Month: July 2008

by Chris Bodenner
In the post I just published, I wrote, "McCain’s POW experience is unique, awe-inspiring, and timeless.  But it isn’t timely" like Obama’s.  I intended to follow it up with this: "Ironically, MCain’s personal narrative could be timely, with all the trauma at hand and all the challenges we face.  But beyond sloganeering, what "service to country" is he calling for? If McCain was true to his well-crafted narrative, he would ask Americans to sacrifice for the greater good in a variety of ways.  Like, say, returning to the upper-class rates in place before we were engaged in three simultaneous wars.  Or perhaps push a bold-but-reasonable plan for national service?  (Ya know, something like Obama’s.)  Okay, start small: How about asking Americans not to pump so much gasoline?  A tax holiday for what?

What is McCain asking us to sacrifice?  A man who gave 6 excruciating years to his country can’t ask Americans to forgo 6% of their annual income?  Does he want us all to act like the self-absorbed hippies and materialistic squares he went to Hanoi for?

by Chris Bodenner
Jamie Kirchick has two problems with me arguing that the symbolic narratives of Obama and McCain are equally relevant to the election:

The first is that, unlike Obama, McCain has not predicated his campaign on his identity or personal story. He’s predicated it upon his experience, namely, his more than two decades of service in the House and Senate. … Obama’s greatest tangible accomplishments are two books, both of which he wrote about himself.

"McCain has not predicated his campaign on his identity or personal story"?!  That’s not just generally wrong, it’s literally wrong; McCain’s first campaign ad was titled "624787," and it featured grainy, B&W footage of McCain as a POW.  (The ad was so overt, my colleague Jenn Skalka unveiled it with: "John McCain. … American hero. Let the branding begin.")  And McCain’s first act of the campaign was a biographical, cross-country tour of McCain’s old stomping grounds.

Also, for the record, McCain has authored five McCain-centered books over the past nine years (plus a made-for-TV movie).  And he seems to have been even more MIA than Obama in the Senate (which says a lot).  But beyond those quibbles, the point remains: Mr. HopeChange and the Mr. Straight-Talk Maverick Express are both self-aggrandizing political brands, second only to Billary.

Secondly, to the extent that McCain has used the "awe-inspiring symbolism of his own personal sacrifice and duty to country" as a campaign theme, it’s relevant to being president. Contrary to what Wesley Clark says, getting shot down over Vietnam and being tortured for five years, while certainly not a requirement for presidential office, is a qualification. It’s a real demonstration of love of country, honor, and leadership capability. … The "symbolism" of John McCain is attributable to what he did, "his own personal sacrifice," not who he is. What has Barack Obama "sacrificed" for America?

It’s certainly arguable that McCain’s narrative has more practical worth for the presidency.  (Though one could also argue that Obama’s "awe-inspiring symbolism of his ability to transcend barriers and bring people together" is more relevant in the wake of Bush-Rove than "duty to country" — a theme the White House overplayed and perverted.)  However, the premise of my post wasn’t the pragmatic power of their narratives, but rather their symbolic relevance (which has real, if intangible, impact).  On that score, Obama clearly trounces McCain.  McCain’s POW experience is unique, awe-inspiring, and timeless.  But it isn’t timely; Obama’s "post-racist" persona provides the country a desperately-needed chance for symbolic healing — not just on race, but on three decades of Bushes, Clintons, and boomers in general.

Therefore, Obama is exactly right; it isn’t about him.  His life narrative — born to biracial parents in the 60s, abandoned by his father, raised by a hardworking mom and two modest Midwesterners of the greatest generation — was largely chance.  While McCain’s crash was chance, he chose to go to Vietnam in the first place, and his POW experience was an active display of sacrifice, suffering, and endurance.  So let’s assume McCain’s narrative makes him a better man; Obama’s narrative makes him a better candidate.  And we’re electing a president, not a father to tell us amazing war stories (I’m lucky to have one already).  The country will always have war heroes.  But an Obama administration/generation in the wake of segregation, the 60s, the culture wars, and the Bush GOP only happens once.

Narrative, of course, shouldn’t be the only reason to vote for someone.  Those sympathetic to the symbol of Obama won’t vote for him if he doesn’t pass a certain commander-in-chief threshold.  But the bottom line is this: McCain not only refuses to recognize Obama’s symbolism, he openly mocks it. Obama, on the other hand, has always praised McCain’s symbolic force as a POW.  The country, and now the world, also sees Obama as a symbolic force.  Yet when he references that reality to colleagues in a private meeting, the McCain camp twists his words into a character assault (a tired, cultural one, at that).  Attack Obama’s policies.  Attack his thin resume.  Even poke fun at how ridiculous Obamaniacs can be.  But to launch false attacks suggesting Obama cares more about his campaign than the war and more about his "celebrity" than wounded soldiers is, well, dishonorable.  McCain’s favorite new mantra is that Obama would "lose a war to win a campaign."  Increasingly, though, it seems The Maverick would lose his soul to win one.

By Patrick Appel
Eve Fairbanks calls Vick Vickers, who is trying to take Senator Ted Stevens’s seat:

The best hope the GOP has in Alaska is for a fresh face to knock off Stevens in the August 26 primary, allowing Republicans to approach the general election from higher ground. Well — Vickers is nothing if not fresh. "As an American historian, I’ve studied every president," he told me over the phone today from Anchorage, "and I can say with authority that George Bush is the worst president in American history."

Oh, yes. Vic Vickers is a George-W.-Bush-hating, Exxon-despising, Iraq-War-loathing Republican who wants to "put an end to the stranglehold that Big Oil" has on Alaska and has an Iraq withdrawal plan — if the Jordanians and Saudis don’t start cutting big checks, you just pack everyone up and come right home — that would make even Eli Pariser queasy.

A giraffe sucks on an ice block containing fruit on July 30, 2008 in the London Zoo. Image by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty.

By Patrick Appel
Marc’s analysis:

McCain’s campaign is trying to play the aggrieved victim card, trying to generate the type of outrage that legitimately follows when the "race card" is played illegitimately. Also, by putting on their poker face a day after the Britney/Paris ad, McCain’s campaign might be trying to associate criticism of McCain’s tactics with the allegedly laid down race card.  McCain’s aides have been waiting to use this "race card" card for a while, saving it up like one of those Uno Draw Fours.

By Patrick Appel
Saletan is worried about South Central’s ban on the construction of new fast-food restaurants:

It’s true that food options in low-income neighborhoods are, on average, worse than the options in wealthier neighborhoods. But restricting options in low-income neighborhoods is a disturbingly paternalistic way of solving the problem. And the helplessness attributed to poor people is exaggerated. "You try to get a salad within 20 minutes of our location; it’s virtually impossible," says the Community Coalition’s executive director. Really? The coalition’s headquarters is at 8101 S. Vermont Ave. A quick Google search shows, among other outlets, a Jack-in-the-Box six blocks away. They have salads. Not the world’s greatest salads, but not as bad as a government that tells you whose salad you can eat.

By Daniel Larison

Besides being paranoid, the idea that McCain’s genuinely weak "Celeb" ad draws from Triumph of the Will is remarkable for something else: its implicit contempt for modern Germans.  It is not much better than the pro-war German-bashing that took place during 2002-03 when war supporters frequently complained that the Germans had lost their former enthusiasm for conflict.  Both treat Germans in an essentialist way and try to reduce them to the most cartoonish stereotypes, as if a cheering throng of Germans in Berlin, c. 2008, must necessarily conjure up associations with Nazi rallies.  To assume this says more about the critics of the ad than about the people who made it.  As for the notion that the images from the ad resemble the techniques of Riefenstahl, one might as well accuse the television news directors who covered the event of imputing Hitlerism to Obama, since the footage and camera angles are all taken from the news broadcasts of the speech.  Obama supporters haven’t been this good at embarrassing their candidate with hysterical commentary since Orlando Patterson felt compelled to compare Hillary Clinton’s "3 a.m." ad to Birth of a Nation.      

Cross-posted at Eunomia

By Daniel Larison

Despite its great importance for U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the region, the failed, rather clumsy attempt by the Pakistani civilian government to rein in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and place it under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior has not received nearly as much comment as it should.  Coming in the wake of the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul earlier this month, which was backed by elements within the ISI (detailed in the 7/28 TAC print edition), and the recent coordinated bombings in Ahmedabad in Gujarat, both the issuing and the reversal of the administrative order are particularly ominous.  Having attempted to assert control and been rebuffed under pressure from the military, the civilian government has shown its limitations and exposed itself to a backlash from the same forces that are trying to foment disorder in Afghanistan and India.  The inability of Gilani’s government to control the ISI is at the heart of the ongoing threat to the security of Afghanistan and the unreliability of Pakistan as an effective ally. 

In The Times of India, Prof. Sumit Ganguly of Indiana-Bloomington describes the extent of the problem:

The Pakistani military having wielded decades of political power has weakened every other institution within the Pakistani state. In aggrandising its extraordinary prerogatives from Ayub Khan to Yahya Khan to Zia-ul-Haq and most recently, Pervez Musharraf, it has used the ISI to serve a variety of political ends well beyond the tasks of espionage and counter-intelligence. Consequently, any civilian regime hoping to make the organisation more accountable will first have to think about how best to limit the privileges of the Pakistani army.

Until they can devise some institutional means to make the army more accountable to civilian authority, any attempts to control the activities of the ISI will not only be futile but dangerous.

The situation also calls for a reassessment of U.S. policies that disregard Pakistani sovereignty, whether they are advanced by President Bush or Sen. Obama, not least since PM Gilani has already declared this unacceptable.  Any association of his government with compromises of Pakistani sovereignty will further undermine civilian rule.  The recent attacks against Indian interests should also cause us to remember that the Pakistani military itself, and not simply rogue elements in the ISI, have been diverting American military aid to building up its conventional forces against India.  If the Pakistani military continues to use U.S. support in this way and if elements within the ISI continue to exploit the "war on terror" to pursue an anti-Indian agenda at the expense of U.S. interests, Washington will need to reconsider the level of military aid our government provides and Pakistan’s formal status as a major non-NATO ally.

Cross-posted at Eunomia

By Patrick Appel
Marty Lederman parses today’s decision:

1. First [Judge Bates] unequivocally rejects the centerpiece of the Administration’s privilege argument: the notion that the House has no legitimate interest in inquiring with respect to why the U.S. Attorneys were fired. At pages 39-41, Judge Bates explains why Congress does have a legitimate and important interest in getting to the bottom of what happened to the U.S. Attorneys, and why, and then at page 89 he adds, for good measure, that "[n]otwithstanding its best efforts, the Committee has been unable to discover the underlying causes of the forced terminations of the U.S. Attorneys. The Committee has legitimate reasons to believe that Ms. Miers’s testimony can remedy that deficiency. There is no evidence that the Committee is merely seeking to harass Ms. Miers by calling her to testify."

2. Second, the court recognizes that the principal argument in favor of the Administration’s absolute immunity claim was the theory that communications of close presidential advisers are categorically privileged, at least as against congressional inquiry: Why should such an advisor have to appear, reasoned DOJ, if she could legitimately assert privilege as to every question involving what she did and her communications with others? Judge Bates rejects this notion, too, at pages 83-86: "At bottom," Judge Bates explains, "the Executive’s interest in ‘autonomy’ rests upon a discretited notion of executive power and privilege." Even the President himself "is entitled only to a presumptive privilege," and therefore "his close advisers cannot hold the superior card of absolute immunity. . . . Presidential autonomy, such as it is, cannot mean that the Executive’s actions are totally insulated from scrutiny by Congress. That would eviscerate Congress’s historical oversight function."

3. Third, the court does not resolve the factual dispute about whether and to what extent President Bush himself was involved in the decisions to fire the U.S. Attorneys. The court does pointedly note, however (note 37), that to the extent the President was not involved, any privilege claims will be on decidedly weaker ground.

The rest is here.

By Patrick Appel
Nate Silver explains his least favorite way of ruling out a prospective candidate.