Month: January 2004

Clark overtakes him in New Hampshire. Clark is now quite obviously emerging as the un-Dean.

Why – if the cannibalism is mutually consented to? Roger Kimball tries to figure out an answer.

The “dean” of Washington pundits tut-tuts Howard Dean. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? I think Dean’s Internet donations just enjoyed another bump up.

NOT KOSHER: Imagine what happened when an Australian asked for a kosher meal on an Air Emirates flight. Emirates, he was told, is “an Arab airline, so we don’t really expect Jews to use us.”

To clarify: I didn’t say I’d support Dean over Bush or that I agreed with everything Dean has said. Far from it. I just think it’s healthy for the Dems and the country to have a real debate, especially about how to deal with terrorism. Bush thinks it’s a war; Dean doesn’t. Therein lies a very important discussion, one that’s been bedeviled by the far left’s loopiness and the need to rally around the president during a national security crisis. I’m glad that Dean won’t wilt under pressure. Even if democracy flourishes in Iraq, he will stick to regretting that we ever deposed Saddam by force of arms. I want to see that argument aired and resolved.

IS HE ON THE LEFT? Some of you have argued that one of my premises is wrong, and that Dean is not a lefty. His record in hyper-liberal Vermont – expanding healthcare benefits incrementally, opposing gay marriage, balancing budgets – is indeed realtively moderate. But his mojo in this campaign has been clearly leftward. The way in which he demonizes corporations, wants to raise taxes on everyone who got relief under Bush, viscerally opposed the Iraq war, and taunts the DLC makes him a candidate that Naderites could easily support. Sure, he’s going to tilt rightward if he wins the nomination – and maybe beforehand. But a politician’s base matters – look at Bush’s. More important, the key message of Dean is not really about policy. It’s about liberating the Democratic Party’s id – an impulse repressed by the moderate Clintonian ego for a very long time. Dean realizes – because it’s obvious – that this is why he is the front-runner. The current New Yorker has a very useful profile and it contains the following Dean quote:

“I think the problem with the Democratic Party in general is that they’ve been so afraid to lose they’re willing to say whatever it takes it to win. And once you’re willing to say whatever it takes to win, you lose – because the American people are much smarter than folks in Washington think they are. Do I still believe it? I think you have to be ready to move forward and not just try to hold on to what you’ve got. I truly believe that if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards in life. There’s no such thing as neutral.”

This is a brilliant analysis of what ails the Democrats. If he’s a doctor, he’s got the diagnosis dead right. I say: unleash the id. Risk losing. It’s what Thatcher did in the 1970s (her previous record was decidedly statist) and what Goldwater did before her. It will do the Democrats good – even if they lose badly.

One anecdote in the New Yorker piece also struck me as worth relaying. It’s Dean’s account of a foreign policy professor he once had. In Dean’s revealing words:

One professor who made a big impression was Wolfgang Leonhard, who taught Russian history. He’d been a Party official in East Germany and had defected. A fantastic lecturer. He once told us, ‘Pravda lies in such a way that not even the opposite is so.’ That really hit home. I felt he wasn’t just referring to the Soviet government but to our own at the time. You knew it from some of the things Nixon talked about – denying the bombing of Cambodia – or from Kissinger’s ‘Peace is at hand’ statement, when clearly peace wasn’t at hand. They said these things just to get rexeblected. I think there are some similarities between George Bush’s Administration and Richard Nixon’s Administration: a tremendous cynicism about the future of the country; a lack of ability to instill hope in the American people; a war which doesn’t have clear principles behind it; and a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States.

Those are words from the boomer left – especially the easy equivalence he draws between the United States and the Soviet Union. Whatever centrism Dean professes in domestic policy, anyone who can say what he said will be another Jimmy Carter abroad.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I think [Iraq is] going well. It breaks my heart whenever anybody dies, but we liberated 25 million people who were living under a dictator. It puts us on the side of democracy in the Arab world. Twenty years from now, we’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn’t worth the effort. This is not just another democracy. This is a democracy in an Arab world…” – former Democratic Senator, and New School University president, Bob Kerrey, December 29, 2003.

“I disagree with most of your views but I do think you hit it on the money here. Whether we end up blue or red in November it will be good for both sides to air their laundry and have a good fight over the essence of what we want this country and its policies to be. We Democrats really feel a need to do this and it would be good to force the Repubs to do the same (state their real, and in my opinion somewhat logical, reasons for going into Iraq, etc… not the pap they normally trot out).
On another point regarding Dean’s character, the “angry Dean” notion is certainly making the rounds but I’m afraid it’s quite off the mark. I’ve known Dean for 20 years, he was my doctor and my father’s doctor when my father had terminal cancer, and anger certainly isn’t his driving force. Sure, he’s tough and abrupt sometimes but I can assure that he is a perfectly decent likeable fellow, perhaps just a little on the energetic side! But there is also something deeper, much deeper that was on display when he was a doctor. If he can bring to the presidency his capacity that I saw to look at facts (my father’s medical condition, for example) and draw difficult conclusions (my father’s terminal condition) and then communicate his findings in the same supportive and, dare I say, inspiring way he did as a doctor then he will bring something quite extraordinary to the country.
He’s not going to play hide-the-ball and he just might inspire us. He’s certainly inspired me before in difficult times.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

THE REAL DEAN BASE? Singles in cities. Here’s a manifesto for them.

ASSAD’S DUPLICITY: He gives an interview to the New York Times in English, then re-publishes it for Arab audiences, omitting a huge chunk of text. Money quote: “The part that was omitted included questions and answers regarding [Syria’s] domestic situation, Iraq, Hizbullah, normalization with the Hebrew state, and U.S.-Syrian security cooperation.” MEMRI is on the case.

He makes predictions each year. There is Nexis. There is the blogosphere. Did you expect me to resist?

NOT A GOOD TRAVEL DAY: Here’s one of those priceless Brit obits that you read from time to time. Obits are one area where the British press easily surpasses anything in America – because they allow real writers to pen the stories and because they treat the obits as among the most insightful genres in journalism (which they are). Anyway, read about this poor bloke’s endlessly ravaged trip in the Second World War and never complain about a bad travel day again.

On the issues – going soft on terror, raising taxes, neo-protectionism, paleo-liberalism on race – I have a hard time even considering Howard Dean as a potential president. On character, I think it’s pretty clear he’s an unpleasant person – prickly, angry, self-important, know-it-all. So why do I find myself rooting for Dean to win the nomination? In part, of course, it’s the lack of a credible alternative. I like Lieberman on substance but he’s unelectable and his religious grandstanding gives me the heeby-jeebies; Edwards has run the classiest campaign, but these are not the ’90s; Gephardt is too left on economics and healthcare; Kerry is about the worst candidate I’ve observed since Al Gore. Clark – well, I have a visceral aversion to his megalomania and to the cynicism with which the Clintonites have rallied around him. A campaign based entirely on regaining power, by using a candidate as a cipher, is a dangerous thing. Besides, I think Clark is a crackpot. My hankering for Dean is therefore a little like Bill Kristol’s. I think it would be refreshing for this country to have a real choice and debate this year, not an echo or yet another focus group.

A FIGHTER: I don’t think Dean will go all fuzzy on us this summer, if he’s the candidate. I think his hatred of Bush will shine through, and give a voice to millions of people who feel the same way. I think his belief in the supreme importance of government in people’s lives deserves debate, and represents what the Democratic party is ultimately about. Why not have a candidate who expresses that without any more goddamn Clintonian equivocation? The Dems haven’t given themselves an opportunity to vent about the way they really feel – about those benighted rednecks, dumb-ass preppies, preposterous puritans and economic snake oil-salesmen they believe are now running the country. It would be really unhealthy for America and the Democrats to repress that any longer. They’ll give themselves a collective hernia. Dean represents an opportunity for honesty, for relief, for a true cultural clash. At this point, in this divided nation, I think it’s riskier to avoid that clash than to give it an opportunity to be explored and democratically decided. That’s especially the case after the Dems’ excruciating loss last time around. Do I think Dean would be buried in November? Maybe. But maybe not. Bush is vulnerable in many ways; and Dean is a conviction politician. We haven’t seen someone with his ideological ferocity since the 1980s. He may command the respect even of those who disagree with him, which is why I think he’s smart not to go all apologetic under the friendly fire of the primaries. Nasty will serve him well. Either the Dems nose-dive under his leadership and then reinvent themselves under Hillary; or they revive themselves as a party of the uncompromising left under his leadership. And why the hell not? It’s what a lot of people believe in – all across blue America. If John Ashcroft can be attorney-general, representing the extreme fringe of evangelical fervor, why the hell shouldn’t a Northeastern, secular, big-government liberal be given a shot at the presidency? If I were a Dem, I’d support him. And feel a lot better for it.

WAIT TILL THEY DIE: When you read a piece like this one by Arthur Miller, you realize that for a certain generation, there’s no chance that they will ever get their heads around the horrors of communism. Here’s Miller, dining with a murderer, thug and dictator, and finding some elegant way to remain committed to liberal principles. He can relay Castro’s obvious megalomania; he can see his monstrous narcissism; but he still hangs in there, blaming the embargo for almost everything, mainly concerned that he’s being kept up past his bedtime. He still longs for a world in which Castro might have succeeded, a world which cannot exist, and which never existed – except in the minds of aging Nation-readers. There is, I think, no chance of persuading this generation. They are lost. But eventually they will die off, and a new realism can take hold. Tick-tock.

NO ACCOUNTABILITY AT THE BEEB: Whatever the forthcoming report from Lord Hutton says, the BBC won’t fire or hold anyone accountable for their inaccurate reporting last year. That’s the word from Greg Dyke, fierce critic of the U.S. press and head honcho at the BBC. It would be hard to get a better insight into big media arrogance. Can you imagine if a government official anywhere said in advance of an independent inquiry that there would be no internal consequences for whatever faults were found? Wouldn’t the BBC be the first to cry foul? Just as the New York Times refuses to hold its individual reporters responsible for their mistakes, so the BBC tells its own that they will be defended regardless of their actions. They’ve learned nothing.

STUPID IS: Yep, this is what a lot of people believe. I give this guy credit for coming out and saying it.

Against the FMA. Here’s NRA president, Kayne Robinson, making a conservative point to Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach:

[We] don’t have a position on it, but I’d just tell you personally, whenever anybody starts “monkeying” with the Constitution it makes me very nervous, they better really have thought through and know what they’re doing. I know there is a Defense of Marriage law out there that I’ve heard about. And it would seem like that may be the better mechanism – to see how that works and give it a chance.

Wouldn’t help much with the Family Research Council’s fund-raising, though, would it?

A major shout-out to Dan Drezner, who has been your host for the last seven days. Check out his own superb blog to carry on the conversation; and thanks for your hospitality to Dan while I was chilling out over the holidays. I’m most grateful.

GONE FISHING: Could Time have helped the White House more than with pictures like these? As his term in office progresses, the Kennedyesque packaging gets more elaborate. And effective.

OKRENT PUNTS: The first column by the NYT’s new ombudsman was a discouraging, but revealing, read. He largely dismisses the notion that the article in question was biased against the president, and distortive of the poll it was supposed to interpret. But he cannot dismiss the violated quote, in which the Times lopped off the first two critical words – “if necessary” – of president Bush’s statement on a proposed constitutional amendment. His explanation is classic NYT-cocoon. The reason for Katherine Seelye’s error was that she was copying Elisabeth Bumiller’s error from a previous report in the Times! So no need to go to, er, a transcript or anything. And since any account of the story in the media made the “if necessary” phrase a central feature of the analysis, Seelye obviously hadn’t bothered to look at any other reporting on the matter either. Hey, we’re the NYT! Why do we need to read anyone else? Okrent explains that the altered quote in the original Bumiller story was followed by a critical qualification in which the words “if necessary” were subsequently cited. So why didn’t Seelye read the whole piece? Or at least one more sentence? Then Okrent blathers on about the necessity of quote-cutting, because in a newspaper, you always have to truncate a person’s full remarks. Fair enough. But here’s a simple rule of thumb to avoid what Okrent calls a “simple mistake.” Why not leave actual full sentences alone? Especially when uttered by the president. Especially when, as Okrent concedes, the reported string of words have been “stripped of a crucial part of their meaning.” (Bonus Times-bashing point: the original NYT correction ascribed the flub to an “editing error.” But according to Okrent, it was a reporting error – and Seelye blundered. How depressing that even in a correction, the NYT dissembles to protect its own. The reporter’s face always comes before the reader’s trust. They really can act like the Vatican, can’t they?)