Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 26

Frum's state of the union | Michael Tomasky

David Frum has penned, for Esquire, a state of the union address he'd like to see Obama give, and while I don't agree with everything in it, I think on balance it's pretty darn good. It opens:

The Constitution requires the president to address Congress on the state of our union. But the American people already know the answer. These are difficult times. More Americans have been out of work for longer than at any time since World War II. Homes foreclosed, retirement savings lost, dreams deferred. You don't need a man in a blue suit in a remote capital to appear on your television to tell you the story of your life.

What you need from your political leaders are solutions to our shared problems. You are not asking for miracles, and I understand that. But you are insisting that your government listen to you — work for you — and deliver some realistic plans to make your life better. And I understand that, too.

For a decade now, almost everything you've heard from your federal government has been bad news. From the failure to prevent 9/11 to the disappointing results of the economic stimulus, it seems that government has again and again failed to deliver the results the American people had a right to expect.

Well, he's not going to talk about the "disappointing results" of the stimulus, but the tone here is good - plain-spoken and nonpartisan, and Frum maintains it throughout.

Most liberals won't like Frum's version, of course, because there's no red meat about protecting Social Security (he doesn't get into entitlements at all) and other things like that (although he does acknowledge the existence of climate change).

Here's a key substantive passage:

Instead, we should reform our tax code to lower taxes on work, saving, and investment. We should move to a new kind of tax code, with higher taxes on consumption and pollution.

Imagine this future: Every dollar you save is untaxed. Period. The first $15,000 you spend on basic necessities — that goes untaxed, too. The next $15,000 pays a low rate of tax. Each additional $15,000 of spending is taxed at a slightly higher rate.

What this means is that the successful entrepreneur who earns $1 million from his or her business will face no tax on any money he or she reinvests in the business. If that entrepreneur can get by with a modest lifestyle, they'll pay a modest rate of tax. If they want to spend the whole $1 million, that's their business, but they'll pay a higher rate of tax.

Savers pay less, spenders pay more — we reduce our debt and invest in our future.

Interesting. Sounds suspiciously like punishing success! I thought it was a sign of moral superiority to go out and toast a big deal by popping a $1,500 bottle of Screaming Eagle.

Frum's reverie is interesting mostly because, since Obama is gearing up for a big budget battle with Republicans, most liberals will be listening to the speech to see what partisan things he says: what line he draws on entitlements and domestic discretionary spending.

But Frum's exercise reminds us that a president is supposed to be not just the head of his party but the leader of the nation, and he has to do more than buck up the ranks. Noted.

Barack ObamaMichael Tomasky
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Romney and Huckabee watch | Michael Tomasky

It's getting plainer and plainer that Mitt Romney doesn't have great judgment. Which doesn't necessarily mean he won't be the nominee. But he doesn't appear to be that good at politics.

From today's Boston Globe:

As the former Massachusetts governor lays the groundwork for a possible second presidential run, he has largely shunned Tea Party activists in key primary states, including the state he must win if he enters the race, New Hampshire. Thus far, Romney is on track to present himself as the establishment candidate — a responsible, mainstream Republican leader with the necessary financial resources and credentials to beat President Obama.

But the approach carries potential risks, as the insurgent Tea Party movement shifts its focus from last year's midterms and seeks to exert its influence on the presidential election.

Even in traditionally moderate New Hampshire, the Tea Party is ascendant. It tugged the state's GOP congressional candidates sharply rightward last year, and one of its supporters is mounting a strong challenge in tomorrow's election for the GOP state chairmanship. In a development that was startling even for a state with the motto "Live Free or Die,'' the Legislature recently decided that lawmakers and visitors should be allowed to carry concealed weapons in the State House.

I have trouble seeing the upside to behaving like this. As the article notes, he has to win New Hampshire. Now I am obviously not on the ground there, but I know enough to know that New Hampshire is a very conservative state, different in important ways from the rest of New England, so you'd have to think the tea party is reasonably well established there.

So Romney obviously wants to be the mainstream establishment person. But then this happens, via Frum Forum:

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Karl Rove addresses what many consider is Mitt Romney's biggest problem in the Republican presidential primaries.

Said Rove: "My view is this year is a year in which every candidate gets a chance to recognize their challenges, to recognize their strengths, and to overcome their challenges, and to bolster their strengths. And if Mitt Romney recognizes that his answer on why on what they did in Massachusetts looks so much like what Obama tried to do to the country, if he recognizes that is a problem, then he'll work his way out of the problem. If he doesn't, he doesn't."

Rove controls more establishment money than any other single figure. So if Rove says it, Romney will have to do it. But won't he look silly? His signal achievement (and he used to call it such). Backing away from it will just reinforce the old "no core" charge.

It often turns out that the nominee of a given party in a given election ends up being the person least offensive to the party's various interest groups. This was John Kerry in 2004, and it was John McCain on the GOP side last time. If that becomes the dynamic, Romney will be the man. But so far he's not proving very adept at navigating the waters.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee may have stepped in some this morning. From TPM, reporting on his appearance on Fox this morning:

"What you will hears is the word 'draconian'," Huckabee said. "It will come from Democrats and middle of the road Republicans. But this boat needs to be rocked. One of the things I learned in government is necessity is the mother of invention. If you have to make cuts and you force the cuts, you will find ways to get the job done. Part of the answer to that is create incentives so the employees who are left get an award and benefit for getting the agency done."

Emphasis added.

The implication's pretty clear: If you cut domestic discretionary spending by $100 billion in a year, you bleed salaries or staff. Republicans generally don't acknowledge that spending cuts cost jobs during periods of high unemployment. They either contend that spending cuts create jobs, or that the private sector fills the gap, or that public-sector jobs don't count as jobs. Huckabee's silent on that score, but at least seems aware that people will be laid off.

This GOP field is looking pretty lame-o, is it not? Romney still isn't ready for prime time. Huckabee just did the above, and let's face it, not to offend anyone, but he's too overweight to win the presidency (not to say he doesn't have time to diet). I've been talking up Mitch Daniels lately, but two sage observers of the scene reminded me that he's 5'7" and rumpled, and just not ready for the big stage.

The bigger problem is not the candidates, but the base, and its ever-increasing list of litmus questions. There may be only one candidate pure enough for them at the end of the day.

Mitt RomneyMike HuckabeeUS elections 2012Michael Tomasky
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Friday quiz: and in conclusion... | Michael Tomasky

Next Tuesday, Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, and it's an unusually important speech, what with the GOP now partly in charge. We also just passed the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy's famous inaugural address. Both of these set me thinking about speeches. And so, today's subject: lines from famous speeches throughout history.

I'm not just relying on the tippy-top most famous speeches in history, and in all cases, as you'll see, I'm not going with the most famous line. Pay any price and bear any burden is a little too easy for you lot. You're all more clever than that (well, most of you). We're also going pretty international here, and they're not even all from political leaders, just to spice things up a bit. Some of them are hard, but I think in each case there are little hints buried inside the quotation that should help you deduce the correct answer.

Before we get going, let me raise the subject, broached by our indefatigable SamJohnson back in December, of reader-constructed quizzes. I'm all for this. Here's my proposal. No reader quiz will actually take the place of a Friday quiz. Rather, they will supplement the Friday quiz and run at other points across the week. I also think they should be shorter, like maybe six or eight questions. Doing this right actually takes a fair amount of time, and I wouldn't want to burden anyone that much.

How many of you would be interested in constructing quizzes? I'd like a rough head count. And give a sense of the general subject area in which you might try to stump the rest of us, although I won't hold you to it. And we'll start putting it in motion.

Okay then. Let's dig in.

1. "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism."
a. Oliver Cromwell, first speech to the Houses of Parliament as Lord Protector, 1653
b. Honore Mirabeau, to the Estates General, 1789
c. George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

2. "But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom!"
a. Edmund Burke, on the death of Marie Antoinette, 1793
b. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on the death of Frederick the Great, 1786
c. Thomas Carlyle, on the abdication of Louis Napoleon, 1870

3. "Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"
a. Frederick Douglass, Fourth of July, 1852
b. Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural, 1864
c. Ludwik Mierosławski, Polish uprising, 1848

4. "You have two babies very hungry and wanting to be fed. One baby is a patient baby, and waits indefinitely until its mother is ready to feed it. The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks and makes everybody unpleasant until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well which baby is attended to first. That is the whole history of politics. You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under."
a. V.I. Lenin, to revolutionaries in Brussels, 1904
b. Emmeline Pankhurst, to women in Hartford, Connecticut, 1913
c. Big Bill Haywood, to union activists in Chicago, 1909

5. "The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power but a community of power: not organized rivalries but and organized, common peace."
a. David Lloyd George, to Parliament, 1918
b. John Maynard Keynes, at Versailles, 1919
c. Woodrow Wilson, to Congress, 1917

6. "Briefly, it is a cultural problem, a problem of comparison and conflict between the Oriental and Occidental culture and civilization. Oriental civilization is the rule of Right; Occidental civilization is the rule of Might. The rule of Right respects benevolence and virtue, while the rule of Might only respects force and utilitarianism. The rule of Right always influences people with justice and reason, while the rule of Might always oppresses people with brute force and military measures."
a. Sun Yat Sen, on Pan-Asianism, 1941
b. Mao Zedong, on the Chinese revolution, 1925
c. Emperor Taisho, on Japan's break with England, 1905

7. "The Marxist parties and their lackeys have had fourteen years to show what they can do. The result is a heap of ruins. Now, people of Germany, give us four years and then pass judgment upon us."
a. Paul von Hindenberg, Stuttgart, 1932
b. Adolf Hitler, Berlin, 1933
c. Franz von Papen, Frankfurt, 1930

8. "We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
a. Winston Churchill, to the House of Commons, 1940
b. Franklin Roosevelt, to Congress, 1942
c. Josef Stalin, to the Poliburo, 1942

9. "Speaking for myself, I can say that I have never felt any hatred. As a matter of fact, I feel myself to be a greater friend of the British now than ever before. One reason is that they are today in distress. My very friendship, therefore, demands that I should try to save them from their mistakes. As I view the situation, they are on the brink of an abyss. It, therefore, becomes my duty to warn them of their danger even though it may, for the time being, anger them to the point of cutting off the friendly hand that is stretched out to help them. People may laugh, nevertheless that is my claim. At a time when I may have to launch the biggest struggle of my life, I may not harbour hatred against anybody."
a. Gamal Abdul Nasser, 1952
b. David Ben-Gurion, 1947
c. Mahatma Gandhi, 1942

10. "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick-sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood."
a. Lyndon Johnson, televised address, 1964
b. Martin Luther King Jr., March on Washington, 1963
c. Robert F. Kennedy, campaigning in New York, 1964

11. "As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes - the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized."
a. Hillary Clinton, Beijing, 1995
b. Benazir Bhutto, Islamabad, 1996
c. Shirin Ebadi, Tehran, 2000

12. "And I salute you and I pay tribute to you and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you've stood firm, and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression."
a. Edward Said, at Columbia University, 1993
b. Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, 2002
c. Vanessa Redgrave, Oscars acceptance speech, 1978

All righty then, let's look at the answers.

Answers:
1-c; 2-a; 3-a; 4-b; 5-c; 6-a; 7-b; 8-a; 9-c; 10-b; 11-a; 12-c.

Notes:
1. Should have been easy for Americans at least; the bit about faction should have been the giveaway.
2. The mention of "sex" was intended as the tip-off that the speaker was talking about a woman. Why mention sex otherwise? And by the way: what in the hell was he thinking?
3. The famous Fourth of July speech, seems pretty gettable to me.
4. Maybe the chosen metaphor here, about babies, would have led you to guess that it was the woman.
5. This was probably a tough one. I chose it for the tragic irony of the sentiment, given what unfolded at Versailles.
6. Superficially hard, but I think not really if you thought it through. Mao would have spoken in more strictly Marxist terms. And I don't think Emperors of Japan ever spoke in public back then.
7. Pretty obvious. Included here because of that business about seeking the German people's consent in another four years' time. Right.
8. This is the blood, toil, sweat and tears speech. This bit came right after that line.
9. Shouldn't have been hard, I don't think.
10. This directly follows the famous phrase about the "fierce urgency of now," which the current president has quoted several times.
11. This is the famous "humans rights are women's rights" speech.
12. Members of the Jewish Defense League were protesting against her nomination outside the hall. I threw this in because, well, I wanted to end on a slightly different note. I remember that weird moment well. I guess she's still at it, eh?

Obviously, there are many great speeches and moments I left out. From the US side, Lincoln, for starters, and FDR and JFK and Reagan. What are some seminal British speeches, besides Churchill? What are some of your most beloved speeches and lines and quotes? And give your score!

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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Tomasky Talk: So, the State of the Union | Michael Tomasky

Michael Tomasky considers whether President Obama's annual address can turn the political tide – especially against Republicans' effort to repeal his healthcare law

Michael Tomasky

O bother | Michael Tomasky

As usual, our own Ed Pilkington delivers a nicely turned story about the new novel O, the presidential novel written by Anonymous. But I have to say, I don't know that anyone is talking about it all.

I live in Washington. I'm fairly plugged in. Why last Saturday I even went to a dinner party full of swells and elitist types. I didn't hear anyone mention it.

It seems sort of desperate and silly, does it not? Joe Klein came up with the Anonymous idea. When Joe thought of it, it was original and clever. Pulling that a second time is humiliatingly lame. It's like, hey, let me tell you about this idea I have for a screenplay. It's set during World War II, and the action takes place in this cafe called Rick's...

I suppose there's a chance the novel is good. But that strikes me as a long shot. It's very rare that these kinds of novels are any good as novels. And Ed says Obama comes off well. What is the point of that? Someone hides their identity and writes puffery? That's kind of ridiculous.

There is also the problem that Obama isn't very good for satire because he just isn't funny. Nothing about him is funny. He's too moderate. In his personal habits, I mean. He looks good, he speaks well, he has no tics, he talks rather flatly without any colorful language. He's unfunniest president since...I don't know who. Calvin Coolidge. Or maybe Eisenhower. It is of course in general a good thing that nothing about the Obamas leads to the kind of salacious tongue-wagging and jibber-jabbery that followed the Clintons around incessantly.

Barack ObamaMichael Tomasky
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Playing catch-up | Michael Tomasky

Hi gang, sorry for the delay today. We had to take the kid to the doctors' this morning, so I was not able to start my day the usual way, which is scanning the news around 6:30 am and getting up a post or two in the morning. Everything is fine, by the way, thanks.

So let's catch up on the day's events. First, the hoot of the day is the ridiculous Daily Caller headline trying to blame last year's uptick in pedestrian deaths on Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. The idea here is that the first lady has sent more people out there walking, so more are dying.

I'm pretty sure the DC, which obviously takes some pride in writing obscenely over-the-top headlines, did this one just to goad liberals into being outraged, so I won't take the bait. Who knows, maybe they're right about the connection. Come on, Tucker, let's you and me go out cruising one night and brush past overweight pedestrians. Teach 'em a lesson, out there trying to lose weight on the Kenyan-socialist plan.

Item two: She's running:

"Have there been informal conversations between supporters on the ground in Iowa and with the PAC? Of course there have," SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford told POLITICO.

"Do we have supporters all across the nation? Yes," he continued. "Do we have supporters in Iowa? Yes. Do those supporters want Sarah Palin to run for higher office? Yes, of course they do."

That catechismic sentence structure is always a dead giveaway. I really dislike it and wish people would stop talking like that. Do I ever lapse into it? Occasionally, sure. And what am I hoping to convey when I do? That I'm saying something without really saying it, if you get my drift.

It would seem to me that she has to do something before she announces to try to fix some of the post-Arizona damage. Or maybe she doesn't even think that way and doesn't see it as damage at all.

Item three: I read today that the Democratic convention for 2012 is likely going to be held in either St. Louis or Charlotte, North Carolina. St. Louis has been the front-runner but Claire McAskill is getting nervous that St. Loo hasn't been named yet.

They're both good picks, and, building on the Denver location last time, they mark the firm arrival of the end of the era of Democrats hugging the coasts (Chicago being the only exception). Looking back, can you believe the Democrats held back to back conventions in New York City, in 1976 and 1980? And at a time when NYC was at its absolute lowest point: The foul and filthy city of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and porn theater marquees blaring "Four Erections!" at passersby? And then they returned there again in 1992?

Item four: I want to leave most of the China discussion to the Guardian's redoubtable diplomatic staff, but I think Yglesias makes a point here that isn't made often enough in all the stories about how China is taking over everything:

China is a dynamo and Greece is a basket case, but Greece is much richer than China. Rapid Chinese progress does in part reflects the skill and wisdom of Chinese policymakers. But in large part it merely reflects the madness of a previous generation of Chinese policymakers—the people who left the country at such a low level in 1980 from which it's so rapidly been growing. If you look at the economic success of Chinese people in Taiwan or Hong Kong or Singapore or diaspora communities around the world, the striking thing about the PRC is how poor it still is.

I read a few weeks ago that the number of Chinese we'd call middle class by our standards is infinitesimal, like 50 million people or something. I'm sure in some ways the regime likes it this way because once they have a truly broad middle class, then it's only a matter of time before their political system will have to change, I think. The more poor people, the more authoritarian they can get away with being.

Item five: Piers Morgan's debut on CNN came away with high ratings. But what I want to know is, are there any Americans employed on British television in this manner? I mean, our prime time is littered with speakers of the king's English, from Simon Cowell (okay, he's not there anymore, but was for years) to all these Cowell imitators, and now Morgan, and Jamie Oliver and who knows who else. David McCallum.

Does this work in reverse? Why not? I really don't understand it at all. Do you think I could host a British television show, with my charming Yank accent and dapper West Virginia ways? I'd move the whole mespoche there if someone offered me a show.

US politicsMichael Tomasky
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Not very civil | Michael Tomasky

Okay, conservative readers, here's one for you. I officially denounce and decry this:

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) spoke before a largely vacant House floor Tuesday night and referred to Republican efforts to repeal health care reform as a Nazi-like endeavor.

"They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels," Cohen said, speaking of the notorious Nazi propagandist. "You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing."

Cohen continued to compare the GOP to Nazis as his rant went on.

"The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we've heard on this floor, government takeover of health care..."

Very poor form, Cohen, especially when we're supposed to be in the era (two weeks?) of civility. Dana Bash of CNN then tweeted that he stood by his remarks, saying it's not uncivil to point out lies. Well, it is not definitionally uncivil, but it can be done uncivilly, as indeed it was in this case.

I am not for a total ban on all Nazi comparisons, by the way. Sometimes you need a good Nazi reference. Sometimes, it can be apropos. See, people's first reflex is that if you call someone a Nazi, you are accusing him or her of wanting to exterminate millions of people. While the Nazis certainly did that, they did lots of other things that weren't that bad but were still very bad. If someone today does such a thing, they have no right to be immunized against appropriate and damning historical analogy. One must be very careful with such things: you really have to be able to back it up factually.

And this can of course be carried too far, i.e., Hitler and a few others were vegetarians, but one would not call a vegetarian a Nazi, despite Jonah Goldberg's best efforts toward that general end.

However, I do think we should dispense with Goebbels-big lie analogies. They're very tired, for one thing. And given that Little Joe was in charge of the whole media, no analogy along those lines can really be accurate.

And to think I saved Cohen's life once. Well, not really. But there was this elevator incident. It was stuck until yours truly saved the day. I'll tell you about it some other time.

Meanwhile, on the subject of the real Nazis...I was watching one of those Nazi shows that American cable channels offer in infinite supply (is that true of British cable channels as well?), and I was reminded of the story of Hitler's niece. What a scandal. He was bonking his niece! Then she killed herself! And he wriggled out of it. Say what you will against sleazy tabloid journalism, but if it had been around in Weimar Germany, that little pervert would never have made it to the Reich chancellery.

DemocratsRepublicansMichael Tomasky
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Lieberman is out | Michael Tomasky

So, old Joe is hanging it up. What can I think to say that I haven't said a thousand times?

I remember the time we had breakfast. That was kind of nice, actually. I was in New York, and he was up in the city and an aide called ahead to say he wanted to have breakfast. No special reason, just to chat up a political journalist, I guess.

It was spring 2001, and at the time he was a figure of some sympathy to me. Sure, I didn't like his passive, let's-give-em-that-one posture during the Florida business, but I felt for him anyway. I remember having a decent time with him. Zell Miller, the Democratic senator from Georgia who went on to endorse Dubya in 2004 and rail at his old party, had written a provocative op-ed of some kind in the Times that day, so we talked about that.

The only thing I really remember is that the doorman at the hotel where we ate was quite moving. He was silent for a few seconds after he recognized Lieberman, didn't quite know what to say. He was Latino, and therefore according to likely odds a supporter. He finally gave Lieberman one of those playful punches on the shoulder and said, "We'll get 'em next time." At a moment when Florida was so fresh and feelings so raw, it was just the right thing to say.

Beyond that, I've never had much use for the guy: preening and sanctimonious, he actually has a very long record of undercutting Democrats and liberals. Many people forget that he first got to the Senate in 1988 by defeating...yes, a Republican, but arguably someone to his left, Lowell Weicker (an old Yankee/New England liberal Republican of the sort who don't exist anymore).

Then he lit into Clinton during Lewinsky, then he undercut his own campaign in Florida, then he embraced every precept of neoconservative foreign policy, and finally he stood on the stage and chuckled - nervously and awkwardly, but chuckled - as Sarah Palin said Barack Obama palled around with terrorists.

But he did undo don't ask, don't tell. He deserves lots of credit for that. It simply wouldn't have happened if he hadn't worked Republicans as hard as he did. So let's send him out on that happy note. Of course, he still has two years to infuriate me, which I'm sure he'll do five or six times.

ConnecticutMichael Tomasky
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Should we see the video? | Michael Tomasky

The Arizona shootings were caught on store surveillance video. Should it be shown?

From today's NYT, I see that store surveillance video exists of the Arizona shootings:

The chief investigator for the sheriff's department here has for the first time publicly described the brief and gory video clip from a store security camera that shows a gunman not only shooting Representative Gabrielle Giffords just above the eyebrow at a range of three feet, but then using his 9-millimeter pistol to gun down others near her at a similarly close range ...

... The crucial video showing the shooting of Ms. Giffords, Judge Roll and Mr. Barber lasts only about five seconds before the gunman steps out of the frame.

At the start of the clip, it shows the "suspect coming from just outside of the frame of the video toward the parking lot," Mr. Kastigar said. "He goes around a table set up for part of that gathering and walks up to Gabby and shoots her directly in the forehead." It was not clear from this video, he said, if Ms. Giffords realized what was happening.

The gunman "then turns to his left and indiscriminately shoots at people sitting in chairs along the wall," he said. The video does not show those people being shot, he said. But quickly the gunman is back in the video, which shows him turning to his right and shooting Mr. Barber, who had been with Judge Roll "standing side by side with the table to their backs."

Should it be shown publicly? It's morbid, yes. There are the families to think about. Obviously, their consent would have to be secured. But maybe people should see what this kind of thing actually looks like in real life. Might have a salutary impact.

• Poll: Should the Arizona shooting video be shown?

Arizona shootingGabrielle GiffordsJared Lee LoughnerGun crimeUnited StatesMichael Tomasky
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Sargent Shriver and the old belief | Michael Tomasky

Sargent Shriver, who died yesterday, led an incredible life. Take a look at this list of accomplishments, from Scott Stossel of the Atlantic, who wrote a biography of Shrive a few years back:

•His pivotal role in getting John F. Kennedy elected President in 1960;
•Leading JFK's "talent hunt," staffing the cabinet and the upper levels of the Administration;
•Founding and leading the Peace Corps;
•Launching Head Start, Legal Services for the Poor, VISTA, and many other programs critical to the War on Poverty;
•Presiding over the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam;
•Helping his wife to found the Special Olympics;
•Cultivating a generation of public servants who will continue to exert a powerful influence on American history for years to come.

Even if 1 and 2 are political and inside-baseball-ish, and 7 is maybe a touch vague, 2 through 6 constitute one hell of a life's work. Item 5 was on the cusp of ending the Vietnam war were it not for Kissinger's subterfuge. It's arguably more than many presidents have accomplished; certainly more than many, many better-known public figures who were cabinet secretaries. As Stossel writes:

One of the things that I hope comes across in my book is that inscribed in Shriver's character is the compulsion to make the world a better place. At the end of every day, starting when he was in high school, he would ask himself, in effect, What have I done to improve the lot of humanity? Even into his eighties and nineties, when he should have been playing golf and resting on his laurels, he was still trying to do more--traveling the world on behalf of Special Olympics, raising money for public service programs, helping his children strategize about their various charities and political activities. When his Alzheimer's disease deepened, what seemed to remain was a fixation on two things: his love for his wife Eunice, and that we should all be working to make life better and more peaceful and more just for our fellow humans.

That's pretty remarkable.

The Peace Corps, which sounds anachronistic now, is still going strong, as I note every day when I walk past its offices on L St. The story of its founding is, at the risk of sounding too corny for our age, kind of inspirational:

The founding of the Peace Corps is one of President John F. Kennedy's most enduring legacies. Yet it got its start in a fortuitous and unexpected moment. Kennedy, arriving late to speak to students at the University of Michigan on October 14, 1960, found himself thronged by a crowd of 10,000 students at 2 o'clock in the morning. Speaking extemporaneously, the presidential candidate challenged American youth to devote a part of their lives to living and working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Would students back his effort to form a Peace Corps? Their response was immediate: within weeks students organized a petition drive and gathered 1,000 signatures in support of the idea. Several hundred others pledged to serve. Enthusiastic letters poured into Democratic headquarters. This response was crucial to Kennedy's decision to make the founding of a Peace Corps a priority.

Could something like this happen today? Yes, I think it still could, but it would obviously be much harder. After 9-11, George W. Bush to his credit requested expanded funding, and Congress acquiesced. Of course if Obama or any Democratic president tried that, Republicans would just scream about what a waste of money and furriners and Islamists and government can't do anything right and we're better off giving that money to rich Americans (well, they wouldn't say that last part, but that would really be their policy).

There are still plenty of idealistic people in America. No one would still be joining the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, the domestic equivalent nobly started by Bill Clinton, if there weren't.

What we don't have today is any sense of collective civic faith among the elite that things like this can work, even though things exactly like this - i.e., these very things - continue to work quite well. That lack of faith hurts Democrats and liberalism, but far more importantly I think it hurts the country. Doing good around the world in the name of one's self or one's church is to be lauded, but doing it in the name of one's country turns it from a confessional action into a civic one, and it's civic actions that keep democracy alive in practice.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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