The Dish

A reader sends me Mental Floss’s NYT archive latest – featuring moi, on April 20, 1983. Yep, I was in the NYT at 19 years’ old, over a flap involving a debate I had set up as president of the Oxford Union. I’d managed to get then-defense secretary Casper Weinberger to agree to debate the leader of the anti-nuclear movement in Britain, historian E.P. Thompson. The Thatcher government had a policy of not debating their prime critic on the anti-war left, and, once they found out, talked Weinberger out of it. I was pissed, but what could I do? I was pro-Thatcher, but I was equally pro-debate. I didn’t believe then that anyone should be out of bounds for political debate:

Mr. Sullivan, the union president, is a 19-year-old student of history and French who describes himself as a supporter of the Government. He reported that Mr. Weinberger said on Friday that he thought a debate might be an "inappropriate" forum for a person in his position and that he did not want to seem to intervene in the British domestic political process with an election in the offing.

"He made it quite clear that he was not in the least apprehensive about confronting Mr. Thompson," Mr. Sullivan said. "When we first talked on Feb. 9, he seemed exceptionally keen to come, because he is eager to put his case to young people."

The debate was eventually rescheduled, after I was president, but the then-president invited me to take part in the debate. I did – and chose to debate on Thompson’s side. (Bonus fact: Benazir Bhutto was my dinner date.)

The motion was

"This House believes there is no moral difference between the foreign policies of the United States and the Soviet Union."

I made the Catholic/Tory case that foreign policy cannot be described as more or less moral in the aggregate. The pursuit of national interest is amoral. But the methods can be either. You had to get specific. Weinberger’s speech rested on a core neocon argument that because America was a democracy, its foreign policy was therefore definitionally more moral. I remember interrupting Weinberger to ask:

Does an immoral act become less immoral if we have the right to choose to do it or not?

I was being a little arch, I know. Objectively, I believe now and believed then that the US was morally superior in actions and intent to the Soviet Union. But my question was a useful corrective to the pretensions of American uber-exceptionalism. And in the Union, I always tried to debate for the losing proposition. It was much more fun. And, yes, my side lost. I think every side I debated on in the Union lost. I picked them that way. Better to hone your skills.

A reader writes:

Andrew, for every emailer like the one who said he’d abandon the Atlantic online, there must be three like myself who check the Atlantic more often than ever. There are poll-driven politicians, but there are also many — far too many — poll driven journalists and pundits. There is obviously no shortage of Hillary criticism from the wacky right, but for a very long period there was a shortage of criticism of her from the sensible center and from liberals, and your critique has helped fill that void.

Another adds:

I think that one reader is being a little harsh, taking you to task about the volume of anti-Hillary posts. It seems you run just as many anti-Giuliani ones. Also, I think it’s important that someone with a (inter)national forum point out, repeatedly, that America may be, once again, picking the worst possible choices from all the candidates available to them.

Back in 2000, even though I knew it wouldn’t happen, I was disappointed that Bill Bradley did not upset Gore for the nomination. Lord knows he wasn’t perfect, but Gore seemed like the nominee out of sheer "well, this is the way its done" habit.

At the time, I thought we could’ve had Bradley vs Bush, Gore vs McCain, or, dream of dreams, Bradley vs McCain, with by far the worst, most tired possible version would’ve been Gore vs. Bush. And which one did we get?

One reason I have come on so strong these past couple of months is precisely because I felt Clinton was getting too easy a pass in the MSM. She had managed to reinvent herself in a way that obscured serious features of her record and her character from public view. It’s better for the process if we judge the real Clinton, abilities and flaws, before simply acquiescing to the meme that she is inevitable. She isn’t. No one is. My take on the strange new affection for Clinton on the right can be read here.

Jonah harrumphs at Frank Rich’s column yesterday, with a nice bit of anti-boomer rage but a somewhat desperate swipe that Rich’s worry about a "quiet coup" is "paranoid nonsense" and "shameful." Really? Jonah should take a look at Charlie Savage’s extraordinarily good "Take-Over: The Return Of The Imperial Presidency." At least one very smart conservative has praised it. The facts are as follows: this president believes that he is not ultimately subject to the rule of law in waging war since 9/11; he believes he can ignore any laws passed in this respect – even those passed with veto-proof majorities if necessary – by signing statements, whose frequency has soared under the Cheney-Bush presidency; he believes that the parameters of the include the territory of the United States and every citizen of the United States; he believes he has the right to seize any individual in this country or the world without charging them and hold them indefinitely or subject them to kangaroo military courts where basic due process protections are absent; he has clearly authorized the torture of many individuals using this power, while redefining the word torture against the plain meaning of the term in law and in English. He has done all this with barely any real push-back from the Congress and only minimal interference from the Supreme Court which he has bolstered with Justices who uphold great deference to the executive branch in wartime. And all these emergency powers – sanctioned by the notion of an emergency and defended with references to previous emergencies (such as the Civil War and the Second World War) – are, unlike in the past, indefinitely awarded to the executive branch, because this war is against an amorphous entity that by definition cannot surrender. And so we have transformed emergency powers – controversial even under those circumstances – into the permanent balance of power in American democracy. We have gone immediately to the most extreme position – a president empowered to do anything to defend the nation – and made it permanent. Just as we have taken the one-in-a-million moral (not legal) sanction to torture, and made it a normal, legal avenue of executive branch interrogation, subject to no checks except those imposed by the torturers themselves.

I do not believe these facts are in any significant dispute, however blinkered NRO "conservatives" want to remain. The current Republican candidates (apart from Ron Paul and, to some extent, McCain) all support this new protectorate in place of a presidency.

If this is not a quiet coup, what would be? And why should conservatives, of all people, support and enable this assault on the constitution and individual liberty, in the name of a war against an abstract enemy that will never be defeated? Has anybody ever read "Nineteen-Eighty-Four"?

Lake Placid, Florida, noon.

Check out the updates on this Fox News blog:

Update #1: Hillary Clinton’s Iowa campaign confirmed to Fox that one of its staff discussed questions with Geoffrey Mitchell before the senator’s April 2 event near Fort Madison, but denied attempting to plant a pro-Clinton question.

Mo Elliethee, spokesman for Clinton, told Fox that Clinton staffer Chris Hayler talked with Mitchell before the event because the two knew each other from previous Democratic activities…

Update #2: Geoffrey Mitchell just called Major to state he had absolutely no previous relationship with Clinton staffer Chris Hayler.

And the beat goes on.

In New Hampshire, he’s bragging that a victory is coming, and bests Clinton in a Rasmussen match-up for the first time since May. Among the voters who have definitely made up their minds, he’s a close second in New Hampshire. Good news from Iraq may help as well. My sense is that anyone in the top five can still win the GOP nomination. And Ron Paul is just beginning his ad campaigns.

A reader writes:

Can the tech wizards at The Atlantic install a “block Hillary Clinton post” filter on your blog to benefit your increasingly pestered readers? This suggestion is intended as a helpful suggestion to keep your readership up. I know, in my case, you are soon to be deleted from my favorites list if there are many more of these stunningly repetitive posts which are starting to dominate your blog. Your point has long ago been made. You don’t like Hillary, think she doesn’t have the character to be President…yada, yada, yada. Enough already.  You are starting to sound like the drunk guy in the local pub who keeps repeating the same story…”(burp) have I told you this one (burp)?” Instead of posting, you should buy ad space on your blog to make the point.

Another writes:

This post links to a Newsweek story about how former Clinton nemesis Richard Mellon Scaife is getting together with Bill. The blogger tries to explain what this means — but I don’t buy the explanation. It’s a pretty extraordinary development. I also think it’s tied into the stuff you dislike so much about the Clintons. I guess I would argue that it’s the flip side of that dishonesty.

An average person wouldn’t be able to sit down with Scaife after everything that’s happened.  It’s hard to think of anything phonier — more dishonest — than Clinton sitting with Scaife and pretending that they’re friends.  The Clintons are wired differently.  (So is Scaife, apparently.)

But let’s step back and ask our little inner Machiavellis which kind of person makes the better prince — the one like me, who would say, "Screw you, Scaife!", or the one like Bill who will sit down with the guy, and try to defang him. I’m trying to make a serious point here. This hollow dishonest quality of the Clintons is not always a bad thing. It allows them to do things that other people wouldn’t be able to do. I think it probably allowed them to do welfare reform, for example. It allows them to sit down with Scaife.

Bush is very much the opposite.  His core is inviolate.  People can’t change his mind.  When he tries a policy, and it fails in the real world, he won’t change his mind, instead he’ll double down.  Bush believes what he believes, and that’s that. What I’m trying to argue is that in a friend, someone with Bush’s core would be better than someone with Clinton’s hollowness. (Ideally we’d want someone between the two extremes.)

The flip side of all of this dishonesty is a completely unfettered ability to do what’s practical.  And the flip side of Bush’s inviolate core is an almost total inability to do anything practical.

I’m trying to call you back to your doubt. There isn’t much doubt in your moral outrage over Hillary’s lies about that waitress’s tip. But we got into this war by going down a path full of such moral certainties.  Saddam Hussein wasn’t just a bad person, he was a fucking monster. HIs sick kids put people in wood chippers for fun. But letting ourselves feel that certainty, that outrage, contributed to our going down the wrong road. It doesn’t seem like it should have, but again, we’ve run the lab experiment, and it did. And we have to come to terms with that.

31 percent approve. Another 30 percent or so is unsure. Which makes the pro-impeachment position as popular and as reasonable in the public’s mind as continuing to approve of the job that Bush is doing. Why is this view regarded as "unserious" again? When you examine the vandalism Cheney has done to the Constitution, the rule of law, and America’s moral standing in the world?

Race exists. Even the NYT now concedes it. Here’s my view in a nutshell:

"Regardless of any such genetic variation, it is our moral duty to treat all as equal before God and before the law," Perry Clark, 44, wrote on a New York Times blog. It is not necessary, argued Dr. Clark, a retired neonatologist in Leawood, Kan., who is white, to maintain the pretense that inborn racial differences do not exist.

“When was the last time a nonblack sprinter won the Olympic 100 meters?” he asked. “To say that such differences aren’t real,” Dr. Clark later said in an interview, “is to stick your head in the sand and go blah blah blah blah blah until the band marches by.”