One of the many interesting things about writing a blog, and the rapid feedback it provides, is writing a post with a particular viewpoint and then having a reader write back, disagreeing, who then goes on to make the same point you thought you just made.
Got that?
True clarity in writing or speaking is a difficult proposition, especially in a medium that doesn't afford the luxury of extensive revision and editing.
This point occurred to me this evening when I received a note from a reader disagreeing with my earlier post about the Schiavo case.
Respectfully and patiently, the reader told me that I had missed the issue which was really at stake and then went on to press the point about the rule of law.
As I suggested above, I couldn't find anything in what he said that I disagreed with. So evidently, in some fashion or another, he and I were talking past each other. And when I considered it further, the issue that I hadn't dealt with clearly enough was the difference between this case in its moral dimension and its legal one.
When I said this case was "murky and dark and difficult to reason through" I was talking about the moral and human questions it raises. Who's right and who's wrong in this instance? Whose wishes should prevail in such a case? How do we compare the life of someone who has no consciousness of their surroundings or existence to someone with all their faculties intact?
Let me share with you one of the letters about the Schiavo case that has had the greatest impact on me ...
1) My mother suffered cardiac arrest in May 2003, and was revived, but with severe brain damage. I faced the do-we-pull-the-plug decision. Everyone -- doctors, other family members, etc. -- assumed that I would and this place enormous pressure on me. I took me a week to realize that, in my own mind, the decision was equally clear: I did not want to pull the plug. My mother's doctor spoke condescendingly of my "not being ready to let go yet". The doctor at the nursing home, to which she was moved, couldn't hide the shock on his face when I told him I'm an atheist, and that, no, I wasn't doing it for religious reasons.The point is this is just to note that we are -- at least in New York, where I live -- pretty far along toward the pro-life-support position becoming disreputable, and I hope some good comes out of the Schiavo case in at least letting people who feel as I do know that they are not alone. Schiavo's parents, let's not forget, have been trying to preserve her life: this wasn't a case invented by Republican attack group.
So, yes, the moral case is cloudy, difficult and painful. But the legal one, as near as I can tell, is not. And that, to me, is the crux of the matter.
The law is not the same as morality. Law is rooted in values and moral judgments, yes. Often moral judgments are what prompt us as a society to pick up the pen again and rewrite the law. But the two are not the same. And that is precisely the point. That is the power of the law -- or one of its great attributes, what makes the 'rule of law' more than just empty rhetoric.
It is precisely because we cannot come to agreement on the most contentious and profound questions of morality that we have the law -- an agreed-upon-in-advance set of rules -- to find our way to solutions which are at least equitably-arrived-at if not necessarily moral or ones that we ourselves agree with. The alternative is a descent into public violence and lawlessness, which we are already seeing the first hints of in Florida.
There is a high public morality at stake in respecting the rule of law even in cases where we disagree with the outcomes it generates or even find them immoral in themselves.
--Josh Marshall
Another take on the Schiavo case, from an article in USAToday. Good stuff. Or rather, good article.
--Josh Marshall
Grover Norquist, quoted in the Post: "Advocates of using federal power to keep this woman alive need to seriously study the polling data that's come out on this. I think that a lot of conservative leaders assumed there was broader support for saying that they wanted to have the federal government save this woman's life."
If this is really about 'sav[ing] this woman's life' why look at the polling data?
I hesitate to dive much more into this than I have in a few brief posts because this is such a murky and dark and difficult to reason through situation. There's no black and white to it. Clearly, you've got a family that truly believes they're watching their daughter being allowed to die for lack of nourishment. Whatever the antics of their supporters or the larger political purposes this is being put to, they believe it. And I can only imagine the sense of impotence and despair they must be experiencing.
From the relatively little I know of this case, there has been a truly unconscionable years-long campaign of slander and defamation against the husband -- accusing him of everything under the sun including attempted murder. But immediate families in such cases must always be judged by very different standards than the ones we rightly apply to the political sharks and outrage-addicts who swarm around these people to feed off their tragedy.
What's more, as Kevin Drum mentioned on his site earier, I could see where a state might make a law that absent clear and specific evidence (like a living will) of a patient's pre-illness wishes, you assume they would want to be kept alive. I'm not saying that's the right or the wrong approach. I'm only making the point that I don't see anything sacrosanct about the particular legal regime about end-of-life care that currently prevails in Florida.
(For what it's worth, some of the most sensible and humane points I've read on this whole case have been on Andrew Sullivan's site.)
The only clarity I've been able to see in this case or find in it is that there is a set of laws governing these issues in Florida and those laws appear to have been followed. Not only followed, but now submitted to numerous appeals. As for the medical questions involved -- specifically, Shiavo's level of awareness or consciousness -- from what I can tell, every independent doctor who has examined her has put her in the PVS category. Those who don't turn out to be either quacks or doctors who didn't do a complete examination.
That doesn't mean those legal or medical judgments are correct. But I know that those judgments have been arrived at by people with vastly more expertise and information at their disposal than I have.
Obviously, I lack any medical understanding to judge these issues myself and I don't know that much about the legal history of the case. But the one thing I'm quite clear on is that I won't get any more clarity on either point from the comic book coverage coming out of CNN and the rest of the cable networks. And the folks who've poured gasoline on this fire for cheap political reasons are truly beneath contempt.
--Josh Marshall
Amazing.
Just out from the Miami Herald ...
Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.
For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called "a showdown."
In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.
"We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in," said a source with the local police.
"The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene," said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. "When the sheriff's department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off."
See the <$NoAd$> rest here.
--Josh Marshall
A question I'd like your assistance with.
I'd like to put together a (relatively) short list of some of the best labor/union websites. I know this covers a lot of ground. And certainly my list will be based on incomplete or partial judgments. But it's not a contest. I'm just looking to put together a list of some of the most informative and useful sites out there, in part to share with readers and in part to add to the ones I'm already familiar with.
Now, what do I mean by labor or union websites?
I don't mean the websites of particular unions, or at least not necessarily that. I mean it a little more broadly -- sites with valuable information for people who are interested in and sympathetic to unions, the right to organize and how organized labor can survive, let alone thrive, in the globalizing economy of the 21st century.
To be a bit more to the point, sites for people who are into union stuff.
Lemme know what you think ...
--Josh Marshall
The president's supporters speak up.
From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "The only real way to fix Social Security is, over the long haul, to convert this socialist wealth-redistribution scheme into a free-market, wealth-creation program. And the best place to start is with the modest private accounts the Bush administration proposes."
(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader DM for the catch.)
--Josh Marshall
As of 6:12 PM on the east coast, go look at the front page of the CNN website and the extreme close-up picture of Terri Schiavo. Whatever your position on this issue, is this extreme close-up of Mrs. Schiavo compatible with preserving some measure of dignity for her? What's the editorial judgment behind this choice of images?
I would say it seems exploitative; but that wouldn't help distinguish it from the rest of CNN's coverage.
(ed.note: TPM Reader KC pointed this out to me.)
Late Update: The photo in question came down at some point early this evening. The image of Schiavo and her mother -- which is posted as of 10:52 PM -- is not the one I was referring to.
--Josh Marshall
Max Sawicky says that he's found no book-cooking in the new Social Security Trustees report. And, Max being Max, I don't think he'd say that if it weren't true. So until I hear evidence to the contrary, I withdraw my original skepticism.
(This doesn't address the separate issue of the generally pessimistic baselines the SSA actuaries use and used in previous years.)
Max also notes that the solvency picture painted by the report isn't as clearly negative as original press reports suggested.
Late Update: Did I speak too soon? Brad DeLong brings us the latest. It's the productivity, stupid! (Actually, the vocative there applies to me and I happily leave all these complicated numbers to those who understand them better than I.)
--Josh Marshall
President makes progress!
First House Republican from Alabama comes out in favor of private accounts: Rep. Spencer Bachus.
Reports the Birmingham News: "More than once, Bachus stressed that Bush is not seeking to privatize Social Security, but he said giving workers a chance at private investments to boost their retirement is worth a try."
That's one down and four to go.
--Josh Marshall
"Contrition is always nice, but it all depends on what gets on the air. That’s the true test."
That and more from Joe Hagan's piece in the Observer on what the White House says CBS has to do to get in its good graces.
It will be interesting to see what Heyward and his fellow geldings at Black Rock come up with this year. But don't expect it will be pretty.
They're still sitting on the goods in the Niger story after all.
--Josh Marshall
"I am extremely concerned that someone familiar with Defense Department classified reporting has forged this document and given it to the press in the hope that it would be reported as genuine. Such an action raises deeply troubling questions about the integrity of the department's processes and raises the possibility of an organized effort to intimidate me as a journalist."
That's a clip from a letter military analyst Bill Arkin recently sent to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And Arkin was right to be troubled.
Arkin found out about the document when he got a call from Washington Times national security reporter Bill Gertz, who sent him a copy. The phoney cable suggested that he, Arkin, had worked as a spy in the pay of Saddam Hussein.
I want to make very clear that no one is suggesting that Gertz either participated in the production of this document or knew that it was bogus. Indeed, from what I can tell from this piece from the Post last week, he did just what a reporter should have done in this case: he went to the person in question and asked for comment.
It soon became clear that the document was bogus -- a point that no one seems to question, including DOD spokesmen. Gertz declined requests for comment from the Post.
But someone was behind this. And given Arkin's role in uncovering various unpleasant facts about those in power, the motive doesn't seem particularly hard to figure out. Yet Larry DiRita says an investigation into the source of the forged document is "not likely."
We still don't know who forged the bogus Niger documents, even though we now know that their circuitous path into US hands was set in motion by a member of Italian military intelligence. (Any on-going -- such as it was -- investigation into this caper was finally ended earlier this month when Sen. Roberts shut down the promised second half of the investigation into pre-war intelligence on Iraq.)
Add this to the trove of phoney documents which have flowed out of Iraq in the last two years and you end up with a lot of phoney documents whose origins have never been explained.
--Josh Marshall
No transcripts from the White House for Cheney's Bamboozlepalooza events? Holden points us to some local newspaper coverage that may help explain why.
--Josh Marshall
For months now I've been saving string for a piece on the Washington Post's endlessly fatuous series of editorials on Social Security and fiscal policy -- the board seems caught between subservience to the silk-thin assumptions of right-leaning Washington conventional wisdom and an almost parodic level of ignorance about the effect these changes have on most Americans (see this for but one richly evocative example.)
But today's piece is worth at least an interim mention. It is another knock at the Democrats for not buying into the president's claim that Social Security is in a state of 'crisis'.
Given what's become clear over the last three months, the Post is compelled to concede that the president's 'plan' does nothing to deal with Social Security's solvency issues, that his tax cuts create a shortfall "three times greater than the Social Security shortfall projected by the trustees" and that Medicare is a far more pressing problem.
Still, the Post continues ...
it's hard to take seriously the Democrats who say that Mr. Bush should switch focus from Social Security to the much bigger problem of Medicare: If they aren't willing to play a constructive role on the supposedly "minor" challenge of Social Security, why should anyone believe that they would behave constructively if the administration wanted to fix Medicare?
As the Post's endless tergiversations for Washington's new luxe Republican establishment again show us, you can work so hard bending over backwards for some folks that you find yourself bending over forward. As they have.
--Josh Marshall
The final blow ...
Support for President Bush's plan to create personal Social Security retirement accounts which might include stocks or mutual funds has dropped over the last month among Americans under age 30, according to a poll released Thursday.Young adults have been the strongest supporters of the proposal for months. Support among those 18-29 dipped from seven in 10 to just under half, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. A quarter of young adults now say they're not sure how they feel about such personal accounts.
More here on the Pew Poll.
--Josh Marshall
Public/Private Partnership. NBC's First Read notes that Sens. Frist, Santorum and Martinez are showing up for Progress for America's Bamboozlepalooza event next week in Tampa ...
By the way, look who's going to Tampa on Wednesday for a Social Security town hall: Senators Frist, Santorum, and Martinez. The event is being sponsored by pro-private accounts Progress for America.
More on this to follow ...
--Josh Marshall
TPM is expanding. And as part of that, we're going to be bringing on at least one new intern. It's a great opportunity to gain experience for a career in political journalism or Internet publishing. If you're interested in applying or would like to find out more, drop us a line.
Send us a note through the 'comments' address at the top of the sidebar and use the subject heading "TPM Internship".
If you applied last year and would like to be considered again, please let us know that too. We had some great applicants who we weren't able to take on and we'd like to know if you remain interested.
--Josh Marshall
Money, money, money, money, money, money, money ...
Traditional Values Coalition founder Lou Sheldon quoted in the Times: "What this issue has done is it has galvanized people the way nothing could have done in an off-election year. That is what I see as the blessing that dear Terri's life is offering to the conservative Christian movement in America."
--Josh Marshall
St. Petersburg Times: "Shame on McCain for being a part of this effort to divide the generations. Usually noted for candid speech, he even resorted to misinformation when he said in 2042 'we stop paying people Social Security.' McCain knows that isn't true."
Mendacity is contagious. And he's caught the bug.
--Josh Marshall
Townhall.com gets out of under Heritage's non-profit IRS restrictions to be more political, says the Washington Times.
No, we're not kidding.
Actually, it's an interesting development, clearly in response to mobilizations taking place on progressive blogs.
--Josh Marshall
It doesn't seem like a perfect comparison. But as this article shows, Sen. Frist seemed to have a more 'pragmatic' definition of what constitutes life before the subject become ripe for presidential grandstanding.
--Josh Marshall
An important development from Vermont, reported here in the Rutland Herald: "The Vermont State Teachers' Retirement System on Tuesday became the first public pension board in the country to take formal action against President Bush's Social Security reforms. The trustees of the largest of Vermont's three public pension boards voted 4-2 to make it harder for investment firms that support those reforms to manage the $1.2 billion in assets in the teachers fund. The two dissenting votes were cast by trustees appointed by Gov. James Douglas."
See more here.
--Josh Marshall
Bush right-hand-man and Iraq contract rainmaker Joe Allbaugh gets a new contract to lobby for Halliburton.
Small world. Small city.
--Josh Marshall
The SEC tells Richard Perle it may sue him over financial improprieties tied to the looting and subsequent meltdown of Conrad Black's Hollinger media empire
--Josh Marshall
Give a look to Ed Kilgore's post today on the Schiavo case, a perceptive discussion of what this case is about, amidst all the fireworks the case has triggered.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), March 18th 2005: "It is more than just Terri Schiavo. This is a critical issue for people in this position, and it is also a critical issue to fight that fight for life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen if we don't win this fight.
"And so it's bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position, and let me just finish with this:
"This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to destroy the conservative movement. It is to destroy conservative leaders, and not just in elected office, but leading. I mean, Ed Feulner, of the Heritage Foundation today was under attack in the National Journal. This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in. And you need to look at this, and what's going on and participate in fighting back."
--Josh Marshall
I must say, I hope the supporters of Social Security aren't resting on their collective laurels just because the president's jihad against the program got off to such an abysmal start.
Today, in newspapers and on websites across the country, headlines used words like 'broke', 'bankrupt' and 'bust' to describe what happens to Social Security when it starts running a deficit at some time in the middle of this century. Only weeks ago, President Bush was being forced to back off such misleading and deceptive language. And many Republicans were openly criticizing him for it. Now these are the words of choice in supposedly straight news reportage.
Supporters of Social Security really don't have the luxury of letting one lie or distortion go unchallenged or unanswered.
--Josh Marshall
More great moments in media whoredom...
MSNBC's front page Soc Sec headline: "Social Security outlook: Broke in ’41"
MSNBC's article page Soc Sec headline: "New date for Social Security to go bust: 2041"
Note to MSNBC press liaison: queue the line about the low-level website staffer, etc.
--Josh Marshall
Langevin out of Rhode Island senate race.
Good news for Chafee, certainly. But good enough?
--Josh Marshall
There's an interesting article today in the Post which fronts the president's new threat that Democrats "will suffer political consequences if they continue to oppose his proposal without providing one of their own."
You'll notice that the article is datelined Albuquerque, where the president just held his most recent Bamboozlepalooza event.
What caught my attention is that while the Post piece made such prominent mention of the president's 'threat', it neglected to mention the name Heather Wilson, who has been obstinately refusing to take any position on Social Security for months.
Wilson, the representative from Albuequerque and the clear target of the president's visit, was afraid to be seen at the president's event today.
Through a spokesman, she begged off with a claim that she was "on a long-planned trip with her husband and two children." But in the context of her earlier flimflammery on this issue, that's simply not credible.
Bottom-line: While President Bush is seeding the media with bogus threats, his own Republicans are afraid to appear in public with him on his Social Security tours. Most press reports either don't mention that or, like CNN, they accept Wilson's bogus denials at face value.
--Josh Marshall
Try picking apart the egregiously tendentious assumptions in this AP report on the Social Security Trustees Report.
--Josh Marshall
Reader mail...
Josh--Everything you say about the Schiavo fiasco is true except your conclusion. The Democrats, for once, did exactly the right thing. By letting the Republicans do what they wanted, they have give the American public, at a very crucial time, the opportunity to see the Republicans in all their sleazy glory. The unspoken backdrop of political debate in the country will now be "Look what you get when the Republicans get to do what they want." No one will point to the Democrats to say they were in it too, but if they'd have kept the vote from taking place, some would have pointed to them as against life and none would have seen the courts' utter rejection of Republican over-reaching. Republican pronouncements from authority will e crippled by the obviously manipulative and mistaken pronouncements by Republican doctors in congress on Schiavo's condition. Even conservative Republicans are upset with Delay now. With outcomes so good, why Monday morning quarterback the Democratic leadership? What better result could you hope for?
PJ
I actually don't think I necessarily disagree with this. It's not an issue for Dems to whip votes on. <$NoAd$>And the Republicans are in the majority. They can do what they want. But any Democrat should feel entirely comfortable saying they respect the legal process and don't believe Congress should intervene in family matters of life and death (notwithstanding the anguished decisions involved) to score political points.
Simple and honest.
--Josh Marshall
Surprise. Surprise.
For years, every Social Security Trustees report has put the insolvency numbers further out than they were the year before.
Until this year.
Late Update: Atrios, an economist, has and, I suspect, will continue to have the best details on the precise methods of cookery involved.
--Josh Marshall
I haven't had my eye as closely on developments as I had been. But it seems now that the Senate's Fainthearted Faction may have to go out of business entirely or at least nearly so. Once I've read all the tea leaves, I'll be updating as appropriate.
--Josh Marshall
There's another lesson for Democrats in this whole sad and sometimes ugly Schiavo affair. It has nothing to do with the politics of end-of-life care or the particulars of this tragic case. It concerns how Democrats present their views to the nation, how they act politically.
The recent national political phase of this case began with Republicans seeing a political opportunity to mobilize the electorate against Democrats -- an especially inviting opportunity given the turn of other political news of late. Most of the national press bought into this storyline. And most Democrats seem to have done so as well.
That doesn't mean they agreed with the underlying viewpoint advanced by Republicans. But they did buy into the political storyline. And that set into motion the standard drama, with cowering Democrats put to flight and fear by grinning Republicans, with national reporters occasionally aghast but mainly enthralled, as our baser natures might be by a gloveless boxing match.
(From childhood, most of us remember that there is a certain bully character type. But it is seldom an accident just who gets bullied. Bullies, in their very nature, perhaps their deepest nature, know how to sense and seek out people who are afraid to defend themselves. That's an instructive lesson here too.)
Yet now we see, quite in contrast to the conventional wisdom, that what the Washington Republicans have done here is quite unpopular with the public. Narrow majorities think the court decision is the right one; and overwhelming majorities believe Congress shouldn't be getting involved in this at all.
But those polls shouldn't have been necessary for Democrats to know how to act in this case. Anybody watching this could see what the Republican majority was doing was a cheap political stunt. We have laws in this country and courts enforce them. This is a case where there is not even a credible argument that there is any question of legitimate interpretation. That's all another way of saying that the Democrats should have been more confident that the majority of the public would have been more supportive of living under the law of the land in this case, or put another way, of their being the grown-up party.
I consider myself very much a political pragmatist -- what's right has to contend with what's doable, and all that. There are also a number of us who've been saying for years that the Democrats have a problem on national security and that much of it is not so much a question of policy as an ingrained habit of approaching defense policy issues through a prism of politics rather than policy. But this last year has brought home to me the belief that this basic problem extends far beyond national security policy.
I think the record now shows that Democrats have reaped ample political rewards by beginning the Social Security debate with a clear and emphatic statement of their support for the Social Security system as it now exists in advance of the public's reaction. And this is one example among many.
For my part at least, this doesn't mean I'm ditching pragmatism in favor of a come-what-will idealism. Not at all. Far from it. I simply think that we are now operating in a political context in which clarity and candor about where Democrats stand makes for good politics -- much better certainly than the tacking back and forth that has become second nature after such a long time sailing against an adverse wind.
Just as is the case with Republicans, there are things that Democrats believe that a majority of the public does not. That's life. And I'm not naive enough not to recognize that there are some issues of such controversy that they may still require delicate handling. But these two examples above show that Democrats are often inclined to move immediately to the defensive in instances where the public actually supports their viewpoint. And even where that is not the case, I think the Democrats will end up, on balance, in better standing with the public that knows just where they stand and that they're willing to stand for it.
--Josh Marshall
I would be remiss if I didn't quickly offer a hearty thank you to the three guest bloggers who generously took time to keep the commentary coming in my absence: Jon Chait, Harry Shearer and Ed Kilgore. A very sincere thank you to each of them. I hope you enjoyed their posts as much as I did. Remember that you can keep reading Jon in The New Republic, Harry in all sorts of different venues described here and Ed at NewDonkey.com.
One other short note. A number of folks have already written in to ask why I'm back already, why such a short honeymoon? Actually, we're taking our honeymoon in May. Thus my (relatively) early reappearance.
--Josh Marshall
Despite being away for several days, I've kept one eye on the Schiavo story. And a couple echoes or reminders keep coming into my head. One is the Elian Gonzales episode from 2000; another is Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities -- only now in a different locale, a different worldview or ideology aflame, and with a new lead character: Tom DeLay.
Another part of this story, which seems hard to miss, is the increasing frequency of one-off legislation -- laws intended to obstruct the normal course of law and explicitly intended to have no value as precedent. All of this, of course, is precisely inimical to the rule of law and puts legislatures and, in other cases, courts (Bush v. Gore) in the paradoxical position of overturning the law, albeit using the procedures of either creating or interpreting it.
And Tom DeLay, this is truly the last refuge for this man. The cable networks seem not quite to have caught on to the fact that almost every tentacle of the political machine this man has created is now careening toward federal or state indictments. So here he is wrapping himself in the cloth of this family tragedy, in an effort to whip up the most whippable of his supporters in his defense, and in so doing finding the hand of God working in this woman's hospice care and in his own exposure as one of the most corrupt congressional leaders in American history. Like I said, Bonfire of the Vanities.
--Josh Marshall
The Bridegroom, as the last post indicates, is beginning to reconnect with terrestrial matters, but he's asked me to keep up the content for a few more hours. This gives me an opportunity to recommend an article by Matt Yglesias, which has finally been posted online by The American Prospect, about the roots of Democratic weakness on national security issues.
His basic thesis, which echoes the seminal New Democrat analysis by Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck back in 1989, The Politics of Evasion, is that the Democratic "security gap" is less a matter of policy differences than of a persistent belief that national security issues are "enemy turf" which Democrats should try to avoid or simply neutralize, while changing the subject back to more congenial domestic issues.
Yglesias argues strenuously that there is a robust and relatively united point of view on national security among wonks and shadow-cabinet experts (such as the Progressive Internationalism manifesto midwifed by the Progressive Policy Institute last year), which is more important than the increasingly-moot differences of opinion on the decision to invade Iraq. But this consensus Democratic wisdom never quite makes it into Democratic presidential or congressional campaigns.
Despite a reasonably broad consensus among left-of-center security hands about what should be done, the party’s political operatives are unable to turn that consensus into a compelling political narrative. Democrats are reluctant to address security issues except when forced to do so, and, as a result, they discover that when they are so forced, they aren’t very good at it. Political failure breeds further reluctance, which breeds further failure -- no one develops the relevant ability to spin security for partisan gain, and because no one can win on security, no one learns how to campaign on it.
The Kerry campaign, he suggests, was a prime example of this disconnect. Democrats had in 2004 a candidate with a strong national security record, supported by a strong personal biography, but in the end, he was perceived as weak on the very set of issues that made so many primary voters believe he was "electable." Why? Because he never had a real national security message, and his campaign made sure of that.
Polls showed that voters were concerned that things were going badly in Iraq, so Kerry talked about it. They showed that voters were concerned about America’s relations with its allies, so he talked about that. This approach may work well enough on domestic issues where the goodies -- tax credits, Social Security checks, new schools, lower insurance premiums -- are concrete and separable.
The best example of this disconnect was on the subject of nuclear terrorism, which, as Yglesias notes, has been an obsessive concern, and a common critique of Bush, shared by virtually all Democrats. Kerry's record on this issue was unimpeachable, consistent, and moreover, the centerpiece of his argument that unilateralism in foreign policy threatened our national security. But you didn't hear much about it on the campaign trail, because Kerry's political wizards didn't think it was a "voting issue."
But Yglesias doesn't blame the consulting class as the sole source of the problem: he also score party activists who simply aren't interested in national security.
New initiatives under way to train a new generation of progressive activists often offer civil liberties as a potential area of interest, but not national security or foreign policy. Of course civil liberties are important, but a strategy to ensure that the government doesn’t go too far in combating terrorism only makes sense as part of a strategy that will ensure that the government also goes far enough. Liberals may think it should go without saying that we, too, want to keep America safe, but in practice it doesn’t go without saying. A movement interested in preparing to defend the United States from its own security apparatus but not against terrorism is inviting the attack that it cares more about protecting terrorists than their victims. Worse, it deprives itself of the ability to cultivate people who will be able to articulate a progressive message on national security in the future.
Most provocatively, Yglesias suggests that the fundamental cause of the "politics of evasion" among Democrats on national security is this: we don't have any recognized constituency group that cares about it!
The upshot is that no one is charged with looking after a topic, like national security, that concerns everyone, rather than anyone in particular. There exists no major group in Washington that defines itself as both progressive and primarily concerned with the topics of foreign policy and security. Until this is changed, it will be hard for Democrats to engage with the subject as they must -- at every level, and not merely in presidential campaigns. It will also be all but impossible to build a broad, thematic case on security policy -- one that raises the way in which the right’s tax-cut jihad at home starves the government of resources needed to fight the real one around the world, and questions the fitness of a movement with an ambivalent view toward theocracy at home to combat it abroad -- rather than a laundry list of narrow, technocratic criticisms.
I rarely use the term "must-read," but I recommend Yglesias' piece to all Democrats, and especially to those Democrats who have been unhappy with the more abrasive argument of Peter Beinart about the urgency of making the Democratic Party's position on national security unambiguous. Matt is not endorsing--indeed, he is rejecting--any intra-party fight or "purge;" but he is arguing that Democratic antipathy to the whole subject of national security is making us all susceptible to the GOP claim that we ultimately just don't give a damn.
--Spencer Ackerman
Take a look at this Media Matters report on CNN's skewed presentation of polling data about the Schiavo case.
It's a textbook example and, I suspect, no accident.
Late Update: As of early this evening, CNN has now revised the graph in question.
--Josh Marshall
Having disrespected a David Brooks column in a weekend post, I have to say that today's offering on the greater meaning of the ever-burgeoning Abramoff/Scanlon/Reed Casino Shakedown Scandal pretty much balances the weekly ledger in my book. Aside from writing a quick and acerbic summary of the scandal and its many ironies, Brooks does not shrink from the connection between the Republican Revolution of 1995 and its increasingly nauseating Thermidor. Indeed, Brooks says you can't understand one without the other:
Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!
So far most GOPers and conservative opinion-leaders are ignoring the whole mess, in part because it's not getting much play in the mainstream media other than in the Washington Post. But this story ain't going away, and soon enough we'll start hearing the splashing sound of Abramoff and Reed's fellow crewmen tossing them over the side with sad, damage-controlling comments about how ol' Jack and ol' Ralph lost their minds along with their principles.
Given his partisan loyalties, I'm glad to see that Brooks isn't buying it:
Abramoff's and Scanlon's Indian-gaming scandal will go down as the movement's crowning achievement, more shameless than anything the others would do, but still the culmination of the trends building since 1995. It perfectly embodied their creed and philosophy: "I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!" as Abramoff wrote to Reed.They made at least $66 million.
This is a major accomplishment. And remember: Abramoff didn't do it on his own.
It took a village. The sleazo-cons thought they could take over K Street to advance their agenda. As it transpired, K Street took over them.
Selah.
--Spencer Ackerman
Having checked out the email queue, I've got two corrections to make to earlier posts about the Schiavo case.
First, as about twenty lawyers have informed me, Judge Whittemore did not "dismiss the Schiavo case," but simply denied a petition for a Temporary Restraining Order that would have reinserted Schaivo's feeding tube while the full case was being heard. But since denial of the TRO (which can be appealed) means the judge thinks there's little or no chance the Schindlers can prevail in the underlying case, it's a bad sign for them.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, I heard from a medical social worker who made it clear "Living Wills" won't necessarily control medical decisions in cases like Schiavo's. He suggested the far superior instrument is a Durable Power of Attorney for Medical Care, which not only indicates your wishes about live-support contingencies, but gives the person of your choice real control over medical decisions.
--Spencer Ackerman
Well, they went ahead and did it: The Republican-controlled Georgia legislature has approved a congressional re-redistricting plan aimed at imperilling two Democratic incumbents and making a GOP incumbent safe.
Democratic observers have mixed assessments about the impact of the remap, which tosses freshman Rep. John Barrow's Athens home into an adjoining district and lowers the African-American and Democratic population of Rep. Jim Marshall's district significantly. Barrow has already made it clear he'll run in his "old" district, which remains Democratic-leaning, and Marshall (who might wind up running statewide anyway) has easily dispatched a strong and well-funded Republican challenger two elections in a row.
But Democrats will mount a legal challenge to the remap anyway, arguing that the dilution of the minority vote in Barrow's district and in that of Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey violates the Voting Rights Act.
More immediately, the Georgia action, on the heels of the much more egregious re-remap in Texas in 2003, is almost certain to let slip the dogs of war by making re-redistricting a viable option for either party when it obtains control of the legislature and governorship of a state after the regular decennial redistricting process. Indeed, Democrats have threatened retaliatory action in three states (Illinois, Louisiana and New Mexico) where they've gained total control since '01, though Illinois Dems have apparently decided otherwise and time's running out for a re-remap in Louisiana.
But the GOP Power Grabs will definitely give added impetus to ballot initiatives that would combine a new system for redistricing with an immediate reconsideration of the last round. There's already an initiative campaign underway in Florida, where '04 Senate nominee Betty Castor has lent her name and some serious cash to the effort. And I gather something similar is likely to happen in Ohio. Along with PA and MI, these two states witnessed the most successful GOP partisan gerrymanders of 2001. More famously, Arnold Schwarzenneger's proposed initiative in California would produce an immediate re-redistricting there as well, though the partisan implications are hard to predict (though engineeered by Democrats, the California map's main characteristic was incumbent protection).
In other words, we had all better get ourselves educated and interested in the murky law and politics of redistricting, and figure out a national model that makes sense. Like a lot of people, I'd prefer that we not lurch into this on a chaotic, state-by-state basis full of potential partisan mischief, but thanks to our Republican buddies, I don't think it's any longer possible to put this particular genie back in the bottle.
--Spencer Ackerman
As you may have already heard, the federal judge that Congress forced into the Terri Schiavo case has dismissed the Schindler family's case, after a hearing in which Judge James Whittemore made it clear the Schindlers had no arguments that hadn't been heard repeatedly during the previous seven years of litigation.
The Schindlers, of course, will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals, but the odds of a reversal there are slim, and I strongly doubt the U.S. Supreme Court will want to get into this one. So the question will remain: having framed the Schiavo case as "murder" and "barbarism" and "medical terrorism," does Tom DeLay now just say, "Well, the family had its day in court," and forget about it? Or will the culture-war implications of the case make it escalate?
Guess you can tell which way I think the wind will blow.
--Spencer Ackerman
You probably haven't heard about it unless you live in or nearby the State of Maryland, but one of the more peculiar local political stories has been the exposure and firing of a Republican operative named Joe Steffen who was fanning, on the Freeper site no less, (completely unsubstantiated) rumors of extra-marital sexual activity by Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. Steffen is a long-time retainer for Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich, whom the very popular O'Malley is thinking about challenging in 2006. When O'Malley publicly exposed the smear effort, Ehrlich fired Steffen.
There's a big fat Style profile of Steffen and his career in today's Washington Post, and a good chunk of it deals not with his attempted sliming of O'Malley, but with his tours of duty of state agencies since Ehrlich's election, where he put a figurine of the Grim Reaper on his desk, let it be known that his nicknames were "Prince of Darkness" and "Doctor Death," and went happily about compiling lists of Democrats to fire.
For anyone who has been through a partisan (or in some cases, intra-partisan) transition in a federal, state or local government agency, Steffen is a very familiar and unsavory type: The Commissar. That's the hatchet man sent in to root out heresy, find expendable members of the opposition party, and create the maximum number of fat jobs for the Party Faithful who are rolling off the winning campaign. The Commissar's tenure is invariably short, since he or she is not there to improve public policy, and there are many agencies to purge.
There are Democratic and Republican Commissars, but in my experience, the GOPers are the most numerous and vicious. Why? For the same reason that you tend to have more corruption in Republican administrations: when you don't much care about the positive uses of government, and you don't have the political guts to cut it back as much as you would like, then government becomes little more than a vast patronage operation. And if chaos in services ensues, hey, it's just more proof that government's bad to begin with, right?
In other words, this is an ideological more than a moral matter. The Post profile of Steffen includes a variety of testimonials that he wasn't that bad a guy, despite his nicknames, his undertaker's wardrobe, and his habit of never turning on the lights in his office. But that misses the point: Freepers like Steffen think it's good to disable government and harrass "bureaucrats," just as they probably think saving Maryland from an O'Malley administration justifies trying to wreck his marriage.
--Spencer Ackerman
What's worse? The exploitation of tragedy in the Terri Schiavo case, or the exploitation of triumph in the previous big media human interest story, Ashley Smith? (In case you somehow missed it, Smith was the young woman who managed to pacify and then escape serial murderer Brian Nichols in Atlanta, ultimately leading to his peaceful surrender).
The former is far worse, no doubt, since the exploiters have explicitly political goals and some very specific plans for each and every one of us.
But now The New Republic's Lee Siegel has broken the general taboo against publicly uttering what I heard many people privately saying at the height of the Smith furor: the media, and especially CNN, bought into the religious interpretation of Smith's courageous acts with an almost evangelical avidity. As you probably know, the part of the story that's led it to be described as some sort of theodicy (an illustration of the divine purpose in apparent evil) is the fact that Smith read Nichols a passage from The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren's evangelical self-help bestseller. She also discussed her own difficult life with Nichols, and cooked him pancakes with "real butter," but it's the Warren book that's getting the credit, almost as much as Smith's own level-headedness.
Now it's not terribly surprising Smith had a copy of Warren's book on hand; it is, after all, the largest selling hardcover book in publishing history, with 20 million copies sold so far (a figure that's sure to climb still higher on the wings of the Smith story). And I have little doubt that being in the presence of an accused rapist and multiple murderer--indeed, sitting with him as the television showed nonstop coverage of the manhunt for him--led Smith, like anyone else, to a preoccupation with Ultimate Things.
But the idea that Smith was simply the Handmaiden of the Lord--the instrument for Nichols' redemption, and for the ever-more-efficient disseminatinon of the Therapeutic Gospel according to Rick Warren--is a story line that's gaining a surprising amount of currency, even in mainstream media sources (I can only imagine what conservative Christian media are doing with it).
Siegel accuses CNN of using the Smith saga to improve its reputation and viewership among Christian evangelicals. I suspect its saturation coverage of the whole event had more to do with proximity than strategy; CNN invariably over-reports any story originating near its Atlanta studios.
As a Christian, I have a holy fear of this kind of story, because it is almost invariably exploited by those who want to sell a very particular type of Christianity in implied hostility to every other form of faith. Remember that previous alleged divine intervention in Georgia, the claims by one Nancy Fowler that she was receiving private messages from the Virgin Mary in a location near the suburban town of Conyers? Those messages invariably endorsed a particularly conservative Catholicism--so conservative, in fact, that the Church hierarchy largely disavowed them.
Those Christians who are rushing to take sectarian credit for Ashley Smith's courage are committing a whole host of spiritually dangerous and ethically questionable acts, among them the breezy dismissal of Brian Nichols' victims as collateral damage in the divine plan to get more readers for Reverend Rick. They need to get away from the cameras, and the cameras need to get away from this story, for good.
--Spencer Ackerman
This weekend WaPo's David Broder did a column hyping Rep. Clay Shaw's "idea" of throwing in the towel on Social Security privatization and just borrowing a few trillion bucks to create "add-on" accounts, which in a different form were once proposed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
But today the LA Times' Ron Brownstein rains pretty hard on add-ons as any sort of "face-saving" compromise.
Clinton and Gore backed the idea when the federal budget enjoyed a huge surplus; now, with the government again so deeply in the red, skeptics are asking whether subsidizing more retirement saving should be a higher priority than expanding access to healthcare or reducing the deficit itself.
And GOPers, despite their growing interest in a way out of the Social Security cul de sac where Bush has taken them, like "add-on" accounts even less:
Almost all congressional conservatives view such accounts as a new entitlement that would expand the welfare state; that's the view among Bush's top economic advisors as well. And that conflicts with a key, if rarely articulated, conservative goal in this debate: shrinking the size of government and encouraging Americans to rely more on the market, and less on public programs, for economic security."I don't think you solve a problem with an old entitlement by creating a new entitlement," says one senior administration official.
Thus, says Brownstein:
Add-on accounts may look like a reasonable midpoint between the two sides in this struggle. But in a polarized capital where the only constant is conflict, it increasingly appears that add-ons don't add up for either party.
Sure looks that way to me. A theoretically possible "deal" on add-on accounts would have to depend on a barely imaginable deal about the overall shape and direction of the federal government and the tax code. Borrowing a few trillion smackers to "save face" for the GOP may be less damaging that borrowing many trillions to screw up Social Security forever, but it's deficits and debt, not retirement security, that's today's unmistakable "crisis."
--Spencer Ackerman
The Schiavo "emergency" in Washington is temporarily over with the passage of a private bill giving Terri Schiavo's parents a hearing before a federal judge. But if that judge doesn't do what the Schindlers and their hyper-politicized backers want, then the protests and demands for ever-more-drastic intervention will start right back up again, aimed no doubt at plenary legislation banning any terminations of life support absent explicit instructions from the person in question. And at that point, Congressional Republicans will be hardly be in a position to say no.
And even if Schiavo's particular case somehow gets out of the news, the precedent has now been set, as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) pointed out today: "Every aggrieved party in any similar litigation now will go to Congress, come to Congress and ask us to make a series of decisions. This is a terribly difficult decision which we are, institutionally, totally incompetent to make."
One thing is for sure: this case will boost the execution of Living Wills into the stratosphere. After this weekend, each of us must decide if we want to control what happens to us if we wind up like Terri Schiavo. Otherwise, Tom DeLay will decide it for us.
--Spencer Ackerman
If I were a congressional Republican, or a supporter of the Schindler family's efforts to obtain federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, I'd be more than a little troubled by the high profile being assumed by the infamous anti-abortion extremist, Randall Terry. Terry accompanied Mary Schindler to a press appearance earlier today, and is also organizing an effort to get Jeb Bush and Florida legislators to visit Terri Schiavo.
One of the distinctive traits of Randall Terry is that he's been very honest in the past about his contempt for the political opportunism of Republicans who have found limited common cause with him in similarly "symbolic" cases. Here's how the conservative U.S. Newswire summarized Terry's views on "partial-birth" abortion in 2003: "Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue says, 'Partial-Birth Abortion Ban is a Political Scam but a Public Relations Goldmine.'" The press release from Terry heavily quoted in the article blasted the "partial-birth" ban as illogical, hypocritical, and essentially meaningless, but went on to laud the issue for its "educational" potential.
Gee, could it be that Terry thinks of the Schiavo case, and its Washington advocates, similarly?
Just wondering.
--Spencer Ackerman
Speaking of gambling with Social Security, there is an extremely odd and interesting New York Times piece by Damien Cave out today about Bush's failure to get young'uns psyched about privatizing SocSec.
There are several Onion-quality passages in this article--including the suggestion that Bush needs some Youth Celebrities (maybe hip-hop artists?) to give his sort-of-plan the requisite sex appeal. But here's the money quote:
To compete, the White House might want to up the ante. Robert J. Shiller, the Yale economist and author of "Irrational Exuberance," an examination of the 1990's boom, said that for this generation, the investment options Mr. Bush's plan will probably offer - low-risk bonds and stock-index funds - are "pretty dull," especially compared to the freedom people have when they invest online or with their 401(k) plans.Young workers, he said, are likely to see the plans as paternalistic, designed by and for their parents. The White House, Mr. Shiller said, might consider offering economic transformation, in the form of more money to invest, or more options.
"Young people today are captivated by poker," Mr. Shiller said. "All this excitement that the president wants young people to feel can only happen when they are playing the game."
From what I know of Schiller's views on Bush's plan, I suspect his tongue was planted so firmly in his cheek during the interview with Cave that he must have spoken in a muffled lisp. But if Rove and his spinmeisters take this idea seriously, they must now find a way to counteract all the Safe 'n' Sound talk about Social Security privatiziation that they've aimed at seniors and near-seniors. According to Cave's analysis, Bush needs to make his proposal sound dangerous and exciting. Gamble on your future! Get control of those payroll taxes now! Screw security! Who wants to get old, anyway? And who cares if insecurity will trouble your sleep? You can sleep when you're dead.
--Spencer Ackerman
Aside from the theatre of the Schiavo melodrama, Republicans are engaged in a variety of entertainment spectacles these days. And as always, the GOPers from my home state of Georgia are in the vanguard of play-acting, as illustrated by two separate items in John Harris's SundayPolitics column in today's WaPo.
Neither of these items involve that classic impresario Ralph Reed, who is running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, and who will soon have to stage a true Oscar-quality performance to explain his role in the ever-burgeoning Ambramoff/Indian Casino scandal, destined to become an HBO miniseries.
First, Harris reports on the acting studio that Rep. Jack Kingston, who chairs the House Republican Conference, has set up to train GOP congressmen and staff in how to deal with hostile constituents in all those Social Security town hall meetings they are reluctantly hosting. Turns out most of the sparse audience for Kingston's Method Acting production wants to know about substance, not style, and there the Georgian is at a bit of a loss. He is, however, offering pizza to his attendees.
Second, and for dessert, Harris notes that a familiar figure has joined the Retread Circuit in Las Vegas:
If you are on the Vegas Strip next month and get shut out for tickets to Wayne Newton, you could have a fallback with a different Newton. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is playing at Vegas next month, with an April 14 appearance at the Silverton casino, just a few miles south of the Strip. The Silverton said Gingrich will appear to "tell his inspiring story."
I'm not a big Vegas fan, and have never been to the Silverton casino, but with Gingrich as the headliner, you have to figure this is a place where the most exciting action is Keno. Still, Vegas is Vegas, and Gingrich will probably have to croon a few tunes between episodes in the "inspiring story" of his rise from young party hack to right-wing incendiary to national pariah and twice-divorced hypocrite, and back again. Given what we have heard about his future plans, he probably won't belt out his own version of the other Newton's signature song, Auf Wiedersehen.
Let's hope that this time, for real, "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
And BTW, what's with Republicans and casinos these days? Is that what makes them so determined to gamble with Social Security? You tell me.
UPDATE: In an amazing demonstration of the omniscience of TPM readers, I have learned from several sources that Wayne Newton's teutonic signature song is not "Auf Wiedersehen," but "Danke Schoen."
But according to a quick Google search, here's the signature line of that signature song:
"Though we go on our separate ways, Still the mem'ry stays, for always,
My heart says, danke schoen. Danke shoen, auf weidershein, Danke shoen."
Spelling issues aside, I still don't think this is a sentiment Newt would want to deliver in Vegas, or in Washington.
--Spencer Ackerman
Why, ask several bloggers and more than a couple of emails to this site, do Senate Democrats, and particularly Democratic Leader Harry Reid, seem to be cooperating with the Schiavo travesty? In particular, a lot of folks are very unhappy with a statement referring to the Senate's version of the Schiavo bill as "bipartisan," and suggesting House Republicans may not be willing to pass it.
There's a lot of confusion over Reid's statement and its timing (on Thursday, well before the latest round of shenanigans), but best I can tell, Senate Dems are going along with a "private bill" giving Schiavo's parents a hearing before a federal judge as a way to head off what House Republicans really want to do, which is to establish a new federal law on life support withdrawal that will apply to all cases, not just to Schiavo's.
Now that the effort to get the House to approve the "private bill" on a voice vote has failed, no telling what Republicans will try to do, but it's a pretty good bet Reid and other Senate Dems will strongly resist any effort to pass a "no right to die" bill.
In other words, the fight is escalating, and it's a fight that both Tom DeLay and Senate GOP leader Bill Frist seem to be entering into with considerable relish. DeLay, of course, would love nothing more than to identify himself with something, with anything, other than the pack of ethics problems surrounding him like a "treed" possum.
As for Frist, I think my colleague Marshall Wittman (a.k.a. The Bull Moose) probably hit it on the head in a quote that he served up to the London Times today: “I suspect that Senator Frist has his eye more on the Iowa caucus than the Hippocratic oath."
--Spencer Ackerman
As I awoke this Palm Sunday, I somehow hoped I had dreamed the whole Schiavo case (sorta the same dashed hope I had each morning for about a month after election day). No such luck.
After House Democrats objected to a maneuver to whip though Schiavo legislation on a voice vote with only a few Members present, it's now clear Congress is coming back in the middle of its Easter Recess to conduct an emergency session--usually the sort of thing reserved for the outbreak of war--aimed at intervening in this family and medical decision and overriding Florida law.
And why? Well, here's the explanation Republican Senators were given, in the form of a (hate to profane the term) talking points memo that the Washington Post got hold of:
"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," said the memo, which was reported by ABC News and later given to The Washington Post. "This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats."Since