I'm out of town for a few days. Perhaps while I'm gone readers might enjoy the archives.
The new FDR
According to the sycophantic Michael Gerson, Bush is the new FDR:
Usually, just the opposite is the case. A sitting president normally must accept the boring constraints of real-world choices. Campaigns can inhabit the utopia of their own ambitions.
But it is President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by proposing the massive government purchase of bad debt, who have assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is John McCain and Barack Obama who are playing the role of Roosevelt's more timid, forgotten foils, "Martin, Barton and Fish." Having last week criticized the role of the Federal Reserve in bailouts — demonstrating a tin ear of elephantine proportions — McCain now calls for a bipartisan oversight board to review the government's rescue attempt.
Bush's idea may be bold and "new" (in the quantity of its generosity), but as of this writing, it seems enormously dumb and completely in line with his notion of the imperial presidency. It invests unchecked and unregulated power in the hands of one person for the direct benefit of a handful of extremely wealthy and irresponsible people and the theoretical good of maybe the American people (not a guarantee). It was thrown at Congress, painted as the only alternative that must be passed without study or examination.
This argument is a very bad example of what one might call aestheticism, the tendency to confuse how an idea appears (new, bold, imaginative) with whether it is wise. Bush has indeed in his eight years had a lot of new and bold ideas, some of them, like this one, quite awful.
Stand down
A few posts back (and for a couple of posts) I remarked on the tendency of "liberal" pundits to separate themselves from the "liberal" candidate by frequently criticizing him or her, usually for failing to look enough like the conservative candidate. Yesterday Ruth Marcus provided another excellent example of this–going after one of Obama's campaign lines for "misrepresenting" John McCain's record. I wouldn't quibble with the criticism, my view is that no one should misrepresent anything. But there is a question of scale.
We have on the one hand Obama, in Marcus's world guilty of a straw man for not criticizing the strongest versions of McCain's one-time social security plan (Obama said had McCain had his way, many people would now be in dire straits–when in reality, only had this crisis happened a few years on, would people be in dire straits on account of McCain's plan–oops!). Obama probably is guilty of that logical offense. It's an offense nearly too typical, in my estimation, for one even to remark upon. Candidates thrive by knocking down weak versions of each others' policy positions. Obama didn't need to do it, however, as his point was independent of the specific facts of the case–in a privatized social security market, he had been saying, this is the sort of thing that could really doom us. And no doubt he's right about that.
But that's not my point. Marcus, for some reason, wanted to even the truthiness playing field, where McCain and Palin lie repeatedly and without apparent consequence about nearly everything, and Obama misrepresents McCain's position once. Marcus bent over backwards for apparent even-handedness.
To my very great and growing surprise, however, Marcus's righward colleagues, usually lockstep in their defense of their guy, have shown me to be astoundingly and thankfully wrong. Here, for instance, is George Will:
Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
Ouch. Notice also for a moment the huge difference between Will and Marcus. Marcus takes Obama to task all of the time (and for the stupidest of reasons–such as he's not "regular" enough); Will, if you look at his recent posts (and search our Will archive) has almost never directly challenged the rightward guy. He's made, in fact, a rather valient effort in recent days to make McCain's case (arguing, in one instance, that maybe one should not think about the economy, since life has so much else to offer than just money).
There goes my theory about the right wing pundit corps, my theory of the non-existent left wing pundit corps still stands, for the moment.
Academic beachheads
As a academic and a historian of philosophy, I find these sorts of initiatives baffling:
COLORADO SPRINGS — Acknowledging that 20 years and millions of dollars spent loudly and bitterly attacking the liberal leanings of American campuses have failed to make much of a dent in the way undergraduates are educated, some conservatives have decided to try a new strategy.
They are finding like-minded tenured professors and helping them establish academic beachheads for their ideas.
These initiatives, like the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, Austin, or a project at the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs, to publish a book of classic texts, are mostly financed by conservative organizations and donors, run by conservative professors. But they have a decidedly nonpartisan and nonideological face.
Their goal is to restore what conservative and other critics see as leading casualties of the campus culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s: the teaching of Western culture and a triumphal interpretation of American history.
“These are not ideological courses,” said James Piereson, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, which created the Veritas Fund for Higher Education to funnel donations to these sorts of projects. The initiatives are only political insofar as they “work against the thrust of programs and courses in gender, race and class studies, and postmodernism in general,” he said.
The programs and centers differ in emphasis, with some concentrating on American democratic and capitalist institutions and others on the Western canon, the great books often derided during the culture wars as the history of “dead white men.” They sponsor colloquia, seminars, courses, visiting lecturers and postdoctoral students. At Brown, the Political Theory Project even put on a play by the capitalist heroine Ayn Rand.
Some, like the effort in Colorado Springs and the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia focus solely on exposing freshmen to classical thinkers. Others favor a return to a more traditional teaching of America’s past, featuring its greatest accomplishments instead of the history of repression and exploitation that had been the trend.
Not surprisingly, such initiatives betray no understanding of how academia actually works. I have never understood why they can't just try to make arguments for their views.
Link post
Here's an article about the Auburn University Philosophy department in the New York Times Magazine. Feel free to post reactions here.
Theory of negativity
Jamison Foser at Media Matters notices some very stunning idiocy and responds accordingly. He writes:
The Wisconsin Advertising Project looked at a single week's worth of ads in determining that 56 percent of McCain ads and 77 percent of Obama ads were "negative." Aside from the dangers in drawing conclusions from such a small sample of campaign ads, the findings are of limited value given that the project made no effort to assess the veracity or fairness of the ads in question. In fact, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the study counted any ad that so much as mentioned the opponent's name as "negative."
I suppose it might be mildly interesting to know that 56 percent of John McCain's ads mention Barack Obama, or that 77 percent of Obama's ads mention McCain. But it doesn't really tell us anything useful. How did they mention each other? Did the ads criticize policy positions or personality? Were they honest? The answers to those questions are essential to any meaningful assessment of the candidates' campaign tactics. (If you do find the project's findings compelling, you should keep in mind that in July, based on a much larger sample, the project found that more of McCain's ads were negative.)
Despite the study's failure to even attempt to assess the validity of the ads it declared "negative," several news organizations hyped the findings. Worse, some suggested the finding that more of Obama's ads have been negative undermines the recent conclusions of many impartial observers that the McCain campaign ads have been more dishonest than those of the Obama campaign.
The New York Post, for example, reported that the results of the study "clash with recent media coverage accusing McCain of distorting Obama's record in ads." Nonsense. That's like saying that the fact that this is September clashes with the fact that it is Friday.
Foser is right. This is what one would call a "category mistake." Also, I think I speak from experience that many people wrongly call anything critical an "attack" and assume that anything "negative" is wrong. Foser's whole piece is well worth reading, as always.
Good enough for Moses
Concern troll Michael Gerson last week whined about how liberals have made light of Sarah Palin's Pentecostalism. While's he's right that this might alienate religious people–the very same who brought you all things that are awesome (abolitionism and civil rights) and none of the things that are bad, (like colonialism, slavery, etc.)–whose votes the Democrats need this coming year.
It has been (correctly) pointed out elsewhere that his argument amounts to a straw man. No one has made fun of Palin's anything (her family, her religion). No one, that is, who represesents the Obama campaign or the Democratic party. If Gerson wants to be believed, he ought at least to have the honesty to name someone, someone representative (not Matt Damon) who is guilty of making light of Palin's religion. Saying "liberals" has a kind of Hannity/O'Reilly/Will kind of falsity about it, as if we're supposed to take his word for it, even though he is in many respects the ultimate partisan hack, as he was the former speechwriter for George W. Bush.
Not finished making stuff up (i.e., lying), Gerson continues sermonizing:
But it is the political effect of these attacks that must have Team McCain shouting and hollering with the joy of a frontier camp meeting. In general, liberal political and media elites demonstrate a religious diversity that runs the spectrum from secularism to liberal Episcopalianism — all the varied shades from violet to blue. Yet they assume their high church or Mencken-like disdain for religious enthusiasm is broadly shared. It was the sociologist Peter Berger who observed, "Puerto Ricans, Jews and Episcopalians each form around 2 percent of the American population. Guess which group does not think of itself as a minority."
This sounds like one of the perpetual and unfounded screeds about the evils of secularism one might hear at one's church when one goes once in a great while. It's a gross misrepresentation of liberalism, as Gerson knows, and a gross misrepresentation of secularism, as Gerson ought to know. Both of those misrepresentations, of course, amount to dishonest portrayals of one's interlocutor. Such behavior does not advance us on the road to understanding.
American idle
In the wake of David Brooks's critical piece on Sarah Palin, I was going to point out that perhaps I was wrong about the right wing pundit corps. Maybe they don't marshal any argument, however foolish, in support of their "guy," whoever their guy is, or however silly his policy prescriptions. That would have been fun to write, as I enjoy being wrong, despite what people may think. But then I run across this morning's George Will column. He's not pro-Palin, but that's not going to stop him from making a pitch for McCain. Well it's not really a pitch for McCain, since he doesn't mention any of McCain's numerous virtues or policy proposals as a reason to vote for him.
What worries George Will, reputedly some kind of libertarian, about a Democratic Presidency is the possibility of (a) an (unlikely I think) expansion of unionization, (b) universal health care, (c) (unlikely again) laws regarding political speech. As a rule, one ought to dismiss out of hand Will's characterization of these issues, as he is, unfortunately, a serial straw man constructor. Perhaps one might find better arguments against those things elsewhere. What's silly is that these three things pose such a danger to the country and liberty, that Will finds their possible vetoing sufficient reason to vote for McCain. I mean, as they say, come on you've got to be kidding me. This is all you have?
Well, in other ironic matters, there's this:
Palin is as bracing as an Arctic breeze and delightfully elicits the condescension of liberals whose enthusiasm for everyday middle-class Americans cannot survive an encounter with one. But the country's romance with her will, as romances do, cool somewhat, and even before November some new fad might distract a nation that loves "American Idol" for the metronomic regularity with which it discovers genius in persons hitherto unsuspected of it.
"Liberals," of course, are elitists–i.e., not "everyday middle-class Americans." Don't they, by the way, belong to unions? Unions like the ones whose expansion this piece claims to offer reason to oppose? Then of course the irony: George Will, cursing elitism, makes fun not only of what lots of people watch, but of their aesthetic judgments as well. But perhaps he never cursed elitism.
In a related matter–this is dumbfoundingly hilarious.
Posts blog posts
I normally don't read the Post's election blog posts primarily because they're blog posts, but this one from Sebastian Mallaby, "Obama's Faulty Logic," caught my eye. I thought, "perhaps someone has caught Obama in a crazy non sequitur I can talk about here."
Then I read it and it occured to me that Mallaby thinks logic means something else than I do. But that's interesting anyway, because I often wonder what people who haven't been teaching it for many years think it is (feel free to comment on that). When I use the term, I mean something rather specific. I mean to point out the part of an argument that takes one from one fact to another fact. This is what logicians call an "inference." Even though this has to do with the facts in some very important sense, one can isolate the inference and see it as part of a larger pattern, a scheme, or whatever, independent of the particular facts. To say someone has faulty logic, for me, means he endorses faulty inference patterns or schemes.
For Mallaby it means something like there's something wrong with the thinking without any specific attempt at a diagnosis. In this particular case, in fact, he just seems to think Obama has wrongly diagnosed the cause of the current financial crisis. That's fine–so long as he attempts to prove it (which, to my mind, he doesn't, but that's another matter). Then Mallaby, swinging about accusations of faulty logic, writes:
The regulation-versus-deregulation rhetoric is appealingly simple, and both parties abuse it. Republicans like to say they will get the economy going by cutting red tape. Democrats like to say that they will make the economy more stable by demanding rational oversight. Neither claim is worth much.
The Republicans fail to acknowledge that the easy economic gains from deregulation were exhausted more than two decades ago, when clearly destructive restrictions on competition in trucking, airlines and so on were scrapped by Carter and Reagan. The Democrats fail to acknowledge that there is a limit to what government oversight can do. Modern financial institutions are so complex that government inspectors are hard pressed to understand their trading strategies. That is why an outfit such as Citigroup, a deposit-taking institution theoretically overseen by multiple government bodies including the Fed, could park billions of dollars of toxic mortgage securities in off-balance-sheet vehicles, with nary a protest from regulators.
Yes, Wall Street's woes reflect greed and reckless borrowing. And yes, some regulatory reform is necessary. But you can't blame the mess on either political party — at least not if you want to remain honest.
It's staggering to say that more rational oversight wouldn't have helped. But it's silly to say that anyone, even Democrats, would argue that oversight would solve all problems. That, in fact, is a bit of a George Will style straw man–one which has the liberals demanding that the government will prevent every wrong if it's allowed to. Obviously some amount of nefarious activity will take place, and unless Obama says that the government will stop every problem, cure every sickness and so on, then Mallaby is making Obama's position more absurd than it needs to be.
It's fine, in other words, for Mallaby to correct Obama's assertions–that's his job, I think at least. But accusing him of faulty logic when he's not guilty of it–even in Mallaby's enlarged sense–doesn't help anyone.
Now you tell me
In today's New York Times David Brooks argues that Sarah Palin does not have the experience to be Vice President and therefore President. He joins a growing chorus (he says) of conservative pundits who make this argument. I can't say of course that I disagree with him or them. But my interest in punditry here has little to do with agreement or disagreement. For even in getting to this obvious conclusion, that Palin does not have the requisite experience to be a candidate for such an office, Brooks still encounters logical difficulty. He cannot escape what has become the single most defining rhetorical trope of his intellectual career–the dichotomy.
Brooks's dichotomies are not always fallacious ones–it's more often the case in fact that they are not. A false dichotomy, the reader may remember, suggests two radically opposed and exhaustive possibilities, one completely ridiculous, one your view, as a means of suggesting your view has a kind of deductive support. On further reflection, of course, one finds there are many shades of opposition to your view, so therefore the dichotomy, and the force it gives your position, is false. So, for instance, you either endorse constitutional overreach, or you support the enemy and are thus a traitor. Since one does not want to be a traitor, one finds one must support constitutional overreach. But then it occurs to one that maybe there are other alternatives to constitutional overreach, so one discovers the dichotomy is false. That's the fallacious false dichotomy. Don't get me wrong, Brooks does it a lot. Today, however, it just the rhetorically false dichotomy. He writes:
There was a time when conservatives did not argue about this. Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement. Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.
But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.
The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct.
This populist tendency produced the term-limits movement based on the belief that time in government destroys character but contact with grass-roots America gives one grounding in real life. And now it has produced Sarah Palin.
People may think this has a kind of sophistication to it–wow Brooks can really distill cultural, economic, and political tendencies can't he!–but it's rather a silly way of looking at complex historical, cultural, etc., phenomena. He has, in other words, just pulled this out of his ass. A minimum of inspection will reveal these things are hardly as opposed as he suggests–especially the small town/big city dichotomy.
Where he gets into logical trouble today is elsewhere, however. He continues the narrative that Democratic elites' main objection consists in the fact that Palin does not eat arugula:
Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.
Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.
These two paragraphs distill the Palin/McCain campaign's political strategy: call everyone who disagrees with Sarah Palin a cultural elite, characterize the media as the enemy, and so forth. It's one massive straw man. But as long as they keep fighting it, the media will keep covering it, remarking on McCain's brilliant strategy in attacking the straw man, and in knocking him down, all the while they will keep asking why Obama can't get them interested in a real fight, and why this makes Obama weak.
But back to Brooks. Having repeated eight years' worth of straw men, he joins the opposition and claims their arguments, repeated anywhere and everywhere for the last eight plus years, as his own:
And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.
But before I get to those, I should remark that the above argument would be a false dichotomy. There's an obvious middle ground between a separate class of executives and caricatured portraits of mountain folk. But I digress, back to Brooks's agreement with everything he has ridiculed:
I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.
And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
Yes. And I think of all of the energetic sophistries Brooks has produced in favor of this ineptness.