The Dish

On the issues – going soft on terror, raising taxes, neo-protectionism, paleo-liberalism on race – I have a hard time even considering Howard Dean as a potential president. On character, I think it’s pretty clear he’s an unpleasant person – prickly, angry, self-important, know-it-all. So why do I find myself rooting for Dean to win the nomination? In part, of course, it’s the lack of a credible alternative. I like Lieberman on substance but he’s unelectable and his religious grandstanding gives me the heeby-jeebies; Edwards has run the classiest campaign, but these are not the ’90s; Gephardt is too left on economics and healthcare; Kerry is about the worst candidate I’ve observed since Al Gore. Clark – well, I have a visceral aversion to his megalomania and to the cynicism with which the Clintonites have rallied around him. A campaign based entirely on regaining power, by using a candidate as a cipher, is a dangerous thing. Besides, I think Clark is a crackpot. My hankering for Dean is therefore a little like Bill Kristol’s. I think it would be refreshing for this country to have a real choice and debate this year, not an echo or yet another focus group.

A FIGHTER: I don’t think Dean will go all fuzzy on us this summer, if he’s the candidate. I think his hatred of Bush will shine through, and give a voice to millions of people who feel the same way. I think his belief in the supreme importance of government in people’s lives deserves debate, and represents what the Democratic party is ultimately about. Why not have a candidate who expresses that without any more goddamn Clintonian equivocation? The Dems haven’t given themselves an opportunity to vent about the way they really feel – about those benighted rednecks, dumb-ass preppies, preposterous puritans and economic snake oil-salesmen they believe are now running the country. It would be really unhealthy for America and the Democrats to repress that any longer. They’ll give themselves a collective hernia. Dean represents an opportunity for honesty, for relief, for a true cultural clash. At this point, in this divided nation, I think it’s riskier to avoid that clash than to give it an opportunity to be explored and democratically decided. That’s especially the case after the Dems’ excruciating loss last time around. Do I think Dean would be buried in November? Maybe. But maybe not. Bush is vulnerable in many ways; and Dean is a conviction politician. We haven’t seen someone with his ideological ferocity since the 1980s. He may command the respect even of those who disagree with him, which is why I think he’s smart not to go all apologetic under the friendly fire of the primaries. Nasty will serve him well. Either the Dems nose-dive under his leadership and then reinvent themselves under Hillary; or they revive themselves as a party of the uncompromising left under his leadership. And why the hell not? It’s what a lot of people believe in – all across blue America. If John Ashcroft can be attorney-general, representing the extreme fringe of evangelical fervor, why the hell shouldn’t a Northeastern, secular, big-government liberal be given a shot at the presidency? If I were a Dem, I’d support him. And feel a lot better for it.

WAIT TILL THEY DIE: When you read a piece like this one by Arthur Miller, you realize that for a certain generation, there’s no chance that they will ever get their heads around the horrors of communism. Here’s Miller, dining with a murderer, thug and dictator, and finding some elegant way to remain committed to liberal principles. He can relay Castro’s obvious megalomania; he can see his monstrous narcissism; but he still hangs in there, blaming the embargo for almost everything, mainly concerned that he’s being kept up past his bedtime. He still longs for a world in which Castro might have succeeded, a world which cannot exist, and which never existed – except in the minds of aging Nation-readers. There is, I think, no chance of persuading this generation. They are lost. But eventually they will die off, and a new realism can take hold. Tick-tock.

NO ACCOUNTABILITY AT THE BEEB: Whatever the forthcoming report from Lord Hutton says, the BBC won’t fire or hold anyone accountable for their inaccurate reporting last year. That’s the word from Greg Dyke, fierce critic of the U.S. press and head honcho at the BBC. It would be hard to get a better insight into big media arrogance. Can you imagine if a government official anywhere said in advance of an independent inquiry that there would be no internal consequences for whatever faults were found? Wouldn’t the BBC be the first to cry foul? Just as the New York Times refuses to hold its individual reporters responsible for their mistakes, so the BBC tells its own that they will be defended regardless of their actions. They’ve learned nothing.

STUPID IS: Yep, this is what a lot of people believe. I give this guy credit for coming out and saying it.

Against the FMA. Here’s NRA president, Kayne Robinson, making a conservative point to Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach:

[We] don’t have a position on it, but I’d just tell you personally, whenever anybody starts “monkeying” with the Constitution it makes me very nervous, they better really have thought through and know what they’re doing. I know there is a Defense of Marriage law out there that I’ve heard about. And it would seem like that may be the better mechanism – to see how that works and give it a chance.

Wouldn’t help much with the Family Research Council’s fund-raising, though, would it?

A major shout-out to Dan Drezner, who has been your host for the last seven days. Check out his own superb blog to carry on the conversation; and thanks for your hospitality to Dan while I was chilling out over the holidays. I’m most grateful.

GONE FISHING: Could Time have helped the White House more than with pictures like these? As his term in office progresses, the Kennedyesque packaging gets more elaborate. And effective.

OKRENT PUNTS: The first column by the NYT’s new ombudsman was a discouraging, but revealing, read. He largely dismisses the notion that the article in question was biased against the president, and distortive of the poll it was supposed to interpret. But he cannot dismiss the violated quote, in which the Times lopped off the first two critical words – “if necessary” – of president Bush’s statement on a proposed constitutional amendment. His explanation is classic NYT-cocoon. The reason for Katherine Seelye’s error was that she was copying Elisabeth Bumiller’s error from a previous report in the Times! So no need to go to, er, a transcript or anything. And since any account of the story in the media made the “if necessary” phrase a central feature of the analysis, Seelye obviously hadn’t bothered to look at any other reporting on the matter either. Hey, we’re the NYT! Why do we need to read anyone else? Okrent explains that the altered quote in the original Bumiller story was followed by a critical qualification in which the words “if necessary” were subsequently cited. So why didn’t Seelye read the whole piece? Or at least one more sentence? Then Okrent blathers on about the necessity of quote-cutting, because in a newspaper, you always have to truncate a person’s full remarks. Fair enough. But here’s a simple rule of thumb to avoid what Okrent calls a “simple mistake.” Why not leave actual full sentences alone? Especially when uttered by the president. Especially when, as Okrent concedes, the reported string of words have been “stripped of a crucial part of their meaning.” (Bonus Times-bashing point: the original NYT correction ascribed the flub to an “editing error.” But according to Okrent, it was a reporting error – and Seelye blundered. How depressing that even in a correction, the NYT dissembles to protect its own. The reporter’s face always comes before the reader’s trust. They really can act like the Vatican, can’t they?)

I’ve said this before, but I think Marjorie Williams is onto something when she notices that many of Howard Dean’s self-inflicted wounds come from the foibles of his profession. Many doctors are not used to dealing with equals; they dictate to patients; they know everything; they can impose their will on other people’s bodies with astonishing ruthlessness; they get prickly when challenged; and they tend to believe that every problem can be solved with the help of their peerless intellect. I’m extremely leery of doctors in politics – right or left, they always veer toward the intolerant, dictatorial and secretive. They belong to one of the least democratic professions imaginable and think they can transit effortlessly to the most. Like Williams, I’ve also dealt with a certain amount of illness, in myself and others. And so I’ve seen this phenomenon close-up. Of course, it’s not universal. In the course of my own adventures with HIV, I was lucky enough to find two amazing doctors: brilliant, empathetic, honest, forgiving. But they’re amazing largely because they’re the exception. Dean’s style worries me – almost as much as his substance.

IN AMERICA: A fallen soldier is buried in Texas. The photographs take your breath away.

TRANQUIL SOUTH: The Brits haven’t lost a military life in months in Basra. In time, we may see the post-war violence in Iraq as a simple continuation of Sunni efforts to control the country. Entrenched elites take time to remove – and to become reconciled to their loss of privilege.

BRITNEY’S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT: Look, I know some of you will object to the logic, but can you not see how something like Britney Spears’ insta-marriage in Las Vegas might infuriate long-committed gay couples who, even now, don’t have a shred of the rights Ms Spears enjoyed for a few days? It is one thing for people to declare their commitment to traditional marriage – i.e. procreative, life-long, heterosexual. It is another thing when that ideal has almost no relationship to civil marriage as it now exists for straights; and when it is nevertheless used to deny gay people access to the institution. Over the holidays, I found myself watching all those VH1 list shows, and happened across the top ten or twenty (I forget which) shortest Hollywood marriages in history. Ha ha ha. We live a world in which Britney Spears just engaged in something “sacred” (in the president’s words), where instant and joke hetero marriages and divorces are a subject of titillation, and where a decades-long monogamous lesbian marriage is a threat to civilization as we know it. Please. Can we have a smidgen of consistency here?