The president’s press conference last night was, I think, perhaps his best ever. He was confident, in command of the facts, moderate in his views, engaging and appealing. It was much better than anything we’ve seen in a very long time; and it makes me wonder why his handlers keep him in such hermetically-sealed partisan settings. He’s better than that; and it seems to me he keeps getting better in these contexts. I tend to agree with him on social security reform, although I’m unconvinced that we can actually afford the transition costs, given how profligate his administration has been for the past four years. It was also gratifying to hear him distance himself from the abuse of religion for political purposes that much of his base and Congressional allies have been indulging in lately. Presumably he understands the need to pull back from the fundamentalist temptation. He described his notion of religious faith as essentially “personal” and one in which people lead by example, not by legislating their own religious views. Sounds more like my position than, say, Ramesh Ponnuru’s. He was also strong on Bolton. The weaknesses, however, were also evident. He really doesn’t have a coherent strategy toward North Korea, which is getting more dangerous by the day. His defense of rendition struck me as weak. He referred to states to whom we send alleged terrorists as those “who say they don’t practise torture.” Not exactly reassuring, especially as he’s referring, among other countries, to Syria and Egypt. He knows they practise torture; just as he knows that his own administration has refused to disclose the techniques that the CIA still uses. The evidence of escalating terror attacks was also a weak spot. He could say that the increase in terror is a function of our going on the offensive, but he meandered around the point. Still, it was an impressive performance over all: at ease, in command, and effective. I doubt it will shift the public mood, which is souring on the Republican hegemony. But it certainly reassured me that he is trying to tack away from the extreme right. Whether he can keep riding the tiger of religious zeal, while not falling off, remains to be seen. But in this press conference he struck me as a conservative of doubt more than one of fundamentalist faith.
A DEBATE ON TORTURE: Marty Lederman reports on a fascinating Columbia Law School debate between Professor Jeremy Waldron, of Columbia, and John Yoo, of the Boalt Law School. Yoo was in the Bush administration and was an architect of the decision to allow torture of detainees captured by U.S. soldiers. Well worth reading and pondering. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal continues its attempt to excuse the widespread abuse and torture as a function of a handful of unsupervised rogues. This sentence stands out:
The media and Congressional Democrats flogged the Abu Ghraib story for months throughout the 2004 election year, with a goal of stripping the Iraq War of moral authority and turning President Bush into another LBJ.
Really? Has it occurred to them that many people objected to what happened because they were morally outraged, because they thought this hindered the war effort, because White House memos seemed to give a green or amber light to these abuses, and because official reports cited those memos as adding to the circumstances that made Abu Ghraib and the murder-by-torture of over 30 detainees possible. The WSJ claims that none of the abuses were related to interrogation. It’s worth repeating: there were no instances of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo that were discovered in any military facilities that were not geared toward interrogation.
The Dish 