Frum-py

David Frum, a usually fairly reasonable conservative, expresses his discomfort with the recent mini-same-sex marriage legalization boomlet in The Week, and in abbreviated form on The New Majority. He doesn't really touch the substance of the issue, but is concerned about a) starting another round of a cultural war in the midst of a depression, two wars, and nuclear threats from Iran and Korea, and b) the different state laws result in confusion about the rights of gay married couples and their children in various states. Which are both very convenient arguments to make when momentum is shifting against you.

Does anybody remember the year 2004? We were losing badly in Iraq, and fighting in Afghanistan. Terrorists attacked the transit system in Madrid. Suicide bombings were common in Israel. We were in the midst of a very tendentious presidential campaign. Howard Dean screamed. Yet the Republicans, led by Karl Rove, orchestrated the addition of 11 anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives to the presidential election.

In fact, the initiatives were added to take advantage of all that was happening in society. The sub-text of the ballot initiatives was not subtle: "America is under attack from home (activist judges!) and abroad (Iraqis who had nothing to do with 9/11)! The world is going crazy! You must vote against gay marriage (and for George Bush, BTW) to maintain law,order, and stability in this country!" And guess what? It worked. (Although it is debatable whether the ordinances had any effect on the election)

Other than hypocrisy, the other problem with this argument is its familiarity. Just wait, gay folks (blacks, women), until things are a little bit easier, little less excited, then we can address your concerns. But when the economy gets back in gear, and we are out of Iraq, and the Middle East situation is magically solved, the argument will be - but things are so great now? Why are you rocking the boat?

Frum is right to characterize this as another "round" of the culture wars. Like boxing, rounds are followed by one another inexorably, each side adjusts to the other's tactics and counterattacks, and each round has a winner and a loser, culminating in an ultimate decision. Unlike boxing, however, (or more like old-fashioned boxing) the fight doesn't end until one side scores a knockout.

As for the patchwork of laws and resulting confusion between SSM and non-SSM states - how is that different from real marriage? Every state has different laws concerning divorce, adoption, marital privelege, and inheritances. Outside of the marriage context, consider another controversial issue - gun ownership. Despite some guidance from the constitution, state laws concerning gun ownership vary greatly. One can lawfully carry an unlicensed gun in state A and be arrested and jailed for possessing that same gun in state B.

More importantly, aren't the Republicans supposed to be the party of Federalism? Federalism envisions - nay, encourages - variation among the states. Federalism requires some amount of confusion.

There will never be a right time, nor an easy path, to the resolution of social questions. The issue of gay marriage will only take longer to remedy if the side losing at the time is allowed to call a time-out.

10 New Romances

The term "bromance" has annoyingly entered the lexicon. Here are some proposed variations on the theme:

Cromance - Love between Neanderthals

Toemance - Podophilia

Fromance - Love of your large swath of curly hair

Homance - An affectionate prostitute/john relationship

Joemance - The Republican Party in 2008

Snomance - The reason Eskimos have 50 words for snow

Yomance - The love between a scrappy underdog boxer and a mousy introvert

Crowmance - Infatuation among Johnny Depp fans

Womance - Leads to Mawiage, a bwessed awangement

Woemance - A doomed relationship

An Epitaph for the Bush Presidency

Via the Avett Brothers:

THE WEIGHT OF LIES

Disappear from you hometown

Go and find the people that you know

Show them all you good parts

Leave town when bad ones start to show

Go and wed a woman

A pretty girl that you’ve never met

Make sure she knows you love her well

But don’t make any other promises



The weight of lies will bring you down

And follow you to every town

Cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there

So when you run make sure you run

To something and not away from

Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere



I once heard the worse thing

A man could do is draw a hungry crowd

Tell everyone his name, pride, and confidence

But leaving out his doubt

I’m not sure I bought those words

When I was young I knew most everything

These words have never met so much to anyone

As they now mean to me



The weight of lies will bring you down

And follow you to every town

Cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there

So when you run make sure you run

To something and not away from

Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you down

Republican Party Lament

First, we lost the integrationists
And I said nothing, because I was a federalist

Soon after that, we lost the liberals
And I said nothing, because I am a conservative

Next, we lost the libertarians
And I said nothing, because I am pro-life

After that, we lost the homosexuals
And I said nothing, because I am a fundamentalist

Soon, we lost the realists
And I said nothing, because I am now a neo-conservative

Now we have lost the intellectuals
And I say nothing, because I am proudly ignorant

On Tuesday, we will lose the election
And I will say, what happened to the Republican Party?

firealldemagogues.com

If you've never checked out the website firejoemorgan.com, open a new tab and open the site up. The site consists of 3 guys (mainly) taking turns critically analyzing/making fun of terrible or hackneyed or internally inconsistent sports writing.

I'm going to do the same thing here, but with terrible or hackneyed or internally inconsistent political writing. Let's start here. The original article is in bold, my commentary in plain text. Tony Blankley, fire up the demagoguery:

McCain's Duty Call

Uh - uh huh huh.

The essence of this election season couldn't be simpler. The American public is so appalled at the condition of the country (which it unfairly, but not implausibly blames on the despised President Bush) that with fate casting John McCain in the role of Bush's surrogate, a majority actually is considering voting for Sen. Obama.

How generous to concede that it is plausible to blame George Bush for the condition of the country. Certainly, the economy runs in boom and bust cycles, and we can't blame the entire current financial crisis on Bush. He's also not personally responsible for the housing bubble bursting, leaving a mess of sub-primy foreclosures all over the country. And it would be totally off base to blame him for the Ritchie-Madonna separation.

But, on everything else - hey, he's the most powerful man in the world. He had the final call on whether to invade Iraq. He maintained an undermanned force there. He authorized reprehensible methods to gather information for that war. His war has led to higher gas prices. And even if he is not to blame for the current economic mess, his administration has been re-active, not pro-active, in solving it.

Did "fate" cast John McCain as the role of Bush's surrogate? Well, unless Fate (R-AZ) cast votes in favor of torture and against ending the war, supports privatizing social security and extending tax cuts for the top income brackets, McCain is not merely a passive stand-in for Bush. McCain is not Bush, but he has tilted toward him for the last 4 years to attract the Republican establishment, and nominated Bush's less intelligent younger sister as his running mate.

And when an electorate is intent on doing something, the last thing it wants to hear about are the facts. Moreover, the public's lack of interest in the facts is facilitated by the major American media's refusal to report them.

Seems to be that people like to hear about facts - gas prices, grocery prices, foreclosure rates, etc. But I am glad that Blankley wants to argue this on facts. That is a good way to go about it. And damn the media for refusing to get the facts out there! If only there was a columnist for a well known newspaper situated in the nation's capitol who would write about this. On to the facts!

For example, as Obama has portrayed his political career as one extended beau geste to the ideal of American democracy, a slightly curious media would have thought to report on how he ran his previous elections. And those prior elections, far from being models of honest elections honestly fought, are redolent of Chicago politics at their most suspect.

FACT NUMBER 1 - Obama's honest past honest elections are honestly not honestly fought, but honestly instead honestly redolent of Chicago politics at their most suspect....Wait a sec, that's not a fact - that's a conclusion. But I am sure there are ironclad facts to support it. Since it is a striking conclusion, I expect there will be compelling facts to support it.

Obama's first election was described recently by Martin Fletcher, a foreign correspondent for NBC News, in the British newspaper The Times (not on NBC): "Mr Obama won a seat in the state senate in 1996 by the unorthodox means of having surrogates successfully challenge the hundreds of nomination signatures that candidates submit. His Democratic rivals, including Alice Palmer, the incumbent, were all disqualified." Hmm.

FACT NUMBER 1 - Obama pointed out that his rivals had illegally gained access to the ballot. And he thereby won the seat! He didn't have to go out and campaign, cut ribbons, kiss babies, any of that stuff - he merely got all of the other Democratic candidates disqualified. Then, they decided not to hold the general election, so he didn't have to worry about the Republican opponent.

Snark aside, in Obama's district, the primary was the equivalent of the general. And Obama did end up running unopposed - read here for a much better summary of the Obama's time in Chicago. But whose activity was "suspect"? - Obama's, or his opponents who had broken the law? It was opportunistic, but not dishonest, for Obama to get his opponents kicked off the ballot.

Plus, I would think that the conservatives wouldn't be bad-mouthing efforts to vote-related fraud right about now. Pretty weak stuff, Blankley. What else ya got?

Obama's election to the U.S. Senate was even more curious...

What about those other elections to the Illinois State Senate in 1998 and 2002?

..."In the Democratic primary, he was a long shot. But a month before the election, his main opponent, Blair Hull, a wealthy Chicago futures trader, was forced to publish divorce papers that revealed, among other charming details, his wife's claim that he had once threatened to kill her.

"In the general election, lightning struck again. His opponent, the engaging Jack Ryan, had run a campaign as a different sort of Republican. But a few months before the election, his divorce papers revealed that, while he might have been a different sort of Republican, he was from precisely the same stable of Obama political opponents. He had, it turned out, once tried to force his former wife to go with him to sex clubs in Paris."

FACT NUMBER 2! Obama's opponents were sleazebags! Does that make Obama dishonest?

Was Obama really the innocent beneficiary of these rare events? Anything is possible. But when a fellow deals himself two royal flushes in a row, the other players are entitled to be suspicious. Moreover, when a politician is suspected of hypocrisy, the Washington press corps usually is supercharged in its efforts to prove their suspicions. But despite the fact that these bare outlines of Obama's elections are pregnant with the implications that he has gained every office he has sought so far by underhanded and sordid means -- while posing as a Gary Cooper-like idealist in a corrupt political world -- the American media have let these extraordinary events simply pass without significant comment.

FACT NUMBER 3! Anything is possible...you can be suspicious...pregnant with implications...extraordinary events. No facts here. Did Obama publish the divorce papers? Did he threaten somebody to make them publish them? Did he sleep with Ms. Hull and Ms. Ryan? (He is pretty handsome).

Obama has sought 4 offices - Illinois state senator, U.S Rep., Senator, and President - for a total of 6 races. Blankley mentions 3 of them, but accuses Obama of gaining every office through underhanded and sordid means. He has one fact that doesn't support his conclusion, one fact that has nothing to do with Obama, and one innuendo that he blames others for not researching. If voters are not interested in "facts" it is because they are the kind of "facts" that Blankley is putting out here.

During the past few weeks, as I have been traveling extensively across the country, I have yet to find anyone (including a few reporters and producers at local news stations in Florida, California and New York) who has heard of these facts. The response when I recite the facts is always about the same. More or less: "Really? Wow!"

More - Really? Wow! That doesn't prove anything!
Less - (polite nodding, getting away from Blankley as fast as possible)

That was fun - let's do this again.

The Maverick vs. a maverick

I think we can all agree that the current downturn in the economy is due to government oversight. Those who blame the plummeting Dow on Uncle Sam blame the government's oversight, that is, it's excessive regulation of the economy. Those who believe that there has not been enough regulation consider this failure an oversight of the government, that is, something the government failed to do. Oversight is an antagonym - a word that, through the passage of time, has come to mean it's exact opposite.

John McCain has self-identified as another such antagonym (and eponym): a "maverick." Samuel Maverick was a Texas rancher who refused to brand his cattle. (His descendants, by the way, don't like McCain). As a result, unclaimed cattle wandering the Texas praire came to be known as "mavericks." The ambiguous nature of such beasts led to the rule that anybody who disovered a maverick and branded it could call it his own. Thus, at least in 19th century animal husbandry parlance, a maverick was not a loner or an independent - it was something that was yours for the taking. Today, maverick commonly refers to a dissenter or an independent. In actuality, maverick means both something claimable and unclaimable.

Which type of maverick is John McCain? Upon his election to Congress, in 1982, McCain was a self-described foot soldier in the Reagan revolution. He did not really buck his party until he emerged only slightly scathed from the Keating 5 scandal. The incident seemed to liberate him from the orthodoxies of his party. He left the Republican ranch.

The newly minted maverick took on big tobacco, and sought to limit campaign contributions. Much like his partner in that effort, Senator Feingold, he voted to confirm Ginsburg and Breyer as supreme court nominees, on the theory that such selections were the president's prerogative. (Feingold voted to confirm Alito and Roberts). McCain worked with both Massachusetts Senators - Kerry on normalization with Vietnam, and Ted Kennedy on immigration reform. I recall an issue of The New Republic from 2000, in which the editors endorsed both John McCain and Al Gore for president, saying of McCain that he was a conservative who, after thinking about things for a while, decided that the liberal side was the right side. (paraphrase). After the 2000 election, in which he was unfairly savaged by Bush during the primaries, McCain's movement across the aisle became more pronounced, culminating with his open flirtation with the 2004 nomination for Democratic vice president.

The maverick dodged that brand, and stayed loose for four more years. But in the quest for the Republican nomination, and the presidency, he let himself be seared. John McCain didn't bring his individuality - his lone wolf streak - to the Republican party, he let the Republicans leave a permanent mark on him. He came to change the Republican party and the Republican party changed him. He denounced his own former stands on immigration and health care. He retroactively opposes the nominations of Ginsburg and Breyer. He proposed to expand the Bush tax cuts that he initially opposed. The Texas ranch-owner branded his party's maverick. McCain has been claimed.

The real Bush McCain Connection

The Obama campaign's main theme has been to try to link up McCain to Bush, and convince people that a vote for McCain will be a vote for a third Bush term. This theme has run its course, largely because McCain has successfully branded himself as a maverick and co-opted Obama's theme of change. This is not a slam at McCain; it is good campaigning, and any semi-intelligent politician runs on a change platform, at almost any time, because people always want something new. McCain does take on the party orthodoxy occasionally, and has worked with Democrats in the past; his message of change is not merely cynical - as opposed to the rest of his campaign.

The problem with McCain is that he is using his maverick image and honorable personal story to lay a coat of varnish on a political party that is dysfunctional and dishonest. I am for a Republican Party that is for state's rights, individual freedom, and limited government; that would be an honest contrast to a more activist Democratic party that is more comfortable with progressive taxation, government solutions to societal problems, and social liberalism. This kind of healthy debate would result in compromises and would be roughly complementary to the system of checks and balances created by the authors of the constitution.

Unfortunately, today's Republican Party is dedicated to the centralization of conservative social policy. Gay rights, abortion rights, and gun owner's rights are not seen as state's issues, or as a matter of civil libertarianism, but instead as grist for conservative federal policy. McCain has espoused federalism on gay rights, not so much on gun owner's rights and abortion rights, and in any event would take the mantle of a party that wants to deprive states from honoring gay marriages, or amplifying abortion rights, or enacting gun bans.

Furthermore, the Republican Party is not for limited government, at least not honestly. Anybody who has studied the federal budget knows that all programs that are designed to help the poor (with the exception of Medicaid), or are the most provincial earmarks, or fund federal programs, could be cut in their entirety, and they would not balance the budget. The budget for defense spending, health care spending, veteran's spending, Social Security, and financing the federal debt are big enough to shove all other programs enacted by either party to the margins. Yet, since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have raised their rights fists and railed against government spending, while cutting more checks and piling up deficit spending with their left hands.

This is the party that John McCain represents. Even if you credit every word of John McCain's clarion calls for change and reform, he is still going to be working with all of the Republicans that have been in Washington for decades. Bush has hired thousands of Republicans to work in his administration and his presidency has ushered in an increased Republican presence, if not dominance, in K Street lobbying firms. If McCain were elected, does anybody really think that all those hirees and lobbyists would be replaced? McCain might believe in reforming the Republican party, but he would be a one man campaign against most of the people who worked for him; he'd be the CEO of Coke who decided that his company really should embrace purified tap water.

Nowhere is the dichotomy between a man who represents honor and a devalued party that represents incompetence more on display than the McCain campaign. While his increasingly limited positive campaigning revolves around his iconoclastic persona and a call for reform, his rampant and deceitful negative campaigning, and his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, hearken back to the two biggest problems with the Bush Presidency and the current Republican Party - dishonesty, and cronyism.

First, dishonesty. President Bush, or rather, the neoconservatives who had the largest voices in his first term, lied to the American people to lead us into war in Iraq. The conflation of Al Qaida and Iraq, the dog and pony show at the United Nations, and the selective trumpeting of intelligence, were all lies that led us into war. The neoconservative belief that the U.S. should pro-actively use its military might to enforce democracy, and thereby make the world a better and safer place, is not a bad agenda, it's just one that a majority of Americans didn't (and still don't) believe in. So the Iraq war had to be disguised as a jingoistic response to September 11, 2001, and a search for weapons of mass destruction that likely never existed. If thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians are going to die for a cause, it should be for one that is forthrightly put on the table, not one that is grudgingly admitted after the media belatedly ferreted out the lies. The Republican brand has become synonymous with deceit, and McCain has embraced that in his campaign:

Barack Obama voted for teaching kindergartners to be wary of strangers who want to touch them inappropriately. McCain accuses him of wanting to teach 6 year olds about sex before the alphabet. That is not spin or "contrast," it is a lie.

Barack Obama voted against an immigration bill, as did John McCain. Putting out a Spanish language commercial slamming Obama for not voting for the bill is so misleading that it is a lie. Here is another example of this, with a defense spending bill.

Barack Obama is proposing a more expansive and progressive tax cut than John McCain; McCain is claiming that the reverse is true, in specific enough ways to make it dishonest. McCain is claiming that Barack Obama wants to have government bureaucrats deny you health care - a line that might have been appropriate for Hillary Clinton...in 1994, when she was helping her husband come up with a health plan. Against Obama, the line is just a lie.

All politicians spin and distort during campaigns; I'm not naive. But McCain is not only doing so worse than any candidate not named Bush in recent memory,but he is also doing so while simultaneously running as a cult of personality candidate based on honor. If this is how he campaigns, how is he going to govern?

Second, cronyism. The Palin pick has been hailed and derided as many things - an appeal to disaffected Clinton voters, an attempt to energize the Republican base, a disaster, a Mcbrilliant masterstroke, etc. Ultimately, whatever one thinks of Palin's politics or her personal story, I think that McCain did "one heck of a job" when he picked Palin.

Let me explain the reference and the comparison. Michael Brown was selected to head FEMA because of personal and political considerations despite an evident lack of qualification. This proved disastrous after Hurricane Katrina, yet Bush, to cover up the fiasco, praised Brown, publicly stating that he was doing a "heck of a job." The same process is true for the selection of Sara Palin. Yes, the coverage of her has been sensationalistic and at some times sexist, although there is delicious irony in the Republicans suddenly becoming strident feminists. Yes, her reputation as a "Barracuda," her possible neglect of her home life, and her quest for earmarks and subsequent denunciation of them make her no different than most politicians, male or female.

But these criticisms are mere distractions to the real problem with her selection - she is not qualified for the office. It doesn't matter that she has executive experience; what matters is her knowledge and mastery of national and international policy. She has been the governor of a state so unlike the rest of the United States - it is vast yet has a tiny population, it is geographically isolated from other states, it is awash in money because of federal subsidies and because of, not despite, high oil prices - that her executive experience will simply not translate to Washington DC. Governor Reagan was governor of a state with a larger economy than most countries. Governor Clinton led a small state - but a small state whose problems mirrored the nation's - racial strife, educational difficulties, transitioning to a post-industrial economy. Unlike either men, she has no articulated vision of the place of the United States in the world. Her only public statements about foreign policy have either aped John McCain's or been false bravado (although the difference between the two has been diminishing) in stating that she would be prepared to declare war on Russia. If Palin had more than a boilerplate vision of the proper role of government, or a theory of the United States' place in the world, don't you think the Republicans would have put it out there, instead of more jokes -- and feigned shock -- about animals that wear lipstick?

But what's worse than Palin's inexperience is the Republican's frantic declamations to the contrary. Hopefully, you've seen Jon Stewart's dissection of Republican hypocrisy, showing Karl Rove slamming the potential selection of Tim Kaine because of his merely being the mayor of a small town and then the governor of a state for a short while, and then extolling Sara Palin for the exact same qualifications. She falsely claimed to have been to Iraq, and now quietly admitted that she has not. And John McCain now blathers that she knows more about energy policy than anyone else in the US, despite the bald ridiculousness of that statement. Finally, Republicans are now claiming that energy policy is really about national security. It reminds me of Bush in 2004, responding to questions about job training with discussions of his education policy. "Energy policy is really about national security" is this year's "No Child Left Behind is really a jobs program." Sure the two topics are somewhat related, but they both confuse part with whole. (Alleged) Knowledge of energy policy is a necessary component of, not a substitute for, mastery of foreign policy. Instead of admitting that they hired someone based on political expedience, the Republicans - with McCain as the head cheerleader - are defending her selection with indefensible reasoning.

If McCain is so in thrall to the right wing of his party, who will he choose as his Attorney General? For federal judicial appointments? I don't know how he can be trusted in this regard anymore. He could have made a politically efficacious pick along the same lines by picking Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who is as conservative as Palin but much more experienced, or Olympia Snowe, or Christine Todd Whitman, who are more moderate and more experienced.

SO, please don't vote for McCain. The two things he has control over as a presidential candidate - the tenor of his campaign, and the selection of a running mate (or as he has freakily called her, a running soulmate) - are contrary to his claims to be a political maverick, and are nasty echos of the Republican politics of the last 8 years. McCain is not running for third Bush term, even if he has given Bush big bear hugs. But he is running for a third term of deceit and cronyism.