Pay to Lead

[digg-reddit-me]A few months ago, I wrote a post called “Before we came here, we thought of ourselves as good people” using the words of Vince Foster to encapsulate the uncommon corruptions of the Clinton years. I was thinking of and looking for the video below when writing, from the conclusion of the film Primary Colors. Both the film and the book were intended to portray barely fictional representations of the Clintons. I believe that movie (slightly more so than the book) captured in a profound way both the appeal and the darker side of the Clintons. (See the trailer here).

The conclusion to the movie is pregnant with meaning given today’s current stand-off between a Clinton and a black man, especially given the arguments made at that time.

There are many issues to tease out of this clip.

Governor Jack Stanton, the clear stand-in for Bill Clinton, is trying to convince an idealistic young black man (of about the same age was Barack Obama in 1992 when the events of the novel happen) to support him as he justifies his use of scandals, smears, dirty politics to win a brutal primary against a candidate who is riding a public groundswell of support from people fed up with politics-as-usual. The governor explains why he needed to use every item in his disposal to take down the opposing candidate, despite their shared values – because the other candidate wouldn’t be able to win in November. The logic used then by candidate Clinton and his stand-in here, Jack Stanton, is the same as the logic used by Ms. Clinton to justify her tactics and continued presence in the race today.

It goes something like this:

1. The only way to win is to win dirty. (“Lincoln had to be a whore in order to call on the ‘better angels of our nature!’ “)

2. The Democrat opposing me won’t be able to win in November. (Because he isn’t willing to play dirty enough and/or because he has some other issues or scandals in his past.)

3. No one else with a chance to win would push the issues and care about the people the Clinton/Stanton candidate would.

4. Therefore, the Clinton/Stanton has a responsibility to save the Democratic party by taking down the candidate(s) opposing them by whatever means they can – because only they can win and push forward the liberal agenda.

Various news agencies have reported that this is exactly the argument that Ms. Clinton and her surrogates have been pushing in private calls to the superdelegates. It’s worth remembering that this is not the first time they have pushed this idea and used it to justify doing whatever they needed to win.

The Clintons seem to truly believe that they alone can win and save America – and that they are justified in doing whatever needs to be done to get them power. This has been their justification to the party for every betrayal, every time they have sold out their values, for every time they have taken out an intra-party opponent.

And if they can continue to make this argument to themselves, it is going to be a long summer.

Categories
Election 2008 Liberalism Libertarianism Obama Politics

Republican Party to Ron Paul Supporters: Get lost!

[digg-reddit-me]One of the core magazine of the Republican conservative establishment has this explicit message to Ron Paul supporters:

[G]et lost. There should be plenty of room for [all of you] in Obama’s big tent.

The Republican party seems to be making no attempt to woo or otherwise capture the energy of Congressman Ron Paul’s supporters. I admired Mr. Paul’s campaign – even if I felt I could never support him. I believe that Mr. Paul’s campaign got some of the biggest issues facing America right – with regards to federalism, the balance of power, and executive overreach. On many other issues, I think he argued from a principled and insightful stance – one that those Republicans – and many Democrats – in power today do not take into account. In foreign policy, he was a military isolationist; on currency, he was against all regulation. These stances are radical – but reflect the reality of America less than a hundred years ago. Although many of those in power ignore this, there are still many fringe aspects of America that they ignore.

Now, the Republican party is rejecting the many young supporters of Mr. Paul – presumably because these elites see these supporters as part of the unwashed masses that get to have a say every four or so years, but who are essentially dumb creatures. There is a contempt for Mr. Paul’s supporters that is hard to fathom – especially for a party that is in decline.

I agree with Mr. Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard though. Barack Obama has many positions at odds with Mr. Paul. But I think Mr. Paul’s supporters can find something to support in Mr. Obama’s platform. And they are welcome in Obama’s big tent.

Here’s a grand liberal-libertarian alliance this November and beyond. (Do you hear me Kos? Freedom Democrats?)

Categories
Election 2008 Liberalism Obama Politics The Clintons

Fuck Hillary’s Big Money Pals


Photo by Joe Crimmings.

[digg-reddit-me]“We are the Democratic party.”

I really hate to use profanity like this on the blog – but I think it is called for under the circumstances. The New York Times is reporting that:

…influential fund-raisers for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton have stepped up their behind-the-scenes pressure on national party leaders to resolve the matter, with some even threatening to withhold their donations to the Democratic National Committee unless it seats the delegates from the two states or holds new primaries there.

According to the Times article, Ms. Clinton’s donors have donated just under $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee – and they are threatening to stop supporting the Democratic party if the DNC doesn’t cave in to their demands. I have some hope that Howard Dean will not give in to Ms. Clinton’s bullying. But he undeniably is being pressured, bullied, strong-armed. And big donors today have an outsize influence in the DNC.

So far, the DNC has been lagging behind the Republican National Committee in fundraising. This is exceptional considering the money advantage both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama have had over any of the Republican presidential candidates. I support the DNC – and no matter who the Democratic presidential candidate is, and no matter who wins in November, I want a strong Democratic party.

But today, I am donating to show that Ms. Clinton’s backers do not own the Democratic party. I may not be able to donate $63,500 like Paul Cejas – and I won’t try to hold the Democratic party hostage to my personal views. But I am donating $50.00 right now to make a point. I hope you can show your support as well.

Mr. Dean has not taken sides in the current primary battle – but is trying to enforce the rules that Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama explicitly and publicly agreed to last year. Ms. Clinton’s backers are now trying to bully the DNC to break the rules and hand Ms. Clinton the nomination against the will of those people who have voted so far.

This is outrageous. We are the Democratic party. Let’s show Hillary’s big money pals whose party this is.

(If you just want to donate to the DNC without showing support for Mr. Obama’s candidacy, try here. Otherwise, to show support, donate here to “We are the Democratic party.”)

(I am not a big fan of Ms. Clinton – but I don’t hate her. This post is not about Ms. Clinton herself – but about my outrage at the tactics of her supporters. Shame on them.

And Ms. Clinton – if you don’t condemn these anti-democratic and anti-Democratic tactics, shame on you.)

Updated: Let me be clear – I support Barack Obama in the primary – and have since before he won more states, more delegates, and more votes than Ms. Clinton. But if Ms. Clinton were in the position Mr. Obama was in – I would not want Mr. Obama to win by extortion.

2nd Update:

The Drudge Report is highlighting the news – which means that it will likely dominate the news cycle tomorrow. Obviously, most commentators will say that the tactics of the Clinton campaign are wrong. But nothing would prove them wrong more than a donation to the DNC – allowing the Democratic party to ignore the powerful individuals who are trying to hijack the party.

3rd update: NJ Mom over at dKos interprets the story in much the same way:

I’ve been concerned for a while that the Obama/Clinton contest is becoming a surrogate battle between the Dean and McAuliffe wings of the DNC. It is a battle between those that believe in the “important states” vs. “the other 40”, between DLCers and DFAers, between an addiction to corporate/special interest money and those that believe that small donors in vast numbers are democracy at its most powerful.

What I read in the NYT today, makes me concerned that McAuliffe and those that he represents are trying to ambush Dean using Clinton donors.

The NetRoots helped Dean get where he is today. With the DNC coffers very low right now, he is under attack. He needs us.

N.B. This post was written in the midst of an obviously contentious election campaign – one in which I had strongly considered supporting Senator Clinton but after careful evaluation, had come to the conclusion that Barack Obama was the only candidate suited to our current challenges. While I stand by the content of the post, in retrospect, the tone is a bit overheated.

Categories
Domestic issues Election 2008 Liberalism Politics The War on Terrorism

Linda Chavez’s unhinged “patriotism”

Linda Chavez wrote in an article that originally appeared in the New York Post about “Liberal patriotism” that real patriotism understands these simple facts:

Our elected officials don’t make America great, nor do temporal policies. America is great because of its people, its defining institutions and its freedoms.

As a liberal and a patriot, I agree with Ms. Chavez. At least in this instance. But somehow, Ms. Chavez manages to praise America’s “defining institutions and its freedoms” ((Which must obviously include the Congress, the courts, the laws of the land, and the Bill of Rights.)) while endorsing the power of the executive branch to break the law, violate the freedoms of its citizens without due process, violate the Bill of Rights, and even torture. Ms. Chavez’s understanding of patriotism itself is so tortured that she manages to decry – at a full column’s length – a candidate’s spouse’s off-the-cuff remark as demonstrating a nefarious anti-freedom-ism while applauding that the Attorney General, in his considered testimony, refused to reject “cruel and inhuman treatment” of prisoners as is Constitutionally required of him.

Somehow, “freedom” – in the sense Ms. Chavez uses the term – has nothing to do with violating civil liberties. And upholding the “defining institutions” of America sometimes requires breaking the law. Those who seek to uphold the law – or who are embarrassed by the blatant lawlessness – are not considered patriots. Instead, they “put politics before the national interest” and give “aid and comfort to the enemy” while trying to “hamper the military’s ability to fight…effectively.” There is a more sympathetic way to view Ms. Chavez’s inflammatory and extreme rhetoric but she certainly doesn’t encourage anyone who disagrees with her in the slightest to attempt to find it.

To some extent, I ask myself: why do I even care about what this woman is writing? She may be wrong; she may be using her position as a syndicated columnist to promote lies and unfairly attack good people. Isn’t it a standard “conservative” line that liberals are in fact traitors by their very nature? ((See anything Ann Coulter has said in the past decade, and much of what Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have said.)) But at this point, is it even newsworthy that a “conservative” political commenter regularly calls the majority of Americans “America-haters” – and worse?

Maybe not. But it is worth pointing out again – and again – that as these hacks drape themselves with the Stars and Stripes, they undermine the very freedoms and attack the very people they claim to admire.

There is a reasonable argument to be made in favor of torture, law-breaking, and freedom-impingement. But it involves compromises our core values in the face of enemy aggression. That’s an argument no hack wants to make.

Categories
Liberalism Libertarianism Politics The War on Terrorism

Torture, law-breaking, and the American way

The debate over torture and the many other instances of law-breaking that have become the modus operandi of the Bush administration’s War on Terrorism has been distorted from the start. The liberals and libertarians who opposed warrantless wiretapping, torture, extraordinary rendition, and other legal, but questionable, tactics used by the Bush administration were – from the start – painted as giving “aid and comfort to the enemy.” The Republicans continue to say: “We just want to make America safe.” This is usually paired with an explicit or implicit message that, “Those who oppose us are weak.”

Liberals and libertarians have yet to find an effective way to respond to this argument – at least on a national level. I think the best approach is to point out that the Republican “strategy” is to preemptively surrender American liberties and the primacy of the rule of law out of fear. Acting out of fear is weak. This line of attack puts us back on the path to the argument we should be having – about the balance that needs to be struck between liberty and security.

It has become an aphorism that in order for a government to succeed in the fight against terrorism, it must win 100% of the time; but for a terrorist to succeed, they only need a single victory. Any counter-terrorism expert will concede that it is impossible to prevent terrorism 100% of the time. In trying to determine the balance we need between liberty and security, this must be a factor. For if we decide to give up certain rights temporarily to prevent terrorism – when there is another attack, it will be presumed that the government will need to go yet another step in taking rights to prevent the next attack. It is a cycle that leads – inevitably – to totalitarian government.

This is why for the good of the American experiment, for our way of life, we need to ensure that arguments over national security do not devolve into questions of “Who is passively supporting terrorism?” The Republicans – by launching this line of attack – are paving the road to serfdom in a way that any true conservative knows we must avoid. By framing the issue in this way – presumably merely for temporary political gain – they are preparing the American people to accept further deteriorations of liberties.

If one is to view the Republican’s position without context – as they defend the near indefensible – you can see how it is effective. By focusing on our worst fears, morality becomes skewed. But the Republican line of attack – even without proper context – inevitably raises tough questions: Would torture be moral if it was done to prevent a nuclear disaster? Would assassination? Would murdering an infant? If the stakes are so high – morality and legality become irrelevant.

By applying the “one percent doctrine” of acting as if one’s worst fears were imminent when there is an infinitesimal chance of these fears being realized, the Bush administration has taken the most extreme circumstances that might justify an exception and made them into normal policy. The Bush administration’s policy reflects fear rather than due consideration.

Republican commenters always bring up the “ticking time-bomb scenario” to justify torture. They say: under these circumstances, if your family and tens of thousands of others would die if you didn’t torture this man, wouldn’t you torture him?  ((I am trying here to view the argument in favor of torture as sympathetically as possible.  I know – and have written before – about how torture has generally been used to get confessions rather than to ascertain the truth. I doubt the efficacy of torture; psychologically, it makes little sense that it would cause individuals to “tell the truth”.  I have yet to see any significant studies of the effects of torture to wring the truth out of individuals – although I can see how it would be a difficult field to study.  You can’t very well torture people in a scientific study.))

I would.

And if the President of the United States believes that tens of thousands would die if he or she did not order the torture of an individual, would you expect the president to follow the law and refrain from torturing?

No – I would expect the president to order the person to be tortured.

But though Republicans make this argument to show that torture should be legal, it proves no such thing. Under either of the two above circumstances, the individual who made the decision to break the law should be held accountable to the law. If the president has ordered that a man be tortured because he thought it was necessary, he should go before the American people – and a duly constituted court of law – and explain what he did, and why he did it. If he does not do so, then until this is corrected, we cannot be considered a constitutional democracy – a nation where laws are above all individuals, no matter their position.

The biggest problem with the Republican arguments is that they are trying to make the exceptional circumstances the policy of the American government. What we must strive for instead is a balance between liberty and security.

Categories
Election 2008 Liberalism Politics The Clintons

Pathological idiocy: Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn of the National Review proves once and for all that he has no idea how liberals, Democrats, or non-ideologues think with this surreal observation:

With hindsight, the oral sex was a master stroke. Bill Clinton likes to tell anyone who’ll listen that he governed as an “Eisenhower Republican,” which is kind of true — NAFTA, welfare reform, etc. If you have to have a Democrat in the Oval Office, he was as good as it gets for Republicans — if you don’t mind the fact that he’s a draft-dodging non-inhaling sex fiend. Republicans did mind, of course, which is why Dems rallied round out of boomer culture-war solidarity. But, if he hadn’t been dropping his pants and appealing to so many of their social pathologies, his party wouldn’t have been half so enthusiastic for another chorus of “I Like Ike.”

Mr. Steyn’s proof of this rather unusual point: “Hillary is what the Clintons look like with their pants up” – and she is losing. Therefore, most liberals supported Mr. Clinton because of his sexual escapades.

The logic used here is impeccable.