Month: September 2008

Watching this for the first time, as opposed to reading it, it’s very clear that Palin has never heard of the Bush doctrine on pre-emption, perhaps the most significant element of his disastrous legacy in foreign policy:

She is clearly out of her depth. And no hard questions about her record have yet been asked – let alone the questions that have been asked at every water-cooler in the country. I reserve judgment on the whole interview until I’ve seen the whole thing. But this exchange is a classic example of how she tends to lie reflexively when caught in an uncomfortable part of her record:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

So far, clearly able to recite talking points imprinted on her by Randy Scheueneman et al. But no actual understanding of the issues involved. She has met no foreign leaders ever, but she has been in touch with Randy Scheuneman’s former client, the somewhat nutty Saakashvili.

I just read it. I’m not sure how to respond because I believe the entire last two weeks have been a farce, and ABC News is now an integral, enabling part of that farce. It’s also unfair to judge a partial interview, because Gibson has so far asked no questions about her record as governor or mayor, and none of the tough questions that a press conference would ask. Maybe that is to come. So I will reserve judgment until I’m able to watch and read the entire interview. All I have learned thus far is that a McCain administration would be prepared to go to war with Russia over Georgia and will never, ever criticize or oppose any decision made by the government of the state of Israel. And I knew that already.

Glad to see that Jake Tapper is not going to roll over in the face of constant lies from the McCain campaign:

The most controversial item in the McCain ad is the assertion that Obama supports children "learning about sex before learning to read," and the accusation that Obama’s "one accomplishment" on education was "legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education’ to kindergarteners." But both claims are false. The idea seems to be to paint Obama as an insanely liberal sleaze ball who wants to teach young kids who don’t even know how to read all about graphic sexual information. That’s not fair and it’s not accurate. One can only imagine what the John McCain of 2004 – who called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads “dishonest and dishonorable” – would say about this ad.

John McCain is dishonest and dishonorable. That much we now know.

Robert Rapier has a good idea:

I still believe the compromise I suggested previously is the right one. Open up some drilling, and earmark the money for programs designed to reduce our fossil fuel consumption. And by ‘programs’, I mean actual programs and not some pandering line about taxing oil companies to promote energy independence.

After all, let’s face facts. There was enormous pressure to drill when gasoline cracked $4/gal. It is only going to increase as gas creeps higher and higher in the coming years. Right now the Democrats have some leverage in which to get a compromise that will help stem the demand side of the equation. But that leverage will disappear as the cries to drill grow louder and louder.

Welch thinks we’ll get to it eventually:

McCain will largely try to run out the clock, and hold onto the Palin bounce. But lest ye despair over the Shallowness of Our Politics or whatnot, remember this: There still is one very significant difference between the two candidates (meaning: not just energy policy, where both candidates will magically wean us off furriner-oil while creating X million "green jobs" by 2025) that McCain still wants to talk about, even if there, too, he has some constituents to not offend. That issue is Iraq, and the broader questions of the Middle East, the War on Terror, and foreign policy overall. We will yet get an election on substance before the gong strikes midnight.

I tried to write my immediate response to 9/11 within a week of it happening. The following essay is what came out. For all those who claim I have changed my mind or position on the fundamental issues at stake here, I hope they will do me the favor of reading the essay. I stand by every word of it. 9/11 was a call, in my mind, to defend the Enlightenment from the nihilistic forces of murderous theocratic fanaticism. What it demanded was a rediscovery of secularism and freedom in a war against the forces of Islamism and despotism. I still believe that those who instinctively responded to the attacks by blaming America were morally lost. But I equally believe that those who showed they were willing to throw away America’s values in fighting Jihadism were wrong as well. And those who use religious extremism as a tool to get elected in America are pale reflections of the evil of Islamism – not the equivalent, as I have always insisted, but related. Christianism and Islamism are twin pincers against our freedom and against freely chosen, freely witnessed Christian and Muslim faith. Islamism is far more dangerous. But Islamism will never defeat America’s core values. Christianism has already made a dent. My essay, "This Is A Religious War" is below:

Perhaps the most admirable part of the response to the conflict that began on Sept. 11 has been a general reluctance to call it a religious war. Officials and commentators have rightly stressed that this is not a battle between the Muslim world and the West, that the murderers are not representative of Islam. President Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington to reinforce the point. At prayer meetings across the United States and throughout the world, Muslim leaders have been included alongside Christians, Jews and Buddhists.

The only problem with this otherwise laudable effort is that it doesn’t hold up under inspection.

The religious dimension of this conflict is central to its meaning. The words of Osama bin Laden are saturated with religious argument and theological language. Whatever else the Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious. Although some Muslim leaders have criticized the terrorists, and even Saudi Arabia’s rulers have distanced themselves from the militants, other Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have not denounced these acts, have been conspicuously silent or have indeed celebrated them. The terrorists’ strain of Islam is clearly not shared by most Muslims and is deeply unrepresentative of Islam’s glorious, civilized and peaceful past. But it surely represents a part of Islam — a radical, fundamentalist part — that simply cannot be ignored or denied.

In that sense, this surely is a religious war — but not of Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. Rather, it is a war of fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity. This war even has far gentler echoes in America’s own religious conflicts — between newer, more virulent strands of Christian fundamentalism and mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism. These conflicts have ancient roots, but they seem to be gaining new force as modernity spreads and deepens. They are our new wars of religion — and their victims are in all likelihood going to mount with each passing year.

Continued here.

(Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty.)

A reader writes:

Believe it or not, sequencing the DNA of Seals, Bears, Lobsters, pick-a-ridiculous-sounding-animal has merit, both in evolutionary and ecological terms.  Why these projects aren’t funded through the National Science Foundation or the National Human Genome Research Institute and are instead shuttled off into earmarks is a valid question, but as a genetics professor, I’m tired of our field being the butt of an "easy" joke.

Fine, but your problem is with McCain, not me. Another reader and scientist adds:

You ask:

The DNA of seals?

I get so tired of this kind of response to specific earmarks: "WE SPEND THAT MUCH $$$ ON THAT [funny-sounding scientific research project]???" There are likely very good scientific reasons to study the DNA of seals. Perhaps it will help us understand the whole marine ecosystem of the northern pacific as a monitor of effects of climate change. Or perhaps something else.

We on the left decry the Bush administration for ignoring science, wanting to kill endangered species, etc, but forget that understanding climate change, ecosystems, which species need saving, etc, requires research and this requires money. The issue should not be that federal money is spent on scientific research, but rather the selection process itself. Why is a project like this funded through a congressional earmark, rather than through the standard peer-review process via a funding agency like NSF?

Of course, this is probably too subtle for the current campaign but expressing ignorant outrage like this over funny-sounding research only feeds the nation’s continuing slide into anti-intellectualism.  Much of what we know about climate change, for example, may well have been funded by funny sounding earmarks.

Radley Balko argues that "Libertarians could do worse than Sarah Palin." Something I didn’t know:

Palin was also one of just three governors in the country to issue a proclamation in support of "Jurors’ Rights" day, an event sponsored by the Fully Informed Jury Association, which encourages the doctrine of jury nullification. Nullification is an idea abhorred by tough-on-crime conservatives.

We keep finding out more, don’t we? All I can say is that I’ll do my best to give you everything out there. As I have.

Marc gives a pro’s take on the pig and lipstick nonsense:

…news outlets are either giving McCain evil-genuis points for turning a nothing into a something, or are calling out the McCain campaign for being mean and duplicitous, but in any event, voters on the periphery of the conversation only hear enough to hear the accusations anyway.

We have less than two months to get past the lies and smoke of the McCain camp. I have faith in the common sense of the American people. I’m not sure I have much faith any more in the cojones of the MSM.

Joe Klein fears the potency of Palin’s story:

Palin’s embrace of small-town values is where her hold on the national imagination begins. She embodies the most basic American myth — Jefferson’s yeoman farmer, the fantasia of rural righteousness — updated in a crucial way: now Mom works too. Palin’s story stands with one foot squarely in the nostalgia for small-town America and the other in the new middle-class reality. She brings home the bacon, raises the kids — with a significant assist from Mr. Mom — hunts moose and looks great in the process. I can’t imagine a more powerful, or current, American Dream.

It is, indeed, a great concept. I can see why someone would want to buy it. I can see why those independents who were once Republicans might have been cheered by the concept of Sarah Palin, as McCain obviously was for the five minutes he thought it over.

Moreover, Joe doesn’t mention here the critical element that really does make her a very powerful figure with the base – is her decision to go through eight months of nerve-wracking pregnancy to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome. To put herself through the emotional toll of that, because she doesn’t believe in abortion (although she does believe in amniocentesis), and to risk all the physical dangers of giving birth to such a child in her forties, even to the point of braving what must have been a truly grueling airplane flight with her amniotic fluid leaking for twelve hours, is what makes or breaks her candidacy. As Tyler Cowen memorably put it two weeks ago:

There is one biographical fact about Palin’s life that the critics (Drum, DeLong, Yglesias, Klein, Sullivan and Kleiman are among the ones I read) are hardly touching upon.  I mean her decision to have a Downs child instead of an abortion. This is the fact about her life and it will be viewed as such from now through November and perhaps beyond.