Category: The Dish

Larison responds to my pondering Hagel as an Obama veep:

…it is only thanks to the media’s romance with Hagel over the last year and a half that anyone, much less Obama supporters, would be entertaining the idea of having Hagel on the ticket with Obama.  In his administration, maybe, but as Vice President?  One reason why this selection strikes me as utterly implausible and also politically ruinous for Obama is that, aside from the war, Hagel is as close to the White House in his voting as anyone in the Senate.  This is not a question of his conservatism, of course, but of his consistency in voting with the administration on almost everything.  I cannot think of many less suitable running mates for the champion of “turning the page” and breaking with the Bush administration than Hagel.  That doesn’t mean that Hagel wouldn’t be a valuable member of an Obama Cabinet, and his foreign policy views are sometimes fairly sensible and they align more with Obama’s than they do with any other candidate’s, but the notion of putting him on the ticket would tend to confirm the most cynical readings of Hagel’s moves in recent years while also detonating whatever credibility Obama may have as a representative of meaningful change.

That’s beginning to look like the date that, for the first time in history, everyone will be able to marry the person they love in California.

Reihan continues the conversation:

My sense is that Ezra and I have some basic agreements about the scale and nature of the problems we’re setting out to solve. One smart — and curmudgeonly — conservative recently argued that the so-called reformist conservatism I believe in is a trap: in a bidding war with the liberal left, conservatives will never win. And I think that’s right: if I really did accept the center-left diagnosis of American discontent and were simply stingier about tackling it through the expansion of government, I wouldn’t be making a terribly compelling case. (That’s one danger John McCain faces, incidentally.) But of course I think the anxieties of the middle class are rooted in a complicated mix of causes, only some of which are susceptible to government solutions.

Steve Chapman gets in on the fun:

There are plenty of good options available. In the spirit of bipartisanship, let me suggest two. For Obama: former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran who received the Medal of Honor and was a member of the 9/11 commission. For McCain: South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a military lawyer who has been an independent voice on the treatment of enemy prisoners and whose voting record is more conservative than McCain’s.

Graham, however, has Crist’s single problem. And Kerrey could drain the life out of Mardi Gras.

Well, Obama does drink Black Forest Berry Honest Tea but his TV taste is Bush’s:

"One cardinal rule of the road is, we don’t watch CNN, the news or MSNBC. We don’t watch any talking heads or any politics. We watch ‘SportsCenter’ and argue about that."

"On April 7, we also won in Kansas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. On April 9, Paul Tsongas announced that he would not reenter the race. The fight for the nomination was effectively over," – Bill Clinton in his autobiography.

So much for the June bullshit.

A memorial for the last hour of Memorial Day:

On May 1, I started wearing a red memorial bracelet in honor of Marine PFC Brandon Sturdy. PFC Sturdy was sitting next to my son in the back of a Humvee on May 13, 2004, when an IED went off just outside Fallujah. PFC Sturdy died in the blast; my son was seriously wounded, but came home and recovered. The difference for those two young men, and their families, was about the distance traveled by a half turn of the Humvee wheels.

My son, a Navy corpsman, was the last person to attend to PFC Sturdy. He did so with his uniform still on fire, for which he received a Navy Commendation Medal with Valor designation, along with a Purple Heart. Everything I could find out about PFC Sturdy is in the little memorial below. When someone dies at the age of 19, there often isn’t a lot to find out.

May is the month of my son’s birth, Brandon’s death, and Memorial Day, which we’re celebrating today. It’s an appropriate time to put on the bracelet.

A reader writes:

That quote from Reihan on your "Pick Webb!" post is pretty amazing.  Here’s the basic thrust of his argument: Obama should pick Webb because Webb practiced "Rove" politics on McCain!  Isn’t that what he says Webb did?  That is, regardless of the fact that McCain also wants to increase benefits (although in a different manner), Webb made it so a man who has dedicated his life to the service of his country and veterans is in a position of being criticized for not caring about veterans?  How much more "Rove" can you get?  And THAT is why Obama should pick him as VP?

Am I wrong to think that the "new politics" is looking a lot like the "old politics"?

I think Reihan is provisionally for McCain this fall, actually, and was just noticing some effective politicking.

My take on his dreadful column today is here, for those of you who barbecued today. A reader adds a fascinating insight on what’s really motivating a series of Clinton statements:

Clinton has indirectly denigrated three heroes of the sixties:  JFK, RFK, and MLK. JFK and RFK also were instrumental in working for Civil Rights, and MLK was the spiritual and moral force that brought it about, but Clinton gives the lion’s share of the credit to LBJ, thereby minimizing the importance of these three. Furthermore, she has reminded us on many occasions of RFK’s assassination.  Why would she do that, make such a point of it?  Precisely because these three men had something Hillary Clinton doesn’t have: charisma.  And today, it is the charismatic and inspirational Obama who is defeating her and she can’t bear it.

These three men, like Obama, were all young (which to Clinton means inexperienced) and inspirational in ways Clinton will never be.

She is more like Johnson, plodding along, hammering away, and waiting to have her chance to show everyone that it is people like her, not people like Obama, who get things done. She is trying to neutralize Obama’s charm and grace and emotional appeal. She reminds us that former leaders with that kind of appeal all ended up dead, while people like Johnson rose to accomplish things these other men did not.

I don’t believe in her comment about RFKs assassination she was actually hoping for such a tragedy to occur, but she is hoping something terrible will happen – a character assassination perhaps, and that is why she stays. Unable to convince the county to choose her, like Johnson, she waits for her chance. Like Johnson, she might be willing to take the vp spot. Much of this, I believe, is in her subconscious, and slips out like it did the other day, when she is tired and particularly angry and frustrated that someone as young and inexperienced as Obama is beating her. I imagine all of her life Hillary has been seen as someone who lacked personality and charm and even sex appeal (how humiliating it must have been for her to know her husband was choosing younger and more beautiful women over her), and she knows that the only way she can succeed is to work harder than anyone else. So to plan and work and prepare all these years to finally prove she is the best, only to be shown up by a young upstart who reminds people of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. combined must be unbearable.

The Economist endorses cognitive enhancers:

Many people already use Provigil to cope with night-shift work, jet lag and lack of sleep, and suffer few side-effects. Others use beta-blockers to overcome the anxiety and stress of performance. Scientists use off-label drugs to increase their focus. If that helps them unravel the mysteries of the universe, so much the better. If chemical assistance can help increase the useful human lifespan, the benefits could be huge.

Some worry about the unfair advantage and peer pressure that comes from these drugs. However, millions suffer from untreated but mild memory loss. Is it fair to deny them help? If the shy or the scatterbrained take cognitive enhancers, it is not obvious whether this is levelling their playing field or giving them an unfair advantage. Is it “natural” to prop up the ageing body with a nip and a tuck, but to restrict help for the ageing mind[?]…

Johann Hari’s self medication on this stuff is here. My own take here.