July 9, 2009
Worst Fauxtography Ever
We've written a lot of serious stuff today. This one is just for fun, via J.M. Guardia, the BarcePundit in Barcelona.
Spain's current scandal involves Alberto Saiz, director of the National Intelligence Center, who was accused of taking exotic trips on the Spanish taxpayer's nickel. In particular, it was alleged that he went on a fishing trip off Senegal at public expense. Saiz defended himself by putting out this picture of the fishing boat in question; the salient fact is that he isn't on it. Click to enlarge:
Looks pretty persuasive, except...look at the guy holding the swordfish or whatever it is on the right. His head, specifically--it's the same head as the guy in the khaki shorts, second from right. Great photoshopping, Senor Saiz! Here is the actual photo, pre-Photoshop. That's Saiz with the fish:
What's remarkable about this, of course, is that Saiz was Spain's head spy. Let's hope we're not depending on Spain for any heavy-duty cooperation in the war against Islamic terrorists.
The Real Sarah Palin
I haven't commented on Sarah Palin's resignation as Governor of Alaska since Friday afternoon, when I noted the story and said that her resignation "seems bizarre to me." Here are some additional thoughts on the subject.
I am, to begin with, an admirer of Governor Palin--the real Sarah Palin, not the creature of myth. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Palin phenomenon is that the mythical version, a caricature of Palin as arch-conservative, especially on the social issues, and populist almost to the point of know-nothingism, has been embraced by many of her supporters as avidly as by her enemies.
But the caricature has little to do with Palin's actual record as a public servant. I don't doubt that she is, personally, a conservative, but her record in office has not been particularly conservative and her political career owes little or nothing to the social issues. She represents, rather, an older strand of Republicanism--the reformist, good-government variety.
Given that Palin is now viewed almost exclusively as symbol, it is not surprising that the least-remarked portion of her resignation speech was that in which she recounted her administration's achievements. But those accomplishments are, in fact, considerable:
Here's some of the things we've done:We created a petroleum integrity office to oversee safe development. We held the line for Alaskans on Point Thomson - and finally for the first time in decades - they're drilling for oil and gas.
We have AGIA, the gasline project - a massive bi-partisan victory (the vote was 58 to 1!) - also succeeding as intended - protecting Alaskans as our clean natural gas will flow to energize us, and America, through a competitive, pro-private sector project. This is the largest private sector energy project, ever. This is energy independence.
And ACES - another bipartisan effort - is working as intended and industry is publicly acknowledging its success. Our new oil and gas "clear and equitable formula" is so Alaskans will no longer be taken advantage of. ACES incentivizes new exploration and development and jobs that were previously not going to happen with a monopolized North Slope oil basin.
We cleaned up previously accepted unethical actions; we ushered in bi-partisan Ethics Reform.
We also slowed the rate of government growth, we worked with the Legislature to save billions of dollars for the future, and I made no lobbyist friends with my hundreds of millions of dollars in budget vetoes... but living beyond our means today is irresponsible for tomorrow.
We took government out of the dairy business and put it back into private-sector hands - where it should be.
We provided unprecedented support for education initiatives, and with the right leadership, finally filled long-vacant public safety positions. We built a sub-Cabinet on Climate Change and took heat from Outside special interests for our biologically-sound wildlife management for abundance.
We broke ground on the new prison.
And we made common sense conservative choices to eliminate personal luxuries like the jet, the chef, the junkets... the entourage.
And the Lt. Governor and I said "no" to our pay raises.
A solid record of achievement in only 2 1/2 years? Absolutely. Red meat for populist conservatives? Not especially.
So I have high regard for Sarah Palin, the effective, good-government reformer. But that brings us to Palin's press conference and her resignation. The biggest problem with her press conference was that her stated reasons for resigning her office didn't make much sense.
She referred to the abuse that she and her family have taken from liberals in the press and elsewhere. No doubt about it: the liberal assault on Palin and her family has been the most despicable I've ever seen. If she had announced that she is leaving politics to return to private life, no one could have blamed her. But that isn't what she is doing; she is resigning as Governor but, evidently, running for President. So the attacks will continue and likely intensify.
She said that she didn't want to continue as a lame-duck governor. But the only reason she was a lame duck is that she had just announced she wasn't running for a second term. If she didn't want to be a lame duck, all she had to do was not hold the press conference.
Recognizing that these themes didn't account for her decision, Palin went on to explain that her real reason for resigning is that she and her office have been fatally distracted by the frivolous ethics complaints that the Democratic Party has mounted against her. She said that most of her time, and her staff's time, is now spent defending against such complaints--successfully, as every one so far has been dismissed. Most of them have been obviously stupid.
So Palin said she was resigning for the good of Alaska, since her successor will be free of this burden. Plus, she has run up a $500,000 legal bill in defending against the Democratic Party's silly charges.
This explanation has a great deal of appeal, but I don't think it holds together. Does Palin really want to set a precedent that a Republican who is unfairly attacked by Democrats will quit? If that principle were followed, the Republican Party would quickly become extinct.
Actually, the Democrats' frivolous ethics charges represent an opportunity. Alaska is a Republican-leaning state. If Palin were to push back against the Democrats--locally, not nationally--she could make them pay a price for their indefensible tactic, and likely cause them to back off. As for the $500,000, that is a minimal amount for a politician of Palin's stature to raise by setting up a defense committee. Donors would quickly furnish a war chest. On a worst-case scenario, Todd Palin could sign a book contract tomorrow for a $500,000 advance. The facts just don't support the idea that quitting as governor is a reasonable response to the Democrats' vicious but entirely unsuccessful ethics-complaint strategy.
Here is why I think Palin quit: she wants to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012. No surprise there, she currently has more support than any other contender in the polls. But she has a serious problem. Her rivals for the nomination are beginning to make the circuit of Republican and conservative grass-roots groups. They are able to criss-cross the country, building up support, establishing campaign committees, speaking to Republican groups on an informal basis, supporting other Republican candidates, laying the foundation for a 2012 run.
Palin, on the other hand, is isolated in Anchorage. It takes longer to get to and from Alaska than most people realize. Palin can't zip into Chicago, deliver a speech to a Republican conference and be back in her office in time to sign a bill. If she starts spending 75 percent of her time in the lower 48, she might in fact be able to carry out her gubernatorial duties via Blackberry, but she would be crucified for abandoning the state of Alaska in favor of her national ambitions. So she resigned, in order to free up her time to campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination.
That is, I think, the only explanation that fits the facts. I still think Palin's resignation was a mistake; it will make the logistics of campaigning much easier, but her failure to complete the only major government job to which she has been elected will haunt her.
What is most sad about this, in my opinion, is that Palin herself seems willing to play the role of the symbol she has become, no matter how at odds it may be with her actual record. I doubt that the old, pre-August 2008 Sarah Palin--the real Sarah Palin, in my book--would have quit.
UPDATE: Feel free to comment, but remember that your comment must include your first and last name in order to be posted.
Judge Sotomayor -- more liberal than the average liberal
Based on an anlysis of all 46 cases in which Judge Sonia Sotomayor participated where there was a "split decision," the Washington Post concludes that the nominee "falls within the mainstream" of court of appeals judges appointed by a Democratic president. But as I read the Post's story, it would be more accurate to say that Sotomayor is more liberal than the average court of appeals judge appointed by a Democratic president, and possibly singificantly more liberal.
According to the Post's analysis, Sotomayor took the liberal position in 59 percent of her "split" cases. The average appeals court judge appointed by a Democratic president voted "liberal" in 52 percent of such cases. The average court of appeals judge appointed by a Republican president did so 39 percent of the time. (The Post determined whether a vote is liberal based on a fairly crude system devised by a professor political science -- for example, a vote in favor of a posltion advanced by a criminal defendant is considered liberal).
Sotomayor, then, is to the "left" of the average judge appointed by a Democrat. It's impossible to tell from the Post's report whether the difference is significant. But if the "distance" between the average judge appointed by a Dem and the average judge appointed by a Republican is 13 percentage points, then it does not seem inconsequential for Sotomayor to be 7 percentage points to the left of the Dem average. It would be helpful to know how many judges appointed by Dems are to the left of Sotomayor, and by how much. However, the Post doesn't tell us.
The Post's main finding based on its review of Sotomayor's opinions is that she discusses the facts of her cases much more extensively than most appellate court judges. Fact-finding is the role of the trial judge and/or jury, of course, and appeals court judges are supposed to give considerable deference to the facts found "below." That doesn't mean that it's improper for appellate opinions to discuss the facts in detail, and an appellate judge might do so for a number of legitimate reasons. (For example, Justice Alito discussed the facts of Ricci, the New Haven firefighters case, extensively in his excellent concurring in order to highlight the unjust racial politics that victimized the white plaintiffs). A problem arises only if the judge ultimately fails to grant the proper degree of deference to the findings of the lower court.
I can't tell from the Post's article whether, or to what extent, Sotomayor commits this error. The Post suggests that she may have done so in a 2004 case about strip searches and one of her colleagues (a liberal) accused her of doing so in another 2004 case involving a criminal conviction for child pornography. But without studying the cases, it's not possible to say whether Sotomayor actually overstepped her bounds.
This much is clear, however: Sotomayor's one-paragraph opinion upholding the district court's opinion in Ricci represents a conspicuous departure from her normal practice of writing detailed opinions which discuss the facts at length. Republican Senators will probably want Sotomayor to reconcile her approach to that case with her normal approach.
Credit Where It's Due
On Tuesday, in the midst of his overseas trip, President Obama gave an interview to an African news outlet called Allafrica.com. I don't think it got much attention, but I read the transcript via Congressional Quarterly. It struck me as the most sensible sustained exchange I've seen from Obama since his inauguration. Reading Obama's words when, for once, he was saying things I agree with conveyed some sense of why many people find him articulate and effective. So, here goes.
Why Obama has planned a trip to Ghana:
Well, part of it is lifting up successful models. And so, by traveling to Ghana, we hope to highlight the effective governance that they have in place.I don't think that we can expect that every country is going to undergo these transitions in the same way at the same time. But we have seen progress in democracy and transparency and rule of law, in the protection of property rights, in anti-corruption efforts. ...
I think that the new President, President Mills, has shown himself committed to the rule of law, to the kinds of democratic commitments that ensure stability in a country. And I think that there is a direct correlation between governance and prosperity. Countries that are governed well, that are stable, where the leadership recognizes that they are accountable to the people and that institutions are stronger than any one person have a track record of producing results for the people. And we want to highlight that.
Economic development in Africa:
Now, I also think on the ground in many of these countries, how we think about not high-tech stuff but low-tech technologies to, for example, improve food production is vitally important. And I'm still frustrated over the fact that the green revolution that we introduced into India in the '60s, we haven't yet introduced into Africa in 2009. In some countries, you've got declining agricultural productivity. That makes absolutely no sense. And we don't need fancy computers to solve those problems; we need tried and true agricultural methods and technologies that are cheap and are efficient, but could have a huge impact in terms of people's day-to-day well-being. ...Number one, you're not going to get investment without good governance. So that's part of the reason why we emphasize it. Again, this is a very practical, hard-headed approach to how we're going to see improvements in the daily lives of the peoples of Africa. If government officials are asking for 10, 15, 25 percent off the top, businesses don't want to invest there. That's point number one.
Point number two, I think that when my father left Kenya and traveled to the United States back in the early '60s, the GDP of Kenya and South Korea weren't equivalent -- Kenya's was actually higher. What's happened over that 50-year period? What you've seen is Korea combine foreign investment, integration with the global economy, with a strategic sense of certain industries that they can promote for export; great emphasis on education for a skilled workforce; insisting that foreign investment is accompanied by technology transferring so that homegrown industries can be built and nurtured.
So we've got models out there.
And I like this exchange, about why much of Africa continues to be so backward:
QUESTION: Is that a failure of U.S. policy or is that a failure of governance in Africa?OBAMA: I would say that the international community has not always been as strategic as it should have been, but ultimately I'm a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa.
I think part of what's hampered advancement in Africa is that for many years we've made excuses about corruption or poor governance; that this was somehow the consequence of neo-colonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racism -- I'm not a big -- I'm not a believer in excuses.
I'd say I'm probably as knowledgeable about African history as anybody who's occupied my office. And I can give you chapter and verse on why the colonial maps that were drawn helped to spur on conflict, and the terms of trade that were uneven emerging out of colonialism. And yet the fact is we're in 2009. The West and the United States has not been responsible for what's happened to Zimbabwe's economy over the last 15 or 20 years. It hasn't been responsible for some of the disastrous policies that we've seen elsewhere in Africa. And I think that it's very important for African leadership to take responsibility and be held accountable.
And I think the people of Africa understand that. The problem is, is that they just haven't always had the opportunities to organize and voice their opinions in ways that create better results.
One could quibble. It would have been nice for Obama to acknowledge the strong Africa policies of his predecessor, but giving credit to others is not the Obama way. And one would certainly like to hear Obama talk about property rights and the rule of law in the context of the U.S. as well as Africa. But let's not dilute our praise: those are sensible comments that many in Africa will probably hear, and some may take to heart. Well done, President Obama.
PAUL adds: Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the one part of the world as to which President Obama has the right line is the part of the world he probably knows the most about.
1,000 "academics" can't be wrong, but at least one is
More than 1,000 academics have expressed their support for Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to the Supreme Court in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. Among other things, the letter vouches for Judge Sotomayor's "careful attention to the facts of each case and a reading of the law that demonstrates fidelity to the text of statutes and the Constitution." It also asserts that she "pays close attention to precedent and has proper respect for the role of courts and the other branches of government in our society."
Jonathan Adler, a law professor himself, wonders what percentage of the professors who signed the letter actually are sufficiently familiar with her record to have reached an informed, expert judgment. Ed Whelan suspects that the answer is around 1 percent.
What most caught my attention about this story is a statement from one of the signing profs, the distinguished Arthur Miller now of NYU law school. Attempting to make lemonade out of a lemon, Professor Miller defended the one paragraph opinion in the Ricci case by suggesting that Sotomayor is a consensus builder. According to Miller, on such a difficult case, the three judges could only come to an unanimous result by eschewing elaborate language.
We'll see whether Judge Sotomayor herself asserts this defense during her confirmation hearings, which begin next Monday. To do so would, I think, be foolish.
First, Prof. Miller assumes that it is more important for judges to attain unanimity than it is to present analysis. This is a radical notion. We see dissenting opinions all the time, but rarely do federal appeals courts decide important cases in one paragraph. That's because dissents rarely do harm (except perhaps to judge's feelings or their prospects of "promotion"), whereas decisions in important cases that eshew explanations undermine confidence in the judiciary.
It is odd, moreover, to suppose that the three Second Circuit judges on the Ricci panel could agree with the result and reasoning of the district court that upheld the race-based discrimination against the New Haven firefighters, but could not agree on words that would explain why they agreed. If an opinion upholding the district court's reasoning "wouldn't write," that should have been the tip off (not that any was really needed) that the reasoning was indefensible, as all nine members of the Supreme Court ultimately concluded.
Of Mice and Pork
Remember the salt marsh harvest mouse? We wrote about the mouse here and elsewhere. When the "stimulus" bill was being debated, Republicans charged that among the absurd pork that the bill would fund was a pet project of Nancy Pelosi's: protecting the habitat of the salt marsh harvest mice in the San Francisco Bay area. At the time, Democrats vigorously denied the charge and pointed out that the mouse was not named in the bill.
True enough: that was one of the major problems with the bill. It allocated enormous amounts of money to be spend on a department by department basis without specifying what the money was to be spent on. The real intent was mostly sub rosa. Thus, Republicans have been reduced to using Google to try to identify local government units and others that have received "stimulus" money.
Now, notwithstanding the Democrats' outraged denials that the mouse was one of the objects of their largesse, it turns out that the Republicans' suspicions were correct after all:
The Obama administration quietly announced last week that as much as $16.1 million from the stimulus program is going to save the San Francisco Bay area habitat of, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.That has revived Republican criticism that the pet project was an "invisible earmark" in the massive spending bill for Mrs. Pelosi, whose San Francisco district abuts the bay, and epitomizes the failure of stimulus spending to help an economy still shedding jobs.
"Lo and behold, the government has announced that the mouse is getting its money after all," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner said while standing beside a poster of the furry varmint. "Speaker Pelosi must be so proud."
Good grief
Senator John Ensign has acknowledged that his family made nearly $100,000 in payments to family members of his former mistress after her husband, a longtime aide and personal friend, discovered the relationship. The payments were made by Ensign's wealthy parents. They are being spun by Sen. Ensign's attorney as having been made "out of concern for the well-being of long-time family friends during a difficult time" and as "consistent with a pattern of generosity by the Ensign family to the Hamptons and others."
Right.
Chief Judge Williams steps down
Karen Williams, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, has resigned due to illness. Judge Williams has been on the Fourth Circuit since 1992. She is only 57 years old.
Prior to her nomination, Williams practiced law in Orangeburg, South Carolina with her husband in the firm of Williams and Williams. Her husband is the son of a close friend of Strom Thurmond, and it was Thurmond who prevailed on President George H.W. Bush to nominate her to the Fourth Circuit. She became the first female to serve on that court.
At the time, the nomination made conservatives nervous. First, Williams had no judicial track record. Second, if I recall correctly, she and her husband were both Democrats.
However, Judge Williams proved to be an outstanding judge. In 2005, when Justice O'Connor retired, Judge Williams was on some reasonably short lists as a possible replacement. Conservatives familiar with her performance on the Fourth Circuit would not have been disappointed if President Bush had nominated her.
Judge Williams' retirement opens the way for President Obama to add a liberal to the Fourth Circuit. Coupled with the recently confirmed Judge Davis, another Obama selection would likely tip the balance of power on this important court in favor of the left.
For this, we can thank the dithering of President Bush, who failed to fill some vacancies and filled others with liberal-leaning judges. We can also thank Sen. Lindsey Graham, who blocked the nomination of the excellent William James Haynes. I don't call Senator Graham the Arlen Specter of the South for nothing.
I understand that Williams will be succeeded as Chief Judge by William Traxler, a Clinton nominee.
We wish Judge Williams all the best.
Obama's Support Eroding
We noted yesterday that President Obama's "approval index" in the Rasmussen survey was down to -5, meaning that likely voters who "strongly disapprove" of Obama's performance outnumbered those who "strongly approve" by five percentage points. Today Obama's approval index plummeted to -8, as 38% strongly disapprove, compared with 30% who strongly approve:
That's not the only bad poll news for Obama. Yahoo News is currently headlining, "Independent voters deserting Obama, recent polls suggest." The linked article says:
It is the independents who appear to be currently on the move: Obama dropped 6 percentage points last week from the week before in Gallup's tracking poll, and Quinnipiac University found a 5-percentage-point drop in approval from independents between early June and early July. Recent state polling shows drops over longer periods.
Paul wrote last night, questioning significance of these early polls. He's right, of course, that poll results are driven mainly by the economy and the real question is how voters see the economy in November 2010, not today. Thus, for example, President Reagan's approval was in the 30s for much of 1983 due to a double-dip recession, but just a year later, after voters saw how successful his administration's economic policies were turning out to be, he was re-elected in a landslide.
Nevertheless, I do see real significance in Obama's current slide. It reflects serious misgivings about the administration's policies at a time when the bad consequences of those policies have not yet been felt. Taxes are going to rise; deficits are going to soar; unemployment will remain relatively high and growth relatively slow due to Democratic policies that weaken the economy, even after the current recession ends; and inflation seems almost inevitable. And that assumes the Democrats don't succeed in passing tax-and-trade or socialized medicine, in which case the adverse consequences will be much worse.
So what voters will see, probably by November 2010 and certainly by November 2012, is that their doubts about Obama's policies were justified. There is little public appetite for the radical proposals the Democrats have been ramming through Congress, little support for the bailouts or the "stimulus," and deep-seated concern about record spending and deficits. When the bill for those policies comes due, the stage could be set for a historic repudiation of the Democratic Party and its principles.
That's my hope, anyway.
PAUL adds: I agree with John that the economic policies Obama has, and will, put into place will do harm. But when, and to what extent, is unclear. The proposition that Obama's economic policies are terrible is not inconsistent with the proposition that the economy will experience a recovery in 2010 or with the proposition that the economy will appear to be in good shape when Obama stands for re-election in 2012.
If the economy recovers, even for just a while and even less robustly than it might have, I think the public's reservations about Obama's policies will recede substantially.
Walpin Stonewalling Continues
We've written several times about the Obama administration's firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin, apparently in retaliation against Walpin's investigation of an Obama crony in Sacramento. A bipartisan Congressional group is investigating the firing, and is running into a brick wall. Byron York reports that the general counsel of AmeriCorps' parent organization is refusing to divulge information about the White House's involvement in Walpin's firing:
Frank Trinity, general counsel for the Corporation, met with a bipartisan group of congressional investigators on Monday. When the investigators asked Trinity for details of the role the White House played in the firing, Trinity refused to answer, according to two aides with knowledge of the situation."He said that's a prerogative of the White House, so he didn't feel at liberty to disclose anything regarding White House communications," says one aide.
Investigators asked Trinity whether he was claiming executive privilege, something that could only be authorized by the president. Trinity answered again that it was a White House "prerogative." When the investigators pointed out that, in the words of one aide, "there is no legal basis whatsoever" for such a claim, Trinity still declined to answer.
According to the knowledgeable sources, Trinity refused to say what contacts the Corporation had with the White House prior to the firing, or after the firing. He refused to say who at the Corporation had spoken to whom at the White House. He refused to say whether Corporation officials had discussed the specific reasons for the firing with the White House.
Obama's aides apparently are still trying to come up with an excuse for getting rid of Walpin. They have now identified something entirely new: a parody "newsletter" that someone in Walpin's IG office produced on the occasion of another employee's retirement. The newsletter is supposed to offend someone's "racial and gender sensitivities," although the quoted portions of it seem unobjectionable to me. In any event, Walpin didn't write it.
There isn't any doubt that it was the White House that made the decision to fire Walpin; it was a White House lawyer, Obama's Special Counsel Norman Eisen, who called Walpin on his cell phone and demanded that Walpin resign within an hour. Moreover, since the White House is still trying to come up with a good reason for getting rid of Walpin, the conclusion that he was fired because he offended an Obama crony seems irresistible.
Quote of the Day
Without looking ahead to the end, guess who said this, in an interview that will be published on Sunday:
Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
That was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an interview to be published Sunday in the New York Times Magazine. Of course, the interviewer didn't ask what "populations" those might be. For a moment, at least, we catch of glimpse of what some liberals really think about abortion.
Via The Corner.
Notes on Obama's Great Torpor
Barack Obama's speech at Moscow's New Economic School this past Tuesday is an incredibly rich text that warrants reading in full. Below are a few notes on the speech that occur to me. I offer them subject to amplification and correction by readers in the comments:
Obvious omission 1: Lack of any explanation for reason why United States "has been blessed by Russian immigrants"
Obvious omission 2: Lack of any mention of the Soviet pact that immediately preceded "our alliance in the greatest struggle of the last century."
Russian immigrant to United States whom Obama should have named instead of Alexander Ovechkin: Walter Krivitsky
Number of times he cites his own previous comments or quotes himself: 4
Number of times he invokes his own biography: 2
Number of times he refers to "extremists" or "extremism" instead of "terrorists" and "terrorism": 3
Number of references to Islam as "a great religion of peace and justice": 1
Number of passages that echo "We Are the World": 3
Number of reminders that "words must mean something": 1
Words that must mean something, but we're not sure what: "We have seen old hatreds pass, illusions of difference lift, and human destiny in the hands of more human beings."
Words that must mean something other than what appears to be intended: "Russia has cut its way through time like a mighty river through a canyon, leaving an indelible mark on human history."
UPDATE: Claudia Rosett capably translates Obama's Moscow speech:
Obama delivered what is by now familiar as his trademark mix of historical omissions and revisions, sweeping statements about the "arc of history" and phrases of hope, change and moral equivalency. He brought up, yet again, America's "imperfections," dismissed as outdated the brand of American moral certitude and leadership that brought victory in World War II and called for collaboration, convergence and partnerships forged on common ground and progress toward a shared future. Call it Brotherhood 2.0....
Rosett's column has much more of interest on Obama's speech. Via Instpundit.
Paul Rahe: The servile temptation, part 1
Professor Paul Rahe writes:
Paul A. Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College. Some of the material in this post is adapted from his Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect, which was published on April 16, the 150th anniversary of Tocqueville's death and has been reviewed by Mark Steyn in The New Criterion, by William Voegeli in National Review, and by Harvey C. Mansfield in The Weekly Standard.As I intimated in my Powerline post last week, it is easy to see why political leaders should succumb to the Progressive vision and push programs conferring on the administrative state a power over our lives and well-being that is nothing short of tyrannical. Unlimited government heightens their power, and it flatters their sense of self-importance.
As John Locke once observed with regard to religious persecution, "The assuming [of] an authority of dictating to others . . . is a constant concomitant" of the natural "bias and corruption of our judgments." But why, I asked at the end of that post, do the tyrannized sometimes savor tyranny? Why have our fellow citizens so often embraced elements of the progressive agenda? Why, let me now add, is it so difficult to reduce the size and scope of the administrative state?
Some opponents of the administrative state think it sufficient that the friends of liberty remind our fellow citizens of the self-evident truths embodied in the Declaration of Independence and trace the manner in which what Lincoln called "our ancient faith" requires that government be limited in scope. I am second to none in my conviction that this is necessary. If we do not win the war of ideas, we will not win the political battle. But I do not think having, or even making, the better argument sufficient. We do not live in Plato's republic, and we are not governed by philosopher kings.
We are a democratic people, and we are not always fully governed by reason. It is impossible to understand the present discontents without paying attention to the Progressives' repudiation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But intellectual history is not enough. There is more to politics than the play of ideas.
Plato understood as much. In the eighth and ninth books of his Republic, when he examined the rise, decline, and the eventual replacement of political regimes, he paid closer attention to the political psychology fostered by each than to disputes concerning justice.
The American Founding Fathers were no less aware of the importance of political psychology. They were no doubt intent on implementing the Declaration of Independence when they framed the Constitution and defended their handiwork in The Federalist, but they made no mention of it, and, in the latter work, they quoted from the Declaration only once.
They focused, instead, on institutions, and, by means of these, they sought to enlist the passions and the interests of their fellow citizens in support of justice and political rationality. Like Aristotle, they recognized that ideas become ruling ideas only when they are embodied and that the distribution of offices and honors within a working polity is generally more effective in educating the citizens than is rational speech.
It is important, however, that we see The Federalist for what it is. It does not provide us with a fully developed political science. It is an occasional work, written to promote a particular political outcome: the ratification of the Constitution. Its aim was to demonstrate to a skeptical public the need for "a more perfect union" - a genuine government uniting the disparate states - and it sought to explain how, in the conditions then existing, such a government would best be constituted. If it failed to articulate the case for vigorous local government, if it made no mention of civic associations, the political advantages attendant on the Christian religion, or the importance of strong family ties, it was because the occasion did not call for such a discussion.
It was not until the early 1790s that James Madison began thinking about the prospect we now face - "a consolidation of the States into one government" - and the dire consequences attendant on such an eventuality. First, he argued, the "incompetency of one Legislature to regulate all the various objects belonging to the local governments, would evidently force a transfer of many of" those objects "to the executive department." Then, he contended that the, if the state and local governments were made subject to the federal government, the sheer size of the country "would prevent that control" on the federal Congress, "which is essential to a faithful discharge of its trust, [since] neither the voice nor the sense of ten or twenty millions of people, spread through so many latitudes as are comprehended within the United States, could ever be combined or called into effect, if deprived of those local organs, through which both can now be conveyed."
In such circumstances, Madison warned, "the impossibility of acting together, might be succeeded by the inefficacy of partial expressions of the public mind, and this at length, by a universal silence and insensibility, leaving the whole government to that self directed course, which, it must be owned, is the natural propensity of every government."
As Colleen Sheehan has shown in an important new book entitled James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Government, this argument - which Madison published anonymously as an essay in the popular press - was first drafted with an eye to his composition of a sequel to The Federalist, which he sketched out in a notebook now lodged in the Library of Congress.
Had he completed that work, we might now have, from the hand of one of the chief architects of the American Constitution, a theoretical account of the logic underpinning the rise of the modern administrative state and an analysis of its tyrannical propensities. As things stand, however, we have to look abroad for this - to Alexis de Tocqueville, who, with unsurpassed brilliance, analyzes the political psychology of liberal, democratic man in his masterpiece Democracy in America.
July 8, 2009
Socialized Medicine: What's In Store?
For reasons I don't understand, some Americans--a minority, to be sure--want us to adopt socialized medicine along the lines of the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries. This view can be held, I think, only by those who know little about the quality of care under such systems. The latest comes from the U.K., via the Telegraph: Parkinson's sufferers face "appalling gaps" in care.
The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Parkinson's Disease found a postcode lottery in services across Britain and said there were too few specialist nurses to treat the estimated 120,000 sufferers in Britain.They also warned that health professionals, including GPs, had a "poor understanding" of the disease.
Ministers and NHS managers are to blame for "appalling gaps" in services and a "lack of leadership of neurological services at national and local level" the report found. ...
Jim Henry, 66, a Parkinson's patient, told the inquiry: "I had to wait six months to see a specialist for my initial diagnosis, but received no information about Parkinson's at that or any subsequent appointment. "At once stage, my neurologist went on sick leave for more than a year, with no notification or replacement service." ...
Ann Keen, the health minister, said that people with Parkinson's disease "deserve the right to access to the essential services they need. She added that ministers were working with NHS managers to ensure that the Nice guidelines were implemented.
The Nice guidelines were promulgated three years ago. But, hey, when your health care is the responsibility of government bureaucrats, and you have no freedom of choice, what's the hurry?
Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld -- compare and contrast
The death of Robert McNamara serves as George Will's springboard to reflect on contemporary neo-conservativism. Will reminds us that neo-conservatism began, in significant part, as a reaction to the immodest stance of McNamara and others that social science can tell us with precision how we should proceed. He finds, however, that today's neo-conservatism has much in common with McNamara's stance. Will writes:
The world McNamara has departed could soon be convulsed by attempts to modify Iran's behavior. Since a variety of incentives have been unavailing, more muscular measures -- perhaps "surgical strikes," a phrase redolent of the McNamara mentality -- are contemplated.Some persons fault the president for not having more ambitious plans to prompt and guide Iranians toward regime change. That outcome is sometimes advocated, and its consequences confidently anticipated, by neoconservatives whose certitude about feasibility resembles that which, decades ago, neoconservatism was born to counter.
But strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities would not be attempts at behavior modification; they would be efforts to eliminate a capability that permits ceratin behavior. And one can advocate ambitious plans to promote regime change without having great certitude about the consequences. Will could just as easily accuse those with less ambitious plans, or none at all, of having great certitude that a nuclear Iran will behave rationally, like the Soviet Union did. Robert McNamara was a big believer in rationality.
Will's piece is thought-provoking, in any event, and it provoked me to compare McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld who, though not a neo-conservative, is sometimes considered a "fellow traveler." The similarities seem obvious: both achieved extraordinary things at an early age (though Rumsfeld was far more seasoned and accomplished than McNamara when he became Secretary of Defense for the second time); both were sticklers for data and precision; both came to the Pentagon brimming with ideas for reform and modernization of the military; both met resistance from the military; both had their tenure defined not by the reforms they wanted to implement but by an unanticipated war against rag-tag opposition that went badly; both left the Pentagon following lack of military success; both wars went better after they departed.
There are important differences too. For example, under McNamara, U.S. troop levels in Vietnam kept increasing. By contrast, Rumsfeld wanted a small U.S. "footprint" in Iraq, and he apparently rejected calls for more troops.
As I noted here, Michael Lind argues that the U.S. blundered in Vietnam under McNamara by overcommitting U.S. troops to what was essentially a guerrilla war, at least until 1968 when McNamara left the Pentagon. This resulted in a level of American casualties that badly undermined domestic support for the war. Rumsfeld, many have argued, blundered by not sending enough troops to Iraq.
In insisting on a small U.S. footprint in Iraq, I don't believe Rumsfeld cited the need to keep U.S. casualties low, Rather his focus was on trying to prevent the U.S. from being perceived as an occupying force, on making sure that Iraqis were invested in promoting stability, and on creating conditions whereby they ultimately could stand on their own.
But Rumsfeld may also have been motivated by a desire to keep the U.S. death count low. If so, he succeeded, at least as compared to Vietnam. But the war still lost public support to the point that there was great pressure to accept defeat, as in Vietnam. Fortunately the administration resisted that pressure.
With a bigger footprint, we would have lost more American lives which, other things being equal, would have eroded support more quickly, perhaps precluding the "surge." But with a bigger footprint, we might have succeeded much earlier, thereby maintaining domestic support all along and precluding the need for a surge.
Meanwhile, we seem to have been viewed as an occupying force notwithstanding Rumsfeld's attempt to leave a small footprint. Yet we maintained enough credibility for the Sunnis ultimately to cooperate with us and indeed to take the lead in expelling al Qaeda from Anbar province and beyond.
George Will is right about this much -- consequences should not confidently be anticipated.
UPDATE: There are other differences between McNamara and Rumsfeld, of course. The most important is that McNamara was an abject failure in office and Rumsfeld was not. Under Rumsfeld, our military liberated two nations and both remain liberated, though troubled. Under McNamara, we lost ground and moved well down the path towards losing a war.
Honor the Jackson Five
The publicity that surrounded Michael Jackson's death rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including the relatives of 1st Lieutenant Brian Bradshaw, who was killed in Afghanistan on the same day that Jackson died. They had a hard time understanding why our news media, in its non-stop hysteria over Jackson's demise, had so little attention to spare--none, actually--for Lt. Bradshaw and others who gave their lives in a cause even more noble than moonwalking.
I can't answer their question, but I'm happy to pass on an email I received today from Move America Forward. The email is titled, "Honor the Jackson Five." Only this "Jackson Five" are the first five American servicemen and women named Jackson who gave their lives in Iraq. For some reason it doesn't appear on their web site, so I'm reproducing the email as a series of three screen shots; click to enlarge:
We're glad to give our readers the opportunity to take a moment to honor these five Jacksons. Their funerals may not have been televised, but they lived and died in service of a cause that will be remembered long after the ephemera of popular music are forgotten.
Obama's popularity dip -- what does it mean?
How significant are the poll numbers John has cited that show President Obama's standing with voters dropping substantially, to the point that in the swing state of Ohio, for example, his approval rating is below 50 percent? In my view, they are not significant at all when it comes to Obama's re-election prospects and of virtually no significance when it comes to next year's mid-term elections.
It's not difficult to figure out why Obama's popularity is declining. It's the economy. I had initially thought the public would be a bit more patient, given Obama's very plausible line that "it took a long time to get into this mess and it's going to take a while to get out." However. Obama's transparent efforts to use the recession as a pretext for pushing a hard-left, big government agenda and his related failure to fulfill his promise to be "post-partisan" have probably reduced his honeymoon period.
In any event, the mid-term elections will turn on the status of the economy next year at this time, not the status now.
However, the current poll numbers are not inconsequential. By nature, elected politiicans are cautious -- too cautious not to pay attention to polls even when they know, or should know, those polls are largely meaningless. Thus, as Obama's short-term popularity diminishes, he will likely find it increasingly difficult to keep members of the Democratic congressional delegation marching in lock-steip with him.
Let's hope so, anyway.
Voters' Skepticism of Obama Growing
If the Rasmussen survey is correct, Barack Obama's standing with voters is tanking. (Rasmussen's presidential tracking survey is a "likely voter" poll.) Today, for the first time, Obama's "approval index" stands at -5, as 37% of voters express strong disapproval of his performance, while 32% strongly approve.
Of the four categories--somewhat approve, strongly approve, somewhat disapprove, strongly disapprove--"strongly disapprove" now represents a plurality.
Obama's downward trajectory seems sure to continue as long as the Democrats push more unpopular legislation in Congress. From Obama's political standpoint, perhaps the best thing that could happen is for Congressional Democrats to fail to enact cap-and-tax, government medicine, further "stimulus" or anything else of more than symbolic significance. Then, when the economy recovers in due course, Obama could take credit and his approval with voters presumably would rebound. But Obama, Pelosi and Reid still seem determined not to let the opportunity offered by an economic crisis "go to waste," no matter how much it hurts them with voters.
UPDATE: Michael Barone writes: "Americans are getting cold feet over Democratic proposals:"
It's still possible for American attitudes to shift, if the Democrats' economic policies are passed and are seen to revive the economy. But it hasn't happened yet. Instead Americans seem to be recoiling against big government when it threatens to become a reality rather than a campaign promise.
