Category Archives: Op-Eds and other opinions

Inexplicable, Michael Gerson

Which hunt

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Michael Gerson has an odd sense of time.  Read the the following paragraph closely:

Holder launched his tenure by showing disdain for the work of career federal prosecutors when it fit his ideological predispositions. In 2004, a task force from the Eastern District of Virginia investigated allegations of misconduct against the CIA and found insufficient evidence of criminal conduct or intent. Holder ignored the views of these respected prosecutors and appointed his own special prosecutor, appeasing a political constituency that wanted the CIA to be hounded and punished. As a result, morale at a front-line agency in the war on terrorism has plunged. What possible reason could a bright, ambitious intelligence professional have to pursue a career in counterterrorism when the attorney general of the United States is stubbornly intent on exposing and undermining his colleagues?

In 2004 George W.Bush had not yet begun his second term of office.  That was five years ago.  Something seemed odd to me about this argument, so I googled it.  If you Google the phrase "2004 task force Eastern District" you get an article from the Weekly Standard on Holder's "witch hunt".

Without many added premises about how the 2004 inquiry resolves any future allegations of torture, Gerson cannot possibly expect us to draw the conclusion that Holder is "intent on exposing and undermining his colleagues."  If crimes were committed subsequent to 2004, then that is another matter.  It's not an insult to suggest that his colleagues failed to stop future crimes.

David Broder, Plain Bad Arguments, Unqualified Authority

Does David Broder read the Washington Post?

Two short points today. We’re still working out the kinks here.

First, my view is that we ought to redo our health care system. I think this is a matter of national security, much more say than the imaginary weapons of a fictional dictator. People here actually die from lack of adequate health care. Now, since it’s a matter of national security, and since we continue to pay richly for imaginary threats to our national security, we ought to not complain about things that are real. This is why this kind of stuff from David Broder) raises one’s blood pressure:

Acknowledging that “clearly, we need radical reconstructive surgery to make our health-care system effective, affordable and sustainable,” Walker cautioned that “what we should not do is merely tack new programs onto a system that is fundamentally flawed” — and rapidly driving the national budget into ruin.

He proposes a four-part test of fiscal responsibility for any health reform plan: “First, the reform should pay for itself over 10 years. Second, it should not add to deficits beyond 10 years. Third, it should significantly reduce the tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded health promises that we already have. Fourth, it should bend down — not up — the total health-care cost curve as a percentage of” gross domestic product.

If only people had made this argument about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Next point, the Lewin group is an insurance company-funded group. One ought not to cite them as independent and impartial observers. Following directly from the above:

An analysis by the Lewin Group shows that the Energy and Commerce Committee bill that was the basic blueprint for the House measure comes close to meeting the first of those tests and fails the other three, according to Walker, “by a wide margin.”

A separate Lewin Group study of the Finance Committee bill from which Majority Leader Harry Reid is working on the Senate legislation shows it is almost as much of a fiscal failure. It fails the fourth test, falls short on the third, and passes the first two only by assuming that future Congresses will force reductions in reimbursements to doctors and hospitals that lawmakers in the past have refused to impose.

Here is the Washington Post on the Lewin group on 7.23/2009:

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers.

Doesn’t Broder read his own paper?

Bad Explanations, Charles Krauthammer, hollow man, Michael Gerson, Straw Man, Suppressed Evidence

A time to gloat

Today's Washington Post features two articles about how bad Health Care reform is for us all from guest columnists, an article about awesome natural gas, and two of the regulars (Krauthammer and Gerson) gloating about the recent victories in the historically momentous off-off year governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey.  For Krauthammer, these victories show how Obama has not eliminated the need for elections:

In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.  

A straw man or a hollow man?  I can't think that anyone seriously would have predicted no republican would ever win any race ever again.  Many in fact won on that election night in 2008, it's just that Democrats secured large majorities in both houses of congress and won the presidency.  I'll go with hollow man here: no one held the view Krauthammer is attacking.

He should be allowed to have his fun about the great myth of Obama.  He continues:

The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm — deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years — because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his "New Foundation" for America — from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.

Moreover, the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt — the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters — as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.

Some rump. Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent). So on Tuesday, the "rump" rebelled. It's the natural reaction of a center-right country to a governing party seeking to rush through a left-wing agenda using temporary majorities created by the one-shot election of 2008. The misreading of that election — and of the mandate it allegedly bestowed — is the fundamental cause of the Democratic debacle of 2009.

Before Charles gets too heated about the death of the Obama mandate, he–and everyone else by the way Democrats included–should consider the following result from Tuesday's election:

House Democrats are adding two new members to their team Thursday and Friday, just hours before a crucial floor vote on health care reform.

One of those guys–Bill Owens–did defeat an authentic Fox-News-deranged guy.  To put this another way, Tuesday's election put Obama two votes closer to enacting his Maoist agenda; it's not the time for gloating. 

Ad Hominem Abusive, Contradictions, George Will, ignorance of basic matters of logic, Ignoratio Elenchi, inconsistency, Plain Bad Arguments, Weak Analogy

You have a right to be wrong

True story.  A few years back one of my students had confused some minor matter about a text of Plato.  When I pointed that out, another student commented: "He has a right to be wrong."  That odd justification comes out in a George Will op-ed where he, unlike his usual, argues for new rights not enumerated in the constitution.  Now of course he probably thinks he can get there with a series of individually valid inferences.  Fine, but you have to understand that any other time one maintains a right not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, Will will shout "judicial activism" or some other synonym.  Don't get me wrong, I believe in the concept of inferential rights, I just think it's funny that Will doesn't, until he does.

This is not to say, however, that Will does not have a point.  He may, but I think, as is perhaps no surprise, that his argument for it sucks.  He maintains as a kind of premise one that liberals want to coerce others to believe like they do–this is their MO, which is a word the very pretentious Will would likely spell out: Modus operandi.  It's a little ironic, since the specific topic in question concerns the desire of some (not the liberals) to limit the rights of others to engage in private, self-regarding behavior.  Some people, not happy with the structure of our democracy (where fundamental rights get interpreted out of the Constitution sometimes), gather signatures to put such matters on the ballot.  This raises an important question: are signatures on referendums like voting and therefore private? 

I think it's fair to say that such a question admits of no easy answer.  But just because it doesn't admit of an easy answer, does not mean any answer, such as the following one offered by Will, will suffice:

The Supreme Court has held that disclosure requirements serve three government interests: They provide information about the flow of political money, they deter corruption and avoid the appearance thereof by revealing large contributions, and they facilitate enforcement of contribution limits. These pertain only to financial information in candidate elections. These cannot justify compelled disclosures regarding referendums because referendums raise no issues of officials' future performance in office — being corruptly responsive to financial contributors. The only relevant information about referendums is in the text of the propositions.

In 1973, Washington's secretary of state ruled that signing an initiative or referendum petition is "a form of voting" and that violating voters' privacy could have adverse "political ramifications" for those signing. In 2009, some advocates of disclosure plan to put signers' names on the Internet in order to force "uncomfortable" conversations.

In the interest of fairness, something I'm always interested in by the way, the above two paragraphs make some attempt at arguing for the position that referendum signatures ought to be private.  I think their attempt fails: The first is irrelevant to the particular issue and the second cites the irrelevant precedent of the secretary of state.  A referendum petition by any standard is not a vote: you sign your name and put your address on it for the purposes of public inspection of its authenticity.  You do not sign your vote. 

In any case, the following arguments for the above proposition really blow:

Larry Stickney, a social conservative and president of the Washington Values Alliance, says that disclosure of the identities of petitioners will enable "ideological background checks" that will have a chilling effect on political participation. He frequently encounters people who flinch from involvement with the referendum when they learn that disclosure of their involvement is possible. He has received abusive e-mails and late-night telephone calls and has seen a stranger on his front lawn taking pictures of his house.

The Wall Street Journal's John Fund reports that some Californians who gave financial support to last year's successful campaign for Proposition 8 — it declared marriage to be only between a man and a woman — subsequently suffered significant harm. For example, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, who contributed $1,500, was forced to resign. So was the manager of a fashionable Los Angeles restaurant who contributed just $100.

The first paragraph offers evidence that vociferous advocates may suffer the paranoia that comes along with taking an unpopular position on a matter of public interest.  It does not establish that a private citizen whose only action was signing a petition may suffer these things.  The second paragraph shows that people who have given financial support, something about which disclosure has been determined to be legitimate (and admitted to by Will himself only a three paragraphs before) have suffered harm.  I don't think one can be fired for one's political affiliations–there are laws against that I believe.

Charles Bouley, a gay columnist, has honorably protested such bullying. He says that people "have the right to be wrong," and reminds gay activists: "Even Barack Obama said marriage was between a man and a woman at a time when we needed his voice on our side on equality. He let us down, too, remember, and many of you still gave him a job."

Indeed, people do have a right to be wrong, and others have a duty to point that out.

Ross Douthat, Things that are false

Western Way of Reason

Culture Warrior Ross Douthat, columnist at the New York Times, opines on the coming religious war:

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.

Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.

The riots reference is silly and self-congratulatory, but "the Western way of reason" as an exclusive European notion betrays and ignorance of both the notions of "western" and "reason." 

Douthat at least, as a graduate of college, ought to know there would be precious little Western way of reason worth giving a crap about without, for instance, Averroe–che il gran commento feo.

So it's compatible, to say the least–one wonders, however, about whether Douthat's militant Christianity is. 

Ad Hominem Abusive, George Will

It’s good to be a gangster

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George Will defends the crazy:

After six years in the state Legislature, she ran for Congress and now, in her second term, has become such a burr under Democrats' saddles that recently the New York Times profiled her beneath a Page One headline: "GOP Has a Lightning Rod, and Her Name Is Not Palin." She is, however, a petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked.

For example, appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball" 18 days before last year's election, she made the mistake of taking Chris Matthews's bait and speculating about whether Barack Obama and some other Democrats have "anti-American" views. In the ensuing uproar — fueled by people who were not comparably scandalized when George W. Bush was sulfurously vilified — her opponent raised nearly $2 million and her lead shrank from 13 points to her winning margin of three.

Well, as Will is fond of saying as he prepares an objection, the unspecified sulfurous vilification on the part of an unidentified some does not justify the loony-toons McCarthyism of a member of the United States House of Representatives.

More funny, however, is Will's defense of Bachmann.  He writes:

Some of her supposed excesses are, however, not merely defensible, they are admirable. For example, her June 9 statement on the House floor in which she spoke of "gangster government" has been viewed on the Internet about 2 million times. She noted that, during the federal takeover of General Motors, a Democratic senator and one of her Democratic House colleagues each successfully intervened with GM to save a constituent's dealership from forced closure. One of her constituents, whose dealership had been in the family for 90 years, told her that the $15 million dealership had been rendered worthless overnight, and, Bachmann said, "GM is demanding that she hand over her customer list," probably to give it to surviving GM dealerships that once were competitors.

In her statement, Bachmann repeatedly called such politicization of the allocation of economic rewards "gangster government." And she repeatedly noted that the phrase was used by a respected political analyst, Michael Barone, principal co-author of the Almanac of American Politics, who coined it in connection with the mugging of GM bondholders in the politicized bankruptcy. Bachmann, like Barone, was accurate.

Some of Bachmann's excesses are defensible because (1) her speech on the house floor has been viewed 2 million times; (2) "respected political analyst (and not definitely right wing hack) Michael Barone coined the term she used repeatedly to describe the actions of a government run by a black guy.  I wonder if the term would have been as effective if the President were a white guy from Texas.  Probably not.  To open up a parenthesis, here's Michael Barone on the Democratic party (via Steve Benen):

that the Republican Party is the party of people who are considered, by themselves and by others, as normal Americans—Northern white Protestants in the 19th century, married white Christians more recently—while the Democratic Party is the party of the out groups who are in some sense seen, by themselves and by others, as not normal—white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, blacks and white seculars more recently.

Ah, normality–certainly a guy with views like that would mean gangster only in the most innocuous way. 

Anyway, back to the point.  One might concede that the bankruptcy of GM was politicized.  That's like the discovery of hot water.  Is it proper to describe political actions you don't agree with as a "mugging" or "gangster"?  I don't think so. 

UPDATE: turns out the "gangster government" allegation was shown to be false a mere two days after it was made.

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

They had better watch what they say*

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No surprise that Charles Krauthammer would jump to the defense of Fox News:

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led [by] and following Fox."

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration — from exposing "green jobs" czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health-care legislation — the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry — finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

I'd say he's not even close and it's a joke to suggest that Fox is not opinion journalism.  The White House has correctly pointed that out, and so have many others.  Nobody is challenging Fox's right to be opinionated rightward, they're only bothering to point out what everyone already knows.

Given Fox's sorry record of GOP worship and partisan hackery in its news division, Krauthammer changes the subject to the slightly related, but dishonest claim that the White House wants to shut it down.  What would that be, a straw man or a red herring?  I'd call it a straw man as it alleges the replacement position (shut Fox down!) is the White House's actual position.

Anyway, here's the funny part:

Factions should compete, but they should also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian. 

Roger Ailes, President of Fox News Channel ought to know–he worked for Nixon as a media consultant.

*On the title of this post, see here.

George Will

Omaha Beach

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Instead of pointing out the usual collection of arcane reference plus caricature plus straw man plus falsehood plus right wing thing tank evidence that is nearly every non-baseball George Will column, let's marvel at this WWII veteran–speaking in favor of equal rights for gays and lesbians.  

In case you don't have time to watch the full video–you should–here's a key passage:

I am here today because of a conversation I had last June when I was voting. A woman at my polling place asked me, "Do you believe in equal, equality for gay and lesbian people?" I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her, "What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?" I haven't seen much, so much blood and guts, so much suffering, much sacrifice. For what? For freedom and equality. These are the values that give America a great nation, one worth dying for.

 


Narrativism, Richard Cohen

Montage sequence

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A while ago I added a category called "narrativism."  This involves pushing narratives about people or events as authentic accounts while knowing such narratives are genre-drive stories, driven by ideology, laziness, or aesthetics, and therefore likely misleading when taken as biography and therefore not worthy of a discourse such as ours ought to be.  There was an example of this yesterday, today another:

Obama's lack of a bonded — as opposed to an associative — constituency is costing him. The political left is carping because it cannot be sure he is one of them. The right carps also, but it alone knows that Obama is not one of them. He doesn't go way back with the unions — he doesn't go way back with anything — and the Jews are having second thoughts.

In a conventional movie, the hero has to change. Something has to happen — the moment when character is revealed. Maybe he loses the girl and has to get her back. In politics, something similar is supposed to happen. You've got to have your PT-109, your Sunrise at Campobello, your walk on the beach with Billy Graham, your combat epiphany in Vietnam, your impoverished childhood, your peanut-farming family, your mission work abroad, your haberdashery that goes bankrupt.

Obama has those moments — abandoned by his father, biracial in a world that prefers things neat, raised in Indonesia — but they are not cited as life-changing events. None of them, at any rate, are given much importance in the documentary. Even the bitter primary fight with Hillary Clinton — all that ugly stuff about race and Bill Clinton, of all people, being accused of playing the race card — could have been happening to someone else. Obama observes his own life. He's not a participant. He calls Hillary to congratulate her on some insignificant win. "Bye bye," he says without bitterness as he snaps his phone shut. He could have been talking to anyone.

Does any of this matter, or is it merely interesting — themes for a columnist ducking Afghanistan for yet another week? I am not sure. If Obama ends the deepest recession since the Great Depression, if he enacts health-care reform, if he succeeds in Afghanistan, then his presidency will have been remarkable, maybe even great — the triumph of intellect. The man will be his own movement.

But if he fails in all or most of that, it will be because it is not enough to be the smartest person in the room. Warmth and commitment matter, too — a driving sense of conviction, the fulsome embrace of causes and not just issues. That is not something Obama has yet shown. See the movie.

That's Richard Cohen.  He's talking about a movie about Obama, not Obama the person, but it's not clear to him, or to us, that he's aware that he's aware of the difference.

George Will, Narrativism

Fighting the war three or four wars ago

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George Will is a man from another time (via Digby).  Discussing what Obama ought to do about Afghanistan, a roundtable of roundtable generals "weighed in" on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

NOONAN:  “I think it is an old cliché in Washington that a leader, a president must be both feared and revered.  I think this president's problems don't have to do with his personality and fearsomeness.  I think it has to do with policy issues.” 

DIONNE: “It takes a lot more toughness to say to your generals, "No," or, "Tell me why you really want to do this," than it does to go along with the generals.  So I think on that front, it's wrong.

 WILL: “The danger is that this narrative about him not being tough enough occurs in the midst of, A.) the argument about Afghanistan, where to prove you're tough, you might want to escalate, and, B.) when he has to make a decision about the public option.  One thing he could do is jettison the public option, offend his left and make himself look moderate, but can he offend his left on the public option and escalate in Vietnam — in Afghanistan?” 

TAPPER: “No, I don't think so.  What you hear from — from them, when you ask them about this narrative, is, yes, we've heard this before.  Is he tough enough to beat Hillary Clinton?  Is he tough enough to beat John McCain?  I think they think that they proved — I think empirically they proved that — that he was able to do both those things. “

KRUGMAN: “I think a lot of people are basically just complaining that he's a Democrat.”

What do you think?

In Viet Nam?

Aside from that, notice the clever use of the impersonal: "this narrative about him not being tough enough occurs."  Why doesn't he say, we tell this narrative about him–in other words, we characterize him as not being tough enough, or we make this a question of cojones, or some other manly property (when it really ought to be a narrative about wise policy)?