July 5, 2009

Sarah Palin's announcement that she will resign as governor of Alaska was welcome, not only for its entertainment value but for the brief respite from news about Michael Jackson. As Gail Collins put it, the Governor "interrupt[ed] the plans of TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead."

The amount of attention given to his death - and for that matter during his lifetime - is another indicator of how superficial and, at times, strange our culture has become. Bob Herbert, one of the few to comment on Jackson's passing with any detachment, thinks that he was a symbol of the times from the 80s forward - when "we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to leave the limits and consequences and obligations of the real world behind." Among his examples: war without serious thought, prosperity based on debt, deregulation, abandonment of welfare programs, destruction of the domestic economy through globalization. It may be a stretch to tie Jackson to all of that, even as a symbol of a general trend, but Herbert's summary seems apt: "The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson's death . . . is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don't want to look under the rock that was Jackson's real life. As with so many other things, we don't want to know." ⁴²

Governor Palin's speech⁴³ was consistent with her earlier public statements: self-centered, rambling, close to incoherent. Although the purpose presumably was to announce her resignation, she never got around to saying that she had or would resign. The word doesn't show up anywhere in her remarks, nor does any form or synonym. The closest she came was to state that she would continue to fight for free enterprise, etc, but that she won't "do it from the Governor's desk." That led to announcing that she would not run for a second term, and finally to an indirect statement that she was quitting: "With this announcement that I am not seeking re-election... I've determined it's best to transfer the authority of governor to Lieutenant Governor Parnell. . . ."

She used a basketball analogy to justify that transfer: "A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. . . ." ("Press" is an inadvertent pun; the full-court swarm in question is unwelcome media attention. The recent article in Vanity Fair, which was highly critical, must have added to her sense of persecution). However, the analogy doesn't work; this guard, daunted by the press, is leaving the floor.

Although Mrs. Palin said that her accomplishments speak for themselves, she listed them. In summing up, she hinted that her success has a allowed her to resign: "Our goal was to achieve a gasline project, more fair oil and gas valuation, and ethics reform in four years. We did it in two."

She quoted a saying displayed on her parents' refrigerator: "Don't explain: your friends don't need it and your enemies won't believe you anyway." She was true to that in result, but not action: she didn't explain her decision, but that wasn't for lack of trying. Select from the list: she can be more effective out of office (doing what isn't clear); she didn't want to be like all other lame-duck governors who wasted time and state money on junkets (why not just avoid that?); she and her family have been the targets of unfair criticism and investigation (causing annoyance, the expenditure of state funds, personal debt, distraction from state matters or perhaps some combination).

There has been much guesswork as to her true motivation, ranging from disgust with politics to positioning for 2012. The author of the Vanity Fair article, Todd S. Purdum, speculated with perfect timing about a possible change of course: "[The GOP] is, at the moment, a party in which the loudest and most singular voices, not burdened by responsibility, wield disproportionate power. She may decide that she does not need office in order to have great influence - any more than Rush Limbaugh does."

Whatever the motivation might be, it seemed that she was not entirely certain that her decision, or the reason when revealed, would be well received. Her speech had the usual perky flourishes, but her delivery was nervous, every other sentence followed by a deep, audible breath.

The positioning-for-2012 scenario is revealing as to the state of the Republican Party. It is a measure of its decline, both in success and character, that as marginal a player as Sarah Palin could be a contender, but that is the case: two CNN polls this year showed Palin first or tied for second. The identity of the other contenders partly explains that and further illustrates the party's woes: Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich and Guiliani.

The soon-to-be-former governor appeals to that segment of the party which places a strange sort of ideology over anything resembling political ideas. In fact, they disdain political ideas and knowledge in general. Purdum illustrated, with an anecdote by one of Palin's opponents in the gubernatorial election, how she fits this constituency: "Andrew Halcro later remembered that he and Palin once compared notes about their many encounters, and she said, 'Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?' " To her and her devotees and to much of the right, no.

_________________________________

42. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=1

43. The text of the speech and a video are at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/03/sarah-palin-resignation-s_n_225557.html . The text apparently was transcribed from the delivery. The video is incomplete, beginning more than half-way through. The portion of the text which can be compared with the video is not entirely accurate, although the discrepancies are minor. There are ellipses which appear to be stylistic, not representing omissions. I've shown those ellipses without spacing and have spaced any I've created. The capitalized words are in the transcript, and only roughly correspond to her emphasis.

June 27, 2009 /

On Friday, Dan Froomkin submitted his last Washington Post column (oh, wait: apparently it was a blog; more on that below). He described the beginnings of his tenure and, in so doing, offered a succinct description of the political effect of 9-11: "I started my column in January 2004, and one dominant theme quickly emerged: That George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes. In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve." Froomkin also provided an apt epitaph for the former administration.: "When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. . . I also think about the extraordinary and fundamentally cancerous expansion of executive power that led to violations of our laws and our principles. "

In his initial response to the firing, the Post's ombudsman, Andy Alexander, accepted the paper's explanation without comment. However, on Friday, he was more critical, and complained that, as to the Foomkin question, Post management was "circling the wagons -- ironic for a news organization that insists on transparency from those it covers."

However, Alexander thinks that the move was not about ideology, not prompted by Froomkin's liberal slant. Perhaps, but the effect certainly was to remove a liberal voice, and I think that it's naïve to conclude that ideology was entirely irrelevant.

Decreased readership was cited as a reason. In January, Froomkin's contribution was transformed, according to Alexander, from a column to a blog. The distinction between an on-line column and a blog escapes me, but the result was to change Froomkin's daily contribution from one long, coherent post to a series of short ones. That was bound to reduce traffic; as much as I admired Froomkin's work, I read it far less often over the past few months. However, the cancellation may reduce the Post's newspaper and web readership as well. On Friday Alexander reported that his earlier column generated "more than 870 comments -- nearly all of them expressing outrage." Many of those I read threatened to cancel subscriptions or delete washingtonpost.com from Favorites.

Froomkin had posted an explanation of the change in format, claiming that it was his idea. If so, it was a bad one. If it was forced on him by the Post, he was set up to fail. Certainly the editors had to realize that the change had something to do with reduced traffic, so the solution was at hand, assuming that really to be a significant issue.

There were other rationales, but whatever the truth of any of them, the Post has become duller and less in touch with its readers, not a prescription for survival.

June 21, 2009

The Washington Post might have posed, in the Bush years, as an establishment paper. Now that the establishment is Democratic, it becomes obvious that the orientation of the Post's editorial page is conservative/Republican. The op-ed page is little different; while it presents some liberals, such as Dionne, Robinson and Myerson, it is dominated by right-wingers and imperialist fellow-travelers: Krauthammer, Kristol, Gerson, Will, Kagan, Hoagland, Hiatt, Diehl, Ignatius and Cohen.

The Post took another step rightward this week by dropping Dan Froomkin's "White House Watch" blog. Its explanation was corporate blather: "Editors and our research teams are constantly reviewing our online content to ensure we bring readers the most value when they are on our Web site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources. Regrettably, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced." What resources did Froomkin's column consume? How does dropping it bring readers more value?

The Post's ombudsman, Andy Alexander, speculated that Froomkin's "liberal bent" was passé: "That slant seemed to attract a large and loyal audience during the Bush administration, but it may have suffered when Barack Obama became president." Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt tried the same line: "With the end of the Bush administration, interest in the blog also diminished. His political orientation was not a factor in our decision." ⁴¹ However, it's difficult to take the diminished-interest argument seriously. The column by the ombudsman, posted on Saturday, drew pages of comments - about 600 by that afternoon - many very hostile to the Post. I read the first 150, of which all but three protested the decision.

Ironically, Froomkin had criticized the current administration, but he had done so from a liberal perspective. Apparently only conservative critiques are allowed.

__________________________

41. All Post quotes from Alexander's column, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/06/post_axes_froomkins_white_hous.html

June 3, 2009

Ryan Blethen, the new editorial-page editor at The Seattle Times, informed us a few days ago that "The Times' Opinion pages are changing." I'm not sure that its opinion pages warrant a capital O, but never mind. The first change is that, on Fridays and Sundays, the only days on which the combined editorial and op-ed pages total two, part of one page will be given over to advertisements. Blethen was very defensive about that, which in a way isn't necessary, as it's hardly unprecedented. He noted that newspapers "from The Oregonian in Portland to The Wall Street Journal" carry ads on their opinion pages. I'm not sure that The New York Times falls within that spectrum, but it does also.

Blethen was at pains to assure us that the ads would not influence editorial opinion, but he seems to have created a perception problem unnecessarily by deciding that only issue ads would be run: "no advertisements for appliances and furniture." If he's worried about the appearance of influence, those would seem to be the ads to favor. Perhaps they are considered to be beneath the dignity of the Times, at least on the Opinion pages.

Blethen acknowledged that the new policy would reduce the already small editorial space, but claimed that the paper needs the money, which is no doubt true, and that eventually, if all goes well, more revenue might lead to an expanded opinion section, which sounds like wishful thinking.

He also said that a review of the paper's policy as to syndicated columnists is under way, the implication being that there might be more variety and fewer appearances by the usual crew. He dropped a hint about Charles Krauthammer, whose departure would be a step forward.

June 2, 2009

A few days ago, I speculated that someone eventually would expose Dick Cheney as a charlatan who abused his power. That was not long in coming. On Sunday, Richard Clarke, writing in The Washington Post, performed the public service.³⁷

Cheney and Condoleezza Rice recently used 9-11 as the excuse for their repressive, militarist policies. Defending "enhanced interrogation," Rice told a Stanford student, "Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans." ³⁸ In his May 21 speech, Cheney said, "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse." More accurately, they determined not to let the people forget. That had two purposes: everything for the next seven years was justified by reference to 9-11, and the Bush-Cheney-Rice failure to prevent 9-11 was buried.

Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining experience." Clarke
responded:

I understand how it was a defining moment for Cheney, as it was for so many Americans.

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. . . .

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate.

Cheney inadvertently admitted that September 11 should not have been a surprise, and thereby admitted the negligence which facilitated it. "That attack itself was, of course, the most devastating strike in a series of terrorist plots carried out against America at home and abroad." He listed several stretching from 1993 to 2000, including the attempt on the World Trade Center and the attack on the USS Cole. "9/11 caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for a while and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated.³⁹

Clarke did not let that pass: "Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack." And the panic caused by unpreparedness led to bad decisions: "[W]hen Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea."

Cheney now has retaliated, claiming in an interview on Monday, "Richard Clarke was the head of the counter-terrorism program in the run up to 9/11. He obviously missed it." Reminded of Clarke's published warnings, Cheney replied with an inanity which would do credit to his former boss, "That is not my recollection. But I haven't read his book." ⁴⁰ Apparently he hasn't read the 9/11 Commission Report either. More to the point, he knows at first hand that his administration simply ignored terrorism despite warnings from Clarke, the CIA and others.

Exculpatory devices, including blaming others, is part of the Cheney technique, as shown by his May 21 speech. The treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was the fault of "a few sadistic prison guards," who deserved punishment; his advocacy of rough treatment couldn't be a factor. He did approve enhanced interrogation procedures, but that was benign. "Torture was never permitted. And the methods were given careful legal review before they were approved." Calling them torture would libel the interrogators, professionals and patriots all. Besides, they prevented further attacks; he wishes he could share the evidence for that, but the administration won't release it. He ended this effort with a ludicrous false choice: "[I]n the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground . . . You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States; you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States."

Cheney's speech was an attempt not only to justify his administration but to prepare the ground for denunciation of Obama should there be another attack. In aid of this he posed another false, and almost equally odd, choice: "You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event, coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort."

A false choice underlay his entire lecture: either use the methods of Bush- Cheney or leave the country defenseless.
_____________________________

37. "The Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse,"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052901560.html
38. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/01/national/main4983736.shtml
39. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gFVMxiIst-Rrdjrj6yZCMV1H1QJgD98AVLAG0
40. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/02/cheney-pins-blame-for-911_n_210300.html

May 25, 2009

The Blethen family has tightened its grip on the editorial page of The Seattle Times by naming Ryan Blethen, an old hand of 36, to replace the retiring James Vesley as editorial-page editor. It would be pleasant to think that the young Mr. Blethen might purge the op-ed page of a few dinosaurs such as David Broder. Not likely, though. Broder's conservatism, wrapped as it is in a cloak of neutrality, probably seems like unbiased commentary to the Blethens.

Broder has always seemed to me to a better reporter than opinion columnist, but his commentary once was of a higher quality than it has been over the past dozen years or so. His pro-establishment centrism gradually became, in effect, a defense of conservatism or whatever it is that Republicans practice. His willingness to front for the right-wing line reached a new extreme in his most recent column, reproduced in Sunday's Times.

"That was a rare and splendid moment when the president of the United States and the former vice president offered their sharply contrasting views on maintaining national security in back-to-back televised addresses last week," Broder told us. How anything disgorged by the constitution-mangler Cheney can be offered as a proper rebuttal to the present administration's policies escapes me. Cheney claimed, in considering Obama's policies, that "[t]he point is not to look backward." However, that's largely what he did, describing the Bush era in the usual mixture of half-truths and pure claptrap. Broder presented that as worthy of praise. Cheney, he said, gave "strong, clear and passionate expression" to his views, and is "confident in his own judgments." So might it be with any deluded former leader.

Did Cheney have anything to say? Broder mentioned two points. The strongest, he thought, was that Obama has "no plan" for dealing with prisoners to be transferred from Guantánamo. That isn't entirely accurate, and Cheney's argument was mainly the usual fear-mongering: we "will be compelled to accept a number of the terrorists here, in the homeland, and it has even been suggested US taxpayer dollars will be used to support them." Aren't they now? However, Broder didn't endorse the NIMBY/fear argument: "Obama was . . . impressive in taking on the panicky populism among lawmakers of both parties who quickly kowtowed to the demand that no terrorists be moved into prisons within the United States. . . . His calm testimony to the security of American jails was exactly what the situation needed."

The second point, that torture has made us safer, didn't seem any stronger to Broder: "Proof is missing that would let laymen judge Cheney's assertion that the methods Obama now has banned were necessary to prevent a second Sept. 11. Avoiding interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which historically have been classified as torture, not only clears our conscience and improves our reputation; it protects our own troops when they are captured. " These are characteristically mild comments, but negative. If Broder doesn't agree with either of the assertions he references, then how, even if he's desperate to find some middle ground, can he take Cheney's speech for one side of the argument?

In his current role as protector of conservative orthodoxy, Broder does not adhere to his own concept of reporting: "From my point view, the basic job of the press is to try to hold . . . government, and the people in it, accountable for the way in which they're doing their jobs." ³⁵ He has not done that since the advent of the Bush-Cheney regime. Some years ago, Broder wrote, "Unless and until this society is prepared to condemn and shun those who abuse their governmental authority, there is no point in having special prosecutors or others trying to squeeze these cases through the criminal justice system. . . . We need scorn and shame for those who violate their oaths of office." ³⁶ True then and true now, but Broder has changed his mind. Cheney and Obama oppose a truth commission, he noted: "And they are right."

That leads to the column in today's Times by Leonard Pitts. He has been no fan of the Bush-Cheney theory of governance, but is unpersuaded that we should turn over the rocks of their era. "If incompetence was a crime, you might have a case. Heck, if arrogance was a felony, you could put them on death row. But these things are not against the law, so forgive me if I'm not sold on the argument that we should launch investigations of the failures of the Bush years." However, we're looking not merely at incompetence and arrogance, although those abounded, but at subversion of the rule of law and leading the country into war based on lies. His argument is that such an investigation would be disruptive and would cause the right wing to fuss. I think that we can take for granted that the right will find something else to fuss about, and allowing misuse of government to become the norm is about as disruptive as anything I can think of. In effect Pitts, whom I respect greatly, is saying: don't irritate Rush Limbaugh.

His other reason for disapproving of an investigation is that we brought it on ourselves, by reelecting Bush in 2004. I didn't, so that carries no weight here. The argument that we are collectively stuck with the result because we were, collectively, stupid four years ago is simply illogical. Leaving aside that Bush's reelection was accomplished by the same false fear-based claims that justified the war, there is no principle of which I am aware that precludes an electorate from waking up, realizing that its representatives have been dishonest, and doing something about it.

__________________________

35. Interview, July 11, 1996: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/press/interviews/broder.html. See my note of 5/27/07 for extended comments on Broder and the criticism of him.
36. January 3, 1993

May 12, 2009

After first wishing for George W. Bush to go away, I decided that his run of public appearances, as he was about to leave office, would fix in people's minds just how inept, dishonest and dangerous he had been. Since then Dick Cheney has become ubiquitous, and I have had the same sequence of reactions.

I watched the video of "Frost-Nixon" last night. It really should have been titled "The Making of Frost-Nixon," as most of it focused on the tribulations of Frost & co. in bringing it off. What made the interviews possible was Richard Nixon's hope of rehabilitation, his desire to tell his side of the story and to put a positive spin on the facts. So with Cheney.

Cheney's task is, of course, easier than Nixon's. Nixon had been on the verge of impeachment, and was the only president to resign; we failed to impeach George and Dick. Nixon's war was far more unpopular than Cheney's, and there was no attack on the United States in the background. Nixon's sins were seen as political and personal in origin, whereas Cheney wraps his in the flag.

Cheney is a better advocate for the programs of the past eight years than Bush. He's smarter, more agile and more certain of the rightness of his views, and his smirk is smug and intimidating, whereas Bush's is simply inane. However, Bush has had the grace and good sense not to criticize the new administration. Cheney's attacks remind people not only of the policies of their time in office, which have the taint of failure even for loyalists, but also of the extremity of their views and attitudes. Cheney's endorsement of Rush Limbaugh illustrates the GOP's shallowness, viciousness and inability to learn, exactly the opposite of the message it needs. The fact that it is Cheney and not a current Republican officeholder who is getting all the attention underscores its failure to move on.

I don't expect that Cheney will admit error as Nixon did. He's tougher and has less of a moral sense. Nixon was flawed, but he did some good, and, when not threatened, often had the right instincts. He was insecure, troubled, tormented and resentful, and his fall was tragic in the classic sense. Bush and Cheney are merely small men given great power who abused it in the way small men do. If Cheney continues on the interview circuit, someone eventually will tumble to that, and he'll be exposed for the charlatan he is.

May 8, 2009

For a long time the political right hasn't had much to say that could be considered intelligent, but it seems determined to set new records for inanity. The latest example is the attention paid to President Obama's purchase of a hamburger. Via The Huffington Post, I listened to Laura Ingraham bleat for four minutes on the various sins committed by Obama in his visit to Ray's Burgers. She complained that it was an effort to look like "a real person"; George W. never did that. She was shocked that Obama and Biden paid for burgers for the reporters in attendance; corruption is rampant! His order was placed too hesitantly; no one so indecisive should be president. His choice of Dijon mustard was ridiculed; so French. But her scorn reached its height in noting, in baffled and outraged tones, that he didn't want ketchup. "The guy orders a burger without ketchup! What is that?" She makes George Will, ranting about jeans, sound sensible.

Someone named Mark Steyn nattered repetitiously on the Limbaugh comedy hour about Obama's stealing Grey Poupon advertising gigs from Brits, and closed by wondering what Obama would do next to "pass for human." These people might want to concentrate on doing something to pass for sentient.

Everyone who expresses an opinion today feels compelled to disclose any association which might influence his opinion, so I'll follow suit. I don't use ketchup on burgers, or on anything else. I don't use mustard on burgers either; I'm a mayonnaise, pickle, onion and tomato man. When I use mustard, for example on a salami sandwich, I use Grey Poupon. That establishes my objectivity on the mustard v. ketchup on burgers issue, but stamps me, in Ms. Ingraham's peculiar world, as a non-real guy and a mustard elitist with suspicious Francophile tendencies.

A comment attached to the Huffington article pointed out that Grey Poupon is a Kraft brand, which indeed it is. The G.P. website advertises its seven flavors as "The Elite Mustard Cabinet." How confusing; Kraft is, at least as to mustard, sort of Francophile. Maybe a classic American brand is elitist. Maybe Laura must avoid Kraft ketchup. Maybe she's really stupid.

May 2, 2009
A serious debate is underway on whether those who engaged in torture - as participants or enablers - should be prosecuted. Even conducting a searching, and potentially accusatory, inquiry is controversial. The arguments in favor are largely moral, those in opposition largely political, but that characterization doesn't determine the answer.

Here's a summary of the debate, as I understand it. Let's start with the arguments against prosecution and investigation; first, the claim that torture is justified.

Most of the focus has been on waterboarding. For some time, conservatives claimed that it wasn't really torture, but that has worn thin. Now it is a matter of necessity or, at least, utility. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Bush, claimed that "the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work." In support of this position Cheney, as usual, avoided nuance. In an interview last month, he claimed that "the harsh interrogations of suspects and the use of warrantless electronic surveillance were 'absolutely essential' to get information to prevent more attacks like the 2001 suicide hijackings that targeted New York and Washington."

Opponents of prosecution have cited Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the new intelligence director, who wrote in a memo this month, "High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country." However, he later added, "The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

The evidence for the success of "those methods" is thin. One of those tortured is Abu Zubaida, at one time considered, or claimed, to be a high-level al Qaeda operative. A recently-released memo²¹ recited that "Abu Zubaida provided significant information on two operatives, including Jose Padilla, who 'planned to build and detonate a dirty bomb in the Washington D.C area.' " However, Zubaida identified Padilla before the torture began. Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent who questioned Abu Zubaida between his capture in March 2002 and early June of that year, has stated that Zubaida revealed Padilla "under traditional interrogation methods." ²²

Khalid Sheik Mohammed is another source alleged to have disclosed valuable information under torture. Part of the problem in assessing this claim is that the torture apparently began immediately after his capture, so there is no control situation against which to measure the effectiveness of the technique. Whether Mohammed gave useful information also isn't altogether clear. One example claimed certainly is phony: the exposure of a plot to crash an airliner into a tower in Los Angeles. This is a somewhat dubious story which the Bush administration trotted out from time to time but, whatever its reality, it doesn't fit here: President Bush told us that the plot was broken up in 2002, before Mohammed's capture in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

Various experts in interrogation have stated that torture is as likely to produce false information as true. The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, a military organization, wrote, apparently in 2002, "The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible -- in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life -- has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture. . . . In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process." However, not so. "The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate information. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption." ²³

Even the enabling lawyers recognized that the efficacy of the methods was questionable. "[I]t is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program. As the [CIA] I[nspector] G[eneral] Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks." ²⁴

Those who defend torture rarely attempt to support it on moral grounds, although Michael Scheuer, formerly Anonymous, resorted to an admitted "worst-case scenario" to justify torture, and to turn the morality argument on its head. Writing in the Washington Post on April 26, he said, "[O]ne can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?" However, the imminent-attack scenario is almost entirely a dramatic device, and the assertion that lives have been saved, while often made, is at best speculative. Last year, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that he did not believe that any attacks had been disrupted because of intelligence obtained through "enhanced techniques." ²⁵

An entirely different argument against prosecution or accusatory inquiry is that the interrogation techniques were approved by Congress, or at least allowed to proceed without objection. Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists that "the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal -- not that they were going to be used." Even if true, that's hardly a defense; she would have to be incredibly naïve to think that the conversation was wholly theoretical. Porter Goss, then a congressman, later briefly CIA chief, has a different recollection. "In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's 'High Value Terrorist Program,' including the development of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers." He implies that waterboarding was discussed. His recollection may be as convenient as Pelosi's, and his fuller statement is somewhat ambiguous, but I'm inclined to credit it in general. It's certainly true that Democrats in Congress - perhaps out of agreement, perhaps out of political cowardice - raised few objections to the administration's policies and practices.

A related argument is that the Obama administration has to some degree approved "enhanced interrogation" practices. In addition to the comment by Adm. Blair, this is based on a waffling statement made by Leon Panetta, now CIA chief, during his confirmation hearings. Panetta identified waterboarding as torture, and said that he was "absolutely convinced ... we can get the information we need, we can provide for the security of the American people and we can abide by the law." However, when pressed he added, "If I had a ticking bomb situation and obviously whatever was being used I felt was not sufficient, I would not hesitate to go to the president of the United States and request whatever additional authority I would need."

A more limited argument is that those who carried out the interrogations should not be prosecuted, because it is highly unlikely that higher-ups will be, and the discrepancy would be unfair. It would, indeed. We should not follow the example of the Bush administration in prosecuting the grunts at Abu Ghraib and giving the policy-makers a pass. Nürnberg principles have been cited in support of prosecution: following orders should not be a defense. However, at Nürnberg the prosecutions went all the way to the top so, unless there is a major change of course, that analogy won't apply here.

On April 29, Thomas Friedman, defending the do-nothing option, tried to make the case for not pursuing those at the top: "justice taken to its logical end here would likely require bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial, which would rip our country apart." This is a new form of "too big to fail." Would it be more disruptive than impeaching a sitting president over trivial issues?

As a way of transitioning to the arguments in favor, let's look at the April 24 house editorial of The Washington Post, which offered its comments on the calls for an investigation. When I saw that the general drift was toward caution, I started to drop the column into the mental bin marked "Bush-friendly, pro-establishment ignorance." (I must confess a tendency to assign all Post editorials to that receptacle). However, this one made sense. "On one side, you have the sacred American tradition of peacefully transferring power from one party to another every four or eight years without cycles of revenge and criminal investigation." That is no small issue. We would not want to create an atmosphere in which each change of administration was accompanied by prosecutions, and every campaign sullied by accusations of criminality. However, the Post's specific reference was oddly inconsistent with that thesis. Rather than pointing out the impeachment of President Clinton as a horrible example, it noted that the investigation (and presumably the move toward impeachment) of President Nixon was OK. "It's one thing to investigate Richard Nixon for authorizing wiretaps and burglaries in secrecy, outside the normal channels of government, for personal political gain. It's another to criminalize decisions authorized through all the proper channels, with congressional approval or at least awareness, for what everyone agrees to be the high purpose of keeping Americans safe from terrorist attack." I don't know where the Post gets the idea that everyone agrees that the motivation behind the Bush actions was that noble.

However, its more general point has validity: where do we draw the line? Should various acts of undeclared war be the subject of investigation and possible prosecution? Again the first example under that heading is strange: "Should Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger and their team have been held criminally or civilly liable for dereliction of duty 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, given that they knowingly allowed Osama bin Laden to flee Sudan for sanctuary in Afghanistan?" A more pertinent question is whether Bush should be prosecuted for allowing 9-11 given his irresponsible inattention to warnings. No one has suggested that as a basis for prosecution, and the Clinton example is even less persuasive.

If that were the only worry, we could move ahead, but the Post added a better hypothetical: "What if the next administration believes that Barack Obama is committing war crimes every time he allows the Air Force to fling missiles into Pakistan, killing innocent civilians in a country with which we are not at war?" That is close enough to the proposed investigation to be worrisome, and its the sort of question which will come up in nearly every administration. However, thePost muddied the waters yet again by claiming that "[s]uch concerns are heightened when the country is at war, as we in fact are . . . ." The "wartime" excuse carves out a special exemption for an administration which starts a war.

The editors also worried that the threat of prosecution would discourage public service, which might be so.

The Post then considered the case for investigation and prosecution: "on the other side, we have this: American officials condoned and conducted torture. . . . In a country founded on the rule of law, a president can't sweep criminality away for political reasons, even the most noble." Again, ignore the nod to nobility. "When the United States sees torture taking place in other parts of the world, it issues some pretty simple demands: Stop doing that, and punish -- or at least identify, and in some way hold accountable -- those responsible, so that the practice will not be repeated. How can a country that purports to serve as a moral exemplar ask any less of itself?" How, indeed.

The Post was concerned that "the past will haunt the present until it is investigated and openly dealt with." I doubt that. Our capacity for convenient forgetfulness and rationalization is too great, and will be reinforced by Bush apologists. "[I]it's also true that if the United States doesn't examine its own record, other nations will have a better claim to do so." That's a possibility, as the threats from Spain have shown.

The Post ended by advocating a thorough, but calm, investigation, leaving open the possibility of prosecution but with a bias against it. That may be the right course, but its concern for evenhandedness is misplaced. The reason we are contemplating an inquiry is that the behavior is unacceptable. The editors seem to acknowledge that, but cover it with a veil of good intentions.

I don't know whether there is anyone who now defends the interrogations on the ground that there is no legal or moral issue regarding the use of torture. At least as to waterboarding, no one could have contended honestly that it was lawful; as recently pointed out, it was among the war-crimes charges against Japanese soldiers after WWII.²⁶

The excuse is that dire circumstances justify drastic measures. (Conservative aversion to situational ethics recognizes a convenient exception). However, the interrogations we know about didn't involve ticking bombs. Khalid Sheik Muhammed was waterboarded repeatedly in March 2003; to my knowledge no one has identified an imminent threat disclosed as a result. Abu Zubaida was waterboarded repeatedly in August 2002, with no useful effect.²⁷

Waterboarding came into the repertoire by the back door. It was used in a program known as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), "created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans." ²⁸ The knowledge that this procedure did not produce true information ought to have indicated its likely uselessness but, as Cofer Black said, "after 9-11, the gloves come off." It's wartime; real men become brutal.

SERE has been pointed to as a model and as a justification for using waterboarding in interrogations; one of the recently released memos treats the use in SERE as equivalent to its use in interrogation.²⁹ However, later memos make clear that the two practices bear little resemblance to each other. "Individuals undergoing SERE training are obviously in a very different situation from detainees undergoing interrogation; SERE trainees know that it is part of a training program, not a real-life interrogation regime, they presumably know that it will last only a short time, and they presumably have assurances that they will not be significantly harmed by the training." ³⁰ Its use in interrogation was hardly comparable: 183 waterboardings of K S Muhammed in a month, 83 in a month of Zubaida.³¹ That indicates that it appealed to interrogators for reasons far removed from any noble concern for national security and, contrary to recitals in the memos, with no regard for the health of the victims.

There is reason to believe that the various extreme measures were used to extract not unknown true information but false information which would be useful politically. That is, they were employed in the hope of "proving' a link between Iraq and al Qaeda which would justify the invasion.³²

The issue for investigation goes beyond waterboarding and beyond abusive interrogations. Scheuer named what he considers to be three "proven threat- containing capacities of the major U.S. counterterrorism programs -- rendition, interrogation and unmanned aerial vehicle attacks." He complained that, "in a single week, President Obama has eliminated two-thirds of that successful- but-not- sufficient national defense troika because his personal ideology . . . ." Presumably the vow not to use torture in the future eliminates one. I don't know which is the other, as Obama has not, as far as I know, renounced drone attacks or rendition.

However, Scheuer has listed three questionable practices, and Obama needs to address each of them. It isn't enough to state that waterboarding is torture and we won't torture in the future. Waterboarding isn't the only barbaric technique which needs to be so identified, and torture isn't the only issue raised by Bush's "wartime" policies and practices. We need to expose and renounce rendition to torture-friendly countries, and the use of black sites, and stop unmanned aerial attacks, at least as to drones sent into Pakistan.

John Dean famously testified that he told Nixon that a cancer was growing on the presidency. Systematic violation of the law and of moral standards create that disease. Collaboration of lawyers in the violation is one of the most reprehensible aspects of this entire scandal. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, called for disbarment of the lawyers involved in drafting the torture memos. "I feel that Gonzales, Addington, Yoo, Bybee, Haynes and Feith should be, at a minimum, disbarred. . . . " Feith doesn't quite fit into that group, and reappears in another category: "Second, the decision-makers and their closest advisors (particularly the ones among the latter who may, on their own, have twisted the dagger a little deeper in Caesar's prostrate body -- Rumsfeld and Feith for instance). Appoint a special prosecutor such as Fitzgerald, armed to the teeth, and give him or her carte blanche." ³³

The memos produced by those lawyers are odd documents. They are worded carefully, in that they recite the information provided by the interrogators and condition their advice on those disclosures. The information provided represents the measures to be mild, emphasizes how carefully the health of the prisoners will be monitored and generally describes something akin to a fraternity hazing. Accepting those representations, even as the basis for an opinion, suggests naïveté or a wink-and-nod arrangement, probably both.

The opinions go to great lengths to find that the procedures will not cause great pain and suffering. Even severe mental distress is declared not to be a result, which is odd, as it seems to be the whole point. Despite the effort, a few hints of the barbarity of the practices slip through. For example, sleep deprivation, in which the prisoner is shackled in such a way as to prevent sleep or much movement, may go on for 180 hours. That's seven and one-half days. But it's not torture; it doesn't cause physical or severe mental pain.³⁴

The memos are long, couched in legalese and larded with citations. It's extremely unlikely that interrogators read any of that turgid prose. The message - go for it! - was all they needed. The memos were designed for ass-covering, for the authors and for the policy makers. They were, in other words designed to forestall exactly the measures now being debated.

What to do? Prosecution isn't a reasonable course because it will criminalize followers but leave those most responsible to pleasant retirement. However, there is a difference between putting people in jail and sweeping it under the rug. What is needed is a principled political declaration.

We should conduct a searching, critical investigation - or more than one - to turn over all of the rocks, to see just how bad it was, to expose all of those involved, however inconvenient that may be. The inquiry must be fair and honest, but it would be ludicrous to insist that it be unbiased. The nature of the crime is known; the purpose of further investigation should be to ensure that it isn't repeated.

Apart from moral considerations, the obvious reason that the Bush policies toward "enemy combatants" must be fully aired is that they undermine the rule of law. They do so by promoting the view that the president is above the law. The legal memos, especially the earlier ones, are briefs for that position. Disbarment makes sense, and so does impeachment of Jay Bybee.

Condoleezza Rice, in a recent exchange with students at Stanford, came close to adopting the Nixonian view that, if the president does it, it isn't illegal. We put people in prison to declare otherwise, but here we are decades later, debating whether we were right, or whether there is a "wartime" exception.

______________________________

21. Memo Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, May 30, 2005, p. 10. Four memos were released on April 16; the others are two from Bradbury to Rizzo, both dated May 10, 2005 and one from Jay Bybee to Rizzo dated August 1, 2002.
22. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=soufan&st=Search
23. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/JPRA-Memo_042409.pdf
24. Memo Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, May 30, 2005, p. 37
25. http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=4
26. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/yes-inational-reviewi-we_b_191153.html
27. http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=1;
28. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22detain.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=in%20adopting&st=cse
29. Memo Jay S. Bybee John Rizzo, August 1, 2002, pp. 4-6
30. Memo Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, May 10, 2005, p. 6
31. Memo Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, May 30, 2005, p. 37
32. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/66622.html
33. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/27/lawrence-wilkerson-disbar_n_191755.html
34. Memo Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, May 10, 2005, pp. 35-39

April 20, 2009

Three themes emerge from the "tea parties." The obvious one is whether ordinary folk have reason to complain about taxation under Obama. The second, suggested by some of the signs and the atmosphere of militancy, is the danger inherent in our gun culture. Finally, the protesters seem to think that America is on a vaguely identified path to perdition, which will bring us to jeans and George Will.

Few of the protesters had a clue as to what the awful Obama tax program amounts to, not surprising since apparently they watch Fox News. Here, from the Heritage Foundation, hardly a left-wing organization, is a summary of "The President's $1.4 Trillion Tax Increase;" the numbers (in billions) are the ten-year revenue impact.¹⁹

339.... Raise income taxes for upper-income taxpayers
118.... Raise capital gains and dividend rates for upper-income taxpayers
180.... Reinstate the personal exemption phaseout and limitation on itemized deductions for upper-income taxpayers
318.... Limit itemized deduction to 28 percent value for upper-income taxpayers
646.... Cap-and trade energy tax
210.... International enforcement, reform deferral, and tax reform
143.... Other business, financial, and energy tax increases
1,953 [Total of increases]
-74.... Make R&E (Research and Experimentation) tax credit permanent
-77.... Modify FAA financing
-444.... New low-income tax cuts (revenue impact)
-4.... Other proposals
1,354.... Total [net] Tax Increase

The "energy tax" is not really a tax, but revenue from sale of pollution permits; any pass-through impact on taxpayers other than polluters will be less than the amount shown and apparently will be offset by some sort of credits. (ABC News presented a summary of the proposals which is similar to this one, but without the so-called energy tax).

Note the limitation to upper-income taxpayers in the first four categories. Also, as revealed by the ABC table, $24 billion of the remaining increase comes from taxing "carried-interest income," a change aimed primarily at private-equity fund managers, who have been able to treat management fees as capital gains, with the result that these very highly-paid individuals enjoy a lower rate than many middle-income taxpayers. That brings the upper-income portion to 50% of the total gross increase, 72% of the net, even including the energy tax. (Without the energy tax, the upper-income portion is 74% of the gross and more than the net). And note the large amount designated "low-income tax cuts." Why will people take to the streets, even pushed by Fox News, to protest this program?

One partial explanation is found in the signs protesting the accumulation of federal debt, often with reference to the protesters' children. Another sign read "Let the failures fail," and to the limited extent that the concern about debt reflects anger at the bailout of banks who seem not to have changed their ways, and who perhaps didn't deserve bailing out in the first place, it's understandable. We could ask why there were no demonstrations before January 20, but the complaint is legitimate nonetheless. More to the point is the absence of protests directed to the accumulation of debt to pursue the Iraq war; there isn't even a plausible excuse for those wasted billions.

However, consistency and informed concern about taxes and spending had little to do with the protests. They were an exercise in resentment; "Your mortgage is not my problem" reflected the fiscal aspect, but unfocused anger and a we-vs.-they attitude dominated. Obama is definitely in the latter category; here are some of the signs: "Obama's plan - white slavery"; The American taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's ovens"; Barack Obama - the new face of Hitler"; "Hey Big Brother show us your real birth certificate"; "Obama bin Lyin free our markets not the terrorists"; "Constitution = liberty NOT National Socializm [sic]"; "Stand idle while some Kenyan tries to destroy America? WAP!! I don't think so!!! Homey don't play dat!!!". The irrational hostility is worrisome, and one sign leads to the second theme: "Guns tomorrow." I don't know whether that meant "we'll bring them next time" or "soon they'll take them away," but either way it points up the close connection between these exaggerated claims of impending tyranny and the gun culture. The overtone of racism makes matters worse still.

During the past few weeks there have been multiple murders in Oakland, Pittsburgh, Binghampton NY, Graham Washington and Priceville, Alabama. In the initial reports there was no mention - that I saw - of the significance of firearms. The connection was pointed out on the Huffington Post²⁰ on April 8 and by Bob Herbert in his NYTimes column of April 14. As Herbert put it, "This is the American way. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country's attention understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in nonterror homicides, most of them committed with guns. . . . That's nearly 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan." The Huffington Post article pointed out that the trend is for ever-more liberal gun laws, and that President Obama's push to renew the assault-weapons ban is opposed by 65 House Democrats.

The Supreme Court made a hash of its attempt to reinterpret the Second Amendment, but its general tone of sympathy to gun ownership will encourage both legislatures and the gun nuts. Oddly, Candidate Obama agreed with the decision; so much for "the tyrant is coming for our guns." Oh, wait: Obama wants to ban assault weapons; we're still in danger.

I suppose that every nation has exhibited self-destructive stupidity at times, but this one seems to be determined to set a new record. Opposition to gun control, identification of gun ownership with true Americanism, and worst, the belief that only being armed and dangerous can preserve individual safety and collective liberty, are markers on the path back to the jungle or, at least, to the wild west.

The final theme suggested by the tea parties is that American culture is under attack or, in the more pessimistic version, is in decline, in both cases due to the dire effects of liberalism.

Numerous causes or symbols of decline have been suggested, but to George Will goes the prize for the most trivial: jeans. I admit to thinking that people sometimes wear jeans when somewhat more formal, presentable garb would be appropriate, but to turn that aesthetic preference into a moral standard requires a deliberate suspension of proportionality. That is what Mr. Will accomplished in his Post column of April 16. Wearing jeans inappropriately - or perhaps too often, or perhaps at all; Mr. Will isn't explicit - is "an obnoxious misuse of freedom"; it is "symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche." Oh come now. Even a conservative can't believe that, can he? Perhaps so: professional conservatism does seem to impair clear thinking.

The tea-partiers didn't suggest jeans as a cause for concern - probably many of them were wearing the dreaded denim - but their identification of threats is no more sensible. They fear communism, which requires not having been out of the cave for some years. They fear socialism; assuming that any of them knows what that is, why do they quake at its mention? Do they turn down their Social Security checks? Do they refuse to drive on public highways? If injured, would they refuse a public-hospital ER? Not likely. They have been taught to equate socialism with waste and tyranny, the "free market" with prosperity, efficiency and personal freedom.

Attendance at the tea parties has a more basic cause than any of the grievances expressed: a general feeling on the part of the protesters that the world is changing too fast, is moving in the wrong direction, and is leaving them behind. They have a narrow and conservative view of Americanism, which makes them prey to Fox and money. They aren't well educated or informed, are impatient of overly sophisticated explanations and suspect, resent and fear "elites" (oddly defined) and "foreigners" (broadly defined). They think that they have made it on their own and resent helping others, especially if the others are black or Hispanic. America is, to them, a disneyfied midwestern small town, which is all-white and all-straight, without labor unions but with kind and generous bosses, where the young men march off to war proudly, knowing that they are fighting for freedom and the American way.

____________________________________

19. http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/17/the-14-trillion-obama-tax-increase/
20. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/07/gun-permits-what-the-late_n_184391.html

April 17, 2009

Last week Michael Gerson, in a column in The Washington Post, described the results of a recent poll thusly: "Who has been the most polarizing new president of recent times? Richard Nixon? Ronald Reagan? George W. Bush? No, that honor belongs to Barack Obama." However, the poll report, by the Pew Research Center, summarized the findings neutrally: "Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades." A glance at the rest of the report shows that the split is due, not to Mr. Obama's polarizing character, as Gerson would have it, but to the fact that Republicans are more partisan in their attitudes than Democrats. Comparing the present to former administrations, we see the following:

Republican enthusiasm for Bush was comparable to how Democrats feel about Obama today, but there was substantially less criticism from members of the opposition party. . . .

The partisan gap in Bill Clinton's early days was also substantially smaller than what Obama faces, largely because Democrats were less enthusiastic about Clinton. . . .¹⁵

The poll reveals the extent of Republican/conservative disdain for Obama; the recent "tea parties" show the degree. Signs carried by the participants included "Commander in Thief", "Hey Big Brother: Show us Your Real Birth Certificate", "Blackbeard Obama, King of the Tax Pirates", "The Audacity of the Dope", "O Crap", Obama as an acronym for "One Big Awful Mistake America", "Napolitano -- Obama's Gestapo Queen", "Tax Slavery Sucks", and "Obama bin Lyin". The Obama-haters reached for any epithet they could remember, regardless of logic. As a result, Obama was derided as both a fascist and a communist.

The whole tax-protest notion is strange, as most of those on the streets probably aren't in danger of having their taxes raised by Obama's proposals. As is so often the case, ordinary Americans are deceived into believing that a plan to tax the rich affects them.

Even the rich are, shall we say, overreacting. As Paul Krugman put it, "President Obama is being called a 'socialist' who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre." Even that "increase" would be accomplished by allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire, as the legislation creating the cuts provided. In other words, it's 1773 again because Obama refuses to reenact an irrational tax break.

Fox News, eager to carry water for the rich, was the main promoter of the events, and its employees were among the participants. In Washington, D.C. Tobin Smith, Fox News "market analyst," enlightened the crowd about the channel's slogan: "You know what 'Fair and Balanced' means? 'Fair and Balanced' means we take our message and try to overcompensate for their lack of message." That doesn't quite make sense, but at least it admits that "We report, you decide" is a fraud, and the network's involvement in the protests ought to make its bias obvious to all but the hopeless.

Perhaps the nuttiest reaction to creeping tyranny came - here's a surprise - from Texas. Governor Perry spoke to three tea parties in his state, which featured signs reading "Secede!" He said, "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that." ¹⁶

The best comment I've seen on the secession ploy, and on the tea parties, is one by Lincoln Mitchell on The Huffington Post.

. . . Dressing up in revolutionary war costumes, calling for the overthrow of the government and waving teabags at the behest of wealthy right wing funders is, while a little pathetic and strange, well within the realm of constitutionally protected behavior and may even play a somewhat constructive role in our democracy. . . .

Floating the idea of secession over this, even in a somewhat tongue in cheek manner, is a very different story. . . .¹⁷

He is concerned, rightly so, that threats of revolution and secession are far out of proportion to the issues which divide the Parties, and those threats tend to validate the recent Homeland Security Department warning about right-wing extremists. I think that he's a little too generous to the tea parties, the tone of which went beyond vigorous protest. In D.C., talk-show host and Limbaugh wannabe Mike Church gave "a mock fascist salute" and said that "it's time to have a little revolution, I think. " He then added coyly: "We don't have to fire weapons. You should own them, you should have a lot of ammo to go with them, but you don't have to shoot them." ¹⁸

The reference to guns and revolution reflects a dangerous tendency in right-wing rhetoric. The guy with the sign reading "Hang 'em high" (listing several Democratic lawmakers) might just take the hint. Republican leaders have been entirely too free with such comments. Last month Rep. Michelle Bachmann tossed this off: "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back." Ms. Bachmann is so dingy that her comments could be dismissed if they were unique, but unfortunately they are not. Sen. Tom Coburn, admittedly also not an outstanding intellect, but more influential than Bachmann, fears an ban on assault weapons. "Why shouldn't I be able to own an AR-15, as an American citizen, to defend myself if I need to." He's afraid the government will "dominate us, the people."

In the hands of people who think that fascism or communism or some other form of tyranny is imminent, the ready availability - and worship - of guns is scary.

__________________________________

15. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1178/polarized-partisan-gap-in-obama-approval-historic
16. http://www.star-telegram.com/668/story/1319689.html
17. "Threats of Secession and Other Recent Republican Rhetoric," 4/16/09: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/threats-of-secession-and_b_187652.html
18. The D.C. protest was described by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post.

April 7, 2009

Richard Cohen, writing in Tuesday's Washington Post, took exception to the criticism of Lawrence Summers. "The recent headlines . . . had it all wrong. They announced with an implied breathlessness that he earned around $8 million last year -- much of it from the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. Here's what I would have written: 'Man Takes More Than $7.9 Million Cut in Pay.' " In other words, we should praise Summers, and other members of the administration, for deciding to do public service, at a substantial financial cost. That may well be so, but it is entirely beside the point.

The appropriate counterargument as to Summers' former employment is one only hinted at in passing by Cohen, that he learned something about the workings of high finance, and specifically hedge funds, while in the private sector. That knowledge could aid him in fashioning polices to clean up the mess and prevent its return. The same argument applies, of course, to other former well-paid business types now in government. It's an entirely legitimate argument, but only performance can tell us whether their background is a blessing or a curse: whether they can use their experience for our benefit or whether they are trapped in a pro-business mindset. Events to date suggest the latter.

April 5, 2009

It's difficult to make sense of the administration's approach to salvaging sick companies. Its demands on automobile manufacturers and unions may not be fair, but at least its program is bold and drastic, which seems to be what our faltering system needs. However, as to financial institutions, Obama & Co. seem to be locked into the Bush program of bailouts with few strings but a good deal of secrecy. E.J. Dionne, channeling Churchill, described the "Obama enigma: boldness wrapped in caution rooted in an ambivalent relationship to the status quo."

The bank-rescue program has accomplished virtually nothing to date. The reaction to the next phase, a retooled purchase of toxic assets, ranges from qualified approval (which seems to involve reliance on opaque theories about the financial markets) to outright denunciation. Knowledgeable critics, including Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, think that the bank program is seriously flawed. Both think that temporary nationalization is preferable to the plan to buy toxic assets, which Stiglitz describes as "ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses." ¹¹ Here is the administration's program, in the form of an example presented by the Treasury Department:

Sample Investment Under the Legacy Loans Program
Step 1: If a bank has a pool of residential mortgages with $100 face value that it is seeking to divest, the bank would approach the FDIC.
Step 2: The FDIC would determine, according to the above process, that they would be willing to leverage the pool at a 6-to-1 debt-to-equity ratio.
Step 3: The pool would then be auctioned by the FDIC, with several private sector bidders submitting bids. The highest bid from the private sector - in this example, $84 - would be the winner and would form a Public-Private Investment Fund to purchase the pool of mortgages.
Step 4: Of this $84 purchase price, the FDIC would provide guarantees for $72 of financing, leaving $12 of equity.
Step 5: The Treasury would then provide 50% of the equity funding required on a side-by-side basis with the investor. In this example, Treasury would invest approximately $6, with the private investor contributing $6.
Step 6: The private investor would then manage the servicing of the asset pool and the timing of its disposition on an ongoing basis - using asset managers approved and subject to oversight by the FDIC. ¹²

[The $84 bid is arbitrary and arithmetically convenient; the 6 to 1 ratio is the most generous the plan offers.]

Stiglitz labeled this "a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win - and taxpayers lose." The banks get money for junk, investors get in cheaply, and the government takes most of the risk.

Henry Blodget criticized the bank bailouts, but for a different reason: he thinks that in "any fair world, the bondholders would lose everything before any taxpayer money was put on the line." That isn't obvious to me, and Blodget doesn't offer any rationale. He thinks that the reason bondholders are being protected is that "insurance companies, pension funds, and other companies that hold the future of Americans in their hands invest in those bonds. And if we force those companies to take a loss, we'll hurt ordinary Americans." Individuals also buy bonds, so the damage wouldn't all be indirect.

One problem with the nationalization alternative is that it is likely to be very messy. That isn't a reason to reject it, but its advocates seem unaware of the controversies it will bring in its wake. The takeover of Washington Mutual has been used as proof that it would be easy.

In attempting to dampen fears of nationalization, Stiglitz commented: "After all, the F.D.I.C. has taken control of failing banks before, and done it well. It has even nationalized large institutions like Continental Illinois (taken over in 1984, back in private hands a few years later), and Washington Mutual (seized last September, and immediately resold)." Blodget spoke of receivership and thought it would be a good idea. A "managed receivership. . . is what happened to WaMu last fall, and the process went so smoothly that few folks can even remember it." Those of us who live in Seattle not only remember but are presently aware of the layoffs and the empty offices formerly occupied by WaMu. The "smooth process" led to litigation in Texas and Washington, D.C. in addition to Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Claims have been made a) by the FDIC against Washington Mutual, Inc. (WMI), the holding company, for failure to adequately capitalize the bank subsidiary; b) by WMI against the FDIC, alleging a fraudulent conveyance of the bank's assets to JPMorgan Chase (JPMC), and demanding the return of capital contributions to the bank after December 2007 and of $4 billion on deposit at the Bank; c) by creditors, including bondholders, of the bank subsidiary to assets in the control of the holding company; d) by JPMC against WMI, apparently in defense of its acquisition of the bank's assets, but also demanding some sort of indemnification; e) by the IRS against WMI, for back taxes. As one reporter put it, "It could take years for the Chapter 11 claims-sifting process to conclude in the former parent company's bankruptcy case, which is one of several arenas dealing with the competing claims to WaMu's leftovers." Nationalization or receivership for insolvent banks may be the best plan, but no one should expect that to be a simple or short process.

Another critic is William Greider, who has submitted an alternative proposal.¹³ His formula seems inconsistent as to regulatory powers to be left with the Federal Reserve, but generally it makes sense, if only because it contemplates more control by the government and less deference to the supposed magic of the financial market. Here's a short version of his outline:

1. Take control of insolvent banks to "supervise a just unwinding of the mess."
2. Convert the Federal Reserve into an agency of the government to increase accountability.
3. Limit "the reformed Fed . . . to conducting monetary policy" and remove its regulatory functions. Transfer those to the Treasury or "a new free-standing regulatory agency."
As to the latter, he seems to have something like the FTC in mind. It should be "armed with strong antitrust laws and other rules to ensure that 'too big to fail' institutions are redefined as 'too big to save.' "
4. Restore laws prohibiting usury "to halt predatory lending."
5. Create a new banking system based on smaller institutions, including publicly-owned banks and nonprofits.
This seems a bit ambitious, and such a system might be inadequate.
6. Give the reformed Federal Reserve "broad supervision of the nonbank financial firms in the 'shadow banking system'--hedge funds, private equity firms, pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies."
This is inconsistent with item 3; however, those powers need to be given to some agency. Robert Kuttner offered a variation on 3 and 6: "before the Fed is turned into an even more potent all-purpose regulator, Congress should turn it into a true public institution--a reform project that has been deferred since Roosevelt's day."

Two problems lie at the heart of the problem; both, unfortunately, are still with us and stand in the way of cleaning up the mess.. The first is excessive, irresponsible debt. As to that, here is Stiglitz's comment:

Let's take a moment to remember what caused this mess in the first place. Banks got themselves, and our economy, into trouble by overleveraging - that is, using relatively little capital of their own, they borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets. In the process, they used overly complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations.

He points out that the cure has the same fault:

Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.

On Saturday, The New York Times carried a story, with accompanying charts, detailing the increase in four categories of debt over the ten years ending December 31. Relative to GDP, government debt rose 6 points, nonfinancial business debt rose 18, household debt 31, and financial sector debt 51 points. Household debt is worrisome, but has begun to fall because of the recession. Government debt, by contrast, has spiked, for the same reason. The huge increase in the financial sector underscores Stiglitz's argument, and the fact that it rose so much more than other business debt illustrates the banks' "overleveraging."

The second problem is a compensation system which skewed business decisions and created today's elite, as insulated from ordinary people's lives as Marie Antoinette. That, too, carries over into the rescue program. Little control has been exercised over compensation, and, as one report put it, the administration is "engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay. . . ." This is the lame rationale: "Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package." ¹⁴ The critics might respond that their cooperation isn't vital. Even if it is, the cards are all in Mr. Obama's hand, and he needs to play accordingly.

However, it isn't likely that he will, as many of his advisors come from that compensation system. We learned yesterday that "Lawrence Summers, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations." Others in the White House were paid highly enough to suffer the illusion that they were worth it, and their successors must be also.

As I've noted before, I don't know much about economics, and know less about banking and next to nothing about collateralized debt obligations, but I'm unconvinced that the administration has any better grasp.

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11. All Stiglitz quotes from "Obama's Ersatz Capitalism," http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=stiglitz&st=Search

12. http://treas.gov/press/releases/tg65.htm
13. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090413/greider
14. The Washington Post Saturday, April 4, 2009; confirmed by David Axelrod (Fox News Sunday via Huffington Post): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/05/axelrod-defends-circumven_n_183235.html

March 30, 2009

A few years ago (actually, it was in October 2000; I've suppressed most of the intervening time), when visiting the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., we saw a model of a planned addition. True to the modern mode, the addition looked nothing like the existing building and, worse, it had been designed by Frank Gehry. I expressed my (negative) opinion, which evoked a mild rebuke by a guide standing nearby, no doubt prompted by dismay that anyone could be so unsophisticated.

The Corcoran ran short of money, so the capital was spared that parody of architecture, but plans for a new National Museum of African American History and Culture have produced another threat. Six designs apparently are in the running. They range from a curved glass structure - covered, more or less, by a rectangular box - to various monstrosities. The former would be inoffensive, if odd, in another location, but out of place on the Mall. The latter would be a bad joke anywhere.

Many contemporary designs are not merely ugly and ridiculous, but degenerate; the impression is not so much of a building as of the ruins of one. Naomi Klein, in her report of a post-invasion visit to Baghdad, offered this insightful comment:

To see the remains of [this] football-field-size warehouse is to understand why Frank Gehry had an artistic crisis after September 11 and was briefly unable to design structures resembling the rubble of modern buildings. [The] looted and burned factory looks remarkably like a heavy-metal version of Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, with waves of steel, buckled by fire, lying in terrifyingly beautiful golden heaps.¹⁰

I'm too conventional to see beauty in heaps of buckled steel, whether caused by fire or architectural fad, but the comparison of his designs to the aftermath of a disaster is apt.

Deconstruction, one has to hope, will pass out of vogue in this field as in others.

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10. "Baghdad Year Zero," http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197

March 23, 2009

The outcry against Wall Street bonuses, triggered by the recent revelations by AIG, is dismissed by many as unimportant. The complaints usually are described as "populist" rage, thereby clearly drawing the line between the reaction of ordinary folk and their betters, including some journalists. "Spare me the populist outrage," wrote Linda Chavez; she and Charles Krauthammer referred to protesters as a mob. They gaze at the rabble from their windows, holding perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses lest the odor reach them.

Krauthammer informed us that it would be foolish to undo $165 million in bonuses to people he aptly describes as "AIG debt manipulators" because they "may be the only ones who know how to defuse the bomb they themselves built." "May be" is a pretty weak argument, even if bribing them to explain their manipulations made any sort of moral sense.

Linda Chavez apparently has different information about the recipients: "These are not the same people who devised the credit default obligations that jeopardized AIG. Those individuals are long gone. The bonus recipients are the people whose job is now to try to mitigate the financial risk those complex instruments caused. They are highly skilled and could . . . walk away and let the company implode . . . ."

So, whoever they are, it's right to bribe them.

Ms. Chavez also enlightened us about the source of the populist outrage. After concluding, for an undisclosed reason, that "it's not the principle of retention bonuses that infuriates people," she concluded that it was in part anger over the greed demonstrated by the bonuses, and she admits that greed is a vice. However, according to her the anger is primarily the result of a truly despicable sentiment. "What's driving public outrage right now is another unattractive vice: envy. . . . Class envy won't put a single penny in anyone's pocket. It won't save jobs. It certainly won't solve the credit crisis." Let them eat cake.

Michael Gerson argued that cancelling AIG bonuses would cause businesses not to participate in the proposed purchase of toxic assets, because investors would worry about retroactive attacks on their earnings. He has a point about retroactivity, but he used hedge-fund managers as his example, surely the class least deserving of any worries about their compensation or tax burden.

To Krauthammer, the bonus amount is trivial: "in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It's less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone." What it has to do with the federal budget is a mystery to me. Rick Santelli, now famous for his rant against mortgage aid, also derided the small amount. Michelle Malkin described it as a "pittance," and a "smokescreen" designed to hide the "gargantuan spending spree" under way.

Ideology has rendered these people politically tone-deaf. The amount is indeed a small fraction of the money dumped on AIG, but it's enough to pay the annual salaries of about 4,000 average workers (those who still have jobs). It is a symbol not only of greed at a time of suffering for others, but of the growing gap between the economic elite and the rest of us and of a compensation system which lies at the heart of the mismanagement of business that landed us in this mess. Congressional posturing has been, in the grand tradition, ludicrous and hypocritical, but it also has been a reaction to genuine and proper popular outrage.

March 16, 2009

Hearst, obviously not obsessed by any concept of timeliness, announced today that the P-I will print its last paper tomorrow. The date selected for closure may have related to the company's payroll periods, but the date chosen for the announcement seems only to reflect a sort of absent-mindedness. The closure has been a sure thing for weeks, and the approximate date known for days, at least.

In keeping with the general ineptness surrounding the closure, the P-I sent us another notice that the cost of our subscription through early June had been deducted from our bank account. This time, it had been. A call to the P-I produced an evasive response as to what would happen to the funds after the paper folded. Today, another call produced an explanation that the payment would be applied to a subscription to the Times. Well, we already have one, and have been charged for that. OK, you can have a refund or have the payment applied to your existing Times account. I have great confidence that this will all get sorted out properly.

March 7, 2009

The left hand at the P-I apparently doesn't pay any attention to the right. Several of its columnists have noted its impending demise, and the 60-day time line established in January will end on Tuesday. Anthony Robinson, whose column appears on Saturdays, indicated that his next will be his last. Folding after next Saturday, or perhaps after the joint edition on Sunday, seems likely. On the other hand, we received a postcard yesterday advising us that the usual automatic checking-account debit has been made, to continue our P-I subscription through June 5. (It hasn't: more confusion).

Recently I criticized the P-I for going out with a whimper, but two exceptions must be noted. On February 24, the house editorial endorsed health care reform, which it saw leading, perhaps by steps, to a "single-payer national system." As the editorial noted, we are "decades overdue for the universal health care enjoyed in other countries." On March 2, the house column endorsed a state income tax, in effect rejecting the negative column by the P-I's conservative business columnist a week earlier.

Neither plan will be an easy sell, so it's sad that the Post-Intelligencer won't be around to continue the fight.

March 3, 2009

I read the transcript of the address by Rush Limbaugh to CPAC as soon as it appeared on his web page. His remarks were laughable enough in print, but the full effect is felt only by watching the video. Having nothing better to do, I viewed it today.

It would be superfluous to describe Limbaugh's performance; he has long since established himself as one of the premier oafs of the age (which he once, with characteristic modesty, described as the Era of Limbaugh). The noteworthy aspect of his appearance was the audience reaction. Granted that political audiences of any coloration are more emotional than rational and will applaud anything that reenforces their views, this one was singularly simple and ideologically blinkered. Only such a group could cheer the self-regard, self-promotion, inanity and inconsistencies of the Limbaugh speech.

CPAC doesn't necessarily represent the Republican Party nor does Limbaugh. However, the Party is now as confused, divided and unsure of its direction as the Democrats have been in recent years. Because of that, and because of a void in leadership, it is sliding toward Limbaugh as its spokesman.

The White House has been promoting Limbaugh as the voice of the Republican Party, a good political gambit. Limbaugh declined that role in his CPAC speech, but he seems to think that he is the spokesman for conservatism, and the voters aren't likely to note any distinction. RNC Chairman Steele criticized Limbaugh, but felt compelled to recant immediately, showing that his members make the same identification.

This, and the unthinking obstructionism of Congressional Republicans are gifts to Obama. He needs to rationalize his policies and, in the process, to move them leftward. He should be able to do so. The decision by Republicans and conservatives to oppose anything he does and to pretend that no drastic action is required has rendered them intellectually and, probably, politically irrelevant.

March 1, 2009

When they were in control of the government, "conservatives" - those on the political right - could indulge their fantasy that they somehow understood Americans and the world, and were providing leadership. They could say and do things that were illogical, irrational, ugly, menacing, violent, barbaric and entirely in opposition to traditional American or human values, confident that they could brush off all objections, usually by asserting that they were protecting us from Armageddon in the form of 1) a physical attack by Muslims or 2) an assault on the culture by the Godless, i.e. anyone other than evangelical Christians. Now that they are on the sidelines, now that President Obama has laid out, for the most part, a progressive vision, they are manning the ramparts, protecting the Chosen and screaming that everyone outside is a Socialist.

Nothing reveals this more clearly than the agenda for the CPAC conference, held Thursday through Saturday. Appearances and book signings were scheduled for John Bolton, Ann Coulter and Joe the plumber epitomizing, respectively, fear-mongering, bile-spewing and witlessness, all common characteristics of the "movement." (Also planned: a signing, by someone named Kevin McCullough, of a book entitled "The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be: Taking a Stand for True Masculinity." According to his web site, "Musclehead Revolution," the book addresses "what modern feminism [to be contrasted, presumably, from the medieval sort] has done to destroy real men [the faux variety apparently still standing]." It's a guide for the easily intimidated, apparently.)

Bolton spoke on Thursday, suggesting that the only thing that would convert Obama from wuss to defender of freedom would be a nuke dropped on Chicago. He thought that was funny, as well as penetrating national-security analysis.

The agenda included a forum on "Al Franken and ACORN: How Liberals are Destroying the American Election System," deeply ironic from people who interfered, in court and as a mob, with a fair count in Florida, among other attempts to steal elections. Another prize for irony goes to a discussion of "What the Government Doesn't Want You to Know, and How You Can Find Out: Putting the Freedom of Information Act to Work for You." Possibly they have not noticed that the obstructive Bush policy was reversed on the first day of the new administration.

There was a panel on "Protecting the Secret Ballot," i.e. on making unionization difficult.

Of course people under siege need their weapons, so the speakers included Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. His topic was not listed, but following his appearance there was the always-popular "Will Congress Take Your Guns?" moderated by another NRA official.

About two weeks ago, Harold Meyerson, reflecting on the sad state of the GOP, observed, "The current form of Republican inflexibility dates to the dissolution of the Soviet Union: With the end of the Cold War, the GOP's signature issue -- anti- communism -- was no more. Republicans quickly discovered that the only other issue they all agreed on was cutting taxes." Interestingly, George Will, at a time when he was more objective, saw the same development. Once (he said in 1990), being a Republican meant resistance to Soviet tyranny, support for cultural conservatism and, especially, defense of fiscal probity. No longer. From the intellectual shipwreck of the good ship GOP, taxaphobia - a refusal, gussied up as a high principle, to pay one's bills - is, believe it or not, the only spar large enough for all Republicans to cling to." The tax obsession appears in the CPAC agenda in a discussion asking "Will Obama's Tax Policy Kill Entrepreneurship?"

Will and Meyerson were on point in identifying a right-wing fixation: cutting taxes no matter the context, no matter the effect. However, they identified only one of three core conservative arguments.

Howard Fineman got two-thirds of the formula. In an appearance on Keith Olberman's program he observed, of this year's CPAC, that all that the right has to offer are opposition to taxes of any kind and fear-mongering, the latter being the heart of Republican tactics from 2004 through 2008. Bolton's speech perpetuated the fear-mongering argument: Democrats and liberals are too weak to defend us.

The element missing from all three summaries is opposition to, denigration of, liberals and liberalism. This isn't confined to liberal policies or tendencies, but to liberalism as such. Liberals are indistinguishable, in this view, from Communists; both are foreign and godless. Declaring that liberals are not real Americans has been Republican policy at least since 1992, when the party chairman declared that "We are America. Those other people are not." ⁸ The new leader of the right, Rush Limbaugh, regurgitated that slander in January. An unidentified publication had asked him, along with other commentators, to write 400 words on his hope for the Obama presidency. His reaction, shared with his radio audience:

Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails. . . . Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. . . . ⁹

When and how, one might ask, but to no avail; liberal-bashing is not an intellectual exercise.

The convention closed with a speech by Limbaugh and the presentation to him of the "Defender of the Constitution Award." Edmund Crispin, in one of his mystery novels, described a character's conversation as "garrulous incoherence," an apt summary of the speech. I'm at a loss to know what part of the Constitution Limbaugh has defended, but selecting him provided the perfect symbol of the intellectual bankruptcy of movement conservatism.

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8. I've discussed this in my notes of 10/22/08 and 2/1/06.
9. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011609/content/01125113.guest.html

February 24, 2009

Perhaps I've been too hard on the soon-to-be-former P-I, and on the news media in general. I may be missing the point of their obsession with trivia and their sponsorship of commentators who have nothing sensible to say. As Oscar Wilde put it, "there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism."

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not. . . .⁷

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7. "The True Critic" in The Oxford Book of Essays, pp. 318-19

February 17, 2009

Just before leaving on vacation, we received our ballots for the King County special election. Had I voted, it would have been an event for me: my first vote by mail. Being a traditionalist, I held out until polling-place voting was abandoned.

It's well that this election did not require the elaborate former system. In our area, and in most of the county, there was only one item on the ballot: electing a Director of Elections. It's dumb enough that we must vote for that office, dumber still that an election was held almost solely for that purpose, as even elections by mail cost something.

Why were we voting for county elections director? Because, nitwits that we are, we voted last November to make the office elective. This is the Western-populist solution to the problems of government; divide responsibility among numerous independent offices, answerable to no one but the same silly voters who created the headless monster.

February 16, 2009

A few days ago, David Horsey, cartoonist and columnist for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, wrote a depressing column about the impending demise of the P-I, along with speculation about the failure of The Seattle Times. The former is virtually a sure thing, at least in print, and the financial woes of newspapers make the latter a possibility. That would leave Seattle without a daily paper.

Horsey's column was entitled "Financial collapse threatens real journalism," but is the P-I still doing real journalism?

The first page of the "Life and Arts" section Saturday featured pictures of silly items to purchase - beyond silly when too many people are wondering where the next mortgage payment is coming from - including ant-shaped magnets for your fridge. Page one of the paper today was dominated by a long article, with two large photos, on "the Vixens," female pool players. Those and other examples of dumbing down make it difficult to regard the title of Horsey's column as anything but an exercise in nostalgia. I'll miss the P-I, especially Horsey, and until recently would have preferred that it survive rather than the Times, but now they're equally weak.

Leaving aside whether emphasizing trivia was a good business model when survival still was possible, why go on with that now? Why not spend the remaining six weeks producing a paper to be proud of, one which would go down practicing "real journalism?"

February 14, 2009

In the right-hand column, I've explained the title of this blog in part as an expression of "my hope that eventually there will be a different and better Washington D.C. than we have seen, especially since January 2001." We were away, and largely out of touch, for the last few days of the Bush era and the early days of the new administration. My impression on return is that not enough has changed, that "the fog that seems to cover the nation's capital" hasn't dissipated.

In several ways, President Obama has indicated that "change" was more slogan than program. His economic team is made up of people who contributed to the present mess. His approach to the bank failures appears to be the same as Bush's: a vague plan, lots of money, few controls and no radical restructuring.

The national security team is made up of hawks. We seem to be drifting toward escalation in Afghanistan with no obvious reason to think that it will solve anything. The nominee for the CIA has said that he might ask for exceptions to the President's no-torture policy. The Justice Department continues to invoke the state-secrets defense.

Mr. Obama's process for selecting and vetting cabinet officers has been inept. A cabinet appointee and a White House official have stepped down due to tax issues and the Treasury Secretary should have. The first choice for Commerce left amid an investigation into the awarding of contracts and the replacement has decided that he doesn't really agree with Obama's policies; he even voted against the stimulus.

To his credit, the President attempted to set a new and less partisan tone, which has been greeted by an all-too-predictable outburst of carping, posturing and adherence to failed policies. (Tony Auth's latest cartoon is a gem: elephants are building a stone wall labeled "Obstructionism," while one says, "We're the party of idea.")⁶ Partisanship, reflexive opposition, self-destructive ignorance and just plain ugliness have become the hallmarks of Republican tactics and conservative commentary; that Rush Limbaugh has become their spokesman is a measure of their decline. Senators Snowe, Collins and Specter are notable exceptions, but they stand almost alone; the Northeast five of a few years ago, a small enough moderate wing, is down to those three.

There was one bit of good news: William Kristol has been dropped by The New York Times. True, The Washington Post picked him up, but next to Charles Krauthammer he'll hardly be noticed.

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6. United Press Syndicate via washingtonpost.com

January 14, 2009

I worried on Sunday that we would forget just how disastrous the Bush presidency has been. However, Mr. Bush may have eliminated the risk. His attempts to create a positive legacy have required his daily presence on the stage, which will do more than anything else to fix in people's minds just how inept, dishonest and dangerous he has been.

His final press conference on Monday contributed to that refocusing. Asked whether America's moral standing in the world has been damaged, he first denied that it has been, then conceded that it might have been among the "elite." Three sentences later he said that "parts of Europe" disapproved invading Iraq, so apparently those countries are the elite. How the head of an administration that wants to rule the world can refer to others as elites is a puzzle.

His rambling remarks eventually converted the question from moral standing in the world to popularity of actions at home. "And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States . . . ." The only concern Bush and his co-president have had about the Constitution is how to get around its limits on their power.

Mr. Bush told the reporters that he had never felt isolated in the office, and that "the phrase 'burdens of the office' is overstated." Here you need the video;⁵ that comment was accompanied by embarrassingly foolish expressions and postures which should destroy forever any notion that he was adult enough to be president.

He really may never have felt isolated or burdened. Certainly his mood never was much affected by the results of his actions. "I tell people that, you know, some days happy, some days not so happy, every day has been joyous." Even days when, despite your best efforts, you were told about the death and destruction resulting from your policies? Well, yes: "Even in the darkest moments of Iraq, you know, there was -- and every day when I was reading the reports about soldiers losing their lives, no question there was a lot of emotion, but also there was times where we could be light-hearted and support each other." His version of light-heartedness was to crack insensitive jokes.

Certainly he wouldn't revisit the definitive instance of his ineptness. He did. Here's his view of the response to the destruction of New Orleans: "Have things happened fairly quickly? Absolutely."

Like many people, I have counted the days until the exit of George W. Bush into anonymous retirement, but maybe we shouldn't want him to disappear. A monthly press conference at which he tries to defend his actions might keep the memory bright and prevent a recurrence.

_______________________________

5. The transcript and video are at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090112.html. Better still, watch the review of the press conference on the Daily Show of 1/14/09.

January 11, 2009

An article in Sunday's New York Times commented on George W. Bush's legacy tour, and noted that some find its tone an admission of defeat. However, according to the reporter, that is not the mood among his staff:

Yet to talk to people still inside the Bush White House is to come away with a sense that they do not feel defeated at all. Rather, having been through the crucible of the worst terrorist attack on American soil, two wars, a hurricane of biblical proportions and the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression, they describe a sense of achievement and honor in having served the country, and in particular this president. . . .¹

Either the reporter was speaking tongue in cheek, the staff were conning her or the staff are as detached from reality as the boss: probably the last. The terrorist attack and the response to Katrina were disastrous failures, one of the wars began with an unprovoked and unlawful invasion and both were bungled, and the recession was helped into existence by the administration's pro-business ideology. If that list doesn't add up to defeat, nothing will.

The article noted that, as part of the legacy spin, Karl Rove, in a formal debate on December 2, took the negative of the proposition "Bush 43 is the worst president in the last 50 years." In the course of his argument, Rove asserted that Bush probably would not have started a war against Iraq if he had known the truth about its alleged WMD. "Absent weapons of mass destruction," Rove said, "I don't think there would have been an invasion." ² Assuming that the threat of WMD was the reason for the invasion, as alleged, that is the logical conclusion. However, the day before, Mr. Bush avoided it: asked what would have happened if he had been told there were no WMD, he said "You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate." ³ Three years ago, he had no hesitation, but took the opposite view from Rove's:

BUSH: I said I made the right decision. Knowing what I know today, I would have still made that decision.
HUME: So, if you had had this - if the weapons had been out of the equation because the intelligence did not conclude that he had them, it was still the right call?
BUSH: Absolutely.⁴

So now we have three versions: 1) no WMD, no war; 2) no WMD, maybe; 3) no WMD, war anyway.

It's apparent that version 3 is the truth. At least since Paul O'Neill's defection, we have known that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was on the agenda from day one of the administration; WMD provided a useful cover story, but a false one. Joseph Wilson exposed the tall tale about uranium from Niger. The Downing Street memos revealed that, in 2002, the evidence was being bent to fit the war plan, that the only question was when. Several sources have disclosed that an Iraqi official told the CIA that there were no WMD, and that this was relayed to Bush in September 2002.

No amount of retrospective spin will change the facts. Bush's best hope is that we will forget them, which is entirely possible.

_________________________________
1. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "For Bush and His Staff, a Season of 'the Lasts'."
2. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97752303
3. http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/Story?id=6356046
4. http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/15/wmd-irrelevant/

January 9, 2009 ...

I noted on Sunday that a comment by the associate publisher of The Post-Intelligencer seemed to show that the P-I was giving up the struggle as a newspaper and might go to online publication. I didn't think that would come to pass so quickly.

According to a report on the P-I's web site tonight, "The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication with a greatly reduced staff or discontinued entirely." The odds of a sale are slim, given the state of the newspaper business. Putting the paper up for sale is merely a necessary step, under the Joint Operating Agreement, toward closure.

The history of the JOA is one of puzzling decisions. The sale of the P-I, after staring down the Times in their recent litigation, is one. Apparently it is in part the result of the appointment of a new president of Hearst's newspaper division, who announced, "One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print."

January 4, 2009 ...

The Seattle Times may have been accurate in its forecast that the city could support only one daily newspaper. However, in 2007 it abandoned its effort to escape the Joint Operating Agreement, the demise of which would have been the end of the Post-Intelligencer, and instead entered into a settlement designed to give each paper a chance to survive for the next several years. The outcome has been the further deterioration of both papers. Each has cut back on pages and has combined sections. The front section of today's Times included the business pages and the pathetic remnant of the editorial/op-ed section. In the P-I, local news joined the editorial page in the front section; look for the business pages behind sports.

Circulation continues to fall. For the six months ending September 30, the Times lost 7.6%, the P-I 7.8% compared to 2007. The papers' combined circulation was down 27% from March 31, 2006. The P-I's associate publisher said, in October, that the paper has reduced its efforts to sell new subscriptions, which seems to be throwing in the towel. Apparently the plan is to go to online publication eventually.

Meanwhile, the strategy at both papers seems to be to cater to young, unsophisticated readers. I suppose that the rationale is that those are the readers of the future, but for the present they are the group least likely to buy newspapers, so the strategy promises little gain but runs the risk of having older subscribers give up in disgust. I sympathized with the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town, which fought the Times' efforts to bury the P-I. However one decent paper would be better than the two we have now.

In a way, it's fitting that our papers are in a state of near-collapse, as this has not been a good time for Seattle. Sports fans have seen the Sonics leave town, while those that stayed might as well have: Mariners 61-101, Seahawks 4-12 and Huskies 0-12. Safeco sold itself to Liberty Mutual, Boeing can't figure out how to build the plane that might make it competitive, and Washington Mutual committed suicide.

January 2, 2009 ...

The economic mess in which we find ourselves has prompted numerous attempts at drawing a moral. Robert J. Samuelson, in Monday's Washington Post, took the establishment line: who could have known that it would happen? He gave several examples of how the "conventional wisdom crashed," including this: "It was once believed" that the effect of failing subprime mortgages would be limited because they represented only 12 percent of home mortgages and "they were widely held, diluting losses to individual banks and investors." I don't know who believed that, nor does Samuelson tell us. The problem grew out of the packaging of those mortgages, as to which there was deceit, greed, foolishness and an almost total lack of control, public or private. Those devices were known to exist, but few, apparently including their creators and traders, really understood them. There was no "conventional wisdom" about them and therefore none to "crash."

The most remarkable aspect of his analysis is the moral: "The great lesson of the past year is how little we understand and can control the economy. This ignorance has bred today's insecurity, which in turn is now a governing reality of the crisis." That's nonsense: the lesson is not that we can't control the economy, but that we quit trying to control business. We aren't so ignorant of the workings of the economy that we can't figure out that the massive circular trading of financial instruments no one understood, backed only by suspect mortgages, will lead to trouble.

In a different way, ignorance was the theme of a column in last week's New York Times by Thomas Friedman, based on comparing transportation and communication abroad to what we have. "What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? . . . My fellow Americans, we can't continue in this mode of 'Dumb as we wanna be.' "

He gave several examples of bad decisions: "tax cuts that we can't afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars," ineffective public schools, and immigration policies that exclude people we need. I'm with him on the tax cuts, the need to improve schools (although not necessarily his analysis of the causes of failure), and maybe on immigration policy. As to bailouts, I don't understand why he picks on Detroit rather than Wall Street. "Energy prices" apparently refers to his advocacy of a tax on gasoline to lessen dependance on imported oil; that sort of penalty tax rarely has worked.

Bob Herbert, in his Times column on Saturday, escalated the rhetoric: the problem isn't mere ignorance; it's stupidity: "We have behaved in ways that were incredibly, astonishingly and embarrassingly stupid for much too long. We've wrecked the economy and mortgaged the future of generations yet unborn." He offers a slogan: "Invest in the U.S." (That may shock the advocates of free trade and the worshipers at the temple of globalization). The first of his particulars, deservedly, is to stop wasting money - and lives - in unnecessary and unlawful foreign wars. He also wants to reduce "mindless consumption." That recommendation may require some tweaking, as consumption is the core of the economy, but he's right about the excessive debt which is part of our pattern of consumption, and about sending jobs overseas, the Bush tax cuts and the failure to invest in infrastructure, education and protection of the environment.

Comparisons have been made between the present recession and the Depression. In some ways, we're not as badly off: fewer businesses have collapsed, unemployment is not as high, deflation has not set in. In other ways, the situation is worse: we already have chronic deficits and a massive national debt, we are conducting two wars, we have convinced ourselves that we must continue to spend huge amounts on "defense," and we have adopted social programs which now are underfunded.

The administration has embarked on a program of recovery stimulus, in the form of a bailout of the financial sector, but it is off to such a bad start that there is resistance to further spending. To overcome that, the new administration must show that it is serious about reform and accountability. It could start with limits on executive compensation at firms bailed out. The excuse that money is fungible, and therefore the companies can't tell where the bailout money went, should be treated as an admission of misappropriation. Accounting - simple bookkeeping - solves the fungibility problem.

There are other measures which would show that the administration is serious about honesty and accountability and which also would raise revenue. For example, eliminate offshore tax shelters, and tax investment fund management income at ordinary-income rates.

Most importantly, end the Iraq occupation, and decide what the mission is in Afghanistan - and whether it can be accomplished - before pouring more money and troops into it.