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.

David Frum Explains His Qualifications....

Asked, "How did you, as a native Canadian, end up working in the White House", David Frum replied,

The same papers that allow you to work at Taco Bell allow you to work at the White House.

I choose to interpret that in light of a prior question,

As a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former speechwriter for President Bush, you’re surprisingly critical of him in your new book, claiming he has appointed “consistently mediocre people” to important jobs and made “a shambles” of the Iraq war.

He's now a "senior policy advisor" to Giuliani? Perhaps to be expected from the guy whose résumé seems to be comprised primarily of penning the phrase, "Axis of Hatred".

And Your Opinion Is....

President Bush on torture:

"A simple question," said one White House reporter during a Bush news conference last week.

"Yes?" said Bush.

"What's your definition of the word 'torture'?"

"Oh," said Bush. "That's defined in U.S. law, and we don't torture."

Asked for his personal definition, Bush replied: "Whatever the law says."

Attention law students: even when you're unprepared for a professor's question you no longer need to try to bluff or "pass" - you can simply answer, "Whatever the law says." And just think how much shorter your exam answers can be.

I am reminded of an exchange from law school in which a student kept insisting upon additional information and details before he would answer the professors's question. After about five minutes of back-and-forth, when it was obvious that no answer would ever be forthcoming, the professor gave up and expressed to the class, "Should you ever hire Mr. Jones as a lawyer you had best take a hammer to your appointment, so you can beat an opinion out of him."

Looking at answers given in response to simple questions by Bush, Mukasey and Perrino, among others, it occurs to me that the professor's comment might now be taken as a compliment - "You're highly qualified to work for the President."

Demagoguery

At the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein lists what appear to be his leading complaints about Congress, including,

General demagoguery, e.g., Democratic members anytime Medicare or Social Security reform comes up, and Republican members on federalizing criminal law, the War on Terror, flagburning, etc.

I have no problem with criticizing demagoguery, but to me I can't think of an issue where you can't find sins on both sides. By way of example, I don't know what Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow has stated about her motivation to vote in favor of a constitional amendment against "desecrating the flag", but her vote is a matter of record.

To present a list like this, where demagoguery on "Medicare and Social Security" is attributed to the Democrats tells you more about the speaker than it does about actual demagoguery. The Republican Party opposed Social Security from its earliest days, describing it as socialism and even communism. The Republican party has attacked Medicare as "socialized medicine". Early fearmongering about Medicare came from none other than Ronald Reagan,

And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

Back during Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security, you could hardly turn around without hearing a Republican complain that the failure to "reform" Social Security would result in fiscal ruin.

I suspect that the explanation is that, on a subconscious level, people tend not to recognize demagoguery when they agree with it. To get past that, people have to actually think about the issues... good luck, right?

Could It Be More Obvious That The White House Has Been Lying?

The U.S. Attorney firing scandal grew out of something that, if addressed in an honest manner, would perhaps have raised a few eyebrows but would likely have been dismissed as "politics as usual... at least under Bush." You know, "Sure, we fired U.S. Attorneys for political reasons, but that's our constitutional right and they're poliitical appointees anyway."

Instead it's been an exercise in obfuscation, but one that has attempted to point fingers away from direct involvement by the White House. With Harriet Miers refusing to obey a subpoena to testify before Congress on a claim of executive privilege - a claim which of itself belies the idea that the White House was not involved in the firings - Bush is now asserting an "I'm completely above the law" concept of what executive privilege entails.

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

This will likely end up being resolved by the courts, and I'm sure Bush hopes that process is slow, but isn't it time to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt? If the White House were being even slightly honest about the firings, it wouldn't be necessary to throw up so many smokescreens, or so flagrantly flout the Constitution.

Article II Humor

Oren Kerr makes a funny.

If Dick Cheney's office truly isn't an executive office, why did the courts give so much credence to his claims of separation of powers?

Cheney argues that the executive branch needs to defends its right to confidentiality against "continual encroachment by Congress."

Sending A Computer Forensics Expert To The RNC?

No... I want a forensics expert from the RNC. Microsoft Outlook hangs every time I try to empty the trash for my email, and it's tedious deleting 70,000 messages in small increments. (In case you're wondering, most of that is automatically filtered spam, which seems to be arriving at a volume of 600 messages per day. I hadn't emptied my trash folder since Christmas.)

(In case you've missed the background to this post.)

Bipartisanship as an Inevitability?

I keep hearing talking heads declare that even if the Democrats win majorities in both the House and Senate, they will have to seek "bipartisan compromise" in order to navigate past Republicah filibusters or save themselves from Bush's veto pen. Oh, really?

What if the Democratic Party passes legislation that is popular with the public, even if it goes against Bush's policies. Let's say, for example, that a significant majority of the public supports broad federal funding for stem cell research or an increased minimum wage. Or allocation of a greater portion of "homeland security" funds to states and cities which are at the greatest risk. They pass the legislation. Is this really the type of legislation which the Republicans in the Senate are going to filibuster? And although GW can't run again, does he want his legacy to be that of an (unpopular) President who vetoes (popular) legislation? Does the Republican Party want to run its 2008 Presidential campaign on that foundation?

In this era where "bipartisanship" has often been defined as "accepting scraps from the table of the majority party", there is room for some turnabout.

It's Not About The Oil....

The world according to Ken Mehlman....

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said the Democrats have embraced a side of their party that wants to block President Bush's tougher anti-terror measures and would abandon Iraq to terrorists.

"Imagine a failed state on the second-largest oil reserves in the world," he said on NBC. "That's what would happen if we cut and run in Iraq, which unfortunately - which is what the Democratic Party has now made their orthodoxy."

I know that people have been making fun of him for conveniently forgetting the Bush Administration's insistence that we "Stay the Course," proposing that reference the Bush Administration's succession of failed plans for Iraq as a strategy to "Win by adapting". But this one deserves ridicule as well.

First, as you surely recall, "It's not about the oil". So how is it that the biggest concern Mehlman can describe as resulting from a premature departure from Iraq is who may end up controlling "the second-largest oil reserves in the world"?

Second, if it is about the oil, or if the oil was actually the last of our concerns but we choose to throw our hands up in despair about everything else, if we choose we can retain control of the oil fields. Or we can utilize our military might to prevent a "failed state" from pumping oil. Or we can utilize the UN to implement another "oil for food" program, although perhaps this time with better safeguards against corruption.

Third, how well are we actually doing at managing the oil fields and oil production? Giving all due respect to the pipe dreams of people like White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, that the war would increase oil production and lower oil prices, Iraq is still producing oil in quantities below pre-war levels and the price of oil is... well, high. Oh, I love this stuff....

It is hard to say what impact this might have on oil prices, but markets clearly expect lower prices. On the eve of hostilities, oil was selling for about $37 per barrel. At this price, Americans would be paying $270 billion per year for oil. But once it became clear that Iraq’s liberation was at hand, the price quickly dropped to about $28 per barrel, cutting our annual oil bill by $70 billion. With full Iraqi production, the price might drop to $20 per barrel or less, giving us the equivalent of an annual tax cut of about $120 billion per year. And this is a tax cut the entire world benefits from.

I guess this means that, with oil trading at over $72 per barrel, Bruce Bartlett is now arguing that the Bush Administration brought us the equivalent of a $270 billion tax increase? No, I'm sure he would argue that any increase in the price of oil is due to factors completely independent of anything within the Bush Administration's sphere of control.... But if the goal truly is to keep oil wealth out of the hands of nasty people, the question of who controls Iraq's oil fields seems peripheral to the fact that the unpleasant regimes which control a significant number of oil producing nations are rolling in cash these days.

Oh, That'll Happen....

History Professor Greg Grandin suggests that President Bush should press Mexico to undertake a recount of its Presidential election results:

The official tally gives Mr. Calderón a razor-thin lead, and there are credible reports of significant irregularities that could, at best, weaken the legitimacy of a Calderón presidency, and at worst, lead to escalating protests. The disputed votes include the 904,000 annulled ballots that come primarily from regions that went heavily for Mr. López Obrador, as well as discrepancies between the numbers handed in by polling stations and the actual ballots cast.

The best thing the United States can do now is to support the push for a recount and to refrain from calling on Mr. López Obrador to concede.

He seems sincere.... Is he a professor of ancient history?

Another Lost $Billion in Reconstruction Funds....

But this time it's not in Iraq.

The Bush Administration doesn't do many things well, but when it comes to graft, fund-raising, and outright incompetence, they stand head and shoulders above most prior U.S. governments.

New from HUD - Subsidies for Bridges in Brooklyn

There has been some controversy over an account related by Secretary Alphonso Jackson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in which he related how he was going to award a lucrative contract to a person but changed his mind when that person expressed that he did not like President Bush.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Jackson doesn't deny saying it - he just says that it didn't happen, and he put the joke in the first person to make it funnier. Joke? That's what Jackson's spokesperson, Dustee Tucker, told the Chicago Tribune:

"You know when you tell a joke you put yourself in first person, for delivery," she said. "You say I was on this train and so and so did this even if you know it wasn't a train. The secretary was putting himself in that first person to make the story more effective...

Wow. He's a funny guy. This part of the explanation is more telling:

"So he was offering an anecdote to say, this is how politics works in DC. In DC people won't just stab you in the back, they'll stab you in the front. And so the secretary's point was a hypothetical, what he said was an anecdote. It did not happen."

Oh... so it didn't happen, but it could have happened had somebody been so foolish as to express disagreement with President Bush, and thus it was important to advise the members of the Dallas Real Estate group that they shouldn't disclose any dislike for Bush if they want government contracts.... with some other agency where this could happen (if things like this happened, but they don't). (Are your eyes rolling yet?)

According to that Tribune piece,

The main message Tucker wanted to leave me with was that Jackson didn't yank anyone's contract because he vehemently disagreed with the Bush administration. Several times she said Jackson had nothing to do with contracting. That was done elsewhere in the department.

And certainly it is impossible that anybody in the agency would be influenced by the position of the Secretary, let alone take instruction from the Secretary.

Does he need a better story? A better spokesperson?

The New Press Secretary - A Big Mistake

Other than the obvious "snow job" joke, was it a huge mistake for the Bush Administration to select Tony Snow as press secretary? With the number of opinions Snow has made on the record, we're already seeing this type of news coverage:

Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, made that point last month in his previous role as a conservative polemicist: "A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget."

Just wait until he starts contradicting himself at press conferences....

If Only Nixon Had Thought Of This....

According to USNews.com,

But in a little-noticed white paper submitted by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Congress on January 19 justifying the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers made a tacit case that President Bush also has the inherent authority to order [warrantless] physical searches. ... The memo cites congressional testimony of Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in 1994 stating that the Justice Department "believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

(Note to Gonzales: Ditch the weasel words, stop trying to pass the buck or hide behind the opinions of others, show some backbone and state what you believe the law to be.)

In any event, I'm still trying to find the "except if you're the President" clause in the Fourth Amendment. (And isn't it terrifically activist to read a "foreign policy exception" into such plain language?)

It Helps To Actually Have A Twin....

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall describes a former Bush advisor's attempt to beat retail fraud charges with an 'evil twin' defense. (i.e., "My twin brother did it.")

It sounds like the defense may fail, but the defendant still has an advantage over a client I once represented who tried the same claim.... That is, in this case the defendant actually has> a twin brother.