Michael Kinsley: Please Don't Remain Calm

Michael Kinsley: Please Don't Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries (2008, WW Norton)

I occasionally ran across Kinsley on television back during his buckraking days, where he supposedly represented the left end of the political spectrum. He seemed like a MOR Liberal, which meant he typically conceded about 75% of the argument, then got his ass kicked. I never much followed his writings. He was the first editor of Slate, which I never read unless I had a direct link to something reportedly interesting, then he moved on to the Los Angeles Times, ditto there. But I did briefly glance at his previous essay book, Big Babies: Vintage Whines (1995), and found that I thought he had a point -- an interesting take, even.

This is his second essay collection, picking up from where the previous one left off. I figured given the times he'd have plenty to whine about. The serial nature of opinion column books is sort of a memory aid, given as it is to exaggerating the importance of fleeting sensations and exposing short-lived misconceptions. On the other hand, such books are rarely worth hardcover price. But I found this one in the library, and figured this to be my chance. Started out by jotting down all of the section headings (in bold, including subheads), and started flipping the pages, reading bits here and there, copying down what seemed most relevant. Got quite a bit: some good stuff (turns of phrase, a fairly keen sense of Bush's political and moral contradictions), some gaffes (actually, more like errors in judgment). Pretty good writer; pretty fair thinker. More with us than against us, but often tempted to argue the other side, not so much to be ornery as to convince himself that he's fair.

1995-1999

Long Sentence: parsing Pat Robertson. (p. 3):

The controversy continues over whether Pat Robertson's bizarre rantings about the depredations of the Rothschilds and the Warburgs make him an anti-Semite. In a way, this debate has been a useful distraction for Robertson, since it has overshadowed the issue of whether he is a complete nut case. Based on the evidence, that is a much easier question. Yet, as the leader of the Christian Coalition, he remains the most important person in the most powerful faction within the Republican Party. If this bothers the party's leading lights -- let alone its intellectual apologists -- they have not said so.

(p. 4)

Anti-Semitism has, of course, taken that form. But Hitler should not be allowed to spoil anti-Semitism for everyone else. Indeed, the fact that Robertson presents his opposition to the elimination of the Jews as evidence of a lack of anti-Semitism arguably is evidence of the opposite. If someone feels moved to declare, even in a sincere spirit of reassurance, "Look, I really don't want to kill you" -- does that demonstrate empathy, or something more sinister?

Confessions of a Buckraker: Kinsley tries hard to sell out, or at least to rationalize doing so.

Editorial: A Dangerous Medium: Kinsley becomes editor at Slate, Microsoft's paperless magazine

Slate: A Policy Statement: the master plan for world domination.

Bill Clinton's Browser: Microsoft humor, at government expense.

In Defense of Matt Drudge

Lies, Damned Lies, and Impeachment: Fine, now let's go back and impeach Reagan and Bush. (pp. 17-18).

The only time Ronald Reagan ever talked about Iran-Contra under oath was in a deposition for the criminal trial of his former National Security Adviser John Poindexter. The deposition was in 1990, after Reagan had left office. He claimed that there was not "one iota" of evidence that profits from the sale of arms to Iran had been diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras, that his aides hadn't lied to Congress about the affair, and so on. All of this was demonstrably false. The only reason he might not be guilty of perjury is that his mind pretty clearly was going.

But the very fact that Reagan was never forced to testify under oath as president illustrates the double standard that has trapped Bill Clinton. If Iran-Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had operated like Flytrap Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, he would have forced Reagan, while president, to repeat or renounce under oath his public lies about Iran-Contra, such as those in his first TV address on the subject, when he declared it "utterly false" that arms had been shipped to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages. [ . . . ] If Walsh had been Starr, Reagan would have faced the same excruciating dilemma as Clinton: admit to a spectacular public lie or lie again under oath.

(pp. 18-19):

The case against George Bush -- by the standards being applied to Bill Clinton -- is even stronger. Bush claimed in the 1992 campaign that he'd given sworn testimony hundreds of times conceding that he knew all about the arms-for-hostages deal. In fact, when the story broke in 1986, Bush repeatedly claimed to have been "out of the loop." He knew we were selling arms to Iran -- itself flatly illegal and spectacularly in conflict with the administration's public pronouncements -- but, he claimed, he had no idea the deal involved paying ransom for hostages. [ . . . ]

As president in 1989-93, Bush did his best to thwart Walsh's investigation. He tightened up on the release of classified information. A diary he started keeping in 1986 somehow never materialized until after the 1992 election. And his last-minute pardon of Weinberger, Poindexter, and others, after he'd lost re-election, effectively thwarted Walsh's pursuit of Bush himself, among others. No "obstruction of justice" or "abuse of presidential power" in Flytrap comes close.

The Trouble with Scoops: something about Monica Lewinsky.

Easy Answers: on Kosovo, which Kinsley seems to be rather happy about (pp. 23-24):

It is often said that there are no easy answers, but in fact there are. In a former life I used to interrogate politicians on television, and in six years there was never a subject on which they were unable to come up with an easy answer. Not necessarily a correct answer -- or honest or heartfelt or logically coherent -- but easy. [ . . . .]

War and peace issues are the worst. A famous joke among academics is that scholarly disputes are especially passionate because the stakes are so low. By contrast, when the stakes are as high as they can get, there is a special need for elected officials to avoid having a forthright opinion. Easy answers to the rescue!

Internet Envy

Go to Hell: The gospel according to George W. (pp. 34-35):

George W. is lying either when he professes his faith or when he denies its implications. Or he hasn't really thought it through, which itself would cast doubt on the depth of his faith. But I doubt this particular dishonesty will keep him out of heaven, since it is imposed on every politician -- and even every clergyman with ambitions.

To be sure, there is a certain joy in watching a pol caught in pandering gridlock. Bush plays up his born-again faith to the religious right. He uses it even more than bona fide Christian-right pols do, as Fred Barnes points out, in order to allay suspicions that he may be moderate or indifferent on social issues. Then he has to fudge his faith so that people who don't share it won't take it seriously.

2000

Six Degrees of America Online

McCain's High Horse: 2000 presidential campaign (pp. 38-39):

No man is more entitled to preen about his honor and heroism than John McCain. But honor has its limits, both as a campaign strategy and as a governing philosophy. [ . . . ]

McCain is not above misusing his honor as a blunt instrument. In the South Carolina debate last week, Alan Keyes raised a perfectly legitimate question about McCain's muddled position on abortion. How can McCain believe that fetuses are full human beings and still say that he would allow his daughter to decide for herself whether to kill one? In response, McCain staged an umbrage fit: "I've seen enough killing in my life, a lot more than you have . . . and I will not listen to your lectures about how I should treat this very important issue." Oh, please. McCain cheapens his own heroism when he tries to use five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp as a rhetorical get-out-of-jail-free card.

George W. Bush's widely mocked garble about McCain taking his "high horse" on the "low road" is actually, with a bit of untangling, a pretty good image. It's one thing to drop your negative ads and challenge your opponent to do the same. But it's a bit rich to carry on as if no decent person would ever do what you yourself were doing just a few days before.

(p. 39):

McCain is hard to nail on hypocrisy because he is so quick with the mea culpa. This too is an honorable habit that becomes cynical with excessive repetition.

One mistake Kinsley makes is at the end, when he writes (p. 40):

Then, too, American honor and credibility were the reasons we kept the war in Vietnam going for years after we'd lost interest in any other rationale. No one paid more for that folly than John McCain.

Well, there's 55,000 names on a wall in Washington DC that paid more, plus thousands more permanently maimed, many more if you count psychological demons. McCain parlayed his few years in Hanoi into sizable wealth and a fabulous political career. Vietnam made him the success he is, so of course he's not going to backpeddle on that, let alone learn any lessons. How could he learn any lessons. For him, getting shot down in Vietnam was a stroke of genius.

Republicans for Hillary: Did we say children shouldn't have legal rights? Never mind. on Elián González (6-year-old Cuban, whose father sued to return him to Cuba); the 1992 Republican platform made a big point that parents (not courts) know best what to do with their children, not anticipating that a child might be a Cuban refugee (p. 43):

All these critics of the operation that reunited father and son seemed more than open to the possibility that the government, or a six-year-old child, or strangers such as themselves, might all be better judges of the child's welfare than the child's one surviving parent. And they may even be right about that. No one ever thought of this particular scenario back in '92. Maybe it's an exception. But then, maybe there are other exceptions, too. In fact, maybe if you've been self-righteously indignant on both sides of an issue, you should conclude that it's not an issue about which self-righteous indignation is called for.

The Secret Shame of the Professional Politician

McCain for Veep: It's Not Too Late!: When the press won't take no for an answer.

It's an Outrage (Never Mind That): Republicans and Wen Ho Lee (Los Alamos nuclear scientist falsely accused of spying for China)

Frankly, My Dear: Politician' favorite verbal tic. (pp. 51-52):

Appending "frankly" to almost any remark made in public turns that remark into a literal lie in two senses. Regarding the speaker's motive, it implies an artless lack of calculation or an active desire to tell unpleasant truths. And it implies that the remark itself is not merely true but deeply true in some way. [ . . . ]

The current king of frankly is Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney. Last week he said that "frankly" he is astonished that Al Gore would attend a Hollywood fund-raiser. Also, "frankly," he "would expect better of the vice president" than to misrepresent what his dog pays for prescription drugs. "Frankly," the Clinton administration is ducking a fight in Iraq. "Frankly" Clinton's decision to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is politically motivated. "Frankly," in fact, it is "not sound policy."

I like the bit about Clinton ducking that fight in Iraq.

Voters to Decide Election: dateline Oct. 3 (oops), notes on what the experts are saying about the election

My Plan's Better than Your Plan: debates, more or less

The Emperor's New Brain: George W. and the stupidity issue. (pp. 58-59)

George W. Bush's handling of the stupidity issue has been nothing short of brilliant. A Martian watching the last presidential debate might have concluded that this man would be well-advised not to put quite so much emphasis on mental testing. But Earth-based commentators mostly shied away from such a conclusion. [ . . . ]

The problem is probably laziness or complacence rather than actual inability, and journalists' reluctance to call someone who may well be our next commander in chief a moron is understandable. But if George W. Bush isn't a moron, he is a man of impressive intellectual dishonesty and/or confusion. His utterances frequently make no sense on their own terms. His policy recommendations are often internally inconsistent and mutually contradictory. Because it's harder to explain and impossible to prove cold, intellectual dishonesty doesn't get the attention that petty fibbing does, even though intellectual dishonesty indicts both a candidate's character and his policy positions. All politicians, including Al Gore, get away with more of it than they should. But George W. gets away with an extraordinary amount of it. [ . . . ]

When he repeatedly attacks his opponent for "partisanship," does he get the joke? When he blames the absence of a federal patients' rights law on "a lot of bickering in Washington, D.C.," has he noticed that the bickering consists of his own party, which controls Congress, blocking the legislation? When he summarizes, "It's kind of like a political issue as opposed to a people issue," does he mean to suggest anything in particular? Perhaps that politicians, when acting politically, ignore the wishes of the people?

(p. 60):

When he repeatedly says he has a "clear vision" about the Middle East but never gives a hint what it is, should we assume he has one he's not telling us about? When he complains that there is no general "strategy" for America's role in the world and promises that he'll ask his secretary of defense to come up with one pronto, should we be reassured? When he criticizes the Clinton administration for misusing American soldiers as social workers and promises to get other countries to use their soldiers that way instead, does he notice the logical flaw here?

(p. 60):

In short, does George W. Bush mean what he says, or does he understand it? The answer can't be both. And is both too much to ask for?

Fun with Numbers: dateline Nov. 8, with the election deadlocked 49-49.

Democracy Is Approximate: Live with It. "Note: So I started out feeling fairly reasonable and statesmanlike about the election result. That didn't last."

No Contest: The most outrageous Bush argument yet.

W and Justice: So you get to be president. Just stop yapping about how fair it is. (p. 67):

The sharpest analysis of the 2000 presidential election is what Republican Sen. S. I. Hayakawa said in 1977 about the Panama Canal: "We stole it fair and square." The best you can say about what happened sine Nov. 7 is that the Republicans managed to bob, weave, and spin their way to victory legally but in defiance of justice and common sense. The worst you can say is . . . a lot worse.

Reading these pieces today I'm struck by how Bush's opponents had their minds completely stuck in the mechanics of the election and the legal procedures -- in their sense of how the game should be played fairly and legally -- with no concern or concept of what the ultimate costs of losing to Bush would mean. Of course, there was no way to know then, except that now we knew there was.

Equal Protection of Whom? From What?

Reasonable People Can Differ?: Not with me they can't.

2001

God Bless You And . . . (p. 75):

When did they pass the constitutional amendment requiring every president and would-be president to end every speech with the words, "God bless you, and God bless America"? Even a nonbeliever cannot reasonably object to the sentiment.If I turn out to be mistaken about the central question of the universe, I'll be happy enough that others were doing some celestial lobbying on my country's behalf. And if the words are pouring into an unhearing ether, there's no harm done.

Reagan's Record (p. 78):

The nutshell case for Reagan's greatness is: 1) He ended the crisis of stagflation and malaise, restoring our country to prosperity and self-confidence. 2) He cut taxes and reduced the size of government. 3) He rebuilt America's military strength and won the Cold War. 4) He lent dignity to the office, unlike a more recent ex-president once could name.

The case against the case takes a slightly larger nutshell.

Start with the economy. The economic crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s was double-digit inflation. Double-digit interest rates and a double-dip recession were the medicine we took to cure it. The doctor who administered the medicine was Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Volcker was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, who fecklessly allowed inflation to develop and then (nobly? naively?) sacrificed his presdency to stop it. Reagan deserves a couple of points for not complaining too much as Volcker twisted the tourniquet. But Reagan's ultimate thanks was to deny Volcker the third term he wanted.

Reagan hagiographers don't even have a theory, beyond raw assertion, to explain how their man is supposed to have stopped inflation. They are happy enough to blame the pain of the actual cure on his predecessor while claiming credit for the prosperity that followed. That triumph and that prosperity -- a record of economic growth over eight years second only to Clinton's! -- helped to renew the country's spirit (as did the force of Reagan's sunny personality and our great victory over the island superpower of Grenada). But what caused the prosperity?

Two things that clearly did not cause it are smaller government and lower taxes, because this legendary Reagan revolution barely happened. Federal government spending was a quarter higher in real terms when Reagan left office than when he entered. As a share of GDP, the federal government shrank from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent -- a whopping one percentage point. The federal civilian work force increased form 2.8 million to 3 million. (Yes, it increased even if you exclude Defense Department civilians. And, no, assuming a year or two of lag time for a president's policies to take effect doesn't materially change any of these results.) [ . . . ]

And taxes? Federal tax collections rose about a fifth in real terms under Reagan. As a share of GDP, they declined from 19.6 percent to 18.3 percent. After Clinton, they are up to 20 percent. It's hard to think of variations in this narrow range as revolutionary one way or the other. For most working Americans, the share of income going to taxes (including FICA) went up even under Reagan.

Reagan's Record II: Did he win the cold war? Of course now, but Kinsley isn't the most quotable on the subject.

O'Reilly among the Snobs (p. 83):

Yet O'Reilly, like many other people, clings to the fantasy that he is a stiff among the swells. He plays this chord repeatedly in the book [The O'Reilly Factor], a potpourri of anecdotes and opinions about life in general and his in particular. He had a very strange experience as a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (which let the likes of Bill O'Reilly through its ivy-covered gates, he is careful to note, "in an effort to bring all sorts of people together"). Other Kennedy School students, he says, insisted on being called by three names, none of which could be "Vinny, Stevie, or Serge." Their "clothing was understated but top quality . . . and their rooms hinted of exotic vacations and sprawling family property. Winter Skiing in Grindelwald? No problem." They tried to be nice, but Bill was nevertheless humiliated, in a Thai restaurant, to be "the only one who didn't know how to order my meal in Thai." [ . . . ]

The notion that the Kennedy School of Government, populated by swells out of P. G. Wodehouse, reached out to O'Reilly, a poor orphan out of Dickens, as representing the opposite pole of the human experience, would be remarkable enough. But O'Reilly's chapter on "The Class Factor" (Chapter 1, luckily for me) contains some puzzling counterevidence. "I'm working-class Irish American Bill O'Reilly . . . pretty far down the social totem pole," he says. Growing up in the 1960s, he watched his father "exhausting himself commuting from Levittown" to work as an accountant for an oil company. Dad "never made more than $35,000" -- which would be $100,000 or more in today's money.

The Mystery of the Departing Guests: O'Reilly "has a cow."

Confessions of a McCain-Feingold Criminal

It's Not Just the Internet: Almost no one pays for content in any medium.

Triumph of the Right-Wing Dorks (pp. 92-94):

In America, the William Hague [UK Conservative Party leader at the time] types don't run for office, but they do appear on television from time to time. For example, there is the sinister Grover Norquist, who carries half-a-dozen front groups around in his pocket as he pursues his sundry enthusiasms. Turn on Fox News at any hour and you might find Norquist identified as chairman of Citizens against Taxing Rich People. Try again later and he'll be there again, this time as president of the Society for Renaming the Moon after Ronald Reagan.

Then there's John Fund, an editor at the Wall Street Journal editorial page with supernatural powers that enable him to plant the exact same thought in the heads of all 147 conservative politicians and commentators appearing on television on any given day. The best-known although least typical example is Bill Kristol, editor in chief of the Weekly Standard. Kristol was known as "Dan Quayle's brain" when he served as that vice president's chief of staff. For a while, ABC used Kristol and George Stephanopoulos of the Clinton administration as paired commentators on This Week. The glamorous Stephanopoulos is still there; the affable but intellectual (and worse, intellectual-looking) Kristol was soon dumped.

The emergence of the Right-Wing Dork (RWD) as a recognizable political type, whether running for office in Britain or conspiring behind the scenes in America, is a significant development. [ . . . ] RWDs are drawn unquestioningly to Washington, where they work as aides to real politicians. Or, if they're lucky, they sink into a life of gilded socialism at a conservative think tank. Thanks to the conservative political revival of the past couple of decades, and the growing political activism of big corporations (a development fomented, as it happens, by Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism and father of Bill), the conservative ideas-and-agitprop industry is now a career track in and of itself. An RWD can go straight from college into a world of seminars, junkets, and political intrigue without ever holding anything most people would recognize as a private-sector job.

There is obvious irony here. But there is poignancy here, too. Are the RWDs hypocrites, or are they selfless martyrs? These are bright, energetic, ambitious people who could probably thrive mightily in the private sector, yet they devote their lives to promoting other people's right to do so. They fight for lower taxes on high incomes that they themselves could earn but choose not to. Selflessly, they promote the cult of the individual. For the good of society, they struggle against dangerous notions like "the good of society." Devoted to reducing the importance of government in our lives, they wallow in public policy so that future generations won't have to. They put up with life in Washington, the better to tear it down.

Trent Lott's Stages of Grief: on losing his Senate majority in 2001 (not the last event to cause Lott grief) (pp. 94-95):

Trent Lott is becoming unhinged. At first the former Senate majority leader tried to look on the bright side about his newly reduced status. "There's something liberating about being in the minority," Lott noted philosophically on a call-in radio show. "You're freer to advocate positions and amendments you really think should be adopted." [ . . . ]

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks," he declared -- No, wait, that was King Lear. Lott merely called for "war" to regain Republican control of the Senate, which had been overturned by a "'coup of one' that subverted the will of the American voters who elected a Republican majority." Doctors believe this may be a fevered reference to Sen. James Jeffords' switch from Republican to independent, also described by Lott as "the impetuous decision of one man to undermine our democracy."

Pandora's Cable Box

Shining C: Land of opportunity, Bush-style. (pp. 99-100):

The most interesting patriotic sentiment of the season was expressed by President Bush last month at Yale's graduation: "And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States." This was intended as a bit of charming self-deprecation: a rhetorical device Bush is quite good at -- possibly because he means it. Modesty is one of his better qualities: He seems genuinely comfortable about acknowledging his own limitations. He doesn't evoke a desire to retort, with Golda Meir, "Don't be so humble, you're not that great." Of course, it requirse a pretty powerful sense of entitlement to pull this off. There's a real smugness underlying the self-deprecation. Hey, I'm mediocre, and I'm president anyway. (So there, Bill Clinton and Al Gore -- study-butts both.)

Sure, a C student can become president. It helps if his father was president first and his grandfather was a senator and he was born into a family that straddles the Northeast WASP aristocracy and the Sun Belt business establishment. And a C student at prep school can get into Yale by adopting a similar action plan of strategic birth control. (That is, controlling whom you're born to.)

By appropriating for himself the magnificent cliché that anyone can become president of the United States, Bush gives it a whole new dimension. Sure, we all know that with gumption and hard work in this land of opportunity, you can overcome a mountain of life's disadvantages to reach the pinnacle of success. That's one option. But as Bush subtly reminded the Yale graduates, there is another option. With a mountain of life's advantages, you can overcome a disposition against working hard and a cultural distaste for vulgar striving and reach those same pinnacles anyway! Our current president opted for the second strategy, and you cannot begrudge him a splash of smugness in noting that it worked.

Equality at the Airport, I: A reluctant case for racial profiling.: dateline Sept. 28, 2001, which makes this the first post-9/11 piece in the book; is this his idea of the major issue du jour?

What Is Terrorism?: dateline Oct. 5, 2001, already thinking ahead (p. 105):

The advantages of defining the war as one against terrorism, not just Osama Bin Laden, are obvious: It helps in rallying both the American citizenry and other nations to the cause, and if things go well it creates an opportunity to take care of other items on the agenda, such as Saddam Hussein. But the disadvantages are also obvious. First, unlike a war against Osama Bin Laden specifically, a war against "terrorism" is one we cannot win. Terrorism is like a chronic disease that can be controlled and suppressed, but not cured. By promising a total cure, Bush is setting America and himself up to turn victory into the appearance of defeat.

There's a gently assumed subtext here worth calling out: ever since Roosevelt set a policy of demanding unconditional surrender in WWII, Americans have tended to look at any declaration of war as demanding an absolute victory. That's led to a lot of frustration ever since, as the US has repeatedly failed to meet those standards in wars over Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq (1991; the 2003 war did provide a victory moment, but that turned out even worse). Of course, wars on metaphors like poverty and drugs have turned out even worse. But actually, very few wars in history have ended as neatly as WWII, and even that case looks deceptively neat because the US went light on the punishment to recruit Germany and Japan as allies against the Soviet Union -- a strategy that worked because Germany and Japan had their own reasons to fear and hate nearby Russia much more than distant America.

What's clear now is that the Bush administration declared war on terrorism because they wanted a long, multifaceted war, something as durable and pervasive as the the anti-Soviet crusade (aka, the Cold War) had been. They all grew up on that war concept, and they were at a loss without it -- cf. their continuing obsession with nonsense like missile defense. Moreover, they couldn't conceive of failing; they were all punch drunk on the power and destiny of America. They had even convinced themselves that US failure in Vietnam was purely the fault of their political enemies at home.

(p. 105):

The difficulty is coming up with a definition of terrorism that does not depend on whose ox is gored. Otherwise you are conceding that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. The concept of terrorism is supposed to be a shortcut to the moral high ground. That is what makes it so useful. It says: The end doesn't justify the means. We don't need to argue about whose cause is right and whose is wrong because certain behavior makes you the bad guy however noble your cause.

Still, it does depend on whose ox is gored. Without the unthinking presumption that the US is always in the right, there's no empirical way of distinguishing what they do from what we do, except for the unuseful problem that what we do costs a lot more and makes a bigger mess. Fortunately, Bush didn't have to argue that we're always in the right, because everyone who mattered assumed that from the start.

New York Becomes Seattle

An Agenda for Victory: I don't know whether this is facetious, but that's the more generous interpretation (the Microsoft antitrust case is beyond my sense of humor) (p. 110):

As someone who works in the Internet sector, I can testify that I and all my Internet colleagues are totally dedicated to showing Osama Bin Laden that he cannot drive the American spirit off-line -- but we need a little encouragement.

Another essential step in the war against terrorism is for President Bush to order the Justice Department to drop its antitrust suit against Microsoft. As an employee and stockholder, I know the dispiriting effect this litigation is having on people at one of the U.S. economy's most important companies.

Is Disappearing

Osama Done Told Me: So how come media objectivity is suddenly a bad thing? (p. 114):

It's a bum rap, of course. No one who watches, reads, or listens could have any doubt that the American media are flagrantly biased. They are pro-America and anti-Bin Laden. On a few occasions when media outlets have allowed neutral, objective standards of newsworthiness to trump overt support for the cause -- for example, on the issue of broadcasting Bin Laden's propaganda tapes -- the journalists have backed down quickly when criticized.

The Genius of Ari Fleischer (p. 117):

The Middle East? "I think that, as always, the President wants events to develop over time in a way that he hopes will be fruitful . . ." That "as always" is truly bravura banality. Never for one moment has the president wavered in his desire to see events develop in ways he hopes will be fruitful. Logicians may puzzle over how it is even possible to hope that your own hopes be dashed, but in case it is possible, the president is not doing it.

Forgetting Afghanistan: And forgiving John Walker.

In Defense of Denial: starts with Parkinson's Disease, which Kinsley has, setting up a broader discussion.

2002

Listening to Our Inner Ashcroft (pp. 125-126):

The grist shortages for both of these mills -- the one grinding away at disloyal dissenters and the one grinding away at the smothering of dissent -- have the same cause: Almost no one is dissenting. It's hard to dissent from the core proposition that the perpetrators of a crime as monstrous as 9/11 are worthy targets of America's military and diplomatic power. But there has been remarkably little dissent on subsidiary issues, unrelated issues, Bush's leadership in general. Even genial mockery largely dried up for awhile, replaced by an unprecedented flood of patriotic gush and mush.

Why? In part because of self-censorship. John Ashcroft can relax because people have been listening to their Inner Ashcroft. I know this for a fact because I'm one of them. As a writer and editor, I have been censoring myself and others quite a bit since Sept. 11. By "censoring," I mean deciding not tow rite or publish things for reasons other than my own judgment of their merits. What reasons? Sometimes it has been a sincere feeling that an ordinarily appropriate remark is inappropriate at this extraordinary moment. Sometimes it is genuine respect for readers who might feel that way even if I don't. But sometimes it is simple cowardice.

The Goldberg Variations: Plus: What to think about liberal bias. On Bernard Goldberg's Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News

Are Conservatives Brainier? (pp. 132-133):

At least one good piece of evidence suggests that tarring liberals as the eggheads around here is a bum rap. As many people, including me, have suddenly noticed, the nonfiction book best-seller list is dominated by explicitly conservative political tracts. By contrast, there isn't a single overtly liberal political book on the list.

I noticed this in writing last week about Bernard Goldberg's Bias (about TV news), which is now No. 1. Final Days (about the end of the Clinton administration), by the late Barbara Olson, is No. 7, followed by The No-Spin Zone by Fox-TV spin artist Bill O'Reilly. When Character Was King, a Peggy Noonan love poem to Ronald Reagan, is No. 10, and Pat Buchanan's latest tract, subtly titled The Death of the West, is No. 11. Five out of 15: not bad. [ . . . ]

Is it possible that conservatives are actually the intellectuals, reading books and playing with ideas and thinking about issues, while liberals are, at least comparatively, the unreflective know-nothings?

Kinsley polls his liberal friends for various theories, of which the most interesting one is: "They note that most of these conservative best sellers are barely books at all. No sustained argument, but rather sloppy stews of tired anecdote and unsurprising statements about familiar issues. They are bought for comfort and reassurance, not intellectual challenge." They are, in short, not the sort of books that brainy people would buy and read.

Also note that the left hasn't always been shut out of the best seller lists. Authors like Barbara Ehrenreich have sold well, as have some humor books -- e.g., Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The latter more closely fit the right model, but are funnier.

Davos for Beginners

What Is Terrorism, Continued: The more things you call terrorism, the fewer you're likely to wipe out. For instance, North Korea's nuclear program (p. 139):

Third, even if you fully support the expansion of the war aims and any action Bush might take in keeping with his latest rhetoric, you ought to be alarmed at the way tacit support for one military action has been converted into implied support for something quite different. That's because the process can keep going. By definition, the first few steps into a quagmire are the ones you want to take. If you want to avoid sinking into a quagmire, you have to walk out of it (or at least stop walking into it) before taking the step that's regrettable, not afterward. We avoided a quagmire in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, we are taken to have authorized a quagmire of global scale and can only wait and see whether the president -- in his wisdom and sole discretion -- keeps us out of one.

Spoke too soon about Afghanistan: the first step into that quagmire was the hugely popular one of starting the war to topple the Taliban. Given that most of the nostrums that we expected to work there, like broad-based international support and a broad consensus within Afghanistan, at this point we have no idea how we might have operated more successfully.

Meanwhile, the North Korea nuclear threat was resolved with diplomacy and a little money.

Social Hypochondria (p. 140):

America is not, as it sometimes seems, a society lurching from one acute social crisis to the next. It is a basically healthy society with lots of chronic problems that exist simultaneously, can and should be ameliorated, but will never go away. Nevertheless, a variety of social forces make it hard to see things that way.

One factor is politics. Both major political parties have evolved from collections of people who share a general philosophical framework for looking at the world into coalitions of convenience among people who each feel strongly about one or two particular issues. Direct-mail fund raising, on which both parties rely (and will rely even more if campaign-finance reform succeeds in reducing the role of large donors), works by finding "hot button" issues and exaggerating both their importance and what can be done about them. Special interest groups have actually replaced the parties as the main loyalty of most politically active people. These groups are monomaniacal by definition, and they depend more on hot-button direct mail.

The media have an obvious vested interest in sowing serial social panic, and that certainly seems to be more true than ever before, though I'm not sure why.

One simple answer is that news viewership goes up in times of crisis. That doesn't explain the appearance of crises, but it does fit with how the media milks an existing crisis.

Equality at the Airport, II: Are shorter lines for special fliers fair?

The Justice's Wife's Tale: Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (p. 146):

In reality -- unless I'm crazy -- "hard left" is not an accurate description of the average Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In reality, both sides of these disputes care disproportionately about abortion. (Homosexuality seems more like a right-wing obsession.) That is why abortion is so contentious. If one side stood for single-issue "litmus test" and the other stood for "tolerance of philosophical disagreement," we wouldn't be having these set-piece standoffs every few years. The battles happen because both sides have litmus tests, which is another way of saying these are issues they feel strongly about. [ . . . ]

Looking around the real world, it is especially hard to see this martyrdom that Clarence Thomas supposedly has suffered for the sin of holding views that the all-powerful hard left wants to suppress. He had a rough confirmation battle, but now he is a justice of the Supreme Court with a lifetime appointment, even though he clearly lied under oath -- or at the very least willfully deceived -- in claiming he had never discussed Roe v. Wade and had no opinion about it. He probably lied about more notorious matters, too. If he's in pain, it must only hurt when he laughs.

An Ode to Managers

Lying in Style: What you can learn about a president from how he chooses to deceive you. (pp. 149):

If the truth was too precious to waste on politics for Bush I and a challenge to overcome for Clinton, for our current George Bush it is simply boring and uncool. Bush II administration lies are often so laughably obvious that you wonder why they bother. Until you realize: They haven't bothered. If telling the truth was less bother, they'd try that too. The characteristic Bush II form of dishonesty is to construct an alternative reality on some topic and to regard anyone who objects to it as a sniveling dweeb obsessed with "nuance," which the president of this class, I mean of the United States, has more important things to do than worry about.

You can just see Bush rolling his eyes at the fuss -- small as it is, over his administration's role in the recent military coup in Venezuela. It is unclear what exactly Bush administration officials said to the coup planners in meetings over the past few months. Conflicting anonymous quotes mean that there is some lying of the conventional sort going on. But a simple "Just don't do it: The United States believes in democracy" was obviously not the message or the coup would not have gone ahead. [ . . . ]

And then two days later the coup fizzled and the elected president was back. I mean, how embarrassing is that? Not very, if you just stick to your story. "The people have sent a clear message . . . that they want both democracy and reform," Fleischer revealed. He went on to lecture the restored president -- whose overthrow we at least tacitly supported -- about "governing in a fully democratic manner." And National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice joined in to tell the Venezuelan president not to be so "high-handed." Who could blame the man for thinking, "Only one of us was elected president by majority vote -- and it wasn't you, George."

Alternative reality can be simple and sleek. That's one thing our Bush du jour likes about it. And simplicity is a genuine virtue in, for example, mobilizing a nation for war. It was quite effective for a while when Bush declared, after Sept. 11, that we were engaged in a Manichaean struggle with a single overarching enemy called terrorism. If anyone had told him it might be more complicated than that, Bush would have smelled nuance and sent the fellow on his way.

Some Kind Words for Cardinal Law

This Throne of Kings: How did America get into the royalty business? The US wants to restore King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan ("on extended leave of absence since 1973").

The Hindsight Saga

Blame the Accountant: Halliburton and Arthur Andersen (pp. 159-160):

And where was the future vice president while this was going on? The company insists, graciously, that a mere $100 million flyspeck on the company accounts (1999 income: $438 million) was beneath the notice of a busy CEO like Dick Cheney. This is believable. Cheney's income in 2000, his last year at Halliburton, was $36 million in salary, bonuses, benefits, deferred compensation, restricted stock sales, exercised options, frequent-flier miles, a turkey at Christmas, and other standard elements of the modern CEO compensation package. It is a vital responsibility of anyone who is that valuable to remain completely ignorant of anything improper going on around him. He owes it to the company to be untainted.

King George: The role of Stephanopoulos in our constitutional system.

Disabilities and Inabilities: Must we pay to hear bad pianists?

It's Good Enough: Freedom, justice, and Martha Stewart.

Who Wants This War? dateline July 10, 2002, i.e., before the official September new product rollout (p. 167):

It was amazing to read the Pentagon's detailed plans for an invasion of Iraq in the New York Times last week. The general reaction of Americans to this news was even more amazing: Basically, there was no reaction. We seem to be distant observers of our own nation's preparation for war, watching with horror or approval or indifference a process we have nothing to do with and cannot affect. Which is just about the case.

Government by Osmosis: How Colin Powell speaks without moving his lips. Overrating Colin Powell, presumed Iraq War critic.

What Time Is It?

Ours Not to Reason Why (p. 175):

Add it up. You may not agree that the Bush family actually stole the presidency for George W., but you cannot deny that the other guy got more votes. Once installed as president, Bush asserted (as they all do) th eright to start any war he wants. Members of Congress can pass a resolution of support if they would like -- in fact, he dares them not to -- but the lack of one is not going to stop him. You may not agree that this is flagrantly unconstitutional, but you cannot deny that this makes any discussion of the pros and cons outside of the White House largely pointless. Finally, it's already clear that Bush will copy his father's innovation of rigorously controlling what journalists covering the war can see and report. You may not agree that the obvious purpose of this is to protect official propaganda and lies from exposure, but you cannot deny that such will be the convenient effect.

Democracy will be especially missed if "pre-emption" -- the hot concept in Bush's national security policy -- takes off as his advisers hope. (The Bushies hail pre-emption as a brilliant innovation by The Man, except when they're downplaying it as nothing new to worry about.) If the United States is going to feel free to attack any countries that might attack us, without the inconvenience of waiting to see if they actually do, then putting that decision in one individual's power seems especially reckless.

The Secret Vice of Power Women: they watch Law & Order

Curse You, Robert Caro!: judging the National Books Awards, nonfiction division

Computers Go Too Far: Hey -- that's my job your automating!

Why Innocent People Confess: plea bargaining.

How Reagonomics Became Rubinomics (p. 189):

There is an honest element in the new party line about deficits, too. At least the Republicans are no longer pretending that deficits, fi they happen to occur, are detritus left behind by the previous administration like all those McDonald's wrappers behind the dresser in the Lincoln Bedroom. Instead, Republicans embrace the coming deficits as their own and pooh-pooh any desire for a balanced budget as some kind of liberal Democratic folly. This is breathtakingly dishonest on three levels.

First is the utter contradiction between the new "deficits don't matter" line and what the Republican Party has claimed to stand for over decades. There is nothing wrong with changing your mind. Indeed that can be one of the nobler forms of intellectual honesty. But if you decide that one of the core values in your political philosophy is misguided, you ought to say so before launching a campaign of ridicule against those who believe what you believed until the day before yesterday. Maybe you even ought to apologize.

Ronald Reagan entered the presidency promising to rid the nation of government borrowing and, of course, ended up tripling the national debt. But Reagan never let his crystalline beliefs be fogged by reality, including the reality of his own behavior.

Lott's Adventures in Gaffeland (pp. 190-191):

If a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth (as someone once said), Senate Republican leader Trent Lott's bizarre endorsement of white racism and segregation does not qualify. An authentic gaffe is more like Lawrence Lindsey's comment that a war against Iraq could cost $200 billion, which got him fired as President Bush's top economic-policy adviser. Nobody at the White House disputed the figure -- they just didn't want it brought up. This is called being off-message, and in Washington that's much worse than being, say, wrong. Lindsey's replacement, investment banker Stephen Friedman, was found to have economic beliefs not always in keeping with the Administration's message (easily summarized in two words: tax cuts). But the important thing is that he will stick to the message from now on, whatever it happens to be.

Lott's comments, by contrast, were certainly not the truth. But they may have revealed a truth. The suspicion is that they bubbled up from his id and escaped through his lips when he guard was down, thereby exposing an important and deeply distressing moral flaw in Lott himself. This process is too serious to label a gaffe. So let's call it a supergaffe. A supergaffe is when a politician says what he really thinks.

2003

Pious Pair: What makes Sens. McCain and Lieberman so appealing is also what makes them so annoying.

Morally Unserious (p. 197):

Proclaiming the case for war as the second half of a speech that devoted its first thirty minutes to tax cuts and tort reform also makes the call to arms seem morally unserious. Why are we talking about cars that run on hydrogen at all if the survival of civilization is at stake over the next few months? Bush declared that the best thing to do with government money is to give it back to the taxpayers, and then put on his "compassionate conservative" hat and proposed billions in government spending on the environment and on AIDS in Africa and on a program to train mentors for children of prisoners and on and on. The dollars don't exist to either give back or spend, of course, let alone both, so we'll be borrowing them if Bush has his way, a point he didn't dwell upon.

This orgiastic display of democracy's great weakness -- a refusal to acknowledge that more of something means less of something else -- undermined the moral seriousness of the call to arms and sacrifice that followed. Sneering at the folly of tax cuts spread over several years instead of right away, Bush failed to note that those gradual tax cuts were part of his own previous tax bill. Bragging that he would hold the increase in domestic discretionary spending to 4 percent a year, Bush probably didn't stop to wonder what that figure was under his tax-and-spend Democrat predecessor. Short answer: lower. These are venial sins in everyday politics, but Bush was striving for something higher.

Desert Shields

J'Accuse, Sort Of: You never know where you're going to find anti-Semitic propaganda. Rep. James Moran, blaming Iraq War on "strong support of the Jewish community"; Kinsley defending AIPAC, sort of (p. 202).

Just as African-Americans can use the "n" word when joshing among themselves and it sounds a lot different than when used by a white person, talk about the political influence of organized Jewry sounds different when it comes from Jewish organizations themselves. Nevertheless, you shouldn't brag about how influential you are if you want to get hysterically indignant when someone suggests that government policy is affected by your influence.

Unauthorized Entry: The Bush Doctrine: war without anyone's permission.

Unsettled: from the "moment when the Iraq war appeared to be 'won.'"

Bush's War: dateline Apr. 21, 2003 (p. 208):

About Gulf War II and its consequences (whatever they may be), though, the "great man" theory is correct, and the great man is President George W. Bush. Great in this context does not necessarily mean good or wise. It does usually suggest a certain largeness of character or presence on the stage, which Bush does not possess. Whatever gods gave him this role were casting against type. But the role is his This was George W. Bush's war. It was the result of one man's deliberate, sudden and unforced decision. Yes, Saddam Hussein deserves the ultimate moral blame, but Bush pushed the button.

Bush's decision to make war on Iraq may have been visionary and courageous or reckless and tragic or anything in between, but one thing it wasn't was urgently necessary. For Bush, this war was optional. Events did not impose it on him. Few public voices were egging him on. He hadn't made an issue of the need for "regime change" during the presidential campaign or made it a priority in the early months of his Administration. If he had completely ignored Iraq through the 2004 election, the price would have been a few disappointed Administration hawks and one or two grumpy op-eds. But something or someone put this bee in his bonnet, and from a standing start, history took off. Thousands died, millions were freed from tyranny (we hope), billions were spent, a region was shaken to its core, alliances ruptured, and the entire world watched it all on TV.

Bill Bennett's Bad Bet: the virtue czar's gambling habit.

The Fabulist: An American success story.

Sympathy for the New York Times

Supreme Court Fudge: the University of Michigan affirmative action case.

Abolish Marriage: the Texas sodomy law case.

Who Is Buried in Bush's Speech?

At Least Say You're Sorry: "President Bush will get his $87 billion for a year's worth of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he will have to endure a lot of nyah-nyah-nyah and I-told-you-so along the way." (pp. 225-226):

Why do politicians so rarely apologize? Why in particular won't they admit to being surprised by some development? Lack of scruples can't explain it: Denying the obvious isn't even good unscrupulous politics. For that reason, it is beyond spin. If spinning involves an indifference to truth, what's going on here looks more like an actual preference for falsehood. The truth would be better politics, and the administration is spreading lies anyway. [ . . . ]

This $87 billion request is a minefield of embarrassments, through which a simple "We got it wrong" would have been the safest route. After all, Bush either knew we'd be spending this kind of money for two or more years after declaring victory -- and didn't tell us -- or he didn't realize it himself. Those are the only two options. He deceived us, or he wasn't clairvoyant in the fog of war. Apparently, Bush would rather be thought omniscient than honest, which is a pity, since appearing honest is a more realistic ambition. Especially for him.

Just Supposin': In defense of hypothetical questions.

Filter Tips: how Bush gets (and takes) his news (p. 232):

When it comes to unfiltered news, the president says he can dish it out and actually brags that he can't take it. In fact, he can't do either one.

Taking Bush Personally: take stem cell research as an example (pp. 234-235):

It's not a complicated point. If stem-cell research is morally questionable,t he procedures used in fertility clinics are worse. You cannot logically outlaw the one and praise the other. And surely logical coherence is a measure of moral sincerity.

If he's got both his facts and his logic wrong -- and he has -- Bush's alleged moral anguish on this subject is unimpressive. In fact, it is insulting to the people (including me) whose lives could be saved or redeemed by the medical breakthroughs Bush's stem-cell policy is preventing.

This is not a policy disagreement. Or rather, it is not only a policy disagreement. If the president is not a complete moron -- and he probably is not -- he is a hardened cynic, staging moral anguish he does not feel, pandering to people he cannot possibly agree with, and sacrificing the future of many American citizens for short-term political advantage.

The Religious Superiority Complex: Lieut. Gen. William Boykin, the guy whose God's bigger than thou's.

Attack Geography: Hey, Buddy, who do you think you're calling "bucolic"? On Howard Dean.

When Good News Is Bad News: The politics of mixed emotions. More on Dean and others running for president.

2004

Novak Agonistes: the beginnings of the Plame affair.

Blind, Deaf, and Lame: No one listened to Paul O'Neill. Here's why.

"I'm Not a Quitter!: Candidates who can't take a hint"

Take This Column, Please

Paradise Lost: review of David Brooks' book, On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense (pp. 253-254):

For several years, in the world of political journalism, David Brooks has been every liberal's favorite conservative. This is not just because he throws us a bone of agreement every now and then. Even the most poisonous propagandist (i.e., Bill O'Reilly) knows that trick. Brooks goes farther. In his writing and on television, he actually seems reasonable. More than that, he seems cuddly. He gives the impression of being open to persuasion. Like the elderly Jewish lady who thinks someone must be Jewish because "he's so nice," liberals suspect that a writer as amiable as Brooks must be a liberal at heart. Some conservatives think so too.

(pp. 254-255):

The Brooks sociological method has four components: fearless generalizing, clever coinage, jokes and shopping lists. [ . . . ] Brooks defends his generalizations as poetic hyperbole with their inaccuracy. But this won't do. When he says that a store in a suburban mall is "barely visible because of the curvature of the earth," that is poetic hyperbole. When he claims that it is impossible to spend more than $20 for dinner in a Red Lobster, that is just wrong, and mystifyingly so. As [Sasha] Issenberg points out, these little factoids are credibility crutches. They are the difference between sociology and shtick. America's cities needn't actually be full of "African bistros where El Salvadoran servers wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs serve Virginia Woolf wannabes Slovakian beer" in order to justify this typical Brooks formulation. But there ought to be one Salvadoran server somewhere who routinely wears a kaffiyeh -- and I wonder if there is one.

At the very least, Brooks does not let the sociology get in the way of the shtick, and he wields a mean shoehorn when he needs the theory to fit the joke. Among some of the formerly young, "the energy that once went into sex and raving now goes into salads." O.K., that's funny. So is essentially the same joke a few pages later, when Brooks writes that "bathroom tile is their cocaine." Except that now he's referring to a different one of his demographic slices, which undermines the claim to sociology. The "16-foot refrigerators with the through-the-door goat cheese and guacamole delivery systems?" Ha ha. A large Home Depot salesman "looking like an S.U.V. in human form"? Ha ha ha. S.U.V.'s "so big they look like the Louisiana Superdome on wheels"? Enough already

"In America, it is acceptable to cut off any driver in a vehicle that costs a third more than yours. That's called democracy." True? Funny? Wouldn't the joke work just as well the other way? ". . . a third less than yours. That's called capitalism." And if it works both ways as a joke, it must not work at all as a sociological insight.

The Trouble with Optimism (p. 259):

Everyone agreed during the recent Reganalia that one of Ronald Reagan's best qualities was optimism. For Reagan's longtime supporters, optimism is a key element in the official hagiography. He lifted the atmosphere of doom and "malaise" perpetrated by his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. For those who did not especially admire the late president when he was alive, this was something nice they could say in all sincerity, instead of or as an introduction to what they really thought of him.

(p. 261):

And if forced to choose between a leader whose vision is clouded by optimism and one whose vision is clouded by pessimism, there is a good case that pessimism is the more prudent choice. Another name for pessimism is a tragic sensibility. It is a vivid awareness that things can go wrong, and often have. An optimist thinks he can pop over to Iraq, knock Saddam Hussein off his perch, establish democracy throughout the Middle East, and be home in time for dinner. A pessimist knows better.

A Good Editorial: an unpublished memo Kinsley wrote when he moved to the Los Angeles Times as editorial/opinion editor.

The Case against George W. Bush: published in Time paired against a pro piece by Charles Krauthammer; you'd think there'd be something quotable in it.

Social Security Privatization Won't Work: That's not an opinion -- it's a mathematical certainty.

2005

The Century's Greatest Love Story: Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, or Prince Charles and Camilla Parker?

No Smoking Gun: The Downing Street memo. Pooh-poohs the memo's significance; Mark Danner wrote a rejoinder, which he can publish in his own book, thank you.

Niger-Scooter-Plame-Gate

How Conservative Is "Too Conservative"? The Samuel Alito Supreme Court nomination.

Guess Who's Not Coming to Dinner?

Cheney Weighs In

The New Corruption: Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay.

2006

Wendy: Wasserstein.

The Future of Newspapers

Give Me Liberty or Let Me Think about It

Why Lawyers Are Liars: They don't want to: it's their ethical obligation!

The Ayatollah Joke Book: So, the prophet Mohammed walks into a bar . . . Something about Danish cartoons, and how "Nothing is easier and more common in the West, including the United States, than criticizing the United States -- except for criticizing Israel." Huh?

What's Your Theory? The Medicare drug prescription thing.

M1 and Me: An exclusive excerpt from Alan Greenspan's $8.5 million memoir.

The Twilight of Objectivity: Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper.

A Date with E. J. Dionne

Above the Law: The president isn't, but journalists are?

Please Don't Remain Calm: In a crisis, should you be a hero? or obey the rules? Example is United 93, but what is the point?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Yrotciv in Iraq (pp. 323-325):

Return with me, if you will, to May 1, 2003. That was the day Bush landed on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and -- under a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished" -- declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" and "the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.)" [ . . . ] And in his radio address two days later, Bush used the term "victory" unabashedly.

Soon, however, the concept of "victory" became more fluid. There is not just one victory, but many. Or, as then-press secretary Scott McClellan put it in August 2004, "Every progress made in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam's regime is a victory against the terrorists and enemies of Iraq." And there was a subtle shift from declaring how wonderful victory was to emphasizing how wonderful it will be. "The rise of democracy in Iraq will be an essential victory in the war on terror," the vice president said in April 2004. [ . . . ]

It was during the 2004 campaign that Bush offered his most imaginative explanations for why victory in Iraq looked so much like failure. "Because we achieved such a rapid victory" -- note that it is once more, briefly, a victory -- "more o the Saddam loyalists were [still] around."

On May 1, 2006, the third anniversary of "mission accomplished," White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked whether "victory" had been achieved in Iraq. He said, "We're making real progress on our plan for victory. . . . We are on the path to victory. We are winning in Iraq. But there is more work to do." Democrats should shut up because their criticism of the president "does nothing to help advance our goal of achieving victory in Iraq." [ . . . ]

Which brings us to last week, and Bush's television speech on the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. "Bush Says Iraq Victory Is Vital" was the Washington Post's accurate headline. And Bush was eloquent. "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more . . ."

War and Embryos: concedes a lot of dubious ground on war just to score a point on stem-cell research (p. 326):

Bush is right, of course, that the inevitable loss of innocent life in wartime cannot be a reason not to go to war, or a reason not to fight that war in a way intended to win. Eggs, omelettes, and all that. "Collateral damage" should be a consideration weighed in the balance, of course. But there is no formula to determine when you have the balance right. It does seem to me that both of our wars in Iraq were started and conducted with insufficient consideration for the cost in innocent blood. Callousness, naiveté, isolation of the citizenry from the consequences, or even the awareness, of what is being done in their name -- all have played a role. I don't see anything coming out of this war that is worth fifty-thousand innocent lives, although a case can be made, I guess.

But it is hard -- I would say it is impossible -- to reconcile Bush's absolutism over alleged human life when it is a clump of unknowing, unfeeling cells with his sophisticated, if not cavalier, attitude toward the loss of innocent human life when it is children and adults in Iraq.

2007

In God, Distrust: Christopher Hitchens

We Try Harder (but What's the Point?): Avis.

How Many Divisions Has the Congress? After the 2006 election, Congress works to restore its constitutional role in determining when and where to go to war. Well, not exactly.

posted 2008-08-06