William Safire mused this week on the reaction of his readers to his "recent diatribes against Bush's grasp for greater executive power;" conservatives wonder why he went wrong and liberals praise him (faintly). His criticism of the President began when he "denounced as a seizure of dictatorial power" the military tribunal order which would "deny the rule of law and public trial to those accused of terrorism."
In a climate of fear, only hard-line right-wing nuts not running for office and professional civil libertarians could get away with such a stand....
Most liberal politicians dove under their desks for fear of seeming soft on terror. Not a peep out of Senator Hillary Clinton; nothing but a wimpish waffle from the majority leader, Tom Daschle; and from Joe Lieberman, of all people, came an initial exhortation to try-'em-and-fry-'em that out-Ashcrofted Ashcroft....
Given the Democratic response, it's good to have a "libertarian conservative Republican
contrarian iconoclast," as he describes himself. He also draws on his status as "a decentralist ideologue with Clinton-deriding credentials" to "inveigh against Bush's recent assertion of 'executive privilege' to hide past presidential blunders and prosecutorial corruptions." Safire thinks that Bush, by "expanding presidential power during wartime, F.D.R.-style," is "centralizing political authority and it is up to conservatives to rein him in."
There isn't much doubt that the President would like to establish the dominance of the executive branch. At this point and in some measure, at least asserting its independence isn't a bad idea. The specific claim of executive privilege which Safire disapproves is questionable, but the extreme of intrusion reached in the Clinton years was not healthy and the Bush position may lead to some more sensible accommodation. Ari Fleischer, while not an unbiased source, summed up this problem aptly enough: "The nation grew weary of endless investigations and fishing expeditions."2
The order for military tribunals, while every bit as bad an idea as Mr. Safire states, doesn't, I think, proceed from a desire to seize power as much as from two other forces, one specific to the situation at hand and the other a common aspect of conservative politics.
The former is a combination of panic, bad judgment and a deficient understanding of the principles involved, including the nature and history of military commissions, all revealed in the text of the order and the statements in its support, including the argument by the White House counsel. The latter influence is an attitude toward criminal prosecutions which emphasizes harsh punishment and takes little notice of the rights of the accused, including the presumption of innocence. In this regard, the order and its defense are but extreme examples of the mindset of the average conservative legislator who votes for long mandatory sentences and who would, if not for the bleeding-heart liberals on the bench, do away with all those picky procedural
rules. The decision to eavesdrop on attorney-client conversations falls into the same category.
However, it certainly is true that this administration is not shy about acting unilaterally nor is it burdened by an overdeveloped sense of its limitations. An article in the Washington Post by Dana Milbank offered an analysis similar to Safire's: "On a wide variety of fronts, the administration has moved to seize power that it has shared with other branches of government." Some of the actions he described are susceptible to the alternative explanation just suggested. Others, assuming his analysis to be accurate, would be expansions of executive power or of freedom from accountability. Milbank refers to the administration's resistance to putting cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal in a treaty, "thereby averting a Senate ratification vote", proposing a
reorganization of the INS "without the congressional action lawmakers sought", attempts to limit intelligence briefings for members of Congress, and refusal to cooperate with a General Accounting Office probe into Vice President Cheney's energy task force; also, when "an open-meeting law prevented Bush's Social Security commission from meeting privately, the group split into two so the law would not apply."3
Milbank noted in passing that Congress approved the USA Patriot Act, which handed to the administration the same sort of powers that it has, in other instances, arrogated. This doesn't validate the Bush approach, but it indicates, as does the lack of Democratic criticism, that anything related to terrorism might be approved anyway.
The administration's tendency to act unilaterally is not confined to relations with Congress. It has given notice of withdrawal from the ABM treaty, has rejected proposals to combat global warming and apparently is considering an attack on Iraq in which we would have fewer allies and a weaker case than in Afghanistan.
The administration's go-it-alone attitude toward foreign affairs is dangerous and should raise far more concern than has been expressed. The domestic issue is, in a sense, the reverse of that posed by Safire and Milbank. President Bush and his advisors may be reaching for more power relative to Congress than is beneficial to the country, but that is easily reversed and will be corrected at some point after the war on terrorism ceases to be an excuse and a means of intimidation of the opposition. The greater danger is that the Bush administration will, through tax cuts, deregulation and concessions to business, cripple the government's ability to deal with domestic problems.
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1. Quotes from column in New York Times, 1/7/02.
2. He managed to dispel any illusion of high-mindedness by applying the same standard to coziness with Enron: "Fleischer warned Democrats this morning against investigations into the Bush administration's dealings with Enron. 'The American people are tired of partisan witch hunts and endless investigations,' he said." (W. Post 1/10)
3. Washington Post, 11/20/01.
January 15
Treasury Secretary O'Neill already had demonstrated to the satisfaction of any objective observer that he knows little about government and less about responsible public policy. Now he has revealed that he is unqualified to hold public office; not only does he have no glimmer of a world outside the boardroom, he's simply too inept to be allowed to be a spokesman even for this business-serving administration. O'Neill on the demise of Enron:
Companies come and go. It's part of the genius of capitalism. People get to make good decisions or bad decisions, and they get to pay the consequence or to enjoy the fruits of their decisions. That's the way the system works.
In his column today, Bob Herbert translated as follows:
I guess it was Mr. Lay...and other top Enron executives who made the good decisions, because they sure reaped the benefits.... And it must have been the rank-and-file employees and the ordinary investors who made the bad decisions, because they're the ones paying the consequences.
In addition to offering a description of capitalism which one would expect, given the circumstances, only from a critic intending parody, Secretary O'Neill put his foot in it regarding contacts from Enron. He acknowledged that he received calls October 28 and November 8 or 9 from chairman Kenneth Lay about Enron's worsening condition. He kept them to himself, he said. "I didn't think this was worthy of me running across the street and telling the president.... I frankly think what Ken told me over the phone was not new news." Apparently he's so afraid of involving the President that he feels compelled to invent excuses for not informing him that one of the nation's largest corporations was in serious trouble, but surely he could have thought of a more plausible excuse than that an impending disaster isn't "new news."
The reason that everyone is terrified of having any contact with Enron, now that it's dying, is that, when it was healthy, the contacts were suspect: Enron and other energy sellers were helping to make policy and to influence appointments. If the administration didn't have a guilty conscience over that and the amount contributed by Enron and its executives to the Bush campaign, it could be more open about the calls for help, none of which appears to have resulted in any improper action.
Mr. O'Neill is of the opinion that a system which taxes corporations is not worthy of an advanced society. No doubt regulation of insider trading, requirements of fair disclosure to shareholders and protection of employees' retirement plans would strike him as something from the stone age.
January 17
Perhaps Secretary O'Neill need only be patient: if we continue on the present path, income taxes on corporations soon will be a thing of the past without formal repeal.
It was revealed today that Enron paid no federal income tax in four of the past five years; in fact, it was entitled to $382 million in refunds over that period. Creative accounting and lawyering helped: Enron has 881 offshore subsidiaries, including 692 in the Cayman Islands, sheltering income from the nasty tax man. No doubt this would be, in Mr. O'Neill's view, part of the genius of capitalism.
January 19
Senator Kennedy once again proved his credentials as the last living liberal by advocating repeal of part of the recently-passed tax cuts. The response was derision by Republicans, horror-stricken aversion by Democrats. "Senator Kennedy has set the stage for an honest debate between those of us who oppose tax hikes and those who support Daschle-nomics," said Dick Armey, not quite honestly. His a-tax-cut-repealed-is- a-tax-increase line was echoed by the White House: "the Democratic leadership in all times, good and bad, looks to raise taxes on the American people." That reference to the leadership and Rep. Armey's to Sen. Daschle were a bit off target: the Senator "issued a statement...recalling that his own recent speech on the economy 'did not call for either the suspension or the delay of the tax cut passed last spring.'" Even Kennedy could not bring himself to urge complete repeal of the future cuts.
January 22
When the past catches up, it does so with a vengeance, or so Sara Jane Olson must think. Even before she was sentenced on her guilty plea in the police-car bombing case (her attempt to withdraw her plea having been denied), she and others of the SLA were charged with murder in the course of a 1975 bank robbery. Bill Ayers, safe behind an expired statute of limitations, can boast of and probably embellish his role in bombings. The SLA, facing a crime not so conveniently wiped away, resort to whining about how unfair it is to remind them of their former lives. In reporting the new charges, The NY Times noted that William Harris was asked in an interview last year how he had changed since his SLA days. "I'm older, no longer self-destructive and unwilling to go to jail." "We were a bunch of amateurs. I wish everyone would forget us." It is typical that the focus is inward. Never mind that the SLA and its clones destroyed other lives; whether Harris now would wear the SLA motto, "death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people," depends solely on how he views himself and how much risk he's willing to take.
February 1
The administration is making it difficult to support its reassertion of executive privilege. In addition to its decision to use the issue of contacts with Enron as a place to take a stand, which casts some doubt on the assertion that this is all about high principle, it has offered arguments which are, to say the least, short on candor.
The privilege which seems to me to be most in need of restoration concerns conversations between the president and his advisors. Vice President Cheney seemed to refer to this in interviews last weekend: "I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job." It was wrong for past administrations to have acquiesced to congressional demands: "We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years." "What's really at stake here is the ability of the president and the vice president to solicit advice from anybody they want in confidence - get good, solid, unvarnished advice without having to make it available to a member of Congress." However, he wasn't talking about internal advice, but justifying his refusal to turn over documents concerning Enron's involvement in his energy task force. Perhaps there is a case to be made for confidentiality of contacts between citizens and the
administration, as he more candidly argued elsewhere, but it's a different case than that for internal advice, and he does the debate no service by attempting to conflate them.
The President recently engaged in the same ploy. After denouncing the demand for the energy committee documents as "an encroachment on the executive branch's ability to conduct business," he said, "We're not going to let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves to become eroded."
The Vice President also attempted to pretend that interest in Enron arose only after its bankruptcy filing and that the only question is whether the Administration did anything late last year to bail it out. That isn't the issue, as Mr. Cheney knows full well, and the demand for his records was made long before Enron's financial troubles were made public.
The proper balance between transparency of official action and the need for candid advice isn't easily struck. The general assertion by this administration that the line has drifted too far toward intrusion is valid, but the broader the claim and the more obvious its use to cover impropriety the less attention it will and should receive.
February 5
It's easy to see why no one pays much attention to the Democrats: they have no effective spokesmen and they are so fair and cooperative that every debate is lost before it begins.1 The latest instance was a confrontation on PBS between Budget Director Mitchell Daniels and Senator Kent Conrad, Chairman of the Budget Committee. The Senator had an important point, that the Social Security fund is being jeopardized in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. However, he made the point so many times that he merely came across as obsessed and made it so incompletely that Daniels could brush it off, which he did, arrogantly and somewhat less than candidly. In addition, Senator Conrad fell over himself pledging to approve every dollar requested for defense, never mind whether it has anything to do with the all-embracing war on terrorism, which prompted a momentary suspension of rudeness by Daniels, but papered over the fact that this budget is a radical document.
A day or so ago, Walter Williams appeared on PBS' Nightly Business Report to advise us that taking money from him to give to someone else is theft; I assume that his parable referred to taxation. Here's the conclusion of his syndicated column today:
A clear constitutional duty of the federal government is national defense, and not taking the earnings of one American and giving them to another. We'd have more than enough resources to put into our anti-terrorism battle, while keeping our liberties, if we'd increase the former and decrease the latter.
Or, as a Times editorial put it, "The Bush budget is a road map toward a different kind of American society, in which the government no longer taxes the rich to aid the poor, and in fact does very little but protect the nation from foreign enemies...." The Bush administration hasn't quite reached that point, but with good libertarians like Dr. Williams to guide them, it may not be long.2
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1. 3/30/02: Paul Krugman put it more bluntly in yesterday's column: "...the liberals I know generally seem unwilling to face up to the nastiness of contemporary politics."
2. 10/12/02: Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State and Utopia, informed us that "Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor." Although the comment doesn't explicitly mirror Professor Williams' aversion to redistribution, it appears in a chapter entitled "Distributive Justice," the Rawlsian form of which Professor Nozick didn't approve. Pick your metaphor; perhaps the anti-tax folk should borrow from their fellow libertarians at the NRA and pledge that taxes will be taken only from their cold, dead hands.
February 12
Judging from the State of the Union address, success - partial success at that - has gone to the President's head. The war in Afghanistan has brought down the Taliban, provided that country with an opportunity to establish a stable and just government and put bin Laden on the run, all more quickly and at less cost than most predicted. However, the stated goal of finding bin Laden has not been achieved, and even the Taliban leader Mohammed Omar remains at large, facts which could have inspired a measure of humility in, or at least received a mention by, a more mature leader.
On balance the campaign has been a success, but it has been so in no small part because the President was able to convince allies to support and potential critics to tolerate the action in Afghanistan. This would not seem to be the time, with bin Laden possibly alive, with al Qaeda cells scattered around the world, and with almost daily killings in Israel and the occupied territories, to decide that we can proceed alone. However, that's apparently what the President has in mind. In sweeping language, he denounced Iraq and Iran, throwing in North Korea for good measure, suggesting that we would attack if they did not mend their ways.
The bluster, combined with the President's willingness, even eagerness, to do all this alone, has put him on the end of a long and shaky limb. Maybe the "axis of evil" is so easily cowed that this threat will bring it to heel, but the odds aren't good. If Mr. Bush's bluff were called, he would have two options, neither attractive: if we attacked another country without broad support, it could be a disaster; if we didn't, the world would conclude that we speak loudly and carry a wet noodle. We can only hope that someone will persuade the President to climb back from his perch while he still has the poll ratings to disguise the retreat.
The threat will get cheers for now, and it diverts attention from the fiscal disaster that is his budget, but at some point the grown-ups must take charge again. The administration is turning a tendency to take unilateral action into a policy of thumbing its nose at the world. The latest move, added to the military-tribunal order, the continued detention of many foreigners with no discernable reason, the accusations of maltreatment of prisoners, the reluctance to abide by Geneva conventions, and Bush's habit of making ill-considered statements in his faux-cowboy style, supplies those who hate America with reams of recruiting material and has to make our allies wonder whether a little distance wouldn't be a good idea.
February 11
Articles and opinion columns about Enron have reported that its sins may be replicated in other companies. They even have noted that executives of failed companies tend to leave with lots of money. I haven't yet seen any mention of the fact that all of this is merely the most visible and most reprehensible form of a phenomenon common to most large businesses, that they are run for the benefit of top management. Executive compensation is out of control; if the managers of Enron and Global Crossing made out like bandits, they merely did what everyone else does, only with their masks askew.
March 27
A Partisan Century collected political articles from The Partisan Review during its first sixty years, 1934-94. I'm up to the mid-1970s, at which point the contributors still are wistfully thinking of radicalism and socialism and reflecting on what an unjust (and philistine) bourgeois society in which they lived. One, writing in 1975, noted "the absence of a left". I can't wait to see what they thought of the eighties.
Perhaps there really wasn't a left in the turbulent late sixties and seventies, just a lot of hedonists, rebellious against authority only to the extent necessary to have their own way. The same author, Christopher Lasch, referred to "the growing demand for immediate impulse gratification" and "the tendency to equate fulfillment of those demands with political and cultural emancipation." Such people could slide easily into the equally self-centered material culture of the next decade.
Whatever the truth of that theory, there certainly isn't much serious criticism, leftist or otherwise, of the current business culture. The News Hour on PBS tonight had a segment on post-Enron proposals to hold corporate executives liable for fraudulent accounting. It offered three commentators, all present or past corporate directors, all of whom assured us that directors take their responsibilities very seriously. This is consistent with the general reaction: the system is sound, but a few bad guys abused it. One panelist, former American Airlines Chairman Robert Crandall, made a point of the terrible complexity of the tax laws, more or less suggesting that the cause of tax fraud is tax law. At a more enlightened time, that would be received as the joke that it is; conditions being what they are, I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the preamble of bill to abolish the IRS.
March 30
We may be conflicted as to the duty to obey tax laws, but we don't fool around when it come to drugs. Drug use must be punished; if that results in penalizing innocent people, so be it.
In HUD v. Rucker, decided this month, the Supreme Court upheld eviction of public housing tenants on the ground that other residents of their apartments had used drugs. The Court's rationale is that the housing authorities merely enforced a statutory mandate that every public housing agency use leases which "provide that any criminal activity that threatens the health, safety, or right to peaceful enjoyment of the premises by other tenants or any drug-related criminal activity on or off such premises, engaged in by a public housing tenant, any member of the tenant's household, or any guest or other person under the tenant's control, shall be cause for termination of tenancy." The authority in Oakland employed such leases, and enforced them against several tenants not personally involved in drug use; Mrs. Rucker's daughter was caught using drugs several blocks from the apartment.
A literal reading of the statute, which the Court obviously favors, would allow Mrs. Rucker to be evicted if her daughter used drugs in New York. I have some doubt that this is what Congress intended, but whether Congress or the Court is to blame for this decision, it is consistent with the official policy toward drugs, which has nothing to offer but draconian punishment. It is surprising that we don't burn down the buildings and pour salt on the earth.
April 8
In a column on March 30, Frank Rich referred, with justice, to the "incoherence and indolence of the Bush 'policy' in the Middle East...." Even when the President finally decided that denouncing Arafat wasn't getting the job done, he still concentrated on intervening rhetorically. Secretary Powell will not reach the scene for several days, making stops apparently designed to persuade Muslim nations to solve the problem for us, clearly a vain hope. In the meantime Mr. Bush ordered the parties to desist, and now he seems surprised - certainly he's testy - that they haven't complied. This level of arrogance in a person of such limited ability and insight is worrisome.
Sharon will end his operation eventually, and may do so earlier due to the President's demands; without American support, Israel hasn't much chance of survival. However, he may decide that Bush will reverse course again before long. This situation needed much more than lectures; it needed the attention of a good-faith broker, someone willing to expend some moral capital in bringing about a cease-fire. Bush not only has failed to play that role, he scoffs at it. His implication that Clinton's effort at Camp David, sabotaged by Arafat, made things worse is illustrative of his level of understanding. He backed himself into a corner by his declaration of a crusade on terrorism, as Sharon insists he is doing nothing else. To make matters worse, this and the President's posturing relative to Iraq and Iran have alienated Europeans other than
Britain and, in the Muslim world, have reinforced the impression that the US is not only anti-Palestinian but anti-Muslim. All of this has made the belated mission by Powell even more difficult.
April 9
[The P-I mentioned in this note is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. ]
The column by Frank Rich excoriated Democrats for their "fecklessness". He denounced the Republican ploy of impugning the patriotism of the administration's' critics: "If anything, it's the Democrats' patriotic responsibility not just to hold up their end of the national dialogue over the war's means and ends, but to say where they want to take the country in peace." However, he didn't have much to say for their efforts to date: "now that they've capitulated on issues ranging from fuel-economy standards to gun control, the sum of a Democratic social vision these days often seems to have dwindled down to a prescription drug program for Medicare patients."
March Shields, in yesterday's P-I, expressed the same opinion of the President's approach to the Palestinian crisis, describing it as "his Pontius Pilate disengagement from the simmering conditions in the Middle East" and the same view of Democratic will: "Whether it is out of fear of being branded "soft" on terrorism or simple political paralysis at the sight of the president's sky-high favorable poll numbers, too many Washington Democrats are too scared to question - let alone to criticize - the Bush administration's very questionable policies."
The war and the polls obviously are problems for the Democrats, but they have been feckless since inauguration day, even though faced by a new and dubiously elected, inarticulate president and some of those same very questionable policies. Only on the confirmation of Judge Pickering have they shown much resolve, and that seemed to be driven by group politics.
April 17
The inability of the Democrats to expose the shortcomings of the administration is the more remarkable considering that it is, in striking degree, confused and inept as well as doctrinaire.
President Bush clearly has a limited set of ideas, or perhaps one should say obsessions. The tax cut is mandatory whether the economy is booming or in recession, whether there is a surplus or a deficit, whether we are at peace or at war. Drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is urgent (this week) because Iraq will interrupt oil sales for a month. The declaration of war on terrorism is hindering efforts to stop the fighting in Palestine; response: more rhetoric on the axis of evil. The Muslim world is virtually unanimous in deciding that we are the evil ones, that we are anti-Muslim; response, as the risk of a Middle East explosion rises: another threat to invade Iraq.
An article earlier this year referred to the President's view of the world as divided into good and evil, and noted that this had been developed "under the tutelage of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice". She apparently also counseled avoidance of the Palestinian issue, stating, "We shouldn't think of American involvement for the sake of American involvement". Her tutelage, no doubt influential with a president so inexperienced in foreign affairs, is one of our problems.
This administration is well on its way to setting a new record for, to put it moderately, unbelievable statements, no mean feat given the standard set by predecessors. Most recently, we have the explanations of why it was cheering on the coup in Venezuela. We had no contacts with the plotters; well, yes, we did but we didn't back an ouster of the president; well, yes, we did but we told them to use a referendum. "Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr. Chávez as Venezuela's legitimate president, one administration official replied, 'He was
democratically elected,' then added, 'Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just
by a majority of the voters, however.'"1 Without question, that is a comforting thought to this administration.
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1. New York Times 4/16/02.
April 18
Secretary Powell has returned from a mission to the Middle East which would be difficult to describe other than as a failure: lectured to by the King of Morocco, ignored by Sharon and Arafat, and snubbed by Mubarak. President Bush, desperate to salvage something and running from right-wing criticism of his brief flirtation with neutrality, grasped at a straw and seized a nettle: as a report in the Washington Post put it, he "endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a 'man of peace' yesterday, crediting him with taking satisfactory steps to end Israel's three-week-old military assault despite Sharon's rejection of the president's demand for an immediate withdrawal from Palestinian cities." That should get Mr. Bush's meeting with Prince Abdullah off to a good start.
The President suffered another defeat today when the Senate rejected drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. He brought both defeats on himself, the former by ignoring an explosive situation for more than a year and then bungling his intervention, the latter by pushing a bad policy which was going nowhere.
Drilling in ANWR to reduce our dependency on foreign oil makes as much sense as finding that everyone leaves the lights on 24 hours a day and deciding that the solution is to build more power plants. However, one of the obvious remedies, improving gas mileage, requires a little intelligence and a small dollop of political courage, not to be found in the White House or in Congress.
Following the decision in California Democratic Party v. Jones, holding California's blanket primary to be unconstitutional, everyone assumed that Washington's primary, on which California's had been modeled, would be next to fall. The Democrats, with the Republicans and Libertarians tagging along, challenged Washington's primary law in U.S. District Court (Washington State Democratic Party v. Reed), only to be told that a) the circumstances in Washington are different than those in California, and b) they failed to prove their case. Whether the Supreme Court will agree remains to be seen. Reversal would not be a surprise, given its willingness to interfere in the conduct of elections by states and its inventiveness in finding constitutional problems, shown not only in Jones but more dramatically in Bush v. Gore.
California adopted the blanket primary by initiative (Proposition 198) in 1996. Its proponents, to their regret, stated that the purpose of the initiative was to force political parties toward the center: opening up the primary to all voters would result in more centrist candidates being nominated than if the selection were limited to party members. The Supreme Court, Scalia, J., made short work of that effort:
...Proposition 198 forces political parties to associate with - to have their nominees, and hence their positions, determined by - those who, at best, have refused to affiliate with the party, and, at worst, have expressly affiliated with a rival. In this respect, it is qualitatively different from a closed primary. Under that system, even when it is made quite easy for a voter to change his party affiliation the day of the primary, and thus, in some sense, to "cross over," at least he must formally become a member of the party; and once he does so, he is limited to voting for candidates of that party...
The Court held that being forced to open up their primary contests to nonmembers violated the parties' right of association, which includes a right not to associate; the state's interests were not strong enough to justify this interference; the California statute therefore was unconstitutional. This strikes me as a dubious conclusion.
The Court made a quick pass at establishing a special status for political parties:
Representative democracy in any populous unit of governance is unimaginable without the ability of citizens to band together in promoting among the electorate candidates who espouse their political views. The formation of national political parties was almost concurrent with the formation of the Republic itself.
This is a little disingenuous. The ability of citizens to band together doesn't mandate permanent political parties, and parties not only are not mentioned in the Constitution, but were considered undesirable; so much for original intent.
Leaving aside explicit constitutional status, do political parties have a character or role that requires deference to their interests in the conduct of elections? Apparently not; at least, none is suggested. The issue is simply that, unless an election is nonpartisan, parties are involved, and they have associational rights which a state may not impair unless there is a compelling state interest. This resolves into a two-level analysis; what injury is there to the parties and, if there is significant injury, is the state's interest strong enough to prevail?
One question regarding the first level is the nature of a political party: is it a sufficiently well-defined entity that it can have the rights described? The Court had some trouble with the concept. At various points, it referred to "party members", the "party faithful", the party "rank-and-file" and the "party base", but never defined the terms. It had difficulty with the concept of "party leaders," applying this term at one point to nominees and at another to those endorsing a nominee. The Court's lack of focus is easy to understand; as it noted, party membership may be demonstrated by nothing more than asking for its ballot upon arriving at the polling place. This fuzziness as to the identity of the party makes it difficult to take seriously the notion that it is an
entity which has associational rights that will be violated by the votes of non-members.
The evidence of damage seems thin. Expert testimony was interpreted as indicating that crossover voting, i.e., voting by non-members, would be substantial, but that "malicious crossover voting" or "raiding" would be slight and that few elections would be determined by crossovers. However, any risk of interference was enough to raise the specter of irreparable harm: "a single election in which the party nominee is selected by nonparty members could be enough to destroy the party"; Lincoln might not have been nominated in a blanket primary. Even apart from disasters of such historic proportions, crossover voting isn't fair: "Ordinarily, however, being saddled with an unwanted, and possibly antithetical, nominee would not destroy
the party but severely transform it." If crossover voting fails to change the identity of the nominee, it will change his position: "Even when the person favored by a majority of the party members prevails, he will have prevailed by taking somewhat different positions - and, should he be elected, will continue to take somewhat different positions in order to be renominated."
In evaluating the evidence, the Court was content to discover possible harm and seemed unconcerned whether it would be likely. It was not unduly interested in the adequacy of the proof because the proponents of Prop. 198 had convicted themselves: "It is unnecessary to cumulate evidence of this phenomenon, since, after all, the whole purpose of Proposition 198 was to favor nominees with 'moderate' positions."
The conclusion, then, is that the parties must be free to choose their candidates without interference by nonmembers, so that the parties' messages may remain clear:
"There is simply no substitute for a party's selecting its own candidates." In a legislative debate over a law such as Prop. 198, this would be a legitimate argument from political theory. But this isn't such a debate; it's a judicial decision purportedly applying constitutional principles. Assuming that the Court is on solid ground in finding a right of non-association, why should that be more important than the state's right to regulate its elections, even if that changes a party's message?1
The Court made fast work of the first two claims by the state:
Respondents proffer seven state interests they claim are compelling. Two of them - producing elected officials who better represent the electorate and expanding candidate debate beyond the scope of partisan concerns - are simply circumlocution for producing nominees and nominee positions other than those the parties would choose if left to their own devices.
This is a peculiar response. The state's arguments were not circumlocution; they were assertions of interests in the election process, interests which in another context hardly would be controversial. The avoidance of straight talk lies in the Court's dismissal of these arguments: it did not deal with them on their merits, but simply found that they conflict, in theory, with the parties' associational rights and therefore must fall. As the Court put it later with unintentional candor, these arguments were "automatically out of the running" because of that conflict. There was no balancing of interests and no serious attempt to evaluate or even properly describe the state's claims.
The third issue had to do with "disenfranchisement". It isn't entirely clear that the Court framed this issue correctly; it summarized the question as follows:
Respondents' third asserted compelling interest is that the blanket primary is the only way to ensure that disenfranchised persons enjoy the right to an effective vote. By "disenfranchised," respondents do not mean those who cannot vote; they mean simply independents and members of the minority party in "safe"districts....
The Supreme Court interpreted "independents and members of the minority party in safe districts" to refer to a single category, i.e., non-majority-party voters in safe districts:
...These persons are disenfranchised, according to respondents, because under a closed primary they are unable to participate in what amounts to the determinative election - the majority party's primary; the only way to ensure they have an "effective" vote is to force the party to open its primary to them....
The District Court, whose opinion was adopted by the Ninth Circuit, appeared to refer to two categories, minority party voters in safe districts, and independents anywhere; the Supreme Court did not address the latter. Whatever the scope, the issue again was disposed of by restating it:
...This also appears to be nothing more than reformulation of an asserted state interest we have already rejected - recharacterizing nonparty members' keen desire to participate in selection of the party's nominee as "disenfranchisement" if that desire is not fulfilled. We have said, however, that a "nonmember's desire to participate in the party's affairs is overborne by the countervailing and legitimate right of the party to determine its own membership qualifications."
The state's argument about disenfranchisement isn't a reformulation regarding keen desire; it's an issue concerning the rights of independent voters and those in one-party districts. It may not be compelling, but it should be met on its own terms, not by a specious redefinition.
The state's remaining four interests - promoting fairness, affording voters greater choice, increasing voter participation, and protecting privacy, "[were] not, like the others, automatically out of the running" but they were disposed of with equal efficiency, in a single paragraph.
The fairness argument, as described by the Court, was a repetition of the disenfranchisement claim: "The aspect of fairness addressed by Proposition 198 is presumably the supposed inequity of not permitting nonparty members in 'safe' districts to determine the party nominee." That was trumped by the party's interest: it would be unfair to permit "nonparty members to hijack the party". However, the District Court had interpreted the fairness argument in broader terms: "it is apparent that the voters of California believe that the system is fairer when all voters, including independents and regardless of party affiliation, may participate in framing the choice of candidates at the general election."
The argument that opening the primary gave voters more choices was rejected in two muddled sentences, in which the Court first declared that the blanket primary actually narrowed choice, then suggested that broadening choice was an illegitimate aim:
...As for affording voters greater choice, it is obvious that the net effect of this scheme...is to reduce the scope of choice, by assuring a range of candidates who are all more "centrist." This may well be described as broadening the range of choices favored by the majority - but that is hardly a compelling state interest, if indeed it is even a legitimate one....
Broadening voters' choices - giving them a chance to select someone sensible, no mean task in any election - may not even be a legitimate state interest. Where does this amazingly anti-democratic conclusion come from? We are not told. This is not legal reasoning; it is merely the imposition of personal preferences.
The next issue did not even rate a separate discussion: "...The interest in increasing voter participation is just a variation on the same theme (more choices favored by the majority will produce more voters), and suffers from the same defect." Given the ambiguity in the discussion of the preceding issue, it isn't entirely clear what "the same defect" is. If the Court again was questioning the legitimacy of the state's aim, it is seriously off track. Whatever one may think of the California scheme, it cannot be denied that a state has a proper interest in encouraging greater understanding of and involvement in government. In a time when suspicion of and hostility toward government are widespread and constantly encouraged, establishing a positive
connection is of critical importance, and the vote is an obvious way to accomplish that. If the associational rights of political parties are even more important, the Court surely must be able to articulate the basis for that conclusion. Its failure to do strongly suggests that it had no persuasive argument and so resorted to this dismissive evasion.
The final issue is privacy: the state argued that voters should not be required to disclose party preferences in order to vote. To the Court, this cannot be a compelling interest because certain Federal laws require the appointment of persons by party; therefore party affiliation cannot be "sacrosanct". The Court does not explain why Congress' decision that some offices be filled on a partisan basis prohibits a state from adopting a policy of allowing voters to keep their party affiliation private at the polling place.
The Court added one more ground for its decision: even if these state interests were compelling, the statute still would be defective because those interests could have been served by a narrower measure, a "nonpartisan blanket primary."
Generally speaking, under such a system, the State determines what qualifications it requires for a candidate to have a place on the primary ballot - which may include nomination by established parties and voter-petition requirements for independent candidates. Each voter, regardless of party affiliation, may then vote for any candidate, and the top two vote getters (or however many the State prescribes) then move on to the general election. This system has all the characteristics of the partisan blanket primary, save the constitutionally crucial one: Primary voters are not choosing a party's nominee.
Under such a system, the state could achieve its goals "without severely burdening a political party's First Amendment right of association".
It is difficult to know how serious the Court was about this. What it described is not a true nonpartisan primary, but a hybrid, but it still would dilute the power of parties more seriously than 198. Inserting an earlier step gives the parties a protected preliminary choice. However, at the level under discussion, the primary election, nonmembers still would be allowed to vote for party candidates, and they could deny the party's nominee, and the party, a place in the final election. That is a greater dilution of party power than the California plan, and hardly seems to be a more "narrowly tailored" solution. It makes sense only if one assumes that party integrity and doctrinal purity are more important than having a seat at the table.
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1. As Justice Stevens put it in dissent, "It is not this Court's constitutional function to choose between the competing visions of what makes democracy work - party autonomy and discipline versus progressive inclusion of the entire electorate in the process of selecting their public officials..."
April 21
Two of the oddities in Jones - two of its features which seemed odd to me, to be more candid - turn out to be related, sort of. First, the Court's insistence on the right of the parties to define their messages, to decide who may carry their banners, sounds less like freedom of association than trademark law, the Court ruling that nonmembers can't be allowed to infringe on the party name. The other peculiarity is the position of the Libertarian Party. Its spirited opposition to the California and Washington blanket primaries is inconsistent with its core principle, that ndividuals should be able to make their own decisions. This statement of principles appears in the LP platform:
As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives,.... We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world,.... Consequently, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings.
The convergence is found in an article I came across yesterday which reported the Jones decision. The Libertarian Party's National Director was quoted as follows: "This ruling means that we can protect our intellectual property - the core beliefs, philosophy, and ideology that make the Libertarian Party a unique and valuable part of the American political process." This formulation of the issue as intellectual property is closer to the result than the negative right of association, although it still leaves us, at least as to the major parties, with the problem of defining the owner.
As to the second issue, Gail Lightfoot, identified as the Libertarian Party's plaintiff in the case and its U.S. Senate candidate in California, had this to say:
How can a party seeking to limit government intrusion into the lives of its citizens possibly support a wide-open primary, where any voter from any party - or no party at all - is able to select its candidates? Libertarian principles demand that...candidate selection be limited to party members who presumably agree with those same principles.
The state wasn't intruding into the lives of its citizens; it was trying to give them more freedom. On this issue, the LP isn't libertarian at all, at least not as to individuals; it's libertarian only in the limited and anomalous sense of opposing interference with its freedom to be exclusive.
April 27
Conservatives, including political columnists, have been on President Bush's case for suggesting that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must change their ways. The criticism has found its way into Democratic ranks; Senator Lieberman declared that the President's hesitant attempt to stop the killing by both sides "muddles our moral clarity." Rep. DeLay wants to introduce a resolution declaring our unwavering support for Israel.1
I think that these reactions are profoundly misguided. It isn't that I differ with the supporters of Israel on the issue of relative virtue. Israel has gone around the bend in its current military operations and has, in other ways, contributed to the crisis it faces. However, if I had to choose moral sides, I would pick Israel. Although I have great sympathy for the Palestinian people, Yasser Arafat is beneath contempt, the Arab nations are setting new standards for hypocrisy and no movement which encourages the use of suicide bombers against civilian populations deserves support. The enthusiasm of the left for the Palestinians is reminiscent of its enthusiasm for North Vietnam, and some of the hostility toward Israel reeks of anti-Semitism. All of this is beside the point.
There are general reasons to be wary of resorting to morality as a guide to foreign policy. One of the problems with moral clarity is that it is far too flexible and manipulable a concept; the importance of morality varies, as does its content, with the political views of the observer. In addition, our focus often is too narrow; it doesn't require much imagination to realize that reasonable people could have differing opinions on the legitimacy of Israel's military operations and even on our war on terrorism, which seems to include the option of attacking anyone we define as a menace. However, the more important problem is that moral principles, even if genuine and unambiguous, may be an impediment to achieving peace and stability. This is not a
situation in which we have the luxury of choosing sides.
The U.S. probably has lost its chance to act as a neutral mediator. Prince Abdullah proposed a program to the President; it clearly is one-sided but could be a starting point and offers the potential for Arab involvement, which is critical. Jimmy Carter made a suggestion a few days ago which contemplates direct pressure on Israel. The President needs to accept someone's plan in a hurry; his press-conference and photo-op ramblings won't do the job. However, under any of these programs, he must have the courage to ignore the moralists, especially those on the Israeli side.
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1. Resolutions were passed by the House and Senate May 3 which were uncompromisingly pro-Israel.
May 20
The discovery of certain pre-September 11 intelligence documents containing various indications of potential terrorism raise three questions: why did the government not do more; why was this information not shared with the public at the time or at least released voluntarily afterward; and what did the government have before 9/11 in addition to the material leaked? The responses from the administration all have been attempts to deflect the demand for full disclosure.
The most direct response to the first question has been to explain that the communications received were not specific enough to have warranted action. That may well be so, although it sounds somewhat false coming from an administration which has shown little aversion to unilateral action and extreme measures. Parsing the known material also implies that it is the complete inventory, in effect giving a very possibly false answer to the third question.
The answer given to the second question is that it was not in the public interest to release it; in part this is based on the assertion that the information was too general to be helpful, but partly on the notion of not causing panic. Neither is convincing, and the willingness now to release current reports of undefined threats certainly undercuts that argument.
It is difficult in this country to react to such threats, in part because we simply do not think along the appropriate lines. The government's failure may reflect nothing deeper than that, and it may be excusable. The failure also may reach back into the Clinton administration. Therefore the calls for disclosure needn't be seen as a partisan or even hostile inquiry. It is necessary for future planning to know, among other things, what we have missed in the past. However, thus far the administration's attitude has been defensive - it's all politics, any criticism undermines the war effort, questions play on the emotions of the victims, etc. - and consistent with its pattern of secrecy and arrogance.
May 29
While the President was in Europe, suicide attacks resumed in Israel along with threats of further operations by the Israeli military. India and Pakistan are stumbling toward war; even if that is averted, the tension is a serious problem as it diverts Pakistani forces from the area near the Afghan border where bin Laden is reported to be alive and active. An administration which understood the problems would be fully engaged, but we seem still to be locked into a policy of stern lectures and promises to send an envoy some time to do something.
Never mind the problems foreigners create for themselves; the President's first act on returning home was to propose a federal purchase of mineral rights to prevent oil drilling in the Everglades. Jeb, always more candid than George, acknowledged that this might help his re-election chances. If the President had enough brothers, we might develop an enlightened environmental policy.
Director Mueller acknowledged today that the FBI failed to respond to information available last summer. He is reorganizing the Bureau to concentrate on counter-terrorism, a move which seems months overdue.
July 22
Rhetorical intervention having worked so well in the Middle East, the President followed that plan as to the wave of business scandals and failures and the resulting crisis of confidence. The backdrop for his July 10 speech on Wall Street was a blue panel repeatedly emblazoned with "Corporate Responsibility." It isn't clear whether he intended that as a challenge or as a description of the way the system now works. His few-bad-apples approach certainly suggested the latter: "...the American system of enterprise has not failed us. Some dishonest individuals have failed our system." "Leaders in this room help give the free enterprise system an ethical compass, and the nation respects you for that.." The stock market fell as he spoke and hardly has stopped falling; clearly investors do not share his appraisal.
To be sure, there were a few suggestions for change, but not only did he fail to get out in front of the movement for reform, his proposals are well short of those already being discussed. In all, the program is modest to the point of insincerity.
One notion, already put into effect, is a "financial crimes SWAT team," which appears to be about as useless as its name is silly. It is intended somehow to increase the likelihood of criminal prosecutions, but "administration officials" were quoted as saying that "creation of the task force did not necessarily mean that more F.B.I. agents or prosecutors would be assigned to such cases, and did not assure a bigger budget for such cases." Appointment of a former corporate insider as head of the team did nothing to enhance its image.
In the course of his speech, The President made several comments which indicate just how far ethical reform is from his focus. We can be confident in a sustained recovery, he said, because of "pro-growth reforms," i.e., the tax cut. "For the sake of long-term growth," he wants Congress to make the reductions permanent. He also will ask Congress to join him "to promote free trade, which will open new markets and create better jobs and spur innovation." In addition to being beside the supposed point of his speech, the last struck me as an unusually flagrant instance of hypocrisy, until I read this, two lines later: "And I will insist on, and if need be enforce, discipline
in federal spending so we can meet our national priorities without undermining our economy." Can anyone say "steel tariffs" or "farm subsidies?"
July 26
The President's bully-pulpit style has obvious advantages for him. It allows him not only to strike moral poses while avoiding the risk of defeat or embarrassment by actually doing anything, but also to claim credit if, through the efforts of others, his goals are met. He reminds me of a character in an old sitcom, a mayor whose only contribution to governance was to pass the buck by flapping his hands and squeaking "Handle it! Handle it!"1
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1. The internet is wonderful; by searching for that phrase, I discovered that the program was Carter Country, 1977-79.
August 7
Questioning of the administration's plans (ambitions? fantasies? propaganda?) regarding Iraq has begun, and it has led to discussion of some relevant and difficult issues, but all at a secondary level. A cartoon by Tom Toles in yesterday's Washington Post is typical: the President hands an unidentified figure a document entitled "Iraq" and says, "It's no longer a matter of if but when." The other replies, "...and what; and who; and how; and what are the costs; and what are the consequences; and what is our follow-up." Good questions all, but where is "Why?"
When the first President Bush was asked why we should drive Iraq from Kuwait, the answers degenerated into a comedy routine, with a new answer every week. The funniest was James Baker's "jobs, jobs, jobs;" the one which seemed to resonate best was the threat of Saddam's development of nuclear weapons; the only plausible one was defending our oil supplies, not so much in Kuwait as in Saudi Arabia.
This President Bush has, for the most part, avoided wandering from one rationale to another, and has concentrated on Saddam's potential or actual possession of weapons of mass destruction, with only occasional and unsupported suggestions that Iraq is linked to 9-11. Iraq has used and presumably still possesses some forms of chemical weapons; whether it has nuclear or biological weapons apparently is less certain, but both are possible. Obviously, one way to find out is to resume inspections on a meaningful basis; it may be that the administration's saber-rattling is intended to bring that about. However, it seems more likely that Bush really would like to bring
about a "regime change." If so, in answering "why," he needs to tell us what Iraq might do with those weapons, specifically whether they are a threat to us. If they are not, unilateral action is next to impossible to justify.
The other question under the heading of "why?" is "why now and not earlier?" or "why Iraq and not other threats of mass destruction?" We tolerated nuclear weapons in the U.S.S.R. and still do in Russia, China, Pakistan and India; North Korea may have such weapons and resists inspections, yet we seem content simply to insult it, while helping it build a nuclear power plant. Why then must we invade Iraq, causing God knows how many deaths, disrupting an entire region and possibly doing irreparable damage to our position and prestige, to say nothing of those pesky secondary problems, among them who succeeds Saddam, how much does it cost us to prop him up and how many civil or other spin-off wars do we get dragged into. I assume that questions of this sort entered into the decision not to go to Baghdad in 1991; what has changed?
The most worrisome aspect to this is the increasing smugness of the President. "I'm a patient man," he tells us, "but I have lots of tools at my disposal." Am I the only one who sees a little boy playing soldier?
Perhaps President Bush is, as predicted, merely the front man for more experienced hands. That isn't the picture, so if it is the fact, it's being disguised skillfully. It appears that he is at least setting the tone and direction for his administration, which is not comforting. Delegation or regard for advice would not offer much reassurance in the case of many of his aides, but more reliance on Powell certainly would help. Instead, "neoconservative foreign policy thinkers," reportedly are influential with the Bush administration. This group recently added to its advocacy of the Iraqi adventure the helpful suggestion that we seize Saudi assets and "target" its oil fields. Well, the Saudis have been reluctant to help invade Iraq, so why not invade their country too? We could mount the invasion from - let's see - who's left?
Senators Biden and Lugar were invited to discuss with Jim Lehrer their two days of hearings on Iraq. Lehrer, who is not ordinarily a sharp or persistent questioner, repeatedly asked, in effect, what business it was of Congress' to be meddling in war plans. It is true that by inaction, acquiescence and legislation, Congress has ceded most of the war-making power to the president, but the constitutional delegation to Congress of the power to declare war remains and it seem bizarre, especially in the present circumstance, that such a question could be raised and that the responses would be so timid.
August 8
Al Gore claimed recently that, if not misled by advisors, he would have been less cautious in the 2000 campaign. Senator Lieberman commented that the Vice President wasn't cautious enough, that he erred in straying from the new-Democrat line. The Senator was quoted as saying that some of the campaign rhetoric about "the people vs. the powerful" may have sent the wrong message. "It was not the pro-growth approach." "It ultimately made it more difficult for us to gain the support of some of the middle class, independent voters who don't see America as 'us vs. them,' but more in Kennedy's terms of a rising tide lifts all boats." Senator Lieberman may be right as to the dangers of appearing to advocate class warfare, but as to the Kennedy line, he
apparently hasn't looked at any middle-class harbors.
Mr. Gore responded, not naming the Senator as his critic, in an op-ed piece in the NY Times on August 4. The heart of his response was an affirmation of a mild populism:
I believe Bill Clinton and I were right to maintain, during our 1992 campaign, that we should fight for "the forgotten middle class" against the "forces of greed." Standing up for "the people, not the powerful" was the right choice in 2000. And, in fact, it is the Democratic Party's meaning and mission. The suggestion from some in our party that we should no longer speak that truth, especially at a time like this, strikes me as bad politics and, worse, wrong in principle.
Maureen Dowd found that offensive, at least coming from Gore, and contributed a bitterly sarcastic column yesterday, referring to Gore's "faux-populist fury...." Mr. Gore made lots of mistakes, has a tendency to be pompous, and has been strangely silent since inaugural day, but I don't know what the poor man has done to deserve a level of scorn epitomized by this:
The problem with Knowing It All, dear boy, is that some of the little people may find you insufferable when you explain to them that they are suffering now because they didn't listen to you in the first place - sigh - when you were right - sigh - as you always are - big sigh and roll of the eyes. They may hold their hands over their little, average American ears. They may even feel compelled to vote for the president who spoke with such sensitivity on the first tee in Kennebunkport Sunday about the suicide bombing that killed nine bus passengers in Israel: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive."
Ms. Dowd had one undeniably valid line: "Feel free to attach yourself to Clinton ('Bill Clinton and I were right to maintain...") once you are sure it can't do you any good. Ignore all the party-poopers, including Bill, who grumble that you would be president today if you had mentioned his name even once after Labor Day in 2000."
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush, en route from Kennebunkport to Crawford, stopped to raise funds in Mississippi and delivered a speech before yet another repeated-slogan backdrop, this one advocating "Strengthening our Economy." The President's plan: tort reform; that should put everyone back to work. Vice-President Cheney also is on the lecture circuit, trying to buck us up. Secretary O'Neill is too busy mending fences in South America to join the pep squad, probably to everyone's relief.
The IMF announced today that it will lend Brazil $30 Billion. Its economy no doubt is in trouble for many reasons, but it hasn't been helped by the steel tariffs which, the Washington Post reported, have reduced Brazil's exports of cold-rolled steel to the U.S. by 80%. Since part of the IMF funds will come from us, we're helping to injure another economy, then bailing it out, all to buy contributions to the GOP from steel companies and votes in steel-producing states.
August 9
Conservatives have begun to express doubts about war with Iraq, which is a good thing, especially as liberals seem to be tongue-tied. George Will argued in today's column that an invasion of Iraq could be undertaken legitimately only if sanctioned by Congress. He made the basic point clearly: "War of the sort being contemplated is not the sort of plunge into uncertainty that a prudent president wants to embark upon alone, even if the Constitution permitted that, which it does not." However, his defense of Congress' constitutional powers was undercut somewhat by his belief that a vote is important as a political weapon: "Today most Democratic presidential aspirants serve in the legislative branch. It is in the interest of all voters, and especially of one who votes in Crawford, Texas, for those aspirants to be required to publicly debate and vote on this issue." This is reminiscent of the threats of Phil Gramm, among others, to tar anyone who voted against the Gulf War with lack of patriotism. The jingoism aroused by that war, which was short, more or less successful and sparing of American lives, faded very quickly, and Mr. Will might be similarly disappointed on this occasion.
A more emphatic statement was offered by Dick Armey:
If we try to act against Saddam Hussein, as obnoxious as he is, without proper provocation, we will not have the support of other nation states who might do so. I don't believe that America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.
Much of what has gone on since September 11 has been equally inconsistent with what we have been or should be. To Representative Armey's credit, he opposed another instance, TIPS, the egregious if oafish spy plan promoted by the egregious, oafish John Ashcroft, and he advocated privacy protections as part of the Homeland Security Department legislation.
August 11
I may have to retract that comment about President Bush's setting the tone and direction because, at least in one instance, there isn't any - or, more accurately, there is more than one.
Sixty Minutes had a segment tonight on the refusal of the Transportation Department to allow anything resembling ethnic profiling in searching airline passengers. This scrupulousness not only is unusual for a law-and-order administration (that will teach Bush to hire a Clinton man), but it is in bizarre contrast to the policy of the Justice and Defense Departments, which is to incarcerate Muslims and to invade their countries. The reticence of the Transportation Department may stem from Secretary Mineta's internment during W.W. II, in which case it illustrates that learning the wrong lessons from history is worse than learning none. The Secretary is so wedded to the notion that one must not take appearance into account that we must suppose that, if he received a report that a six-foot-tall Arab had entered an airport carrying a bomb in a black briefcase, he would stop everyone with a black briefcase (women too:
mustn't discriminate based on gender), while passing all six-foot Arabs carrying charcoal grey ones.
I don't think that I can ascribe to any of Mr. Bush's policies the weird disparity in the conduct of his secretaries, so he must not be in charge, at least here.
August 21
The most recent failure of the Democrats to capture the White House can be blamed on the combination of the electoral college and the Supreme Court, but they have a persistent weakness: their inability to project themselves as a party of all the people. I came across two references to this failing a few days ago which demonstrate that this is not a new problem and suggest that, unless the Democrats reassess their heritage, it may be intractable.
One is by Pierre Rosanvallon, in The New Social Question, published in 1994 in France, in English in 2000. He adopts a theory that the strength of the Democratic Party has been creation of a " 'progressive coalition' between the black population and a large part of the white middle class, a coalition cemented by a Keynesian philosophy of the state, inherited from the Roosevelt era." According to this theory, the coalition fell apart in the 1980's because "the Democrats had become increasingly identified only with 'minorities' and seemed primarily to express the specific demands of those groups." By concentrating on minorities, "the party had tended to make general social programs secondary to campaigns targeted to specific populations, and hence had reached that 'boiling point' of the middle class, which was fatal to the Democrats."
The last comment was made with reference to Kevin Phillips' The Boiling Point, cited in the footnotes, but the use of that title as a description of rebellion against the Democrats is misleading. Phillips' book was published in 1993 and its political context is the rejection by voters of the re-election bid of the first President Bush; the boiling point was reached in part because of the subservience of government to the wealthy, primarily under Presidents Reagan and Bush, a theme addressed in his earlier book, The Politics of Rich and Poor. However, the general argument that the Democrats have become identified with group rights is sound enough.
The other reference is by Henry Fairlie, writing in The New Republic in 1983. He too criticized the tendency to focus on interest groups, but to him the point was not that the coalition had failed, but that its significance had been misinterpreted:
Too much is made of the New Deal "coalition" that F.D.R. put together after 1932.... [H]is initial opportunity was given to him less by his own political skill and intuition, less by the Democratic Party and its machines, than by a profound social and political movement of voters who felt themselves disenfranchised.
***
...Democratic candidates..., with various degrees of emphasis, are trying to attract the support of various interest groups, which they hope to bind together into a fanciful "coalition." It is wholly to the point that these interest groups are usually
identified and identify themselves as minorities, and it is precisely there that the analogy with the New Deal "coalition can be seen today to be misleading and unprofitable.... The genius of the New Deal was not the "coalition," but the appeal to the majority sense of the nation.
This undoubtedly is correct; Democrats more recently have failed to convince voters that
they are in and can represent the mainstream.
Moderate Democrats like Senator Lieberman understand this and realize that they must reconnect with the middle. Unfortunately, when they get the message that average voters are being ignored, the New Democrats' response is to become faux Republicans, as if being pro-business were the key to majority acceptance. This approach, imitating Republican economic policy, seems to me to be exactly backward; one key to Republican electoral success has been disguising the fact that they are Republicans, at least as to economics.
September 6
The President has embarked, reluctantly and unwillingly, on a course of persuasion as to his desire to invade Iraq. Congress will be "consulted" and the U.N. will be lectured. The conduct of the Iraq initiative has been so inept that it's tempting to think that second thoughts may have appeared, but inept, hesitant, unconvincing arguments for extreme proposals are not new to this administration, so I wouldn't bet much on that.
September 20
President Bush, perhaps concerned that patience with his obsession with toppling Saddam was wearing thin, dressed it up in a hedged and insincere multilateralism before the United Nations. The President probably regrets that turn, as it prompted more calls for deferring to the UN and produced an offer by Iraq of "unconditional" inspections followed by a plea for understanding. The speech also muddled an already implausible case by introducing new justifications for invasion: the UN will become "irrelevant" if it allows its resolutions to be ignored; "Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause...."
The speech was, internally, a complete muddle as well, wandering back and forth from one theme to another. At one point, the President set out a long list of actions by which Iraq could regain legitimacy: "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace," he declared, it will "disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction," "end all support for terrorism." "cease persecution of its civilian population," "release or account for all gulf war personnel whose fate is still unknown," "accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions," "end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program," and "accept U.N. administration of funds from that program to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people." All of this obviously would take time and would imply some ongoing dialogue; the President seemed to recognize this:
If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq. And it could open the prospect of the United Nations' helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis, a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty and internationally supervised elections.
However, the rest of the speech ignored this detailed proposal and, by implication, abandoned it. It was surrounded by denunciations of Iraq's violation of UN resolutions and calls for action to punish such violations. Even those parts of the speech were ambiguous. The President advised the delegates that
My nation will work with the U.N. Security Council to meet our common challenge. If Iraq's regime defies us again, the world must move deliberately, decisively, to hold Iraq to account. We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions.
Does he really mean to move deliberately? That statement was followed by a thinly-veiled threat to act unilaterally if need be, in which he announced that "The Security Council resolutions will be enforced." Does this refer to the new resolutions "my nation" will seek or existing resolutions flouted by Saddam? Statements made after the speech, the resolution to be sent to Congress, and the new policy of preemptive war leave little doubt that deliberation and multilateral action are, at best, options to be employed or rejected at the administration's discretion and that the program for Iraq's redemption was not seriously meant. It would be ironic if pressure from the public, Congress or our few remaining allies required the President to adopt his own suggestions.
I thought, for the first several paragraphs, that the column by Thomas Friedman in Wednesday's New York Times was intended to capture the absurdity of the administration's position. He reported that, in talking to people around the country, the question most often put to him was some variation of this:
"How come all of a sudden we have to launch a war against Saddam? I realize that he's thumbed his nose at the U.N., and he has dangerous weapons, but he's never threatened us, and, if he does, couldn't we just vaporize him? What worries me are Osama and the terrorists still out there."
He thinks that the prevailing view is that Saddam is "deterrable."
That is, he does not threaten the U.S. and he never has, because he has been deterred the way Russia, China and North Korea have been. He knows that if he even hints at threatening us, we will destroy him....
No, what worries Americans are not the deterrables like Saddam. What worries
them are the "undeterrables" - the kind of young Arab-Muslim men who hit us on
9/11, and are still lurking....
This makes sense, and ought to lead to the conclusion that the obsession with Iraq is a distraction from the far more important task of making the country safe from terrorist attacks. It also ought to lead to the realization that, among other motivations, the administration is proposing to attack Saddam because Iraq is an easier target than al Queda.
I thought that Mr. Friedman was heading this way. Unfortunately not; he is concerned that we are planning to take out Saddam for the wrong reasons. Rather than worrying about weapons of mass destruction, we should be aiming at regime change so that we can create a democratic society in Iraq which will be a model for Muslim youth and will draw them away from the politics of despair and suicide.
If Congress paid attention to the opinions reported by Mr. Friedman, it might reach sensible conclusions in the upcoming debate. Instead, judging from comments by the leadership and the presidential hopefuls, it is likely to join him in deciding that we have to invade, for some reason, never mind which one. The Democrats, fearful of being regarded as wimps if they fail to support the proposed war, are on the brink of proving that they are indeed wimps by caving in.
September 24
The administration complains that the Senate sits on judicial nominations; the Senate responds that it has processed more than the Republican Senate did for President Clinton. Which is right? Who cares? It's merely the latest installment in a tedious and irresponsible game. The administration complains that the Senate is applying political or ideological tests to nominees; the Senate responds that the administration is making appointments on ideological grounds. Again, a plague on both houses.
There is, however, no doubt as to the criteria used in picking judicial nominees, a fact underscored by the Justice Department today. A US District Court Judge in Vermont held the Federal Death Penalty Act unconstitutional, finding that its authorization to use hearsay evidence in the sentencing phase is contrary to Supreme Court decisions including Ring v. Arizona. Was the official response "We respectfully disagree and will seek clarification through an appeal"? Not by Mr. Ashcroft's doctrinaire, arrogant department: noting that the judge was a Clinton appointee, a spokeswoman offered this analysis:
Today's decision underscores the importance of confirming President Bush's nominees to the federal bench - well-qualified men and women who will apply the laws that Congress has passed in accordance with Supreme Court precedent.... In our system of government, it is the legislature elected by the American people which determines the proper punishment for federal crimes, not lone members of the judiciary. Congress passed the Federal Death Penalty Act to save lives, and the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly said the death penalty does not violate the Constitution.1
The aggressive ignorance of this response suggests that no one at Justice had read the opinion. The decision made no attempt to determine the proper punishment for federal crimes and clearly stated that it is Congress' role to do so. It held that the statute violated standards recently set out by the Supreme Court, but noted that Congress could not have anticipated the recent holdings. Whether the death penalty violates the constitution was not an issue.
The prosecution may appeal and may well prevail. The opinion seems to me to be an ambitious reading of the recent decisions, although the principles it derives from them are sound. The political response is unfortunate, but it is entirely in keeping with the attitude of this intellectually and ethically challenged Justice Department: it and it alone will decide the law; certainly no Clinton man in Burlington, Vermont has any business interfering.
___________
1. New York Times 9/25/02.
October 5
Pollsters are telling us that the Republicans probably will retain control of the House and may recapture the Senate. Apparently the voters are reacting to the administration's tactics about like a recent cartoon: a man is sitting on the sidewalk holding a sign which says "lost my job/401(k) went south/lost my health insurance/lost my house/please help." A pollster asks him "what is your no. 1 concern this election cycle, sir?" His response: "Iraq."1
The poor fellow can be forgiven his lack of focus; he shares it with those who ought to know better, who ought to be challenging the administrations' priorities and perceptions.
An example of uncritical acceptance of a White House line is a column on September 30 in the Washington Post. In it, Jackson Diehl gushes over the new strategic policy in terms that suggest that he is acting as a press agent for Condoleezza Rice: he credits her with its "execution," apparently meaning its expression; he describes it as "a bold - and mostly brilliant - synthesis," at once "Jacksonian," Wilsonian" and "Kissengerian." Mr. Diehl complains that the policy, despite its publication, has not been fully accepted by others in the administration. One can only hope so, as this is a policy which is not only dangerous and unprecedented, but stunningly simplistic; it
reads like the product of an undergraduate conservative club, albeit an unusually smug one.
In Mr. Diehl's view, the policy "packs into just 34 pages everything the foreign policy of the 1990s lacked."
It begins by embracing two facts that have been obvious since 1991, but hard for a democratic and sometimes insular society to accept: that America has unmatched and unprecedented power in the world and therefore no choice but to shape the international order; and that it faces threats that are utterly different but in some ways more dangerous than the threats from the old Soviet Union.
I count four alleged facts.
As to the first, our power is unmatched at present, but our dominance will not last forever (an issue explored in a far more analytic column by Robert Wright the previous day in the NY Times). Therefore it is foolish for us to adopt a policy which will make the entire world resentful - and encourage it to play power politics in response - when some day we may be on the short end of the equation. In addition, Mr. Diehl's third fact, that the current threats are different from those faced in the past, goes a long way to mitigate the importance of the first: the policy he praises uses our dominance in conventional warfare as a basis for hegemony in a world where that may not count for much.
Mr. Diehl's second point, that we have "no choice but to shape the international order," is neither a necessary nor a desirable inference from the first. We should be involved in world affairs, should be internationally responsible and frequently will be required to take the lead. However, that does not obligate or authorize us to dictate to the world. Anyone who thinks that the lesson of September 11 is more unilateralism hasn't thought the problem through.
_____________
1. Matt Davies, The Journal News (Tribune Media Services) 9/30/02.
October 9
The portion of the President's address to the UN suggesting that, by meeting certain conditions, Iraq could avoid war and regain legitimacy seemed to go by the board the next day, assuming it to have been seriously meant in the first place. For that reason, his speech in Cincinnati Monday was surprising, as it included a similar proposal.
The speech began with a litany of Iraq's violations of UN resolutions and international law. There followed a review of the failures of previous policies. This led, however, not to a statement of the need for drastic and immediate action, but to a revised version of those policies:
Clearly, to actually work, any new inspections, sanctions or enforcement mechanisms will have to be very different. America wants the U.N. to be an effective organization that helps keep the peace. And that is why we are urging the Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough, immediate requirements.
Among those requirements the Iraqi regime must reveal and destroy, under U.N. supervision, all existing weapons of mass destruction. To ensure that we learn the truth, the regime must allow witnesses to its illegal activities to be interviewed outside the country....
And inspectors must have access to any site, at any time without pre-clearance,
without delay, without exceptions.***
...In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It must release or account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot whose fate is still unknown.
By taking these steps and by only taking these steps, the Iraqi regime has an opportunity to avoid conflict.
All of this sounds, as did the corresponding part of the UN speech, like a step back from unilateralism. The comment which followed sounds like a step back form another extreme position: "These steps would also change the nature of the Iraqi regime itself. America hopes the regime will make that choice." "Regime change" now could be internal, more or less voluntary, and consist of a change of behavior.
Whether these apparent signals of moderation can be taken seriously is anyone's guess. These passages may have been inserted solely to placate the State Department, our allies or the UN; the clumsy way in which they have been stitched into the text suggests that the speeches were the work of collaborators who have different agendas. Perhaps the President simply is keeping a line of retreat open.
October 12
One theory is that the President emphasized the UN in his Cincinnati speech because he wanted to convince Congressional skeptics - you know, those Democrats who might, under extreme provocation, vote "no" - that he isn't a loose cannon. This theory might explain references to collaboration with the UN, but not the President's version of a twelve-step program.
William Kristol speculated today that the program was designed to confuse Saddam; we're preparing for war, but we'll catch him off guard by pretending to wait for his compliance. Mr. Kristol also thinks that the appeal to the UN is merely a "prelude to war," a cynical manipulation of that body on the way to our doing what we damned well please. Both are plausible (the first barely so), but Kristol also thinks that Bush has been clear and straightforward in his description of the threat and the need for immediate action (a performance aptly described by Michael Kinsley as "arguments that stumble into each other like drunks"), so I'm not sure that his evaluation is reliable.
October 16
Possibly the strangest aspect of the Democratic capitulation on the war resolution is that its political motivation never was a secret. In January, Karl Rove told the RNC, "Americans trust the Republicans to do a better job of keeping our communities and our families safe. We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." Perhaps that was too vague. Helpfully, Andrew Card revealed why the White House waited until the start of the election season to promote action in Iraq: "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
To make clear that the bipartisanship he sometimes touts, if it ever was a reality, is now a thing of the past, the President charged that the Senate was "not interested in the security of the American people." and babbled "if I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people, say, 'Vote for me and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.'"
Was the Democratic leadership unaware of the fact that the alleged threat to our security was a partisan program being marketed at the politically most propitious time? At least one of them had no illusions on this score; I discovered today that Rep. Gephardt wrote an op-ed piece for the NY Times on September 27 which referred to all of these statements and added one I'd missed: "last June...a computer disk containing a presentation by Mr. Rove revealed a White House political strategy to focus on the war as a way to 'maintain a positive issue environment'...." Mr. Gephardt didn't want to believe the ugly truth, but finally concluded, "there's no denying it. President Bush himself has decided to play politics with the safety and security of the American people." And to him, it became worse than mere politics:
One Republican member of Congress even went on national television to question a Democratic colleague's patriotism and accuse him of hating America, simply for saying we needed a debate on Iraq.... To question people's patriotism for simply raising questions about how a war is to be fought and won, to say that anybody who doesn't support the president's particular policy on national security is against national security, is not only insulting, it's immoral.
Then why go along? Is the argument for immediate, unilateral action so compelling? Apparently it is, to Rep. Gephardt:
It's clear that in a world plagued by terrorism, protecting our national security means worrying about where terrorists could get their hands on weapons of mass destruction.
Around the world, Iraq is the No. 1 candidate for spreading those weapons. We must deal with this diplomatically if we can, but militarily if we must.
Let's grant the premise of the possible spread of Iraqi weapons, even absent much evidence; how does that lead to approval of the resolution? To be repetitious, why now? The answer, given by Mr. Gephardt, by Secretary Rumsfeld and others, is 9-11, but what is the connection? Those terrorists needed only plane tickets and box cutters; others do well with plastic explosive or rifles. In addition, it is possible that invading Iraq will increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks. If homeland security is the question, this plan is the wrong answer.
Rep. Gephardt's concluding qualification can't be taken seriously. If he or the President really meant unilateral invasion to be a last resort, a very different resolution should have been adopted.
The UN determined long ago that Iraq was dangerous and that its weapons program needed to be brought under control. However, the UN has been ambivalent and irresolute; it needs a better policy than economic sanctions and occasional bombings. If all of our bluster brings that about, good; if we must take the lead in enforcement, so be it. However, granting the President imperial power and hoping for restraint is foolish and irresponsible. Doing so knowing that the program is being pushed at least in part for political reasons is pathetic.
October 18
As if to lift the veil from any Democrats who did not fully understand that they have been had, the administration has confirmed that it knew of serious violations by North Korea - an evil country, remember - which it somehow did not mention while the anti-Iraq resolution was pending. The only reference to Iraq in the new strategic policy is in this paragraph:
At the time of the Gulf War, we acquired irrefutable proof that Iraq's designs were not limited to the chemical weapons it had used against Iran and its own people, but also extended to the acquisition of nuclear weapons and biological agents. In the past decade North Korea has become the world's principal purveyor of ballistic missiles, and has tested increasingly capable missiles while developing its own WMD arsenal....
Despite the twinning of threats by Iraq and North Korea in the policy, they were, in the administration's judgment, unrelated for purposes of deciding whether one of them justified a declaration of war. By the merest coincidence, disclosure of the Korea problem came hours after the President signed the resolution. He then put the final nail in the coffin of Democratic self-respect by hitting the campaign trail.
October 31
The two recent statements of American military policy are remarkable documents. The war resolution recently approved by Congress is dangerously sweeping in its delegation of war powers to the President; it also is notable for its manipulation of the facts to create a threat to the United States. The National Security Strategy provides a general framework for the imperial tendencies of the resolution. Perhaps because of its wider scope, the Strategy is an even more seriously flawed statement.
The ostensible focus of the Security Strategy is terrorism: "The United States of America is fighting a war against terrorists of global reach. The enemy is not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism...." However, the first application of the policy is a plan to overthrow a single political regime and person. Although an attempt is made to tie this to terrorism, the administration has not made that case, and one reasonably can doubt that it is the principal motivation.
One of the Strategy's more obvious flaws is that it sets forth a program which its drafters certainly do not want anyone else to adopt. Imagine, for example, India handed this formula:
We make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them.
***
While [we] will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country;
***
...The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, [we] will, if necessary, act preemptively.
The Strategy has a rather different suggestion for India: "Our involvement...looks first to concrete steps by India and Pakistan that can help defuse military confrontation." We do not seem to be prepared to accept similar suggestions regarding our confrontations.
There are other examples of this sort, but in a sense the inconsistencies of the policy are beside the point: this is intended to be a policy in which the rules are different for us than for anyone else. As there is no principle, other than superior force, on which that distinction could be based, this is a policy which can be accepted by any other nation only by coercion, which the drafters apparently think is a viable theory.
The Strategy, as expressed both in the President's foreword and the text, has as its fundamental premise the unmatched military power of the United States. The President tells us, "Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence." The text echoes this: "The United States possesses unprecedented - and unequaled - strength and influence in the world." The inference from strength to influence is dubious; indeed, the events of recent weeks demonstrate that the brandishing of our power has diminished our influence in some ways. The statement would be more accurate if it were to refer to our strength and ability to intimidate.
The Strategy's attitude toward our military power is amazingly simple-minded; essentially it consists of noting that we have the most powerful military in the world and concluding that we can, therefore, do whatever we want. There are at least two major problems with that view.
The first is that at least some of the security threats we face, possibly the most important ones, are of a sort not amenable to unilateral military force. The document repeatedly refers to the dangers posed by terrorism; by my quick count, the words "terrorist," "terrorists" or "terrorism" are used seventy-five times. Superiority in military force will go only so far in combating terrorism. International cooperation will be far more important. That receives occasional mention, but the focus clearly is on unilateral action: "... we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists...." If our only response to terrorism is to invade other countries, we won't make much progress in preventing it.12
The second problem with basing a policy on the assumption of military dominance is that it will not always exist, and in practice may not exist now. If there is any clear lesson from the Vietnam war, it is that theoretical military superiority will not always bring military victory. Our measured response to the disclosure of North Korea's nuclear program undoubtedly is based at least in part on the fact that it would be difficult to defeat and that invading it would put other countries at risk. However, ignoring reality, the policy reaches this level of bluster:
It is time to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength. We must build and maintain our defenses beyond challenge. Our military's highest priority is to defend the United States. To do so effectively, our military must: ...dissuade future military competition;...
Is the last meant seriously? I doubt it. I have difficulty in imagining a recommendation to the President that we invade China in order to prevent it from becoming too strong; even Richard Perle might think twice about that. The policy proceeds from conclusions about the behavior of states; preemption (like the need for an antimissile shield) is premised on the supposed ineffectiveness of deterrence:
But deterrence based only upon the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people, and the wealth of their nations. We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries. Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction - weapons that can be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning.
This is a thoroughly confused statement. Why are "leaders of rogue states" more willing to take risks and less afraid of massive retaliation? What is the significance of rogues' not using "conventional means"? We can concede that Iraq isn't likely to invade the U.S. (or to bomb it, despite the President's fantasies about a "growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles"), but how does the unlikelihood of such "conventional" operations advance an argument for preemption? Is there a known threat of terrorist attacks on us from "rogue states" as opposed to stateless terrorist organizations? Assuming that terrorists desire weapons of mass destruction, are they more likely to obtain them from rogue states than from non-rogues? Do we preemptively attack only the former and hope for the best as to the latter? Does the rather silly definition of "rogue states" in the policy really help us to identify them?
That paragraph exemplifies the argument - muddled or disingenuous, according to your appraisal of Bush & Co. - which runs together the concepts of rogue states, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction as though there were a demonstrable and exclusive connection between them.
The document in places wanders rather far from national security issues. Not content with declaring that progress and social justice depend on a free-market economy (there is "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise"), it specifies that it must be a supply-side economy:
We will use our economic engagement with other countries to underscore the benefits of policies that generate higher productivity and sustained economic growth, including: pro-growth legal and regulatory policies to encourage business investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial activity; tax policies - particularly lower marginal tax rates - that improve incentives for work and investment;....
In the section on trade policy, we get doublespeak: "To promote free trade, the United States has developed a comprehensive strategy," which includes this: "Help domestic industries and workers adjust. There is a sound statutory framework for these transitional safeguards which we have used in the agricultural sector and which we are using this year to help the American steel industry." Farm subsidies and steel tariffs as keys to free trade are at least consistent with this administration's obsession with going its own way.
The war resolution is introduced by twenty-three recitals. The heart of the matter is a series of clauses about the danger posed by Iraq; all of them in one way or another assert that it is a threat to the U.S.
Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;
***
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;
***
Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself....
The first recital is typical of the document as a whole: a claim that the U.S. is in danger, mixed with more general references to Iraq's threat to others and its violations of UN resolutions; the latter somehow are supposed to prove the former. The second recital is factually accurate, although the second example is not much of an indictment given that the U.S. and Britain have been attacking from the air. Both parts of this recital are old news, hardly a basis for our sudden shift of policy. The claim in the third recital that Iraq might directly attack the U.S. is simply nonsense. The danger that it might attack our armed forces obviously is enhanced by putting them in harm's way. The claim that Iraq may give WMD to terrorists leads to the central argument; because of the paucity of evidence of direct threat, the resolution seeks to connect Iraq to terrorism:
Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;
Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;
Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations...;
There is little to support the first two; the few contacts revealed come nowhere near showing a connection between Iraq and 9-11 or a meaningful connection to al-Queda. The last recital is at most boilerplate, but it isn't even a sensible observation; what 9-11 underscored, as to weapons, is that terrorism can be a simple, low-tech undertaking.
The administration's inability to articulate persuasive reasons for its proposed actions has two implications. The first, obviously, is that we may be embarking on a course which is unjustifiable or disastrous. It is possible to take an action for the wrong reason or no clear reason and still turn out to be right, but the odds are not good and government by luck or retrospective rationale leaves something to be desired. It also is possible that the administration is about to take action for good and sufficient reasons which have been withheld, but it would be naïve to believe that and, in any case, it poses too serious threat to democracy to be tolerated.
The second problem, especially in the case of the National Security Strategy, is that the effect of its impulses are not limited to the immediate case, but may determine our actions in the future and our relations with the world, as well as suggesting to others that unilateralism is the order of the day.
Finally, there is the issue of hypocrisy. Apart from the sections of the Strategy which reveal this, there are, with respect to Iraq, our former actions to contemplate. We tolerated all of Iraq's present sins without declaring that they demanded immediate regime change. In addition, we did business with Iraq up to the eve of the Gulf War and did so again in the recent past; Hallibuton was involved in this. Perhaps this administration simply is wiser than its predecessors and perhaps Vice President Cheney now sees something which escaped him earlier but there is little evidence of either; the "why now" question remains, and casts a cloud of illegitimacy over the present plan.
______________
1. 5/31/03: The March-April, 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs quoted the Suddeutsche Zeitung on the National Security Strategy: The greatest deficit in the new U.S. doctrine lies in its national self-overestimation, the overemphasis on the military and the ignoring of a system of values and allies. That is why this doctrine will
not last.
November 1
An article in the Washington Post a few days ago presents an example of the possibility that the administration is about to take action for good and sufficient reasons which have been withheld. The article challenges the prevailing theory that the anthrax letters were sent by a lone American.
The reporters claim that "a consensus has emerged in recent months among experts familiar with the technology needed to turn anthrax spores into the deadly aerosol that was sent to Sens. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) that some of the fundamental assumptions driving the FBI's investigation may be flawed." It goes on to discuss difficulties with the FBI theory and to outline possible Iraqi connections.
It isn't clear what to make of the story, beginning with the claim of consensus. Although the article concentrates on Iraq as a possible source, there isn't much to support that. Referring to "Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998," the article states, "Spertzel and more than a dozen experts" interviewed by the Post suggested "investigators might want to reexamine the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism, or try to determine whether weaponized spores may have been stolen by the attacker from an existing, but secret, biodefense program...." However, Dr. Spertzel is the only one of the scientists named who refers to Iraq or explicitly to another state as a possible source.
The reference to "recent months" is ambiguous. To some degree the article restates concerns expressed late last year. An article in the New York Times in December reported that, although the administration had adopted the theory of a lone domestic source, "the sophistication of the anthrax found in the letter mailed to Senator Tom Daschle...has kept Dr. Spertzel and others convinced that Iraq or another foreign power could be behind the attacks."
The Post article is equally ambiguous as to the administration's supposed reaction to the attacks, which it summed up as follows: "Bush administration officials have acknowledged that the anthrax attacks were an important motivator in the U.S. decision to confront Iraq, and several senior administration officials say today that they still strongly suspect a foreign source - perhaps Iraq - even though no one has publicly said so." The statement permits at least two interpretations. It may mean that the administration officials were initially convinced that Iraq was involved, but that the case was not made and now there is only suspicion that there might be a connection. It may mean that the desire to invade Iraq already existed and the anthrax attacks reinforced that urge, perhaps without regard to any conviction as to a connection.
In any case, it is difficult to believe that the administration presently thinks that there is a connection; if it did, it would have ample incentive to say so: it would be far easier to justify its determination to topple Saddam - and its preference to do so without restrictions imposed by the UN - if it could tie Iraq to the anthrax attacks. That connection would do almost as well as a link to 9-11 in justifying a retaliatory war. The danger of further biological attacks would make a better case for preemptive action than anything offered to date. Unless the administration is playing so deep a game that it prefers to appear inept, the connection must not have been made.
Director Mueller said today that the FBI continues to favor the domestic theory.1
_______________
1. 4/11/03: The Seattle Times today carried a report from the Baltimore Sun that Army research has concluded that the anthrax could have been produced "using simple methods, inexpensive equipment and limited expertise, according to [anonymous] government sources familiar with the work." Dr. Spertzel still wouldn't rule out Iraq.
November 2
[This refers to Tim Eyman's tax-cutting initiatives (see November 6, 2001). Most of his proposals have been directed, unsuccessfully, to reducing annual auto license tab fees to $30.]
Seattle decides tomorrow, via "Seattle Citizen Petition No. 1," whether to build a monorail line from West Seattle to Ballard. This is, if one believes the proponents, the Elevated Transportation Company, the first leg of a more extensive system.
The monorail proposal is, in terms of planning, on a par with the disastrous Sound Transit light-rail program. At least the latter was a serious, if inept, attempt to deal with the area's transportation mess. The monorail is a sort of cult object, supported less on the basis of any promise of utility than because it somehow seems so "Seattle."
The Times ran op-ed columns pro and con on Sunday. The argument in favor, signed by the chairman and vice chairwoman of the ETC, said that people should vote for the monorail because it has "pizzazz."
Yes, pizzazz! Because monorails are cool and a lot of people think Seattle has been losing its edge. We are buried in process and by those who are opposed to everything. Some say the last cool thing Seattle did here [sic] was when the people rose up against the political leadership and saved the Pike Place Market.
With a public vote! Sound familiar?
People should vote for the monorail, authorizing expenditure of $1.5 billion in 2002 dollars for (what is hoped to be) the first phase of a controversial transportation system because it's cool, or has pizzazz, as you prefer. The reference to the Market suggests that doing things by public vote is cool, so the message apparently is: vote yes on the monorail because you've been given the chance to vote on the monorail.
Building a transportation system by initiative should be popular with Tim Eyman's fans, who want to vote on anything concerned with spending money. However, the method of financing the monorail won't be. Funding will be provided by a tax imposed on vehicle license tabs. Eyman's latest initiative, I-776, also on tomorrow's ballot, seeks (again) to bestow upon us the blessings of pure, no-additives-allowed, $30 annual auto license tabs. According to monorail proponents, the average car in Seattle is worth $6,700, which would produce an annual additional tab tax of $94. So much for purity. The proponents threw in an additional snub to Eyman by describing the tab
tax as "both economically and environmentally progressive. It costs more for people who own more expensive cars and provides an incentive for people to own fewer cars." The latter may be wishful thinking.
November 6
The weather until today has been unusually good - glorious for this damp corner of the world - leading to the best show of fall color here that I can remember. It's gray and drizzly this morning, a fitting comment on the election, a decision to hand complete power to an accidental president who aims for an imperial plutocracy. Oh, well; we get through Seattle winters and this too will pass.
Whether it passes sooner or later and the amount of damage done in the meantime will depend in part on whether the Democrats find a voice, and a program.
November 16
I attended a seminar Monday on the subject "Will September 11 Change the Constitution?" There were perceptive comments over the course of its two hours, but on the whole it was notable for its superficiality. The discussion was, of course, in terms of the war on terrorism. At one point, a member of the audience asked for a definition of that sort of war; none was forthcoming and there was no serious discussion of whether "war" is an appropriate name for the present effort.
Two panelists edged up to the subject, one by offering the opinion that "war" is a rhetorical device, the other by asking whether there is any analogy between 9-11 and Oklahoma City. The moderator did not follow up on these points and thereby missed an opportunity to put a test to those who would justify administration policies as part of the restrictions necessary in wartime.
Why were the 9-11 attacks an act of war but the Oklahoma City bombing a law enforcement issue? There is a considerable difference in the number killed, 3,030 v. 168, but that isn't enough to make the distinction. Is it simply that foreigners were involved in 9-11? If, instead of those attacks, Richard Reid had succeeded in blowing up his plane, would we be at war, and with whom? The combination of the number of casualties and the foreign source is significant, but is it definitive?
To some degree, the attack on Afghanistan, which clearly was an act of war, has created language and a mindset which has been carried over to every other effort. The determination to invade Iraq reinforces the sense of a war footing.
"War" certainly is being used as a rhetorical device, to great and opportunistic effect. The use of the term is not unprecedented: as was pointed out, we have had a war on drugs, a war on poverty, etc. However, no one took those labels literally; here we are doing so and are basing conclusions about constitutional principles on the assumption that a literal interpretation is proper.
Leaving aside how we came to adopt the term, what are its implications? The discussion of this topic was limited to whether specific, otherwise objectionable policies, e.g., detention without charge, are justified by the circumstances. As the moderator put it provocatively, must a few bones be broken to win the battle? One of the defects of the discussion as a whole and of this approach to invasion of rights is that no one addressed the issue of duration. The assumption seemed to be that all of this is temporary, that the emergency somehow will end. One panelist referred to President Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, arguing that it was the price paid for holding the nation together. However, the comparison may not work: the Civil War eventually was over, so even if suspension was wrong, it was temporary; there is no basis for an
assumption that terrorism will conveniently go away after four or five years. If a risk of terrorist attacks places us on a war footing, we will be there permanently. It is time to reject the metaphor; otherwise, the government will have an excuse to do whatever it wants, forever.
There was disagreement as to whether we face a constitutional crisis. If we accept the notion of permanent war, the answer is yes.
November 29
[The counties referred to in this note are in generally liberal Western Washington, except for Whitman, which is in the generally conservative east but is the site of Washington State University. The comment on Mr. Eyman's credibility refers to his admission that he diverted to his personal use funds contributed to his initiative committee. He eventually paid a fine of $50,000.]
Initiative 776 passed by a significant but hardly overwhelming margin, 51.47 to 48.53. Six counties voted no, Jefferson, King, Kitsap, San Juan, Thurston and Whitman: the west side plus WSU. The favorable vote varied widely, from 69.6 in Grant County to 32.1 in San Juan. Both the cumulative and highest county margins were down from Eyman's best; the public may be wearying of his $30-tab obsession, or it may reflect the damage to his personal credibility.
Eyman already has drafted another initiative, I-800, this one to require a 75% favorable vote on any new tax, especially the dreaded income tax, or any tax increase. No text is available yet, and it appears to be a work in progress. According to the Permanent Offense website, I-800 originally applied only to the legislature and carried an effective date of January 1, 2003. Now it applies to cities and counties as well and would be effective November 5, 2002. The change was prompted by announcements by local governments that, pending the outcome of a constitutional challenge to I-776, they will continue to collect tab taxes. This is prudent given Eyman's record in court. Tim, however, is not a man to be trifled with; hence the revision.
His web site shows Eyman wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with "the return of I-601/spending and taxation limits." This is a little odd, as the law created by 601 hasn't gone anywhere, although it was modified a few years ago when Republicans in the legislature suddenly found it to be inconvenient. In addition, 601 limited spending, not taxes. I-800 more closely parallels the invalid I-695 (but substituting legislative supermajorities for public votes) and I-602 (defeated the year 601 was passed), which would have limited taxation.
The "politicians" Eyman derides play into his hands by assuming that he has a personal following and great influence, even though he has been revealed to be dishonest and sticky-fingered. It is true that there are many people in the state who will buy his line, but that's because they have convinced themselves that they are overtaxed and will vote for anything which limits taxes. Elmer Fudd could sponsor an anti-tax initiative and command a following. The "politicians" need to forget Eyman and start persuading people that government services are valuable and that, like everything else, they have to be paid for.
December 2
Senator Kerry announced, more or less, that he's running for president. Whether this is a wise decision is impossible to tell. President Bush would be unbeatable at this point and the prospect of permanent war certainly creates the possibility that he will still be so two years from now. However, he is fundamentally very vulnerable and, if the war mantle ever were stripped from him, he could sink as abruptly and disastrously as his father did.
December 8
King and Pierce Counties have filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of Initiative 776 and have obtained a temporary injunction blocking implementation until a hearing on January 31. According to news reports, the plaintiffs have raised several issues, including impairment of revenue pledged to pay bonds, the old reliable one - subject rule, and the fact that voters across the state were allowed, in effect, to repeal local taxes. The last is the most interesting.
All 39 counties voted on 776. Four counties, King, Pierce, Snohomish and Douglas, impose a local-option tax which 776 repeals. Douglas, Pierce and Snohomish produced majorities for 776, so presumably those voters decided that they no longer wanted that tax and, subject only to other constitutional issues, they ought to be able to make that decision. However, King County voted against 776; why should the rest of the state - or, to be more accurate, the 33 counties which voted for 776 - be able to tell us that we can't tax ourselves? I don't know how this will shake out as a constitutional issue, but as political theory it isn't sound.
December 9
A column in the NY Times yesterday decried the tendency of newscasts to substitute participles (gerunds? - some sort of verb-derived part of speech) for verbs. "In North Dakota, high winds making life difficult...." "A Big Apple accident, two taxicabs plowing into crowds of shoppers The author directed his comments primarily toward cable news, i.e., Fox News and CNN, but noted that the usage turns up on network news programs as well. I've noticed it mostly on the Nightly Business Report on PBS: "On the Dow today, IBM rising, Boeing falling...." As the author points
out, none of the rationales for this - immediacy, economy, conversational tone - make any sense.
Another example of decline is punctuation. Advertising readerboards are perhaps the most consistent offenders and the most common sin is inserting an apostrophe in front of every s. Advertising seems to be especially prone to misplacing apostrophes, but this error is widespread. I had a secretary some years ago who could get the apostrophe wrong whatever the situation: if one was called for, it was omitted; if none was appropriate, it went in; as a variation, it came after the s when it should have been before, and vice versa.
I assume that those errors are due to not knowing or not caring about proper usage, but punctuation also is subject to fads. The P-I reported a year or so ago that the hyphen is passé and "increasingly is being replaced with periods, underscores or, especially, asterisks." We were told that replacing the hyphen conveys "a more European feel" (so would reversing commas and periods in numbers; surely a little confusion is a small price to pay for being more European) and that using underscores "creates a hip, high-tech feeling." It concluded this excursion into communications wonderland by inquiring, "So does anyone know what's going on with the uestion mark?"
As implied, I think, by the last sentence, the question mark also is passé. Consider William Greider’s book Who Will Tell The People. Exactly what the editor or publisher thought would be conveyed by omitting the question mark from a question is a mystery. Someone failed to the author that the book would be in the new mode; his Introduction states that Chapter Two is entitled Who Will Tell The People? (They also forgot to mention that Chapter Two, as published, is entitled Well-Kept Secrets. )
The title of one of Stephen Carter's books is (integrity). Presumably this also is intended to convey some sort of originality by way of creative typesetting, but the combination of lower case and parentheses suggests that the publisher believes that the subject is something to be discussed only in whispers.
December 10
The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, on the eve of his departure from office last month, lamented the inability of the Service to collect taxes due. Although all indications are that he is right that taxes are being avoided regularly and blatantly, legally and not, a few delinquent accounts are being worked. I know this because one of them is mine.
To be more precise, one of them pertains to a partnership of which I was a member up to 1993. Last November, I received a notice stating that the firm owed $35.10, of which $17.20 was the principal amount, the rest interest. It indicated that the debt arose from the unemployment tax return for 1992, but offered no explanation of the basis for the claim. The form was unsigned and did not identify any office, department or section. It came from Ogden, which is roughly equivalent to saying that something came from Washington, D.C. It recited that there had been prior notices, which was not true (a fact later acknowledged by the IRS). It did give a phone number, which was in a different city and apparently a different office, department, section, etc.
(Even other IRS offices seem to despair of getting through to anyone in Ogden). After the obligatory excursion through the telephone tree, I spoke to someone who agreed that a claim for pennies nearly nine years old wasn't worth anyone's time. The file would be closed.
Of course, you know the sequel. This November, I received a virtually identical notice. It was dated November 25 (last year it was November 26), and the deadline for payment was December 5 rather than last year's December 6. Diligence, consistency and even a sense of tradition are alive at the IRS. With additional interest, the claim had increased to $37.31.
Being a good and paranoid citizen, I called again. This time I got through after a shorter wait but as a penance was given the full bureaucratic treatment. At one point the conversation came to a halt because my interlocutor insisted on having the address of the partnership office at the time of the events in question. I have no idea whether this was necessary information which she did not have or whether it was a test to see whether I was really who I claimed to be, there no doubt being a significant risk that a stranger to the account would find calling the IRS amusing. In any case, accelerating senility has made it impossible for me to remember such details as the address of my office in 1992. I pointed out that the claim was nearly ten years old, and that one reason for statutes of limitation is that even more alert folk tend to forget things and to toss records in less time. The agent, or whatever she is, went off the line for several minutes and came back prepared to proceed despite my obstructive behavior. Eventually, she agreed to close the file. Watch for next year's bulletin.
The article on the departure of Mr. Rossotti, the former Commissioner, noted that some of the IRS' computers date to the Kennedy administration. Perhaps old computers can store only old information. If the Service ever gets new ones, it may be able to go after the taxpayers (I use the term descriptively) who are, right now, under the IRS' nose, avoiding payment of millions.
December 13
We think of the attitude of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol as an anachronism, or an exaggeration for effect, or both. Early in the story, he is asked to contribute to a fund for the poor. He inquires whether the prisons and poorhouses still are in operation. Upon being told that many would rather die than go there, he responds that if they would rather die, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Perhaps we can trust that no one could think that now.
After Scrooge has been partly enlightened, The Ghost of Christmas Present reveals two children, Want and Ignorance, hiding beneath his robe. Scrooge asks, "'Have they no refuge or resource?" To his chagrin, his words are thrown back to him: "Are there no prisons?" "Are there no workhouses?" In the George C. Scott film version, a line is added to the scene which perfectly describes the modern cure for such chagrin: "Cover them," Scrooge says; "I do not wish to see them." Unlike Scrooge, we have not progressed beyond that point. Perhaps we need a visitation from the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.
The welfare reform act of 1996 was an exercise in putting poverty out of sight. Tired of having to contemplate the poor, Congressional Republicans, with Clinton's consent, covered them with the robe of federalism. They satisfied their consciences by sending some money to the states along with the poor, but tied the money to rules designed to ensure that idleness would be punished. The unreconstructed Scrooge would have approved: "I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned - they cost enough."
Hard times have made the poor visible again. The necessity of reauthorizing the welfare devolution should force a closer look, one which will reveal that, even before the economy turned down, many were worse off working than on welfare. Of course, if our only aim is to cover them again, we can continue the program and hope that the economy will improve enough to produce the required inventory of minimum-wage jobs.
December 18
A Scrooge analogy, although not presented explicitly as such, appeared in Tom Toles' cartoon in the Washington Post yesterday. A plutocrat, complete with top hat, looks out his window and sees a woman waiting, in the snow, at a bus stop. He says to himself, "Look at that poor woman out there. I have everything. She has nothing. This special time of year makes me want to give her something I have too much of." So he leans out the window and yells, "You should take some of my tax burden, you lazy freeloader."
On December 3, Paul Krugman found another modern Scrooge, the Wall Street Journal. He noted, in his New York Times column, that its editorial-page editors "are upset that some low-income people pay little or nothing in income taxes." They referred to those earning $12,000 as "lucky duckies" because they pay less than 4% in taxes. Professor Krugman pointed out that even the math was biased: the 4% refers only to income tax; payroll taxes would push the bite to something like 20%.
Robert Reich, in this month's American Prospect, noted the regressive nature of payroll taxes and the government's increasing dependance on them. According to his numbers, payroll taxes accounted for 2% of federal revenue at the end of World War II and 37% now. (The tables I could find on the IRS website show the 2001 share to be 32%; Professor Reich may have better data). We're absurdly dependant on this unfair tax. On our present course, so succinctly portrayed by Mr. Toles, we will become more so.
December 20
The welfare policy of the Great Society, we have been told repeatedly, was a costly failure; therefore it had to be abandoned. That analysis is sufficient for a program whose purpose merely is providing for needy people. A more forgiving standard is required for really important projects, such as a missile shield. Therefore, we are proceeding with that program despite its being a costly failure; in fact, deployment was ordered days after its most recent unsuccessful test. Unlike welfare, which eventually was repudiated by liberals as well as conservatives, this irrationality has produced virtually no comment.
December 24
Welfare reform has given us a new term, "the working homeless," people employed at "low-wage jobs the government shepherded them to, jobs that perversely afford them too little money to pay for shelter." So we are informed by a column by Francis X. Clines on the editorial page of the New York Times today. To be specific, he tells us, using St. Louis statistics, it requires a wage of $12 an hour to pay for a two-bedroom apartment, but the wage of many female single parents is likely to be at or near the $5.15 minimum wage. So they live on the street, or on the charity of friends and relatives. They have done what we demanded, and still suffer privation.
Welfare reform was long on a blinkered form of moral principle and short on compassion, long on theory and short on realism.
Mr. Clines has attempted to introduce us to the working homeless, "if we care to know them." But we do not; we still are Scrooge confronting the Ghost of Christmas Present and his destitute children; we do not wish to see them.
December 26
Happily, there are exceptions. Today's P-I reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated eight million dollars to a local program designed to provide decent housing and other assistance to homeless families.
December 28
I don't know whether I could sustain an argument that beer commercials are an indicator of the state of the culture, but a pair of them seem like a fair reflection to me.
In the mid-80s, Miller ran an ad at Christmas showing a horse-drawn sleigh accompanied by "I'll be home for Christmas." It was a beautiful little piece, in addition to being very sentimental.
This year, Coors has been running ads which are crude, stupid and ugly. I haven't thought of the 80s as a golden age, but everything is relative.
