Month: June 2007

Is the MSM back to its old tricks with respect to covering Gore? Paul McLeary thinks so:

[Dana] Milbank gives us an account of a recent speech by Gore that reads almost like a parody of everything we read about the candidate back in ’00.

Milbank said that during the speech, Gore "waxed esoteric," "waxed erudite," and "waxed informed," as if these might be bad things to have happen during a speech. Milbank then quotes several audience members who gush over how smart Gore is, concluding that "therein lies a problem for the Gore ’08 bubble." Can’t be too smart, now, or else you’ll look like an egghead, right?

… Making this point in his own way, Milbank says that "the crowd loved it. But would the ‘average American?’"

When reporters at places like the Post start acting like they know what’s up with the "average American," we’re headed for trouble. Milbank is trafficking in a portrayal of Gore that was almost entirely invented by the press, and, given that seven years later the press appears unable to move beyond that caricature, perhaps we’ll all be better off if Gore doesn’t run.

A couple of thoughts. I’m not unsympathetic to many of Gore’s points in his new book. But have you read it? It’s a multiple-page-sigh at the idiocy of his fellow humans. He comes off as a total jerk, when he’s not being a monumental bore. And if you’re a grown-up politician trying to get better press, it might not be the best idea to blame the media for everything that’s wrong in American democracy. It’s also a stupid argument. The notion that Americans became collectively unhinged after the O.J. Simpson trial, that it’s only been in the last decade or so that news has been chased out of American consciousness by celebrity, Hollywod and scandal, is so loopy and ahistorical it reads like a college thesis – which, of course, it once was. Really, I try and give the guy a chance. He’s not wrong about everything. He’s right about the Bush administration’s constitutional excesses, torture, war-bungling and the dreck that passes for news on a lot of cable channels. He deserves mad props on climate change. But there really is something about Al Gore. It took real talent to throw the 2000 election away. He’s still got it. 

Ross makes an essential point:

There are two strains of secularism, I would argue, which are usually intertwined but philosophically distinct: A soft secularism that argues for a legal separation of church and politics – no school prayer, no federal funds for churches, etc – and a hard secularism that militates for a complete separation of religion and politics, and shades easily into hostility toward organized religion in a general. But neither form precludes private belief in the supernatural. A perfectly "secular" society would be defined not by universal atheism, but by a religion-free politics in the short run, and probably a long-run "decoupling," as Razib puts it, of supernatural beliefs from religious institutions.

The conflation of secularism with atheism in the popular vernacular is one of the more corrosive abuses of the English language today. It is perfectly possible to be devoutly religious and aggressively secular. Yes, that combo is rarer than it was, but its possibility is a lynchpin of liberal democracy.

They start in Kindergarten.

Peggy Noonan after Bush’s re-election.

Gordon Chang blames Mohamed El-Baradei for weakening the economic vise around Tehran:

Sanctions may ultimately not disarm the Iranian government, but at this moment they are the last tactic on the road to military action. They are contributing to the already severe woes of the Iranian economy, in the hopes of inducing Ahmadinejad to stop the nuclear program. Western banks are breaking off business ties with the regime, and pressure from Washington is persuading European energy companies to reevaluate investing in Iran.

Sanctions cannot work unless the international community joins together behind them. But Mohamed ElBaradei is standing in the way. He is not giving coercive diplomacy a chance, and if he succeeds in eroding support for still-tougher diplomatic measures, the only way to stop the Iranian mullahs will be war.

A reader writes:

The problem with the conservative "revolt" over immigration and the discomfort it is causing with the base and their mouthpieces (along with the broader reconsideration of Bush this seems to have provoked) is that all this is coming far, far too late.

Am I really supposed to take Peggy Noonan, or Glenn Reynolds, or, basically, anyone at NRO seriously when they become indignant at Bush now? All they have done (in varying degrees, of course) is carry water for this man for the last six years. They stood by him as he declared "Mission Accomplished," they stood by him as he authorized torture, they stood by him as he massively expanded government and destroyed any vestiges of fiscal sanity that were handed on to him. Some complained here and there, and some more than others. Noonan, in particular, seemed genuinely put off by his second inaugural address. But, to cite another example, can I really view David Frum’s current protestations as credible after reading "The Right Man"? After glorifying Bush, after hailing him as the man Providence bequeathed to us, after blindly marching behind him into war, now they act indignant?

When critiques were made, they were at the margins. In a fundamental way, they gave this man their support. These people must take us for idiots. Idiots with no memories. Some, (again) like Noonan, seem to be a bit more honest. Some, like you, saw the light early and tried to take advantage of the one real opportunity we had, as a nation, to stop this man — the election of 2004. But the rest? Give me a break. They just aren’t serious. They never were serious. And their belated "break" with Bush tells me that they don’t think I, their reader, am serious. The game’s up. I’m a conservative. But now, I read Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Ross, and a few others (like your blog). That is, the honest left and what’s left of the honest right. Now, when I go to NRO, its only to see what the crazies are up to, a duty of sorts as a citizen. To drain the swamp, it helps to know what’s in it.

The rightwing blogosphere reacts to the latest high-profile defection from the Bush disaster. Gandelman:

In considering Noonan’s main point, you could slice the immigration issue totally off, and you’d still have to note profound differences between this administration’s central ideology (to retain and expand political and executive branch power) and traditional Republican conservatives who insist upon following Barry Goldwater’s and Ronald Reagan’s cherished principles.

Yet, traditional conservatives have been driven into the circled covered wagons by the Bush administration to defend policies that are in some cases radical. And how? By using the late 20th century America’s most identifiable and potent political tactic: demonization of the opposition. If you believe your opponents have horns and pitchforks, you’ll work until your last breath against them.

Amen. One lesson conservatives should surely learn from the last six years is the danger of partisanship. It can blind you to the betrayal of your own ideals. The Right Angle loves Noonan. Rising Hegemon notices that Noonan’s own record on calling her own party out is less than stellar. Hey, better late than never.

Steve Clemons exults in a new policy director for Condi. Money quote:

The constructive players in the administration, at this point, include people like Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten (he has made HUGE difference in general change of course of this administration away from Cheneyesque pugnaciousness), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary John Negroponte (yes – for all the critics who have a problem with Negroponte, you need to take another look – he is winning bureaucratic battles for Condi now against Cheney’s team), Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns (whose success at ‘lots’ of new international deal-making that was preempted in the last few years make him a great potential successor to Bob Barker on The Price is Right), Legal Adviser John Bellinger, and now David Gordon succeeding Stanford’s Stephen Krasner in George Kennan’s famous job.

Others on the side of light include Secretary of Defense Bob Gates who is strongly backing the Diplomatic Team (and by reports I’ve received is in the clear lead – though not demanding credit – in laying out a new strategic road map for American interests in the Middle East). Gordon England, Deputy Secretary of Defense, is running DoD far more competently than Paul Wolfowitz did. Mike McConnell at the Directorate of National Intelligence and Michael Hayden have completely turned around a convulsing, dysfunctional intelligence establishment that was being ravaged and distorted by Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone into something far more ordered and constructively supportive of the current foreign policy and national security missions.

Make no mistake about my enthusiasm for the rising A Team here.

Way ahead of the revelations, the president approved of almost all of it:

The report, completed last August but only declassified and made public on May 18, suggests that the abusive techniques stemmed from a much more formal process than the Defense Department has previously acknowledged. By 2002 the Pentagon was looking for an interrogation paradigm to use on what it had designated as "unlawful combatants" captured in the "war on terror." These individuals, many taken prisoner in Afghanistan, were initially brought to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo, although others were subsequently hidden away in CIA secret prisons or turned over to U.S.-allied governments known to practice torture. That same year, the commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo began using the abusive "counter resistance" techniques adopted from SERE on prisoners at the base, and according to the Pentagon report SERE military psychologists were on hand to help.

From whom did they learn their techniques? The Soviet Union. We looked at the worst our former enemy did, and copied it.

In this handout image provided by Courtesy Science Ltd and Jay Jopling/White Cube (London), Artist Damien Hirst’s platinum cast of a human skull is shown covered with 8,601 ethically sourced diamonds and is estimated to be worth over $98 million. Titled ‘For the Love of God’, the original skull was examined by forensic experts, who concluded that it was male, probably of European origin and about 35 years old at the time of death. Radiocarbon analysis suggests that he lived some time between 1720 and 1810. (Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd via Getty Images)