NYTimes to McCain: Dude, You Can't Write

Forgetting for a second that McCain probably didn't write the thing himself, let's take a look at that Iraq policy op-ed of his that the NY Times refused to publish, in a move that has our favorite libertarian Frances Martel up in arms.

I’m not a John McCain fan by any means, but what glorified liberal rag The New York Times did to him and his editorial today crossed boundaries of objectivity and decency that should not have been crossed.

I think there's another answer, and it's this: McCain, or his speechwriter surrogate, submitted a genuinely unpublishable piece. Take a look for yourself over at the Drudge Report, which I commend for bringing this issue to light--not because I care about self-referential analysis of old media by new media, but because this op-ed is seriously educational, in a bad way.

Full disclosure: I think the surge worked. I thought it would, and I'm glad we did it. I do think we should think about eventually leaving a country we had no business in in the first place. But none of this has anything to do with why McCain's piece was rejected. I doubt it would have been accepted by the Crimson. It's a thinly-disguised attack ad, a shallow and partisan rhetorical stream. Case in point: It mentions Obama ten times. Ten. I'm excluding pronouns. (Examples, and much, much, much more, after the jump...)

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Dammit, Barack, I was THIS CLOSE

Obama almost had me. He really did. (Mostly because his nomination is, at this point, about two yards shy of inevitable.) And then he goes and says this:

Obama said he [is] less inclined [than Hillary] to give in to partisanship.

"Her natural inclination is to draw a picture of Republicans as people who need to be crushed and defeated," the U.S. senator from Illinois said in a separate telephone interview with the newspaper.

"It's not entirely her fault. She's been the target of some unfair attacks in the past."

It's also not her fault because it's true. Republicans ARE people who need to be crushed and defeated. It's called winning an election so you can make laws; everyone seems to know this except newspaper columnists and the people who advise politicians.

I should point out that Clinton, typically, said the same thing but with less pizzazz ("Some people have been surprised by the collegiality between me and my colleagues across the aisle"). Argh. When can we finally stop with all the "bipartisanship" bullshit?

Above: NOT POLITICS

(Via Sadly, No!)

UPDATE (Sunday 2:30 PM): Oh for the love of God.

A legit question to Obama supporters

If Eva can ask Clinton supporters a question, I figure I get one too -- although this is a less practical and more basic one. Here goes...

When I'm arguing with my Obama-supporting friends, inevitably the "unity" thing comes up. More particularly the fact that Obama likes to reach out to conservatives -- "broadening the coalition," so to speak. (By most accounts he's doing a good job of it.) Temperamentally, Obama wants to expand the Democratic Party out to include people who are substantially further right than he is; there isn't much doubt about that.

Why?

Everyone says this like it's a good thing and I just don't get it. There are plenty of reasons not to let conservatives near our party -- for starters, the historical fact that everything they touch turns almost immediately to shit -- but there aren't any reasons for it. The Democratic coalition is plenty big already, and it'd be unstoppable if only we had an infrastructure to turn it out (which will come from the left, not the center or right). We don't need conservatives; why would we want them?

The Topeka Catch-22

This story should probably be Sam's turf, but I can't resist. Apparently the Kansas Republican Party, which is in tremendous electoral pain (not only is Kathleen Sebelius one of the best Democratic governors in the country, but they unexpectedly lost Jim Ryun in the '06 landslide and their moderates are jumping like rats from a sinking ship), has gone Soviet:

The state Republican Party is forming a loyalty committee so that it can punish officers who endorse or contribute to Democrats.

The GOP's conservative-dominated state committee also is accusing a prominent moderate of trying to undermine the party's fundraising. It has adopted a resolution criticizing Steve Cloud, a Lenexa businessman and former legislator who represents Kansas on the Republican National Committee. [...]

"It gives me pause for thought anytime someone requires a loyalty oath of anyone from any organization," said Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh. "I'm somewhat uncomfortable with a group sitting in judgment of other members."

[political scientist Bob] Beatty said forming such a committee could be seen as an attempt to purge moderates from the party -- something Kobach said isn't true.

But Andy Wollen, president of the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, a moderate group, mused about the GOP creating a "grand high inquisitor."

Now, leaving aside the hilarious image of the Kansas Republican Party having a "grand high inquisitor", there's a lesson here on the position of today's conservative politics. From the left, Kos laughs at how obviously they're shooting themselves in the foot:

I won't pretend to be distressed at the Kansas GOP's abandonment of the moderate center. I think it's fantastic -- their rightward tilt has had an objectively negative impact on their electoral viability (unlike our own efforts to create a strong, proud, and unified Democratic Party).

One word of advice, though -- skip the creepy loyalty oaths and stick to the democratic process -- elections. It makes for much better optics and really, it's the right thing to do.

And then keep ousting your moderates until you deliver to us Democrats your state on a platter.

But over on the right wing, at RedState, diarist MartinAKnights points out quite rightly that having moderates doesn't really seem to help them either:

"Moderate" and/or Rockefeller Republicans (I exclude proper Republicans like Rudy Guiliani and William Weld) may win elections here and there, but at the end of the day, they are basically slow acting poison...

It is extremely rare to find a Rockefeller Republican as either an elected or party official who leaves office with the party in his district or state stronger than when he/she met it. It is far more common to find the exact opposite, e.g. Bob Taft in OH, George Pataki in NY, Christie Whitman in NJ. I have looked for instances where it is proven otherwise but those instances are very few and far between. In fact, in recent times, the immediate after-effect of electing a "moderate" Republican into any public office is an increase in Democratic strength in the area affected.

Witness Kansas - a state which has long had a traditional strong preference to the Republican Party; the state GOP long ago decided to cater to "moderates", in the process essentially violating post-Watergate Reagan's admonition that a party must have certain principles and beliefs that must remain inviolate. Worse is that after having crippled the GOP by basically cutting it free of its philosophical moorings and rendering it without purpose or direction, these "moderates" are switching over to the Democrats i.e. the Kansas Republican Party State Chairman from 1999 to 2003 switched parties (to Democrat) last year.

Let's be honest; how often do "moderate" Republicans have coat-tails? How many actually hand over to another Republican after their terms are over? Usually they hand over to a Democrat (often they do so more gladly than they would have to another Republican) because during their terms they would have conceded so much of the basic premises that define what it means to be a Republican that they basically render the average Republican unelectable for being "extreme." i.e. does anybody honestly believe that any Republican would be able to win a statewide race in CA for a long while after Arnold steps down?

This is one of the reasons why I have become convinced that allowing Republican "moderates" to achieve high positions in the GOP is basically slitting our own throats, trading in short-term gain (if any) for very long-term pain. To be blunt, I personally consider Christie Todd Whitman's (who ironically won her first Governor's race in New Jersey by running as a strong fiscal, law and order conservative) particular off-shoot of Republicanism to be akin to streptococcus on the body of the GOP. It's basically guaranteeing sabotage from within until the Jeffords' moment when they switch.

(Frontpager Erick concurs with a post wonderfully titled "Snakes in the Kansas Grass".) This is all, frankly, true; while of course I despise everything the RedStaters believe, I quite agree that their party (like ours) requires a clear and vigorous message in order to win. It's political common sense.

Problem being, that message sucks. These days, with resentment of Republicans and conservatism at all-time highs, you have to have a hell of a song-and-dance routine in order to make these ridiculous ideas look palatable, and right now that means showing your moderate side. So the Kansas GOP, like its compatriots across the country, is in what I propose to call the Topeka Catch-22: either they stick to their beliefs and look psycho, or they compromise their beliefs and look weak and gutless. Neither of these situations, one might add, is particularly conducive to winning elections.

...This problem is going to break national as the GOP primaries heat up; we're already seeing cries of "Real Conservative!" behind pretty much everyone that isn't Rudy Giuliani, and if the right can coalesce around someone to focus their rage on him, LOOK OUT. For decades, and especially post-Gingrich, this festering rage between far-right fundies and pragmatic Republican "moderates" has been more or less hidden because their coalition worked politically; but apparently it doesn't play in Peoria anymore, and from there it's only a couple steps to outright GOP cannibalism. (Which, considering how conservative the party is anyway, amounts to a snake eating its own tail, but whatever.)

This can only mean good things for Democrats; plus, intellectually it'll be interesting to watch this paradox play out. As they often say in the pages of RedState when our party is infighting: folks, get the popcorn.

Bloomberg, and Bush's Post-Modern Presidency

I really don't see how anyone can look at the overwhelming blizzard of abuses, crimes, and foolhardy errors that have constituted the Bush years and then decide that what they're really sick of is partisanship:

... The forty per cent of the American electorate who regard themselves as Independents would also benefit. Their number has been growing in recent years, and they are increasingly joined in political sympathy by Republicans and Democrats who find their parties captive to a base, fringe, or interest group with which they have little in common. We are living through one of those recurring moments—1912, 1980, and 1992 were others—when disgust with the two big parties stirs a longing for an outsider of upright character, untainted by dirty money or political dealmaking.

Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that voters are sick of what I'm sick of, which is the actions of the current executive, and the actions of Republicans in the House and Senate (and now apparently the Supreme Court). If pressed, I could draw up a specific, and fairly inclusive, list of grievances against BushCo and against the GOP and other enablers. But maybe that's just because I'm on the high side of the news-awareness bell curve.

I can see how, in someone who doesn't spend a fairly significant portion of their waking life reading and digesting news information (this is a class issue as well, by the way; a good portion of the population doesn't have the leisure time or spare energy), my fairly specific dissatisfaction could manifest in a general 'screw the government' sort of feeling.

That it's so difficult for a casual news observer to distinguish between radicals and anti-radicals is also a damning comment on our broken media discourse. After all, most politicians sound the same as one another, they all yell and point when they get angry, and mostly they only are seen on television disagreeing with one another.

Too often, our politicians are quoted side by side making mutually contradictory claims, and too often the media fails to point out factual falsehoods (because to point out a negative about a candidate or official without pointing out a symmetrical negative for the other side would be 'biased' and 'partisan,' perhaps).

I recall a commentator on CNN who, after the Bush/Kerry debates said that it would take a team of Kennedy School of Government fact checkers a week to verify or refute all the truth claims made in the debate. And in terms of substantive discussion, that was apparently it for CNN. All that CNN was prepared to do was identify truly glaring factual inaccuracies. The rest was about who was more effective in their message delivery, the little tics, the gaffes. Coverage shifted over to 'Spin Alley,' a name suggesting fluctuation between two poles, existing simultaneously without cancelling each other out, matter and anti-matter.

It's understandable for people to get sick of it. The lack of attention to substantive policy difference makes mainstream political discourse a cross between a beauty contest and a shouting match. The media itself isn't the least bit interested in changing the dynamic; it makes for good television (Crossfire! Liberal, conservative--debate!). It took Jon Stewart making his own good television to get the show off the air.

There's ambivalence to objective truth; theirs a post-modern feeling that the truth is unknowable and that things can be two mutually exclusive ways at once. Maybe it's best just to call it doublethink. And Bush and his supporters have been disconcertingly open about their post-modern thinking:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

That's a post-modern stance (in the sense where post-modern can mean "counter-enlighment". There are so many senses of post-modern that it's best to specify). When Bush and Cheney say, as they often do, that only History will be able to judge their Administration, they are really concurring with the above. The un-named aide quoted is just, you know, articulater.

Post-modernism made some sense when applied to literary conceits like Justice, Virtue, Love, and all the rest, but it is a terrible paradigm under which to build a functioning government, composed of bureaucrats and cops. It's nonsense to say that truth is unknowable in the context of governance. The government must operate under the premise that truth is knowable, or government policy is governed by nothing but competition to see which narrative is the most compelling.

There are a few issues where one side or the other is objectively correct, and they can prove it. There are a great many other issues where an objective observer would say that the preponderance of the evidence tilts one way or the other.

I don't know that anyone (except maybe that Bush aide) would disagree with that assertion, and yet our media often seems to operate on the premise that all viewpoints are created equal. That stance, more than anything, creates the conditions that I think will consistently allow a sufficiently visible third-party candidate who can "bridge the divide" to claim ten to twenty percent of the vote.

The main way to be 'visible' without joining a party is to have tons of your own dough to pour into television ads. That's what Ross Perot did in '92, and that's what Bloomberg will do if he ultimately decides to make a run. Hell, he may get more than 20%. Perot got 18, and he sure wasn't a popular and effective city administrator with a record of effective compromise.

The question, if Bloomberg runs, is who he will pull more votes from, the Republican or the Dem. To me, it looks likely to be a negative for the Democrats. So what Bloomberg needs to consider, if he's conscientious, is whether he wants to help someone like Giuliani or Thompson ascend the throne of George the Second. I hope he doesn't run. If it looked like he would help the Democrats, I would be pulling for him all the way. I say this because I am not a political post-modernist--I think the Democrats have superior ideas and positions, and as a result, I want them to win.

Partisanship on Fox's 24

So 24 has been popular at Harvard for a while, basically since I got here three years ago.  This is the first year I've watched it, and there are already a few things that I have noticed that have made me go "huh?"

Obviously all the news on tvs in 24 show Fox News.  Ok, that's just product placement, whatever.

Then you get Karen Hayes, National Security Advisor butting heads with the Chief of Staff for the President over civil rights.  He accuses her of being not cut out for homeland security, that perhaps she belongs in the Justice Department, and her defense is that she is not "some bleeding-heart liberal" and that she wants to protect the country as much as anybody.  First off, do bleeding heart liberals not want to protect America from terrorists?  Ok, I can let this one go because the character was trying to establish that she wasn't an extremist, but rather a pragmatist.  

Then there is the internal racial profiling of the US intelligence community such that agents of a Middle Eastern descent have to be double authenticated by a non Middle Eastern agent.  The middle management character, Milo, is outraged that one of his workers, Nadia Yassir, of Arab descent, is handicapped like this.  In his exasperation, he says that Nadia is no terrorist, and "I mean, she's a registered Republican!"  Like a Democrat has more likelihood of being a terrorist?  Seems a little off to me.  

Perhaps I'm overinterpreting the show.  But 24, IMDB's highest rated show, clearly reaches a lot of people.  Perhaps this is an attempt to counteract that "liberal media" that's out there, but I'd like to separate my politics and my entertainment please, Fox.  Thanks!