Month: January 2004

I’ve written a detailed critique at TNR. Here’s the link. But here are some other thoughts. It was the worst Bush SOTU yet. Maybe the occasion wasn’t up to the previous ones. But the speech lacked a real theme; it had only a few good lines (at the beginning, on the war); offered no new vision or any concrete future direction in foreign policy; and revealed complete insouciance toward the deficit and, more importantly, toward those who have not yet benefited from the economic recovery. A pretty bad political misjudgment in my view. To brag about a growing economy without some kind of passage of empathy for those still struggling reveals major political obtuseness. I was also struck by how hard right the president was on social policy. $23 million for drug-testing children in schools? A tirade against steroids? (I’m sure Tom Brady was thrilled by that camera shot.) More public money for religious groups? Abstinence only for prevention of STDs? Whatever else this president is, he is no believer in individuals’ running their own lives without government regulation, control or aid. If you’re a fiscal conservative or a social liberal, this was a speech that succeeded in making you take a second look at the Democrats. I sure am.

Who knows what to make of this passage? Let me fisk it:

A strong America must also value the institution of marriage. I believe we should respect individuals as we take a principled stand for one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilization.

The premise here is that allowing gay people to marry is an idea that’s incompatible with valuing the institution of marriage. But that’s the crux of the debate! If this is such an important issue, shouldn’t the president explain why he believes that allowing more people to marry is such an insult to the institution? It’s not a given. And if it is a given, then the president is simply not “respecting individuals” who differ from him. He’s dismissing them as a threat to an institution they merely want to join.

Congress has already taken a stand on this issue by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, signed in 1996 by President Clinton. That statute protects marriage under Federal law as the union of a man and a woman, and declares that one state may not redefine marriage for other states.

So does the Defense of Marriage Act stand or does it not? Who knows?

Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people’s voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process.

What constitutional process? A State constitutional amendment? A federal constitutional amendment? The constitutional attempt to remove or elect judges? Again, who knows? And what would the president’s position be if a state’s legislature passed equal marriage rights? There’s a majority in Massachusetts in the polls on such a matter. California has just passed a marriage-in-all-but-name civil union. Would he support a constitutional process to thwart the people’s will as well? Again: who knows?

Our Nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.

So why not tighten divorce laws? Or support a new covenant marriage? Or criticize high divorce rates? Nah. Might lose votes.

The outcome of this debate is important – and so is the way we conduct it. The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God’s sight.

It’s a nice sentiment, and I’m sure the president means well. But if the president really meant it he could have said something else: “The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual – whether gay or straight – has dignity and value in God’s sight.” But the president wants the credit of being tolerant without talking the real talk, let alone walking the real walk. If gay people have dignity and value in God’s sight, why are we unmentionable? Why are we talked about as if we are some kind of untouchable? Why in three years has this president not even been able to say the word ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’? The reason: because Bush will not confront bigotry outright. He wants to benefit from it while finding a formula to distance himself from it. That’s not a moral stand. It’s moral avoidance. Still, the good and important news is that the president hasn’t endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment. The Family Research Council is mad as hell.

AND THEN … : I watched Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle. Good grief. What whining weenies. Back to Bush.

I’ve been chiding myself for not writing more about Iraq and Iran these past couple of weeks. The news strikes me as decidedly mixed. In Iran, it’s got to be good news that sit-ins have forced a trivial retreat by the ruling Islamo-fascist elite. But reinstating 200 candidates out of 3600 disqualified reformers can hardly count as a victory for the democratic forces. In Iraq, I found the massive demonstrations by Shiites earlier this week to be somewhat good news. The demos were peaceful; they were pro-democracy; they’re a small sign that democracy is possible in that blighted country. At the same time, David Ignatius’ troubling report from Baghdad shows the faultlines ahead. The vicious cycle of security breakdown preventing economic revival fomenting more unrest has yet to be broken. The possibility of the much-predicted civil war is now higher than in the recent past. The fact that we now desperately need the U.N. to achieve a stable transition shows how tough this has turned out to be. No. I still support the effort. The chance for a stable non-dictatorship in the Middle East would be a huge and transformative event. I just hope the White House still understands this; and won’t take its eye off the ball. We need the U.N.’s help to persuade Sistani of the impracticality of a direct election by the end of June. Just as obviously, we shouldn’t attempt to delay the transfer of power to a provisional Iraqi government. It’s going to take skill and some luck to thread this needle. But we cannot afford to botch it.

Donald Sensing takes issue with me. I take his points as well. Maybe I should clarify: what I meant is not that pre-emption isn’t necessary. I think it is, in a post 9/11 world. And I also don’t buy the argument that you have to have proof of actual ready-to-go weapons in order to take action. As Donald points out, all you really need is componentry. And the preliminary Kay report convinced me – and still convinces me – that the war was worthwhile, that Saddam had been lying, that he couldn’t be trusted, that we had no viable future alternative to war (sanctions were becoming grotesquely immoral and porous), and that the future threat was absolutely real. But – and it’s a big but – we made the case on the existence of actual, operational WMDs and stockpiles of the same. We did so publicly, openly, clearly to as big a global audience as we could find. We said: trust us. We know. But we didn’t. I cannot see how a single ally will support us in future in a similar circumstance because of that. Certainly, Britain won’t be able to. And I think a large swathe of American public opinion will be more skeptical than ever. It’s not exactly a case of crying wolf. The wolf was there all right. It’s a function of exaggerating a threat. I believe it was an honest mistake. I was prepared to give the inspection teams months and months to find something. But so far … no actual weaponry. I hope we still find some. Or that we can get some plausible explanation for why we were so wrong. But we’re deluding ourselves if we think it doesn’t matter, won’t count in the future and hasn’t done us a great deal of damage in the court of world opinion. And if the president cannot take responsibility for that, who should?

THE EDWARDS RECORD: The scrutiny is beginning. Check out Overlawyered.com for Wally Olson’s take on Edwards’ suing obstetricians for allegedly giving kids cerebral palsy. I don’t see how it should affect one’s views about Edwards as a potential president, but worth a look.

“I recognize the political problem of Abbott’s raising the price of its inhibitor drug, and the poor timing. But are either ignoring production economics or you have gone wobbly on your own argument. The Sullivan Pharmaceutical Development Incentive Thesis (as I understand it): If we want the pharmaceutical industry to invest in more new drugs, we must support pricing necessary to attract the capital required. This applies to pricing adjustments as well. The amount that Abbott had invested in this drug did not change just because the dosage changed. the only thing that changed were the dosage and (therefore) the required production quantity. So Abbott had to amortize their fixed investment over a smaller production opportunity. Therefore the price goes up.
The dosage dropped by a factor of ten and the price only rose by a factor of four. Suppose the profit margin on the product before the change was 20%. Then the pricing change is a break-even proposition for Abbott if the fixed costs were somewhere between 30% and 35% of total revenue. If the fixed costs were more than that range, then profits drop. Less and profits rise.
If you have evidence that Abbott’s fixed costs before the price change were under 30% of projected lifetime revenues, then your charge of gouging has substance. Otherwise, your critique works only as a commentary on the bad public relations dynamics of the change.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

It seems I’m not the only one refusing to buy the administration’s spin on its spending binge. Money quote:

The bottom line is truly shocking. Passage of the omnibus bill would raise total discretionary spending to more than $900 billion in 2004. By contrast, the eight Clinton-era budgets produced discretionary spending growth from $541 billion 1994 to $649 billion in 2001. Nor can recent increases be blamed on the war. At 18.6%, the increase in non-defense discretionary spending under the 107th Congress (2002-2003) is far and away the biggest in decades. In 2003, total federal spending topped an inflation-adjusted $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II.

Good for the Journal. The pork in all this excess resembles a hog-farm.

Rich Meislin, the NYT’s editor for News Surveys and Election Analysis, defends himself:

I’m not sure where your seasoned Republican analyst is getting his numbers, but they seem to be incorrect.
The latest Gallup poll, taken Jan. 12-15, has this party ID breakdown:

Republicans 32
Democrats 34
Independents 33

The latest NYT/CBS News poll, taken Jan. 12-15, has this party ID breakdown:

Republicans 28
Democrats 32
Independents 31

They’re pretty similar. We also ask a followup question to the independents on whether they lean Democratic or Republican, which – in our polls and everyone else’s – moves around a great deal from poll to poll. By its nature, asking independents how they lean results in fluid answers depending on the circumstances. I’d also note that the Gallup poll released today shows Bush’s approval rating at 53 percent, which is statistically the same as the 50 percent we found in our poll during the same period.

Hmm. So the leaners skewed Dem. Hence the somewhat anti-Bush results.

Front Page Magazine has an interview with yours truly, if you’re interested.

Just check out both David Brooks’ and Paul Krugman’s columns in the NYT this morning. One actually tries to look at the opposing party empathetically, attempting to understand what’s going on, hoping for the best. The other is pure, demonizing, personal bile. One tries to give others’ motives the benefit of every doubt. The other refuses to do anything but impugn the other side’s motives. Revealing, I’d say.

The hard left has every reason to despise Tom Friedman. He can bring himself to praise the Bush administration from time to time; he’s pro-Israel; he’s an optimist about progress in the Middle East that can accommodate the Jewish state. But this diatribe from Cynthia Cotts at the Village Voice is particularly vicious. She’s offended that Friedman is … religious. A recent prize was donated to … a synagogue! The horror:

In Israel, religion and politics are inseparable. Orthodox Jews have considerable power, and Reform and Conservative groups fight for leverage. While Friedman does not usually identify his arguments as religious ones, he has exhorted moderate Jews to be as passionate as extremists, and he endorsed the war in Iraq, which he casts as a moral imperative… Friedman’s religious beliefs are relevant because they shed light on his political ideology, which he espouses with tremendous authority. In a New York Times column published shortly before Yom Kippur 1997, Friedman called on moderate U.S. Jews to give money to Israel “in a very targeted way,” so that it would not end up in the hands of “ultra-Orthodox elements.” In the same column, Friedman wrote that he had recently turned down an invitation to talk about Arab-Israeli affairs to an “American-Israeli educational institution,” because he was required to end his speech “on an uplifting note.” These days, Friedman routinely bills himself as an optimist. In a recent column addressed to Israeli moderates, he wrote, “We have nothing to lose but our pessimism.” In a speech he gave last fall, he declared, “I am an optimist by nature.” And upon accepting the award last week, he recalled how his editor at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz had praised him, saying, “You’re the only optimist we have.” Asked whether he had ever agreed to give a speech on the condition that he take an optimistic stance, Friedman declined to comment.

What on earth does this have to do with anything? All it amounts to is an attempt to dismiss or undermine Friedman’s views because he’s a religious Jew. Some on the left really are bigots, aren’t they?