The Dish

This time to the Guardian, for an egregious piece of anti-American slander.

STICKING IT TO THE JEWS: The EU lives up to its reputation.

PASSPORT CHAOS: Meanwhile, some of the elements of anti-terror legislation are going to kill off a huge amount of tourism. By the end of this year, all foreign passport holders will need a new biometric passport to get through immigration – or they’ll need an interview and a specific visa. But none of the countries affected have processed or manufactured the new passports – which means that the embassies abroad are going to face massive lines, huge waits and enormous hassle for visa applications to allow even tourists in. If the tourists go through all that, they’ll face finger-printing and photographing at airports. Welcome to the U.S.. I’m sure a large number will decide to vacation or visit someplace else. One of the things I despise Osama bin Laden for is how he has destroyed the old tradition of free travel across the globe. If I were in the tourist industry, I’d be terrified of the impact. Surely the Congress can adjust the time-table to make it vaguely enforceable without huge upheaval.

Jonah signs on for Dean. He’s not as high-minded as Bill Kristol and yours truly, but probably therefore more convincing.

ANOTHER BLOODY HEAD-COLD: I’ve been kinda sick for weeks. Just venting. Well, I would vent if I could breathe.

Risen star Noam Scheiber defends free trade against some moronic criticism.

Clark overtakes him in New Hampshire. Clark is now quite obviously emerging as the un-Dean.

Why – if the cannibalism is mutually consented to? Roger Kimball tries to figure out an answer.

The “dean” of Washington pundits tut-tuts Howard Dean. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? I think Dean’s Internet donations just enjoyed another bump up.

NOT KOSHER: Imagine what happened when an Australian asked for a kosher meal on an Air Emirates flight. Emirates, he was told, is “an Arab airline, so we don’t really expect Jews to use us.”

To clarify: I didn’t say I’d support Dean over Bush or that I agreed with everything Dean has said. Far from it. I just think it’s healthy for the Dems and the country to have a real debate, especially about how to deal with terrorism. Bush thinks it’s a war; Dean doesn’t. Therein lies a very important discussion, one that’s been bedeviled by the far left’s loopiness and the need to rally around the president during a national security crisis. I’m glad that Dean won’t wilt under pressure. Even if democracy flourishes in Iraq, he will stick to regretting that we ever deposed Saddam by force of arms. I want to see that argument aired and resolved.

IS HE ON THE LEFT? Some of you have argued that one of my premises is wrong, and that Dean is not a lefty. His record in hyper-liberal Vermont – expanding healthcare benefits incrementally, opposing gay marriage, balancing budgets – is indeed realtively moderate. But his mojo in this campaign has been clearly leftward. The way in which he demonizes corporations, wants to raise taxes on everyone who got relief under Bush, viscerally opposed the Iraq war, and taunts the DLC makes him a candidate that Naderites could easily support. Sure, he’s going to tilt rightward if he wins the nomination – and maybe beforehand. But a politician’s base matters – look at Bush’s. More important, the key message of Dean is not really about policy. It’s about liberating the Democratic Party’s id – an impulse repressed by the moderate Clintonian ego for a very long time. Dean realizes – because it’s obvious – that this is why he is the front-runner. The current New Yorker has a very useful profile and it contains the following Dean quote:

“I think the problem with the Democratic Party in general is that they’ve been so afraid to lose they’re willing to say whatever it takes it to win. And once you’re willing to say whatever it takes to win, you lose – because the American people are much smarter than folks in Washington think they are. Do I still believe it? I think you have to be ready to move forward and not just try to hold on to what you’ve got. I truly believe that if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards in life. There’s no such thing as neutral.”

This is a brilliant analysis of what ails the Democrats. If he’s a doctor, he’s got the diagnosis dead right. I say: unleash the id. Risk losing. It’s what Thatcher did in the 1970s (her previous record was decidedly statist) and what Goldwater did before her. It will do the Democrats good – even if they lose badly.

One anecdote in the New Yorker piece also struck me as worth relaying. It’s Dean’s account of a foreign policy professor he once had. In Dean’s revealing words:

One professor who made a big impression was Wolfgang Leonhard, who taught Russian history. He’d been a Party official in East Germany and had defected. A fantastic lecturer. He once told us, ‘Pravda lies in such a way that not even the opposite is so.’ That really hit home. I felt he wasn’t just referring to the Soviet government but to our own at the time. You knew it from some of the things Nixon talked about – denying the bombing of Cambodia – or from Kissinger’s ‘Peace is at hand’ statement, when clearly peace wasn’t at hand. They said these things just to get rexeblected. I think there are some similarities between George Bush’s Administration and Richard Nixon’s Administration: a tremendous cynicism about the future of the country; a lack of ability to instill hope in the American people; a war which doesn’t have clear principles behind it; and a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States.

Those are words from the boomer left – especially the easy equivalence he draws between the United States and the Soviet Union. Whatever centrism Dean professes in domestic policy, anyone who can say what he said will be another Jimmy Carter abroad.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I think [Iraq is] going well. It breaks my heart whenever anybody dies, but we liberated 25 million people who were living under a dictator. It puts us on the side of democracy in the Arab world. Twenty years from now, we’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn’t worth the effort. This is not just another democracy. This is a democracy in an Arab world…” – former Democratic Senator, and New School University president, Bob Kerrey, December 29, 2003.

“I disagree with most of your views but I do think you hit it on the money here. Whether we end up blue or red in November it will be good for both sides to air their laundry and have a good fight over the essence of what we want this country and its policies to be. We Democrats really feel a need to do this and it would be good to force the Repubs to do the same (state their real, and in my opinion somewhat logical, reasons for going into Iraq, etc… not the pap they normally trot out).
On another point regarding Dean’s character, the “angry Dean” notion is certainly making the rounds but I’m afraid it’s quite off the mark. I’ve known Dean for 20 years, he was my doctor and my father’s doctor when my father had terminal cancer, and anger certainly isn’t his driving force. Sure, he’s tough and abrupt sometimes but I can assure that he is a perfectly decent likeable fellow, perhaps just a little on the energetic side! But there is also something deeper, much deeper that was on display when he was a doctor. If he can bring to the presidency his capacity that I saw to look at facts (my father’s medical condition, for example) and draw difficult conclusions (my father’s terminal condition) and then communicate his findings in the same supportive and, dare I say, inspiring way he did as a doctor then he will bring something quite extraordinary to the country.
He’s not going to play hide-the-ball and he just might inspire us. He’s certainly inspired me before in difficult times.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

THE REAL DEAN BASE? Singles in cities. Here’s a manifesto for them.

ASSAD’S DUPLICITY: He gives an interview to the New York Times in English, then re-publishes it for Arab audiences, omitting a huge chunk of text. Money quote: “The part that was omitted included questions and answers regarding [Syria’s] domestic situation, Iraq, Hizbullah, normalization with the Hebrew state, and U.S.-Syrian security cooperation.” MEMRI is on the case.

He makes predictions each year. There is Nexis. There is the blogosphere. Did you expect me to resist?

NOT A GOOD TRAVEL DAY: Here’s one of those priceless Brit obits that you read from time to time. Obits are one area where the British press easily surpasses anything in America – because they allow real writers to pen the stories and because they treat the obits as among the most insightful genres in journalism (which they are). Anyway, read about this poor bloke’s endlessly ravaged trip in the Second World War and never complain about a bad travel day again.