Meeting W. at the CAFE

Gregg Easterbrook, writing in Slate points out something that jaded advocates of energy reform may have overlooked from the SOTU, which is that while Bush offerred mere rhetoric (the famous "addicted to foreign oil") in last year's SOTU, this time around W. is actually putting at least the first steps towards genuine energy conservation on the table.

Last Tuesday, Bush proposed that the CAFE standard grow 4 percent stricter per year. Essentially, this would mean that each new model year would need to get one mpg better gas mileage than cars from the year before. The last time the federal fuel-economy standard was strengthened was 1988. Nineteen years with zero progress on mpg is the leading reason U.S. petroleum consumption continues to rise.

Easterbrook wonders why Bush's proposal has met with a collective yawns from the mainstream press. Easterbrook then riffs on one of his pet themes during the Bush administration, which is that W. is not nearly the environmental despoiler he is made out to be. This happens to be one of the few areas where Easterbook, a incisive and contrarian thinker has repeatedly fallen flat. Perhaps Bush's critics demagogued a bit on mercury standards, but it strains credulity that an administration that repeatedly let industry draft environmental legislation, packed the EPA and Interior with corporate hacks and denied the existence of climate change for 6 years was anything other than a disaster for the environment.

Still, Easterbrook has a point - for the first time Bush seems to be putting something real on the table. Unlike the majority of Bush's SOTU initiatives (e.g. his tax cut for personal health insurance masquerading as health care reform), the CAFE proposal provides the Dems with a dilemma in that it is a genuinely sound public policy. Ignore Bush's offer, and they are complicit in maintaining the disastrous energy policy that 12 years of GOP/Big Oil control of Congress has wrought. Take Bush seriously (despite his utter lack of credibility on this front) and pass his proposal and you provide him with a genuine bipartisan accomplishment.

So what should the Dems do? Take him up on the offer. Unlike health care reform, energy reform can be done just as effectively in stages and every bit helps. Rather than waiting on a "comprehensive" energy reform bill that gives the GOP minority and Bush a chance to throw issues like ANWR drilling or ethanol subsidies into the mix, they should fast-track a CAFE standards bill modeled on Bush's proposal and put it on his desk to force him to pack his rhetoric with action. Either he signs it and everybody wins, or he vetoes it and gives Hilary, Obama or whoever is the Dem candidate in 2008 one more issue to attack the GOP's vulnerability on energy and the environment.

ON SECOND THOUGHT:


As Kevin Drum points out, on actual inspection Bush's CAFE plan has some serious flaws, with obvious loopholes written into the program. (It proves that my environmental wonk skills have grown rusty from years of disuse.) Anyway, strike the part about modeling the program after Bush's proposal - but the Dems should still fast-track a CAFE standards bill with teeth. Of course, the environmental policy wonk in me notes that a gas tax would be a far more efficient way of achieving the same goal of reducing fuel efficiency, but living in a nation where cheap gas is considered a constitutional right, that's not going to happen any time soon.

Nixon 1968, Gore 2008 ??

The Bull Moose is once again commenting on the "Phoenix-like" rise of Al Gore as a presidential candidate. Here's the Moose in January, noting the parallels between a Gore run in 2008 and Nixon's successful comeback in 1968.

Nixon is back! Well not really, the Moose is referring to the comeback of Al Gore, the Democrat's version of the Phoenix-like Republican of '68. The remake of the former Veep is in overdrive. The lefties realize that Al is their true heart-throb.

No doubt, the Veep is reading Six Crises and consulting with the Old Nixon men. Like Tricky Dick, Al can wave the "Bloody Shirt" of a stolen election. And after eight years in the wilderness, Gore can mobilize the base because he has been "right" on everything dear to the left.

Let's put to the side the fact that Nixon was historically the worst threat to American democracy in the history of the nation and that Al Gore is genuinely decent man and public servant with an impeccable record.

The historical analogies between a Gore run in 2008 and Nixon's run in 1968 are striking:

(1) Minority party (GOP, Dems) reverses years of exile from the White House with a charismatic, moderate president (Ike, Clinton)

(2) Despite popularity of policies of outgoing president, less charsimatic VP (Nixon, Gore) stumbles against a young, inexperienced but up-beat challenger (Kennedy, Bush).

(3) Dramatic event rallies divided nation around incumbent party (Cuban Missle Crisis, 9/11)

(4) Majority adminsitration gets mired in war, corruption and overreaching of its cultural fringe.

(5) Former VP (Nixon, Gore) returns to public stage to rally demoralized party (post-Goldwater GOP, post-Kerry Dems) and present himself as both an stateman with experience and outsider who can clean up the mess of the majority party.

Wouldn't it be great if the parallels continued. A 2-term Gore presidency beginning in 2008 (which since Al Gore would never bug his opponent's phones would last its full 8 years)?

Anyway, the Moose is panicking a bit too much from Gore's rhetoric. After all, Nixon's actual policies while in office were surprinsingly moderate.

Democrats Options In the National Security Debate

Karl Rove has pretty much set out what the GOP strategy for 2006 will be - a replay of 2002,

In essence, the GOP has a three pronged approach


(1) Since 9/11, the most pressing issue facing America is protection from terror. Democrats are mired in a "pre-9/11" mindset.

(2) Bush is an effective leader in the War on Terror, willing to make the tough choice necessary to keep America safe.

(3) A GOP Congress is necessary to assist Bush in fighting the War on Terror. Democrats would get in the way of Bush's efforts to keep America safe.


As of now, the Democrats do not appear to have anything resembling a coherent response to this plan. As I see it, these are the following responses they could take, but the party may be too fractured to adopt any of them.

(1) Try to Change the Subject to Domestic Issues

(2) Attack from the Left - Bush and the Right have overhyped the threat of a post 9/11 attack, overreached in Iraq, and are a danger to our civil liberties, etc...

(3) Flank from the Right - Bush has been too timid on Iran and in pursuit of Bin Laden in Pakistan, etc..

(4) The Sensible Center - This is the default wonky Democrat "good policy is good politics approach" - Democrats will be tough on Iran (but sure to consult with our allies) will look to reduce the U.S. footprint in Iraq (but will be responsible about not withdrawing too quickly).

(5) Redefine the Issue - Bush has made us less safe through incompetence and cronyism in the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA is a mess, chemical plants are exposed, the recommendations of the 9/11 commission haven't been implemented.

The Dems tried the Change the Subject approach in 2002 - it didn't work so well. Kerry's approach in 2004 resembled the Sensible Center, but his nuanced positions elicited yawns and were unable to compete with Bush's more simplistic, clearer message. Despite this, to the extent any national security message is delivered from the Dem establishment, it resembles this approach.

The netroots desperately wants the party to employ a full frontal Attack from the Left. While this approach at least provides clarity and theoretically could shift the terms of the debate somewhat, it reality it plays right into Rove's playbook. The netroots dramatically misreads that the average swing voter is far more concerned about preventing the next terror attack than warrantless wiretapping.

The much-maligned hawks would ideally like to employ the Flank from the Right strategy, but whatever the political upsides, it will likely lead to an internal mutiny from the party's core.

That's why I endorse the fifth approach - Redefining or Reframing the issue. While Democrats are not going to succesfully convince swing voters that the "War on Terror" is overhyped bunk, the GOP is vulnerable on the other two points - Bush's leadership and whether a GOP Congress is needed to support Bush

By reframing the issue around what Bush has failed to do since 9/11, the Democrats (1) plug into doubts about Bush's ability of a leader in the War on Terror that have been raised by Iraq and Katrina, (2) highlights the downside of a lacky GOP Congress unwilling to keep Bush honest;

For the approach to be as effective as positive, Democrats need to link the failure of Bush and the GOP Congress to act to the culture of corruption and cronyism that is rampant both in the Bush White House and Congress. Its obvious, for example, how GOP corruption has sabotaged efforts for reducing dependance on foreign oil - considering that oil lobbyists wrote the energy bill. Other examples of how lobbyist money has translated into GOP inertia on the 9/11 commission recommendations need to be unearthed and placed front and center in the fall.

Truman Democrats to the Rescue

I have been caught up in the excitement of the new Talking Points Memo Cafe, and have therefore have been spending my limited blog-time "commenting." One of the many interesting discussions I found there involved the newly-formed Truman Democrats. whose mission is to develop a credible Democratic national security alternative to the GOP.


Michael Signer, a Principal of the Project, outlined six principles of Truman Democrats in a recent post on Democracy Arsenal.

At least six values grounded our discussion, and showed how Truman Democrats improve on both the left and the right. Our first three values share some similarity to principles currently claimed by neoconservatives:

1) American exceptionalism: Like the neoconservatives, we believe that America is the greatest country the world has known. We are historically, morally, and intellectually unique. Unlike the necons, however, we believe we must constantly earn our exceptionalism through our moral conduct. Our uniqueness stems from our values, and so we bear a unique responsibility for living up to those values in shaping and influencing the world.

2) The use of force: Like the neocons, we're comfortable with the use of force for morally good ends. Unlike the neocons, as a general matter, we believe force shouldn't be the default choice for achieving our ends. We're neither reflexive doves nor pacifists; rather, we're pragmatists on the use of force.

3) American hegemony: Like the neocons, we want America to retain its supremacy as the military, political , and economic leader of the world in order that we can maintain our own security, help strengthen the world's safety and stability, and accomplish morally right goals. We are and should be a unipolar power. Unlike the neocons, however, we believe we must constantly earn and affirm the right to exercise that power.

But Truman Democrats also add three new principles of their own:

1) The world community. The traditionally conservative (rather than neocon, but still threaded through the current Administration's foreign policy) viewpoint borrows heavily from libertarian principles. As a matter of right and obligation, conservatives often believe people are and should be fundamentally selfish and individualistic, and that collective action is wrong. Truman Democrats believe, on the other hand, that the world is a community. America can lead that community -- but, to paraphrase John Donne, we are not an island, and any death diminishes us, because we are involved in mankind. To switch to a more prosaic metaphor, America is like a quarterback for the world. Although he's the most critical member of the team, the quarterback can't win alone; he needs the confidence and loyalty of his teammates, which he earns through leadership.

2) Liberal-mindedness: Neoconservatives believe that the discovery of ideas is basically finished. That's why they constantly return to the ancient theorists and ancient values in search of some lost nobility and greatness. Truman Democrats believe instead that knowledge is constantly expanding, and that to conclude that we have finished knowing, or that ideas are presumptively wrong because of where they come from, is both arrogant and dangerous. We believe in a resilient, flexible national mind, avoiding the calcification of ideology. We believe in learning from events and fitting our thinking to facts, not the other way around. This is why democracy (which encourages the growth of knowledge) is our political system of choice.

3) Helping the least well-off: Conservatives and realpolitikers have generally believed that wealth and power should be the key determinants to foreign policy decisions regarding other countries. Following philosophers like John Rawls, Truman Democrats believe we should instead help the least well-off before we help the most well-off. So building up the economies in many developing nations, or addressing the AIDS crisis, is not only a matter of stability -- it's a matter of moral right. Moreover, helping the least well-off also helps us. Being the only wealthy house in a poor neighborhood makes us the target. Helping the whole neighborhood become richer makes us a leader.

The following is my commentary on Signer's points, which I posted atTPM Cafe :

While I share the aims of the Truman Democrats, I think that the 6 points listed are inartfully drafted.

Truman Democrats share the following values with the neocons:

1) The central goal of American foreign policy should be the promotion of liberal (individual rights, rule of law) and democratic values. These should not be subordinated to the competing values of stability or material interests.

2) America has been and will continue to be the indispensible nation for the furthering of liberal and democratic values. America (for the most part has not) and should not seek to use its power solely in a narrow national self-interest like past great powers. [What Signer calls "Exceptionalism"]

3) America should use its political, economic and military supremacy to promote liberal and democratic values [What Signer calls "Use of Force"]

4) Because America is uniquely committed to the promotion of liberal and democratic values, it is essential for it to maintain its
military, political and economic supremacy. [What the Signer calls "Hegemony"]

Truman Democrats are distinguishable from neocons in the following ways:

1) Committment to the expansion of a liberal international order outside of the economic sphere. America needs to work with its liberal, democratic allies to create functional institutions to combat global security and environmental problems. [What Signer calls "global community.]

2) The values of social justice and "soft" power. America must show moral leadership by assiting the world's most vulnerable. Such leadership is just as powerful as military, political or economic leadership. [This is what Signer calls "helping those least well-off"]

3) Pragmatism and Professionalism. American foreign policy must use pragmatic means in achieving idealistic ends. There are realistic limits to the capacity of America to change the world overnight, and the correct ideological position cannot substitute for technical and professional expertise and fully thought out plans. [corresponds to Signers "liberal-mindedness."]

It should be very clear that the Bush Administration, both its neocon and Jacksonian camps, do not support the last three values. Truman Democrats therefore would present an idealist, muscular foreign policy that is anything but neocon-lite, but instead truly promotes America's national interests by adhereing to America's core values.

Note: I found it interesting that when I came across the articulation of Truman Democrat values on their site, that it was closer to what I had articulated.


The Truman Democrats list the following 8 core values:

1. Promoting democracy and freedom protects American national security.
   
   
2. Protecting American national security requires us to promote consistently our deepest values of freedom and liberty – with actions as well as words.
   
   
3. Robust military and intelligence capabilities protect American national security.
   
   
4. Strong alliances protect American national security.
   
   
5. Legitimate international behavior protects American national security.
   
6. Free trade protects American national security.
   
   
7. Promoting development abroad protects American national security.
   
   
8. Comprehensive policy coordination protects American national security.
   
   

It should be even more clear from this articulation that Truman Democrats are not neo-con lite but rather offer a clear Wilsonian alternative to the radical unilateralist idealism of the neocons, the Jeffersonian neo-isolationism of the pacifist grass-roots left, and the competing visions of Hamiltonian realism and utopianist globralism of the foreign policy establishment.

Governors for Jesus, against Jews

The front cover of today's Times has an article on yesterday's signing of anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation by Texas governor Rick Perry at an evangelical school in Fort Worth, Texas. While the entire scene - the need to "celebrate with Christian friends" over the signing of legislation whose secular purpose seems dubious to begin - was distubring, of particular note is Perry's decision to have "Rabbi" David Stone, minister of the Beth Yeshua Messianic Jewish Congregation of Fort Worth offer the closing benediction among protestations by the Perry camp that the event was "open to people of all faiths."


The local Messianic Jewish congregation is part of an initiative is often known by its best-funded and most visible organization, "Jews for Jesus," one of the leading pioneers in the succesful exploitation of the Comic Sans Font to produce whimsical-looking pamphlets. Whatever the differences between the varying forms of Messianic Judaism, they have two things in common: One, a desire to succeed where crudades, inquisitions and dis-enfranchisement failed and convert the stubborn Jews; and two, a lack of faith in the ability of a straight-forward presentation of the merits of Christianity in getting the job done. Thus "Messianic Jewish" congregations retain the ritual trappings of Judaism (down to a Hebraicized Bet Yeshua/House of Jesus) but in fact espouse the Christian doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ.


While many of my co-religionists are deeply troubled by any evangelizing of Jews (believing understandably that given the general way its been done in the past 2000 years, we deserve a milenium or so break from prostelyzation), part of being in America is for everyone to be exposed to the marketplace of competing religious ideas. Further, I understand the central role witnessing plays in the religious lives of evangelicals - they believe they have a divine obligation to spread what they believe to be the "Good News." Such witnessing provides no threat to any truly secure Jewish identity - there is no reason to slam the door on a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon who doesn't get the hint that mezuzah on the doorpost is a signal to pitch their spiritual wares next door.


Jews for Jesus and its ilk is another story. Support for Jews for Jesus is fundamentally inconsistent with respect for Judaism and evangelicals should be ashamed of their support for it. To have the chief executive of one of the most important states in our union endorse such degredation of the Jewish faith is unacceptable. Governer Perry needs to get the message loud and clear that he has deeply offended the American Jewish community and he accordingly not deserving of any support, even from the minority of Texas Jews who do vote Republican. Further, the GOP needs to get the message that there is a limit to what even hawkish, Israel-centered Jews will put up with when it comes to pandering to the religious right. And that Governor Perry, by endorsing a movement created for the sole purpose of readicating the Jewish faith, has just crossed that line.

STATE OF THE UNION: 2005..."LIVE" BLOGGED ON TAPE-DELAY

I orignally had no intention of watching this, by my attractive lawyer wife wanted to play the SOTUS drinking game, so I taped it for her and we watched it an 1 1/2 hour behind schedule, (with a necessary break for the Daily Show). I decided it was the perfect opportunity to break a blog-drought, so here goes....(Admittedly, the snark to deep thought ratio is much higher than usual)

Well, its early on and already Bush is promising to make the tax cuts permanent and cut the deficit in half by 2009 (next up, a donut that will magically reduce your gut). Ahh, that's how he's doing it, he's eliminating more than 150 government programs that don't fulfill substantial priorities...like Social Security, for example.

A shout out to education...now we're expanding NOCLB to high schools, no mention of adding any money (after all there's a major deficit you know). Good news, he's increasing the size of Pell Grants (the bad news of course this probably means, he's decreasing the number of Pell Grants awarded).

Wow, he just managed to weave in small business, women and minorites benefiting and frivolous asbestos claims into the same sentence. (Yes, I can see it now, somewhere in Ohio there's a young entrepeneur all ready to open shop and hire lots of women and minorites, except for those damn asbestos claims!!) Anyway, W. gets 5 points for managing such an impressive pander-scapegoat combo.

Next up, W. promises a "comprehensive" health program, but I'm not really paying attention since its clear he doesn't plan to spend a dime on any of it and it will the last you'll hear of it until next year's SOTU.

I'm trying not to laugh as he says "environmentally sensitive energy"...which translates as "safe, clean, nukular energy" ...now I've lost it... It's followed up by a laundry list of alternative fuels that he will continue to underfund, but provide a fig leaf for ANWR. (Of course, there's a great trade-off to be made, ANWR for a serious green energy policy, but I highly doubt any Dem is imaginitive enough to propose it...and I'll stop reliving my days as an espiring Environmental Policy wonk and move on now...).

Now he's talking about updatiing "archaic" institutions. Its gotta be Social Security...

[Sorry, the rest of this post somehow got lost in cyberspace....]

WHY "TERROR AND LIBERALISM" IS RELEVANT AFTER ALL

I recently read Paul Berman's medidation on the current conflict, "Terror and Liberalism." Before reaching the merits of Berman's argument, one has to get past the problem that the book simply mistitled. Berman's central thesis is how the "War on Terror" is simply a continuation of liberalism's struggle against totalitarianism. More specifically, Berman sketches out an argument for why our disparate enemies in the Islamic world - Irqai Baathism (which represented the last, deadliest version of pan-Arab fascism) and Islamism in both its Sunni and Shiite forms are the intellectual heirs of western totalitarian thought. Therefore, they pose a similar threat to Liberal societies, and demand a similar struggle (as was provided against facism and communism) by liberals. Thus, in a book that seeks to clarfify the stakes and rationale for liberals in this conflict, the very title of Berman's book confuses the struggle against Islamic variants of totalitarianism with its principal tactic of terror.


Putting this non-trivial semantic failing to the side, I otherwise enjoyed "Terror and Liberalism." I was not surprised, given my ideological leanings to find myself agreeing with Berman's call to arms to liberals, but I found his writing lucid and his more specific argument (about the close connection from western totalitarian thought to Islamic totalitarian thought) tightly reasoned if at times oversold. What I found particularly enlightening were Berman's explanations of the fundamental similarity of superficially distinct forms of totalitarianism and some of the reasons for liberals failure to respond adequately to the totalitarian threats. But on the whole, I wondered if Berman's book wasn't in some sense superfluous. After all, isn't it obvious that Islamic totalitarianism (at least in its Islamist form) is a threat to liberalism, isn't it self-evident that liberal societies (and the United States in particular)have a duty to struggle against this force until it no longer poses a threat to liberal and free societies? Could any sober-minded liberal take a contrary view?


Berman's publisher, if not Berman should rest easy. The relevance of "Terror and Liberalism" has been made all too plain by the response to Peter Beinart's TNR piece challenging Liberals to place a struggle against Islamic totalitarianism at the center of their politics. In particular, for anyone who wants to comprehend why so many liberals reject the liberal hawks' views about the threat of Islamism, Berman's chapters on liberal rationalization and denial in the face of totalitarian irrationality are required reading.


I'll expand on this in further posts, but in the mean time, read the response to Beinart of Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly, his comment posters, or John Judis, author of the Not Ever to Be Emerging (If It Follows the Foreign Policy Prescriptions of Its Authors) Democratic Majority on TNR Online. All of the pathologies catalogued by Berman - the claims of exagerration, the projection of rational, appeasable objectives, the blaming of victims for the anger fomented against them - are on display. And the truly scary fact, is that this is the case barely 3 years after 9/11. How deep must the pathologies in American liberalism run for this monumental event to have faded so quickly? And can it be healed in time before Islamism abroad and corporate-evangelical Bushism at home wreck irreperable damage?

CAN THE DEMS GET FAITH?


Well, with today's N.Y. Times' article on the subject, it is clear whatever number crunching remains to be done on the exit polls, the Dems initial response to the election defeat is to focus on closing the "faith" gap.


For those of us on the religious left who have been beggin the party for years to tackle this issue, I would like to extend a hearty "what took you so damn long?"


It is somewhat ironic that it is the narrow defeat of Kerry to Bush, as opposed to the down-ticket debacle that is driving this discussion. The irony comes from the fact that while Kerry's loss is far more easily attributable to his failure to close the deal on national security, the Dems tone-deafness on faith is a major reason the party is in shambles at the local, state and Congressional level. Still, progress is progress.


So how exactly is the gap to be closed?

But Democrats disagree about how to establish the party's spiritual credentials. Some play down the need for changes, saying poorly framed surveys of voters leaving polls are overstating the impact of conservative Christian voters. Others argue that Democrats need to rephrase their positions in more moral and religious language. And an emboldened group of Democratic partisans and sympathetic religious leaders warn that Mr. Bush has beaten Democrats to the middle on social issues like abortion that resonate with religious traditionalists, arguing that the party should publicly welcome opponents of abortion into its ranks and perhaps even bend in its opposition to certain abortion restrictions.

Unfortunately the article does not really do a good job of expounding any of the these alternate approaches, nor does it coherently present the contrary view of much of the party's base, represented by Jerry Nadler (D-Village) that this is much ado about nothing. What exactly does it mean to employ "moral and religious" language. Is this as simple as nominating a candidate like Carter or Clinton to whom the rhetoric comes natural, or does it require a deeper, sustained campaign to reframe what constitute "moral" or "religious" issues in American political discourse? Similarly, the article seems to suggest that moving to the middle on cultural issues is primarily about shifting positions on abortion and gay marriage. There is no mention whatsoever of the alternate approach (on which Lieberman is way ahead of the rest of the party with his approach to family leave and regulation of entertainment) of directly addressing the aspects of the culture that worry traditional voters rather than merely reacting to the issues the GOP uses to exploit that worry.


Finally, a critical limitation that often goes unexplored in these discussions is the party's absolute financial dependance on the cultural left. (Anyone who wants to understand how this dynamics works should examine the 2000 Pennsylvania Senate race, where the anti-abortion, economically liberal congressman Ron Klink, who had an excellent shot of knocking off Rick Santorum, could not raise the funds he needed to compete from the state party's pro-choice, metro Philly donor base.)


The article in passing, however, touched upon the most important thing the Dems can do to close the faith gap - building its grass-roots ties to liberal and centrist faith communities. In the end, it is the ability of the party to tap into these communities that will determine whether or not an authentic progressive faith-based agenda can be developed that can end the current disconnect from public morality to social justice.

NOT TO BE REDUCTIONIST...

But the more numbers-cruching of exit polls and analysis of vote totals I read (for example those at the Not Quite Emergerging Democratic Majority site), its more and more apparent the number one reason the Dems lost was national security. Its the best explanation for the dramatic decline among white, working-class women (maybe the security mom existed after all), its the best explanation for Bush's gains among secular voters (have you run into any rabidly homophobic atheists recently?), and its best explanation for Bush's surprising gains in Blue America (especially in New Jersey) that were essential to his winning the popular vote.


The good news for Democrats is that there is really no need to sacrifice any core principles on economic, social or cultural issues. The bad news - the Dems will need to get as tough on terror as they were on Communism during the Cold War, a move that will met with stiff resistance by much of the party's activist base (Hollywood, hard-line civil libertarians, Jeffersonian peaceniks). And even worse news for the Dems, it is by no means certain that the hawks will win.

MORE POST-ELECTION THOUGHTS


So I've read the various analyses of why the Dems lost this election, especially the fascinating selection from Slate. The problem as I see it is that there there were two losses last Tuesday: First, John Kerry's narrow loss to Bush in the Presidential election; and second, the disastrous performance of the Democrats in Congress. As a result, the Democratic party and political liberalism is from the perspective of power and influence at its lowest ebb since before FDR.


Depending upon what you foucs on - the relative parity in popularity between the two parties, or the massive gap in power, of course leads to quite different assessments as to the seriousness of the Dems problem and how radical the solution is required.


Because of the nation's rough ideological parity, the closeness of the last two presidential elections was not a mirage. This suggests that to win next time around it will simply be enough to field a candidate that can 1) relate to cultural conservatives (as opposed to the cultural reactionaries who would cast their ballot solely on the basis of gay marriage), 2) articulate an alternate national security vision (opposing wars you think are stupid and singing the praises of multilateralism doesn't count) and 3) run a better campaign with consistent themes and sharper messages.


On the other hand, the depths of the Democrats powerlessness in the absence of holding the White House suggests that a more radical fix is necessary. Part of the Dems problem is simply due to larger structural phenomena. Majoritarianism in increasy unchecked in the Congress due to computer-modeled gerrymandering and the ideological homegenization of the parties. The Dems 49$ of the vote translates into 45% of the Senate and 46% of the House. While 45% of the Senate can still hold its relative weight (for now, but watch out for GOP moves to disable the fillibuster break, especially with respect to judicial appointments), 46% of the House now attributes for about 5% of the power in a Tom Delay led GOP Congress. And in contrast to how close the Dems are to regaining the White House, the prospects for regaining either house of Congress in the near term don't look particuarly good.


First of all, the undemocratic nature of the Senate forces the disproportionately metropolitan Dem party to fight uphill. A rough cut of the nation from this past election puts us at 25 states which Bush carried easily (to be unoriginal, lets call them "Red" states) arrayed throughout the South, Plains and West, 13 states won cleanly by Kerry (the beleaguered "Blue" states) clustered on the coasts, and the 12 swing states that until the last minute could have broken either way (those finicky "Purple" states). Thus, it is very possible for the Democrats to gather support from a clear majority of the country and barely prevent a filibuster-proof GOP majority. The fact that the Dems are now at 45 is actually testament that Democrats can win in Red America. There are currently Democratic senators from Montana, Nebraska and Louisana, and 2 Democratic Senators from North Dakota, Arkansas and West Virginia. (In contrast, the GOP has only the three anachronistic New England moderates in Blue states). And until the next census and redistricting, the Dems will be fighting an uphill battle in the House as well, due to their failures at the state level.


Which lends itself naturally to what the core problem is - the Dems are losing worst at two critical levels, both at the most mundane, concrete level in terms of local and state grassroots networks, and the opposite end - in the battle of overaching vision. (What the Dems are doing perfectly fine at is developing concrete policy proposals that consistently outscore the GOP alternatives in blind taste tests) On the ground, the Dems need to do what the GOP did 20 years ago by tapping into the religious right - develop a core grass-roots organizations that will fight the critical, less glamorous fights for school board and state legislature. It is simply not enough to rely on the declining strength of organized labor (much of which is increasingly concentrated in the public sector, where it more often than not does more harm than good to progressive policies) and episodic get out the vote campaigns. In the clouds, the Dems need to settle on a set of core principals with which to combat the GOP's clearly articulated vision of "economic liberty" (tax cuts for the rich, hand-outs to big corporations, and abdication of governmental responsibity for socio-economic problems) and "public morality" (expressed through gay-baiting and the imposition of radical theological constraints on medical research). This will facilitate the Dems ability to frame debates such that their criticism of GOP policies resonates rather than alienates mainstream voters.


These are the steps that need to be taken now, so that by 2006, when mainstream America goes to the polls uncomfortable with where an unfettered Bush administration is taking the country, they will feel comfortable turning to the Democrats as a leigitimate counter-balance. Once that happens, we are well on the way to this election being anything but the epochal landslide that depressed Dems and shameless Republicans are presenting it as.

QUICK POST-MORTEM THOUGHTS ON THE ELECTION


The Dems lost a very winnable election for three main reasons: 1) they failed to establish credibility on national security issues; 2) they were unable to respond to the GOP's gay-baiting "values" approach to domestic issues; and 3) Kerry, despite the attributes of his biography (skillfully dented by the Swift Boar smear) and his tenacity (unlike Dukakis, he fought back) was simply a poor candidate.


It is tempting to say, given how Kerry came to "winning" (as opposed to the millions of votes that separated him from legitimately winning) to think that these are relatively small problems to be fixed. But that analysis ignores the palpable weakness of Bush's re-election bud. If you look further down the ticket, 2004 was a disaster for the Dems. Decades of neglecting their grassroots has led to unfavorable congressional gerrymanders that pad the radical GOP's House majority, and besides for Ken Salazar, they got shut out of all of the competitive Senate races.


To recover the Dems need to:

1) stop treating national security and the War on Terror as a wedge issue that needs to be neutralized and more as the bipartisan struggle it should be;


2) begin a major effort to reframe the values debate. There is simply no beating or even neutralizing the GOP edge if they can define public morality as gay-bashing. I give Kerry credit for trying, especially in the debates, but in the end he came off as unauthentic. The problem is not the lack of Dems with that skill - Clinton knew how to do this, and so do Edwards & Obama, it is deeper than that. The Democrats need to begin to wage a long-term campaign to recapture terms such as "family values," and they will need to brush off the large segment of their core who are likely to respond "enough with the G-d talk!!"


3) fix the friggen nomination process to increase the likelihood of getting a candidate who can communicate to the vast numbers of socially conservative (but not fundamentalist) working class voters. Right now, until I see any else who can match him in this area, I'm backing John Edwards. He now has four years to appeared to have mastered the intricacies of international affairs. I give him until the end of the year to relax with his family, and then its back to work, John, because the last thing this country needs right now is another practising lawyer.

THE SWING INTELLECTUALS GO TO KERRY


As the election approaches, I find it harder and harder to imagine reconciling myself to a Bush victory. The past year has shown a steady withering away of my ambivalence between the Dems flawed instincts on foreign policy and national security and the GOP's horrific domestic agenda. The primary reason of course has been Bush's disastrous handling of the war in Iraq. It has gotten to the point that sensible, committed hawks like Hitchens, Drezner and Sullivan have all endorsed Kerry despite noting they are far more in line with the vision articulated by Bush when it comes to prosecuting the war on terror. In each case, reality trumped vision, competance trumped conviction.


My deepest hope is that other swing voters, no doubt turned off by the Bush's domestic peformance but skeptical about Kerry's security bonifides will choose the hope that Kerry will rise above his limitations as president rather than give into the despair that we can do no better than to watch Bush fail under the weight of limitations for four more years.

BURNED BY BUSH, VOTING FOR KERRY



This article in the Chicago Tribune (thanks agains Sully) pretty much sums up my dilemma this election and my decision to vote for Kerry.

For most liberal hawks, there is little doubt that Bush bungled the Iraq campaign. Many, however, still believe deeply that going to war in Iraq was the right decision, and some remain cautiously optimistic that Iraq eventually will steady itself and move in the right direction, as long as America and the world provide the necessary help.

That belief only compounds what is a heart-splitting decision.

They find Bush's policies on just about everything outside the war abhorrent. The administration's tax policy is offensive to people who believe in reducing economic disparities. The government's manipulation of science for political gain, including its approach to stem cell research and contraception, infuriates many.

Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is personally offensive to almost every liberal. And yet, Iraq still stands as the pivotal issue in the international arena, one that will have implications for the future of the Middle East, for democratization, human rights and international security.

In the end, most liberal hawks will find it impossible to vote for Bush.

They likely will stand with Kerry, praying that as president he will take the right action; that the words of the candidate on the campaign trail were aimed at gaining the vote of a sharply divided nation, concealing what they hope is Kerry's knowledge that the liberal hawks were right all along.

The last sentence however does quite get things accurately. Kerry has since the beginning of the campaign tried to appeal both to die-hard dovish opponents of the war, condemning the fundamental policy decisions underlining the war, and at the same time reassure liberal and centrist hawks that he would not aband


I can't speak for all liberal hawks, but I don't happen to think that Kerry's critiques of the Bush's decision to go to war ("wrong war, wrong time, wrong place") are merely sops to his party's base and that in his heart of heart he is a fellow Wilsonian. No, it is far more likely that Kerry's Jeffersonian tropes come from the heart and his more hawkish stances are the strategic counter-thrusts. No, the faith that I have with Kerry is his essential pragmatism. That even though he would never have gone to war in Iraq to begin with, he has the analytical gifts and intellectual flexibility to understand the very real national security interests America has in seeing the project of a stable and democratizing Iraq. That's what I'm praying for when I'm pulling that Working Families Party lever for Kerry on November 2.

THE TRIUMPH OF KERRY'S POLITICAL THEOLOGY


For decades, Republicans,with the complicity of Democrats, have managed to frame the national "values" debate in this nation as one between religious conservatives and secular liberals. In doing so, they have also managed to define public religiosity almost entirely through the dictates of holiness; that above all else what G-d demands of believers is that they uphold traditional sexual morality. For justice-seeking people of faith, this state of affairs was doubly depressing. Not only were these appeals made in the name of religion politically effective, helping to promote socioeconomic agendas antithetical to social justice, they were also a hillul hashem (desecration of G-d's name), in advancing a theological notion of a Creator mostly indifferent to injustice so long as "faith" and "piety" were advanced.


In the past, select Democrats have fought the lonely two-front battle against the GOP's twisted political theology and their own party's religious privatism. Black Democrats, treated as a "special case" as they carried the embers of the fires of the faith-based Civil Rights movement; Clinton, who intermittedly effectively employed religious rhetoric but undermined it with his own behavior; and most directly Lieberman, who drew undue villification from the party elite's secularists. It was therefore a wholly unexpected and delightful surprise for John Kerry, to shed his religious privatism and finally bring progressive political theology out of the shadows of American political discourse. Last night Kerry took our "faith-based" president (who, to his credit has at least pursued justice abroad if not at home) and put forward a far brighter political theology.



Kerry exposed the poverty of the GOP's notion of "values" by taking them to task on the injustice of their socioeconomic priorities:

The president has denied 9.2 million women $3,800 a year. But he doesn't hesitate to fight for $136,000 to a millionaire. One percent of America got $89 billion last year in a tax cut. But people working hard, playing by the rules, trying to take care of their kids, family values that we're supposed to value so much in America - I'm tired of politicians who talk about family values and don't value families. What we need to do is raise the minimum wage.

Five hundred thousand kids lost after-school programs because of your budget. Now that's not in my gut. That's not my value system. And certainly not so that the wealthiest people in America can walk away with another tax cut - $89 billion last year to the top 1 percent of Americans, but kids lost their after-school programs. You be the judge.



And in a more profound way, Kerry addressed the poverty of the GOP's understanding of "faith" in explaining why true faith requires the pursuit of social justice:

There's a great passage of the Bible that says What does it mean my brother to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead. And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people. That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith. But I know this: that President Kennedy in his inaugural address told of us that here on earth God's work must truly be our own. And that's what we have to - I think that's the test of public service.

Finally, Kerry powerfully delivered a political theology that America needs, one that is intolerant of injustice, while tolerant of the pluralities of holiness - the different ways in which people of different faith traditions connect to G-d.

And as I measure the words of the Bible, and we all do, different people measure different things: the Koran, the Torah or, you know, Native Americans who gave me a blessing the other day had their own special sense of connectedness to a higher being. And people all find their ways to express it. I was taught - I went to a church school, and I was taught that the two greatest commandments are: love the Lord your God with all your mind, your body and your soul; and love your neighbor as yourself. And frankly, I think we have a lot more loving of our neighbor to do in this country and on this planet. We have a separate and unequal school system in the United States of America. There's one for the people who have and there's one for the people who don't have. And we're struggling with that today. The president and I have a difference of opinion about how we live out our sense of our faith. I talked about it earlier when I talked about the works and faith without works being dead. I think we've got a lot more work to do. And as president I will always respect everybody's right to practice religion as they choose or not to practice, because that's part of America.

I know that many religious conservatives Americans, already commited to Bush as "one of them" tuned Kerry out last night, and I know that many secularists and religious privatists find Kerry's public discussion of faith disturbing and a capitulation to the religious right, but if even a small minority who listened to Kerry were open-minded enough to take his words to heart, it will mean major progress for both religion and politics in America.

BROOKS: BUSH IS FOR SMALL WORLD GOVERNMENT, KERRY IS FOR BIG WORLD GOVERNMENT...


For the past couple of months, GOP pundits have been furiously trying to raise the foreign policy debate above the unfortunate level of the facts on the ground to questions of vision and grand strategy. After all, from the clouds, Bush's platform of muscular democracy-promotion looks to be a far stronger long-term response to the threat of Islamist terror than Kerry's platform of international cooperation and domestic preparation. The recent article in the N.Y. Times Magazine, which aimed to reassure readers that Kerry in fact has a grand strategy in the war on Terror, acheived exactly the oppposite effect for me. Reducing the impact of terror to a nuisance level exalts a tactical objective to the level of strategic goal. However,
the reality is that on the ground Bush's lofty goals are being thwarted by the fiscal irresponsibility, cronyism, pervasive polticization and sheer incompetence of the Bush Administration.


In today's Times, David Brooks finds an original way to over-simplify the differences in worldviews of the two candidates, by mapping the Blue/Red America dichotomy onto the Kerry-Bush foreign policy agendas. Bush, the candidate of wide-open, libertarian, gun-shooting, meat-eating Red America is for small world government. Islamic terror, like Communism was, is rooted in a lack of freedom, and freedom is best preserved by the good guys - America and other freedom-loving nations (namely the U.K. and Poland) having more firepower than the bad guys. The U.N. and other international institutions are more likely to get in the way than be constructive.


On the other hand, Kerry, the candidate of crowded, communitarian, tax-and-redistribute, smoke-banning Blue America is for big world government. Islamic Terror, like illegal narcotics, environmental concerns and other trans-national problems, is rooted in a lack of order, and that order is best established through America helping to build multilateral alliances and institutions. The least constructive way to do this is for the U.S. to round up posses to dole out vigilante justice.


Putting things that way, however, it clearly the Jacksonian vision of Bush that is lacking. You simply cannot fight global problems such as failed states, nuclear proliferation and global warming with the good-will of freedom-loving nations. Too many nations are run by regimes that are any but freedom-loving, and too many nations that believe in freedom for their own citizens (France) are indifferent to the freedom of others. We need strong international institutions to solve these problems, to lock otherwise selfish nations into firm commitments the global good.


To take Brooks' domestic analogy further, we are currently at a place analogous to the 1980s debate over dysfunctional social programs. Conservatives pointed to the programs dysfunction and argued for in effect ignoring the underlying problem (whether it be poverty or education or health care) while liberals pointed to the underlying problem and ignored the programs dysfunctions. It took a New Dem, neoliberal approach to begin to reform welfare and other programs.


It is no surprise that Bush is taking the same politically effective "small government" critique on international issues. After all, the U.N. is corrupt, the IAEA impotent and the Kyoto Treaty hopelessly flawed. Unfortunately, up until now, John Kerry has played the role of the paleoliberal - so focused on the need for these institutions to work that he is denial about how little they actually do. If Kerry was able to, like Clinton on domestic issues, articulate a reform agenda for international governance, he could dramtically shift the terms of the debate. More importantly, if he were to win, a Kerry Administration might be something more than "anything but a second Bush" administration.

THE VEEP DEBATE


Here are my quick thoughts on the veep debate



Cheney won the first half of the debate, for now. If points are deducted for Cheney's egregious prevarications (He NEVER linked Saddam to 9/11....nope, never happened, never, ever, ever, well, OK, a little, but he had a good reason for doing it), then he loses, which he still might in the post-debate re-evaluation if the Kerry campaign effectively follows through.
The dynamic of the foreign policy part of the debate was dramatically different than Thursday night. Cheney delievered the administration's talking points far more effectively than Bush, keeping Edwards on the defensive, where he was not particuarly impressive in defending the Dems "consistent" position on Iraq.

The problem of course is that the Kerry campaign can't decide whether or not to focus on Bush's decision to fight the war - attacking the claims of linkage between Iraq and the larger war on terror, the deceiving claims made by the administration, the disingenuous diplomacy (which would appeal to the Dem base); or rather to focus Bush's incompetence in conducting the war - failure to put in sufficient number of troops, abandoning Fallujah to Zarqawi, Abu Ghraib, etc. (which appeals to hawkish swing voters). Kerry didn't do a particularly good job on this front either in the Miami debate, but the combination of Bush's weak, non-sequiter attacks and Jim Lehrer's passive moderating let him get away with crisply delivered soundbites that sounded at lot more coherent than they were. Edwards did not have that luxury; Cheney's attacks were head on, moderated Gwen Ifel would not let Edwards dodge the issue. Edwards played the good soldier in spending much of this portion rebutting Bush's distoritons of Kerry's positions in the Miami debate. Still, especially on a day where Bremer's recent admissions were still fresh, for Edwards not to focus on the incompetence conduct of the war was a missed opportunity.


Cheney's pot-shot at Edwards absenteeism from the Senate during a campaign season was a cheap shot that the TV pundits were giving far too much credit for afterwards. Edwards countered this brilliantly by invoking Cheney's radical record in Congress, which he has effectively hidden under his cool, CEO-demeanor.


I thought Gwen Ifel for the most part did a solid job, but why on earth did we have to endure 2 questions on gay marriage? If the Bush campaign wants to distract the rest of the country from its national security and economic record by peddling their attempted stain on the Constitution, that's their choice, but I don't see why the media has to play along. Then again, along those line, why did we need 2 questions on medical malpractice reform. I feel Edwards did an excellent job digging out from the hole this framing of the health-care issue put him in.


Edwards crushed Cheney on domestic issues, but by that point in the debate, most everybody had zoned out. The tele-pundits especially overlooked Edwards effective attacks as the debate wound down.


Oh well, its now on to a fun Iraq-free town-hall for Kerry-Bush 2 on Friday, which easily has the potential to be the least memorable debate in the campaign. I'm dozing off already thinking about it.

KERRY WOULDN'T HAVE LIBERATED IRAQ, BUT THAT'S BESIDES THE POINT

By the way, as a side point, I haven't undergone any great conversion to Jeffersonian principles in my endorsement of Kerry over Bush. I am still quite queasy about Kerry's willingness to err too much against the use of military force in the war on terror. But I am getting a bit tired of reading pundits who seek to define this election as fundamental clash of ideas with respect to the War on Terror. If it were that simple, I'd be voting for Bush, whose abstract positions on the use of military force and the role of democratization in combatting terror I agree with far more than those of Kerry. But an election is not simply a referendum on a competing set of ideas - it is also about the people who are charged with executing their visions. And after 4 years it is obvious that Bush and the people around are both disingenuous about many the values they advocate, incompetant in translating these values into productive policy on the ground or both.


So the question isn't is the world safer without Saddam in power, which noone seriously disputes. Nor is the question either is the world safer with Saddam no longer in power through Bush's war in which the candidates vigorously disagree about. The real question is who is going to manage the mess we're in at the present for the next for years? The answer for me is Kerry. Kerry may not advance the strategy of defeating terror through expanding freedom in the Islamic world - but at least he won't like Bush has, through his strong embrace and weak execution of these ideas - discredit it.

IS KERRY FINALLY IN THE GAME?

If Kerry does go on to win this fall, I believe yesterday's speech on Iraq will be seen as a turning point for his campaign. For the first time since his convention acceptance speech, Kerry was clear and crisp, outlining his differences with the President unencumbered by his usual mountain of obfuscatory verbiage. On top of that he actual offered something resembling a policy to boot. The key section, in which Kerry offers a devastating critque of the Bush administration's failed assumption about Iraq was quoted by Andrew Sullivan yesterday. However, it a phrase Kerry used later in the speech to apply to Bush - stubborn incomptence - that I believe is the one that gives him the best opportunity to crack Bush's so far impregnable reputation on national security.


First, because Bush's Iraq policy has been stubborn & incompetent. Kerry reeled off some of the clearest examples of Bush's incompetence - failure to adequately train Iraqi soldiers, the inability to utilize the overwhelming majority of the reconstruction money. (To that I would add the collassal moral and strategic failue at Abu Ghraib, which Kerry needs to highlight more). In each case, Bush has stubbornly continued to deny the existance of any problems nor hold anyone accountable.


Second - labeling Bush as "stubborn" is effective political jujitsu. The public's perception of Bush after months of well-honed message form the Bush camp is that he is a decisive and steadfast leader. Rather than fighting against the pre-disposition, "stubborn incompetence" exploits it. There is fine line between steadfast and stubborn and Kerry has the very doable task of pushing the perception of Bush over that line. Bush doesn't swerve from his chosen path, but he's driving us off a cliff. This metaphor needs to pounded home ad nauseum.


Third, making the election about Bush's "incomptence" frames the election on the ground least favorable to Bush and most favorable to Kerry. The core vulnerability for Bush is the yawning chasm between his rhetoric and his real accomplishments. Kerry needs to drag Bush into the muck of the details of the last four years, and not let him retreat to platitudes. (here Edwards could be very effective, complementing Bush on his good intentions but sticking the knife in on his failed execution). The Bush administrations glib excuses for their failures "freedom's messy", "war is unpredictable" don't wear well. In contrast, while Kerry fails repeatedly at being stirring, he should be able to market himself as stable and competent.


Kerry has finally found a message that could win the election. Whether he sticks to it is another question.

BUSH & KERRY ON IRAQ: BEYOND RECKLESS vs. FECKLESS



Recent presidential campaigns have demonstrated that you can count on the mainstream media for two things. The first, is that it will happily glom on to whatever substance-free issue comes its way to avoid any discussion of actual substantive issues. The second is that to the extent substance is discussed, it is transmitted through an uncritically accepted conceptual framework. Thus, once the motif of Stupid But Sincere Bush against Smart but Calculating Gore was established, anything that played against it (such as blatant lying by Bush on his tax plan) was downplayed, while anything that played to it (any repositioning on any issue no matter how slight by Gore)emphasized.
With respect to this campaign, on Iraq, the conventional wisdom is Bush is reckless while Kerry is feckless. And any inconvenient facts that may suggest either pragmatism/wobbling from Bush or resolution/rigidity from Kerry are ignored.


Kerry: Mostly Feckless


As liberal pundits have noted, Kerry's position on the war is not as inconsistent as the simplistic version of it offered in the media. Kerry saw his as vote as empowering Bush to bargain from a position of strength, and use force only after diplomacy failed. Thus, by only going through the motions diplomatic, Bush did things "the wrong way" and Kerry is not inconsistent in opposing the war that Bush actually fought.


However, consistency and coherency are two different things, and Kerry's proceduarlist critique is maddeningly vague. At no point does Kerry answer the relevant questions his position begs to be answered: how much time should the weapons inspections been given to verify the state of the Iraqi WMD production? How much abuse of the inspections process would he have tolerated before deciding to use force? Should a tightened sanctions regime have been the alternate in the event that the inspectors found no smoking guns, but did no received total cooperation from the Hussein regime? How should a president have handled differences of opinion with other nations as to these questions - especially from the French and others who were not negotiating themselves in good faith? Will Kerry ever answer these questions before November? Will he even be ASKED these questions? Highly doubtful.)


Bush: From Reckless to Feckless


Whatever problems the media has with accurately portraying Kerry's position on Iraq pales in comparison to its reporting on what the Bush administration has actually done there. Both liberal and conservative pundits alike portray the Bush administration as holding a unilateralist, idealist course throughout the whole Iraq process. Thus liberals decry Bush as reckless, ideologically radical (wedded to the vision of the Neocons), and completely unable to admit, let alone adapt to unanticipated circumstances. Conservatives portray Bush as dynamic, decisive, steadfast and morally grounded in holding the course he set out in 2002. What's fascinating is that both the standard attack and defense of Bush's Iraq policy has become so fixed, so ritualized that they pretty much ignore anything the administration has done over the past 12 months.


The reality is that since May 2003, while the Bush Administration's neocon/Wilsonian rhetoric has stayed the same, on the ground it has reversed itself in numerous areas, subordinating the goal of producing a functioning Iraqi democracy to the goal of shortening the occupation to a politically palatable level. In order to carry out this fundamentally Jacksonian policy, the Administration turned to the Hamiltonian experts at State and elsewhere to facilitate it.


The appointment of Bremer in May 2003 marked the beginning of this shift, but Bremer himself was responsible for disbanding of the Iraqi army in the name of de-Baathification. The real change came in October, with the reorganization of Iraq policy. Unilateral idealism was out, multilateral pragmatism was in, for better or worse. Opposition to U.N. involvement melted, transfer of sovereignty to a Iraqi government was pushed ahead of elections, anti-democratic militias in Falluja and Najaf were left intact to preserve short-term stability, Ahmed Chalabi went from ally to target. Were some of these new policies prudent? Perhaps. Cautious? Definitely. Reckless? Definitely not. A reckless crusader for democracy would have doubled down, sent in more troops and rode out the short-term criticism to present a better environment for Iraq's first elections. A purist, ideologue would have not handed over the government to a former Baathist strongman.

Both liberal and conservative pundits however would rather peddle the convenient myth of neocon consistency. For liberals, now enamored with realism, doing so would force them to admit that Bush has adopted much of their platform over the past year, and for them to face the consequences of what they advocated. For conservative idealists, facing Bush's last year squarely forces them to face just how far they have fallen, and the very real weaknesses of their hero. But the truth is Bush has been reckless & feckless. And Iraqis and Americans alike will be paying in the future just as much for the "solutions" offered by realist wise-men as they will for the problems created by neocon hubris.

NO WILSONIAN CONSENSUS


It is tempting as a Wilsonian, to make the claim that in contrast to the Realist views of the foreign policy establishment, the American public is decidedly Wilsonian. This is how OxBlogger Patrick Belton optimistically reads
a recent PEW/Council of Foreign Relations poll on the American public's view of foreign policy.

Interestingly, it also shows the American public is solidly Wilsonian, with 72 percent believing the top priority for American foreign policy is to follow moral principles

As Daniel Drezner (another Wilsonian) notes, this finding doesn't quite jibe with the rankings on actual foreign policy issues, which place promoting democracy & improving living standards in poor nations dead last on a list of 19 priorities.

These results bolster a thesis that I've been cogitating on for the past few months: despite claims by international relations theorists -- including most realists -- that the overwhelming majority of Americans hold liberal policy preferences, it just ain't so. Even if those beliefs are extolled in the abstract, when asked to prioritize among different foreign policy tasks, the realist position wins.

I agree, somewhat. However, there is still the question of how to explain the 72% "moral principle" figure? First, I think this poll is a perfect example of where setting out a Wilsonian (as a proxy for idealist)/realist dichotomy breaks down, and once again it is preferential to use Walter Russell Mead's categorization of the four American foreign policy traditions.


The mere advocacy of a "moral" foreign policy does not make somebody a Wilsonian. There also needs to be a commitment to American promotion of universal values such as democracy and human rights (the means - unilateral or multilateral is what Wilsonians can disagree about). Thus, the size of the American public who can be fairly characterized as having principally a Wilsonian view of foreign policy correlates with the 24% who place democracy-promotion as a top priority (which by the way matches up roughly with the 25% who value idealism).


In addition to Wilsonians, the 72% figure also encompasses Jeffersonians, who also believe in a "moral" foreign policy. The difference is that they believe America acts morally when it does not utilize its military against weaker nations, is respectful of cultural difference, and does not provide aid to "immoral" regimes. No doubt the 72% also includes a number of Jacksonians who believe America has a "moral" obligation to defend its friends, and to exact vengeance upon its enemies. Finally the number includes those who can be said to have any principle foreign policy orientation.


So in order to get a better sense of the relative strengths of the different orientations, I repeated Drezner's exercise with the list of concrete foreign policy objectives, but instead using Mead's classification(Wilsonian-Wil;Hamiltoninan-Ham;Jeffersonian-Jef;Jacksonian-Jax).

Protect against terrorist attacks -- 88 (all)
Protect jobs of American workers -- 84 (Jax;Jef)
Reduce spread of AIDS & other diseases -- 72 (Wil)
Stop spread of weapons of mass destruction -- 71 (Ham;Jax;Wil)
Insure adequate energy supplies -- 70 (Ham;Jax)
Reduce dependence on foreign oil -- 63 (Jef;Jax)
Combat international drug trafficking -- 63 (Jef;Ham)
Distribute costs of maintaining world order -- 58 (Ham;Jax)
Improve relationships with allies -- 54 (Ham;Jef)
Deal with problem of world hunger -- 50 (Wil)
Strengthen the United Nations -- 48 (Ham;Wil)
Protect groups threatened with genocide -- 47 (Wil)
Deal with global warming -- 36 (Jef)
Reduce U.S. military commitments -- 35 (Jef)
Promote U.S. business interests abroad -- 35 (Ham)
Promote human rights abroad -- 33 (Wil;Jef)
Solve Israeli/ Palestinian conflict -- 28 (Ham;Wil)
Promote democracy abroad -- 24 (Wil)
Improve living standards in poor nations -- 23 (Wil)

Obviously, some of my assignments are open to debate, and most Americans do not neatly fall into any one category. But it seems to me that a plurality of the American public holds primarily Jacksonian views, which explains why there has been so much pandering in that direction by both candidates. Although there is a clear difference here, in that while Bush has actually conducted an especially Jacksonian foreign policy (with its tough rhetoric and disdain for world opinion), Kerry, who would conduct a foreign policy that was anything but Jacksonian, has to rely on symbolic appeals based on his military record).


The other three groups, at least with respect to those who hold these views as primary appear to be roughly equivalent. However, the appeal of issues such as the global AIDS crisis and global hunger suggests that there is a large amount of secondary, soft support for Wilsonian ideas that is not present for the other two groups. I believe it is this combination - the breadth of support for Wilsonian ideas combined by the softness of that support - that explains why advocates for a more ambitious Wilsonian agenda believe they have widespread support, only to find that support to be fickle and fleeting.

I DIDN'T SERVE WITH JOHN KERRY IN VIETNAM SO YOU SHOULD PROBABLY JUST TUNE ME OUT

Here are my thoughts on the whole Kerry Swiftboat nonsense

1) If you were voting for John Kerry because he won 3 people hearts in Vietnam, you're a moron
2) If you are no longer voting for John Kerry because you believe the attack ads against his Vietnam record, you're a gullible moron
3) If you produced the attack ads against John Kerry's Vietnam record, you're a sleazebag.
4) If you are making the argument that the real issue is John Kerry's veracity and therefore this inquiry into possibly exagerrated claims in his war record is really is a salient issue, you are either a soulless GOP shill, an easy mark for GOP shills, or fundamentally unserious about politics.

Look, I find the whole Kerry war-hero schtick highly problematic. First, because as it has indicated all along, the Democratic Party views national security primarily through the lens of politics, as if it were akin to gay marriage or some other cultural wedge issue that Republicans like to play whenever they are afraid working-class voters might actually realize how badly their policies screw them. So Kerry was chosen precisely with the current strategy he is now employing in mind.

The way Kerry baldly uses his personal heroism to deflect any concerns about his Jeffersonian foreign policy vision that he has consistently espoused (except when prompted by poltical necessity) for his entire public life should be fair game. But not the heroism itself. It is not only a cynical degredation of the public debate, but it exposes the very real fact that the Bushies aren't confident that they can win the national security debate substantively. When you consider the staggering record of incompetence left behind by Bush's four years, its not surprising that Rove has already turned to character assasination. After all, Kerry may not take the country where we need to go to defeat Islamist fundamentalism, but at least he'll get it wherever he's going in one piece.

John Kerry - He won't win the war on terror, but at least he won't lose it. Or something like that.

BOSTON AND BEYOND


In watching the Democratic convention and the true start of the Bush-Kerry campaign, I can not help but escape from the feeling of detachment that plagues me. As a Dem, I usually have little trouble being fully caught up in the rhetoric and pageantry of a Democratic convention, in the drawing of sharp, clear contrasts between the two parties governing philosophies. And during moments of the this convention that was the cased. I awaited Barack Obama's speech with rapt anticipation. I was fully carried up in the excitement and passion of John Edwards's speech. Most of all, I was delighted in seeing the party's fighting spirit, and its vigorous efforts to wrest patriotism and faith away from their partisan abuse as part of the still effective GOP playbook laid out two decades earlier by Atwater. The home team has never looked more disciplined and yet more passionate. The combination of the two could be seen in John Kerry's surprisingly animated acceptance speech. Rather than play it safe, Kerry spoke from his heart and threw down the gauntlet against the Bush Administration - against its radical religious right agenda on cultural issues, against its abdication of responsibility on social issues, against its irresponsibility on economic issues and its fecklessness on foreign policy. It was the speech that liberal Dems wanted to hear - a speech that read as if it was scripted by Aaron Sorkin. (Indeed, the speech it most reminded me of was the one delivered by Michael Douglas's President in the American President.)
So where does the detachment come from, with such a stirring scene that warmed my left-of-center heart. It comes of course from the cold reality of the grim choice the nation faces on the most important issue facing it - the War on Terror. True, the Democratic Party went all out to show that it is no longer the McGovernite party it was from Carter to Dukakis. And this is heartening. It means that at least on the tactical, political level, the party understands that the War on Terror is not going to be won through appeasement and detente. Kerry, however, has made clear that while he understands he must cabin his Jeffersonian instincts, that when he does so, he will act in a Hamiltonian way. As Joshua Micah Marshall and other moderate Dems have written with approval, Kerry seeks to bring us a foreign policy that will be quite similar to that of Bush the Elder - restrained, multilateral, forceful when necessary, and above all realist.
Kerryt's Foreign Policy (and it very much will be Kerry who will be its foremost architect) It therefore a wholesale rejection of the neoconservative project, rather than a rejection of neoconservative hubris and Cheyney & Rumsfeld's use of Neocon idealism as a cover for their own Jacksonian agenda. As a Democratic Wilsonian, therefore, who believes that the War against Islamist Terror will be won only through the agressive promotion of democratic and liberal ideals in the Islamic world, this is enough to dampen my enthusiasm for the Kerry Administration. (I'm still waiting for Kerry to utter the word "Sudan"). But a second Bush term does not hold out any more hope. Iraq was the Neocon high tide, and even there they have lost out to the Jacksonian impulse to shy from the messy task of nation-building and the need to bring in the Hamiltonian State Department to clean up the mess of the post-war disaster that was in much due to the Neocon disdain for details. Neither side address the deep inadequacy of our current international institutions. Bush revels in it as an opportunity to pursue American policy unfettered, while Kerry appears to be in denial, placing the entire blame for America's strained relationship with those institutions on Bush's recklessness.
Perhaps the best thing for me to do is to focus on the positives of a Kerry Administration. Stem cell research will no longer be held hostage to the most fundamentalist views of the religious right. The Supreme Court and the lower branches of the federal judiciary will be stacked with more Breyers and less Scalias. The defecit will be reduced. There is hope for some progress on education and health care. The perils of climate change will finally be noted, and a serious plan for energy efficiency may get enacted. And with respect to the less-sexy, technocratic aspect of the War on Terror (searching port containers,tracking down loose nukes) Kerry will be more than up to the task. And if that doesn't quite stir me into the same fervor of my fellow Dems, it is enough to make the chances of my pulling the lever for Kerry in November, very, very likely.

THEY LIKE MY MONEY, THEY REALLY REALLY LIKE MY MONEY


I received earlier this week a very special invitation from our president to join him (and a squadron of GOP heavy-hitters) for dinner (all for a generous contribution to the campaign ). It was forced to share my mailbox with not one, but two appeals from the Kerry campaign. How exactly this happened is still a bit of a mystery. (Not the Kerry part, as clearly I am currently on at least two Dem mailing lists after giving to Lieberman and Edwards during the primaries), Still, it does make me feel wanted to be one of those precious swing voters. Now, to be fair, I am voting in New York and therefore don't really have to conisder the possiblity that my vote may enable a second Bush term, Still, it is a testament to how alienated I feel from the Democratic Party's national security and foreign policy to consider myself torn at this late point in the game to register a protest vote.


The member of the Bush Administration that makes pulling the lever for Kerry the most attractive has got to be John Ashcroft. Thankfully, the worst excesses of his assault upon the Constitution have gone checked by the Supreme Court. He has failed just about every test posed by the War on Terror - whether it be a sensible, targeting tightening of our immigration regime, or the need for a full-scale housecleaning at the FBI, necessary restraint in the curtailment of civil liberties for terror suspects, or resisting the temptations to expand the compromises of civil liberties necessary to fight the war on terror into regular law enforcement. Without a doubt, a Kerry Justice department will a dramatic improvement no matter who Kerry selects for the top post. As much as find Kerry's overreliance on the rule of law in the international realm troubling, his firm commitment to the rule of law domestically will be reassurring in what no doubt will continue to be a trying time in our nation's history.

COMING SOON TO A REPUBLICAN CONVENTION NEAR YOU....ANYTHING BUT REPUBLICANISM


So the featured speakers at the upcoming GOP convention are going to Ahnold, Pataki and McCain. It seems that the GOP enjoyed its faux integrated convention so much in Philly last time around that it is going for a Rockefeller Republican convention in NYC this time around. With that lineup, the GOP is rightly running away from their entire domestic platform - gay-bashing, handouts to the rich and corporate lobbies, environmental deregulation. The only thing they aren't running from is their hard-line stance on the War on Terror. None of this is surprising. Karl Rove didn't become the Mayberry Machiavelli without a keen sense of when to put on the show for the swing voters..

THAT'S THE TICKET....


I wish could get excited about the selection of John Edwards as Kerry's VP choice. After all, I am big fan of Edwards and this decision has effectively preserved his national political career for at least one more election cycle. I am looking forward to the Edwards-Cheney debate, which will put the starkest contrast between the GOP's domestic policy of cronyism versus the Democratic alternative that is superior both in terms of prudence and justice. Still, at the end of the day, the top of the ticket is the top of the ticket, and Edwards' passion and vision do not erase Kerry's failings anymore than Al Gore's moral probity erased Clinton's. Moreover, the one area where it is pretty clear Edwards is going to have little say about is foreign policy. If Kerry wins it will be as much his show as it was for Bush the Elder. And that means a large, heaping dose of liberal realism.


A large part of me prefers the Jacksonian-neocon mess that stumbled into Iraq to four years of putting democracy-promotion on the back burner in the name of international consensus. I won't however, pull a lever for Bush, not even in New York as a protest vote. Not after Abu Ghraib. I'm not sure I could have ever swallowed a domestic platform based on gay-bashing, tax cuts for the rich and an ostrich-like approach to global climate change. However, up until Abu Ghraib, for the all the bumbling, Bush at least "got it" about the war against Islamist terror. But, the Jacksonian urge to "send a message" won out over the neocon dreams of a "democratic Middle East" and the whole point of the Iraq war was discarded for a short-term bump in intelligence on the insurgency. So, as upset as I am about the the Democratic abdication of America's mission, there is no point in doing anything that rewards the Cheyney-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft approach to the world either.


So maybe what I really do need, given the dark color to my thoughts on the American political landscape is to listen to few more John Edwards speeches. At least somewhere, besides the blankness of Bush and the bleakness of Kerry there's a ray of hope coming out of the 2004 election. While that might not be excitement, at least its something.

CONSERVATIVES FOR GAS TAXES


First Sullivan, and now Krauthammer respond to the Gas price "crisis" with a blast of common sense.


So where is John Kerry, who no doubt understands that gas prices remain radically underpriced in this country and that raising them further is essential to any realistic efforts at improving energy efficientcy and combatting climate change - pandering like there is no tommorrow by offering half-baked plans to lower gas prices. I'm still waiting for a U.S. politician to speak the truth on this issue. Maybe Al Gore, after he's done shilling for the latest enviro-disaster flic can get working on a more realistic version of the "Day After Tommorrow" in which the legacy of a decades of pandering on gas prices leads America to collapse into a major depression when the world's oil supply dries up and the backup energy sources haven't been developed.