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Karl Rove's Doomsday Device

By Rob Goodman

With the midterm elections approaching, Republican strategists are busily searching for a way to avert disaster in the 70-some days remaining. Obviously, anything to do with terrorism helps: The foiling of the British airline plot brought President Bush’s approval ratings, uninvolved as he was, to a six-week high. Painting Democrats as cutting-and-running cowards has been a perennial fallback, as has the specter of Speaker Nancy Pelosi leading a frivolous impeachment investigation.

But while these tried-and-true tropes may yet win the battle of ideas, Republicans also know that nothing confers an advantage like procedural skullduggery. Tom Delay’s off-year redistricting in Texas ousted four Democratic congressmen and helped turn the state’s congressional delegation from 17-15 Democrat to 21-11 Republican. In Ohio, Republicans managed to put a referendum banning gay marriage on the 2004 ballot, ramping up evangelical turnout and securing a crucial state for President Bush. And in the Senate, the Republican “nuclear option” would have lowered the bar for conservative judges’ confirmation to a one-vote margin.

In each case, Republicans were acting within the rules; even Delay’s questionable redistricting plan was upheld by the Supreme Court. So railing against the GOP’s “dirty tricks” is clearly counterproductive; we ought just to be aware that convincing your fellow lawmakers to change the rules in your favor is often a lot easier than convincing your constituents you’re right. With that in mind, we liberals need to work on our skills of anticipation, because acting sooner always beats whining later.

Thus it is that I direct your attention to the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, approved by Congress on March 1, 1845. Remember that Texas, for nine years after defeating Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto, officially existed as an independent republic. Annexation took so long, in part, because of the difficulty of the slavery issue: Adding another slave state, and such a large one, would upset the Union’s balance. And so annexation had to wait until Congress agreed on the following compromise:

New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution; and such states as may be formed out of the territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise Line, shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as the people of each state, asking admission shall desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory, north of said Missouri Compromise Line, slavery, or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.

Though the rationale for the state-splitting compromise has disappeared, the Joint Resolution remains, to my knowledge, the State of Texas’s founding document. Thus, Texans can still choose at any time to balkanize themselves.

Of course, the four prospective new states would still have to be admitted to the Union “under the provisions of the Federal Constitution”; and here the relevant passage is Article IV, Section 3:

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

Therefore, with the approval of the state legislature and both houses of Congress, Texas can at any time resolve itself into five states, each with their own congressional representation.

Representation in the House and the Electoral College, both of which are linked to population, would most likely remain unchanged. But, crucially, a breakup would enable Texans to increase their number of Senators from two to 10—the current two plus two each for four new states. And it goes without saying that this instant eight-seat pickup would be almost entirely Republican.

Would the necessary resolutions pass? It seems likely—a breakup is in the interest of every party involved. True, the state of Texas would lose some biggest-state-in-the-continental-US and whole-other-country cachet, but a five-fold increase in power on the national stage would easily compensate. And for congressional Republicans, the vote would be a no-brainer—a vote to place themselves in a permanent majority. With the rewards so rich, any Republican holdouts could easily be characterized as traitors to their party’s best interests.

Not even the most optimistic forecasts show Democrats winning back the Senate by more than one or two seats in November. The prospect of eight more Republicans (who would presumably take office in a series of rolling special elections over the next two or three cycles) would put the chamber out of play for the foreseeable future and place Democrats at a severe strategic disadvantage, forced to win every tight race in perpetuity just to stay competitive. And the guaranteed Republican majority would keep the original state-splitting resolution from being repealed any time soon.

But the GOP must act now. As the polls now stand, Republicans have only until the current Congress expires to get the ball rolling while they are still in the majority. If the political forecast doesn’t change drastically, and very soon, look for Karl Rove to reveal his Doomsday Device within the next month. And remember that you read it here first.

The Mortal Threat

by Andrew Nowobilski

E(C) = P(C) * C

Expected cost of an attack equals probability of the costly incident occurring multiplied by the cost of the incident. This equation explains Vice President Dick Cheney‘s 1 percent doctrine. The 1 percent doctrine, as elucidated by Ron Suskind in The One-Percent Doctrine, is Cheney’s view that ''if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction… the United States must now act as if it were a certainty” (see New York Times June 20 review by Michiko Kakutani). OK, so that’s not quite correct Mr. Cheney. But critics can chortle all they want; Cheney’s instincts are right, and disturbingly so.

Assume the American electorate will tolerate only a certain expected cost in terms of terrorist attacks. This desire is approximately rational and consonant with preserving “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” So E(C) is more or less fixed,. Now over the last fifty years C, or cost per incident, has risen meteorically. This is due to the explosion of high-yield, advanced weapons technology, mass production techniques that have made said technology widely available on the black market, and constantly progressing miniaturization techniques.

Therefore, in order to keep E(C) fixed, the government must somehow suppress P(C). Cheney’s argument that the government “must act as if there’s a 100 percent chance” is simply his admittedly awkward way of saying that the government must take threats seriously and suppress P(C). Enter the War on Terror, with its NSA wiretaps, the Patriot Act, and the Department of Homeland Security.

It is a foregone conclusion that in this situation that at least some liberty will be sacrificed for the sake of life and freedom from the tyranny of Islamo-fascists. If a people foresees the terrorist threat, advance action will minimize the terrorist threat, and increase, at least partially, the threat posed by government. Option two is that a people does not foresee the threat, or does and chooses to ignore it. Assuming the threat is real, an attack will eventually occur, and people will panic, rushing headlong into their chains. Illiberalism is therefore more or less a natural equilibrium and not a choice. Either way, as C increases, P(C) will fall, which means that - for a time at least - liberty will be restrained by popular will.

This problem is only going to get worse. Terrorism is fundamentally driven by technology. Without it, terrorism cannot exist. A pike man, a swordsman--even a gangster armed with a Tommy gun--cannot pose a serious enough threat to transform the geopolitical landscape. But with technology comes miniaturized nukes, ever-more sophisticated and deadly biological and chemical weapons, and plenty of ways of coordinating individuals over vast distances. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman outlines how technology and globalization create “Super Empowered Angry Men,” individuals who can play the same game as nations because technology “empowers” them. In X-Men 3, the US President asks his secretary of mutant affairs how democracy can persist when a single man can pose a mortal threat to the entire society on a whim. Terrorists are these Super Empowered Angry Men; they are Dark Phoenix. As Thomas Friedman notes, a “[nuclear] warhead exploding 300 miles above Omaha would instantly zap the United States from coast to coast,” melting down every computer and circuit in the country.

So what happens as technology advances further and further? What happens as miniaturization makes nuclear materials smaller and more transportable? What happens as genetic science and cloning leads to the re-invention or modification of deadly pathogens, present and past? Scientists have already brought the deadly Spanish flu back from extinction, and in the grand scheme of things genetic science is still in its early stages. In 1900 everyone rode around in horses and buggies; just think of where we will be in 2100 relative to today.

We cannot avoid the march of technological advancement. The choice between liberty and security is not before us because of some crafty, secretly-autocratic Republicans. Technology has irrevocably transformed the strategic landscape by super-empowering the individual. This cannot be reversed any more than we can un-invent the nuclear bomb.

Let’s say we fail to quash terrorism. C will rise. Cheney’s 1 percent doctrine will be replaced with 0.1 percent, or 0.01 percent doctrines. As the damage dealt by a single attack increases, the probability of attack that is tolerable decreases. As this happens civil liberties will give way. The real problem is that if we do not suppress terrorism sufficiently, if we do not decrease P(C) by decreasing the supply of terrorists, someday (far in the future perhaps, but some day) P(C) will have to plummet, and a revoking civil liberties will be the only option. Then something horrible will happen, much worse than public panic: The authoritarians will be right.

If that is a sobering thought, then let us recommit ourselves to the proposition that the only acceptable victory in this War on Terror is a total one. Whether by co-opting angry young Muslims into a capitalist economy, or by spreading democracy, or by simply hunting down Osama and his ilk, we must prevail. Whether we will is another matter entirely.

EDITOR'S CONTRIBUTON: Yet Another Danger of Polls

By Andrew Collins

Some politicians like to avoid risk by heeding the advice of polls. But evidence keeps suggesting that the real risk may lie in following them too closely.

Take a look at this result in “The Arkansas Poll,” administered in 2005 by political scientists Janine A. Parry and Bill Schreckhise at the University of Arkansas. The question is:

Do you approve or disapprove of a law that would prohibit Arkansas textbooks from defining marriage as anything other than a relationship between one man and one woman?

(In case you were unable or unwilling to follow that, “approve” is basically pro-gay marriage, and “disapprove” is basically anti-gay marriage.)

“The Arkansas Poll” broke down the results by “all respondents,” “evangelicals/‘born agains,’” “weekly [or more] churchgoers,” “[people who] know a gay or lesbian person,” and “[people who have a] somewhat/very unfavorable view of gays/lesbians.” From common sense, you might expect evangelicals to feel less favorably about teaching about alternative marriage, and you might expect people who know a gay or lesbian person to feel more favorably.

You would be wrong.

According to the poll, 81 percent of evangelicals/“born agains” take the essentially pro-gay view, along with 83 percent of people who have a somewhat/very unfavorable view of gays/lesbians. Specifically, the vast majority of evangelicals and anti-gays think Arkansas textbook writers should be free to define marriage as something other than a relationship between one man and one woman. This is far greater than the 70 percent of all respondents who feel this way.

This is a preposterous result. And it gets worse. Among those people who know a gay or lesbian person, a mere 68 percent approve of the law. According to the poll, people who personally know gays are less likely than people in any other group to support the teaching of alternative marriage.

Something is obviously amiss. The people of Arkansas are generally intelligent, thoughtful about gay issues, and honest, so that leaves two possibilities. Maybe evangelicals and anti-gay people actually favor gay marriage at unusually high rates, and people who know gays are more likely to oppose gay marriage. Or maybe the poll is misleading.

Let’s give the first explanation a fair shake, however unlikely it sounds. After all, if all we needed were our preconceptions, polls would be superfluous. So let us take a look at the answers voiced by various groups in the same University of Arkansas poll (broadly, a higher percentage signifies pro-gay attitudes):

• Forty-six percent of evangelicals, 38 percent of anti-gays, and 67 percent of people who know a gay or lesbian person approve of gays in the military.
• Sixty-five percent of evangelicals, 61 percent of anti-gays, and 76 percent of people who know a gay or lesbian person approve of gay adoption.
• Twenty-two percent of evangelicals, 14 percent of anti-gays, and 31 percent of people who know a gay or lesbian person would ban discrimination against gays in the workplace.
• Thirty-nine percent of evangelicals, 33 percent of anti-gays, and 51 percent of people who know a gay or lesbian person would permit gay foster parents.

Clearly, evangelicals and anti-gay people in Arkansas are consistently more opposed to gay rights than people who personally have gay acquaintances—just like our intuition tells us. So on the question of defining marriage in textbooks, the poll’s result is just plain wrong. The results on this particular question probably need to be reversed to reflect the true feelings of Arkansans. The poll question was flat misleading, to the point that it actually produced an opposite result.

(The poll’s lead researcher, Janine A. Parry, acknowledged in an email message that respondents did, indeed, have difficulty answering the question. “In fact,” she wrote, “we dropped those results from our academic analyses because people clearly misunderstood our meaning.”)

All this would be unfortunate but acceptable, of course, were the question not about a hot-button issue in a credible major university poll. A newspaper, politician, or researcher could selectively pull misleading data from the poll and present an entirely justified, entirely inaccurate result to the public or policymakers.

For example, anti-gay forces could use the misleading poll result to essentially say, “People who personally know gays oppose gay rights even more than the average Arkansan. You think gays are bad now—just wait until you meet one!” Or, pro-gay forces could say, “Even people who don’t like gays think it’s fine to teach kids about alternative marriages!” No one, on either side, wants such a ridiculous manipulation of facts. Using such invalid “results” could lead to the warping of voting patterns, legislative or referential agendas, or executive agendas for politicians who read too deeply into polls and not their own hearts.

There are two lessons to be drawn from this case. One, poll questions should be more clearly written so as to obtain more accurate answers. Two, politicians’ worship of polls represents a serious peril. Even when questions are phrased straightforwardly, results are not always what they appear to be. It is best for politicians to be true to their principles, express them clearly to the people, and let the polls take place where they belong: at the ballot box, where everyone has a voice in a vote.

Do you not approve of a ban on disallowing polls to unduly influence politicians from their course, with the expectation that they will heed them to the ignorance of the possibility that they may present misleading information?

My answer: Yes.

Ali G, Reactionary

By Rob Goodman

“So how come if a guy steal me wallet he go to jail, but if he steal me girlfriend he don’t?”

“Well, your wallet is your property, and your girlfriend is not.”

The problem with being interviewed by Ali G is that there’s really no right answer. If you’re some sort of world leader and the man sitting across from you is a highly intelligent comic playing a buffoon in a yellow tracksuit, you can profess incredulity, try to maintain your dignity, or hope that if you just laugh at him, he’ll vanish like some Germanic hobgoblin. But really, you lost as soon as your press agent signed you up for the interview.

It turns out that none of the interviewees I watched on the Compleet First Seazon DVD did too badly. Former Attorney General Richard Thornborough, who’s quoted above, did an excellent job of remaining calm and providing a sound legal definition of property. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was smiling and relaxed. Even Newt Gingrich managed not to say anything too fatuous. Comedy-wise, it was a bit of a disappointment. But each subject becomes a mockery through the mere act of dignifying Ali G with his presence.

So even if nothing funny happens, the joke on the mark remains, and the mark is presumed to not get it. He has to not get it. As long as that holds, we have the possibility of subversion; without it, we just have a lousy interview.

These two levels—both the intrinsic humor, and the necessity of excluding someone who doesn’t get it—seem to me to define a kind of bifurcated style that’s really popular lately. Think The Daily Show, with straight-faced reporters coaxing stupidity from the self-important. Think Stephen Colbert, Dog Bites Man, Tom Green, The Onion, or Ali G himself. Half the joke is that someone doesn’t get the joke—or at least the possibility that that someone might exist.

The tradition of the fake interview actually goes back a long way. We could trace it all the way to Socratic irony—the philosopher feigning ignorance to expose the ignorance of everyone else. We get the fullest exposition in Plato’s Apology: When Socrates heard the Oracle say that no man is wiser than he:

I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great….After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, “Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.” Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him—his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination—and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me.

Take that at face value, and Socrates is on a pious mission to prove his own inadequacy. But read between the lines as so many have done, and you see an extremely intelligent man humiliating his mark and then claiming the whole thing was a misunderstanding. Then as now, the target of choice is a politician.

In its most constructive form, Socratic irony is extremely useful; then, the ignorance isn’t really a pose at all, but mixed with actual humility. In that case, both parties can move toward the truth in dialogue, with what Montaigne called “a healthy ignorance.” At the very least, fake buffoonery is wonderful for exposing buried truths, and that’s the end our modern comic interviewers pursue when they’re at their best. I will always be in sincere awe of “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” The trouble is that the useful kind of Socratic irony is also the really hard kind, and therefore the really rare kind.

What we’re left with is mostly Socrates Lite. There’s still a mark—the idiot who takes the Onion article seriously, the conservative blog that approvingly quotes Stephen Colbert, the politician who sits through an Ali G interview with a straight face—but there’s nothing intrinsic to criticize about him. In most cases, the mark’s only failing is failing to get the joke, and so the mockery is sterile—it only amounts to “Why aren’t you on our rarefied, subtle plane of humor?” The point of Socrates Lite isn’t truth-telling or truth-finding, but merely the construction of a particularly facile in-group. Those Who Get It can be 99 percent of the viewing public—especially when shows like The Colbert Report are explicitly advertised as comedy—but as long as they can confirm the existence of at least one moron, they can consider themselves the elect. This pleasure of election is, I think, the chief attraction of Socrates Lite.

Which points to its biggest political problem. In practice, the Colbert/Daily Show/Ali G style can belong to any side. But in theory it will always carry the whiff of liberalism, because its target is an elite that has to be conceived as entrenched and out-of-touch. As Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind Ali G, puts it, “It depends on the class….The best targets—the legitimate targets—are successful, powerful white men, who rule the country.” There’s nothing wrong with that, or with liberal humor in general—comedy has always poked holes in elites, and for good reason.

But the kind of comedy practiced by Baron Cohen manufactures its own elitism. As I’ve said, the point is excluding someone who fails to get the joke. And there we have our new elite—based not on political power, but on mere joke-perception. Instead of forcing the audience to do something about the elite he considers corrupt, to make good on the liberalism he professes, the comic simply provides the satisfaction of swapping places. And in building new unmerited elites instead of tearing them down altogether, Socrates Lite internalizes exactly what it aims to mock.

Booyakasha?

P.S. On a mostly unrelated note, I can’t miss the chance to further disseminate a wonderful video. Pause it at 0:12 and 1:18. Recognize our friend on the right, in the Confederate uniform and fake mustache?

Three Cheers for the UN

By Andrew Nowobilski

The United Nations cease-fire resolution between Lebanon and Israel is perfection incarnate. It compels Lebanon to establish control over Hezbollah soil. It orders the disarmament of Hezbollah. It cuts off Hezbollah’s arms supplies. And it beefs up Lebanese and international security forces to get the job done, all while limiting the loss of human life. What better monument is there to wisdom, temperance, and justice for all?

Yes, the UN resolution is a masterful victory in the War on Terror. If it is enforced.

A perfect agreement, which assiduously considers all the angles, piling stipulation upon stipulation, devoting its every element to prudence and virtue, means nothing if it is not enforced. And it won’t be. Why? The UN is not temperamentally or politically equipped to engage in offensive maneuvers, bloody guerilla warfare, or any conflict that might result in significant civilian casualties (which is to say, all of them).

But isn’t the UN’s mission primarily defensive? Well, at the moment yes. But all Hezbollah has to do to change the strategic landscape is simply to refuse to disarm. Then the UN will either give up its mission, or it will have to root out Hezbollah by force, against which Hezbollah would of course retaliate. If the hard-nosed Israelis had trouble enough with this sort of asymmetric warfare, is there any hope at all for the boys in blue? Clearly not. Hezbollah can therefore completely eviscerate the mortal threat posed to it by the resolution if only it has the will to fight. And will is something its fighters do not lack. This agreement is like a water bucket. One hole is enough to drain the whole thing. And this is a big hole.

Pundits will prevaricate. They will talk about incremental gains here and there from the resolution, even after Hezbollah refuses disarmament. But the very fact that the pundits’ approval requires so many qualifiers shows the cease fire is a bum deal. The only acceptable victory against the terrorists is a complete one. The sole question we need to ask is whether the UN and the Lebanese can rapidly and--if need be--forcefully disarm Hezbollah. If the answer is anything less than an unqualified “yes,” the deal represents an unacceptable deviation from the clarity required by the War on Terror.

We have not failed because diplomacy is useless. Seeking total victory against terrorists is in no way incompatible with diplomacy with states. Diplomacy used in conjunction with the threat of force is a good thing. So too is cooperation. There is nothing wrong with offering Lebanon a partnership in enforcing its own sovereignty. In fact, turning states against their resident terrorists and working with those states may be the only way to make this conflict tractable. That’s why a cease fire presented such an opportunity, if only it was proctored by a serious alliance instead of a utopian (dystopian?) bureaucracy.

If quasi-failed states like Lebanon could be made to police their own territories and expel terrorists from them with the cooperation of international forces, the War on Terror would become manageable. If the threat of unacceptable consequences for failure to prosecute terrorists forces a failed or rogue state to start regulating itself, then that state can be used as a lever against the terrorists. This strategy would fold the war into a more symmetrical framework by subsuming terrorism under the sovereignty of a state. A war against a state is a definite thing. It is not an infinite war fought against 10,000 evil, unknown, technologically-empowered armies of one. We know how to impose costs and benefits on states. They have an address. It requires vigilance; it can still get ugly; it requires a mix of both force and realistic diplomacy. But it is workable. As it stands, however, the US, the Israelis, and a handful of fellow travelers can only play Whack-a-Mole digging endlessly multiplying suicide bombers out of their foxholes. If war is hell, this type of asymmetric warfare is the seventh circle.

World leaders had a chance to test a new strategy. The choice to use the anemic UN instead of a robust military alliance has utterly thrown this opportunity away. Diplomacy is not at fault. Diplomacy is an essential asset. Rather, we have failed only because some people think that diplomacy means the UN. It doesn’t. Western leaders could have found a way to make the War on Terror tractable, to cooperate humanely with Lebanon, and to maintain the moral imperative of accepting only total victory against terrorist organizations. But they gave it up because they’d rather feed a foolish utopian fetish for a chimerical “world community“ than engage in serious strategic analysis.

The UN has become not just morally repugnant by positioning despots and democrats as equals. It is not just bureaucratic and weak. It has become dangerous. Governments seek its corrupt moral approval and shrink from a just doctrine that demands both clarity and total victory. We have had enough false starts in this War on Terror. Time is running out. Next time, Hezbollah’s rockets might just have nuclear tips.

When Opportunity Knocks

By Jimmy Soni

Last week’s uncovering of a plot to down British airliners thrust terrorism and security issues back into the forefront of the American consciousness. To be sure, terrorism hadn’t strayed far, but its place at the top of the order was stealthily wedged out by a summer of high gas prices, intense heat, and Al Gore’s cinematic flair. Now, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, security concerns are sure to play a much more central role in the midterm elections, challenging both parties to critically examine where they are and where they are going in keeping America safe.

After a series of setbacks, the President is on the defensive. Despite an uptick in the polls for Republicans after the British arrests, the President’s job approval has not gained similar ground. Earlier this week, he lost a crucial fight when a federal judge ruled unconstitutional the National Security Administration’s selective wiretapping of international communications of Americans. Republican Representative Jo Ann Davis of Virginia unexpectedly broke ranks and called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, a reflection, perhaps, of waning White House control over the party’s rank-and-file. The Republicans—traditionally disciplined, in sync, on message—cannot afford these kinds of outbursts with the election less than two months away.

Perhaps the most disturbing news for the majority party came from a recent Pew poll surveying “security moms”—married women with children—in Ohio. The Democrats appear to have dislodged this group of swing voters from their Republican loyalties, a coup considering that this cohort supported Republicans 53-36 in 2002 and the President with 56% in 2004. In a crucial swing state, and one where Democrats have gone almost a decade without winning a statewide office, the Democratic candidate for governor leads by 20 points. Not only does this sea change leave vulnerable Republican Senator Mike DeWine reeling, but it suggests that the Republican strategy of rolling out summer votes on divisive cultural issues might have been blunted by security concerns.

The link between these unhappy mothers and uneasy Congressional representatives is Iraq. The decision by the President to marry the war in Iraq with the broader security of the United States appears now to have been a Faustian bargain, with Republicans facing criticism in an area that usually serves as their electoral anchor. With no end in sight and violence aplenty, the war will continue to be dead weight and will only cause more dissension. Mavericks will be forced to separate the war from security--an impossible trick if you ask any Democrat.

The Republicans unsure footing offers Democrats a rare opportunity to take charge. One emerging problem is how to turn these recent Republican setbacks into Democratic gains for the midterm elections, without sacrificing coherence and vision for the all-important 2008 Presidential campaign. Democrats remember all too vividly the sting of ‘voting for it, before voting against it,’ and the party ought to be careful not to make the same lethal mistake. One strategy might be to avoid tearing the party threadbare over Iraq and focusing on a platform that tackles forgotten security issues.

We have some inkling of such a strategy in Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel’s recently released “The Plan: Big Ideas for America.” Ignoring for a moment that the title lacks the brevity and clarity of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” Emanuel’s “Plan” does challenge the United States to substantially increase the size of its armed forces and reexamine the labyrinthine Department of Homeland Security. But here’s the rub: Emanuel also proposes three months of compulsory disaster training for all 18-to-25-year-olds. It’s a fool’s errand, and comes at a time when Americans aren’t too keen on government projects laden with inefficiency (airport security), incompetence (Iraq), and inadequacy (energy policy).

In a matter of weeks, the country will pause to reflect on the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. If we are to expect our elected officials to find real solutions to very real problems—port security, outdated intelligence systems, or loose nuclear weapons, for example—then we must demand it of them at the ballot box. The foiled British plot is a stark reminder that the threat of terrorism is ever-present, and solutions will require more than disaster training or disastrous conflicts.

Killing an Arab

By Rob Goodman

“US President George W. Bush quoted French existential writer Albert Camus to European leaders a year and a half ago, and now he’s read one of his most famous works: The Stranger. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush, here on his Texas ranch enjoying a 10-day vacation from Washington, had made quick work of the Algerian-born writer’s 1946 novel—in English.”

-AFP, August 11

It’s been seven years since I myself read L’Étranger, and in that time I’ve forgotten most everything about it, except that the climax had something to do with an Arab. I tracked down a copy yesterday at the local university library, and what I found refreshed my memory entirely; I hope you won’t mind if I quote at length (not least because more Camus and less Goodman is probably a good thing):

It struck me that all I had to do was to turn, walk away, and think no more about it. But the whole beach, pulsing with heat, was pressing on my back. I took some steps toward the stream. The Arab didn’t move. Perhaps because of the shadow on his face, he seemed to be grinning at me. I waited….And then the Arab drew his knife and held it up toward me, athwart the sunlight. A shaft of light shot upward from the steel, and I felt as if a long, thin blade transfixed my forehead. At the same moment all the sweat that had accumulated in my eyebrows splashed down on my eyelids, covering them with a warm film of moisture. Beneath a veil of brine and tears my eyes were blinded; I was conscious only of the cymbals of the sun clashing on my skull, and, less directly, of the keen blade of light flashing up from the knife, scarring my eyelashes, and gouging into my eyeballs. Then everything began to reel before my eyes, a fiery gust came from the sea, while the sky cracked in two, from end to end, and a great sheet of flame poured down through the rift. Every nerve in my body was a steel spring, and my grip closed on the revolver. The trigger gave, and the smooth underbelly of the butt jogged my palm. And so, with that crisp, whipcrack sound, it all began. I shook off my sweat and the clinging veil of light. I knew I’d shattered the balance of the day, the spacious calm of this beach on which I had been happy. But I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing.

And that is how the hero Meursault kills an Arab, a crime for which he is eventually executed. Now, I’m not the first one to raise questions about this odd choice of summer reading; Slate’s John Dickerson does so here. But there are two things still undone.

First, no one has, to my knowledge, read the President’s choice of literature as a direct signal. But what else could it be? We know that there’s no such thing as private beach reading for a president—our public figures live lives as deliberately scripted as any Sun King. We also know that President Bush in particular has made a habit of advertising his reading list for political purposes. In this 2004 photo, Bush ostentatiously carries down the path to Marine One Bernard Goldberg’s Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. Pro-war historian Victor Davis Hanson has also been invited to the White House on the strength of his book Carnage and Culture and his opinion writing for National Review.

Given this ongoing ideological Reading Rainbow, it would be a fair deduction that President Bush announces his reading when he has a distinct message to send. Indeed, the announcement alone should tip us off—in what other field besides politics is your private recreation anyone else’s business? (“…and Friday’s lunch will be fish sticks with corn and a fruit cup. Finally, Mr. Goodman would like you to know that he is reading 120 Days of Sodom. Have a super weekend.”)

So—what message? Well, I suppose President Bush could have been trying to make nice with the French and demonstrate a little intellectual heft. But for that, he could have chosen anyone from Rabelais to Houellebecq —we need a more specific explanation. And I can’t help wondering if there’s a certain identification between Camus’s protagonist and a leader connected to (I won’t use that agitprop word, “responsible”) the deaths of so many Arabs.

The second thing that no one’s done on this question is attempt a close reading of Camus’s key passage; let’s do that, and as we do, let’s imagine that the words are spoken by George Bush; that it’s our President, perhaps in swim trunks, standing on the crowded French beach as the heat from the sun bores into his head.

First, the physical setting. The existentialist hero is deeply out of place, even in so ordinary a setting as a beach on the weekend. “The whole beach, pulsing with heat, was pressing on my back”—the environs almost attack our speaker. “Beneath a veil of brine and tears my eyes were blinded”—the alien scene provokes a sympathetic reaction in his own body, tears of pain and frustration. He ceases to distinguish between the light from the sun and the direct threat of the light glinting from the Arab’s knife. And then, a cataclysm: “A fiery gust came from the sea, while the sky cracked in two, from end to end, and a great sheet of flame poured down through the rift”—and Meursault/Bush pulls the trigger. What we have is a picture of paranoia and alienation—of a man so ill at ease in his own skin that he could easily crawl out of it. And if we posit an analogy between the stage on which Meursault acts and the stage on which Bush acts, we sense a man, and a President, distinctly pained by his place in the world. Indeed—imagine that Bush’s world of press conferences, G-8 meetings, and campaign stops is analogous to Meursault’s beach, and we have a clear explanation for the President’s consummately awkward public behavior, from the frequent inability to successfully complete a sentence, to the gait that many dismiss as a cowboy’s strut, but which I see as the carriage of a man in chronic internal pain. Meursault chose a day at the beach; Bush chose to run for national office. But neither suspected that the fruit would turn to ashes in his mouth. In fact, it seems not to be hatred of the Arab, or impulsiveness, or anger, that makes Meursault/Bush pull the trigger, but rather the pain emanating from the environment itself, the existential trauma of being-in-the-world—

Second, the Arab. We note that he doesn’t speak a word, and we note that he is nameless. Is this how the Arab world looks to our President—inscrutable, teeming with unspoken menace? We also note that the Arab does very little to provoke the crime. He grins, or seems to grin, possibly bespeaking a hidden knowledge our speaker lacks. He brandishes a knife, but he doesn’t use it, or advance with it—rather it’s the glint of light from the knife, the intimation of being attacked, that provokes Meursault/Bush. Is it, then, a preemptive strike? We only see that the speaker is conscious of the nerves in his body, and his grip on the stock, and the jerk of the underbelly of the butt, and the whipcrack sound of the pistol’s report, and of more light from the sun, and even of the body he’s fired into, but never even really of the Arab that he’s murdered. The killed man doesn’t get a word or a thought? Is this how it feels to kill from a distance, with a button, by an order, from a room filled with maps? The Arab, the Arabs, only lies there, mute and victimized—

Third, the act. Finally, we find that the Arab isn’t even the victim at all. “I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace.” We don’t even see the Arab die. Impervious in life, impervious in death. Instead, the very act of preemptive war rebounds most on the preemptor. The gunshot isn’t the act that ends the Arab’s life, or does anything to change the balance of power on the beach/world stage—rather the gunshot is “the loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing.” Meursault/Bush does and un-does at the same time; it’s as if the thoughtless act of violence is an accidental suicide. And if being on the beach/being President was tough, it’s now instantly transmuted into nostalgia: “I knew I’d shattered the balance of the day, the spacious calm of this beach on which I had been happy.” The attentive reader replies—“What balance? What calm?" But the slow-dawning torment of this suicide-by-aggression is such that our speaker would gladly trade it back for the sting of the brine, and the glint of the silently threatening knife, and the sun beating down mercilessly—


So what does this all mean for George W. Bush? What is he pondering tonight in Crawford? Is it his delight in a hero who so thoroughly dehumanizes an Arab? Is it transference of his fears and his passions to a figure from literature? Is it identification with the tormented speaker and his unprovoked violence? Is he working out a secret guilt he can never speak? I can’t tell you; I wouldn’t presume to go any further.

But mark my words, George Bush read the book, and George Bush told us he read the book, and George Bush is trying to tell us something. That something can’t be said aloud, because it’s so often a leader of men has to speak in code to us. But at least we all see this: the pathos of a man who can never let go of his heart and speak to us true, but can only talk in signs, in signals, in passages scraped here and there from existentialist literature, in semaphores, in ciphers…

Downloading Democracy

By Andrew Nowobilski

Aristotle’s assumption that democracy is essentially rule by mob is the cause of many a furrowed brow among present-day scholars. What an anti-democratic Neanderthal! sneers Modern Man. I suppose one can’t expect much from a slavery lover. But perhaps the enlightened egalitarians are too quick in using the unjustifiable latter opinion to disqualify the former from serious consideration. Democracy has some big problems. Aristotle was onto something; a one-year anniversary postmortem on the President’s campaign to reform Social Security proves it.

The Republicans never had a very serious plan. Given that they had sold themselves electorally on the mantra of lower taxes at any cost they couldn’t very well propose higher payroll “contributions” to fund the transition to personal accounts. But any credible savings program cannot generate more deficits now. Some compromise of cutting expenditures and raising taxes would be needed to launch a reform program. But compromising on taxes is anathema to one of the central pillars of Bush‘s political success. Republicans therefore reaped the bitter harvest of the indulgent expectations they had sewn; so constrained by their own promises, they could not even formulate a rational plan.

But the Democrats shouldn’t be too self-satisfied about foiling the President. Whether or not President Bush’s reform was the right one, the Medicare and Social Security financial numbers dictate that tough entitlement reform will be necessary, and it will hurt. The Democrats’ victory was too easy. It demonstrated all too clearly the immense political power of AARP and other seniors’ advocacy organizations. The so-called gray lobby wields veto authority over any far-sighted reform. It is swollen into a political monster that no other faction can match. And it is acutely sensitive to opportunistic accusations of nefarious plans to put seniors on a cat food diet. Democrats gave those fears free rein last time around. They promised painless solutions. They strengthened the forces that favor the unsustainable status quo. But whenever the Democrats regain Congress they will no longer have the good fortune of being able to simply needle everything the Republicans do. They will actually have to, you know, govern, and that means they will have to reign in grandpa Frankenstein. Frankie may not appreciate it.

Beneath the surface paternalism of the classicist’s skepticism of democracy resides a clarifying frankness. A democracy qua democracy contends only that society should be ruled at the total discretion of the will of the majority of the people. Combine that with the human impulse to reward oneself with goodies bought on someone else‘s tab, and democracy is like Napster for loot. Only instead of pimply-faced teenagers downloading songs without paying for them, the Joneses download beefier Social Security benefits and more generous Medicare services purchased with other people‘s checkbooks… or on their children’s backs.

Like music piracy, democratic pillaging is difficult to stop once begun. Just look across the pond. The French cannot institute even modest reform of their hiring laws for fear of retaliation by violent gangs. Every faction, from plumbers to prostitutes, has an unshakable sense of entitlement to its special advantages. People have been permitted, even encouraged, to download property and privilege for free, and the result is as unstoppable as Internet piracy. Like old-school Napster, democracy’s “product” is “free,” its acquisition impersonal, its use socially acceptable. It is demanded by everyone.

Madison recommended that factions be kept weak and competitive, so that they cancel each other out to the public benefit. But Madison’s Big Idea works only under a liberal order that places strict limitations on the resources and uses of government. The erosion of that order has given rise to the delusion that no tradeoffs are necessary. The tax cutters can get what they want, and so can the gray-haired robber barons over at AARP. Ask the Democratic Man what he’s doing to plug the future funding gaps in Medicare and Social Security, and he’ll just laugh at you and keep on downloading. Why not download some nice Medicare drug benefits? Sure, it may add trillions to our unfunded liabilities within a stone’s throw of the demographic tsunami, but who cares? It’s someone else’s problem.

The problem isn’t the demand for retirement income or medical care, any more than the problem with old-school Napster was that its denizens liked a lot of music. Newspaper headlines screaming about rising medical costs don’t consider that most of the cost creep derives directly from demand for life-enhancing quality improvements. The problem is that with the current entitlement system, like Napster, there is absolutely no correspondence between personal benefit and personal sacrifice. There is no feedback information about costs. And unfortunately, the economy has a lot less wealth than the World Wide Web does bandwidth. With everyone trying to download at once, the system will sooner or later slow to a crawl.

I hope Aristotle was wrong to criticize democracies so harshly. But if the US doesn’t temper its democratic zeal with a healthy dose of liberal restraint, in twenty years it will be exactly where much of Europe is now, with spoiled, ungovernable voters--with a mob. The Democrats had better enjoy the one-year anniversary of the quiet death of Bush’s plan while they can. The Gray Dawn nears. And Frankie’s a bit of an early riser.

EDITOR'S CONTRIBUTION: Shamelessly Exploiting Philanthropy

By Andrew Collins

The huge boom in private philanthropy has given the world’s unfortunate the opportunity to attain a better life.

It has also given government a whopping excuse.

As foundations ramp up their splendid work, the federal government should not recede from its responsibilities to Americans and people all over the world. The government should persist with its schedule of domestic programs and foreign aid regardless of private donations, and let the foundations mete out additional funds to urgent projects and underfunded areas.

The Bush administration has recently taken the position that if the private sector is committing money to a cause, the government has a green light to withdraw support. For example, The New York Times reported Aug. 13 that the administration’s fiscal year 2007 budget eliminates a $93.5 million program to underwrite the development of smaller schools, citing the increase in support for those schools from “nonfederal funds” from the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.

This is clearly wrongheaded. If the Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation commit significant new funds to smaller schools, it is because they have deemed the development of such schools to be a high-need area—even with the existing $93.5 million federal commitment. For the Bush administration to withdraw that money leaves an already vulnerable area further exposed and increases the burden on foundations. It essentially creates more of a need where one already exists; it is the equivalent of dropping a drowning person back in the water because someone else has come over to help.

The government is abandoning its responsibilities to Americans and the world, using private philanthropy as an excuse. This should not be tolerated. The private sector should be free to operate according to need and the desires of donors, not forced to fill in the gaps of an increasingly deadbeat government.

Ironically, despite the Bush administration’s constant rhetoric about free enterprise in philanthropy, it has actually bound private organizations to the whims of government to a degree never before seen in American history. By stripping federal dollars from certain causes—with the expectation that private organizations will fill in the gaps—the administration has exerted a classic “big government” overreach and now essentially controls a considerable portion of these organization’s budgets. The Bush administration is backhandedly treating private foundations as if they were US agencies; this is both ill advised and completely contrary to conservative ideals.

Foundations like Gates, Carnegie, and countless smaller organizations should be released from the dictates of government and allowed to move with the agility and critical analysis that distinguish them from the sometimes lugubrious federal government. Private organizations should not fill in lines in the federal budget, but rather swiftly analyze situations and apolitically allot funds to causes that need them most. The government can then distribute its aid along a generally consistent schedule, bowing, of course, to immediate exigencies like the AIDS crisis in Africa and Asia and disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

The private sector can and should be the vital “extra” that fills one of three roles: 1) money for a problem to which the government is too slow and/or unwieldy to respond; 2) a well researched “big picture” contribution for a cause not quite identified by government; 3) a concentrated boost to solve, not just alleviate, a problem; or 4) funding for a cause the government cannot approach for political reasons.

This state of affairs—the status quo for most of American history—gives the Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and others the freedom to function as capitalist enterprises, addressing vital needs that the government cannot quite reach. It frees these organizations from inappropriate governmental restrictions, and ceases the backhanded provision of resources to the Bush administration for its rancid policies. Where the Bush administration sees “money for the taking,” wise philanthropists like Bill Gates see opportunities to help major world problems. Gates’s money should be his to spend.

If President Bush needs money to alleviate his record budget deficit, I can suggest one place to start: withdraw the tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. Don’t patch up your sinking ship by exploiting the generous people who know what the hell’s going on and have the means and know-how to make a difference.

Thou Shalt Not Lie

By Jimmy Soni

In 1995, Ralph Reed’s angelic 33-year-old face appeared on the cover of Time magazine, next to the words “The Right Hand of God.” What Reed recently learned is that age-old Sunday school lesson: the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away—particularly in politics.

Last month, Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition and poster child for all things evangelical, faced a humiliating defeat in his primary race for lieutenant governor of Georgia. What is striking, aside from a heavy-hitter like Reed running for a second-tier state office, is that all his political chips—tested phone lists, countless contacts, charisma, years of experience, a perfect head of hair—could not carry the day.

His downfall was due in no small part to a 25-year-old relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose dirty dealings have sounded the death knell for countless others. Reed turned to Abramoff for help in starting his own lobbying and consulting firm. Help he did, bringing Reed in to smooth over details in Abramoff’s partnerships with Indian casinos. The rest, as they say, is history.

This case is revelatory for two reasons. The first is that Reed’s ethics were called into question despite his fervent religiosity—and, of all places, in Georgia. The second is that even the prospect of ethical impropriety led to his undoing; Reed himself has not been convicted of any crimes, though his record is peppered with similar near-infractions.

Despite years of Bible thumping and a formidable political machine, Reed lost due to questions of character, which suggests that no matter how closely you read the good book, it only counts if you are actually doing good. This turns the “moral values” agenda on its head. It suggests that baiting voters on divisive religious issues can’t serve as the ultimate political trump card. They know the difference between doing right and preaching right, and, in Reed’s case, they were certainly able to tease out the hypocrisy of making millions from Indian casinos, years after calling gambling “a cancer on the American body politic.”

Is this revolutionary? Hardly. Americans have long hunted for honesty in their politicians. What it indicates, however, is a heightened level of scrutiny on ethical errors and an incentive for candidates to shoot straight. Consider the example of political neophyte Paul Hackett, the former Ohio Congressional candidate and near-Senate candidate, who’s straight-talking, no-nonsense ways nearly won him a seat in the House.

“My word is my bond and I will take it to my grave,” said Hackett, after withdrawing from the Senate campaign and refusing to run for Congress in another district because of earlier promises not to. In a solidly red district, Hackett’s pro-choice and anti-war positions had surprising purchase. His tell-it-like-it-is demeanor and military service in Iraq attracted a wide throng of supporters, including endorsements from leading Republican press; no small potatoes in a district that has only elected one Democrat since 1951. David Goodman, of Mother Jones magazine, reported on the strange tune sung by Hackett’s supporters:

Butch Davis, a 70-year-old lifelong Republican, pulled up at Hackett HQ in a 1943 Marine Corps jeep, complete with a mounted 30-caliber machine gun, sporting a “Veterans for Hackett” sign. “I’m a redneck from Brown County,” he declared proudly, extending his weathered hand. “Paul’s pro-choice,” he added. “I’m pro-life. He said educating the young fellas and gals is the answer to the problem, not outlawing abortion.”

Davis continued in a thick Southern drawl, “I used to think clinic bombers were doing the right thing. My preacher said I was too uptight.” He chuckled. Now, he said, “I think Paul’s approach is as good as mine.” The Bush administration, he continued, “trampled on our Bill of Rights and Constitution. They should be ashamed.”

In recent years, Americans have seen captains of industry hauled away in chains, experienced the bitter taste of a war fought for reasons unverified, and watched numerous members of Congress fall victim to temptation and hubris. Is it any wonder that forthright candidates like Paul Hackett are in high demand? Is it any surprise that “religious” is no longer simply synonymous with “moral?” It seems that honesty, always the best policy, might now be the best politics.

j = mv...

By Rob Goodman

…where m represents mass, v represents velocity, and j represents joementum. I want to argue that even today, j remains a nonzero positive integer likely to increase as t approaches November.

Right now, Joe Lieberman’s newly-independent Senate campaign faces two hurdles: a growing Ned Lamont bandwagon, and the perception that pushing on as if nothing happened last night makes the Senator a sore loser. On the first point, it still seems to me that Lieberman has the edge, given his crossover appeal to independents and Republicans in a general election; it seems less likely that leftish Lamont can expand his base beyond the hardcore Democrats who turned out for him on Tuesday. But I’ll leave that question to the professionals. I’m more interested in whether disregarding a primary result will be, or ought to be, considered sour grapes.

Byron York makes the argument on this morning’s NRO:

If you lose a campaign and then come around two, or four, or six years later to challenge the man who beat you, that’s one thing. If you lose a campaign and keep running as if you hadn’t lost, that’s another. From now on, every day that Lieberman campaigns, he will be reminded that he has already lost to the man he is running against. Lamont’s supporters won’t let him forget it, and Lamont himself will be happy to point it out….This time, it might be Democrats holding those “Sore Loserman” signs.

Ignoring the fact that punning on the Senator’s ethnic name is blatantly anti-Semitic (whereas punning on his given, or Christian, name remains wholesome fun), I would dispute York’s basic claim. Anyone should be allowed to ignore a primary—if he can get away with it.

After all, primaries exist largely to lift politicians from obscurity. In return for convincing your party’s hardcore supporters that you’re the man for the job, you get a) media coverage, b) money from the national organization, and, most importantly, c) the party’s imprimatur, its D or R next to your name in November. The party’s endorsement is basically a time-saving device for voters: It gives them a broad summary of your views, and it tells them that you are the preferred choice of other likeminded party members. For an obscure candidate, the transaction is mutually beneficial: Contribute to the party’s talent pool and submit to party discipline, and in return you get the seal that can sway uninformed voters.

But what if you’re not obscure? What if you have the name recognition of a three-term Senator? In that case, the primary transaction becomes a lot less beneficial—the party has little to offer you that you don’t already have yourself. In that case, you can operate outside the system without consequence. Primaries aren’t sacred; they’re simply a deal between party and candidate that either can abrogate.

Besides, candidates who use their unusual personal resources to operate outside the system are regularly tolerated. The real parallel for Lieberman isn’t the 2000-issue Al Gore. It’s Michael Bloomberg, the lifelong Democrat billionaire who ran in the Republican primary for New York Mayor (because there was less competition) and blew everyone out of the water with campaign spending. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger, who used his celebrity to defeat over a hundred other candidates on a California recall ballot. Or Ross Perot, self-financing his independent campaign in 1992.

Now I myself think it’s mightily unfair that Bloomberg, Schwarzenegger, and Perot got a leg up because they were rich and/or famous, minimizing the primary endorsement process by buying their own name recognition. But it’s also true that Americans accept self-financed candidates and continue to put them in office. Often, we’re persuaded by the argument that a candidate who’s already rich can’t be bought.

So how’s Lieberman any different? Unlike Lamont, Lieberman is no longer tied to any segment of the party, so he has the freedom to reposition that Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger claim for themselves. And unlike self-financed candidates, Lieberman’s electoral wealth is actually intrinsic to politics—not Wall Street money, but a record built up over three terms in the Senate and two national campaigns. If Americans support a Bloomberg, they’ll support Lieberman, and for the same reasons.

None of this makes the sore-loser epithet sting any less. (Lieberman could have saved face and avoided this mess if he’d had the foresight to switch parties a year ago.) It just means that Lieberman can make a continuing case that he’s earned the right to bypass the primary, if he’s willing to do without the big D by his name. Obviously, Joe doesn’t have to tell Democratic primary voters to go fuck themselves. But he makes the case implicitly whenever he cites his long record of service, or when he stakes out positions that Lamont can’t touch. If voters forgave Bloomberg for essentially buying his way out of the primary, they’ll forgive Lieberman for earning his way out.

Lieberman has every right to face the general election with renewed energy. Because, as we all know, E = cj. He’s got the joementum, and c represents the speed of light, which is a whole lot.

Moderates at Stake

By Andrew Collins

Senator Joe Lieberman’s unexpectedly robust challenge from liberal philanthropist Ned Lamont in tomorrow’s Connecticut Democratic primary is not about Lieberman’s record, Lamont’s qualifications, Presidential smooches, or even, really, Iraq. At issue is the identity—the very definition—of the moderate.

What is a moderate? The term’s elusiveness partly results from its linguistic similarity to “modulate,” “modify,” and “moderate” the verb, which means, “to tamp down.” Those words have variable meanings, but all bespeak a mealy-mouthed lack of conviction and certitude. None of these terms are the same as the political orientation describing Lieberman, both Clintons, John McCain, and 45 percent of the American people.

“Moderate,” meaning a pragmatic political centrist or someone whose views span across traditional categories, has no linguistic connotations of moral or ideological flimsiness. It suggests adherence to principles—adherence that can be as fervent as that of an archliberal or ultraconservative. A moderate may be committed to positions anywhere along the ideological spectrum, but there is no logical reason to question the strength with which he or she holds positions.

In fact, if you consider that a moderate must come by his or her positions without the guidance of a readymade popular ideology, you might conclude his or her commitment to principle to be more carefully considered and more deeply held than that of a rote liberal or conservative.

Logic, of course, holds little sway in election season. When confusion about terminology meets manipulative political opponents, the result is the public perception of the moderate-as-pushover or the moderate-as-flip-flopper. That is what Joe Lieberman presently faces in Connecticut.

Far from being a pushover or flip-flopper, however, Lieberman is quite the opposite. He has thus far refused to bow to immensely powerful forces ordering him to repudiate his 2002 vote authorizing force in Iraq. Nor has he flip-flopped by any stretch. In his longstanding conviction that 1) Iraq needed to be confronted, by force, if necessary; 2) the Bush administration mishandled the war from the get-go; and 3) the United States must do well by Iraq, the region, and itself by finishing the job right; Lieberman has been stalwart.

One can reasonably disagree with his stance without castigating him for vacillation and kowtowing to Republicans, as the campaign of Ned Lamont has done. In willfully distorting his positions and record, Lamont has attempted to damn Lieberman—and, by extension, the moderates he represents as the most public standard-bearer for that political orientation—as spineless. It is nasty politics and should be taken as an affront to anyone who navigates politics with a personal, not partisan, compass.

It should be noted that the only reason Lamont threatens to be successful in this task is the odd American primary system, which tends to reward candidates on the respective extremes of the political spectrum. In states where only those persons registered with the party in question are allowed to vote in primaries, the pool of voters is naturally skewed in orientation toward whichever extreme ideology is encapsulated by the party holding the primary; in this case, the left half of the spectrum will have the opportunity to choose between Lamont and Lieberman in Connecticut and will thereby be inclined to vote for a more liberal candidate than the populace would favor more in the general election. In addition, primary voters are typically more radicalized than general election voters, further skewing the results. By the end of a competitive primary season, the choice between candidates is generally more extreme than an average voter would prefer. This greatly contributes to Washington partisanship and makes the nomination of moderates like Lieberman—whom 56 percent of Connecticut voters would favor in the general election—difficult.

Americans are basically a moderate lot. And with the clarification of a moderate self-definition, political fair play, and perhaps primary reform, they might even have the opportunity to vote for principled candidates that best match their policy preferences, personal preferences, and disparate-but-generally-pragmatic visions for America.

Unfortunately, the chances of those developments transpiring are slim. Moderates are being held to the stake by the imperfect structure of our democracy, as they have been for many years. And they will continue to remain a scarce commodity for the foreseeable future, except for those rare and blessed episodes when someone like Lieberman can sneak through and, for a time, conduct the country’s business with the sense of fair play and open-mindedness desired by a vast plurality of the American people.

A Bullheaded Blitzkrieg

By Jimmy Soni

What did Israel get for its recent military action? A hill of beans.

Early results from Israel’s blitzkrieg of Beirut leave little doubt of the madness of the exercise. By holding out as long as it has, Hezbollah has sharpened its sword in the region. By failing to forestall the violence, the fragile Lebanese government has lost what little authority it had. Al Qaeda, though traditionally hostile to Shiites, has embraced Hezbollah and even emulated its language in recently released messages. Arab governments initially critical of Hezbollah and supportive of Israel have done an about-face. Hezbollah’s Sheik Nasarallah has been deified for his defiance—all this after only two weeks.

And this is only what we can confirm. No doubt the exercise has replenished the supply of accusations against Israel and, to a lesser-though-still-significant degree, the United States. It has likely shifted or intensified loyalties among other terrorist organizations, civilian populations, and their donor nations. And it has almost certainly emboldened the next generation of yet unrecruited Hezbollah fighters.

The majority of these developments were foreseeable, and some were so easily anticipated that they would not have changed the calculus for war. But when coupled with the war’s ill-conceived logic—that precision bombing could squash, once and for all, a diffuse organization that fills its ranks with civilians—it becomes infinitely harder to make the case for military action.

There is no question that the near simultaneous attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas that precipitated this conflict required some response. But the chosen strategy seems more a means for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to prove his military bona fides than for Israel to eliminate the threat to its citizens. Terrorism by its nature flies in the face of the doctrine of overwhelming force. Targeted assassinations, intelligence gathering, small unit tactics, and diplomacy—even if slow-going and politically prickly—are ultimately more successful strategies in such a war.

Olmert’s failure of leadership is only matched by President Bush’s own. His unwillingness or inability to bring the conflict to a cease-fire not only prolonged the carnage, but eroded what little diplomatic capital the US had left in the region. The conflict opened the door to courageous statesmanship, and the President quickly slammed it shut. As wisely noted by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the Washington Post, there is a predictable logic at work here: tempers flare, hostilities begin, the US negotiates a cease-fire.

The logic is, of course, confounded by Syrian and Iranian support of Hezbollah. Even so, that doesn’t prevent the United States from crafting a cease-fire, basking in praise, and then moving on to Syria and Iran.

Make no mistake—there is an alternative to war with either country. To those frustrated with the hard work of diplomacy, like my Bracket colleague Andrew Nowobilski, I offer the example of Libya, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice herself called “an important model” for extremist tune-changing. The United States recently restored diplomatic ties with Libya—the same Libya that once actively supported terrorists, festered US resentment in the region, and stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Sound familiar? If, as suspected, the Israel-Lebanon crisis is a proxy for the United States vs. Syria or the United States vs. Iran, then we need only look to Libya for a cheaper, smarter, and ultimately more effective model.

The President is wrong to call this a “moment of opportunity”—it is in fact, a closing window. Hezbollah can be weakened, Israeli positions fortified, Syria and Iran neutralized, and the Lebanese government strengthened, but not until a cease-fire is achieved. It’s time to stop playing into Hezbollah’s hand and start playing the diplomatic game.

The Parable of the Drunk Anti-Semite

By Rob Goodman

I know my first response to this whole Mel Gibson thing shouldn’t be childlike delight, but it’s just that it’s so rare our national life provides us with anything resembling an answer key. In February 2004, the question was posed: “Is Mel Gibson (A) a pious, yet misunderstood artist, or (B) an anti-Semite nutjob?” And in July 2006, we as a people turned our kids’ menu upside-down and found the answer in small print, right next to the solution to the word jumble. I don’t expect anything this clear-cut to happen again in my lifetime. So in these weeks of bombs falling on civilians who may or may not be sheltering terrorists, we can at least thank Melvin for giving us something so blissfully unambiguous.

But some of us want even more. It’s not enough that we’ve resolved a question of character; apparently we’ve also resolved a question of art. The critics who called Gibson’s Passion of the Christ anti-Semitic back in 2004 are claiming a smashing victory—hateful director, hateful film. Indeed, I’m racking my brain and can’t think of a debate on art that was ever won this decisively. Is Finnegans Wake readable? Is The Rite of Spring music or noise? Is Wagner’s Alberich an obvious Jewish caricature? I’m sure there are learned articles on all sides of these and many other questions, but I haven’t read a single one that ended: “In conclusion: Neener-neener.”

Debates in criticism can move toward consensus, but they just don’t get won. Yet the demand for apologies and the naming of names going on right now in the blogosphere seems to suggest that The Passion is a unique case in all this history. I suppose it could be. But I think it’s likelier that what we have is a much more mundane case of the logic politics corrupting the logic of art.

Take these juxtaposed quotes posted by Andrew Sullivan, who, as an early opponent of The Passion, has been gloating for about 72 hours:

“Mel Gibson might be my favorite feminist…. In a day when 'Take Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries' is an often-heard chorus in mainstream abortion debates, Mel Gibson's understanding of women and his articulation of their unique mission could have remarkable repercussions. This new—or old, inasmuch as it is natural and commonsensical—kind of feminism, a focus on the different contributions of men and women and the different ways they live their missions, should make us all rethink how we live and love,” - Kathryn-Jean Lopez, National Review Online, not so long ago.

“What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?” - Mel Gibson to a female police officer last Friday.

The quotations are posted back-to-back, with no comment, as if the latter is an obvious refutation of the former. But is it? Gibson’s certainly a misogynist as well as an anti-Semite, but I don’t think Lopez said anything about his character. In fact, if you click on the link, you find that she’s talking about his filmmaking. And since “sugar tits” isn’t heard a single time in The Passion, or any other of Gibson’s movies (to the best of my knowledge), his filmmaking has to stand or fall on its own. Sullivan has amply proven hypocrisy, but he hasn’t proven a thing about the content of Gibson’s movies—unless he wants to argue that wonderful ideas, sounds, and pictures can only come from wonderful souls. It would take about ten minutes in any art history class to disabuse him of that notion.

The gotcha moment on The Passion’s anti-Semitism follows much the same deficient logic, and I called it political logic because of its blinkered focus on personality. Gibson’s rant will certainly keep him from ever being elected to Congress, but it can’t touch his movies.

In fact, this is probably the single insight literary criticism has to offer the broader world: The author is irrelevant. If Shakespeare came back from the grave tomorrow and told us what he meant by Hamlet, his interpretation wouldn’t be any more inherently valid than mine. Why? First, art and art criticism are two independent disciplines, drawing on far different skills and frames of mind. As Northrop Frye argued in The Anatomy of Criticism:

The axiom of criticism must be, not that the poet does not know what he is talking about, but that he cannot talk about what he knows. To defend the right of criticism to exist at all, therefore, is to assume that criticism is a structure of thought and knowledge existing in its own right, with some measure of independence from the art it deals with.

Second, once a piece of art is released into the world, it has its own life. It can contain themes and dimensions the artist never consciously conceived; but because art can’t exist without an audience, those themes and dimensions are there if we see them. Making our own readings is the necessary condition of our autonomy as readers. We have to argue for them, but we can’t simply short-circuit the argument by appealing to biography. The Romantics thought Satan was the hero of Paradise Lost; everything I know about John Milton’s personal beliefs might tell me otherwise, but I haven’t made an argument about the poem until I point out exactly where and how they’re misreading.

So let’s step back and apply this line of reasoning to Mel Gibson. He’s offered us an interpretation of his own movie: “The Jews are the cause of all the evil in the world, and my movie shows how they killed Jesus.” From what we now know, that’s what he intended. But do we have to take his word about his movie? No! That would be lazy. We know how film is a complex medium that can sustain multiple readings. We know how an artist’s spoken intentions can go awry, and how his unspoken ones can surface uncalled. We know, as of last Friday, that Mel Gibson is an idiot and probably incapable of intelligent criticism. For all of these reasons, his interpretation is irrelevant.

Now, this doesn’t mean that The Passion is not anti-Semitic. All it means is that arguments to that effect have to come from the movie itself—its portrayal of the Jewish people, its privileging of the New Testament’s most anti-Jewish details, its pornographic violence. I haven’t seen The Passion, but I am personally swayed by what I’ve read of those arguments (Charles Krauthammer has a particularly insightful one here; and, in fairness, Sullivan was arguing on the merits back in 2004). I’m just asking us to discriminate: Folks like Krauthammer are interested in debating art; folks who simply cite the Malibu traffic stop are interested in embarassing their opponents.

This has been a a lot of time to waste on a two-year-old movie—but it’s not really about that. The shoddy thinking that favors personality over content is at the heart of a lot of political idiocies of both left and right, from the insulting “chickenhawk” trope and the “unimpeachable moral authority” of Cindy Sheehan, to Republican cronyism and President Bush’s good ol’ boy appeal. The present fiasco is just a more flamboyant case of the above.

True, we’re not going to be able to wipe out this universal ad-hominization. It appeals to too many of our appetites: drama, simplicity, laziness. For the most part, it is politics. But can we please keep it out of art?

If not, we risk spoiling the simple joy of watching a real-life person get unmasked like a Scooby-Doo villain.

(And he would’ve gotten away with it, if it weren’t for you meddling Jews.)