Judicial Salaries

George Will complains that current salaries are resulting in a Bargain Basement Judiciary. To advance this argument, Will presents some misleading claims, but no actual numbers. For example,

The denial of annual increases, Roberts wrote, "has left federal trial judges - the backbone of our system of justice - earning about the same as (and in some cases less than) first-year lawyers at firms in major cities, where many of the judges are located." The cost of rectifying this would be less than .004 percent of the federal budget. The cost of not doing so will be a decrease in the quality of an increasingly important judiciary -- and a change in its perspective. Fifty years ago, about 65 percent of the federal judiciary came from the private sector -- from the practicing bar -- and 35 percent from the public sector. Today 60 percent come from government jobs, less than 40 percent from private practice. This tends to produce a judiciary that is not only more important than ever but also is more of an extension of the bureaucracy than a check on it.

Roberts' claim predates a probable, 32% pay increase for the federal judiciary, almost certain to pass in the Senate. Assuming the House approves, a federal District Court judge will be paid $218,000.00, and a federal appellate judge will receive $231,000.00. Given that the House previously approved similar figures, there's every reason to believe that these increases will take effect. That, I believe is more than four times the median household income for the nation as a whole.

The comparison of judicial salaries to salaries from the highest-paying law firms in the nation? Sure, you're going to be able to argue that associates at those firms earn amounts comparable to the salaries of federal judges. And well in excess of state judges. And comparable to or in excess of state governors and legislators. Or U.S. Senators and Members of Congress. Or the Vice President. Or members of the Cabinet. Or mayors. Or law professors. Or state and federal prosecutors. Well, you get the idea.*

Also, when a lawyer is approached about becoming a federal judge, he does not weigh the offer against a starting salary at a major firm. Either he's in the firm, already making far more money than an associate, or he's in a different type of practice and is quite possibly making far less than the judicial salary. That's the essence of Will's complaint,

Fifty years ago, about 65 percent of the federal judiciary came from the private sector - from the practicing bar - and 35 percent from the public sector. Today 60 percent come from government jobs, less than 40 percent from private practice. This tends to produce a judiciary that is not only more important than ever but also is more of an extension of the bureaucracy than a check on it.

Will provides no evidence that the quality of the judiciary has declined, or that there is a shortage of lawyers willing to take appointments to the bench. All of the evidence I see is to the contrary - we have a lot of highly qualified federal judges, and ample numbers of lawyers who would be happy to get life tenure as a federal judge. As for the idea of judges fleeing from the bench to get bigger salaries, it isn't happening. Granted, some do leave, but we're simply not going to increase judicial salaries to the point that a judge won't be tempted to earn $600,000 - $800,000 or more for walking in the door of a private firm. (If a federal judge wouldn't command that salary when leaving the bench, with the cachet of having a former federal judge on a law firm's résumé, it's safe to assume that the same judge would not be deterred from the judiciary by only making $218,000.00 to start.

Will's other concern appears to be that Republican presidents are appointing too many career civil servants to the federal judiciary, resulting in excessive bureaucracy. That's a creative argument, but one he doesn't back with evidence. Instead, he invokes his usual, tired anti-liberal invective:

Upon what meat hath our judiciary fed in growing so great? The meat of modern liberalism, the animating doctrine of the regulatory and redistributionist state. Courts have been pulled where politics, emancipated from constitutional constraints, has taken the law -- into every facet of life.

That's right, folks. It's the fault of liberals that the judiciary has grown under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, and they've been advancing their liberal policies by filling the federal bench with liberal bureaucrats. More than sixty percent of federal judges are Republican appointees.

It's insipid for Will to pretend that the number of civil servants who become judges has to do with some sort of "bureaucratization" of the judiciary, or is an evil left-wing plot. Take a look at one of the leading examples of a federal judge who qualified for his position through a careful series of civil service jobs - Clarence Thomas. The civil service provides many opportunities for an administration to position and advance people on the basis of their ideology, without regard for whether those candidates would have a skill set that would allow them to advance in private practice. Some of those people might do very well in private practice, but have deliberately chosen a slower paced life with more rewarding work, great benefits and paid vacations. A federal judgeship has all of those benefits, plus a lot of prestige and a fantastic pension. For all of Chief Justice Roberts' whining about judicial salaries, and that of Chief Justice Rehnquist before him, is there any sign that either of them ever considered resigning their positions to earn more elsewhere?

Even if you choose to overlook the dominance of Republican appointees, it's also silly to pretend that the federal bench has become liberal. State courts are often hostile enough to plaintiffs, but when presented with the opportunity to do so it is the defense that will typically leap at the opportunity to have a case removed to federal court. When "tort reform" groups propose federalizing various claims, such as class action cases, it's not because they believe the federal courts will present them with a disadvantage.

There's also a legitimate question as to whether the highest paying law firms are the best source of federal judges. Will assumes so, and attributes the diminishing number of practicing lawyers who join the bench as evidence that G.W. Bush is appointing substandard judges. To the extent that any substandard judges reach the federal bench, it's the result of patronage, not a dearth of qualified candidates. The greater concern for Will, the one he won't admit, is that he is interested in judicial ideology, not qualification. And no, it's not that he opposes "activist judges" - he wants judges who will actively advance his preferred political agenda.
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Addendum: In addition to the fact that the starting salaries at top law firms are a poor point of comparison, the fact is that we're not going to compensate judges at a level comparable to the highest paying legal jobs in the country, any more than we're going to compensate cabinet members like CEO's. Will implicitly acknowledges this when he speaks of elite firm starting salaries, without choking out specific dollar figures for those neophyte lawyers. You would be hard pressed to find a partner at one of those firms earning less than $500K/year. Most of the people Will claims to want to entice to the bench are likely earning well into the seven figure range.

Race, Patriotism, and Obama

Dan Larison presents an analysis, inspired in part by a thoughtful bloggingheads piece, on the racial issues implicated by Obama's church, pastor and speech.

Meanwhile, middle- and working-class white (and probably other) audiences heard this, remembered the anti-racist catechisms they had been taught for as long as they could remember and understood that the proper, approved reaction was to shake their heads and boo. McWhorter makes a similar observation. Now that anti-racism has captured the minds of so many of these people, now that the conditioning has had its intended effect, observers sympathetic to Obama are dismayed that Obama’s nuanced effort to explain (or, as the critics have it, explain away) racially-charged and potentially racialist rhetoric fell on deaf ears. Yet this shouldn’t surprise anyone–if the speech fell on deaf ears, it was the elites who deafened them years before with a single, simple imperative: “Don’t pay attention to race, except when we tell you to!”

I believe Larison misses the mark here, not so much because there aren't "elites" of the type he mentions, but because those "elites" don't have the ear of the "middle- and working-class white (and probably other) audiences" he describes. If it did, those audiences would have voted down anti-gay marriage, anti-domestic partnership ballot initiatives. They would have rejected ballot initiatives ending affirmative action. Etc. That audience is responding to other factors, discussed in the bloggingheads piece, not the least of which are their own concerns about job security and the future, and their own experiences with the effects of poverty.

Larison is correct that society has largely learned that it is not acceptable to make public, racist announcements, and that the response that our popular culture now dictates is to boo. He's even correct that this culture change has been a top-down phenomenon, driven by "elites" of various types. But I think that he's overlooking the fundamental reason why Rev. Wright's statements resonate in a bad way - and this is discussed in the bloggingheads piece - it's because people are not willing to accept blame for historic wrongs, nor are they willing to absorb a penalty (real or perceived) to correct those wrongs when they see similar problems within their own communities for which no similar remedy is offered.

Obama could address these issues in a post-racial way, and maybe he still will. If you were to ask them what causes patterns of poverty and crime within their communities, may may demonstrate and external locus of responsibility (i.e., "blame others") similar to that of Rev. Wright. But few are going to go into a diatribe about how they're being held back by their race, or by affirmative action, and even that group (perhaps especially that group) is not receptive to the notion that there is something special about race that necessitates race-based remedies to social ills.

What is perhaps more interesting is that the willing tools of the Republican attack machine aren't focusing on race. They're focusing on patriotism. This isn't a first - recall the earlier attacks to besmirch Obama's patriotism through comments made by his wife. Then it was the false claim that he didn't have his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, and even that he wouldn't say the Pledge. And let's not forget the flag pin smear, which was even propagated by tools who don't even wear flag pins.

Perhaps it remains too hard, as suggested by Peggy Noonan, to attack Obama directly on issues of race? Noonan, as I read the piece, was trying to drive a wedge between the Obama's and working class whites - but she still chose to couch her attack in terms of patriotism ("Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.") In the present context, see, e.g., Gerson ("Obama's excellent and important speech on race in America did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor"); Kristol ("This doesn’t mean that Obama agrees with Wright’s thoroughgoing and conspiracy-heavy anti-Americanism"); Chris LaCivita (of Swift Boat fame), ("'You don’t have to say that he’s unpatriotic, you don’t question his patriotism,' he added. 'Because I guaran-damn-tee you that with that footage you don’t have to say it.'")

It's also interesting to me how Wright is deemed unpatriotic ("God damn America"), but a John Hagee ("America is under the curse of God" - i.e., we're damned) is not - they're both arguing that America deserves to be damned by God, but Hagee is adding that we are damned - should Wright have used the passive voice? Or how a conspiracy theory that blames the government for spreading AIDS or drugs is unacceptable, but a conspiracy theory blaming the government for the JFK assassination can be raised in pretty much any context (although you can expect to get disagreement and inspire some eyerolls). Or how other nutty theories about the spread of AIDS (e.g., Falwell's "AIDS is God's punishment", or Hagee's "AIDS began in African prisons, where thousands of men ... turned to perverted sex") do not trigger condemnation, apparently because they omit mention of the U.S. government. Or how conspiracy theories can swirl about the government's role in Waco, Ruby Ridge, and 9/11 even in the same circles that deem Wright's "our policies brought it on us" philosophy to be unacceptable. Or why it is acceptable to blame 9/11 on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way", while remaining in the warm embrace of the Republican Party. But sometimes we have to accept the world the way it is.

Perhaps the focus on patriotism over race boils down to this: It's also a hard sell to argue to blue collar America that racism doesn't exist, even if many believe its effects are minor or are more than counter-balanced by "reverse discrimination", because they know better.

Lessons On How To Behave In Church

What do you do if your church leader makes comments with which you take issue? Do you sit through a sermon, and perhaps engage in a quiet discussion with your minister afterward? Ignore it? Charles Krauthammer tells us, that would be wrong.

So I guess we're supposed to follow the Krauthammer model?

About three years ago, I saw Krauthammer flip out in synagogue on Yom Kippur. The rabbi had offered some timid endorsement of peace — peace essentially on Israel's terms — but peace anyway. Krauthammer went nuts. He actually started bellowing at the rabbi, from his wheel chair in the aisle. People tried to "shush" him. It was, after all, the holiest day of the year. But Krauthammer kept howling until the rabbi apologized. The man is as arrogant as he is thuggish. Who screams at the rabbi at services? For advocating peace?

I don't dispute that there are valid questions about when and how to respond to outrageous statements by your minister, but I don't think Krauthammer has any room to lecture.

"Heck Of A Job, Gersie"

That is, if I were to guess at the probable dinner conversation.

Michael Gerson's Open Hypocrisy

Let's take a look at some Gerson quotes from a Fox News interview by Megyn Kelly.

But the reality is that Wright is not a representative of the African-American community, he's an extremist. He's talked about AIDS being, you know, a plot by the American government to destroy people of color, you know, blamed America for 9/11. These things are not the mainstream of the African-American tradition. He's not a symbol of these things, he's an extremist.

Now let's take a look at some of the Republican ministers who, in Gerson's mind, are free to endorse and embrace Republican candidates - and who Republican candidates need not repudiate. On God punishing us for our sins:

• Pat Robertson: "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those [gay pride] flags in God's face if I were you. This is not a message of hate - this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs. It'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor."
• John Hagee: "All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are - were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing."
• Jerry Falwell: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this [9/11] happen.'"
• John Hagee: "As a nation, America is under the curse of God."

On AIDS:

• Jerry Falwell: "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."
• John Hagee: "AIDS began in African prisons, where thousands of men, deprived of normal sex, turned to perverted sex. From the infection created by this perverted sex came the infection that birthed AIDS."

On natural disasters and terrorist acts, the distinction between Wright and the extremists Gerson deems acceptable appears to be that it is unacceptable to suggest that government policy is sinful and might inspire vengeful response, but it is acceptable to argue that God will smite people en masse because some of their neighbors engage in acts the minister (and probably Gerson) regard as sinful.

And for AIDS, it's not acceptable to say that the U.S. Government created AIDS, but it is acceptable to say that it was created by God as a plague on homosexuals and those who tolerate them. To me, you know, the former position sounds silly and ill-informed, and the latter sounds like... blasphemy. And it is apparently acceptable to assert that AIDS arose out of "perverted sex" in "African prisons", so Gerson appears to have no problem with ministers taking positions that are scientifically ludicrous and arguably racist... against Africans.

Well, uh, I guess I would say that somebody who believes the United States government is guilty of genocide is not a fierce critic. He's a dangerous man.

A dangerous man....

• Pat Robertson (to Joel Mowbray): "I read your book. When you get through, you say, "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer." I mean, you get through this, and you say, "We've got to blow that thing up."
• Pat Robertson: "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."

So it's acceptable to speak of committing a terrorist act to blow up the State Department, or to suggest that the U.S. Government is engaged in a worse genocide than the Holocaust, but... I'm having trouble finding even a farcical point of distinction.

Um, and this is a, I think a genuine problem going forward. It undermines Obama's appeal to conservatives. It undermines his appeal to Jews because of this relationship with, of his Pastor's with Farrakan.

Ah yes, lest we forget the warm feelings emanating toward Jews from Gerson's acceptable extremists (and one who is considered not so extremist)....

• John Hagee: "No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler's Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have - Israel."
• Jerry Falwell: "The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior."
• Billy Graham: " I go and I keep friends with [Abe] Rosenthal at the New York Times and people of that sort, you know. And all -- I mean, not all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I'm friendly with Israel. But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances."
• John Hagee: "How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.... it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people."

I know I'm supposed to buy into the notion that ministers who believe in the "End of Days", and support a vision whereby all of the world's Jews move to Israel where they ultimately either convert to Christianity or perish in the sea of fire, are somehow Jew-friendly. But....

And it really does undermine his basic message that words of healing matter. Because these are words of hatred that he has been, you know, associated with now.

In excusing every Republican affiliation with religious extremism, Gerson makes plain that he has no genuine problem with mere "words of hatred". His goal here is not to merely depict Wright's statements as "words of hatred", but as "words of hatred" from a "scary black man". Gerson knows that to achieve his goals, that last part is all that matters.

Running An Effective Smear Campaign

With factions of the Republican Party giddy with the idea of smearing Barack Obama on race issues, I thought I should remind them how to run an effective smear campaign.

"It's Different When We Do It"

"Michael Gerson is not a man who is stupid - but he chose to walk with a man who is."

No, wait, I got that first part wrong.

The better analogy is this: What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in the pew of a theonomist church - a fanatical fragment of Protestantism that teaches the modern political validity of ancient Hebrew law?

No, that wouldn't be it, because we know the church Obama attended. Perhaps Gerson has never heard of the United Church of Christ?

I realize why Gerson wants to distinguish this from McCain's embrace of Hagee (or Huckabee's attendance of Hagee's services), or the various other ways Republican candidates and Presidents have sucked up to offensive religious extremists. Why he wants to argue, "They were only making kissy-face with the leaders, not attending their services. They were lying about their religious convictions to get votes - and it's morally superior to lie about your belief in extreme religious doctrine than it is to attend a church where the minister sometimes says hateful things, even though you disagree with the minister." As with Gerson's defense of infidelity, we're entering the theater of the absurd.

When Gerson tries to argue that Republicans should be excused excused for lying about their religious beliefs in order to suck up to religious extremists, he also states,

Yes, but they didn't financially support his ministry and sit directly under his teaching for decades.

Can he truly believe that religious extremists embraced by Republican politicians do not profit from the association? That the open embrace of their theology and person doesn't augment their fame, their power, their authority, and ultimately their fortune? That Bob Jones University only wants Presidents and politicians to speak on its premises because it thinks it has the nicest auditorium in the country? That Hagee and similar religious leaders have no self-interest in injecting themselves into national politics?

How charmingly naive.

The Michigan Democratic Primary

Look, I understand the reasons why the political parties adhere to the ridiculous custom of letting Iowa and New Hampshire "go first" (even in violation of party rules). But if you want to disenfranchise me, make the defender of your decision somebody less self-interested, myopic, and obtuse than Carrie Giddins. Okay? Be honest about what you are doing.

What Does "Inferior" Mean?

John Derbyshire reacts to Obama's speech:

"Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students."

What on earth does this mean? It's true that there is widespread school segregation today. In my state, 60 percent of black students attend schools that are at least 90-percent black. From what I can see, the main reason for this is the great reluctance of nonblack parents to send their kids to schools with too many black students, which they assume are beset by all the problems associated with poorly run public schools. Do you think that they — actually we, as my wife and I share this reluctance — are wrong to think like this? How will you persuade us to think otherwise? Or will you depend on judicially-imposed forced integration of the schools?

Okay... So where Derbyshire comes from, parents assume that majority-black schools are not suitable for their children because "they assume [the schools] are beset by all the problems associated with poorly run public schools", yet he feigns confusion over Obama's use of the word "inferior"?

What does Derbyshire see as the difference between "poorly run public schools" and the public schools to which he would happily send his kids? If he measures school quality by racial composition, the only benchmark for distinction he cites, how is he not reinforcing Obama's point?

McCain In Iraq

In the interest of security, as with other U.S. politicians, when John McCain goes to Iraq his visits are not pre-announced, he flies into secret locations, and is provided with extensive security and air cover. He is concerned about Iran's rising influence, and its training of al-Qaeda insurgents.

In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy make him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.

Compare and contrast: When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits Iraq, he announces his visit weeks in advance. More specifically,

He announced the dates of his visit in advance, landed at Baghdad International Airport in daylight and drove through the capital, albeit in a heavily guarded convoy, on a relatively quiet day. Iraqi forces provided security.

That business about Iran's rising influence? It's not so much "in the future".

Market Forces At Work

The Subprime Primer. (Via C&F.)

McCain's Religious Ties? Oh... "That's Different"

Tapped takes a brief look at the religious extremists currently enjoying the warm embrace of John McCain, and the historic lack of calls for candidates to distance themselves from the controversial statements of the religious leaders who support them.

And It's All Up To The Media Now....

With the mainstream media (encouraged by the Obama campaign) having set the bar, Barack Obama has given his "make or break" speech distancing himself from Rev. Wright. Does it matter what he said? Only to a degree. What really matters now is whether or not the mainstream media deems him to have passed the test.

If he is deemed to have "passed", as it seems unlikely that Pastor Wright has said anything more inflammatory than what has already been dredged out of his decades of sermons, the presentation of more quotes becomes "more of the same" - an attempt to reopen a closed issue.

If he is deemed not to have "passed", this will continue to hound him as a candidate. It will be used to taint him as "the other", somebody "not like us" who "can't be trusted" with the presidency. (Some tar will stick - some will now think of him as "the other" no matter what else happens in this campaign.)

But doesn't it seem a bit odd that the determination of whether this will remain news, or whether it will be treated as a dead issue, falls upon whatever consensus is quickly formed by the mainstream media?

Cafeteria Conservatives

David Brooks writes,

So I guess we’re all bailout artists now?

We do seem to have reached some Bernanke-era consensus. In normal times, the free market works well. But in a crisis like this one, few are willing to sit back and let the market find its own equilibrium.

This is consistent with many, probably most, modern "conservatives" - free markets are great when an individual is having a house foreclosed, is drowning in credit card debt, or is bankrupted by medical costs. They're horrible when a large business may fail, and the government had best be fast with a handout.

It's pretty standard for the "there are two types of people" crowd - they latch on to an ideology that purportedly makes them superior to those they oppose ("Conservatives favor free markets; liberals favor handouts"), but make little to no effort to consistently apply those principles. When multi-billion dollar subsidies are handed out to energy companies, even as those companies enjoy record profits, well, that can be ignored. When the markets catch up with a poorly managed company, the market principles that they supposedly embrace can suddenly be ignored because "this is different".

You know what? It goes both ways. I call myself "cheap", my wife says I'm "frugal". But I'm fiscally conservative, in a small "c" sense. I don't like to hand out my money to anyone. I am much more willing to offer people help when they are in a fix that is not of their own making. So I'm much more sympathetic to the financial plight of somebody who is drowning in medical debt than somebody who is drowning in credit card debt arising from self-indulgent spending. I'm not at all sympathetic to the idea that people who are at the top of the economic pyramid need government handouts. Yet that's the Republican approach to energy companies, and corporate welfare in general.

I see the current crisis among financial institutions as analogous to that self-indulgent credit card debt - and view it as unfortunate that the incompetence and corruption involved is on such a large scale that we can't just "let the market take its course." But I see few signs that the Republican Party or the supposedly pro-market leaders of those institutions share my sentiments - at least when their millions are on the line. Citi Group was no doubt lobbying hard for the Bankruptcy Reform Act, to keep people from discharging credit card debt - but it would no doubt leap at its first opportunity to have the government subsidize its debts and nationalize its losses. What would a self-professed "free-market conservative" call such a bailout? Probably something like "bipartisan stimulation".

Pay No Attention To The Race-Baiter Behind The Curtain

Robert Novak writes,

In such a prolonged contest, Obama will enjoy overwhelming African American support. The question is whether the Clinton campaign can resist pointing this out in an effort to mobilize white backing. It certainly has not resisted so far, demonstrated by feckless Gerry Ferraro's mimicking what she heard from Bill and Hillary.

As Novak suggests, why would Clinton need to point that out when they have people like Gerry Ferraro Robert Novak making the argument for them?

It's Always The Worst-Case Scenario

Another Iraq war "expert" presented in the Times, Kenneth Pollack, argues,

If we leave behind a raging civil war in which the Iraqi people are incomprehensibly worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein and the Middle East more threatened by the chaos spilling over from Iraq than they ever were by the dictator’s arms, then no one will care how well-intentioned our motives.

If all that matters is the outcome, Mr. Pollack, then our pure-as-snow motives going in are no more relevant than would be our "well-intentioned motives" when pulling out. It's a false dichotomy anyway - unless Mr. Pollack sees the present situation as "a raging civil war in which the Iraqi people are incomprehensibly worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein", as we don't need a force the size of the present occupation force to keep a significantly larger civil war from breaking out. As an "expert," you would think he would recall from the long period of sanctions how effective a "no fly zone" and total air dominance can be at preventing troop movements.

Let's look at Iraq's neighbors.... If a post-occupation insurgency were actually a threat to them (and possibly even if not), Turkey, Syria, and Iran could be anticipated to create "security zones" inside Iraq to limit its effect. This, of course, would be contrary to U.S. goals for the region, but none of those countries are going to permit an Iraqi civil war to spill across its borders. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? They'll be fully backed by the U.S. military. That leaves Jordan and, even if we assume that Jordan is incapable of defending its border, even if we ignore its history and pretend that it cannot put down civil unrest, and even if we assume that the U.S. completely withdrew from Iraq (yes, there will be continued troops and continued air dominance for many years after "withdrawal), on the opposite side of Jordan is a nation called "Israel" that does not sit idly by when its neighbors fall into civil war and chaos.

Why can't proponents of indefinite occupation be honest? They don't fear a civil war leading to chaos. They fear the end of Iraq as a nation state, with neighboring companies carving it up into pieces in the name of "security". (Perhaps I'm giving them too much credit, though, as some so-called "experts" don't seem particularly bright or informed.)

The "Experts" Speak (Again)

More than four years ago, The Guardian asked a number of "experts" on Iraq to comment on how to improve the situation. The suggestions were pretty mediocre. The most laughable? From Danielle Pletka:

For Danielle Pletka, of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, improved security was a matter of being tougher. The US should "stop acting as a weak power, because that is what is giving encouragement to the terrorists", she urged.

"We could stop driving around in Humvees without actually arresting anybody," she said. "We could arrest a lot of people, including all of the Ba'athists, the mukhabarat [secret police] and senior military who are floating around freely in Iraq. We could stop releasing people after we arrest them, often within 24 hours."

Closing Iraq's borders effectively, to prevent infiltration from neighbouring countries, she added, was half the battle. "We could make clear to the governments that are allowing infiltrators through that the consequences to them will be extraordinarily unpleasant if it continues."

Her suggestion for how to get us onto a path of success? One of those "It would be funny, but..." things.

What would kickstart moves to peace?

Danielle Pletka:

'Establish an understanding that there are liberal, democratic Iraqis who should be empowered with more control over the political and security wellbeing of the country'

• Chance of stability in 12 months: 50-75% as long as changes are made in tactics

The New York Times continues to anoint her as an expert:

But what about the mistaken assumptions that remain unexamined? Looking back, I felt secure in the knowledge that all who yearn for freedom, once free, would use it well. I was wrong. There is no freedom gene, no inner guide that understands the virtues of civil society, of secret ballots, of political parties. And it turns out that living under Saddam Hussein’s tyranny for decades conditioned Iraqis to accept unearned leadership, to embrace sect and tribe over ideas, and to tolerate unbridled corruption.

So when we invaded, her position was, "Wave a magic wand, get freedom." Now she knows better, because with her newfound grasp of Iraqi history she has come to realize that Saddam Hussein created tribalism and sectarianism in the Middle East, and apparently that he succeeded a government that was honest, diligent, free of corruption, and democratically elected. Having been 100% wrong on the invasion, and taking the ignorant and wildly incorrect position that the U.S. wasn't arresting or detaining suspected insurgents and terrorists in 2003, Pletka continues to display near-total ignorance of the region and its history.

Some have used Iraq’s political immaturity as further proof the war was wrong, as if somehow those less politically evolved don’t merit freedoms they are ill equipped to make use of. We would be better served to understand how the free world can foster appreciation of the building blocks of civil society in order to help other victims of tyranny when it is their turn.

The "some have used" game. Yes, particularly war supporters who try to explain away their failures with Coulteresque racism directed at Arabs and Muslims.

But those voices who can tell us how nation building works, and the difficulties of occupation? Had Ms. Pletka been listening, she would have heard those voices before the invasion. Instead she plugged her ears and dreamed up a "democracy gene". And when things went wrong, advanced the line that we had a pretty good chance of success if only we would get tougher and arrest more people, and turn power over to "liberal, democratic Iraqis"... which, yes, in her mind meant Ahmed Chalabi.

Some expert. And yet, on it goes.

Bush Speechwriters United....

... Against Obama.

Michael Gerson attempts to attack Barack Obama's record on the Iraq war, but first a blatantly false assertion about McCain:

John McCain's nomination was ensured by the success of the surge he had consistently advocated, against intense opposition.

Daniel Larison responds:

This is ludicrous. McCain was the frontrunner in the spring of 2007, long before anyone could have reasonably claimed that the “surge” had done anything (not that many pundits didn’t make outlandish claims), and there was in any case never any doubt in the Republican rank-and-file that the “surge” was the right thing to do. On the contrary, if McCain’s nomination was ever assured it was assured by the collapse of his only real national rival, Mitt Romney, under the waves of the Huckaboom, whose beginning had literally nothing to do with the war in Iraq.

Gerson attempts to depict Obama as inconsistent on Iraq, lifting his analysis out of an essay by fellow Bush Speechwriter Peter Wehner. The phases appear to be:

1. The 2002 speech, opposing the Iraq war;
2. A post-war period, from 2003 to 2006, in which he argued that it would be irresponsible to withdraw, and that we had an obligation to try to stabilize Iraq;
3. Starting in late 2006, argument for phased withdrawal, and skepticism about "the surge";
4. An apparent present mindset that his Iraq policy as President will be shaped by the facts on the ground.

Gerson, of course, is all for the idea that Obama should base his opinions on the realities of the situation in Iraq, not campaign promises. But this obviously undercuts his suggestion of inconsistency between pre-war opposition to invasion, and post-war support for an effort to make the invasion and occupation work. Did Gerson somehow miss that the facts on the ground changed considerably between the time Obama opposed a theoretical war, and the time he was hoping to get the best outcome out of an actual war? Of course not. Gerson's attacks on Obama are consistently short on honesty.

Not only is there no inconsistency between points one and two, Obama remains correct to have opposed the war, and once Bush started the war he was correct to press for the best outcome. Had his position during the post-war period been a demand for immediate withdrawal at any cost, it would have been ridiculous. And this, of course, further highlights Gerson's mendacity - Gerson would be savaging that stance, as well. (The difference being, had Obama taken such a ridiculous position, Gerson could have presented an honest impeachment.)

So now the "inconsistency" is reduced to skepticism of "the surge", and the suggestion that the time has come for the Iraqi government to shoulder the burden of running the country. Or, if you believe that the Iraqi government will remain incapable of assuming actual governance and responsibility for security in the next twelve to thirty months, that the time has come for us to cut our losses. With all due respect to Gerson, if he truly believed that "the surge" was working he wouldn't be trying to disown the Bush Administration's benchmarks of its success, or exaggerating its successes.

It is a perfectly legitimate reaction to the present situation to observe that it is not apparent that Iraqi factions will even try to resolve their differences as long as the occupation remains in force, and to ask, "Why shouldn't we cut our losses?" The easy thing to do is what Gerson and his ilk have done from day one - prop up the official Bush Administration line that up is down, left is right, and the best way to overcome past failures is to keep on doing exactly the same thing.

Oh, you say, but "the surge" was something different. Even accepting that argument, that the failures of the prior years of strategy had become so patent that there were some real changes in our approach to the occupation on the ground, the surge has failed by the Bush Administration's benchmarks, and apparently also in the assessment of General Petaeus. And here's where the circle closes - the brilliant strategy of the man Gerson wants to push into the White House? "We'll keep doing exactly the same thing, whether for a hundred years or even a thousand years." That, Gerson would have us believe, is the better Iraq war policy.

I know I tease Gerson here, by suggesting that he is a world-class idiot, but there's another possibility. He's capitalizing on his position with the Washington Post to inject Republican smears into mainstream discourse. If they don't stick, those feeding him the lines he is to pitch can shrug and say, "It's only Gerson." And if the smears stick, more credible right-wingers can run with them.

Holy Prescience, Batman

I stumbled across this from my archives.

In today's Times, Bill Safire cautions us not to get too exuberant in what he sees as an amazing financial recovery for the nation, for fear of causing another bubble.

Revisiting that editorial,

Contrarians, arise! As consumers are consumed with buying DVD's over their cellphones, getting second mortgages to take advantage of stock tips and letting their invaluable animal spirits get the better of their judgment, it is for us to march around with sandwich boards that say ''Repent - The End Is Near.''

That's what you get, though, for wearing a sandwich board and portending doom - nobody listens to you.

"Our Greatest Contemporary Philosopher" Speaks

Following up on David Mamet, maybe I should have gone with the parody I contemplated in footnote 1:

I was tempted to write a piece about Mamet's early work being performed the Organic Theater and, well, basically drawing as many parallels I could between Mamet's background and Jonah Goldberg's notions of a "liberal fascist." Such a piece would be entitled, "I used to be a liberal fascist, but it turns out I was a conservative the whole time." That, of course, would be intended as a poke in the eye of those who gush over both this essay and Goldberg's book, but they wouldn't get it and everybody else would be bored.

Because I just discovered (via Glenn Kenny) the great philosopher's edict on liberal fascism:

Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss — and a major loss.

Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis.

Right.... Brilliant.

Brooks on Spitzer

Without "naming names," David Brooks has written what is obviously intended as an armchair psychoanalysis of Elliot Spitzer. I wonder, though, if it isn't more of an introspective essay - where Brooks might find himself but for his preternatural ability to resist marshmallows.

They go through the oboe practice, soccer camp, homework marathon childhood. Their parent-teacher conferences are like mini-Hall of Fame enshrinements as all gather to worship at the flame of their incipient success. In high school, they enter their Alpha Geekdom. They rack up great grades and develop that coating of arrogance that forms on those who know that in the long run they will be more successful than the beauties and jocks who get dates.

Then they go into one of those fields like law, medicine or politics, where a person’s identity is defined by career rank. They develop the specific social skills that are useful on the climb up the greasy pole: the capacity to imply false intimacy; the ability to remember first names; the subtle skills of effective deference; the willingness to stand too close to other men while talking and touching them in a manly way.

Is it just me, or did that get a bit weird toward the end....

Oh, I suppose Brooks paints one path to narcissism. (Mike at Crime and Federalism seems more inclined to see this as sociopathy.) The high school geek, certain of his own superiority, reinforced by family members (but not by peers), who gains a position that vest him with money and power. But at the end of the day, it's the destination that matters. Some of the more common manifestations of personality disorder:

Narcissistic personality disorder

• Inflated sense of - and preoccupation with - your importance, achievements and talents


• Constant attention-grabbing and admiration-seeking behavior


• Inability to empathize with others


• Excessive anger or shame in response to criticism


• Manipulation of others to further your own desires

Brooks himself knows that the narcissistic geek is the exception, not the rule, in positions of leadership. How did he put it?

The only real shift between school and adult politics is that the jocks realize they need conservative intellectuals, who are geeks who have decided their fellow intellectuals should never be allowed to run anything and have learned to speak slowly so the jocks will understand them. Meanwhile, the geeks have learned they need to find popular kids like F.D.R. to head their tickets because the American people will never send a former geek to the White House.

Also, if history tells us anything it's that there is no single personality type that is inclined toward a Spitzer-type fall from grace. The "jocks, cheerleaders and preps" are more likely to get a position of fame and/or fortune from which to fall, but maybe that makes no difference to Brooks, who states that in high school:

... all prestige goes to jocks, cheerleaders and preps who possess the emotional depth of a cocker spaniel.

Does Brooks see anybody as having emotional depth? Other than possibly himself?

I'm left with the question, why does Brooks focus on lust, and not the other deadly sins? Does he believe that a hyperachieving nerd is more susceptible to this type of scandal? That Gary Hart and Bill Clinton were unpopular nerds in high school? (What about JFK and Lyndon Johnson?) That Charlie Sheen, Eddie Murphy and Hugh Grant are nerds at heart, involved in prostitution scandals due to their "rank-link imbalances"? Or is it that he's trying to find a way to wag his finger at Spitzer without acknowledging the fallen heroes of the right - Newt Gingrich, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Larry Craig, Tom Delay, George Allen, Bernie Kerik, etc., likely to soon be joined by Don Young and Ted Stevens? Because when you broaden the context and include the more typical cases, you can really see how Brooks missed the mark.

"My Favorite Philosopher Is Thomas Sowell"

A number of years ago I wrote an entry, "My Favorite Philosopher Is Jesus", that took a jaundiced view of Thomas Sowell's In A Conflict of Visions, an effort to categorize political philosophies into two categories, "constrained" and "unconstrained". As is typical of this type of work, that really translates into "people like me," and "everybody else", with "everybody else" being wrong. Oh, I know, Sowell's proponents argue that he avoids saying, "all those who adhere to an 'unconstrained vision' are wrong," but how dumb would you actually have to be not to discern that message?

The title to that post is, of course, alluding to the conservative's conservative, George W. Bush, describing Jesus as his "favorite philosopher". If G.W. reflects the "constrained vision" to which Sowell would have us aspire, may his favorite philosopher help us.

The other day when I was browsing weblogs, I saw a post on Talking Points Memo,

David Mamet: Why I am no longer a 'brain-dead liberal.'

Okay, I thought, I'll bite.¹ And at the other end of the link I found an intriguing essay written by a man who, although unquestionably bright, has spent sixty years on the planet without spending any discernible time contemplating politics. It's an analysis I might expect from an undergraduate student, who for the first time has come to realize that there is a lot of nuance in the world around him (but better written).

None of the other weblogs I read mentioned this essay. That's perhaps not surprising, given that there's really not much to it. So I did a blog search to find out what others were saying. The first thing I learned was that the essay was given prominent treatment by the Drudge Report - that explains the original link, and also explains the second thing I learned. It's all over the right-leaning blogosphere, with typical expressions being that it is a "brilliant piece of writing", "welcome to the real world", and "liberals are going to hate you for this."² And thus David Mamet is welcomed into the world of shallow politics, a world in which he presently belongs.

I don't mean that as an insult of David Mamet, but it is his own admission that he spent sixty years on the planet without reconsidering political assumptions that were self-contradictory³, at odds with each other⁴, at odds with his body of work⁵, and at odds with the way he lives his life⁶. If he truly believed himself to be a "liberal" throughout those sixty years, he deserves his self-applied label. And while his "awakening" may put him on par with the right-wing bloggers who gush over his essay, I don't think you can read it without the sense that when it comes to political philosophy he is not only far from the deep waters - he is still splashing around in the kiddie pool. A high school student could shred his facile comparison of George W. Bush to J.F.K.

The line that told me exactly where Mamet is coming from was this:

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.⁷

I doubt I would be the first to point out to him that you can have a profound understanding of economic theory and still be an unabashed liberal. Or maybe I would. But his comment on Sowell provided a context for his entire piece - he read In A Conflict of Visions and, without a second thought, swallowed the theory of "unconstrained" versus "constrained" visions.

This also gives me something of a chuckle, in terms of the warm embrace Mamet is receiving from the right-wing blogosphere. How many among them have read Sowell? How many of that tiny group would describe Sowell as "our greatest contemporary philosopher"? Sowell has written some very good stuff during his career, but his brand of (paleo-)conservativism isn't particularly fashionable. And more to the point, perhaps out of a newfound awareness of the limitations of his understanding, Mamet does not actually embrace a new political label. His conclusion, which like the endings of many of his plays leaves many questions unanswered, is,

The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler.

That is to say, he seems to be categorizing himself as some form of centrist - somebody who is now sufficiently politically aware to know that everybody else is "mooing" but not quite sure where to stand (other than by the water cooler). Perhaps after a bit more reading and a bit more thinking, he'll realize that his reluctance to join one or the other of Sowell's political camps results from the fact that Sowell has it wrong, and that political thought is a multi-dimensional spectrum.

---------------
Footnotes

1. I was tempted to write a piece about Mamet's early work being performed the Organic Theater and, well, basically drawing as many parallels I could between Mamet's background and Jonah Goldberg's notions of a "liberal fascist." Such a piece would be entitled, "I used to be a liberal fascist, but it turns out I was a conservative the whole time." That, of course, would be intended as a poke in the eye of those who gush over both this essay and Goldberg's book, but they wouldn't get it and everybody else would be bored.

2. Would Mamet fear small audiences? Probably about as much as he fears having somebody say, "That dialog wasn't realistic." But really, he's in the Kelsey Grammer category of, "respected for his work," not in the Dennis Miller category of, "Overdone schtick that can't even survive on Fox." Either way, it's not his politics that matter.

3. Mamet admits this, "I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart?" But that's why he presents his cutesy self-appellation, "brain-dead" - he wasn't thinking.

4. A contradiction he highlights is his former belief that governments, composed of people, are the solution to our problems while businesses, composed of people, act only in self-interest. Now it's pretty much the opposite, perhaps with the qualification that he relishes his own materialism, but somehow he no longer sees the contradiction.

5. It is hard to imagine Oleanna - in which a young woman plays the sexual harassment card and destroys her professor - as advancing a liberal philosophy. Mamet's new play, November, that supposedly inspired this political awakening is about interplay "between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter" - in other words, the "liberal" is a caricature, and an easily defeated straw man. And his views on race?

Races, as Steven Pinker wrote in his refutational The Blank Slate, are just rather large families; families share genes and thus, genetic disposition. Such may influence the gene holders (or individuals) much, some, or not at all. The possibility exists, however, that a family passing down the gene for great hand-eye coordination is likely to turn out more athletes than without. The family possessing the genes for visual acuity will likely produce good hunters, whose skill will provide nourishment. The families of the good hunters will prosper and intermarry, thus strengthening the genetic disposition in visual acuity.

Bambi v Godzilla, Pantheon (February 6, 2007). The purpose of the essay is to explain the high representation of Ashkenazim (and possibly Asperger's Syndrome) among film directors; but what's the implicit statement about other races?

6. "The observed rule in Hollywood is ‘feel free to treat everyone like scum." Did he believe that the peons who fetch him his lattes every morning do so because of their "inherent goodness"? "I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as 'a brain-dead liberal,' and to NPR as 'National Palestinian Radio.'" If he truly believed those expressions to be charming (or clever), I'm at a loss for words.

7. Mamet later elaborates, "I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow." Mamet is an unabashed Zionist. It shouldn't take him very long to think of one good thing that resulted from government intervention. But should I assume that he believes environmental laws, child labor laws, Medicare, Social Security, food inspection, drug inspection, public highways, etc., all stand in the way of great filmmaking, and are thus social detriments? More to the point, he's a playwright - a profession that could scarcely exist but for government grants, publicly funded education, charitable donations and tax exemptions.

Is It About Race, Or About Getting Noticed

It's tough to be a white man who wants to run for President. To be taken seriously you need an impressive résumé. Unless you're wealthy. Or your dad was President (and you're a wealthy heir). Or you're really wealthy. Or you're filthy stinkin' rich. Or your name is Kennedy. Or to have played the President on the teevee. There's also something about "being in the right place at the right time" - something that could never happen to a white guy.

So let's look at the remark that got Geraldine Ferraro into so much trouble.

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship," Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. "Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."

Ferraro is sticking to her words, while the Clinton campaign "disagrees". Maureen Dowd (of all people) provides some additional context:

Geraldine Ferraro, who helped Walter Mondale lose 49 states in 1984, was clearly stung at what she considered Obama’s easy rise to celebrity and electoral success. Last Friday, Ms. Ferraro, who is on Hillary’s national finance committee, told The Daily Breeze, a small newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Obama acknowledged when he arrived in the Senate that he got more attention, his big book deal and his celebrity, because he is not white. He was only the third black senator elected since Reconstruction.

But as he campaigned here Tuesday, he was outraged at Ferraro’s comments. “They are divisive,” he said. “I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd.”

Here's the deal. Getting noticed, for the most part, isn't enough to get you taken seriously. The insulting part of Ferraro's comment is not so much that Obama's race helped him get noticed; it's the implication that it's the only reason he was noticed, and that it's the only reason he remains a serious contender in the race. Beyond that, as Josh Marshall asks, "Can anyone seriously claim that it's an asset to be an African-American in a US presidential race?"

The same can be asked of gender - look at the media coverage of Clinton. And I suspect that Ferraro is correct that were Obama a female of any race, with all else being equal, he would not have been taken seriously as a Presidential contender. Within the right context, being African American or being female can help you "get noticed", but it's no free pass.

Putting political beliefs aside for the moment, were he to have tried to run as a Democrat this time around how many days do you think G.W. Bush's campaign would have lasted? Both Clinton and Obama are far superior candidates as compared to our sitting President. Stripped of his family name and fortune, a candidate as mediocre as Bush wouldn't have lasted a day.

Using Gmail As A Spam Filter

I have no love of web-based email. Years ago when I had MSN dial-up, Microsoft made the anti-consumer decision to block POP Mail and force its users to use Hotmail instead. I had about eight more months on my MSN contract, and Microsoft indicated that the fee for early termination was, well, almost as much as the balance of the contract. (If you want to know the point in time when I decided to give Microsoft as little of my money as humanly possible, that would be it.)

I also used Yahoo! mail for a number of years, particularly when I was on vacation. I would use it to pull email from my POP server, without deleting the originals such that they could be downloaded when I returned home. But its atrocious spam filtering led me to abandon that idea. The idea of paying them a premium to (possibly) keep a web-based email account usable, with a spam filter of unknown quality? Not appealing.

I haven't been paying much attention to Gmail, beyond noting that it does have decent spam filtering, but I read something today that may cause me to take a second look - apparently I can route my email through Gmail, taking full advantage of its spam filter, while continuing to download my email and continuing to use my own email addresses.

Running Against McCain

E.J. Dionne suggests,

So what's the path of integrity for one-time McCain fans in the center and on the left? It would be to base our judgments on the extent to which the rebellious McCain we admired has given way to the McCain who is as conservative as he always said he was - even if many liberals (and, for different reasons, many conservatives) didn't want to believe him.

Is there a need for a special "path of integrity"? I don't think that a Democrat who would have preferred McCain to Bush in 2000, or again in 2004, to note, "I thought he would be better than G.W. Bush, but that doesn't mean I think he's better than anybody." Or to observe, "He has done some good things, and to me that puts him head and shoulders above the other Republicans who he defeated in the primaries, but I now have to compare him to the Democratic nominee."

What gives me the most pause about McCain? His retreat from his own historic positions without regard for whether he is followng a "path of integrity". The positions where I found him historically most impressive, such as fiscal conservativism, willingness to stand up to intolerance? When he decided to run for President again, they were the first to go. Where he is the most consistent as a "conservative", it seems, is when he advocates against abortion rights or flag burning. To the extent that it is even fair to call it "conservative," that platform doesn't inspire me.

Meanwhile, Richard Cohen is telling us that McCain could win based on the one issue where he has been consistent - to maintain the Iraq War as a war without end.

John McCain lacks Nixon's raw talent for hypocrisy, so I don't think he'll go that far. But he will make his stand on the surge, and it will be, for him, the functional equivalent of Nixon's secret plan. His plan, McCain will say, is to win. The Democrats' is to surrender, he will say. The issue, if he frames it right, will not be the wisdom of the war but how to get out with pride.

But that's not what's going to happen, is it? The Democrats will be asking, "How do we get out with pride, while maintaining stability in the region," and McCain will be arguing, "Get out? Why would we ever want to do that?"

McCain, of course, owns the surge. He advocated putting additional troops in Iraq way back when President Bush, deep in denial, was proclaiming ultimate faith in Rummy and his merry band of incompetents.

McCain only "owns" the surge because the mainstream media lets him. Why doesn't he own the entire war? ("Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.") Why doesn't he "own" the catastrophically bad plan that he endorsed, up to the date it should have been obvious to a sack of hammers that more troops were needed? McCain argued,

Many critics suggest that disarming Iraq through regime change would not result in an improved peace. There are risks in this endeavor, to be sure. But no one can plausibly argue that ridding the world of Saddam Hussein will not significantly improve the stability of the region and the security of American interests and values.

That argument was being plausibly made at the time. It proved correct. But Mr. "Straight Talk" - Mr. "National Security" - wasn't listening. And McCain's enduring embrace of Chalabi is evocative of Bush's deep stare into Putin's eyes - how wrong can you be?

So when Cohen gushes, "McCain, in fact, oozes national security", the question is legitimately raised, why are so many in the mainstream media unwilling to point out that, on the whole, McCain's judgment on the war has been terrible? (And what else is there?)

The ABA Journal on Macs v PCs

The ABA Journal has a cute "debate" between two lawyers who "advise on the use of technology in the law office", one advocating for Macs and the other for PCs. There's not much new to the debate - you can read it yourself here. I did find it amusing, though, that the PC advocate frequently resorted to misinformation.

My first Mac was an SE/30. I needed a new hard drive. Did I call Apple? No. Did I find a third party vendor, order a third party hard drive (Apple, after all, doesn't actually make hard drives), and install it myself? Sure did. When I wanted to expand the memory, same story. And this was how long ago? Seventeen years ago - 1991. Has this changed? Hardly. My external hard drive has the word "Maxtor" on the side, not "Apple". My scanner and printer say "HP". My memory card reader says "Lexar". My FireWire hub says "Belkin". My wireless hub says "Linksys". So when I read,

As far as worrying what components are in my PC and worrying about the company I buy from, I have always objected to Apple's proprietary mindset: If you want a new hard drive, you must buy it from us, and you will pay what we want.

I cry "shenanigans". And when I read,

I like competition, and I like the fact that I can open up a PC and change out the hard drive with an inexpensive product that is the result of a lot of competition.

Well, welcome to 1991. No, even then he would be late to the game.

I do grant that many Macs aren't meant to be opened. As with PC's, Mac notebooks aren't meant to be serviced by the end-user. The iMac and Mac Mini are also not meant to be casually opened and self-serviced. Which, frankly, is fine for most users, even if the gearheads would prefer a Mac Pro.

His "last word" on the PC/Mac debate is this:

For all the positive hype about the “cool” Mac, a Web developer/ Mac convert has posted on his blog a 33-item complaint about why he has thoughts about going back.

Slow operations, bugs and crashes, useless functions, high expenses—sounds like the cost of an Apple is nearing its weight in gold.

Even though there is no follow-up to suggest that the developer actually switched back, that might be a little bit more compelling if, you know, the blog entry weren't dated September 22nd, 2005. (This would be more current - and the complaint, "Seriously, Steve - want more people to buy Macs? Just let them get the software", is valid, as you might expect from a seven-day-old post.)

That's not his first effort to oversell the PC, either.

In its zeal to be cool and proprietary, the new Apple ultralight, the MacBook Air, costs more than $1,700. Comparable specs are available on Windows machines for less than $1,000.

Comparable specs are available on cheaper Macs as well. I do agree that Wintel machines still have a price advantage in the portable market, which is why my portable is a Dell, but the proper comparison would be to a standard MacBook. In terms of performance? Let's just say, Vista is pretty but slow - I suggest investing in extra RAM. And Vista seems quirky - sometimes when I try to "wake up" my Dell, it shuts down - that's annoying.

My take on the debate is this: Despite the hype about how hard it is to learn a "different" system, it's really not. There are some significant differences between OSX and Vista, particularly if you use keyboard shortcuts, but you get used to them. I frequently switch back-and-forth between systems with only an occasional slip.

PC's have a lead in software, and have held that lead for years. As more software is browser-based, this lead will become less significant in the future. But if your office runs on a PC-only case management program, or you have a ton of money invested in HotDocs, you need to be careful. You can run both OSX and Windows on the current generation of Macs, but if you're going to be booting up in Windows mode as a matter of course it isn't sensible to spend the extra money (a Mac plus a Windows license) for functionality you will not use. If you run an emulator such as Parallels, so that you can run Windows in a window while running OSX, don't expect it to be fast.

If you are really just looking for basic functionality - Microsoft Office, and browser-based access to Lexis or WestLaw, you can go either way. In my opinion, right now Macs are much more pleasant to use. But there is a short learning curve if you switch.

After I graduated from law school I produced many legal documents on a Mac desktop computer, as that was what I owned. After owning several Macs, I switched to Windows because at the time it was a better option. When my last Dell desktop was groaning under the weight of modern applications, I switched back to a Mac desktop, because OSX offers many advantages over Windows. (XP was a resource hog. Vista is worse.) I have an emulator for programs that only run on PC's - I rarely use it. As I mentioned, my notebook is a Dell. Not that my saying so will make either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs happy, but my loyalty is to my own needs, not to a computer manufacturer.

"Why They Hate Us"

It's a throwaway line in a rather silly editorial, but hasn't this one worn itself out?

The United States went into Iraq because, even if mistakenly, it wanted to rid the world of a menace. For this, the world hated it.

I would challenge Sebastian Mallaby to find me somebody who hates the United States because it toppled Saddam Hussein, except there is a possibility that if he looks hard enough he'll find... one.

Is Mallaby trying to get invited to a White House dinner?

Prisons, Mental Health Policy and Incarceration Rates

At Lawyers, Guns and Money, we're reminded of this prison's extremely high incarceration rates and the resulting costs to states. The Detroit Free Press explains the cost to Michigan:

Before the nation hits two in 100 behind bars, which seems inevitable, it's time for a national debate on corrections and criminal justice policies that will lead to a more rational, humane and cost-effective system. The nation has gotten far too little for its enormous investment in locking people up. Violent crime rates are higher than they were more than three decades ago, when tough-on-crime policies, including mandatory sentencing laws, created a prison-building boom.

States can no longer afford to divert so many resources from education, health care and other pressing needs. Michigan, for example, with one of the nation's highest incarceration rates, spends $2 billion a year on corrections, or 20% of its general fund. It is one of four states spending more on corrections than higher education. In today's economy, spending more on prisons than college is a recipe for failure.

If you've been reading this weblog for a long time, you have a sense of my position on this - "... before we get "tough" on them by throwing away tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on their repeated stints behind bars, perhaps we should take a long and hard look at what we are doing and, for those cases where it isn't working, what we can and should do differently." Our nation's legislators irresponsibly toss billions of dollars at prisons without any sense of whether incarceration works, or whether there are more effective or more cost-effective alternatives.

A while back, an interesting graph was put up at the Volokh Conspiracy, illustrating our nation's prison and mental institution incarceration rates. Short of saying "correlation is causation", the illustration makes it hard to miss a connection between the closing of state-funded mental hospitals and the exploding incarceration rates in jails and prisons. I'm not arguing for reopening state mental hospitals and mass "mental health" incarceration as an alternative to prisons. But I am saying this: We had a lousy mental health policy that was followed by a paradigm shift (community-based mental health, self-determination) that was not adequately funded and supported, followed by misguided budget-slashing in states like Michigan which closed many of the state's remaining mental health facilities, followed by a willful blind eye to the fact that jails and prisons were filling up with people who were mentally ill, and otherwise untreated or given a lot less community-based support than they need.

I'll renew my call for evidence-based public policy.

Popularity

His editorial deserves greater ridicule, but I don't have time to keep up with all of Gerson's nonsense. Let's focus on this:

The real lesson in the years since Sept. 11 is different from what the Democratic candidates imagine: It is easy to be loved when you are a victim. It is harder to be popular when you act decisively to protect yourself and others.

Well, first of all we have a false dichotomy - our choices are either to "be a victim" or to "act decisively to protect yourself and others". Obviously, between the two, people are going to choose the flattering depiction - "Of course we want to be decisive! Of course we want to defend ourselves! Of course we defend others as well." Never mind that Gerson's "lesson" is not even close to reflecting reality. If Gerson were writing about the two World Wars and adhered to this style, he would elide the gratitude received by the nations the U.S. helped liberate, and would write something along the lines of, "Twice now, we have fought to free Europe, and both times Germany hated us for it."

If anybody has been playing the "victim" card since 9/11, it would be the Bush Administration. Being a "victim" is its excuse for everything, from secret detentions, to torture, to limiting habeas corpus, to warrantless spying, to entering into a massive war of choice despite the doubts and, in some cases, opposition of our allies. And the rift with the world did not start with a war in the defense of ourselves or others - it came by virtue of Bush's war of choice with Iraq. His decision that he was going to reinvent the region by war, whatever the doubts of our allies. What happened? He proved to be wrong in his professed rationale for the invasion and, despite an extremely competent invasion by the U.S. military, he proved to be beyond incompetent in the aftermath of the invasion.

Had Bush listened to "old Europe", he may well have learned within months that there were no "WMD's" in Iraq. But then, that was a pretext - he didn't want confirmation that Iraq had abandoned its weapons programs before the war, as it might have cost him the opportunity to start the war. Had he listened to "old Europe", or even to experienced voices within his own Administration, the military, or the State Department, he would have heard that successful occupation is difficult, requires a massive troop commitment, and that democratizing a nation and introducing market principles into a controlled economy is a touch more complicated than, say, growing a Chia Pet. Instead he sent in a band of incompetents like L. Paul Bremer to reinvent the nation, whatever the will of the people. And he decided to disband the Iraqi military, sending hundreds of thousands of armed, unemployed young men off to joblessness (i.e., to engage in street crime, join the "insurgency", or both.) What's not to love?

You can argue that once he got past his "The Pet Goat" moment, Bush started to act "decisively", sure. But decisive or not, you don't earn anybody's respect when every major decision you make is wrong. (I know that some people will choose to give him respect despite his incompetence, but let's not pretend that he earned it.) A half-competent President could have used his post-9/11 popularity boost, combined with the enormous "benefit of the doubt" initially afforded by the rest of the world, and could have embarked on a plan to eliminate Al Qaeda and to press for reforms in the Middle East. Bush had other plans.

Gerson follows his standard mendacious line that when the Democrats speak of improving our reputation in the world, it can only mean that we want to make this nation's enemies like us more. He is contemptuous of "old Europe" - "pacifists" (like the French in Chad?) who fought alongside us in the First Gulf War and Afghanistan.... er., I mean, who thought invading Iraq was a really bad idea. Gerson illustrates this idea by arguing that even when we're popular in other countries, they still may oppose our policies and pursue their own self-interest... well, duh. And even more idiotic, his notion that improving our international reputation will inevitably mean rolling over and giving our enemies everything they want. While this type of idiocy may be mistaken for brilliance during Bush Administration speechwriting sessions, it's unfortunate that Gerson's White House experience has apparently left him unable to write anything more than bad fiction.

Free Trade

McCain backer Dan Schnur has an editorial in the Times in which he ridicules Clinton and Obama for pandering on free trade.

Barely a footnote in the Democratic debate throughout most of 2007, trade has emerged more recently as perhaps the key defining policy distinction in Tuesday’s Ohio primary. One of the most important Democratic gains in recent years has been among financially secure and highly educated voters, most of whom understand the benefits of a global economy. A prolonged argument on trade policy between Senators Clinton and Obama could put those voters in play again in the fall.

Well, probably not. Because well-educated, financially secure people understand the difference between campaign trail hyperbole and what will actually happen when either candidate, if elected President, assumes office. I don't much care for the pandering, but it probably resonates with targeted voters better than is McCain's admission, "globalization will not automatically benefit every American". (They already know that.)

The danger for a protracted struggle between Senators Clinton and Obama is not that the party will fail to unify. Rather, the real threat is that the two candidates will continue to move leftward to try to win over voters in the remaining primary states, not just on trade policy but on other issues as well.

It's always good for a Democrat to follow the advice of a Sicil... er, McCain backer.

Had John McCain lost the Texas primary to Mike Huckabee on Tuesday night, he would still eventually have become the Republican nominee for president. But after another month or two of competing with a fundamentalist minister for primary votes, Senator McCain probably would have had to put James Dobson on the ticket with him and give his convention speech in tongues to turn out conservatives in the fall.

Actually.... Dobson has already declared that he would rather sit out the election than support McCain and, with nothing to fear from Huckabee, McCain has chosen to embrace Hagee. I doubt McCain will speak in tongues at the convention, but if he thinks it will make the difference he needs....

I don't argue with Schnur's (professed) hope that Clinton and Obama avoid escalating their "anti-trade sentiments", but I have to wonder¹ if his real fear is for them, or is it concern that their continued emphasis will highlight McCain's competing stance of, "Many workers will suffer and good jobs will continue to disappear, but free trade is good for everyone else."
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1. This is a rhetorical flourish. I think we can reasonably infer Schnur's intent. Paul Krugman highlights the real risk to the Democrats, and perhaps especially Obama - that anti-NAFTA talk will be viewed as disingenuous.

Obama On The Attack

David Brooks believes that if Obama goes on the attack, his campaign will disappear in a puff of smoke.

In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal. Barack Obama doesn’t have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he’s got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him.

Let's see.... On the one hand, we have hardcore Barack Obama supporters, who often seem to be out for Hillary Clinton's blood. On the other hand, we have those of us who never thought of Barack Obama as something special or transcendent. Which of us will be turned off if Obama "goes negative" on Clinton or McCain, particularly if he does so in a dignified manner? (There's no need for swiftboating, "Willie Horton" ads, or similar abrogations of honor and honesty.)

Senator Clinton says that she has a longer history of service in the Senate than I do. She says that Senator McCain has a longer history in the Senate than I do. I don't dispute their distinguished careers as Washington insiders. Yet Senator Clinton claims this means she and Senator McCain have "a lifetime of experience" that they will bring to their campaigns. Take a look at their votes, their foreign policy decisions. Having a long record of bad judgment on key issues of national security and defense is not a qualification to be President.

Here's my challenge to Senator Clinton. Identify the foreign policy decisions where we've disagreed, the Senate votes where we were on opposite sides, and explain why in every case my judgment proved to be better.

Would that approach be so offensive? (It works on McCain, as well.)

The Clinton Tax Returns

There's a silly back-and-forth right now over Hillary Clinton's refusal to release her tax returns before April 15th. If it were just this year's tax return, that might be reasonable, but of course it's not.

The reasonable inference is that Clinton has something to hide. If it would hurt her in the primaries against Obama, it will hurt her in a general election against McCain. Come on, Senator Clinton - Rip off the Band-Aid and get it over with.