Year: 2005

Thanks to all of you who listened to it and wrote me your responses. I was struck by two points. A reader makes one:

I enjoyed listening to your debate with David Blankenhorn. However, I was jarred by one, what appeared to me large, flaw in David’s logic. If marriage is “translegal” and exists as a social institution despite the governng law, how can changing the law to include more married couples have the catastrophic effect on marriage that David and his coterie suggest it will? I know you alluded to the fact briefly during a rebuttal, but it would appear to me a paradox that David will need to think long and hard about before engaging in similar debates in the future.

This is indeed a critical issue. It’s clear that opponents of marriage rights for gay couples have been frustrated in trying to show why those couples do not meet the current standard of what civil marriage is. If the legal standard is that Britney Spears gets to exercize a civil right for 55 hours but a committed 55-year long lesbian couple do not, then you have a hell of a case to make, without appearing to be, well, just prejudiced against the lesbians. So they switch to a “translegal” standard, which, of course, can mean anything they want it to mean. But if it’s trans-legal, why would changing the law, as in Massachusetts, affect it in any way?

THE SHIFTING DEFINITION: At the same time, the opponents of marriage rights for gay couples now argue that child-rearing is the central purpose of civil marriage, that such child-rearing must include a father and a mother, and that therefore the current exclusion of even committed gay couples with children is justified. (They do not fully explain why childless heterosexual marriages nevertheless qualify, except that they “symbolize” the ideal and so get a pass. In fact, of course, childless heterosexual marriages represent the exact opposite of the ideal. They represent a heterosexual couple fully capable of the ideal – but choosing to go against it. Gay couples have no such choice.) But as this blogger points out, making procreation and child-rearing the sine qua non of civil marriage has not, as Blankenhorn would have it, always been the main argument of the gay marriage foes. A few weeks ago, Blankenhorn argued that

Talking about heterosexual intercourse, child bearing, and child well-being is not something that some of us just thought up five minutes ago in response to a political controversy. Instead, you simply can’t talk accurately about marriage without talking about these very things …

Hmmm. Blankenhorn’s own Institute put out a “Statement of Principles,” only five years ago on what marriage is. It has “six important dimensions.” Five of them do not mention children at all. The one dimension in which children do appear – the sixth and last dimension listed – says the following:

Marriage takes two biological strangers and turns them into each other’s next-of-kin. As a procreative bond, marriage also includes a commitment to care for any children produced by the married couple.

Notice how children are optional, not essential. In the statement, the first definition is that “marriage is a legal contract.” Five years later, Blankenhorn is insisting that it is a “trans-legal” institution. Maybe this new argument is a product of five years of deeper thinking. Or maybe it is indeed “something that some of us just thought up five minutes ago in response to a political controversy.”

THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE: Blankenhorn was, of course, right in the first place. The notion that marriage isn’t marriage without procreation and children is far from being the traditional view. Here, for example, is John Milton, hardly a milque-toast Christian, on what marriage is fundamentally about. A reader sent me the passage from Milton’s “Doctrines and Disciplines of Divorce”:

“And what his [God’s] chiefe end was of creating woman to be joynd with man, his own instituting words declare, and are infallible to informe us what is mariage, and what is no mariage, unlesse we can think them set there to no purpose: It is not good, saith he, that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. From which words so plain, lesse cannot be concluded, nor is by any learned Interpreter, then that in Gods intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and the noblest end of mariage: for we find here no expression so necessarily implying carnall knowledge, as this prevention of lonelines to the mind and spirit of man.”

Here, in the seventeenth century, is a Christian arguing that the divine, “trans-legal” meaning of marriage, its central meaning, is companionship. Sex is peripheral, let alone procreation. And Blankenhorn and Gallagher would have you believe that the idea of marriage as a form of lasting faithful friendship built out of romantic love, in which children are optional, is something invented in modern times. Hooey.

This is an interesting tidbit from Byron York, who has great sources in the White House:

According to informed sources, this is how the last day of the Miers nomination played out. Yesterday morning, President Bush met with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, and others at the White House, where they discussed the problems facing the nomination. There were staff conversations between the majority leader’s office and the White House throughout the day. There was a meeting in Dick Cheney’s office in the afternoon, with the vice president and nomination strategists taking part, in which the fading support for the nomination was discussed. And then in the early evening, Frist had a phone conversation with White House Chief of Staff Andy Card in which Frist gave what’s being called a frank assessment of the nomination’s prospects. Not long afterward, a final decision was made, and Miers called the president at 8:30 p.m. to say she would withdraw, and the formal announcement was set for this morning.

My italics. Who made the decision? Cheney? Bush? Doesn’t this strongly imply that the president or vice-president decided to pull the plug on Miers and then had Miers “decide on her own” to withdraw? Face-saving can be so elaborate sometimes, can’t it? Especially if you’re constitutively unable to concede error. This was probably a necessary move – in order to consolidate the base in response to the looming possibility of indictments. The fight is on. And whom Bush picks to replace Miers will be a very interesting insight into how he sees the remainder of his presidency.

An impeccable source informs me that Charles Krauthammer is indeed brilliant and clairvoyant and was never nudged by anyone in the White House to come up with a face-saving formula for the Miers’ withdrawal. He came up with it on his own in the shower. Who says you don’t get solid, breaking news from a blog?

RACIST LEFT UPDATE: Robert George has the latest on the fall-out from this.

Jonah is terrified it might be Gonzales. I doubt it will be. Another fight with his base, while he’s losing key aides? Bush will be politically tempted to pick the most nationally divisive candidate he can find – one that gives the far right goosebumps of joy and the center and left a shiver up the spine. Bush may believe he needs to polarize the country to win back his base, especially if he’s reeling from indictments and a major staff turn-over. He has done it before; and he may do it again. For my part, I think the Rovians are misguided in this prescription. A socially conservative fire-breather is not what the country needs right now – and, although it may shore up the base, it will further rattle the middle. What we need is someone of Roberts’ ilk: impeccably qualified, intellectually serious, and concerned more with judicial process than results. The fundamental concern the public now has about this administration is its competence. The Roberts and Bernanke picks are reassuring. The Miers pick, er, wasn’t. Excellence and judicial restraint should be the criteria: not ideology. They are the criteria upon which the right and center can converge. Here’s hoping.

MOORE AWARD NOMINEE: “Iraq Body Count, Reuters says, estimates that 38 Iraqis die in violence every day. Over thirty-five years, that would amount to nearly 500,000 dead. In fact, it is estimated that the Baath party killed 300,000 Iraqis, so the current rate seems to be greater than the Baath rate. (The number of civilians killed by the Baath is probably in fact exaggerated. Only a few thousand bodies have been recovered from mass graves so far.)” – Juan Cole, on his blog. (Hat tip: Striding Lion.)

In the end, the Bush team decided to deploy what seems to me a transparently phony argument that executive privilege over confidential papers forced them to withdraw Miers. The Bush statement is particularly lame:

“It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House _ disclosures that would undermine a president’s ability to receive candid counsel. Harriet Miers’ decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers – and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her.”

All of this was scripted in advance in Charles Krauthammer’s latest column. Either he’s brilliant and clairvoyant – and he is, of course – or he was nudged to air the strategy in advance. Or both.

REAX: A couple of thoughts. This is a big coup for the Washington conservative intellectual establishment and the counter-intelligentsia that has been deliberately built to tackle the left’s academic monopoly these last couple of decades. They wanted one of their own on the Court, and they’ll get one. At the very least, they have shown they have a veto against anyone too patently unqualified. Given Miers’ credentials and post-nomination performance, we may have reason to be grateful for their clout. Score one for Frum! Second, it’s again amazing how unable this president is to take full responsibility for his decisions and choices. Face-saving is not an unusual thing in politics. But equally it is never a sign of real strength. A strong president takes responsibility for his own choices, even if he feels misunderstood or misled. Reagan’s Iran-Contra confession was an example of someone strong enough to admit a failure. This president is not internally strong enough to do something similar. His strength is a form of brittleness. Like all brittleness, it is prone to cracking suddenly and without warning. It just did.

An emailer responds to my previous post:

“You are right, Bush should clean house (I would say, because this nation has no means to do that otherwise until 2008, e.g. call for elections).

But your post is pie-in-the-sky for two reasons: 1) He will never do it. He has never backtracked on anything significant, for better or worse (usually worse). You are asking him to admit wholesale failure. What in his history suggests that he would ever do what you are asking? In fact, his stay-the-course simplicity has been a major cause for the current problems.

2) The country has had a “reeling vacancy” in the Oval Office since 2001. All of the failures, the poor choices, the misguided appointments, lack of foresight and diplomatic grace etc. have been there for years. Put another way, he is not reeling now just because he has been caught at being wrong in so many ways on Iraq, North Korea, the deficit, torture, cronyism, et al. He is reeling now because he has always been reeling.

There is a distinction physicians make between an acute illness and the acute diagnosis of a chronic illness. We as a nation are dealing with the latter.”

That’s what I fear and why I reluctantly backed Kerry last year. But I’m trying to be constructive. And Bush has been capable of radical moves in the past. If it weren’t for the war, this would be an opportunity for schadenfreude, but far too much is at stake for that kind of response. I can hope, can’t I?

The president is reeling. Tomorrow may mean a raft of indictments, or none at all. Either way, there is obviously something awry with the structure of the current White House, the small group of people who have dominated foreign policy and seem unable to rectify clear mistakes, and the inner clique who came up with the brilliant idea of nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Bush will have two options in the coming days: a) retain as much of his staff as he can, while ceding the indicted to the history books and struggling on or b) clean house for real. I think he’d be smart to do b). By that, I mean firing Cheney as veep and replacing him with Condi Rice, regardless of what Fitzgerald discloses. Cheney’s role in the Plamegate mess is just the latest in a long string of screw-ups and misjudgments. If Bush cannot see that now, he is fooling himself. I also mean getting rid of Rumsfeld, replacing Card, withdrawing the Miers nomination, and shaking his cabinet to its roots. He needs to show the world that he gets it; and that he will not merely limp along in damage control mode for the next three years. In every crisis, there is an opportunity. The future of Bush’s presidency will pivot on whether he seizes this moment, surprises all of us, and regains momentum. He can; and he should. We have a war to win. We cannot afford to have a reeling vacancy in the Oval Office.

THE READERS VENT: Byron Calame provides an online forum for NYT readers to tear Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger Jr to shreds. I’m not sure whether I am more shocked or impressed. (Hat tip: Petrelis.)

An MIT economist thinks so.

HOW TO BECOME A REPUBLICAN: One jaundiced but funny Democrat’s cartoon version.

At this point, we should simply wait for the facts, no?

THE DEMS AND MIERS: It takes a conservative to give them an obviously shrewd, if cynical strategy.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Andrew, isn’t it obvious? The social right wants sodomy laws reinstated and homosexuality defined as a mental illness. Of course they’re not going to come out and say it (at least not most of them–some of them are quite upfront about it) but the bottom line is that gay people don’t deserve civil rights or protections of any kind because gay people shouldn’t exist in the first place. What part of that don’t you understand? You really need to get out in the trenches some more, on various websites and discussion lists where ordinary people are not only homophobic but open and unapologetic about it.”

I am aware of much of the homophobia in the trenches of the religious right and the GOP. But I’m referring to people who would publicly strongly deny such a thing, i.e. people like Bill Bennett or Stanley Kurtz or Maggie Gallagher. David Blankenhorn does not strike me in any way as homophobic, for example. In fact, he went out of his way in our debate to say he worries about associating with such bigots. So whence the silence about social policy toward gays? And when does complete indifference to gay lives become indistinguishable from bigotry? There are shades and nuances of prejudice here. There’s another explanation, of course. The people I have mentioned have as key allies those who believe that homosexuality is a moral blight that demands legal suppression or psychiatric or religious “cures.” Some are political operators as much as they are intellectuals, and so their silence is simple politics, nothing else. But at what point does allying with bigots and not calling them on it make you a bigot yourself?

This post speaks for itself. (Hat tip: Robert George.)