Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 16
March 7, 2011
Hillary Clinton and Al-Jazeera | Michael Tomasky
I say Bravo, Hillary, for telling the senators last week the US news networks were getting their hats handed to them by Al-Jazeera:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that Al Jazeera is gaining more prominence in the U.S. because it offers "real news" -- something she said American media were falling far short of doing.
Clinton was speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and she said the U.S. is losing the "information war" in the world. Other countries and global news outlets, she said, were making inroads into places like the Middle East more effectively than the United States has. One of the reasons she cited for this was the quality of channels like Al Jazeera. The channel, she said, was "changing peoples' minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective." U.S. news, she added, was not keeping up.
"Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news," Clinton said. "You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners."
If you streamed any Al-Jazeera during the Egypt crisis or have done so more recently, I think you'd probably agree that there's a newsier feel to AJ's coverage. They have their share of talking heads too, but in my experience they put more emphasis on reporting.
And now I read via Wired that AJ-English is launching a show that sounds potentially groundbreaking:
The core idea of The Stream is that it's not scripted in the ordinary way. Rather than give the hosts a script, typed rundown, or teleprompter cues, the producers will make extensive use of tweets, Facebook wall posts, and YouTube videos from their most engaged viewers and the web at large.
That's not to say it will be crowdsourced — producers are still making decisions about what topics to cover — but it will be deeply informed by an ongoing conversation with its viewers online.
"Inherently it is a show that would not exist without these kinds of users," says Shihab-Eldin.
They're even considering "scripting" the show with Storify, a utility that makes it easy to assemble tweets into narratives.
I wonder if this is the kind of thing Keith Olbermann and the folks at Current TV have in mind. One can now foresee the day when we might not even need cable news anchors. That will be the best day for democracy since they passed the civil rights act.
Glenn Beck said:
"You have the Secretary of State of the United States of America saying you cannot get real news here in America," he said. "You can only get it from Al Jazeera and everybody knows it. This is insanity."
Where to begin with that?
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Garton Ash and Peretz on Libya: case studies | Michael Tomasky
There's a sensible way to mull the question of whether the Western powers should intervene in Libya, and an obnoxious way. If I mentioned here Timothy Garton Ash and Marty Peretz, could you guess who represented which view?
Last week in the Guardian, Garton Ash wrote a column weighing precisely the question that had been on my mind and a lot of people's: whether the idea of liberal intervention was still a valid one. He introduces Iraq into evidence as the case against. Then he considers the case for:
Yet alongside these perversions of liberal interventionism, a much more careful, law-abiding and genuinely liberal version of it has quietly continued to develop. Building on the post-1945 tradition of human rights promotion and international humanitarian law, and working with and through the UN, this has brought us the international criminal court and the doctrine of a "responsibility to protect", also endorsed by the UN. To be sure, it is rank hypocrisy for the US, Russia and China to threaten Gaddafi with being arraigned before an ICC whose authority they do not themselves accept. But that's an argument for the US, Russia and China to join the ICC, not for that court to be abolished. If the threat of prosecution persuades some more of Gaddafi's henchmen to defect, this must be a good thing.
And do we not have some responsibility to protect the people who have risen against him, if only in the form of the no-fly zone supported by Libyans such as Muhammad min Libya, and especially if this is to protect them against weapons we sold to their oppressor?
A decade ago an independent international commission that elaborated on the idea of "responsibility to protect" spelled out six criteria for deciding whether military action is justified. Essentially a modernised version of centuries-old Catholic standards for "just war", these criteria are: right authority, just cause, right intention, last resort, proportional means, and reasonable prospects. Bitter experience, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, has taught us that "reasonable prospects" (ie of success) may be the most difficult to judge and achieve.
Reasonable, judicious and insightful as usual. Then today I turn to the former editor-in-chief of The New Republic, who huffs and puffs and tries to blow Barack's house down:
The fact is that Gates has, because of his deeply conservative reluctance to expend some little American power with the freedom fighters in North Africa, on the shores of Tripoli, become someone oh-so-sagely quoted at liberal dinner tables across the country. This is a primordial but cumulative moment for these liberals: They can, they will, now turn their backs on anyone and everyone. No matter who the oppressor, no matter who the victim or hero.
What would Peretz have the US do? As is usually the case with these blusterers, Niall Ferguson often among them, they don't say specifically, because specific commitments are difficult. Peretz seems to want at the very least the imposition of the no-fly zone.
Sure, of course. How can we leave the poor people of Libya blah blah blah? Well, there are implications to a no-fly zone, as I mentioned quickly last week: what if Ghaddafi defies the zone, and the US shoots down a Libyan plane or two? Then what? But conflict would commence even before any such incident, and yes, I am indeed about to quote Robert Gates:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in congressional testimony last week that suppressing Libyan air forces would require offensive military operations against Libya. "A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses."
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Pentagon news conference last week that a no-fly zone would be "an extraordinarily complex operation to set up."
Garton Ash makes two further points, the second one being particularly salient:
... I remain unconvinced that a no-fly zone over Libya is justified – at the time of writing. If it turns out that Gaddafi does still have a secret stock of chemical weapons, and can drop them from the sky, this judgment could change overnight. We should prepare contingency plans. But we have not yet exhausted all other avenues, including trying to pry Gaddafi's cronies away from him by fair means and foul. A no-fly zone would be very difficult to enforce, and might not have anything more than a marginal impact on the ground.
Above all, any form of armed intervention by the west – and the US military says a no-fly zone would require initial bombing of Libyan radar and anti-aircraft facilities – would spoil the greatest pristine glory of these events, which is that they are all about brave men and women liberating themselves.
How long after a military intervention will it take for Ghaddafi, Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, Hugo Chavez and all the other usual suspects to persuade a significant chunk of public opinion, especially but not only in the Middle East, that we're just after the oil? Not long. Once these uprisings smack of western design or direct influence, they will be immediately manipulated by all the above. That may become necessary if things turn especially gruesome, but we aren't there yet at all.
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Wisconsin Democrats deny that they're returning | Michael Tomasky
The buzz this morning is about this report in the Wall Street Journal, which says that the Wisconsin state senate Democrats who've fled the state are about to give up the ghost:
Sen. Mark Miller said he and his fellow Democrats intend to let the full Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker's "budget-repair" bill, which includes the proposed limits on public unions' collective-bargaining rights. The bill, which had been blocked because the missing Democrats were needed for the Senate to have enough members present to vote on it, is expected to pass the Republican-controlled chamber...
...Mr. Miller declined to say how soon the Democratic senators, who left for Illinois on Feb. 17, would return. He said the group needed to address several issues first—including the resolution Senate Republicans passed last week that holds the Democrats in contempt and orders police to detain them when they return to Wisconsin.
Other senators deny this vociferously. Democratic Senator Chris Larson had this to say:
Sen. Miller's comments are taken out of context in the Wall Street Journal article just released. Dems will return when collective bargaining is off the table. That could be soon based on the growing public opposition to the bill and the recall efforts against Republicans. Unfortunately, the WSJ fished for the quote they wanted, skipping this key step in logic: we won't come back until worker's rights are preserved.
Meanwhile, Governor Scott Walker's numbers get worse and worse. In a new state poll, his approval rating is below 50%. The Senate Democrats' is at 50%, with 42% opposing. The approval ratings of the public-employees' and teachers' unions are near 60%. By a slight majority, Wisconsinites disapprove of Walker's union proposal, and by two-to-one they want him to compromise. Ominously for Walker, independents' views match up pretty closely to Democrats' views. Republicans are the outliers. Read all about it here.
I've been puzzling to myself for a while now about the Democrats' strategy. I will acknowledge that if Republican state legislators in some state did this when the Democratic governor was, say, trying to raise taxes on the upper brackets, I'd probably be fulminating against them. There is obvious truth to the idea that the election went the way it went, and if the Democrats wanted to stop something like this, the time to do so was last year by electing more Democrats. These realities will probably catch up with the D's eventually.
But why is (liberal and moderate) public opinion in their corner? Because of Walker's imperiousness, I would reckon. If the Democrats are behaving in an un-democratic way, so too did Walker, insisting on no compromises and only three days of debate.
In addition, there's a deeper principle at issue here. This isn't the same, for example, as that Texas episode a few years ago, when Republicans fled that state in a redistricting fight. There is no principle at stake in something like that. It's just politics and power. But this involves a pretty core principle, so voters appear to be more focused on that than on tactics.
As I've said repeatedly, Walker has the votes and will probably get his bill eventually. Will the state's voters hold it against him, or will it all be forgotten a year from now? I don't know the state's politics well enough to know that, but on the national level I suspect it revs up hard-core Democrats who did not vote in big numbers in 2010 to get out and vote in 2012 and 2014.
Wisconsin is a longshot for Republicans at the presidential level in any case, and people who said what happened there last year could portend a GOP win in 2012 were being hopeful (or fatalistic as the case may be). The 2010 electorate, there as elsewhere, skewed older and far more conservative than in the comparable 2006 midterm election. Check out these numbers.
The 2012 electorate will be very different from that, so if nothing else Walker is probably guaranteeing an Obama win there, not that that does the state's unions all that much good.
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March 4, 2011
The budget battle: Obama missing in inaction | Michael Tomasky
There's a worrying sense of White House inertia over the cuts debate. It's time the president showed some leadership
I was at a lunch the other day with five friends and friendly acquaintances. All political insiders, all liberals. During a lull, someone asked a general question about Barack Obama: how we thought he was doing these days. Nervous glances were exchanged, no words spoken, and we moved on.
If my lunch companions' anxieties were the same as mine, and I think they were, they weren't general. Generally, he's doing all right. I think the anxiety was about the budget negotiations. We all sensed, I believe, that the White House is on the verge of getting rolled, and Obama, after that successful December of legislative wins in the lame-duck session and a reasonably assertive start to the New Year, has fallen into that passivity we saw a lot of last year and isn't leading.
Here's the budget situation in a nutshell. The Republicans have put $61bn in domestic cuts on the table. The Democrats don't want that, but know they have to cut. If there's no agreement, there's still a good chance of a government shutdown.
And to Democrats' surprise, polls have not consistently shown that people would blame the GOP. One recent poll showed the public evenly split: 35% blaming Obama and 36% blaming the GOP. Worse, independents in this poll leaned slightly towards blaming the president.
That was some dose of cold water in Democrats' faces. The conventional wisdom is that people will blame Republicans. But three points. "People" includes the folks who think Obama is a Kenyan Muslim anti-Christ, so we know which side they'll blame. Second, Republicans got the blame back in the 1990s because Newt Gingrich was a megalomaniac. And third, it does seem that there is more public sentiment for cuts this time.
The Democrats are in their usual posture: divided. Friday's Politico reports:
"The Democrats' disarray has been evident at several levels. When the House on Tuesday passed a two-week spending extension, the party was split down the middle, with minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California spearheading the opposition and minority whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland favoring the deal – a divide that exposed once again the longrunning rivalry between the Pelosi and the Hoyer factions in the House.
"Senate Democrats have also struggled with an erratic response, first proposing a two-week extension of existing spending, then quickly embracing some modest cuts while failing to offer a long-term compromise. White House press secretary Jay Carney floated a trial balloon for a one-month spending extension, only to have majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada deflate it an hour later. In another breakdown a few days earlier, New York Senator Chuck Schumer called the emerging Republican spending plan "a recipe for a double-dip recession", as Reid was preparing to embrace the deal.
"Perhaps most worrisome for Obama and his party is that they've shown no ability to rally behind a long-term budget proposal – even though the White House pitched its first offer Thursday evening.'We haven't yet found a common voice,' Representative Dennis Cardoza (Democrat, California) said. 'Eventually, the president will take the lead. I don't know if the White House has a strategy for [the current spending bill]. If they don't, the Republicans will be strengthened.'"
Politico loves the "Dems in disarray" story line and probably puts too much emphasis on it. Not one Democrat in the House voted for the GOP budget. Not one – not a single "blue dog". That's unity. But it's unity in opposition to something, which is easier to achieve than unity for something.
Here's what comes next, from Friday's Washington Post:
"The White House proposed Thursday to trim an additional $6.5bn from federal programmes this year as Vice President Biden opened talks with congressional leaders aimed at funding the government through 30 September and averting a shutdown […]
"The White House proposal falls far short of the $61bn the House voted last month to slash from current funding levels. But senior administration officials characterised it as an opening bid in a process that is likely to stretch on for days.
'We're willing to cut further if we can find common ground on a budget that we think reduces spending in the right way while protecting our investments in education, innovation and research,' White House economic adviser Gene B Sperling told reporters […]"Both measures are expected to fall short of the 60 votes necessary to avert a filibuster. Aides in both parties said that would be progress: failure in the Senate would show that neither plan is workable and that a compromise is needed. Democratic leaders could then press reluctant liberals to support additional spending cuts. And Republican leaders would have fresh leverage with the independent-minded bloc of House conservatives who forced them to pursue far more ambitious cuts than were first proposed."
That suggests a path toward compromise, but frankly, a compromise in which the GOP gets about two-thirds of its loaf. And Obama isn't doing much to persuade or influence public opinion. In addition, someone I heard on the radio Thursday made a very interesting point. This person observed that Republicans aren't talking about a shutdown much at all, while Democrats have regularly raised the possibility. This has probably had the effect of linking the shutdown in people's minds to the Democrats, who, after all, are the ones talking about it. Could well be.
In any case, Obama needs to assert himself next week. This has started to feel like last summer, when liberals were waiting for the White House to unveil its midterm election strategy. And like the visa-less travellers in Casablanca, we waited. And waited. And … waited.
Barack ObamaObama administrationUS politicsUS CongressUnited StatesRepublicansDemocratsPublic financeMichael Tomaskyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
March 3, 2011
First ever Tomasky blog guest quiz | Michael Tomasky
As promised, we unroll the concept of the guest quiz. Our first offering is from our friend and reliable commenter Samuel Johnson, and the subject is...take a guess. Instructions will appear in the next week or two about how others of you can submit (SJ came to my drinks session in Holborn last year and thus had a deserved inside track). From the next paragraph down, all words thoughts and deeds are his, not mine, so he gets the credit and the blame. It's pretty hard. I got seven and three-fifths. Good luck.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is the most quoted writer in the English language after Shakespeare. He was born in poverty in Staffordshire; dropped out of college for want of funds, failed as a teacher and drifted, out of necessity, into writing and to London, the largest city in Europe in 1750.
To earn a crust between 1740 and 1743 he "edited" parliamentary debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, which is to say that he invented much of the dialogue at a time when reporting such debates directly was punishable as a breach of privileges of the House. (Suppression of political reporting ended in 1771 by which time our Tomasky forbear had moved on, having produced among other things his great dictionary of the English language, a monumental work of scholarship that remained unsurpassed until the advent of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later).
I first picked up Boswell's Life of Johnson, widely reputed to be the greatest biography ever, with limited expectations, but soon discovered that no one, and certainly not an Irishman, could fail to enjoy the Scottish-English banter in it, nor Johnson's brilliant conversation. Boswell's amorous adventures and anxieties, recounted in his Journal, with more Johnsoniana, add an enjoyable Pepysian dimension to the story of these now inextricably linked names. To borrow a Boswellism, there are few finer ways to "solace one's existence" than to appreciate Johnson. Alas, we can only guess what was lost when he burned all his personal papers shortly before he died. And on that note, let us begin.
1. Johnson dropped out of Oxford University unable to afford to continue his education. Which university later granted him an honorary doctorate?
a. Oxford University
b. Cambridge University
c. Trinity College Dublin
d. University of Edinburgh
2. According to Johnson: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for"
a. glory
b. fame
c. money
d. love
3. Match the words and Johnson's definitions
i. jobbernowl
ii. lexicographer
iii. politician
iv. patriot
a. harmless drudge
b. scoundrel
c. a man of artifice
d. blockhead
4. Much enquiry having been made concerning a gentleman, who had quitted a company where Johnson was, and no information being obtained; at last Johnson observed, that "he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was ______".
a. an accountant
b. a wifebeater
c. an attorney
d. a patron
5. On occasion Johnson was known to purchase oysters for Hodge. Hodge was:
a. an indigent neighbour
b. his cat
c. a lodger with a predilection for salty bivalves
d. his housekeeper
6. What was the relative worth or proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman, according to Johnson?
a. 1 to 1000
b. 2 to 1500
c. 3 to 1600
d. 4 to 1700
7. Which of the following was not an original member of the Literary Club founded in London in 1764 by Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds?
a. Adam Smith
b. Edmund Burke
c. Edward Gibbon
d. Joseph Banks
e. Oliver Goldsmith
8. Match the nationalities and Johnson's prejudices:
a. Are a fair people; -- they never speak well of one another
b. They are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging
c. Nature has done more for _____ ; but they have done less for themselves than the Scotch have done
d. (They have) meat and drink enough to give the inhabitants sufficient strength to run away from home
e. Their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm
The:
1. Americans
2. Irish
3. Scottish
4. English
5. French
9. Mrs. Hester Thrale was a friend of Johnson's who indulged his interest in:
a. fine porcelain
b. romantic poetry
c. shackles and handcuffs
d. Italian Renaissance art
10. Johnson replied, "I find that is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help" when Boswell said " __________, I cannot help it."
a. Aye, I like porridge
b. I am Scottish
c. Whisky likes me
d. I play the pipes
11. According to Johnson, "A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then"
a. eaten fresh
b. served cold
c. thrown out
d. sprinkled with parsley
12. Johnson believed that "A decent provision for _____, is the true test of civilization."
a. young artists
b. writers and booksellers
c. the poor
d. teachers
13. Johnson observed that "Every man is, or hopes to be,"
a. master of his destiny
b. the apple of his mother's eye
c. the object of a lady's affections
d. an idler
Relations with the English are often triangular: the French and Scottish Bon Accord Alliance against the auld enemy; the French and American alliance likewise; and not least: Irishman, Scotsman and Englishman jokes; In several sports, e.g., rugby, and anything played by Australians, there is a particular hatred of losing to the English and satisfaction at defeating them (Google "Your boys took one hell of a beating"; or for an even more glorious instance of giant-killing read today's accounts in The Guardian of Ireland's defeating the English at cricket). Do you have to play to really get the grudge? What other international antagonisms are amusingly celebrated in the work of great writers?
Answers
1-c; 2-c; 3: i-d, ii-a, iii-c, iv-b; 4-c; 5-b; 6-c; 7-a; 8: a-2, b-1, c-5, d-3, e-4; 9-d ; 10-b; 11-c; 12-c; 13-d
Notes:
1. Trinity, a sister of Oxford and Cambridge, granted Johnson an honorary doctorate of laws in 1765 (it took Oxford another 10 years to do so). He has been known as Dr. Johnson ever since.
2. He also said "A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it."
3. Johnson's dictionary contained numerous witticisms, perhaps most famously his definition of oats ("A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"), and this small putdown of his own profession. His "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" (it is generally assumed that he was referring to FALSE patriotism or the misuse of patriotism) is quoted by Boswell.
4. When his dictionary Johnson appealed unsuccessfully to the wealthy Earl of Chesterfield for financial support. At the last minute the Earl made public endorsements of the project, inspiring Johnson's famous rebuke "Is not a Patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water - and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?" His dictionary defines a patron thus: Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.
5. Oysters were food for the poor once. Johnson was famous for his acts of charity to all and sundry; beggars, prostitutes, the homeless and the unlucky, even the condemned. Although politically conservative he was liberal in his compassion for others. He left his estate to a freed Jamaican slave who worked for him.
6. When he undertook to create a dictionary in 3 years (it actually took 9) he was asked how he could do so when the Academie Francaise had 40 scholars working for 40 years on a similar labour for the French language. Johnson asserted that his 3 years to 40 times 40 represented the relative worth of an Englishman to a Frenchman.
7. Adam Smith was a later member. The club met weekly for dinner in Gerrard Street in Soho. New members had to be elected unanimously.
8. Johnson made many humorous jibes about the Scots to taunt his friend Boswell, but reserved some of strongest criticism for Americans of whom he said "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American".
9. This has been inferred from ONE line in his diary. It's by no means certain.
10. More: "The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!"
11. Johnson's table manners were a little uncouth but his wit made him a treasured guest. The full quote ends "as good for nothing."
12. Johnson's London was the original Hogarthian canvas. He knew well that force of circumstance directed the lives of many, including e.g., sailors (press gangs roamed the streets conscripting them). A ship to Johnson was "a jail with a chance of being drowned".
13. No man ever reproached himself more strongly for his failings or made more earnest resolutions to improve himself than Johnson. Poignant reading still.
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Ohio anti-union bill advances | Michael Tomasky
More anti-union action, this time in Ohio under new GOP Governor John Kasich (another former Fox News contributor, for what it's worth). From TPM:
The Ohio State Senate just passed the controversial SB 5, aimed a limiting unionized state employees' ability to collectively bargain or go on strike.In an indication of how divisive the legislation is in the Buckeye State, the final vote in the Senate was 17-16. The bill now moves to the state House, which like the Senate, is under Republican control.
Gov. John Kasich (R) has endorsed the measure and is expected to sign it when it reaches his desk.
Democrats united against the bill, and they needed seven Republican members to join with them to stop it. In the end they got six.
Pushing the bill through the Senate has been tough for supporters of the plan, with the Republican leader of the state Senate removing two Republicans opposed to the measure to get the bill to the Senate floor today.
Say what? Yup. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Cincinnnati Fire Department Lt. Mark Sanders, president of the Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters, ripped Senate President Tom Niehaus of New Richmond today for abruptly removing Sen. Bill Seitz of Green Township from a committee that narrowly approved Senate Bill 5 this morning, by a 7-5 vote.Another Republican, Sen. Scott Oelslager of North Canton, was removed from the Senate Rules Committee to avoid a split vote and get the bill to the 33-member Senate floor this afternoon.
UPDATE: Seitz and Oelslager joined all 10 Democrats in voting against the bill, but fell one vote short. Here is Enquirer coverage of 17 to 16 vote passage of Senate Bill 5.
"That's my senator," Sanders said of Seitz. "He represents my area. I don't have that voice anymore. What kind of democracy do we have? I think the Senate has forgotten Ohioans today."
"We're going to leave no stone unturned," Sanders said of recourse should the full Senate pass the legislation that guts the state's 27-year-old collective bargaining law.
Well, that's one way to do it. Just imagine if Harry Reid had removed a Republican senator from a committee to pass an Obama bill through.
Yep, it's shady, and here's hoping Sanders and his brethren and sistren can claim a scalp come election time.
But the episode does serve as a reminder of something that has gone to my reading all but unmentioned in press coverage of these fights. At the state and local level, there is indeed such a thing as a pro-union Republican.
Various estimates I'm familiar with say that roughly 35% of public-employee union members are Republicans. Some are cops and fire fighters and work in other professions and trades that skew GOP, and some are conservative because of cultural issues and so on. They vote for Republicans, but they prefer voting for Republicans who respect basic bargaining rights, and the two given the boot above obviously do. So the union movement has a bit of leverage into the GOP at the state and local level, something that people on the ground in Wisconsin are well aware of.
I have to travel today and tomorrow, so this will be it for today, except for one surprise post coming shortly. I'll probably do one in the morning tomorrow.
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The party of weird: the GOP 2012 field
My friend Mark Alan Stamaty, one of the great political cartoonists of our time, used to write a strip called "Washingtoon" whose lead character was a congressman called Bob Forehead. I don't recall that Forehead was ever explicitly identified as a Republican, but he clearly was that: a man of the heartland, of simple values, of imprecations cast toward the big-spending elitists back when Ronald Reagan had only just made that a popular sport. And he was, by his creator's design, a walking cliche - the famous "blow-dried" politician, with the plastic and automatic smile and with every hair in place.
We are at this moment in a gestational phase as regards the likely array of Republican presidential candidates in 2012, and lately I've been thinking about Forehead. Because you look at these people, and I'm talking about seven or eight of them, and there's only one Forehead in the bunch. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has fewer hairs out of place than Forehead himself did, and Forehead was a cartoon.
Other than that, the GOP wannabees are a strange assemblage. For a group of people who come from the party that has usually striven to reflect 1950s sitcom spotlessness, these people look less like the perfect family than the Addams Family.
Gomez is clearly Newt Gingrich, who, with Rick Santorum, was pushed off the air yesterday by Fox News in that rare move on Fox's part that vaguely resembles doing something ethical. You can almost picture Newt, the tectonic plates in his busy mind constantly shifting and colliding, blowing up train sets.
Morticia...Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann?
Actually, I give the nod here to Bachmann. It's not just the raven hair. She is, in her way, a far more layered figure than Palin. The former half-term governor is just not very intelligent and is proud of it. Bachmann, on the other hand, is fairly intelligent: remember, she was reading a "snotty" Gore Vidal novel when it struck her that she was really a Republican. She says outlandish and bizarre things, but not because she's ignorant: she says them because she believes them. And she is - certianly more than Palin, who is a sort of freelance figure interested chiefly in Sarah - the matriarch of the tea party movement.
Okay, I'll stop with the direct analogues there. I concede there's not an Uncle Fester in the bunch. But the point is, they're a, let us say, unruly assemblage. Look, by way of comparison, at the 1988 GOP field. George H.W. Bush, a vice president, oil millionaire and former CIA chief. Al Haig, former general and White House chief of staff. Pete Du Pont, governor and gazillionaire. Bob Dole, respected senator-insider. Paul Laxalt, ditto. Now these were good solid Republicans. Intending no disrespect to them, I'd say they were more Forehead-ish than not: straightforward, heartland-besotted, ruling-class politicians.
Of course, televangelist Pat Robertson was in that lineup. His was certainly a kind of Dada candidacy, which made the leap from Duchamp to Dali (surreal, in other words) when he won the Iowa caucuses. That was the first glimmer, now that I think about it, of establishment-loathing, right-wing protest politics in America. Bachmann, Palin, and even Mike Huckabee (a southern baptist preacher) are Robertson's inheritors.
What's all this about? How did we go in a generation from a group of Foreheads to a collection of people straining to outdo one another with their dark fulminations about Muslims and socialists and birth certificates and Kenya?
There are many reasons, most of them well-known. The GOP's increasing lurch (heh heh) to the right over the years. The ascendancy of the Clintons, who drove the right mad. The ascendancy of Obama, with his particular set of traits. But I think there may also be something to this idea: conservatives have adopted, to some extent, a counter-cultural way of thinking.
The counter-culture, of course, comes from the 60s and the left. Its motto was: question authority. Through the 1970s and the 1980s, this counter-culture bled into mainstream culture. Conservatives hated this. That is, they hated (and hate) the specific values that came from the left: freer love, more rights for out-groups, hatred of corporations, protests against America, etc.
But at the same time, they absorbed (inevitably, since they live in the culture like the rest of us) something of the mindset of questioning authority. And over time, in an evolutionary process, they lashed that mindset to their values: moral rectitude, impatience with non-conformity, worship of corporations, hatred of hippies (broadly defined, such that Obama is kind of a hippie).
In this way, today's GOP does sort of resemble what happened with the Democratic Party in 1972. There was an energy then, among liberal-left youth, that the party tried to exploit and fashion toward its own purposes. But the energy was stronger than the party establishment. And Ed Muskie, the establishment's candidate, wasn't able to hold the line.
There is little doubt that the GOP establishment of our time is better prepared for the onslaught than was the Democratic establishment of George McGovern's time. So they may be able to contain the virus and make sure Romney gets it. Or Mitch Daniels, maybe, the Indiana governor. But Daniels is the David Brooks candidate: the candidate many liberals could grudgingly respect. For that reason, I doubt the right-wing counter-culturalists will have much truck with him.
And maybe, being Republicans - believers in order and authority to their core - the right-wing counter-culturalists won't press as hard as their left-wing predecessors did in the 70s. Maybe they'll get this out of their systems and revert to form.
But it's also reasonable to guess that this paroxysm of mania has to play itself out over the course of one presidential election. Let the people in the rumpus room have their way - once. Then the adults take back over. Unless the rumpus roomers somehow win, which is not likely but not impossible. In which case America will be blowing up more than toy trains.
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The party of weird: the GOP 2012 field | Michael Tomasky
The likely Republican party challengers to Obama represent the rise of something strange: the rightwing counterculture
My friend Mark Alan Stamaty, one of the great political cartoonists of our time, used to write a strip called "Washingtoon" whose lead character was a congressman called Bob Forehead. I don't recall that Forehead was ever explicitly identified as a Republican, but he clearly was that: a man of the heartland, of simple values, of imprecations cast toward the big-spending elitists back when Ronald Reagan had only just made that a popular sport. And he was, by his creator's design, a walking cliche – the famous "blow-dried" politician, with the plastic and automatic smile and with every hair in place.
We are at this moment in a gestational phase as regards the likely array of Republican presidential candidates in 2012, and lately I've been thinking about Forehead. Because you look at these people, and I'm talking about seven or eight of them, and there's only one Forehead in the bunch. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has fewer hairs out of place than Forehead himself did, and Forehead was a cartoon.
Other than that, the GOP wannabees are a strange assemblage. For a group of people who come from the party that has usually striven to reflect 1950s sitcom spotlessness, these people look less like the perfect family than the Addams Family.
Gomez is clearly Newt Gingrich, who, with Rick Santorum, was pushed off the air yesterday by Fox News in that rare move on Fox's part that vaguely resembles doing something ethical. You can almost picture Newt, the tectonic plates in his busy mind constantly shifting and colliding, blowing up train sets.
Morticia … Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann?
Actually, I give the nod here to Bachmann. It's not just the raven hair. She is, in her way, a far more layered figure than Palin. The former half-term governor is just not very intelligent and is proud of it. Bachmann, on the other hand, is fairly intelligent: remember, she was reading a "snotty" Gore Vidal novel when it struck her that she was really a Republican. She says outlandish and bizarre things, but not because she's ignorant: she says them because she believes them. And she is – certianly more than Palin, who is a sort of freelance figure interested chiefly in Sarah – the matriarch of the tea party movement.
OK, I'll stop with the direct analogues there. I concede there's not an Uncle Fester in the bunch. But the point is, they're a, let us say, unruly assemblage. Look, by way of comparison, at the 1988 GOP field. George H.W. Bush, a vice president, oil millionaire and former CIA chief. Al Haig, former general and White House chief of staff. Pete Du Pont, governor and gazillionaire. Bob Dole, respected senator-insider. Paul Laxalt, ditto. Now these were good solid Republicans. Intending no disrespect to them, I'd say they were more Forehead-ish than not: straightforward, heartland-besotted, ruling-class politicians.
Of course, televangelist Pat Robertson was in that lineup. His was certainly a kind of Dada candidacy, which made the leap from Duchamp to Dali (surreal, in other words) when he won the Iowa caucuses. That was the first glimmer, now that I think about it, of establishment-loathing, rightwing protest politics in America. Bachmann, Palin and even Mike Huckabee (a southern baptist preacher) are Robertson's inheritors.
What's all this about? How did we go in a generation from a group of Foreheads to a collection of people straining to outdo one another with their dark fulminations about Muslims and socialists and birth certificates and Kenya?
There are many reasons, most of them well-known. The GOP's increasing lurch (heh heh) to the right over the years. The ascendancy of the Clintons, who drove the right mad. The ascendancy of Obama, with his particular set of traits. But I think there may also be something to this idea: conservatives have adopted, to some extent, a counter-cultural way of thinking.
The counter-culture, of course, comes from the 60s and the left. Its motto was: question authority. Through the 1970s and the 1980s, this counter-culture bled into mainstream culture. Conservatives hated this. That is, they hated (and hate) the specific values that came from the left: freer love, more rights for out-groups, hatred of corporations, protests against America, etc.
But at the same time, they absorbed (inevitably, since they live in the culture like the rest of us) something of the mindset of questioning authority. And over time, in an evolutionary process, they lashed that mindset to their values: moral rectitude, impatience with non-conformity, worship of corporations, hatred of hippies (broadly defined, such that Obama is kind of a hippie).
In this way, today's GOP does sort of resemble what happened with the Democratic party in 1972. There was an energy then, among liberal-left youth, that the party tried to exploit and fashion toward its own purposes. But the energy was stronger than the party establishment. And Ed Muskie, the establishment's candidate, wasn't able to hold the line.
There is little doubt that the GOP establishment of our time is better prepared for the onslaught than was the Democratic establishment of George McGovern's time. So they may be able to contain the virus and make sure Romney gets it. Or Mitch Daniels, maybe, the Indiana governor. But Daniels is the David Brooks candidate: the candidate many liberals could grudgingly respect. For that reason, I doubt the right-wing counter-culturalists will have much truck with him.
And maybe, being Republicans – believers in order and authority to their core – the rightwing counterculturalists won't press as hard as their leftwing predecessors did in the 70s. Maybe they'll get this out of their systems and revert to form.
But it's also reasonable to guess that this paroxysm of mania has to play itself out over the course of one presidential election. Let the people in the rumpus room have their way – once. Then the adults take back over. Unless the rumpus roomers somehow win, which is not likely but not impossible. In which case America will be blowing up more than toy trains.
US elections 2012RepublicansSarah PalinMike HuckabeeMitt RomneyNewt GingrichMichele BachmannUS politicsUnited StatesMichael Tomaskyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
March 2, 2011
No, this wasn't an Onion headline | Michael Tomasky
I refer to this headline, from HuffPo:
Fetus Set to 'Testify' in Favor of Ohio Abortion Bill
The article:
A Christian pro-life group in Ohio is touting their plan to coordinate testimony of a nine-week old fetus -- the "youngest to ever testify" -- in favor of an anti-abortion bill."For the first time in a committee hearing, legislators will be able to see and hear the beating heart of a baby in the womb--just like the ones the Heartbeat Bill will protect," Janet (Folger) Porter, President of the group Faith2Action, said in a release.
In February, Ohio state Rep. Lynn Wachtmann (R) introduced a piece of legislation that would forbid abortions in any case in which the fetus had a detectable heartbeat, a development that can come as early as 18 days into a pregnancy.
It seems that the bill won't pass, or at least won't hold up in court. But my oh my. I admit to being a tad disappointed when I read the whole article, because it was my hope that the fetus was going to speak out against the bloated salaries and high living habits of the state's public employees.
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The Darrell Issa and Mark Leibovich leak story | Michael Tomasky
Okay, I'm sort of starting to get myself worked up about this story. If you haven't followed it, Darrell Issa is a GOP congressman from California. He has - had - a press aide named Kurt Bardella. Meanwhile there's a New York Times reporter called Mark Leibovich. He is writing a book about the inside culture of Washington or some such. Bardella, we learn from Politico, was in the habit of sending Leibovich copies of his communications with other journalists. Issa just fired Bardella.
It's actually a pretty big scandal. The reasons why a press secretary should not be sharing journalists' emails with another journalist ought to be fairly obvious. And it will have an impact, gratifyingly, on Issa. He runs the House's investigations committee and so has more or less carte blanche (and a good-sized staff and budget) to investigate anything he wants to investigate about the administration. One of his 1990s predecessors kept the Clinton people tied up in knots with a bunch of fake "scandals" that the media reflexively and stupidly lapped up. So to the extent that this damages Issa's (long I, like EYE-suh) credibility with the media, that's all to the good.
Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker has the most interesting read on it, though - and it has less to do with Issa and Bardella than with the journalists who cover them. Lizza profiled Issa not too long ago, so he was hanging around with Bardella and other staff. He writes today (link above):
I'm somewhat mystified that Issa required an "investigation" to get to the bottom of this, because inside Issa's office there was no secret about Bardella's cooperation. When I was writing my profile of Issa, Bardella openly discussed his cooperation with Leibovich—and not just with me, but with his direct boss as well. For example, during a meeting with Bardella and Issa's chief of staff, Dale Neugebauer, the three of us had a light-hearted discussion about how extensively Bardella was working with Leibovich.
"So you know about this, right?" I asked Neugebauer.
"Oh yeah. Yeah, he knows," Bardella said.
"He [Bardella] just got to Washington and he's got a book about him coming out," I noted.
"I know, no kidding," Neugebauer said.
In a later conversation, Bardella told me, "I've shared a lot with [Leibovich]." He added, "I have provided him with a lot of content. I BCC him on certain projects that I'm working on." Bardella said he shared information that shows "this is how it happens" and "this is the conversation I'm having right now."
"Do the other folks in the office know?" I asked.
"Yeah," Bardella said, and he gave me an example of the type of stuff he shares: "Here's this inquiry I got from a reporter. Here's what I said to my staff about it, here's the story, here's the e-mail I just got from so-and-so, another reporter who's upset that I gave his story to [someone else]."
A lot of what's "revealed" here isn't really very interesting. Bardella had an easier time planting stories with conservative outlets than mainstream ones. Wow. But then there's this from Lizza, which is pretty astonishing. This is Bardella speaking, as quoted by Lizza in his Issa profile:
[R]eporters e-mail me saying, "Hey, I'm writing this story on this thing. Do you think you guys might want to investigate it? If so, if you get some documents, can you give them to me?" I'm, like, "You guys are going to write that we're the ones wanting to do all the investigating, but you guys are literally the ones trying to egg us on to do that!"
That's astonishing, no? Back when I was a beat reporter in New York, if I got wind that a state legislative committee, say, was investigating something about the Pataki administration, I'd call the committee and say I hear you're investigating and try to establish a relationship and try to get something. That's normal.
But to do what Bardella lays out above...that is sleazy. And note that these reporters, i.e. members of the "liberal media," are offering to serve as vessels for Issa (Republican) against the administration (Democratic). I just note that for the record. That's not the part that bothers me. The part that bothers me is obvious. It's waaaaaay over the line for reporters to say in essence, hey, if you investigate X, I'll write your press releases. I'm such a babe in the woods sometimes.
All this makes the prospect of Leibovich's book far more interesting to me than I ever would have thought. As Lizza notes: "From what I know of what Bardella shared, the beat reporters who cover Issa and engaged in this kind of game with Bardella will be the ones most embarrassed by the e-mails that Leibovich possesses."
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