As Justice Brandeis observed, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
So says the man whose governorship was felled by a bit too much sunlight on his sordrid sex life.
But an excellent new column by Eliot Spitzer in Slate on reforms to bring transparency to Wall Street.
This eviseration of hypocritical posturing is what makes Glenn Greenwald such an essential person to read:
This is the self-absorbed mindset that allows the very same people who cheered for the attack on Iraq to, say, righteously condemn the Russian invasion of Georgia as a terrible act of criminal aggression. Russia’s four-week occupation of Georgia is a heinous war crime, while our six-year-and-counting occupation of Iraq is a liberation. Russia drops destructive, lethal bombs on civilian populations, but the U.S. drops Freedom Bombs. Russian leaders were motivated by a desire for domination even though they withdrew after a few weeks; Americans, as always, are motivated by a desire to spread love and goodness.
However in this passage, we can also see the exaggerated view he takes of his opponents views – as he caricatures their ideas. This particular caricature draws it’s effectiveness from how closely is resembles the position of his opponents. But more reading of Greenwald will demonstrate that he also denies his opponents’ good faith and humanity. Greenwald seems used to being the smartest guy in any room – and faults his opponents for either insufficient intelligence or glaring hypocrisy. He treats those who are sympathetic to his opponents similarly.
Greenwald argues to make his case rather than to formulate policy. But he is a useful gadfly, pointing out hypocrisies and exposing lies and propaganda.
I have my opinion of this statement, but it is somewhat more subtle than most who read this blog might guess – but here’s Dick Cheney being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:
The president of the United States now for 50 years is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States.
He could launch a kind of devastating attack the world’s never seen. He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in. [my emphasis]
It’s interesting that though Cheney continually refers to the powers of the Constitution throughout his remarks, grounding his justifications of various extraordinary actions in his unique interpretations of the Constitution, his final source of authority is “the nature of the world we live in.” I don’t think this is the worst possible justification – but it is a hypocritical one for someone who opposed a judiciary that saw the Constitution as changing as the nature of the world we live in changed.
One of the points I tried to make in this piece this October was the similarity of the radicalism of the 1980s to the radicalism of the 1960s – and how both were responsible for overturning the economic and social stability of the 1950s and early 1960s. But Stephen Metcalf in a review of Tom Cruise’s career for Slate summarized almost my entire point with this:
The ’80s did for money what the ’60s did for sex.
Metcalf goes on:
They told a miraculously tempting lie about the curative powers of disinhibition. It took AIDS, feminism, and sociobiology a while to catch up to our illusions about free love. It has taken cronyism, speculation, and manic overleveraging a while to catch up to our illusions about free money.
William Kristol in The New York Times (my comments in red):
[C]onsider this exchange with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”:
WALLACE: Did you really tell Senator Leahy, bleep yourself? (I wonder if Wallace really said “bleep” or if his question was bleeped.)
CHENEY: I did.
WALLACE: Any qualms, or second thoughts, or embarrassment? (Really – this is what you’re asking him if he has had second thoughts about – not torture? not his pushing of domestic wiretapping so radical it almost forced the entire top levels of law enforcement to resign in protest before Bush intervened? this?)
CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time. (Laughter.) And we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now.
No spin. No doubletalk. (I’ll grant Kristol this. This exchange seems franks, even if Cheney was known as someone who could manipulate and spin with the best of them – just ask Dick Armey who still regrets that Cheney convinced him to support the Iraq war.) A cogent defense of his action — and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice. (“I thought he merited it.”) (WTF? How does this exchange demonstrate that Cheney has a “well-considered sense of justice” – because he thought that guy deserved it? Please! Kids use that as their justification – and now Kristol is trying to make Cheney’s “I thought he deserved to be told to fuck himsel” into some koan-like mastery of justice! This is worse than spin by Kristol – it’s just plain silly.) Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, one might say that Dick Cheney aspires to being a just man. And a thoughtful one, because he knows that justice is sometimes too harsh, and should be tempered by civility. (This whole conversation is about how Cheney told Patrick Leahy to “Go fuck himself” on the floor of the Senate. I can accept that Cheney might think Leahy deserved it. But to say that it proves Cheney aspires to be a just man? And a thoughtful one??!? And that justice must be tempered by civility. It’s like Kristol is talking about an entirely different incident and the facts are mere props that sometimes get in the way. Kristol’s editor shouldn’t publish this bullshit. He should tell him to – in the words of our Vice President – go fuck himself. Because Kristol deserves it.)
Andrew Sullivan – who loyal readers of the blog will know is the reason I began to blog – is hyperventilating today. In a post titled “Less Qualified Than Palin,” Sullivan wants to convince his readers that Caroline Kennedy is like Sarah Palin. But his argument fails miserably to prove the point he wants to make:
In fact, Sarah Palin was more qualified to be vice-president than Caroline Kennedy is to be a Senator.
The problem with Sarah Palin that Sullivan more than anyone else made was that she was not a serious candidate in that she hadn’t seriously considered the issues that would be facing her as Vice President. This was the qualification she was lacking that Sullivan rightly harped on. As he wrote immediately after she was announced:
Yes, Obama is inexperienced in foreign policy. But at least he has thought seriously about it. Do you really believe that Sarah Palin understands the distinctions between Shia and Sunni, has an opinion about the future of Pakistan, has a view of how to exploit rifts within Tehran’s leadership, knows about the tricky task of securing loose nuclear weapons? [my emphasis]
These are issues that Palin would be faced with as Vice President – and based on her public comments, she hadn’t seriously dealt with the issues. And her lack of serious thought on the issue seemed to be the result of deliberate ignorance – or perhaps incuriousness – as Sullivan pointed out citing George Will:
Can you name a single newspaper or magazine you currently read? If you can, you are more qualified to be president than Sarah Palin.
And you can feel him stretching the facts to make his point fit in his recent piece claiming Caroline Kennedy – who can almost certainly name a few dozen newspapers and magazines she reads, as well as a few she has published serious pieces in. The worst example is how Sullivan takes this statement by Kennedy:
“I’ve written books on the Constitution and the importance of individual participation. And I’ve raised my family.”
And responds to that sentence with: “Good for you. But so have millions of others.” I presume he only means the latter part. He describes the above defense as “even more painful than Palin’s.”
Really? Remember this?
Look – I’m not saying Caroline Kennedy is the best possible candidate for the Senate seat. But the over-the-top criticism by Andrew Sullivan – as well as others – demonstrates a lack of perspective. Caroline Kennedy – with her involvement in constitutional law and education issues – can bring that experience with her to the Senate.
Kathleen Parker gets to the heart of the issue in a way that defuses Andrew Sullivan’s argument:
The real rub is that she hasn’t earned it. The sense of entitlement implicit in Kennedy’s plea for appointment mocks our national narrative. We honor rags-to-riches, but riches-to-riches animates our revolutionary spirit.
Palin paid her own passage unfreighted by privilege. But I and others opposed her spot on the Republican ticket for good reasons, some of which resemble concerns now aimed at Kennedy.
To wit: It isn’t enough to want the prize. One must be up to the job, in a league with one’s fellow actors.
In Kennedy’s case, those actors would be senators, not heads of other, potentially belligerent, nations. If appointed, she would be a single vote among 100 and otherwise a placeholder until 2010, when she would have to run for election as any other.
Which is to say there are three differences here that make all the difference:
These are significant differences – which makes this sentiment all the more jarring, especially from a normally astute observer like Sullivan.
Patrick Radden Keefe mentioned, in an offhand manner, one of the great questions about the transition:
Even the legal opinions governing the program are still squirreled away in a safe in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. In recent months, the Senate Judiciary Committee and a Washington district judge have ordered them turned over, and the next attorney general should do so immediately.
He was referring here to the wiretapping program specifically – but it applies to many of the legal rationales in the War on Terror. Dick Cheney and his lieutenants David Addington and Scooter Libby perfected the art of bureaucratic warfare during the first years of the Bush administration. According to Jack Goldsmith as quoted by Barton Gellman:
They were geniuses at this. They could divide up all these problems in the bureaucracy, ask different people to decide things in their lanes, control the facts they gave them, and then put the answers together to get the result they want.
In addition – as Keefe mentioned – and as Gellman reported in his book The Angler – Addington kept certain legal documents exclusively in the safe in his office. Not just copies – but the originals, with no copying permitted, and with access to the documents severely limited. (For example, even the attorneys in the National Security Agency responsible for making sure the NSA was following legal guidelines were not permitted to see the legal rationale for their wiretapping program.) As members of the incoming administration attempt to decide what is the best means to deal with the abuses of power during the Bush administration – Nuremberg-style trials? a truth commission offering clemency? the normal legal system? – you have to wonder what steps Cheney and Addington will take. There has been much discussion of whether or not George W. Bush will offer a preemptive pardon to anyone involved in the War on Terror – but less discussed is what Cheney and Addington might be able to do to entirely obfuscate attempts to find out what happened.
Based on my understanding of Cheney’s personality as described by Barton Gellman – and on his recent interview with ABC News – I think Cheney might want to just get it all out there. He virtually admitted – though not necessarily to the point of taking legal responsibility – that he authorized war crimes:
He was also asked whether he authorized the tactics used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
“I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do,” Cheney said. “And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.
It seems that Cheney – at least on some issues – is now, and finally, willing to come forward and admit his role. He isn’t willing to admit fault – but seems proud of what he did, and willing to accept the judgment of history.
Still given the extreme secrecy surrounding even the legal rationale of many aspects of the War on Terror, we may never know if documents are destroyed.
John Dickerson seems about a day too late in offering the conventional wisdom about the American reaction to the show-throwing incident:
At the very least, I suspect a spark of patriotism will kick in when some Americans watch the tape or see al-Zaidi heralded in the streets as a hero. Hey, you can’t throw shoes at our president, they might say. Only we can throw shoes at our president.
That was my first reaction certainly – but most other people seem to have either looked on the Iraqi journalist with sympathy or merely commenting on Bush’s dodging ability as was evident in the day after the show-throw. And in the case of Iraq – and Bush’s insouciant, “So, what?” in response to Iraq’s lack of weapons of mass destruction – it’s hard to blame one an Iraqi for wanting to grievously insult our president.
Can we really be outraged that the man threw a shoe in anger when Bush invaded his country under untrue pretenses and so botched the aftermath of the war? I can’t.
Slate’s Mickey Kaus and Troy Patterson sum up David Gregory’s presense as the new anchor of Meet the Press aptly.
Kaus:
Gregory seems not straightforwardly dull, but somehow goofily hollow.
It probably makes no difference to the show’s content, but the new face of Meet the Press wears a contented smirk.
John Dickerson seems about a day too late in offering the conventional wisdom about the American reaction to the show-throwing incident:
At the very least, I suspect a spark of patriotism will kick in when some Americans watch the tape or see al-Zaidi heralded in the streets as a hero. Hey, you can’t throw shoes at our president, they might say. Only we can throw shoes at our president.
That was my first reaction certainly – but most other people seem to have either looked on the Iraqi journalist with sympathy or merely commenting on Bush’s dodging ability as was evident the day after the show-throw. And in the case of Iraq – and Bush’s insouciant, “So, what?” in response to Iraq’s lack of weapons of mass destruction – it’s hard to blame one an Iraqi for wanting to grievously insult our president.
Can we really be outraged that the man threw a shoe in anger when Bush invaded his country under untrue pretenses and so botched the aftermath of the war? I can’t.