December 31, 2004 [LINK]

Tsunami: 9/11 times 50?

The scale of destruction and death around the rim of the Indian Ocean is simply incomprehensible. The death toll has risen to 117,000 and will probably climb much higher. Even if relief workers manage get a handle on the situation, it will probably be weeks before an accurate assessment of the damage to property is made. Whole islands have been obliterated. Writing a measly check seems so hopelessly inadequate in this situation, but like voting, it's the sort of tiny gesture that yields huge effects when done en masse.

American Red Cross
Disaster Relief Fund
P.O. Box 37243
Washington, D.C. 20013

It is times like these that the term international community has some real meaning. Sadly, however, it only took two days for this disaster to become politicized. U.N. official Jan Egeland accused the U.S. and some other Western countries of being "stingy," even before the magnitude of the calamity was fully grasped by most people. What was most annoying about his remarks was the suggestion that how much tax revenue a government collects is an indicator of the people's commitment to good causes. Well, of course, if you're a socialist. The Washington Post had virtually nothing on Mr. Egeland's words, but did print some stories that push the notion that Bush was not paying attention to the crisis for the first couple days. Daniel Drezner provides plenty of evidence to refute the "stingy" charg. The United States gives 2.34 cents per capita per day in relief aid, much less than the altruistic Scandinavian countries, but nosing out France and Canada by a whisker. In any event, the early pledges of money mean very little, as much more will be donated to South Asian countries in one form or another in coming months. Colin Powell spoke very effectively about the active role the United States is playing, and it makes me very sad that someone with his high stature and ability is leaving the State Department. Finally, Josh Marshall heaped scorn on President Bush for allegedly "badmouthing" Bill Clinton. What really happened was that a White House spokesman defended President Bush's low profile by making a tart reference to the previous president's compassion-mongering, with that ubiquitous four-word cliche.

December 31, 2004 [LINK]

Susan Sontag

One of the Left's leading voices passed away this week. Ms. Sontag offended many people by her sharp denunciations of U.S. policies, and for rejecting the notion that the 9/11 attacks were a barbarian atrocity. In her view, it is arrogant and erroneous to assume that we belong to the civilized world and those who attacked us are savages. Generally, speaking, there is some truth in such a relativistic view of global conflict, but she picked an inappropriate case to make the argument. It's like when Michael Dukakis reacted so coldly to the hypothetical question of what if his wife were raped and murdered in 1988. For an American not to get angry about 9/11 reflects a certain lack of humanity. The superb literary critic Henry Allen had a good piece on her in Wednesday's Washington Post:

Sontag, who died Tuesday at the age of 71, had the gift of fame, which is to say she possessed charisma, which may be why she ended up being called overrated, the fate of charismatic people. I had read more about her than by her.

Even so, she was always the center of attention, one of the world's most quoted figures. I remember well the uproar the followed a comment she made back in 1982, as quoted by Allen:

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only the Nation or the New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?

Indeed so. Ms. Sontag must be given credit for her intellectual honesty, if not for good judgment.

December 31, 2004 [LINK]

Radical utopians, here and there

Cathy Seipp, writing in the National Review notes that a group blog in Los Angeles called Martini Republic that the pro-democracy blog Iraq the Model is just a front operation of the CIA. It's not true, but such a belief typifies the conspiracy mongering on that side of the political spectrum these days. Which reminds me, many if not most Americans would probably say the religious fascists in the Muslim world have more in common with the Religous Right in the United States than with the Secular Left. So why does it so often seem that the Left is rationalizing atrocities committed by the Islamo-fascists? Anyway, Seipp goes on,

I did come across a good explanation in David Horowitz's new book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. Horowitz's theory is "the utopian future that embodies the idea of 'social justice'" connects radical Islam and its sympathizers with yesterday's Marxists: "It is this utopian vision that provides radicals with the standard of judgment that condemns the actually existing world, no matter how decent it may be." So therefore America and its friends, like Iraq the Model, are automatically suspect.

I like what Horowitz has to say, though he's often a bit too harsh. His previous book Radical Son exposes from a first-hand perspective the descent into hypocrisy and bitterness of the post-1960s American Left. My lifelong political journey has paralleled his in many ways.

December 31, 2004 [LINK]

More recounts!

As expected, Viktor was the victor in the recent "do-over" elections in Ukraine -- Viktor Yushchenko, that is. Oddly, however, Viktor was also the loser -- Viktor Yanukovych, that is. Perhaps inspired by Al Gore, the latter is pursuing a challenge to the election, and both sides are mobilizing for a possible mass confrontation in the streets. This would seem to be a humiliating setback in prestige for Vladimir Putin; might some other hardliner wannabe rulers in Moscow start contemplating pushing him aside?

In Washington state, the Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire won in the second recount after several hundred "missing" ballots were discovered in heavily Democratic King County. As the Church Lady would say, "How convenient!" Republican Dino Rossi asked for a new election, like they did in Ukraine, but it's not going to happen.

In Ohio, the recount narrowed President Bush's margin of victory slightly, but it's still a difference of over 112,000 votes, validating John Kerry's wise decision to accept reality and avoid a slow descent toward a second American civil war. Many of Kerry's more zealous supporters refuse to accept the election outcome, however, and are planning to disrupt the inauguration ceremonies on January 20.

Finally, in Puerto Rico, the pro-status quo (commonwealth) candidate Anibal Acevedo Vila defeated by a tiny fraction the pro-statehood candidate for governor, Pedro Rossello, who was governor from 1993-2001. The margin was about 3,600 votes, or 0.18 percent of all votes cast. The pro-independence candidate Ruben Berrios received only 2.74 percent of the votes.

December 22, 2004 [LINK]

Is conservatism unpopular?

In his typically incisive yet blunt fashion, Andrew Sullivan raises serious doubts about whether Bush can accomplish much in his second term, and indeed whether Bush is truly serving the interests of conservative philosophy.

[C]onservatism, understood loosely as an "ideology of self-reliance," has failed to make serious inroads since the mid-'90s. It's still nowhere near a popular majority. This is why conservative politicians are often forced to use deception to advance conservative policy proposals.

Predictably, the Bush administration is contemplating a series of half-assed "reforms" that are likely to make matters worse. In doing so, the administration will yet again discredit the "ideology of self-reliance." One wonders if Bush is a sleeper agent for the Socialist International.

I think he's overstating the case, no doubt bitter toward Bush for cozying up too much with social conservatives, but I too have such worries that the Bush-Rove team is too focused on winning elections to adopt a serious, comprehensive economic conservative agenda. If he fails to "spend his political capital" and take on the tough issues, this precious moment of opportunity will end up wasted. In that case, and the Republicans will be right back to where they started, probably splitting into recriminating factions much as the Democrats are doing. It is critical for the Republicans to realize that at least half of the American population still takes for granted the Federal entitlements spawned by the New Deal era. For many folks, unfortunately, talk about "freedom" and "personal responsibility" is nothing more than talk. They are the ones susceptible to the lure of another Clinton presidency (!) if the Bush does not make a much more serious attempt to explain the ramifications of conservative policy, and to persuade the comfortable, "ultra-entitled" middle class of the need for radical reform. As Rush Limbaugh said on his show today, the battle for Social Security reform is just the beginning.

December 13, 2004 [LINK]

Wiretapping, foreign and domestic

News that U.S. agents eavesdropped on International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei (specifically, his telephone conversations with officials in Iran) came as quite a shock. Not the fact itself so much, but the public announcement thereof. The Bush administration is putting pressure on him to resign, but this heavy-handed tactic may backfire unless the taped conversations reveal something very damaging about ElBaradei. Some in the Bush administration suspect that he is not seriously committed to ensuring that Iran halt its nuclear weapons program. The hardening U.S. position on Iran is probably in response to Iran's support for fundamentalist Shiite leaders who are running in the upcoming elections in Iraq. Unfortunately, France and other members of the U.N. Security Council may calculate that the risk of an Iranian bomb is outweighed by their priority of thwarting U.S. objectives in the Middle East. Donald Rumsfeld recently criticized NATO "partners" for failing to cooperate in training the reconstituted Iraqi military forces.

By coincidence, there was an update in the Post last Wednesday about the March 2002 case in which then-state GOP executive director Edmund Matricardi wiretapped Democratic officials who were conversing with Governor Mark Warner about their challenge to the Republicans' redistricting plan. Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, who is running for governor next year, alerted law enforcement officials as soon as this was brought to his attention, leading to arrests. This shows he is a principled official who puts the law above party loyalty, and he deserves credit for it. The wiretapping was a costly mistake for the Virginia GOP, however: "The state Republican Party has agreed to pay most of a $750,000 settlement in the federal lawsuit brought by the 33 Democratic lawmakers who were on the conference calls." Matricardi went to jail for it, and two others pled guilty to lesser offenses. How do people involved in politics think they're going to get away with such stupid dirty tricks? It's probably the intoxicating thrill of power.

December 13, 2004 [LINK]

Cabinet update

President Bush has nominated EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt (former governor of Utah) to serve as Health and Human Services secretary, replacing Tommy Thompson (former governor of Wisconsin). Nine of the 15 department heads have announced their departure, more than in any other presidential second term since 1972. Gary Trudeau ran several "Doonesbury" comic strips last week lampooning Bush's fondness for agreeable cabinet heads, with a "Department of Toady Affairs." Ha ha.

Bush is catching a lot of flak for the failure to properly vet Bernie Kerik, the erstwhile nominee to be Secretary of Homeland Security. The fact that many House Republicans initially opposed the intelligence reform bill (see below) because it lacked provisions for guarding against illegal immigration make this case especially ironic. The rumored other factors, such as Kerik's enrichment from serving on the board of a company that makes stun guns, raise further questions about White House management. Will anyone be reprimanded for this lapse, or lose their job?

December 13, 2004 [LINK]

Intelligence reform

The passage of the Intelligence reform bill by the House last week is considered a political victory for Bush, but he had to spend a lot of political capital, and the benefits are murky at best. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) insisted on the armed forces retaining control over battlefield reconnaissance, and his concerns were met. Some doubted Bush's commitment to the bill, and even now it is uncertain how much of a priority it was for him. This much is certain: the bill passed because of domestic political reasons, and not many people believe that centralizing control of intelligence will accomplish much if anything. Indeed, this change might even make intelligence gathering less efficient. But the families of the 9/11 victims, bless their heavy hearts, needed some concrete sign of government action so that the deaths of their relatives will not have been in vain. This is a classic case of "Politically compelling policies," as congressional scholar R. Douglas Arnold put it. (See the newly reformatted Arnold on Congress page, which summarizes Arnold's superb, succinct analysis of how the U.S. Congress works.) The immediate necessity of winning votes in the next election (or minimizing vote losses) outweighs doubts in the legislators' minds that the bill in question will achieve the stated ends.

December 11, 2004 [LINK]

"That's really gotta hurt!"

Doctors in Austria have confirmed what Ukrainian presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko has been saying: the hideous deterioration of his face since last summer is the result of poisoning, by dioxins to be precise. See cnn.com for a dramatic photographic contrast. If this poisoning incident was a political dirty trick engineered by the Kremlin, Russian politics are in even worse shape than most people thought. President Bush said last year that he could see into Mr. Putin's soul and saw a good man. Yikes. I hope this is not an accurate overall indication of "W" as a judge of character. Putin's recent fierce and obnoxious criticisms of the United States and the West are strange, given the fact that we both face a common enemy -- Islamo-fascist terrorism.

The burgeoning democracy movement in Ukraine is one of the most uplifting global political trends of recent months, and represents an opportunity for the U.S. and Europe to work together. I was a little annoyed that the huge crowds in downtown Kiev were "singing" a protest rap "song". Whatever happened to rock and roll as a symbol of Western freedom?? It would appear that the old-style blatantly despotic tendencies of incumbent President Kuchma and his hand-picked successor, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, may not work after all. The second (hopefully clean) election will be held on December 26.

December 11, 2004 [LINK]

Cabinet shakeups

Former NYPD top cop Bernard Kerik shocked everyone by withdrawing as nominee to be the next Secretary of Homeland Security because of the same kind of "nannygate" scandal that plagued Bill Clintons' second choice as Attorney General, Zoe Baird. (His first choice was Lani Guinier, remember?) Whether Kerik was well-suited for a national-level position, I don't know. He may have been picked for symbolic reasons, since he was in charge of New York police during the 9/11 attacks. I hope not.

What is more worrisome to me is the offhanded way Bush seems to have been deciding on the fate of his top officials. In the Chicago Sun Times, Robert Novak wrote:

For nearly two weeks, John Snow had been twisting in the wind. Snow had not heard one word on whether he should leave or stay as secretary of the Treasury until Wednesday, when President Bush asked him to remain at least temporarily.

Snow is a perfectly capable and politically loyal cabinet official. Why Bush would hesitate to ask him to stay on, especially when so many other cabinet secretaries are leaving, is a mystery to me. Maybe Karl Rove knows...

December 11, 2004 [LINK]

Abstinence

Last week Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) called attention to a report by House staffers that casts doubt on the effectiveness of school programs that encourage teens to abstain from sexual activity. He said the data and findings of Bush administration reports did not meet standard scientific criteria. A Heritage Foundation study written Melissa Pardue gives support to the abstinence approach, however. See www.heritage.org.

By coincidence, yesterday it was reported that American teenagers are now waiting longer to have sex than in the 1990s. Does this reflect the morali proselytizing of President Bush, the First Lady, and his administration? Probably not. Presidents have no more control over individual behavior than they do on the wheels of the economy, except in a very general, indirect way. It should be noted, nevertheless, that good examples by adults in positions of authority certainly can't hurt. Which leads us to baseball...

December 9, 2004 [LINK]

Krugman on Social Security

Donald Luskin (www.poorandstupid.com) and "justoneminute" are among the bloggers who have ripped into Paul Krugman for flip-flopping on Social Security in his Tuesday New York Times column. Back in 1996 when he was supporting President Clinton's initiatives, Krugman wrote with regard to Social Security, "Where is the crisis? Just over the horizon, that's where." (quote from Luskin) Now, however, he downplays a Congressional Budget Office report that the "trust fund" (a misleading accounting contrivance) will run out in 2052. He says,

But it's a problem of modest size. The report finds that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd century, with no change in benefits, would require additional revenues equal to only 0.54 percent of G.D.P. That's less than 3 percent of federal spending.

He goes on to sing the praises of the creaky old system as though it were a success story, and concludes, "And that's why the right wants to destroy it." No, they want to trim back the unsustainable giveaways and direct benefits toward those who need it the most. Krugman was among those on the Left who had to take a long rest after the traumatic defeat they suffered on November 2. Perhaps he needs more time.

I have long been skeptical of "privatizing" Social Security, if that means handing off responsibility for providing entitlements to some private financial entity. Those who argue that individuals could get a better rate or return from private investments than from Federal retirement benefits are missing the point. Social Security is NOT an "investment," it is an ongoing transfer of resources from the younger generation to the older generation. It will work as long as there exists a solid nationwide consensus and trust among political factions. Do those conditions exist any more? Absolutely not. It would be much better, I think, to simply scale current benefits back to the pre-1960s era, when Social Security was still understood as being a supplementary fund aimed primarily at widows, the disabled, and other people unable to provide for themselves. Unfortunately, the benefits were inflated by Democrat Congresses over the decades, to the point that middle class people began counting on Social Security to provide for a comfortable retirement. Big mistake, that. The cyncical doubts of the younger generations about ever getting back a fair share of their contriubtions is entirely appropriate, which is another reason why Krugman's newfound complacency about the solvency of the Social Security system is so utterly misplaced. The Concord Coalition drew attention to the looming catstrophe in the early 1990s, and even though the Bush administration has shaky credentials on fiscal responsibility, it is on the right overall track where this is concerned.

There remains, nevertheless, a sadly-neglected Big Picture, which is the way that Social Security, health care, tax reform, immigration, and the war on terrorism all fit together. President Bush has taken tentative steps by creating "medical savings accounts," but there really should be no distinction between savings accounts intended for health, education, or any purpose, including gambling at the casino. It's the individual's own business! A truly conservative economic policy would be aimed at forthrightly "smashing the bonds of statism" and freeing individuals to pursue happiness as they see fit. That is why I have consistently urged that the hideously complex maze of regulations on 401K plans, etc., etc. be abolished, in favor of simply exempting up to $5,000 of personal savings from Federal income taxes each year. What could be more fair or simple to understand? Such an approach is utterly alien to the mainstream of opinion in the United States, especially the left-liberals who look to the ultra-cushy European social democratic system as a model for our future. They fail to recognize, of course, that the European socio-economic system could not be sustained without many millions of exploited cheap immigrant workers who are not covered by the system. Hence the resentment of these "outsiders" toward the entitled Western citizens, which paves the way for terrorist subversion. Making the connection between entitlements affordability, immigration, and the terrorist threat could be the basis for a radical restoration of economic freedom that would make this a second "American century." Otherwise, China will steadily gain on us, as demonstrated by IBM's sale of its personal computer division to the Lenovo Corporation, headquartered in "Red" China...

December 7, 2004 [LINK]

U.N. scandals widen

Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman called on Kofi Annan to resign as U.N. Secretary General, but that doesn't appear to be likely any time soon. The State Department has disavowed such a position but leaves no doubt about the deep dissatisfaction with Mr. Annan. The fact that his son has been implicated in the U.N. "oil for food" scandal is further indication that his credibility is in tatters, probably beyond repair. As a further reminder that the opposition to U.S. foreign policy by both foreign and domestic political forces is based on corrupt self-interest, it was reported by ABC News that one of the key figures involved with the U.N. "oil for food" program was former American fugitive Marc Rich. Just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, he served as a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001. Ver-r-ry interesting... (via badhairblog)

December 3, 2004 [LINK]

Sweet home Alabama

Alabama voters narrowly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have stricken provisions for racially-separate schools and an explicit non-guarantee of a right to a public education, which was enacted in an effort to neutralize the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in the 1950s. Opponents such as Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles claimed they were focusing on the second part, on the grounds that it was needed to prevent activist judges from decreeing tax hikes to provide funding. See washingtonpost.com for more. I'm no fan of activist judges, but I can't see any legitimate grounds for such fears, certainly nothing that would justify making common cause with recalcitrant racists. How many of the opponents of the amendment fit that description? I would like to think they are but a small minority, but that may not be the case. I would hope the Republican Party can take a principled stand on this issue, even though it might cost a few votes in the short run.

December 1, 2004 [LINK]

"Anchors away!"

Tom Brokaw bid farewell as NBC News anchorman this evening, and thankfully refrained from any attempt to be profound. He also managed to avoid any tear-shedding, as happened on his appearance on the Today show, where he got his start. In all the historic vignettes that were replayed in his honor, I was surprised that nothing was said of his coverage of the 1972 McGovern campaign, when he first drew national attention. That assignment was natural, since Brokaw is from South Dakota. Of the three current network anchormen, he stands alone in terms of journalistic integrity and just plain decency. Rush Limbaugh ran several clips of past moments he shared on the air with Mr. Brokaw today, and had some surprisingly warm words for him.

By sheer coincidence, as I was cleaning up Princess and George's room this evening, I noticed how they paid selective "respects" to the other two news anchors, the shamefully partisan Dan Rather and Peter Jennings. This was from the November 24 Washington Post article about Dan Rather's departure next March, and the photo was of a panel forum held by the three anchors in October. I swear, this photograph was NOT doctored (!), and the bird "events" were not contrived or staged in any way.

November 26, 2004 [LINK]

"Reddest" county in a "red" state

Of all the counties in Virginia, Augusta and Rockingham scored the highest percentage vote for President Bush in the recent elections, with 74.4 percent. This is definitely part of the "Bible Belt," part of the vast U.S.A. Heartland, or as some leftists are now calling it, "Jesusland." I once shared such fears about the Religious Right, but virtually none of the conservative folks I've met who prioritize faith and values would qualify as "wackos" or zealots. By and large, they are simply sincere people who are deeply worried -- as am I -- about the direction our country has been heading. On the east side of the Blue Ridge, in contrast, is Democrat territory, including the "People's Republic of Charlottesville," home of the University of Virginia. (Click on the adjacent map I drew to see a full-size version in a pop-up window.)

What do these deep divisions in our nation portend? Will the secular "Brainland" (as Randy Paul calls it) secede and join Canada? (See politicalhumor for a hypothetical future map of North America.) Somehow I doubt it will come to that.

Speaking of Red vs. Blue, I took a photo of Earth's nearest neighbor as it was rising above the horizon earlier this evening, and noticed the very same polarizing effect!!! Just as in the United States, the blue fringe is is the north and the red fringe is in the south. (You may have to squint.) Perhaps what our country needs to overcome this high degree of polarity is a higher quality "lens."

November 26, 2004 [LINK]

Dems lose control of media

At the end of CNN's "Late Edition" program hosted by Wolf Blitzer, there was a roundtable featuring three Democratic Congresspersons -- Martin Frost (TX), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL), and Loretta Sanchez (CA) -- plus Air America talk-show host Al Franken. Ms. Sanchez let the cat out of the bag when she mentioned one of the reasons her party fared so poorly:

SANCHEZ: I agree with Jesse. I agree with my colleague. I believe that we made mistakes. The media certainly is not in our hands any longer, and, in particular, radio talk shows where that is completely in the opposition's hands, and they use it effectively against us.

BLITZER: But, Loretta, when you say the media -- when you say the media is not in your hands, are you saying that ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN are hostile to Democrats?

SANCHEZ: No, that's not what I said. I'm saying that -- if you would let me finish -- that the majority of people are now receiving a lot of their information out of radio. And the radio isn't in the hands of the Democrats anymore.

Does that mean she thinks TV still is under control of the Democrats? Again, it's one of those facts of life that is so obvious that there's no point in raising it. SOURCE: cnn.com WARNING: Turn off Java, Javascript, etc. in your browser program before clicking on that link. The Safari program on my iMac kept quitting until I did so. (via InstaPundit)

Which brings me to Dan Rather's exit: CBS denies it has anything to do with Ra^thergate, of course, but no one believes that. I'm a bit surprised, since I had expected him to take a brief vacation and then resume full-time duties as anchorman. What a lesson his life provides about the huge costs to be paid when personal vanity rages out of control. And what a contrast between him and the dignified professional Tom Brokaw, who has just retired as NBC anchor. I was in a small group chatting with him after he spoke at our mutual alma mater, the University of South Dakota, back in the late 1970s. He would be the last to claim that he was a role model, but he was quite an inspiration nonetheless.

November 26, 2004 [LINK]

Recount in Ohio?

It sounded like a joke at first, but Democrats in Ohio are now seriously calling for a recount. See the Washington Post. Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is under bitter criticism in the Buckeye State, the same fate as Katherine Harris suffered for her role in overseeing the Florida 2000 recount. The folks behind this movement even launched their own Web site, ohiorecount.org, but for some reason it now shows nothing but an article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer on voting machines. For leftist views on this, see washingtondispatch.com. John Kerry's gracious concession on the day after the election has apparently not earned him any credit or respect from the left wing of his party. Too bad... Meanwhile, the Republican candidate Dino Rossi is ahead by 42 votes in the Washington state governor's race won by after a recount, and there will probably be a second recount.

Speaking of close races, I was looking at a Washington Post article from October 25, focusing on "ten House races to watch." The Republicans won seven of those ten races, receiving from 54 to 61 percent of the votes. In contrast, none of three the Democrats who won got more than 52 percent of the votes. These were all supposed to be close races, and provides yet another indication of how broad and deep the Republican victory really was.

November 26, 2004 [LINK]

Recount in Ukraine?

President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have both declared that the recent elections in Ukraine were not legitimate, an unusually strong statement about the political system in another country. Vladimir Putin seems to have decided that Russian security interests necessitate an iron-fisted leadership, using force or fraud to regain influence and even control over the former Soviet republics. Moscow has also resorted blunt threats during the recent flareup in the intermittent civil war in Georgia. Interestingly, a group of Democratic former congressmen who were observing the first round of the election declared that it was basically free and fair, but as reported in the Washington Post:

What the congressional group did not say was that its members were recruited and paid $500 a day by a Washington-based lobbyist who is a registered representative of the pro-Russian candidate in the race, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. ... The delegation of former lawmakers was led by Robert M. Carr, an 18-year Democratic House veteran from Michigan who is returning with another delegation to observe the runoff.

In the first round, Carr brought former Wisconsin congressmen Peter Barca, Jay Johnson and Jim Moody, as well as Norman D'Amours of New Hampshire, Ronald Coleman of Texas and Mike Ward of Kentucky.

No word yet on what these Democrats said about the second round. Even the vigorously pro-democracy Carter Center has not issued any statement on this Ukrainian travesty, more than a week after the event. What does all this say about Democrats' commitment to democracy?

November 22, 2004 [LINK]

CIA upheaval update

Robert Novak wrote about Senator John McCain's role in the CIA controversy in the Chicago Sun Times last week:

McCain told Goss the CIA is "a dysfunctional organization. It has to be cleaned out." That is, the CIA does not perform its missions. McCain told Goss that as director, he must get rid of the old boys and bring in a new team at Langley. Moreover, McCain told me this week, "with CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization."

Senator McCain appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday, giving strong support to new CIA Director Porter Goss. McCain's contention that there are "rogue elements" in the CIA is a very disturbing thought. It's quite ironic that the CIA careerist seem to be favoring the Democratic side. What's next: Will Michael Moore come out defending the CIA against Bush's attempted reforms? One of my professors at U.Va. once posed the problem in very stark terms: Can an agency with responsibility for extremely sensitive and secret matters of national security be considered truly accountable in a wide-open democracy such as ours? If not, are they above the law?

Ex-CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, the formerly anonymous author of Imperial Hubris, followed McCain on "Meet the Press," and frankly I was not very impressed. I've always been very attentive to serious arguments about U.S. foreign policy rooted in the idea that our ambitions must not exceed our resources, and I have therefore been planning on reading his book. To my surprise, however, his comments to Tim Russert were mostly formulaic criticisms of Bush, not particularly thougtful. It also struck me as a bit odd how many times he used the word sir, and from checking the transcript at MSNBC, I counted 21 times. He takes the grievances of Osama bin Laden at face value, apparently believing the threat will go away if we just pull our military forces and commercial interests out of the Middle East. He denies being an appeaser, however, and says he thinks operations like the one in Fallujah are necessary. Well! Perhaps the Sunday interview show format is not well suited for expositing his thesis.

November 19, 2004 [LINK]

Diplomacy: fantasy and reality

The Washington Post Magazine had an article on the classic board game Diplomacy, its zealous devotees, and its designer Allan Calhamer. (He eventually sold out to Avalon Hill, which now publishes it.) I learned from the article that Gideon Rose, managing editor at Foreign Affairs, is among those who have played it. The game is premised on a brutally Hobbesian view of the world, where lying and back-stabbing your allies are the keys to success. It's always been a favorite holiday pastime in the Clem household!

Speaking of diplomacy, here are some strong suggestions addressed "To the Next Secretary of State" at The Diplomad, a new blog by (mostly Republican) career U.S. Foreign Service officers. (via Daniel Drezner):

The single greatest step you could take to ensuring that merit is the basis for advancement is to do away with the Department's Affirmative Action program, i.e., quota system. It is a total fraud. It is just another white upper- and middle-class entitlement. The overwhelming beneficiaries of the program are white women from elite schools. ...

Put an end to the little ... empires established by bureaucrats who "homestead" themselves in the HR system. ...

Drastically reduce the layers of bureaucracy. ...

Finally, ignore the New York Times and CNN.

November 15, 2004 [LINK]

Even more post-election fallout

The resignation of Colin Powell as Secretary of State today was expected, so it probably doesn't mean too much for policy. When he writes his memoirs it will surely provide intense fascination. Condoleeza Rice has excellent credentials from the academic world, but is yet unproven in terms of administration and policy planning. The heads of the Agriculture, Education, and Energy Departments also tendered their resignations today, but the Pentagon is "staying the course." NBC reported that President Bush doesn't want to let Donald Rumsfeld go, because that would be seen as an admission of failure. On the contrary, the biggest sign of failure is when leaders make decisions aimed at avoiding the appearance of failure. Rumsfeld is old and his determined efforts at reforming the Pentagon have largely run out of steam, so I'm not there is any concrete reason to keep him into the second term.

Speaking of recalcitrant bureaucracies, the CIA seems to be on the verge of chaos as top-level spymasters have resigned in protest against the managerial style of newly appointed Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss. Some view him as a political hack, since he had served for several years as a congressman from Florida, but before that he worked in the CIA and has professional experience. It's hard for outsiders to know what's really going on, but Senator John McCain, who is at least an independent voice, opined on Meet the Press yesterday that the main problem is the Agency is bogged down in bureaucratic inertia, and its managers refuse to make needed reforms called for by the 9/11 Commission.

In the Washington Post, David Broder emphatically refutes the leftist notion that Election 2004 signifies a step backward into reactionary, hate-mongering darkness. He mentions the hysterical piece cited below by Maureen Dowd, who sees the Republicans as hell-bent on exploiting the poor and punishing he weak. This is utter nonsense, Broder writes, as is all the commotion over the gay marriage issue. In fact, he notes, the decisive edge was moderate voters who decided that Bush was the safer choice, given the supreme importance of the terrorism issue and security matters in general. Whether the paranoid Secular Left or the zealous Religious Right like it or not, the Republican Party remains in the hands of sensible, non-extreme conservatives. Relax, folks: The nation is in good hands.

For an off-the-wall satirical take on the collective nervous breakdown suffered by millions on the Left, see "Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values" at the Iowa Hawk blog.

The Democrats and Michael Moore

Matt Welch tries to belittle the significance of the "Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party," specifically the assertion that John Kerry could have won the election by criticizing Moore just as Bill Clinton criticized "Sister Souljah" in 1992, thereby establishing his credentials as a "moderate." Welch notes that Moore endorsed Wesley Clark, while his biggest and zaniest fans gravitated toward Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich.

I can look you in the eye and say these people do not have a significant voice within the modern Democratic Party.

Well! I beg to differ with Welch's conclusion, with which Randy Paul heartily concurs. Here in Staunton, the local Democratic Party sponsored a series of political films in October, two per night for one week, with Farenheit 9/11 being shown every night! Furthermore, the Democrats' Sixth District Web site continues (as of November 12) to highlight that film near the top of their home page, and this is rock-solid conservative territory where radical ideas are not exactly "kosher." Welch's after-the-fact attempt to disassociate the Democratic Party from guerrilla film maker simply does not square with the facts. Any politically conscious person was well aware that throughout the campaign John Kerry and the Democrats were recycling the same venomous rhetoric and the same lies about President Bush that Michael Moore was purveying. The revulsion of the moderate mainstream in this country toward such bile may have been just enough to tip the balance in Bush's favor. Welch tries to downplay Moore-ish fringe elements on the Democratic side by "point[ing] out that the Republicans' extremist fringe includes powerful senior elected politicians from their own party," such as Rick Santorum and Tom Coburn. If he considers these social conservatives "extremists," perhaps it is because he is further from the center of the political spectrum than he thinks.

November 12, 2004 [LINK]

Window of opportunity for reform?

George W. Bush is the first President since 1936 to be re-elected in a year when his party gained seats in the House and the Senate, and he is the first Republican President to be re-elected with House and Senate majorities since 1924. How weird is that? (Answer: almost as weird as the Red Sox winning the World Series.) Perhaps the mere fact that this situation is so unusual accounts for the bitter grumbling still heard from the Democratic side, which had been accustomed to holding at least some governmental power for the last several decades. Though his margin was too slim to be considered a clear mandate, he is finally in a position to get some real action. On the down side, the Republicans will now be held accountable for policy successes and errors for the next four years. (The GOP will hold onto Congress in 2006, barring some catastrophe; see below.) Most second-term "lame-duck" presidencies end up in frustration and/or scandal; indeed all of them since World War II have: Truman, Eisenhowever, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton. That may not apply this time, however, since this is the first term in which Bush can claim a majority of the popular vote.

So what now? At the top of my dream reform agenda is abolition of gerrymandering, of which both parties are guilty. Tom DeLay's intervention on behalf of redistricting in Texas is but the most recent and notorious example; Republicans in Virginia and Democrats in Maryland have done likewise on a lesser scale. In the Washington Post, David Broder fears that this pernicious habit is "... creating a U.S. House of Lords," a privileged body that is virtually immune from popular will.

Thanks to rigged boundaries and the incumbents' immense fundraising advantage, nearly 96 percent of the "races" were won by a margin of at least 10 percent.

For example, in the Sixth District of Virginia where I live, incumbent Bob Goodlatte received almost 97 percent of the vote, mainly because the Democrats didn't even bother to nominate a challenger. He is a fine representative and recently was named to the powerful position of chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and thus would have every reason to expect to be reelected. Yet even in a heavily Republican area such as the Shenandoah Valley there should be some degree of meaningful political competition. There was certainly a lot of organizing on behalf of the Kerry-Edwards ticket around here... Elsewhere in Virginia, in only one of the eleven congressional races did the winner have less than a 20-percent margin in the vote totals. BOR-ing! Such landslides are typical nationwide, reinforcing the alienation voters feel from their elected representatives in Washington. Remember, the House of Representatives is supposed to be the most direct expression of the popular will. Nowadays, incumbents have such a huge advantage that it calls in question the very democratic nature of our political system itself. What does this sad situation say about our fitness to preach democratic government in other countries?

The idea of Republicans as a reform party strikes many people as strange, but Newt Gingrich gave some good arguments for that in the Washington Post on Tuesday. For a perfect example of the hopelessly outmoded conventional thinking on such matters, read what George Silver wrote in yesterday's Post:

Today's dysfunctional health care system is a palpable example of the lessons that come from our national obsession with markets at all costs.

WRONG! Our health care "system" is the furthest thing from a pure market-driven system. It is, rather, a nightmarish publicly-subsidized monopoly in which the lack of accountability (thanks to non-market-based insurance policies) fuels an uncontrollable upward spiral of costs. I only wish enough Republicans were brave enough to actually say such a thing in public, but then they might not get reelected. (Such timidity is another sign of deep flaws in our democratic system.) Here are some other matters that I hope Bush will tackle:

Radically simplifying the U.S. tax code, perhaps replacing the corporate income tax with a luxury consumption tax.
Exempting virtually all personal savings from income tax, as part of new approach to Social Security, health insurance and loans for higher education.
Slashing U.S. contributions to the World Bank and IMF, which do more harm than good these days.
Getting serious about immigration, with more efficient processing of visa applicants, and huge fines on companies that employ undocumented workers.
Raising taxes on energy across the board, to discourage profligate waste and pollution. (I know, I'm dreaming about that.)

Peterson is guilty!

After two jurors were dismissed for misconduct, which almost caused a mistrial, Scott Peterson was just found guilty of murder in the first degree. After some of the other outrageous aquittals of recent years, it's nice to know our legal system works. In the television age, it's easy for average citizens to think they can render judgments in these high-profile cases, but we never get to see or hear all the evidence. That's why I usually refrain from weighing in. The lack of direct incriminating evidence was more than offset by the overwhelming circumstantial evidence that made it obvious he was guilty as sin. (And that's an understatement.) The jurors clearly needed plenty of time to seriously consider whether there was any other plausible scenario consistent with the known facts of the case. Clearly, no. Now, does Mr. Peterson deserve to get free room and board for the rest of his life and gloat over how close he came to getting away with his nauseatingly horrible, heinous crime, or does he deserve the Ultimate Punishment? Will European countries portray us Americans as savages if he is executed?

November 11, 2004 [LINK]

Arafat

Few peace-loving people will mourn the death of Yasser Arafat, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, along with martyred Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Another Peace Prize recipient, Jimmy Carter, had this to say today:

While he provided indispensable leadership to a revolutionary movement and was instrumental in forging a peace agreement with Israel in 1993, he was excluded from the negotiating role in more recent years.

Huh? It must be pointed out that Arafat's "exclusion" was self-inflicted. Rather than accept the nearly ideal peace terms offered by Prime Minister Ehud Barak, he resumed the Intifada in 1999, stoking the hateful fires of the fascist movement of which Osama bin Laden was a part. When his moment of truth came, he just could not rise above his terrorist past and live up to the vain hopes of the Nobel Committee by transforming himself into an elder statesman. Instead, Arafat reverted to his comfortable old ways, thereby showing himself to be a complete coward -- much like all terrorists! I'm afraid that Jimmy Carter's judgment in recent years has deteriorated from questionable to simply abysmal. There is no need to spit on Arafat's grave, but Americans and Westerners in general need to remember that his broad popularity in the Arab-Muslim world is the heart of the problem! There is simply no point in trying to accommodate the nationalist sensibilities of people who revere such a shameful figure. Whether or not they mature and leave barbaric ways behind is up to them, not us.

November 10, 2004 [LINK]

Let the Honeymoon Begin! (Please?)

In keeping with the "New Era" occasioned by the historic Republican victory on Tuesday, I've begun some long-deferred format and organizational revisions of this Web site. Real permalinks and interactive comments should be largely finished by the end of the month.

Early indications are that the olive branch extended by President Bush to his opponents on Wednesday has not been widely accepted. Indeed, quite the contrary. So much for reconciliation! For example, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Reynolds (Mr. InstaPundit) called attention to what novelist Jane Smiley wrote yesterday in Slate:

The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. ...

The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey -- workers and consumers.

Italics added to highlight inanity. Overgeneralizing, are we? That is the same basic line of presumptuous, bigoted thinking expressed by Thomas Frank in What's Wrong With Kansas?, reviewed below. E. J. Dionne is another of the Democrats who is terribly bitter about the election results, as you can hear for yourself on the NPR All Things Considered archives. (via InstaPundit) In today's Washington Post he writes in conclusion,

the burden for achieving national unity is on a president who could manage a narrow victory only by savagely trashing his opponent.

In other words, "It's all their fault! It's all their fault!" And this from an intellectual? It would help in the task of narrowing partisan differences if Dionne would either acknowledge that many of the criticisms of Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans, et al. were well grounded, or that past criticisms of the president have been terribly unfair and destructive. As I have made clear many times, I am not thrilled with some of the hardball tactics devised by Karl Rove, and being on the winning side I have the duty to go the extra mile in de-escalating the "tit for tat" warfare. Therefore, I will continue to do my best to meet his challenge to moderate Republicans of holding to account the less temperate partisans on my side, even though Dionne doesn't give me much reason to hope it will do much good. Believe it or not, the reactions on the Left to Bush's reelection get worse. From the Daily Kos blog:

The big silver lining, and it's significant, is that Kerry won't be tarred for cleaning up Bush's mess. Had Kerry gotten us out of Iraq, he would've been blamed for "losing the war". Now Bush will ineptly lose it for himself. Kerry would've been forced to make sense of a mess of a budget. Now Bush will be responsible for his own half-trillion dollar deficits.

Losing a war and national insolvency are "silver linings"? If he's trying to raise suspicions that Leftists want to drag this country down, they are succeeding. Many of the comments on that page are even creepier, worthy of a Halloween horror flick. By comparison, Richard Nixon's famous 1962 retort "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore" sounds mature. And then there's the indisputably wacko far left: The photos posted on zombietime.com of a rally in San Francisco on the day after Bush's reelection will make you sit up and take notice.

Given the traumatic magnitude of their defeat, perhaps such "sour grapes" attitudes are to be expected. Nevertheless, those of us plaintive dialogue-seekers should not despair over the apparent communication breakdown among the main factions of the U.S. body politic. The only cure for such pain-induced vitriol is time. In the coming months and years, wiser folks on the Left will get over their bitterness, reflect on their side's crippling flaws, and come up with a more constructive alternative to Bushism. They'd sure better, since would be extremely unhealthy if the opposition party did not play such an active role in shaping national policy. Others will probably remain stuck in the mud of the past for the rest of their miserable lives. However things shake out in the end, the 2004 election is almost certain to signify the definitive end of New Deal political paradigm, which has been on its death bed for at least two decades already. What's next from the Left? If they're smart, they will abandon the pursuit of socialism on a nationwide scale and instead coopt the conservative agenda of decentralized government, and start from scratch building utopian communes in places like Berkeley, Boulder, Greenwich Village, and Charlottesville. Heck, some of them might even work!

Enough of bitter, hyper-opinionated polemics, already! Here's an interesting fact-based observation from Coyote Blog: (via InstaPundit)

Assuming Cheney does not want to run for president, which I think is a given, something will happen in 2008 for the first time since 1952: Neither of the two major-party presidential candidates will be incumbents of the President or Vice-President jobs.

I heartily agree with his subsequently-posted conclusion that that the wide-open primary election campaign will be chaotic and even more distorted than usual by the absurdly early Iowa caucuses. Can we reform the nomination process by then?

Election update: As the last of the vote tallies slowly trickle in, President Bush's lead in the nationwide popular vote has actually climbed. He now has 52.1 percent of the vote, nearly matching the 53 percent share of the electoral vote he won (286 to Kerry's 252). So my prediction wasn't quite right after all! I'm tempted to say that the 4.6 million vote margin (nearly 5 percent) is big enough to count as a mandate, E. J. Dionne notwithstanding.

November 3, 2004 [LINK]

Victory, Redemption, Reconciliaton

WOW! The past 48 hours have left me utterly exhausted, but the final results made it all worth it. Just as I predicted three days ago, Bush won 51 percent to Kerry's 48 percent, just enough of a margin to put aside all those asinine gripes we've been hearing for the last four years. It's hard to imagine a more decisive election, and we will all have vivid memories of it for the rest of our lives. It may be less than a full endorsement of Bush's agenda, but it will definitely give the President a huge psychological boost as he confronts foreign adversaries. (Imagine how distraught the French and Germans must be right now!) The "icing on the cake" was the increase in GOP strength in both houses of Congress, especially the defeat of Senator Tom Daschle -- "Mr. Obstructionist" -- by John Thune in South Dakota. Any chance Tom the Consummate Washington Insider is going back to retire in his "home state"? Zip, zero, nada. Senator Kerry deserves great praise for deciding not to contest the results in Ohio, where he was at least 130,000 votes behind, not including the "provisional" ballots. (What a risk-prone mechanism those are!) His concession speech was a bit late perhaps, but the tone was gracious and sincere, which will hopefully go a long way toward restoring public trust and repairing the damage to our body politic caused by the Florida 2000 fiasco. John Edwards came across as more defiant, in contrast, perhaps indicating that he'll run for the Number One spot in 2008 -- against Hillary??? President Bush made a fine victory speech, graciously reciprocating the peace offering from Kerry. Let us hope and pray that enough of Kerry's supporters take Bush's words to heart.

For more on what I've been up to with the local Republicans for the last few days, take a look at swacgop.org. It includes a video I took of the rally last October 28, the first time I've dabbled in Web video. Good old Apple iMovie and QuickTime come through reliably as ever, once again.

November 1, 2004 [LINK]

The Moment of Truth

O.K., here's what this pivotal moment in our nation's history really means: Do we have enough confidence in the values that bind us together as a nation to recognize the barbarian challenge for what it is, or will we simply shrug and shuffle away with our figurative tails between our legs? Because I am an unabashed believer in all the good that America stands for (though acknowledging our blemishes), I am sticking to my hunch that Bush will end up with a slight majority in the nationwide popular vote. Voting for Bush is an expression of resolve and solidarity, the vital psychological underpinning upon which our national security depends. I liken this moment to the early 1980s when there were huge protests against the deployment of U.S. cruise missiles and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe. Nevertheless, elections in several NATO countries in effect ratified President Reagan's buildup, which nullified the Soviet nuclear advantage and ultimately played a huge part in ending the Cold War. Senator Kerry, in case you don't recall, was a staunch opponent of the Reagan foreign policy, wrong as usual when it comes to security matters. He talks tough about "hunting down" Al Qaeda, but he acts as though he had a spine of rubber. Mortal danger has the healthy effect of focusing one's mind on how to survive, and I think enough American people are aware that we are close to that point. I will give Kerry my (conditional) support if he is elected, since we simply must stand together in this time of peril, but I will tremble for the fate of this great nation if and when his hands are on the wheel of the Ship of State.

Larry Sabato's last Crystal Ball before the election hints at a slight edge for Kerry, depending on the turnout, since no incumbent has ever won an election without a clear lead in the polls. He foresees a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College, in which case the GOP-controlled House would choose the president. How will the Democrats react in that case? Armies of lawyers are standing by.

Good news for Bush: Reds' Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench endorsed him at a huge rally last night at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, where I saw a game back in August. The estimated attendance was 40,000. (I would have guessed more like 30,000, given that most of the upper deck was empty.) Bush appeared calm and confident, and that kind of event might be enough to tip the Ohio vote into his column. Kerry, however, has seemed strained and nervous, and positively silly when he wears that Red Sox cap. By the way, where is Mrs. Heinz Kerry these days? Locked up in a luxury suite in BelAir, or Bermuda, perhaps?

Rush Limbaugh raised a good point today: the Redskins don't play in Washington any more (FedEx Field is actually in Landover, Maryland), so that old superstition about incumbent presidents losing elections no longer applies.

Given all the nice things I've said about him, this is probably a good moment to review Bush's major failures and shortcomings.

Not telling the American people how arduous the war would be, or asking them to make material sacrifices.
Not asking Congress for a formal declaration of war against Iraq, in lieu of U.N. authorization.
Not making enough gestures of respect for the Iraqi people, and Arabs in general.
Not listening to advisers who urged a more robust occupation force, thus losing the strategic initiative, temporarily.
Not articulating a clear enough vision of what freedom would mean for the Middle East and the Third World. (MTV?)
Not upholding true conservative principles in health and education policy, or in the budget in general.

George Will makes some of these points in his tepid endorsement of Bush in yesterday's Washington Post. In the end, he writes, the most important thing is pursuing a firm, steady course in defeating the Arab-Islamic terrorists -- and Bush knows it. I'm willing to bet that the Democrats would have been in a much better position to win this election if such fringe elements as MoveOn.org and ACT had been more restrained and reasonable in their criticisms of Bush.

Just what I was thinking: Osama bin Laden's surprise address to the American people sounded like it was written by Michael Moore or the Democratic National Committee. Guess what? A Democrat has frankly admitted as much. Will the implications of this striking rhetorical convergence sink in to enough heads by tomorrow? See Jeff Jarvis's buzzmachine. (via InstaPundit and Belmont Club)

The eerie thing about the bin Laden tape is how he remixes Michael Moore -- remixes as if in a Cuisinart. I swear the guy saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and picked up the themes for his latest wacky show -- even the fixation with that goat book. It's so nutty that if he weren't such an evil murdering slime, it would almost be funny. Or it would sound like another 527 ad.

What's also strange is that it's hard to see exactly how he wants to influence the election. Though it may seem he's trying to defeat the President, taunting Bush and America may only serve Bush. And that may be his goal: These cult nuts feed on having enemies and Bush is his ideal enemy.

I sharply dispute his last part, of course, since I think bin Laden is more sophisticated than that. Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, all that made me think, what if Bush has been consciously downplaying the importance of Osama bin Laden in order to undermine his prestige among his supporters? Did Bush deliberatedly "take his eye off the ball" (as Kerry keeps whining) in order to rob bin Laden of the attention he needs to survive?? If so, it would a "psychological operation" of the highest order. Reactions from the Looney Left to the bin Laden videotape (see erictheunred, via InstaPundit) make you wonder if some of that stuff is coming from right-wing plants out to discredit them. Nah, that's too conspiratorial.

NOTE: The blog posts above this point (chronologically subsequent) are part of my upgraded archiving system; blog posts below (chronologically preceding) were done the old fashioned way, lacking permalinks.)

October 31, 2004

Bad news for Bush:

The Redskins just lost to the Packers at FedEx Field, 28-14, and every presidential election immediately following a Redskins home defeat since the Redskins moved to Washington in 1937 has been lost by the incumbent party, and vice versa. Today's loss was tainted by bad officiating, however: What would have been a go-ahead touchdown pass play for the Redskins was called back on an illegal backfield motion penalty that the instant replays showed was dubious at best. The Redskins' in-motion back may have paused for a less than a full second prior to the snap, as he was supposed to do. I demand a recount! Perhaps this is a job for Football Fans for Truth!

Even if I were superstitious, I would still hold out hope based on the fact that this season has seen two long-standing historical precedents smashed: Baseball is returning to Washington, and the Red Sox won the World Series. Who's to say whether yet another Iron Law in the sports world won't finally be broken this year? (Speaking of which, Maryland beat Florida State for the first time ever yesterday, and the Steelers are on their way to upsetting the Patriots' 17 (?)-game winning streak!) Seriously, I'm guessing that Bush will win the popular vote by a slim majority, enough to erase any doubt about his "legitimacy," but not enough to lay to rest all the silly challenges that are likely to erupt, however the results turn out: Bush 51%, Kerry 48%, Nader, et al. 1%. So many states are up for grabs, however, that the electoral vote could go either way. That's why I'm preparing myself for the possibility of a Kerry presidency, as made clear in my letter to the editor in today's Staunton News Leader. (There were twenty (20) others!) Alas, I had to trim nearly half of it away to fit within their 350-word limit.

It is hard to know what to make of all the letters attacking President Bush that have appeared in your newspaper. Sometimes they make reasonably valid criticisms, but more often they are filled with hatred and bitter closed-mindedness. It's a perfect example of how many Americans have become "unglued," as your editorial in July put it. Blind dissent is just as bad as blind patriotism, if not more so.

Some differences of opinion in the war against terrorism are to be expected, since terrorists, and the "rogue regimes" that harbor them, specialize in sowing confusion and doubt about their intentions. However, Bush critics who deny that Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks or claim that there never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are missing a fundamental point: Rogue regimes derive their political power not so much from formal links to terrorists or the actual possession of WMDs as from their ability to raise foreign anxieties. Did U.N. inspections ease our anxieties? No. Did Saddam Hussein's defiant cheering of the 9/11 attacks serve to rally Arab-Islamic terrorists? Yes. As long as he was in power, we could never feel safe. Senator Kerry's alternative -- focusing on "hunting down" al-Qaida while ignoring the culture of violence in the Middle East -- would be futile. As President Bush has emphasized, making America safer depends on promoting freedom abroad. This task will not be quick or easy.

Likewise, there are terrible misunderstandings about the Bush foreign policy. Suffice it to say that the multilateral approach favored by Sen. Kerry was made impossible when French and German leaders decided to exploit anti-American sentiment for domestic political purposes in 2002. That was not President Bush's fault.

The growing polarization in the American electorate may be a sign that the terrorists are succeeding in dividing us from within. As long as we Americans stand together, we will withstand any attacks launched against us. Divided, however, we fall. I will support whoever is elected president, but I will have far more confidence in our nation's security if President Bush is re-elected.

ANDREW G. CLEM
Staunton

October 30, 2004

As election day approaches, our collective anxiety about terrorism increases. Aside from proving he's really alive, Osama bin Laden's videotape had the healthy effect of getting Senator Kerry to call the enemy by their rightful name: "barbarians." The fact that he's worried [about] a mere media appearance by the Al Qaeda leader -- as opposed to an actual attack -- suggests that Kerry and perhaps many Democrats have been pinning their hopes on Al Qaeda remaining out of the picture. Bin Laden's message laid equal guilt at the hands of Bush and Kerry, and while he probably sees no significant difference between the two, the election will still make a big difference in how the war is fought, and terrorists can hardly be neutral. Besides, they need to show they have clout -- by influencing foreign decisions -- in order to recruit new members.

Missing explosives update: Senator Kerry has harped on the alleged stolen high explosives in the final days of the campaign, even though his aides admit that no one knows the full story yet. To me, that shows desperation, and it gave President Bush a great rhetorical opportunity:

This week Senator Kerry is again attacking the actions of our military in Iraq, with complete disregard for the facts. Senator Kerry will say anything to get elected. The Senator's willingness to trade principle for political convenience makes it clear that John Kerry is the wrong man for the wrong job, at the wrong time. (via www.georgewbush.com)

As expected, Daniel Drezner also endorsed Kerry, based on what he believes was the incompetent way the postwar pacification was handled. Interestingly, however, I've just learned that the newspaper in John Kerry's hometown -- the Lowell Sun -- has endorsed President Bush. The title says it all: "It's about national security." Christopher Hitchens gave a weak endorsement to Bush in The Nation, after a cryptic and equivocal rejection of Bush in Slate. Well, I can certainly understand ambivalent feelings about Bush.

October 30, 2004

Kansas blues.

I just finished a book that expresses in fine detail how the Left views the upsurge of the Right over the past 25 years. It's What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank. I saw him on C-SPAN2 a few weeks ago, and he seemed reasonable enough. I was immediately taken aback, however, by the razor-sharp rhetoric and comments such as the "borderline criminality of capitalism itself..." Hello, Comrade! The fact that poorer, rural areas have come to vote Republican on a habitual basis contrary to what he believes is in "their fundamental interests" is evidence of widespread "derangement" which "is the bedrock of our civic order..." (Gosh! I'll have to tell that to folks here in Staunton; I'm sure they'll be thrilled to know that.) Raised in Kansas but frustrated as a young adult, Frank seethes with resentment toward the economic elite, while denying the existence of a liberal cultural elite. He probably couldn't grasp the irony that his book is a perfect example of the arrogant presumptiveness of the liberal elite. I did learn some interesting details on conservatives from Kansas, such as Sen. Sam Brownback and the Koch family, and on the issue of abortion in the early 1990s. I would agree it was too bad Republican moderates were overtaken by fundamentalist zealots. I'm all too familiar with the dying small towns across the prairies which he decries, but he glosses over the fact that these changes began long before the Reagan Revolution. Why on earth can't he at least acknowledge the possibility that two generations of urban-driven Democratic labor-union machine politics created huge distortions in our economy that were prejudicial to agrarian interests? His epilogue betrays what I see as the fatal flaw of many in the Left today: bitter, fatalistic resignation to impending doom: "Kansas is ready to lead us singing into the apocalypse." The fact that radical ideologues such as Frank who pose as scholarly analysts are gaining credence in mainstream circles these days is sadly indicative of the recent tilt toward the Left on the American political landscape. It is also a sign of fierce political battles to come.

Sign survey:

I was driving around town a few days ago, and decided to keep a rough tally of the political yard signs. Staunton is solid "red" (conservative, not socialist) country, so I expected a majority of Bush-Cheney signs. To my surprise, there were more than twice as many Kerry-Edwards signs: 50 to 24. Does this portend an upset win for Kerry in the Old Dominion? More likely it's an indication that all those reports we've been getting of stolen Bush-Cheney signs being stolen are true. We'll see. Democrats' support seems much stronger in upper-income neighborhoods. Speaking of stolen signs, a Democratic activist from North Carolina was arrested for theft and trespassing after he was videotaped stealing Bush-Cheney sign from a location where there had been at least two previous thefts. What are the Democrats doing with all those stolen signs? I hope they are at least recycling them properly.

GOP rally in Staunton!

Congressman Bob Goodlatte and Attorney General Jerry Kilgore spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of well over 100 supporters at the Republican headquarters yesterday afternoon. For photos, see swacgop.org.

October 27, 2004

The latest "scandal" over 380 tons of missing high explosives in Iraq, as reported by the New York Times on Monday, may be another concocted brew of half-truths. NBC's Jim Milkaszewski reported that when U.S. troops arrived at the site during the ground offensive toward Baghdad in April 2003, the explosives were already gone. (See MSNBC for an update.) The fact that CBS News and Kerry's campaign picked up on it so quickly raises eyebrows (Where is Mary Mapes?), and Rush Limbaugh declared that this is the Democrats' "October surprise." (Speaking of which, I thought they were going to capture Osama bin Laden this week.) The polls seem to be tightening, and the Washington Post's daily tracking poll puts Kerry ahead slightly, but I'm not panicking just yet.

As expected, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan announced he's voting for Kerry, as "the lesser of two risks..." The reasons for his disappointment in Bush are well put, if emotionally strained, but his defense of Kerry on national security issues sounds like wishful thinking: "Besides, the Democratic party needs to be forced to take responsibility for the security of the country that is as much theirs' as anyone's." How about Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of Defense!?

Does Kerry really Have "a Plan" to get European countries to share the burden in Iraq? Sebastian Mallaby writes in the Washington Post:

If neither foreign nor Iraqi troops come to the rescue, a President Kerry might face a choice: Take back his election talk of bringing soldiers home, or take back his election talk of winning. Kerry is a responsible leader surrounded by a tough foreign policy team, and in the past few days I've edged closer to the view that he would not abandon Iraq prematurely. But if his team really did present the Europeans with a [Senator Joe] Biden-style ultimatum -- you get into Iraq or we get out -- it would risk creating a dynamic that would lead to a U.S. withdrawal and terrifying anarchy.

Which leads me to make a point that has been percolating in my mind for many months: Maybe Kerry and/or some of his top supporters actually want the United States to lose? It sounds insane, but the bitter spitefulness many on the Democratic side have showed in the last few years make you wonder. "See, we told you so!" Would Kerry as president be willing to jeopardize American interests down just to prove a partisan point? After reflecting, I will put that option past him, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Perhaps such thinking is what gives rise to the hostile reactions faced by Republicans. Just out of curiousity, a journalist in Southern California decided to don a Kerry-Edwards shirt and strolled through conservative communities such as Bakersfield; then he put on a Bush-Cheney shirt and walked into the hip and posh neighborhoods of Venice, where counterculture Bohemians and the Hollywood set hang out. Guess what kind of reaction he got in each place?? See "Political Poseur: Pretending to be a Republican in Blue California" by Richard Rushfield in slate.com. (via InstaPundit)

World Series and Decision 2004:

Many people have concluded that the Red Sox ALCS triumph is a harbinger for a Kerry victory, since the team from Bush's home state lost in the NLCS. Here's another possibility: The fact that both teams in the World Series have red colors means that the candidate favored by the (GOP) "red states" will win the election!

October 24, 2004

Will John Kerry show up at Fenway Park for Game 2 of the World Series tonight? I'm sure "Manny Ortez" would be happy to see him. Massachusetts is safely in his column, so it's more likely he would be campaigning in Wisconsin, perhaps seeing a game in Green Bay's "Lambert Field." Kerry showed that he's a real manly man by going hunting in a crisp new camouflage outfit last week. Wind-surfing, anyone?

Most of the polls show a close race, with a slight lead for Bush. There's a lot of uncertainty because polls depend on telephone directories, but many young folks rely exclusively on cell phones these days, and are thus excluded from the sampling universe. Which reminds me, I've gotten into the habit of ignoring incoming phone calls unless the Caller ID tells me who it is, so any pollster trying to reach me this year didn't. That's another reason for the big uncertainty as we head for the finish line. A few months ago it was conventional wisdom that incumbents either win by a comfortable margin or lose decisively; this year may break that pattern. My hunch is that most of the undecideds will opt for Bush at the last minute, not being convinced that Kerry has anything better to offer, and perhaps a little spooked by his tactless wife. (Laura Bush never had a "real" job? How appalling. Imagine the wars that she might start by an offhand remark at an official reception.)

Meanwhile, Larry Sabato compares this election to that of 1916, in terms of the dynamic between foreign and domestic issues. See his Crystal Ball. It really shouldn't have come as such a surprise that Bush did better in the later debates which focused more on domestic policy, since that was his the heart of his original agenda during the 2000 campaign. 9/11 changed all that.

In spite of some misgivings, I strongly favor Bush over Kerry, mainly because of the war on terrorism. Here is my brutally honest, scrupulously impartial assessment:

Decision 2004: A Fair and Balanced Assessment
Issue / aspect	Bush	Kerry
War on terrorism	B	D
Other foreign policy	B	C
Trade and immigration	B	B
Economy	C	C
Civil rights & judicial issues	B	C
Social issues	B	C
Health care	C	F
Environment	C	B
Character	B	C
Intellect	C	A
Likeability	A	D
OVERALL	B	C-

As I've made clear recently, nothing Kerry has said gives me any confidence that he really understands the nature of the conflict being waged against the West by the Arab-Islamic fascists. Note that Bush's "C" grade for economic issues is not based on any blame for the recent slow economy, but rather his apparent lack of concern for long-term fiscal soundness. Kerry is slightly better in terms of rhetoric, but is basically an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Keynesian Democrat. Bush's "C" for health care reflects his pandering to AARP on the prescription medicine coverage under Medicare. Kerry's "F" grade in that category reflects his pandering to trial lawyers (the biggest single source of health care inflation) and his fatuous promise of universal insurance coverage while denying any intention to impose government controls. That is simply impossible; as Bush said, Kerry's proposals would take us a huge step toward a European state-run system. Many people think we are inexorably headed that way in any case; not me!

October 22, 2004

In today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer digs beneath the multilateralist foreign policy rhetoric of John Kerry and asks what he can possibly do to deliver on such a dubious promise. What is the one issue on which Europe and Mideast Muslim countries stand in agreement? Opposition to Israel. Krauthammer thinks Kerry intends to pressure Israel into major concessions and/or dramatically scale back U.S. security guarantees toward the Jewish state.

October 21, 2004

Is John Kerry disqualified?

Legal blogger Eugene Volokh addresses the question of whether section 3 of the 14th Amendment would bar the junior senator from Massachusetts from serving as this nation's Chief Executive (or indeed in Congress itself), by virtue of having met with North Vietnamese officials during the Vietnam War and having slandered American armed forces. Here is the relevant text:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

(italics added for emphasis) Volokh ultimately concludes that this clause does not apply as one might think it does, but it is an intriguing thought, nonetheless. In more recent years, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) is at the top of this list of those who have come perilously close to giving aid or comfort to our enemies. (link via InstaPundit)

October 20, 2004

You're a Republican???

Why, yes, that is What I Am. For a heartfelt manifesto from a guy (George J. Esseff, Sr.) who is sick and tired of all the insults and bigoted stereotypes that have been hurled at members of the Party of Lincoln in recent years, take a look at whatiam.net. This appeared as a full-page "open letter" ad in this morning's Washington Post.

October 20, 2004

Based on the third debates last week, Daniel Drezner raised his probability of voting for Kerry from 60% to 80%. After reconsidering foreign policy comments submitted by his readers, he has since lowered the probability back down to 70%. His explanation is thorough and thoughtful, if not entirely convincing. I do fault Bush for not making it clearer from the outset that we had no desire to stay in Iraq any longer than is necessary, and for not seizing the opportunity to pay respect to the wounded pride of Iraqi people immediately after Saddam Hussein was toppled. I'm not convinced that a bigger occupation force would have made much difference in pacifying Iraq, and I'm definitely not convinced by Kerry's bemoaning Bush's alleged lack of a "plan to win the peace." We're not imperialists, so we can't presume to script the final outcome via a "plan." In a sense, the awkward handling of the transition by U.S. authorities is a reassuring sign that we don't mean to make this a routine course of action. Back to Drezner's main points, his complaints about the lack of coordination between the State Department professionals and administration Neoconservatives such as Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz are valid, in my view. The problem is that this focus makes Drezner quite oblivious to Senator Kerry's policy incoherence, failure to grasp the nature of the conflict, and his lack of commitment to winning the war.

October 19, 2004

So what about the flap over John Kerry "outing" Mary Cheney during the last debate? I thought it was tacky and crassly opportunistic, but not much to get excited about. Like President Bush, I'm basically "agnostic" on the nature-vs.-nurture question of "gaity" -- I just don't know how much choice is involved for most people. But that's just not good enough for some people such as Richard Cohen, who lambastes Bush's "intellectual obtuseness, the fervid confession of ignorance" in today's Washington Post. Though granting that homosexuality may not be 100% predetermined, he rants on, "Deep in his heart -- which too often functions as his brain -- Bush knows he has pandered to ignorance and homophobia." Just how does Cohen knows what is in the President's heart or mind? I sharply disagree with his proposed "Defense of Marriage Amendment," but at least Bush came across as sincere and thoughtful on the subject.

After seeing those big grinning teeth on one of the Sunday morning political shows, I thought of a good question to ask Jimmy Carter:

President Carter, please compare the recent referendum in Venezuela to the 2000 elections in Florida by ranking each on a scale of 1 (filthy, rigged) to 10 (pristine).

Would he dare answer candidly? He often gives the impression that there's not much difference, a disgraceful slur on our political system. Perhaps President-for-Life Hugo Chavez will build a statue to Jimmy Carter to replace the one of Christopher Columbus that was torn down.

October 18, 2004

In a fit of hyperbole, John Edwards said last week that if he and Kerry win the election, "people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." Oh really? In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer (who is wheelchair-bound) wrote,

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Mr. Reeve was a great inspiration for disabled people, but the tragedy of his horse-riding accident was compounded when his life ended up being exploited for political purposes. I'll never forget his dramatic appearance at the 1996 Democratic convention, which laid the sentimental groundwork for Bill Clinton's reelection triumph against the sensible but dour Senator Dole. Reeve asked what was meant by all this talk of "family values," and said, "I think it means we are all family. And we all have value." Like Plato (in his Republic) and like the 19th Century Socialist utopians, he saw no harm in seeking to forge a mass-scale community of sharing and equality. Never mind that such a vision clashes so directly with our own political culture!

What about the sexual harrassment allegedly committed by Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly? It's way too soon to know with any degree of confidence. Just because he fits the stereotype of a "mean-spirited Republican" does not mean he is necessarily guilty, and the same goes for Tom DeLay. As for the latter's troubles, I would hope one side-effect of the recent criticism of him would be to undermine the blatantly partisan redistricting schemes of the kind that he hatched in Texas. Can we hope to reverse the nationwide trend as exemplified by Colorado, Maryland, and Virginia? Both parties share guilt for this.

As a "public service," here are the links to the Web sites cited in last week's "Doonesbury" comic strips. Most of them aim to undermine President Bush's credentials as a conservative. Some of them are up front, making points that I think have validity, while others have a certain aroma of disingenuity, like the "seminar callers" that Rush Limbaugh complains about. To me, the grievances stem from the fundamental liberal-conservative conundrum associated with war that Bruce Porter (1994) called attention to. Even if Garry Trudeau doesn't buy the conservative premises to begin with, thus casting doubt on the sincerity of this bit of campaigning, they are worth reading for open-minded people.

Monday 10/11/04: theunionleader.com (John Eisenhower)
Tuesday 10/12/04: poynter.org (dead link?)
Wednesday 10/13/04: salon.com (Doug Bandow)
Thursday 10/14/04: journalstar.com (Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-NE)
Friday 10/15/2004: iconoclast-texas.com
Saturday 10/16/2004: washingtonpost.com (George Will, last year)

October 13, 2004

UPDATE: Bush continued to improve both stylistically and in command of the issues tonight. Even liberal stalwart Mort Kondracke gave Bush the win. There were a couple solid points made by Kerry that Bush either didn't answer or didn't have a chance to answer, but otherwise he kept Kerry on the defensive the whole time. Also, Kerry repeatedly strayed away from the questions that were asked, feeling like he needed to make one more point about the previous issue, a bad sign. Bush handled with sincere ease the final question about the role of his wife and daughters, whereas it was almost too painful to watch Kerry do likewise. I felt a little sorry for him.

Just in time for the third presidential debate, I've written another big essay on "Understanding the War on Terrorism," posted on the SWACGOP Web site. Yet another plaintive appeal to fair-minded skeptics of the war, interspersed with a few sharp political barbs. (HINT: Your vote this year counts more than you could ever imagine.) Revisions are likely, in which case I'll post an updated version on this Web site. Back to the debates, the first two were pleasantly substantive, rising above the low standards we have come to expect in recent years. Too bad it interrupts tonight's ball game in The Bronx.

October 11, 2004

Glenn Reynolds writes in unusual detail about Kerry's comments in a New York Times Magazine article about wanting to reduce terrorism to the level of a "nuisance." Bush and his campaign organization jumped all over Kerry for that one, and there is a big irony in that Bush himself had caught some flak in early September for saying that we should not expect a clearcut military victory over the terrorists. That's just common sense, but Kerry has an extra burden of proof to surmount, by virtue of his own mealy-mouthed past statements that cast doubt on his commitment to prevail in the war on terrorism. Furthermore, the Bush ads mocking Kerry contain a very valid fundamental criticism: Over three years after 9/11, Kerry still shows no indication of grasping the nature of the Arab-Islamic fascist movement, or the political agenda behind it. He really does seem to think of terrorism as just an extreme form of juvenile delinquency that we just have to live with. On that point, he is dead wrong.

The networks and major newspapers all focused on the part of the report by U.S. chief weapons inspector Robert Duelfer that concluded that Saddam Hussein's capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction had been seriously degraded during the 1990s. Hardly any of them picked up on the part that found large-scale bribery of U.N. officials via the hopelessly corrupt "oil for food" program, rendering the economic sanctions against Iraq and the whole idea of "containing" Saddam a pathetic joke. (See Washington Post.) No surprise there. Another bit of good news for the Bush administration that got lost in the shuffle was the electoral victory of Australian Prime Minister John Howard's conservative coalition. He is almost as important an ally of the United States as Britain's Tony Blair.

In South Dakota, John Thune seems to have a narrow lead against incumbent Senator Tom "Mr. Obstruction" Daschle. The Washington Post reports that both candidates are pandering to West River ranchers who regard prairie dogs as destructive pests. Mainly for political reasons, environmental regulations on prairie dogs were recently loosened, so thousands of those burrowing rodents will probably be poisoned in coming months. To think that such peripheral issues might tip the balance of power in the U.S. Senate...

Archives, 2004

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Tsunami: 9/11 times 50?

Susan Sontag

Radical utopians, here and there

More recounts!

Is conservatism unpopular?

Wiretapping, foreign and domestic

Cabinet update

Intelligence reform

"That's really gotta hurt!"

Cabinet shakeups

Abstinence

Krugman on Social Security

U.N. scandals widen

Sweet home Alabama

"Anchors away!"

"Reddest" county in a "red" state

Dems lose control of media

Recount in Ohio?

Recount in Ukraine?

CIA upheaval update

Diplomacy: fantasy and reality

Even more post-election fallout

The Democrats and Michael Moore

Window of opportunity for reform?

Peterson is guilty!

Arafat

More Post-Election Fallout

Let the Honeymoon Begin! (Please?)

Victory, Redemption, Reconciliaton

The Moment of Truth

Bad news for Bush:

Kansas blues.

Sign survey:

GOP rally in Staunton!

World Series and Decision 2004:

Is John Kerry disqualified?

You're a Republican???

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