j a c k *

Advice and Dissent...

Everybody hates job interviews.  They are often a grueling and dehumanizing affair, for interviewer and interviewee alike.  At least the candidate can look forward to being offered a job if they perform well, but for the interviewer the potential rewards are mostly negative.  If this is an early screening to qualify candidates, the interviewer can end up with some share of the blame if someone they approve turns out badly.  If this is a courtesy interview only intended to get the interviewer's by-in then they may face some degree of retribution for rejecting candidates, especially favorites of the CEO.

The Senate's advice and consent role in confirming cabinet appointments is much more like the latter.  Confirmation hearings can be thought of as a kind of job interview, but the kind that are permitted only after the candidate has been selected and cleared by management.  Senators have two choices: they can confirm the nominee, thus giving their tacit approval and potentially sharing in responsibility, or they can reject the nominee and perhaps expect a reduced role in setting policy as retaliation.  To escape this Catch-22, an understanding has developed that the Senate grants wide liberties to the President in picking his cabinet.  By officially saying that they are giving the benefit of the doubt to the executive, the bulk of the responsibility for failure will lie with him, not them.

But in Karl Rove's black or white political landscape, does anyone really expect that they can beat a no-win scenario anymore?  Either way they vote -- even the weaselly third way of "approve with reservations" -- will be used against them.  The old rules do not apply, and the facts about how the Senate really works are not going to get in the way of a good smear campaign come election time, or a tu quoque flight from responsibility for continuing administration catastrophes.

Some have argued that the Gonzales confirmation is a more important fight than the Rice confirmation was because the post of AG does a lot more than just carry out administration policy.  As the nation's police chief he has to be responsible to the people, not just the President.  I would agree with this line of reasoning if the battle was about stopping his confirmation.  It's not.  Given that Abu Ghraib was not enough of a scandal for even moderate Republicans to distance themselves from Gonzales, we can pretty much assume they will keep their ranks close and confirm him as they did with Ashcroft.  In this case I see little difference between opposing someone with a record of failure in her prior job, and someone with a record of bad judgments in his resume.

The big issue for the next four years is going to be accountability.  Iraq, jobs, security, economy, foreign relations, health care, the dollar, education -- as administration failures in all these areas continue to mount the Democrats will need to be in the position to lay blame where it belongs.  Are Senate Democrats laying the right groundwork now for that fight?  Boxer, with her principled stand against Rice's lies and distortions that took us into Iraq, is.  Feinstein, with her blanket "everyone thought so too"  absolution of Rice, is not.

- jack*

Distract and Annoy...

How goes the war?  Is the war in Iraq going well, or is it going badly?  How much longer do we expect it to endure, and what are the conditions under which it will end?  In other words: are we winning, and what do we mean by "winning?"  These are frightfully important questions.  Whether you supported the war or not when it started, and whether you think it should continue now or you believe it should be stopped, the answers to these questions are critical to the future of the U.S. and the world, not to mention a matter of life or death for our soldiers.  We can't afford to be wrong.

And yet, with so much at stake, there are those who will not take these questions seriously.  They don't want to talk about it.  Rather than engage in any discussion of whether the war may be going badly, and especially if changes in leadership may be required, they prefer to evade the question.  One common form of this evasion goes something like this:

You liberals are always looking for an excuse to blame Bush for anything that goes wrong.  You never blame the head-loppers and car bombers for what they do.  Don't they bear some responsibility for their actions?

I see this same thing crop up over and over in various forms.  Alberto Gonzales had his own more subtle version of this favorite winger evasion:

We are nothing like our enemy, Senator. While we are struggling to try to find out at Abu Ghraib, they’re beheading people like Danny Pearl and Nick Berg.

Surprisingly often, when confronted with this, liberals rush to defend themselves -- making suddenly harsh statements about how bad terrorists and other criminals are, castigating them for their evil actions, and bending over backwards to say how we are better than them.  But this is unnecessary and counterproductive.

Fundamentally this is an ad hominem attack -- an attempt to discredit the person asking the question rather than addressing the question itself.  The winger in this case intends to discredit the liberal and thus defuse their argument without having to confront the real evidence at all.  Deferring to someone who has attacked you in this way validates their position, and doing so in a cool and rational manner may be actually used against you.  Recall the way that Micheal Dukakis' well-reasoned stand against capital punishment was attacked not on its merits, but ad hominem.  Implicit in that rather sick and twisted hypothetical was the assumption that being against the death penalty was equivalent to being for vicious murderers.  Likewise in this case the attacker wants to create a guilt-by-association between those who criticize administration policy and the enemy in Iraq.

Going beyond the personal, this argument is a utilitarian straw man which can be dragged out at a moment's notice to deflect any criticism of the administration.  A straw man argument attacks a different -- and weaker -- argument than is actually being presented.  So instead of standing up to critiques of specific Bush policies, supporters of the regime frame their defense as if they were defending all Bush policies, the party, or the man himself.  Tempered criticisms are dismissed with claims of partisanship, charges of bias, or the blanket "Bush-hater" -- as in the "you liberals always blame Bush" construction above.  Of course the originator of a charge has nothing to do with the validity of the charge itself (something many wingnuts were quite willing to parrot during the Swift Boat campaign), but since the Bush administration has been the author of so many and varied bad policies, critics of one specific policy often turn out to be critics of many other policies as well.  This cornucopia of failed policies has ironically bolstered this defense.  Again, liberals sometimes make the mistake of trying to cite Bush policies they support as evidence of their fairness -- an unnecessary and almost always fruitless concession.

At a superficial level this argument does contain a contention that could be the basis of legitimate debate: can we hold our leaders responsible if the war goes badly?  The argument against often has a vaguely racist tone, but if we ignore that it can be stated quite simply.  War is messy.  Unexpected things happen.  Since no one can predict the outcome ahead of time, no one can be held responsible for any outcome.

The argument for is a little less simple, but we can approach it through a series of analogies.  Take sports.  If a team has a long run of losses, should the managers hold the coach responsible?  Certainly there are random factors in any game, elements which cannot be predicted, but in the long term the coach is responsible.  Any coach who claimed not to be responsible for the outcome of his team's games would not be fit for the job.

Of course sports are a fair competition, with rules and a referee.  What about domains that are more cutthroat?  Take Wall Street.  If two corporations battle for the same market, and one is succeeding while the other fails, should the officers of the failing company be held accountable?  Of course they should.  People invested in the company because they believed the management would be able to employ a strategy that would capture the market.  While it is true that the actions of the other company deprived them of their target market, that is not a valid excuse.  To allow a failing executive team to give nothing but excuses quarter after quarter would be utterly irresponsible for the board and for shareholders.

Of course corporate competition is at least bounded by the rule of law.  We can't apply the same intuitions to people outside the law, can we?  OK, take normal crime.  If the mayor runs on a law and order ticket, and the police chief he installs presides over a massive increase in crime, should the voters hold the mayor and the police chief responsible?  Again, of course they should.  Any mayor who said "the people you should blame for the increase in crime are the criminals themselves" would be laughed out of office.  Naturally criminals commit crimes.  Citizens don't expect the police to magically make criminals commit less crime, they expect the police to protect them from and prevent crime.  If the current police can't do the job well, they should be fired and someone else should be found.

The central point here is that each job holds certain responsibilities.  A coach is responsible for winning games.  A CEO is responsible for winning market share.  A policeman is responsible for protecting people from crime.  A secretary of defense is responsible for winning wars.  A national security adviser is responsible for correctly assessing security threats.  All of these jobs entail working against other people in related jobs who want to prevent you from succeeding.  It's possible in the short term to blame bad luck or weather or some other circumstance for failure, but in the long term there is no other place to put responsibility.  Blaming your own failure on the very people you are paid to best is simply an admission of defeat.

It's vitally important, second by second, for the American people to know how the war is going, good or bad, for their own sakes as well as that of their children in uniform.  And yet every day there are people who try to stop the discussion.  Where are the real patriots who will face the naked facts?

- jack*

The Boxer Rebellion...

Given those facts and given that the Democrats hold neither the White House nor either chamber of Congress, the only power the Democrats have is their power to state the facts clearly and withhold the legitimacy they alone can impart through providing bipartisan cover.

Joshua Micah Marshall, Talking Points Memo

Politics has changed.  And I think Barbara Boxer is starting to get it.

I'm pleased with Senator Boxer.  She is one of my representatives, and I have voted for as often as possible in my lifetime.  I'm less than completely happy with the more senior but more ambiguous Senator Feinstein, although I have also voted for her since I have preferred her to any of her electoral competitors.  But Boxer, unlike her most of her Democratic cohorts, appears to have found the only workable approach to double-oh politics.

During the past several decades, the environment where the modern Democrat evolved, no single party controlled all the levers of power.  We had Republican presidents with a Democratic Congress, or Democratic presidents with a Republican congress, and the third and fourth estates were reasonably neutral.  The eighties Democrat takes a cautious and well-considered approach.  The nineties Democrat still believes that diplomacy, backed by the threat of legislative or executive force, can lead to imperfect but still reasonable policy compromises.  But the environment in Washington has changed.  With a radical conservative in the White House, solid majorities in both houses of Congress, a sympathetic bias in the Supreme Court, and a cowed or controlled media, the GOP has an effective lock over the legislative process.  Nonetheless last century's Democrats are still operating as if diplomacy will work.  It won't, at least not on the Hill.  For the new asymmetric nature of the conflict in this new decade, a different kind of strategy is needed.  We need to evolve double-oh Democrats.

Like the cold-war operatives of the same name, double-oh Democrats would think fast and react quickly, identifying and rapidly exploiting small weaknesses in their opponent's position.  They would attack without hesitation or remorse, fearlessly belay any argument with overwhelming rhetorical force, then pause only briefly to make cutting quips over a fallen legislator or slain pundit.  They would take offense at bad policy and the ferocity of their words would match their outrage.  They would call a lie a lie.  They would move smoothly through the halls of power, quietly gathering intelligence on GOP plans, making alliances when necessary but being willing to abandon them for the greater good.  They would never give the opposition cover or succor, and would expect none in return.  And they would tell the truth -- the ugly and rude truth -- about the enemy.

This kind of Democrat can be made.  Boxer is start in the right direction, a bold but uncertain mutation in the Democratic genome.  What's required is that we, her constituents and Democratic voters everywhere, voice our support.  Not necessarily because we think that any particular action made a real difference this time, but to send a signal through the whole Democratic ecosystem that we support these kinds of actions.  These are strategies we'll vote for.  Those who adopt these strategies will have our support.  Votes and dollars are what it's about.  If more Democrats see that stepping out, defending what is right even if they get laughed at, makes the voters at home happy, more will do it.  On the other hand if her colleagues see that her actions harmed her more than helped, the spark will be quenched.

- jack*

Blameless King George...

President Bush said that the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

Boston Globe

George "What, me responsible?" Bush has passed the buck once again.  Not only does he declare himself and his staff immune from accountability for any actions prior to November 3, 2004, but he pins the blame for any and all of his past actions on the American people.  He and his party have always blamed others for their own failures, but they usually finger the kinds of people that Republican voters don't like -- liberals, Democrats, terrorists, poor people, etc.  This time, in an odd reversal, he's not blaming the traditional enemies but is instead trying to shift the burden for mistakes in Iraq to everyone who voted for him.

Does that alarm anyone?  What about you, "moral values" voters -- did you realize that your vote granted this administration absolution for any and all prior errors?

It's not exactly what Bush ran on.  His platform seemed to mostly be something along the lines of, "My opponent eats aborted fetuses for breakfast, wipes his mouth with the American flag, and tears pages from the Bible to use as toilet paper.  Vote for me, because I'm the other guy."  With a combination of hate, fear, lies, divisive issues, and character assassination -- helped along by systematic voter suppression by election officials who also just happened to work for the Bush campaign -- he managed to squeak by with one of the slimmest margins of victory in history.

Of course some Bush voters do approve of everything he has done and everything he will do -- the stupider and more violent, the better.  But most Bush voters had at least some reservations about giving this administration a second term.  They voted to support the troops, or to stem the tide of gay marriage, or for any number of issues, but for any issue where the President was strong in each demographic, he was weak on others.  True to form, Bush cannot cope with a complex situation and attempts instead to cast the election into black and white terms.  America is for me, he says, so I have nothing to apologize for.

His tainted photo-finish is not the blanket of immunity Bush wants, but it's up to the media, the opposition party, and to the people themselves to remind him of that.  It remains to be seen if his supporters will put up with being used and abused as much as his opponents have in the past.

- jack*

Never Blood Enough...

To those who consider the war a mistake but still fear the consequences of military withdrawal, we ask these questions: when will enough be enough? If not now, when?

An Appeal to Global Conscience

There's a very interesting series of essays over on AlterNet debating the role and the message of the anti-war movement regarding the future of Iraq.  On one side is the argument that we who oppose the war risk losing the moral high ground if we simply insist that it's time to bring the troops home, while leaving the Iraqis to deal with their shattered country.  We should, they argue, work not to end our intervention, but to transform the effort into one that will lead to real self-determination for Iraqis and lasting stability for the region.

While this sounds decent and forward-looking, organizing the anti-war movement around this principle would be a disaster.  The anti-war movement would simply be giving in to Bush's revolving rationale for waging this war.  He would be able to point at the anti-war leaders and say, "See, even they now agree that we should be there."  We would also alienate those who oppose further waste of American lives and dollars, regardless of how they felt about starting the war in the first place.

The situation in Iraq is deteriorating.  It's no longer a matter of working for a good outcome to this ill-conceived venture.  The only options left are all bad, so it's a matter of trying to eke out one that is slightly less bad than the others.  Attempts by occupation forces to assert control through the use of more and more violence only strengthen the resistance.  Attempting to legitimize the Iraqi authority only leads to civil war by officially pitting the Sunnis and Shiites into political opposition.  Staying the course is impossible -- rate of loss to men and equipment is already unsustainable -- and no other options can violate Bush's fantasy world.  It seems very likely that if troops are not withdrawn voluntarily, they will be forced out by resistance fighters.  Yes, it will be a humanitarian nightmare, and it will be a catastrophe the U.S. created, but that is inevitable now.

Bush's administration will not easily give up their dreams of a puppet Iraq, a subdued client state friendly to American interests, and we cannot allow them to continue to clothe their actions in the mantle of humanitarian concern.  They would rather continue to kill than admit that they have already lost.  Whether or not they pay the price for their hubris, the war must end.  As the bodies continue to pile up and as the price continues to rise, public support for this war will wane.  Already some Republicans are talking about withdrawal.  Despite what the opposition says, the anti-war movement does not need to have a better plan for waging this war or even a plan to end it cleanly.  We who opposed this war cannot be held responsible for it's outcome.  Bush and his minions are.  We only need to have one message: End The War Now.  Once the tide of public opinion has turned and the neo-cons are on the ropes, we can we talk about how best to do it.  Not before.

- jack*

Trust Deficit...

But, starting in 2018, there’s nothing there but I.O.U.s.

Rich Tucker

We're going to be hearing a lot of information -- and misinformation -- about Social Security in the coming months as the Bush administration and allied groups apply political pressure for drastic changes.  Any evidence that isn't an outright lie will be carefully framed to suggest that Social Security is the cause of -- and solution to -- a vast and pending budget crisis.  An "iceberg" looming on the horizon.

Case in point: the Social Security Trust Fund.

Alan Greenspan chaired the 1982 Commission that proposed raising payroll taxes to help offset future growth in Social Security benefits, and later as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board he was able pressure the Clinton administration into implementing the changes.  The idea was to generate more income in the last decades of the twentieth century to offset higher payments in the twenty-first.  It worked.  Social Security has been running a surplus, about 2 trillion dollars so far, which has been socked away in the Trust Fund of the same name.  The dread date of 2018 is when the flow reverses, and Social Security starts to withdraw from the Trust Fund.  The Trust Fund itself doesn't run out until the middle of the century.

But, the critics whine, there's no actual money in the Trust Fund.  The government spent it.  All that's in there is a bunch of I.O.U.s.  So what gives?  Is Alan Greenspan, the economic genius of the 1990's, actually a moron?  Is he now smacking himself in the forehead with dawning realization?  D'oh!  They spent it all!  What was I thinking!?

Of course not.  Don't be silly.

The problem with this picture is the term "I.O.U."  It deliberately evokes the worthless promises of a deadbeat, perhaps your stoner roommate who leeches off you until you manage to move out.  You never really expected to get paid back, and trying would probably ruin your friendship so you don't bother.  But these I.O.U.s are not from a known deadbeat -- they are from the Federal Government; and they are not insignificant -- they are our social safety net.

Rich Tucker's straw man is wrong in two critical aspects.  One is that the person who is planing for retirement actually earns money which he puts aside while working.  This is the high payroll taxes being currently collected.  He also doesn't just write an I.O.U. to himself, nor does he just store his money in a mason jar.  Instead he takes his current income and invests it in the safest instruments he can find: U.S. Treasury notes.  This is the Trust Fund.  When he retires he will cash out those investments and live off of them.  Or so he hopes.

The coming crisis, to the extent that it's real, is not about cash-flow problems within the Social Security system itself.  It's about the solvency of the U.S. Government.  The 7 trillion dollar national debt is held by those who trust that it will be paid back, and to the extent that the U.S. can maintain an illusion of solvency the debt will not be called en masse.  It's not clear that trust is something we should mess around with, even if it seems like being clever to move funny money around between different agencies.  The fact is, the U.S. cannot make good on those loans, not even to pay retirement benefits which have already been promised.

Famous deadbeat George W. Bush is once again attempting to misdirect.  Where the real problem is unsustainable deficits and an unbearable debt load, Bush points the finger at Social Security.  Like Iraq, he tries to pin the blame for his own failures on the thing he wanted to destroy anyway.

- jack*

Correction: changes to the payroll taxes were made under Reagan, not Clinton.

Rules for Scoundrels...

Have you ever wondered: is Congress too ethical?  Are our legislators suffering under the weight of overly prudish ethics rules?  Do they need to have less oversight in order to do the people's business?  The Republican House leadership thinks so.  Flexing its partisan muscle in the 109th Congress, Republicans forced through rules changes to make it more difficult for House members to be investigated for ethics violations.  Does this strike anyone -- and I'm looking at you, "moral values" voters -- as just a bit odd?

One would expect that red state constituents (to the extent that they will even hear about this) would be outraged.  The reality-based community will be bowled over by the overwhelming stink of hypocrisy; candidates campaigning on moral values, winning by cravenly attacking the honesty and integrity of their opponents, who then immediately wield their new power to hide their own moral weakness.  They promised higher ethical standards and they're reneging, aren't they?  But the faith-based will see it differently.  There are two principles in play here.

Rules are for bad people.  Although they pay it lip service, the philosophical bedrock of the faith-based community is in opposition to the rule of law.  While we who put our stock in reality apply rules equally to everyone and take any rule-breaking as evidence of foul play, the faith-based care less about actions and outcomes than thoughts and intentions.  Starting from the assumption that some people are good and others bad, they believe it righteous to impose strong rules to restrict "bad" people while giving "good" people free reign.  We end up with zero tolerance for some and the honor system for others, with only ideology as the deciding factor.

This creeping elitism gives us such institutionalized double standards as three strikes laws that put people in jail for 25 years for stealing a bicycle, while serial pedophiles get off with a hand slap because they happen to be priests.  When the cops end the rich white kid's joyride he's let off with a warning since boys will be boys; the poor black kid doing the same thing is a hooligan and goes to jail.  Since the red staters have been told for years that liberals are evil, it stands to reason that those who oppose them, the conservatives, are necessarily good.  Republicans don't need strong rules on them since they will do good just because they are good.  Likewise if changing the rules takes away power from the evil Democrats, then that must also be good.  Ironically the Republicans can cite the large numbers of ethics charges filed against Republicans to argue that the rule changes weaken their opponents.

Out of sight, out of mind.  Denial is not just a fleeting state of mind for the faith-based, it's a way of life.  No matter how strongly we may believe in something, reality can -- and very often does -- give us evidence that contradicts that belief.  In the reality-based community we have the ability, even the duty, to examine evidence objectively and to integrate it into our understanding of the world.  If we have to change our beliefs, that's fine.  Faith is the opposite.  The job of the faithful is to ensure that all evidence is properly subsumed into belief so that their ideology remains unchallenged by evidence.  Denial is a key tool.  For any troubling fact, the faith-based can simply say, "I just don't believe it."

The creationists battle against evolution is a great example of a denial movement.  Far from trying to challenge the scientific reality of evolution on its own terms, creationism attempts instead, through political action, to obscure the facts about evolutionary theory.  During much of the previous century teaching evolution was illegal.  More recently the method has been to muddy the waters by getting "Creation Science" taught side-by-side with evolution in biology classes.  If they can simply close their eyes to evolution, either by ignoring it or by provided a more faith-friendly alternative, then the problem is gone.  Denial in action.  It's no surprise that the House ethics rule change did not directly weaken ethic standards themselves, but rather made it more difficult for charges to be heard.  If the charge can be denied, then there was clearly no violation.

These two principles underlie a lot of conservative tactics: framing the agenda as good vs. evil to justify asymmetric executive power, and hiding, obfuscating or obscuring any information that might undermine ideology.  These two prongs can be easily identified in the talking points provided Alberto Gonzales for his recent testimony.  It is not simply possible, however, for those of us who oppose this regime to adopt their methods.  The turnabout won't work.  These principles are an affront to both truth and justice, and to fall back on the same ourselves would lose the very things for which we fight.

- jack*

Ohio and Bust...

I'm facing tomorrow with a certain apprehension.  I know that a smirking Dick Cheney will convene a special joint session of Congress to certify the electoral college vote.  I know that certain members of the House will object to the Ohio vote and will cite reams of evidence to support and document their claims of vast voter suppression of Democratic voters.  I'm 99% certain that no Senator will back up their challenge.  Why not?  Fear of schoolyard taunts of "sore loser" from the media mavens, I guess.  As far as I can figure out there is no other cost.  No one is immune from name calling -- statesmen least of all.

But what if it was an Anita Hill moment?  A moment that showed that in the face of the most despicable and depraved character assassination, courage and dignity can win out?  Open congressional hearings would almost certainly be very embarrassing to the Blackwells of this sordid affair.  But I really don't think -- despite the outcry of a persistent few -- that the gravity of lost confidence in an already rather shabby election process can overcome the inertia of political expediency on Capitol Hill.

My apprehension is less about what happens tomorrow than what happens after.  We fight the battles we are faced with, day after day, and loss after loss starts to become rather disheartening.  It's not even a feeling that it was a good fight and we did all we could and lost fair and square.  This isn't about winning or losing a football game or a tennis match.  It's not like the best team won and we should congratulate them.  This is about fighting for the game itself.  It's as if the playing field is tilting more and more to the right, but all the players and so fixed on the goals that they refuse to mention it.  Once the game is rigged it doesn't matter if you are sportsmanlike.  You will always lose.

Sorry for the depressed tone and the overstretched metaphors.  At the end of a week like this I'm never certain whether to laugh or cry.  I'm 99% sure no one will stand up.  It's that 1% chance -- that one rogue senator out of 100 -- that keeps me on edge.  We'll know tomorrow if facts hold the day, or if ideology and self-interest once again squash debate and reason.

- jack*