Category: The Dish

… on what the meaning of "pledged" is.

"Conservative skepticism has its place; it can be a valuable corrective when government goes flabby and corrupt or engages in wild neo-colonialist fantasies abroad. Any new legislation–or any new war–needs to be carefully vetted by those who would question its assumptions or who can put it in a larger context. Those who believe that government can act more ably than free individuals and markets in all–or even in most–circumstances are not patriots, but fools, and the same is true of those who only believe in the supremacy of the market," – Joe Klein, Swampland.

For me, conservatism is defined by skepticism of government, of rationalism, and of change – but it is not an ideology opposed to all government and reason and change. One of my mentor Michael Oakeshott’s great insights was that all politics can be seen in the West in modern times as a battle between the politics of faith and the politics of skepticism. He was a dogged defender of skepticism in an era when hubristic liberal rationalism was at its height. But even then, he recognized the necessity and recurrence of the politics of faith in the West as well. For him, a true conservative sought balance in accordance with the times. Occasionally, liberalism was needed – not for too long, but sometimes as an agent of change, or as a respite from corruption and degeneracy elsewhere. Occasionally, a true conservative can endorse even radical change – as Burke supported American independence, as Disraeli expanded the franchise, as Reagan slashed taxes and sought to abolish nuclear weapons. And this pragmatism between skepticism and faith – this attempt to keep both in precarious balance for the sake of social and political coherence – is the true conservative position.

I don’t expect the avatars of the American conservative "movement" to embrace this definition of the c-word. Many are principled ideologues or religious enthusiasts who hold that their ideology and theology is always the answer to every practical question. But the pursuit of the intimations of our time is the Oakeshottian calling. I do not believe that today, the kind of conservative I have in mind would want to reward the Republican party for its recent recklessness, utopianism and bile.

Milan, Italy, 7.05 pm.

A reader writes:

I’m offering you a challenge this week. I dislike … ahem … hate Clinton as much as you do, but I wonder if you can’t find a few nice things to say about her. So here’s my challenge to you: say at least one nice thing about Clinton each day of this week.  It can be a comment on her pant-suit if you wish, or something of that nature, but it must be positive.

NOTE: The Clinton challenge is not valid in the states of Michigan and Florida.

Ok, I’ll try.

By Patrick
Jonathan Chait:

Almost nobody contends that Clinton has a chance to overcome Obama’s lead in pledged delegates. The spin now is that Obama’s delegate lead is "small but almost insurmountable" (USA Today) and that, since neither can clinch the nomination with pledged delegates alone, "the nomination is expected to be in the superdelegates’ hands" (Los Angeles Times). These beliefs reflect the mathematical illiteracy that has allowed the press corps to be routinely duped by economic flim-flammery. A lead that’s insurmountable is, by definition, not small. The very primary rules that make it impossible for Clinton to catch up–proportionate distribution of delegates that award tiny net sums to the winner–are exactly what made Obama’s lead so impressive.

The notion that the superdelegates will decide the race implies that pledged delegates won’t matter–like a sports event that goes to overtime. Obviously, though, the pledged-delegate count determines how many superdelegates each candidate needs. Depending on how the remaining primaries go, Clinton will need about two-thirds of the uncommitted ones to break her way. Problem is, over the last month, superdelegates have broken to Obama by 78 percent to 22 percent.

By Patrick
The NYT reported on the price of rice last week:

The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world’s population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.

The Moderate Voice and Dave Schuler commented upon the article, and Krugman devotes his column today to the rising price of grain worldwide:

Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.

This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.

Bainbridge offers a deal:

I think a lot of conservatives otherwise puzzling support for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign can be explained for the most part by those conservatives’ opposition to the Iraq war. See, e.g., Andrew Sullivan and Doug Kmiec. So I’ll offer them a long bet: If Obama wins and pulls all US combat troops out of Iraq by the end of June 2010, they win. If Obama wins and there’s 50,000 or more US combat troops in Iraq at the end of December 2010, I win. Anything in the middle and bet’s off. Deal?

No deal. I certainly hope that we have fewer than 50,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2010, but no one can predict these things. The question is a more complicated one: who will be best able to extricate the US from Iraq as prudently and as carefully as possible: McCain or Obama? What does each see as the point of the mission at this point? And how do their plans reflect those goals? We know the big difference: one was a champion of the war at the start, the other opposed it. In some ways, McCain is better poised to get us out quickly with less domestic resistance, on the Nixon/China analogy, than Obama. But will he? Right now, he’s talking like a "’white flag’ or ‘victory’" neocon.

The one thing I do know is that Clinton would be paralyzed. Unable to withdraw swiftly for fear of looking like a "weak" leader, and unable to unite the country behind staying, a president Clinton would mean the status quo in Iraq indefinitely. She is tough when resisting attacks; she has never been tough and effective in forging difficult new policy. On that score, she is merely ideological and brittle and unpersuasive. Like Bush.

By Patrick
Toby Harnden writes: 

It seems that Hillary Clinton is pondering three options: seeking an amnesty deal and fleeing the country; going for an immediate run-off (on April 1st, she suggesting a bowling match with Barack Obama) or declaring a 90-day state of emergency and taking the whole thing into July. But she’s been ignoring pleas from across the civilised world to call it quits, insisting that the people have a right to vote again and again until they get the right answer.

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s beleagured president, finds himself in a similar plight. According to one wag at Free Republic, he’s taking his inspiration from the former First Lady. The ingenious freeper quoted deputy information minister Bright Matonga as saying: “In meetings with Mr. Mugabe, we talked about how much he has in common with Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party nomination process in the United States. Like Hillary, Mr. Mugabe is behind in votes. In drawing a favorable comparison, we admire her fighting spirit, her unwillingness to let go when she’s obviously behind and should quit as well as her decision to take this all the way to the Democratic Party convention in Denver.”

I don’t think the Clinton and Mugabe parallels are as stark as Harnden makes them out to be; for all her faults, Clinton’s actions are in no way equivalent to Mugabe’s crimes. That said, when even Robert Mugabe recognizes you’re "obviously behind and should quit," maybe it’s time to get out of the race.

By Patrick
France debates the fate of the ailing semi-colon:

Encouragingly, a Committee for the Defence of the Semicolon appeared on the web (only to disappear some days later, which cannot be a very good sign). Articles have been written in newspapers and magazines. The topic is being earnestly discussed on the radio. It was even the subject of an April Fool’s joke on a leading internet news site, which claimed, perfectly plausibly, that President Nicolas Sarkozy had just decreed that to preserve the poor point-virgule from an untimely end, it must henceforth be used at least three times a page in all official correspondence.

Scott Esposito:

Personally,  I can’t imagine why anyone would want to get rid of the semicolon, otherwise how do you connect two thoughts that lie somewhere between an em dash and a comma?

"The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bullshit. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with. These old black politicians say, “Ooh, Massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!” Hoo! Charlie Rangel, David Dinkins—they have to understand this is a new day. People ain’t feelin’ that stuff. It’s like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean," – Spike Lee, New York Magazine. (Hat tip: Ben.)