The Dish

A reader writes:

Ron Paul’s religious AND constitutional fundamentalisms are anti-historical, and consequently anti-literate, as all forms of fundamentalism are.  As a Christian fundamentalist believes in the supposed "literal" truth and total organic unity of the bible from beginning to end (the "authored by God" position), failing to acknowledge the thousand of years of changing circumstances and beliefs that produced the various texts that we now call scripture, the constitutional fundamentalist views the U.S. Constitution as a document produced by a group of like-minded individuals with one definitive goal in mind.

For Paul and others, "the forefathers" are our surrogate God/author; the strangest thing about this point of view is that it directly contradicts their mantra that our country was founded by "rugged individualists."  How can our forefathers be both a group of individualists AND a collective hive-mind?  The God/author view of the constitution ignores all readily and widely available documentation of the circumstances which produced the Constitution, which shows us a group of men with a wide variety of opinions on how to deal with the important issues of their time and create a fair representative government of the people.  The Constitution is a series of compromises that this group of individuals settled on, not the "word of God."

A reader writes:

I’m a lifelong Dem, and I’m baffled by how easily some are impressed by the Clintons. Yes, they "work their asses off," as your reader put it–but much of the time they’re working at either their own elections or correcting their own mistakes. The Clinton years were economic boom years, and Clinton pursued some smart policies, such as balancing the budget. They also hired smart, effective people, as opposed to cronies. But Clinton benefited tremendously from the tech boom, which was driven by private industry and military R&D, and from the Soviet Union’s economic and political implosion. For a short time–ah, yes, remember "The End of History"?–the U.S. was on top of the world.

But when it came to the tough stuff, how successful was Clinton, really, in showing leadership?

On issues where he could get Republican support, such as balancing the budget and welfare reform, he did well, but he never really swayed or led the country when it came to more controversial policy, whether it was health care (a fiasco!) or gays in the military.

His minor victories–say, increased financial aid for college students–were easily undone when the Republicans took over, thanks in no small part to his weakening of the Dem party. He failed to lead the West during the massacres of the Bosnian war.

His response to the growing Islamic terrorist network was anemic. After the deadly attack in Mogadishu, he ordered the military to flee Somalia. We spent the last two years of his presidency dealing with marital infidelity. (Did it ever occur to him and his wife to simply tell the truth and move on, not because it was our business, but because we had, as a nation, more important things to do?) He backed NAFTA without adequate labor and environmental provisions. He did little to help ease the transition for working class America as heavy industry declined and hi tech blossomed. His inability to gain respect in military circles (justly or no) helped further alienate the Democratic Party from our military establishment, to the point where many Americans think the Democrats are incompetent in times of danger.

Do we really want Clinton II?

And finally, what is Clinton II talking about when she says she’s been "working for us" for 35 years? You mean, as a corporate lawyer at Rose Law firm in Little Rock? There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but I really don’t see how it amounted to serving the American people. Serving on corporate boards? Again, nothing wrong with that, but please, that was for "us"? Helping her husband weather scandals and crises? For us! And as a Senator, how has she really made a difference during the Bush years? By getting along with Lindsey Graham! Yay for us!!

I’m so disappointed at the nostalgia Democrats feel for the Clinton years. It is based on a most superficial reading of history. Does no one remember what that second term was like? Yeah, I back Obama, but I’d vote for Biden or Dodd in the primaries, too. We don’t need to go "back to the future."

“The most important thing I needed to do at this point is to give people the conceptual ideas of where I would lead this country. It’s really a bit premature to start getting down deep into the weeds, talking about, here’s what the chart looks like, here’s where the budget numbers are going to be … ” – Mike Huckabee.

No need to apologize for insisting on your version of the truth:

It’s important to understand that the message you are sharing is not merely an opinion but a fact. That’s why sharing the gospel can’t be called an imposition, any more than a pilot can impose his belief on all his passengers that the runway is here and not there.

A melt-down? Lowry on Huckabee’s new-found obsession with process here.

A reader writes:

Your comments on the conservative soul have been a catalyst for some of my own thinking about why Obama is so appealing to people of my own generation (I’m 29). I think that one reason (among many) is that Obama, like so many of us, is conservative by temperament, but liberal in his particular positions. As you know, ‘liberalism’ and ‘conservatism’ can mean many things. They can describe complex political philosophies or they can be a grab-bag of particular political positions. But they can also describe the overall attitude with which people approach political problems: very broadly, ‘liberalism’ says, "I have a grand plan to make things better," and ‘conservatism’ says, "Be careful not to make things worse instead." In this sense, ‘liberalism’ means thinking in terms of grand plans, great movements, and sweeping revolutions, while ‘conservatism’ means skepticism about such plans, and a preference for incremental, pragmatic change.

Now, I get the sense from boomers across the ideological spectrum, that their approach to political questions is generally framed in grand ideological terms (are you ‘for life’ or ‘for choice’? are you ‘for peace’ or ‘for defending America’?). And because Boomers have been dominating our political discourse for while now, they have defined the contours of debate on most issues in strongly ideological terms. But in many cases, the facts have moved on, while the debate has remained frozen.

For example, on the invasion of Iraq, I still hear many Boomers talk about Peace v. War (as if you either supported one or the other). But I hear almost no younger people talking that way. We don’t really approach the question from a grand ideological point of view (‘is war good or bad?’) but from a more conservative, pragmatic point of view (‘is this war going to work, or not?’). Obama spoke for us when he said, very early on, that he didn’t oppose all war, but he did oppose "a dumb war". Obama was moving the debate into a new era, in which people who support some wars don’t have to support all wars, and people who oppose some wars don’t have to oppose all wars.

Similarly, on some social and economic issues, people in my generation often tend to take liberal positions. But we don’t arrive at them from a ‘liberal’ approach to the questions. We don’t support welfare, gun control laws, limits on carbon emissions and so on because we think we can build the Great Society or a perfect world, but because pragmatically, these policies seem like the best solutions to particular problems. Also, on some issues, we grew up wth ‘liberal’ policies already in place, and the conservative impulse is not to try and change things too quickly. In his less ideological, more ‘conservative’ approach to problems, and his tendency to  find ‘liberal’ solutions to many (though not all) of them, Obama is very appealing to people from my generation. But I think this also helps explain why he has had trouble with Boomers. He doesn’t grandstand, and his rhetoric often doesn’t fit the categories that Boomers are accustomed to hearing and thinking in. I’ve been amazed to hear some Boomers (esp. the Krugman type) claim that Obama ‘doesn’t take a stand’. He does, but he does it with new language and new paradigms, and they don’t recognize it. Younger people do, and for us, Obama’s a breath of fresh air in a political room that was getting very stale, from constantly refighting old battles.

It’s a girl thing mainly.

Uninspiring:

Her candidacy is, to borrow from Bill Clinton, a roll of the dice.