Succinctly put by Steven Greenberg of the Ventura County Star.
I would have to say it’s an open question as to whether or not these Republicans are adherents to the “Starve the Beast” strategy or are just pure hypocrites on the matter of fiscal responsibility.
The McCain campaign is now clumsily attempting to jumpstart/simulate a grassroots web presence according to the Washington Post:
On McCain’s Web site, visitors are invited to “Spread the Word” about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor’s screen name. The site offers sample comments (“John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .”) and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate” and “other” categories. Just cut and paste.
Activists and political operatives have used volunteers or paid staff to seed radio call-in shows or letters-to-the-editor pages for years, typically without disclosing the caller or letter writer’s connection to a candidate or cause. Like the fake grass for which the practice is named, such AstroTurf messages look as though they come from the grass roots but are ersatz.
McCain’s campaign has taken the same idea and given it an Internet-era twist. It also has taken the concept one step further.
People who sign up for McCain’s program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain’s webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.
This could just be me – but I cannot recall if I have ever seen, posted in the comments here or on other websites, canned or barely rehashed Obama talking points. I’ve had Hillary talking points posted – and Ron Paul talking points – and I’ve seen anti-Obama talking points. And I’ve seen all of these in many other places as well.
It always seems to me to be a sign of a candidate’s weakness when irrelevant talking points start appearing. If a campaign has a true grass-roots presence, their message will be amplified and – more important – owned by many people. These people will respond authentically and incorporate the talking points without repeating them verbatim.
Even Obama’s supposed private moments on his world tour ended up generating positive headlines.
There was this supposedly private exchange between Obama and Conservative party leader, David Cameron, in London caught by ABC News:
“These guys just chalk your diary up,” said Cameron, referring to a packed schedule.
“Right,” Obama said. “In 15 minute increments …”
“We call it the dentist’s waiting room,” Cameron said. “You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.”
“And, well, and you start making mistakes,” Obama said, “or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of, I think you lose a feel- ”
“Your feeling,” interrupted Cameron. “And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions.”
And then there was the prayer note Obama placed in the Western Wall in Jerusalem which was taken out by a student and published on the front page of the Israeli paper Maariv:
Lord,
Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride and despair.
Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just.
And make me an instrument of your will.
The student later apologized and replaced the note in the wall.
Meanwhile, after McCain make Obama’s trip more and more newsworthy by challenging him to go to Iraq and around the world, he was left in America whining about the media’s “love affair” with Obama – even as a new survey came out showing that though Obama received more coverage than McCain, a larger percentage of the stories were critical of Obama.
Despite this overwhelming media bias in favor of McCain, Obama is leading in virtually every poll. And if – as has traditionally happened – the media closes ranks with the Democrats come late October, this bodes well for Obama.
Fred Kaplan asks a serious question that comes up again and again among those who pay attention to foreign policy: How Much Does John McCain Really Know About Foreign Policy?
He frames the issues by asking the question that was echoed by pundits all over America in the days before Barack Obama’s foreign trip:
Would Obama, the first-term senator and foreign-policy newbie, utter an irrevocably damaging gaffe?
Kaplan then gives examples of gaffes that might hurt Obama’s foreign policy credibility seriously:
The nightmare scenarios were endless. Maybe he would refer to “the Iraq-Pakistan border,” or call the Czech Republic “Czechoslovakia” (three times), or confuse Sunni with Shiite, or say that the U.S. troop surge preceded (and therefore caused) the Sunni Awakening in Anbar province.
The kicker, of course, is that it was John McCain who made all of these gaffes, errors, other non-truths:
But, of course, it was Obama’s opponent, John McCain—the war hero and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee—who uttered these eyebrow-raisers. “Czechoslovakia” was clearly a gaffe, and understandable for anyone who was sentient during the Cold War years. What about the others, though? Were they gaffes—slips of the tongue, blips of momentary fatigue? Or did they reflect lazy thinking, conceptual confusion, a mind frame clouded by clichéd abstractions?
And therein lies the question that anyone supporting McCain must ask – why is this “expert” on foreign policy making so many mistakes in discussing it?
So far this meme hasn’t gotten much traction – because it doesn’t fit into the established media caricature of this race – between the new and inexperienced Obama and the old and knowledgeable McCain. But at some point, you have to figure the sheer amount of these gaffes will have a public impact.
I appreciate that Matt Drudge is in the tank for Obama, but this is a bit ridiculous.
I find it hard to believe that ABC News published the story, let alone the fact that Drudge is linking to it as his biggest story. It’s virtually inexplicable.
Unless Drudge has some angle on this that he has yet to reveal.
Otherwise, this is just silly.
[digg-reddit-me]Jon Stewart backs the New Yorker and their cover 100% – showing more guts and – that highly valued quality that I’ve been harping on lately – perspective than most journalists or other opinionators. But that apparently is what Jon Stewart is here for.
Jon Stewart issues what Obama’s response should have been:
Barack Obama is in no way upset by this cartoon that depicts him as a Muslim extremist. Because you know who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists, of which Barack Obama is not. It’s just a f****ng cartoon
Or, how George W. Bush has been just awful enough
[Photo by schani licensed under the Creative Commons and found here.]
[digg-reddit-me]Many liberals argue that George W. Bush’s presidency has been an unmitigated disaster; most libertarians see George W. Bush as the worst thing to happen to America since our government interned hundreds of thousands of Americans purely based on race and expanded government involvement in the economy at the same time. Even many conservatives now see George Bush’s tenure as a series of betrayals. The past eight years have been a dark time – with the specter of terrorism hanging over our lives – with an economy that has only benefited the elites – with America’s standing and influence in the world dropping precipitously – and with a government flailing about in attempts to prevent the next attack, attempts that have primarily succeeded in undermining our inherent liberties.
There is clearly a broad consensus that the Bush presidency has been a failure. A recent poll of historians recently ranked George W. Bush’s presidency as the worst in history; late last year, The Atlantic ran a cover story asking what lessons we can learn from Bush’s failed presidency; the American people have given George W. Bush the lowest approval ratings for a president since polls have been taken; and recent news reports have shown that over three quarters of Americans believe our country is on the wrong track. The consensus clearly is that Bush’s presidency has failed. It’s true that a number of conservatives have tried to defend Bush – Ross Douthat for example pointed out that Bush’s disasters do not rival the catastrophes of Civil War or Great Depression yet. But even the group considered the architect of many of Bush’s policies – the neo-conservatives, have begun to argue – as have failed ideologues again and again throughout history – that it was not that their ideas that failed – rather their ideas were never truly tried. Bush must know he is in trouble when even the neoconservatives are attacking him as weak and ineffective – or to use the term they use, “liberal”.
Having a somewhat contrary nature, I’m not so sure this almost universal consensus is true.
While I do see Bush’s presidency as a disaster, I believe a kind of redemption can be found in this disaster because Bush’s presidency: (a) could have been much worse; and (b) has created a unique historical opportunity.
My postulate is that George W. Bush’s presidency has been just bad enough to avoid destroying the core institutions that form the backbone of our society while creating a virtuous backlash that will strengthen these institutions in the long term. Bush has abused his power just enough, and aggravated festering issues just enough, and presided over a decline that was so sudden that he has created near ideal conditions to move the country in a positive direction.
Throughout history, the price of radicalism has been steep and the chances of reversing deep-seated trends has been long. Conservatives who opposed the social welfare programs of the New Deal tried and failed for a generation to rollback the programs that Franklin Delano Rooselvelt instituted in the wake of a Republican-abetted disaster. Unsuccessful and marginalized, these conservatives finally settled on a strategy of indirection. They called this strategy “starve-the-beast.” Seeing that they could not win by attacking the institutions of the New Deal directly, they decided to deliberately increase government spending to irresponsible levels while cutting taxes – which would leave no choice for a hypothetical future administration but to raise taxes massively or to reduce the size of government. ((What else but this strategy could explain Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s massive deficit spending?)) These conservatives realized that the only way to achieve the ends they sought was to create a set of circumstances that proved their opponents wrong, to discredit, through their actions, the basis of liberalism and create a virtuous backlash against excessive governance. They had seen that effective change throughout history had only occurred when the reigning ideology was proved bankrupt by circumstances. These conservatives believed that if they could undermine the credibility of government enough, their ideology would be the only alternative.
Unfortunately for these conservatives, whatever George W. Bush’s intentions were, his administration has been the most effective proponent of liberalism in modern times – as it demonstrated the bankruptcy of contemporary conservatism, undermined the credibility of the Republican Party, and created precisely opposite virtuous backlash than which they intended.
Bush’s effectiveness in advancing the goals he stood against comes has taken several interrelated forms:
Bush has – in almost every respect – pointed America in the direction it needs to go. He has demonstrated what not to do. It is hard to imagine the libertarian or the progressive movements achieving their widespread support and strength if not for Bush’s presidency.
This election cycle has already demonstrated the strength of two responses to the Bush administration’s legacy – the libertarian response as embodied in the unlikely success of Ron Paul and the progressive response as embodied in the progressive netroots which powered Obama’s campaign. As a card-carrying civil libertarian and a lifelong progressive, Barack Obama has an opportunity to synthesize these two competing movements – to create a rough political consensus of the next steps we need to take. (I’ve written before both about how the libertarian movement and liberalism seem to be converging and about how Obama represents some part of this.) However, Obama’s vote for the FISA Amendments Act was a poor start to the creation of this alliance – as he took a position in defiance of both of these movements.
In a very real sense George W. Bush’s legacy depends on how well the next president is able to capitalize on the opportunity given to him – in this campaign and in his potential presidency. The final judgment on Bush will not be knowable when he leaves office. Rather, some years later we will be able to make a definitive judgment – after we see how intractable the problems he leaves for his successor are and when we see what precedents the next president will reject and which he will build upon. Bush may be forgiven for his disrespect for the Constitution if the next president repudiates these precedents. (After all, Washington was forgiven for Hamilton’s army; Lincoln was forgiven for becoming a tyrant for several weeks; and FDR was forgiven for trying to pack the Supreme Court.)
But while I argue that Bush’s primary legacy is that of a uniter-not-a-divider whose presidency set America on a better path, this rosy evaluation of Bush’s legacy still leaves three areas uncovered – areas in which Bush created unique problems rather than exacerbating existing ones: Iraq, the War on Terror, and global climate change.
Complications
Iraq
It is hard to imagine another president invading Iraq under the circumstances that George W. Bush did. The many American and the far more Iraqi dead that resulted from this foolish gamble, this dumb war, will surely burden his soul and must undermine any positive legacy he leaves behind. Even assuming the best of intentions, the Iraq war has proved to be a strategic blunder that has empowered Iran, destabilized the region, inspired more extremism, degraded our military, and only achieved the removal of minor antagonist. Making this strategic error worse was the hubris and idiocy that dogged every step of the occupation. Although our alliance of convenience with the Sunni extremists who were fighting us just a few months ago has helped to stabilize Iraq and even given the recent show of independence by the Iraqi president in his call for us to set a firm date of withdrawl, Iraq still has a long way to go before we can get out of this quagmire. Until we get out, the Iraq war will continue to eat our resources, undermine our global position, and strengthen our enemies.
The War on Terror
Domestically, the Bush administration has done virtually nothing to harden potential targets of terrorism – allowing the use of the funds appropriated for this purpose to be pissed away on pork barrel spending. The main steps it has taken within America seem designed primarily to expand executive power rather than to achieve any particular goals related to terrorism – asserting the power to crush the testicles of a potential terrorist’s child, to detain individuals without charges for indefinite periods of time, to torture, and to ignore any laws that limit the president’s power. Abroad, the Bush administration squandered our best opportunity to destroy Al Qaeda when it began to shift resources to Iraq and away from those who attacked us. The nexus of world terrorism shifted as a result of the War on Terror from the center of Afghanistan to the lawless areas of the Afghani-Pakistani border – where Chechnyan islamists, the remants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, veterans of the Zaraqawi’s Iraqi campaign, and other terrorists from around the world are now working together and with greater freedom than at any time since the attacks on September 11. The successes we have had in the War on Terror seem largely to be the fruits of our failures – as the islamist ideology has proven to be an unattractive one once it begins to rule any territory.
Global Climate Change
It is hard to imagine another president ignoring the growing signs and consensus of global climate change so steadfastly. The eight years the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases has wasted ignoring the problem – despite the near universal consensus of the scientific community – have made more drastic steps necessary to correct the problem before it is too late. What other president – with a legacy on climate change such as this – would have bragged at a recent G8 summit about being the “world’s biggest polluter“?
Conclusions
Lincoln Chafee, the Republican Senator from Rhode Island, observed upon first meeting Bush that Bush did not seem up to the job of being president. The past several years have proved this observation prescient. I cannot argue that Bush’s actions have been wise, although I do generally think that they have been well-intentioned. ((I know there are many who disagree.)) But while George W. Bush and his administration have committed petty crimes, war crimes, and constitutional violations, attacked liberties, advocated the preemptive surrender of American values, usurped independent branches of the government for partisan ends, and caused the injury and death of thousands of Americans citizens and citizens of the world – it is Bush who created this moment – this moment for renewal that has traditionally been what sets America apart.
While Ron Paul believed we needed a revoliution to begin to reverse the growing encroachment of government (even if that required the exploitation of poisonous racial resentments) – all we really needed was George W. Bush.
If America truly is a great nation – and in order to redeem the vision of the Constitution of the Founding Fathers, of that great address of Abraham Lincoln, of the square deal of Teddy Roosevelt and the four freedoms of his cousin, of the city on the hill that an old Hollywood actor once invoked – we must take advantage of this opportunity. The American moment is now – as all of us, feeling the fierce urgency of now, must work to restore the America that we grew up believing in – to restore the ideal and to form a more perfect union. Throughout the dark times in American history, Americans have believed and fought for this idea of America – to make this idea a reality and to protect this idea from the encroachments of tyranny and totalitarianism.
Change doesn’t come easy – but the greatest legacy of George W. Bush is that he has made it easier – and given us this opportunity to create a more perfect union. There will be obstacles and compomises in the days ahead – but (yes) we can achieve real change. Bush, more than anyone, deserves responsibility for that.
[digg-reddit-me]The political cartoon by David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer currently making the rounds (h/t Andrew Sullivan):
For all those who laughed when they saw this (like me) but are offended by the Obama New Yorker cover (unlike me) – how do you justify the differing responses?
My position is that I agree with the popular reddit post yesterday citing Donklephant:
That New Yorker cover is clearly satire. We can’t get offended every two minutes. It’s not healthy.
Is anyone offended by the New Yorker cover but appreciative of this faux National Review cover?
Update: Lenny Bruce wisely observed:
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
This doesn’t excuse the double standard that I see as the only explanation for not being offended at both or by either picture – but it does offer an explanation as to why this is considered more offensive now than it might be otherwise.
Updated again: One thing, upon reflection, that differentiates the two cartoons is that David Horsey’s cartoon has the virtue of merely exaggerating the truth while the New Yorker cover is based on outright lies.
Still – I feel that this makes the depiction of McCain more damaging than the ridiculous depiction of Obama.
Paul Krugman takes a break from Obama-bashing – including not a single reference to the candidate in an entire column – in order to try to take a sensible position on the current near-collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and with them, potentially, the entire worldwide financial system. While Krugman comes out in favor of a government bailout, he points out that these two companies are problematic institutions:
The most important of these privileges is implicit: it’s the belief of investors that if Fannie and Freddie are threatened with failure, the federal government will come to their rescue.
This implicit guarantee means that profits are privatized but losses are socialized. If Fannie and Freddie do well, their stockholders reap the benefits, but if things go badly, Washington picks up the tab. Heads they win, tails we lose.
Such one-way bets can encourage the taking of bad risks, because the downside is someone else’s problem.
The Financial Times’s Willem Butier takes a similar position, but with more verve:
There are many forms of socialism. The version practiced in the US is the most deceitful one I know. An honest, courageous socialist government would say: this is a worthwhile social purpose (financing home ownership, helping my friends on Wall Street); therefore I am going to subsidize it; and here are the additional taxes (or cuts in other public spending) to finance it.
Instead the dishonest, spineless socialist policy makers in successive Democratic and Republican administrations have systematically tried to hide both the subsidies and size and distribution of the incremental fiscal burden associated with the provision of these subsidies, behind an endless array of opaque arrangements and institutions…
So let’s call a spade a bloody shovel: nationalise Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They should never have been privatised in the first place. Cost the exercise. Increase taxes or cut other public spending to finance the exercise. But stop pretending. Stop lying about the financial viability of institutions designed to hand out subsidies to favoured constituencies. These GSEs were designed to make losses. They are expected to make losses. If they don’t make losses they are not serving their political purpose.
So I call on Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernanke and Director Lockhart to drop the market-friendly fig-leaf. Be a socialist and proud of it. Come out of the red closet. The Soviet Union may have collapsed, but the cause of socialism is alive and well in the USA.
Many reporters have been using the phrase “too big to fail” to refer to the crisis surrounding Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae – Butier acknowledges this for what it is – a socialism for the rich, in which concentrations of power are protected, profits are privatized, and losses are spread across the social spectrum.
As I posted previously – there has been a lot of anger by a significant subset of Obama supporters at his reversal on how he would oppose the telecom immunity provision in the FISA bill.
As part of the group that is the center of much of this protest – “Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right“ – I have had a front-row seat to observe the raw feelings of the most disappointed supporters. I argued in my previous post that many of these supporters had lost perspective – as they abandoned Obama over a position that was a rather minor element in his campaign.
But one thing my response missed – and most of the angry Obama supporters missed – is precisely what Obama changed his mind about.
Obama – through a spokesperson – had promised to support a filibuster of any law that would give the telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their actions relating to the warrantless wiretapping program:
To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies
Throughout his campaign, this promise was reiterated.
In February, Obama voted to strip away the provision that gave the telecoms immunity from the FISA bill – but the amendment failed to garner sufficient votes to override a presidential veto.
As the FISA bill came up for a vote this July, Obama announced that he had changed his mind about the degree to which he would oppose telecom immunity. Yesterday, he voted for an amendment that would strip the immunity provisions from the FISA bill, but voted to pass the bill even though the amendment failed to get the required support.
In other words, while he still agrees with the position that the telecom companies should not get immunity, he has made a tactical decision that the costs of opposing the full measure were not worth the benefits.
Many who have expressed disagreement with Obama have talked about how he has changed his mind about defending the Constitution, how he is now agreeing to eviserate the Fourth Amendment, etcetera and so on. They argue against the full FISA law itself – as well as the telecom immunity provision. But although Obama has said that he sees the law as flawed, he did not commit himself to opposing it.
Most of those who are disillusioned by Obama’s vote don’t seem be interested in the subtlties. They speak in terms of betrayal, in terms of being with-us-or-against-us, and they judge Obama harshly by an ideological purity scale. But if any of these people had evaluated Obama seriously before – they would have seen that he was not the ideological purist they claim he was.
As Gail Collins put it in an insightful column today (an unusual event for her):
But if you look at the political fights he’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity. “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war,” he said in 2002 in his big speech against the invasion of Iraq. He did not, you will notice, say he was against unilateral military action or pre-emptive attacks or nation-building. He was antidumb.
Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance.
On the common-ground front, he’s called for giving more federal money to religious groups that run social programs, but only if the services they offer are secular. People can have guns for hunting and protection, but we should crack down on unscrupulous gun sellers. Putting some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap is better than nothing, even though he would rather have gone further.
Dumb-avoidance would include his opposing the gas-tax holiday, backtracking on the anti-Nafta pandering he did during the primary and acknowledging that if one is planning to go all the way to Iraq to talk to the generals, one should actually pay attention to what the generals say.
Touching both bases are Obama’s positions that 1) if people are going to ask him every day why he’s not wearing a flag pin, it’s easier to just wear the pin, for heaven’s sake, and 2) there’s nothing to be gained by getting into a fight over whether the death penalty can be imposed on child rapists.
I’ll take this opportunity to point out that Collins is misleading about how she uses the death penalty example as Obama indicated he was in favor of the death penalty for child rapists before the recent Supreme Court decision in The Audacity of Hope.
But her basic point is right.