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Gail Collins, George Will, Inexplicable

Mind numbing

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I’m out of my territory here a little bit, but yesterday’s excursion into press narratives (although only to make a kind of side point) inspired me to read a little more of it.  With that in mind I stumbled across Gail Collins’ column in the New York Times.  She is another card-carrying (remember that phrase anyone?) of the liberal media.  Let’s read:

It’s all up to Pennsylvania!

Yes folks, over the next seven
weeks — the amount of time it takes a normal country to conduct an
entire national election — we will be obsessing about the critical
upcoming Pennsylvania primary. Harrisburg! Altoona! The Poconos! Did
you know that in the Poconos, some hotels have bathtubs shaped like
hearts or Champagne glasses? We actually plan on bringing that up a lot.

That’s really how the article begins.  I think it’s pastiche of the kind of irrelevance we will be subjected to in the coming days.  The kind of irrelevance the following paragraphs provide: 

Of all the things that went right for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, the
Ohio primary win was most impressive. Although Ohioans politely tiptoed
out of Hillary’s more boring round-table discussions, they came to
believe she could be a president who would fix things, no matter how
complicated or frustrating. The mere fact that she had the staying
power to keep her eyes open, they felt, was a good sign.

In
response, the Obama campaign has reportedly decided to do far fewer
exciting rallies and lots more mind-numbing round-table discussions in
Pennsylvania. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say we are all
really looking forward to that.

Collins’ fact-free insight and vast power of generalizing amazes me.  Notice two things.  First, she knows what Ohioans are thinking, believing and feeling–in detail "no matter how complicated or frustrating."  Was that a poll question?  I doubt it.  Beyond that, she’s intolerant of meaningful discussions of policy–they’re boring!  Mind-numbing!  And on that point–who is the "we" who is not looking forward to these discussions?  Maybe it’s Collins, who wants to talk about the Poconos.

Maybe I’m just impatient with this stuff, and I miss the larger points Collins is making.  I guess I’m a conservative that way.  I like my assertions supported by evidence.  

Keep in mind, of course, that while the liberal media over here at the New York Times can’t even bother to discuss matters of policy, George Will, conservative luminary, is busy eviscerating such leftist heroes as Oliver Stone, Norman Mailer, and Jean Paul Sartre, for their admiration of Fidel Castro, or Cuba (or something).  What’s wrong with them?  Well, Cuba has basically sentenced people to jail after one-day secret trials.  I know, I know.  That sounds awful to be stuck in Cuba in some kind of extra-legal limbo and convicted after a Stalinesque one-day secret trial.
 

category mistake, Maureen Dowd, Ruth Marcus, Things that are false

Compatible Concepts

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Has Hillary Clinton been subjected to more "scrutiny" on account of her gender?  All signs point yes.  A cursory examination of the media coverage will find Clinton having to contend with questions directed at gender in a way that, say, John McCain won’t.  Here’s just one of countless examples.  Enter Maureen Dowd (courtesy of Media Matters):

 

After saying she found her
"voice" in New Hampshire,
she has turned into Sybil. We’ve had
Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic
Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary,
It’s-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary,
Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and
hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke
up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a
political solution to her problem. If she can only change this or that
about her persona, or tear down this or that about Obama’s. But the
whirlwind of changes and charges gets wearing.

And Maureen Dowd, by the way, is supposed to be a liberal.  But, like we’ve been saying, the liberal op-eds disappoint.  In the face of such evidence, Ruth Marcus argues that Clinton cannot claim to be "hampered" by her gender.  Marcus’s claim (isn’t she supposed to be a liberal too?) has what we professionals call a ring of falsity to it.  But she also makes a conceptual claim to support the false empirical claim:

 

The candidate of inevitability and the victim of the uneven playing field aren’t compatible concepts.

The candidate of inevitability is an empty concept.  There might have been a presumption among media types like Marcus that Clinton was the candidate of inevitability, but there hadn’t been an election yet.   Besides, being a candidate for a job, as I can attest from personal experience, doesn’t mean you’ll get the job–or that you even have a chance of getting the job. 

E.J.Dionne

Post Game

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Maybe you’re not like me, but I open the op-ed page for directives from the liberal media.  Most of the time, however, the liberal media disappoints.  I get instead a kind of post game breakdown of the sort you’d find in the most technical of sports sections.  There’s an election going on, as some of you may know, and the candidates (in particular the Democrats) are out there making their case–"vote for me because of I am a better fit for the job–my judgment, record, etc., make me so."  So, liberal media, who is better?  Let’s ask E.J.Dionne:

To be sure, just about everyone anticipated that when the field
narrowed, Clinton would be one of the contenders left standing. She had
won allies from her work for her husband and in the Senate, was helped
by the residual affection for Bill Clinton in many parts of the party, and created a support base among women.

But the scenario-builders pondering this contest two years ago imagined
a showdown between Clinton and — let’s be honest — a white guy. It
was thought that a moderate Democrat (popular choices included Mark Warner of Virginia and Evan Bayh of Indiana) would cast himself as the "electable" alternative to the "divisive" Clinton.

Alternatively, John Edwards
had the chance to go at Clinton from her left (he’d run against
"Clintonomics" as the pro-labor, mill-town-born populist) and from her
right (he was, after all, a Southern white man).

Obama upended all these calculations. Warner and Bayh understood how
much the race had changed and decided not to run. Obama bested Edwards
in Iowa, effectively blocking Edwards’s only path to contention.

He doesn’t care.  While his conservative colleagues stake out clear positions and defend them–urging others to believe as they do–Dionne can’t bother do anything other than, er, color commentary:

Against anyone but Obama, Clinton could have counted on strong support from African Americans. Against an Adlai Stevenson–Gary Hart–Paul Tsongas–Bill Bradley
sort of reformer, she would have assembled the "regular" Democratic
coalition: blue-collar whites allied with black voters. This is, more
or less, how Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and Al Gore
prevailed in the primaries. Against a centrist, Clinton would have won
the liberals. Her strength among women would have provided her with
additional ballast.

Obama not only created an alliance between African Americans and
upscale reform voters, but he also changed the composition of the
Democratic electorate by drawing in hundreds of thousands of voters
under age 30.

To me this is just baffling.  I can see how this would be interesting from the perspective of political operatives or political scientists.  But most of us are rather interested in who is a better fit for the job.  Dionne assumes however we are like him.  We’re interested in who runs the better campaign organization rather than who, for Pete’s sake, is better for the job.  It’s a little early, in other words, for an explanation.

Because the Clinton campaign failed to anticipate the imperatives of a
race against Obama, it was only in the past two weeks that she managed
to move to offense. Her campaign has gone back to its basic argument
that, love her or not, Clinton is the experienced fighter who can be
trusted to deal with a nasty world and a decaying economy. She’s trying
to turn Obama’s newness into inexperience, his eloquence into slickness
and his conciliatory nature into a form of softness. It is no accident
that her "red phone" ad about her readiness to be president was created
by a veteran of Mondale’s campaign who made a similar ad against Gary
Hart in 1984.

And to conclude:

This is not the campaign Clinton had hoped to run, but it’s the one
approach she has left, and it’s had the effect of forcing Obama to
respond to her. You wonder what would have happened if she had adjusted
earlier.

That’s not really what I’m wondering.  I wonder if anyone can explain what this article was about.

Straw Man, William Kristol

Nattering nabob

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The death of conservative icon William F. Buckley led someone, I don't remember who, to eulogize that "he loved his own ideas more than he hated theirs."  He wasn't, in other words, one of those "liberals are fascists" or "party of death" types that dominate conservative thought these days.  I can't really say for certain whether that's true.  My suspicion, however, is that it isn't.  Helping me along with this suspicion is William Kristol.  Writing in today's New York Times, he says:

In my high school yearbook (Collegiate School, class of 1970), there’s a photo of me wearing a political button. (Everyone did in those days. I wasn’t that much dorkier than everyone else.) The button said, “Don’t let THEM immanentize the Eschaton.”

There you see an example of the influence of Bill Buckley, who died last week at age 82. For it was Buckley who had promulgated this slogan, as an amusing distillation of the thinking of the very difficult historian of political philosophy Eric Voegelin. I’d of course not read Voegelin then (there’s a lot of him I still haven’t read, to tell the truth). But the basic thought was: Don’t let ideologues try to create heaven on earth, because they’ll deprive us of freedom and make things a lot worse.

To read Buckley growing up in the 1960s was bracing. Buckley and his colleagues — some merrily, some mordantly —  mercilessly eviscerated the idiocies of the New Left. They also exposed the flaccidity of the older liberalism. If, like me, you already had a sense from listening to most of your peers and some of your elders that a lot of what they believed was silly (or worse), you couldn’t help but be attracted to Buckley.

That doesn't paint a rosy picture.  Aside from the obsession with the worst caricature of the opposition (with the ever present but equally silly idea that their idiocy guarantees the legitimacy of your view–it doesn't), Buckley's slogan has a kind of ironic ring to it.  Conservatives have now embraced those people who literally want to bring about the Eschaton.  Just ask John Hagee.

*minor edit for sense above–"loved his ideas more than he hated THEIRS"–apologies–I posted too damn early in the morning. 

**minor edit in "minor edit"–thanks Jem. 

category mistake, Op-Eds and other opinions

Qual pium al vento

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Mysterious words from someone in the Washington Post.  And apropos of the woman voter, she writes:

Penn was right about the importance of the women’s vote. About 57
percent of the voters in the Democratic primaries so far have been
women. As of Feb. 12, Clinton had a lead of about seven percentage
points over Obama among them (24 points among white women). But the
Obama campaign reached out to the fair sex, following Clinton’s
announcement of women-oriented programs with similar ones within a
matter of weeks. I can imagine the strategists for the senator from Illinois thinking, "What’s that song in Verdi‘s ‘Rigoletto’?" Women are fickle.

Turns out it’s true.

Why’s that, you wonder?  

From the moment the primary season began, the group "women" divided
along racial lines. Black women have backed Obama by more than 78
percent. But even after subtracting that group, white women (including
Hispanics) are still the single largest demographic in the party, at 44
percent. If they voted as a bloc, it would take only a little help from
any other bloc to elect the female candidate. White women favor
Clinton. So why is she trailing as the contest heads to Ohio and Texas?

I know this is supposed to be funny–what with the hilarious reference from Rigoletto–but aside from being representative of Cokie Roberts style Monday morning identity politics breakdown, it’s just silly.  Women would only be fickle if, as an identical group, they changed their minds–qual pium al vento.  The quick references to the polls hardly establish that. 

The more likely conclusion is that the author of this silly thoughts is muta d’accento e di pensiero. 

Equivocation, Inexplicable

Support

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One word could be blamed for the intellectual muddle that led to war in Iraq.  The constant refrain of 2003 was: "support the troops."  The word support was aptly chosen, of course, by the war party, as the poll question used the same word when asking whether Americans favored war: do you support the President's decision to go to war?  Do you support the war?  People supported the troops, so of course they supported the war. 

Now the word support has a new job: do you repudiate (or reject!) the support of x?  Colbert I King reports the following question (which he got from the Politico.com, but I can't find it there) asked of Hillary Clinton:

 "But you criticized Obama for not rejecting the support of Farrakhan."

Here's Tim Russert badgering Obama about Louis Farrakhan's support:

RUSSERT: Senator Obama, one of the things in a campaign is that you have to react to unexpected developments. On Sunday, the headline in your hometown paper, Chicago Tribune: "Louis Farrakhan backs Obama for president at Nation of Islam convention in Chicago." Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?

OBAMA: You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can't censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we're not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.

RUSSERT: Do you reject his support?

OBAMA: Well, Tim, you know, I can't say to somebody that he can't say that he thinks I'm a good guy. [laughter] You know, I — you know, I — I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments.

RUSSERT: The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism "gutter religion."

OBAMA: Tim, I think — I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That's why I have consistently denounced it. This is not something new. This is something that — I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I've been very clear in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him.

RUSSERT: The title of one of your books, Audacity of Hope, you acknowledge you got from a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church. He said that Louis Farrakhan "epitomizes greatness." He said that he went to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to visit with Muammar Qaddafi and that, when your political opponents found out about that, quote, "your Jewish support would dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell."

What do you do to assure Jewish Americans that, whether it's Farrakhan's support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?

OBAMA: Tim, I have some of the strongest support from the Jewish community in my hometown of Chicago and in this presidential campaign. And the reason is because I have been a stalwart friend of Israel's. I think they are one of our most important allies in the region, and I think that their security is sacrosanct, and that the United States is in a special relationship with them, as is true with my relationship with the Jewish community.

And the reason that I have such strong support is because they know that not only would I not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form, but also because of the fact that what I want to do is rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community.

You know, I would not be sitting here were it not for a whole host of Jewish Americans who supported the civil rights movement and helped to ensure that justice was served in the South. And that coalition has frayed over time around a whole host of issues, and part of my task in this process is making sure that those lines of communication and understanding are reopened.

But, you know, the reason that I have such strong support in the Jewish community and have historically — it was true in my U.S. Senate campaign, and it's true in this presidency — is because the people who know me best know that I consistently have not only befriended the Jewish community, not only have I been strong on Israel, but, more importantly, I've been willing to speak out even when it is not comfortable.

When I was — just the last point I would make — when I was giving — had the honor of giving a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in conjunction with Martin Luther King's birthday in front of a large African-American audience, I specifically spoke out against anti-Semitism within the African-American community. And that's what gives people confidence that I will continue to do that when I'm president of the United States.

BRIAN WILLIAMS (co-moderator): Senator —

CLINTON: Tim, I just want to add something here, because I faced a similar situation when I ran for the Senate in 2000 in New York. And in New York, there are more than the two parties, Democratic and Republican. And one of the parties at that time, the Independence Party, was under the control of people who were anti-Semitic, anti-Israel. And I made it very clear that I did not want their support. I rejected it. I said that it would not be anything I would be comfortable with. And it looked as though I might pay a price for that. But I would not be associated with people who said such inflammatory and untrue charges against either Israel or Jewish people in our country.

And, you know, I was willing to take that stand, and, you know, fortunately the people of New York supported me and I won. But at the time, I thought it was more important to stand on principle and to reject the kind of conditions that went with support like that.

RUSSERT: Are you suggesting Senator Obama is not standing on principle?

CLINTON: No. I'm just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it. And there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting. And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory — I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we've got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far-reaching.

OBAMA: Tim, I have to say I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word "reject" Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word "denounce," then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.

CLINTON: Good. Good. Excellent.

Even McCain has the same problem:

"Yesterday, Pastor John Hagee endorsed my candidacy for president in San Antonio, Texas. However, in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not.

"I am hopeful that Catholics, Protestants and all people of faith who share my vision for the future of America will respond to our message of defending innocent life, traditional marriage, and compassion for the most vulnerable in our society."

This is all kind of dumb.  One would expect a candidate to have enough self-confidence and independence to distinguish herself or himself from the views of every last voter.  Besides, I wonder what the appropriate remedy is here.  Does Obama have to beg Farrakhan to vote for someone else?  Can't Obama (or McCain or Clinton) say: "I'm glad to have the votes of Hagee, Farrakhan or whomever, but they ought to know that I won't advance core aspects of their agenda?"?  What does "reject support" even mean?

More fundamentally, if the implication is that the support of Hagee et alia means there's something Hagee-like (because birds of a feather. . . ), then why not just talk about the Hagee-like bits of McCain's view?  That's more efficient.

Accident, Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

The Lobby Lobby

One hears a lot of complaints about lobbyists from the likes of McCain, Clinton and Obama this election season.  But did you know that lobbying was protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States?  I didn't.  Well, Charles Krauthammer will set me straight.  My intrusions are in bold.

Everyone knows the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. How many remember that, in addition, the First Amendment protects a fifth freedom — to lobby? [No way–I don't believe  you]

Of course it doesn't use the word lobby [Phew–I thought I forgot my rights!]. It calls it the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Lobbyists are people hired to do that for you, so that you can actually stay home with the kids and remain gainfully employed rather than spend your life in the corridors of Washington.  [I wonder where I can get one of these lobbyists]

To hear the candidates in this presidential campaign, you'd think lobbying is just one notch below waterboarding [we thought waterboarding was ok with you Charles], a black art practiced by the great malefactors of wealth to keep the middle class in a vise and loose upon the nation every manner of scourge: oil dependency, greenhouse gases, unpayable mortgages and those tiny entrees you get at French restaurants. [He's being serious–this isn't a caricature or a straw man]

Lobbying is constitutionally protected, but that doesn't mean we have to like it all [that's a relief, because I was about to embrace every single instance of "lobbying" fully in the spirit of the law rather than sophistical equivocations meant to cloud the issue.]  Let's agree to frown upon bad lobbying, such as getting a tax break for a particular industry. Let's agree to welcome good lobbying — the actual redress of a legitimate grievance — such as protecting your home from being turned to dust to make way for some urban development project.

And with this last claim we're back to square one.  When people scream about "lobbying" this election season, they mean the kind of lobbying of special interests purchasing favors and access–bad lobbying.  Just because you call it "lobbying" does not ipso fatso mean its protected by the constitution.  That would be to insist on the relevance of a general rule where it obviously doesn't apply.  But I guess Krauthammer has a right to do that.  It's a free country.

 

General discussion

The Stagirite

Here's Aristotle, on fallacies:

To reduce it to a single point of contrast it is the business of one who knows a thing, himself to avoid fallacies in the subjects which he knows and to be able to show up the man who makes them; and of these accomplishments the one depends on the faculty to render an answer, and the other upon the securing of one. Those, then, who would be sophists are bound to study the class of arguments aforesaid: for it is worth their while: for a faculty of this kind will make a man seem to be wise, and this is the purpose they happen to have in view.

More at some other time. 

Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, David Brooks

Opponents

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If you look at opinion journalism, you'll often find the author complaining of someone's willful dishonesty and/or lack of basic critical thinking skills. This is the "opponent" (yes, I'm looking for a new name) variety of op-ed.  That's the op-ed directed at specific opponents (this also includes specific fantasy opponents).  This specific type of op-ed is typical of the conservative pundits usually featured on this page.  Paul Krugman is the only liberal I can find who writes frequently in this genre.  So, again, when people ask, "where are the liberals?" this is the answer–they just don't write or argue like their conservative colleagues.  In many respects I think they should.  

The typical opponent op-ed will consist in the claim that the object of criticism fails some basic critical thinking and/or honesty test.  Such charges seem to me to be very serious.  It's also very worthwhile that they be made.  But it's worthwhile especially when they're made properly.  When they're not made properly,they lead to the misspelling of misspelling problem.  In other words, there's a right way to attack an argument and a wrong way. 

It's truly surprising to me, however, how often such charges are made.  Take David Brooks today: 

You wouldn’t know it to look at them, but political consultants are as faddish as anyone else. And the current vogueish advice among the backroom set is: Go after your opponent’s strengths. So in the first volley of what feels like the general election campaign, Barack Obama has attacked John McCain for being too close to lobbyists. His assault is part of this week’s Democratic chorus: McCain isn’t really the anti-special interest reformer he pretends to be. He’s more tainted than his reputation suggests.

This is the basic opponent style attack.  Obama's consultants lack imagination and independent thought (they're part of the chorus!), so they mistakenly go after McCain on his strengths–he's not cozy with lobbyists, as the evidence will show.  Then he proceeds to deal with evidence. 

This, it seems to me, is the wrong way to go about the opponent op-ed.  Brooks sets the whole thing up in psychological terms.  Obama's consultants lack imagination and critical thought–they follow "fads" that lead them into making silly and false claims about McCain.  After a partial list of McCain's achievements on special interests, Brooks concludes:

Over the course of his career, McCain has tried to do the impossible. He has challenged the winds of the money gale. He has sometimes failed and fallen short. And there have always been critics who cherry-pick his compromises, ignore his larger efforts and accuse him of being a hypocrite.

This is, of course, the gospel of the mediocre man: to ridicule somebody who tries something difficult on the grounds that the effort was not a total success. But any decent person who looks at the McCain record sees that while he has certainly faltered at times, he has also battled concentrated power more doggedly than any other legislator. If this is the record of a candidate with lobbyists on his campaign bus, then every candidate should have lobbyists on the bus.

And here’s the larger point: We’re going to have two extraordinary nominees for president this year. This could be one of the great general election campaigns in American history. The only thing that could ruin it is if the candidates become demagogues and hurl accusations at each other that are an insult to reality and common sense.

Maybe Obama can start this campaign over.

The last line made me chuckle a bit (I kept thinking of "the coward with a manly bearing" and Brooks's other vile distortions from the 2004 election–insult to reality!). 

But this remark is also funny because this column is an accusation of the variety Brooks describes.  Brooks is right to respond to the claim that McCain is tainted by special interests.  In fact, if he thinks its false and he has the evidence that it is, then by all means he ought to respond.  This is a crucial function of the opponent op-ed.  It can go directly at the argument–focus the mind of the reader on whether specific claims warrant belief.

But that's where it ought to stop.  Brooks does himself in with the silly framing of his piece: people who wonder about McCain's honesty (and they are legion, by the way) suffer from a fundamental lack of critical skill–or they're mediocre.  We could do, in other words, without the ad hominems.  If it's wrong or misleading to say that McCain is cozy with special interests, then just show why.  Accusing people who think of this of shallow partisan hackery is shallow partisan hackery.  

Inexplicable, Lack of Evidence, Plain Bad Arguments, Sebastian Mallaby

Brainiac

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Maybe writing a column every now and then is harder than it looks.  You first have to find a premise that is thoroughly grounded in conventional wisdom, and then you have to give it an ironic twist that will surprise the person for whom the conventional wisdom is regular wisdom.  That person, call him CW, might for instance, believe that ethanol was the solution to the energy problem: the only one, ever, and it will never be revised, and no new ideas will ever be entertained by anyone at anytime because that idea is awesome.  Or he might believe (at the same time) that cap-and-trade emissions policies were the complete awesome solution, with none better ever imaginable.  But, you'll point out, ethanol isn't perfect.  It will alter agriculture in massive ways without producing the kind of solution CW believed.  

But CW will always have the second, won't he? Not so.  Sebastian Mallaby tells us how.

Obama favors a cap-and-trade regime. This is indeed a good idea, and the candidates are right to back it. But a cap-and-trade system is not the silver bullet that advocates sometimes imply. The same is unfortunately true for that other popular cure-all, a carbon tax.

Oh sometimes–cousin of some–where would we be without you?  You're so vague and malleable.  And you'll stick on anything.  For we don't know who these advocates are or when they make these claims.  No matter.  We're busy showing CW how wrong he was to listen to the CW.  

Besides, some–hee hee–might think it stretches credulity to believe that anyone seriously claims that any of the things Mallaby is talking about are "cure-alls."  And just in case you find his premise as thin as April ice, you'll probably also wonder how this applies to Barack Obama, for whom this article is named–"Obama's missing ideas." 

I was wondering that as well.  But then Mallaby explains. 

So it just isn't true that we have all the good ideas we need — at least not on climate change. And it's peculiar that Obama, the brainiac Harvard grad, should dismiss the importance of fresh thinking this way: He is an intellectual, he is beloved by intellectuals, and yet he poses as an anti-intellectual. If he locks up the Democratic nomination and faces off against a brave old airman with little interest in domestic policy, he will want to encourage a debate about ideas. He has the skills to win it.

I can't fathom what Mallaby is talking about.  Who says we have all of the good ideas we need?  Besides, he hasn't in the first place shown or even attempted to show that Obama is "anti-intellectual" or "dismissive" of "fresh-thinking."  He's established–if you can call it that–that Obama "favors" one perhaps fallible approach to the energy issue.  A quick glance at Obama's website, however, will show you that he favors much else as well.

So let's recap.  Some believe incorrectly and exclusively in solutions that few would seriously believe in.  Obama embraces one of those solutions–among others–and so therefore Obama is running as a moron CW believer, not as the Braniac we know he is.