Notes on the Bush-Maliki Summit

What President Bush has to say is not very interesting because he cares so little about the real world. The same is the case with Bush's current summit with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Jordan. Bush talks about "finishing the mission" and victory. The whole world knows that a U. S. victory in Iraq is no more likely than the Kansas City Royals winning the World Series or Vanderbilt University winning the Super Bowl. So nobody particularly listens.

Maliki is a different story though. Today it emerged that he told Condi Rice that al-Sadr and the Mahdi army militia were "not a big problem." Now there's a formulation that's ripe for multiple interpretations. Perhaps al-Maliki meant that al-Sadr and his forces were not a very formidable force and that he could deal with them before his morning prayers if he really wanted. Al-Maliki--too tough to care.

Or perhaps Sadr is "not a big problem" because Maliki sees the Shiite militias as an important element in the power of the Iraqi government. That's a possibility because the ferocity of the Shiite militias has demonstrated indeed that Shiites are willing and able to defend themselves. With the Shiite militias integrated throughout the government, there can be little doubt that the elected Shiite government can defend itself against Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda.

Or perhaps, al-Maliki thinks that Sadr is "not a big problem" because he knows that an American attack on Sadr and the Sadr City slum of Baghdad would create a much bigger problem.

Maybe Maliki was saying that Sadr is "not a big problem" compared to Rice and the rest of the blundering Bush administration.

Bad News for a Noble Enterprise

Today's a bad day for my field. Political philosophy, the effort to think about political matters in moral terms, is among the more ambitious of intellectual enterprises. Many of the great figures of human thought have worked in political philosophy as a genre, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, and Locke.

But political philosophy has its share of slimeballs as well. The German political thinker Carl Schmitt caddied for the Nazis. Likewise, Mihailo Markovic served the cause of Serbian nationalism under his brother-in-law Slobodan Milosevic. Now it turns out that Luis Echeverria, the former Mexican president was also a political philosopher. That would not be so bad except that Echeverria was responsible for massacres of Mexican students during the sixties. Today, the charges against him were reinstated.

The Shame!

Actually, it's worse. The Bush administration and their fellow travelers in the media have been loaded with people (actually men) with academic training in the right-wing views of Leo Strauss, a leading political philosopher at the University of Chicago after WWII. Key architects of Iraq invasion like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were trained in Straussianism--the same with William Kristol.

My only consolation is that Bush administration Straussians might end up like Echeverria-- under arrest for their crimes against humanity.

Newt Plays the Outrage Card

Newt in New Hampshire. Last night in Manchester, New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich proclaimed that the U. S. "will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism." Newt's immediate reference was to changing "the rules" so that terrorist groups couldn't get their message out through the internet. But Gingrich is a complex guy and he was talking on many levels. As a result, we need to exercise care in parsing out what Newt meant.

Playing the Outrage Card. Frankly, I think Newt challenged the freedom of speech to incite liberal "outrage" as a way to keep his name in the media. In other words, he was playing people on the left for suckers as a way to promote his long-shot presidential candidacy. On right-wing radio, figures like Rush Limbaugh and their callers get special pleasure out of outraging liberals. It's a form of psychological power that they see themselves as having over the left. One liberal who's already taken the bait is Bob Cesca who couldn't resist the temptation to proclaim that he would be willing to die (and by implication, see whole cities go under) in defense of free speech.

So, let's resist the urge to be outraged.

Nibbling around the issue. Instead, what Gingrich said should be examined in the context of right-wing political discourse. People on the right have been talking about the constitution not being a suicide pact and you can't have civil liberties if you're dead for some time now. Conservative figures ranging from Bill O'Reilly to President Bush have been trying to establish a distinction between "responsible" dissent and "irresponsible" accusations that the administration engaged in systematic lying in order to promote the Iraq invasion (which they of course did). There's the everyday treason accusations made by Ann Coulter and all her bombthrowing imitators. Although the right has yet to launch a full assault on freedom of speech, they've certainly done a lot of nibbling around the issue, looking for a pretext to promote their own schemes for limiting free speech while complaining about the limits that McCain-Feingold puts on their ability to extort money from corporations.

Who's the target? Gingrich talked about curtailing the ability of terrorists to use the internet as if we already did not have laws against criminal conspiracy and recruiting for terrorism that apply to the internet. But, of course, the target is the left. What worries Newt much more than terrorism is the rise of a left-wing blogosphere that has been much more determined and effective than the Democratic leadership and the mainstream media in opposing the Iraq war, the Bush administration, and the right-wing in general. By the eve of the invasion in April 2003, the Bush administration had thoroughly cowed the Democrats and the mainstream media, but the internet turned out to be a powerful mechanism both for rallying anti-war sentiment and challenging the Democrats and the regular media to be more critical. Conservatives have always viewed the development of an anti-war politics as a treasonable exercise in giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. With Republican defeats in the 2006 election, it looks like the current anti-war movement is an intolerable threat to the war effort. As a result, Newt is taking his probe of free speech up another notch. If the Republicans lose another election in 2008, Newt will probably wonder if elections are really that necessary.

The Benefits of Free Speech. In the case of the Iraq War, the exercise of free speech rights has not only been a manifestation of the natural freedom at the core of human existence, it has also been extremely good for the nation. Outside the initial invasion, the Bush administration has bungled the war in Iraq so badly that Baghdad and other cities have become hells on earth. Because the liberal blogosphere and a few Republicans like John McCain and Chuck Hagel had the free speech rights to pount away at the Bush administrations failures from an early point in the occupation, the whole country has a context for understanding the current disaster and an intellectual basis for debating future policy. If dissenters had not had free speech rights, the Republicans would have occupied Iraq for ten or twenty years, wasting lives, money, and military assets, and getting nowhere.

Conclusion. I'm far from being outraged by the right-wing's little campaign against free speech. However, the right is just as wrong about free speech as it was wrong on Iraq, the Civil Rights Movement, women's rights, gay marriage, social security, McCarthyism, the New Deal, government regulation of business, and abolitionism. There are few things more reliable than the wrong-headedness of the right.

Right Where They Want to Be

With Bush being presidential in Latvia, Michael Richards on the apology circuit, and a Republican mayor of New York wondering why his cops are acting like they're in Baghdad, the Democrats are off the front page.

And off the front page is where the Democrats need to be until they're actually ready to do something.

A Note on Mormon Discrimination

To the extent that Mormons are identified with the right-wing and social conservatism, I think their impact on American society is negative in much the same way that the conservatism of the white South and Plains States is a negative.

That is far from excusing Andrew Sullivan's display of "Mormon sacred underwear" on his blog last Friday. What he was trying to do was incite bigotry against Mormons in the same way that right-wingers try to incite bigotry against gays by promoting lurid images of gay sex. Sullivan is gay and is very sensitive about discrimination against gays. He should have known better.

Sullivan was wrong and his actions are harmful to Mormons all over the U. S. My department at my university in Kentucky hired a Mormon government professor and it was a little over a year before some jerk started baiting her about Mormons wearing "leather underwear." We took it as an incident of religious discrimination and complained to our chair. I don't know what the ultimate disposition of the case was, but I was extremely saddened when the professor told me that she had been dealing with these kinds of comments "all her life."

People shouldn't have to deal with that garbage. I know that Mitt Romney is gearing up for a presidential run as a social conservative and I'll certainly oppose Romney as much as I can. But that's no more excuse for promoting bigotry against Mormons than Barack Obama's presidential aspirations are an excuse for white racism or Hillary Clinton's efforts are an excuse for sexism.

The Power of Words

George Bush: Today, President Bush stated emphatically that American troops would not withdraw from Iraq "before the mission is complete." But, the ideal of completing the mission grows more disconnected every day with the reality in Iraq. In fact, Bush's jargon is now so disconnected from the real world that one has to wonder if he actually is thinking the opposite. That was the case with firing Donald Rumsfeld. In October, Bush was already searching for Rumsfeld's replacement when he was offering assurances that the former Defense Secretary would be retained until the end of his term.

A Civil War Too Late: Like President Bush's insistent on finishing the mission, NBC's announcement that the Iraq conflict is a civil war indicates a disconnect. Iraq has been in a state of civil war since Saddam leftovers and Sunni insurgents began assassinating secular figures in 2003. Indeed, civil war may be an overly mild term for the situation that's developed in Baghdad since the March bombingof the Shiite shrine in Samarra. Given the four or five corner conflict between U. S. troops, the Iraqi military and police, the various Shiite militias, the many Sunni insurgent groups, and criminal gangs, it might be better to characterize Baghdad as a Hobbesian war of all against all.

Michael Richards: It's been almost a week but I'm still stunned by the Michael Richards racial tirade. The more I heard the tape and looked at the transcript last night (while blogging), the more upset I got. It's still bothering me tonight. Richards was not just being a racist. He wasn't just using the n-word. He gave a stunning evocation of lynching as a preferred model for race relations. I wonder if that's what all the discrimination against blacks, all the racist stereotypes, all the racial profiling, and all the sneers about affirmative action and "political correctness" ultimately point back to--the lynching regime that served as the violent backbone of racial segregation in the South. Perhaps, all the racial "progress" of the last forty years is a very thin layer of humanity over a bedrock of segregation and lynching.

Michael Richards and the Power of Segregation in the White Mind

By this time, everybody knows about Michael Richard's racist rant at the LA Comedy Club last week. Personally, I'm not particularly interested in whether Richards apologized (he did) or whether Richards a racist (how could he say he isn't?). The tabloid question of whether Michael Richards is going to be condemned, saved, or rehabilitated doesn't grab me either. I never liked Seinfeld all that much. As a result, Richards never really mattered to me as a cultural icon. Perhaps some good will come out of the efforts of Jesse Jackson to use the incident to question the use of the n-word in popular culture.

However, what really interests me is what we can learn about American society more generally from Richard's outburst. I think there's a lot to learn about the enduring symbolic importance of segregation here.

What set Richards off was heckling by either Frank McBride or Kyle Doss that Richards was not funny. The issue here was a black person was passing judgement on him as a white man. From Richards' point of view, McBride or Doss were mistaken in presuming to have the right to evaluate Richards' work as a comedian and he quickly moved to correct them. For Richards, desegregation was an act of noblesse oblige on the part of whites rather than a recognition of racial equality. Believing that McBride and Doss should have been grateful to be allowed in the club at all, Richards was offended that they would presume to judge a famous white man.

This is why Richards reminded the men that "fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass." Of course, the "we" here is the white race and Richards is reminding McBride, Doss, and their party of the power he views whites as exercising over blacks in American society. For Richards, segregation and lynching are still archetypical expressions of the fullness of white dominance. When Richards raises the specter of lynching, he is reminding blacks of his view that segregation is still current and fundamental even if it is not often spoken. Racial power relations have remained the same even if few blacks get lynched and Richards doesn't see these particular blacks guys as having any more right to judge him than Emmet Till had to whistle at a white woman during the fifties.

Michael Richards reminds us of the extent to which segregation is fundamental to American culture. With the on-going dominance of stereotypical portrayals of black women and men in popular culture, popular culture inculcates the idea that the racial stereotypes of the segregation period are still "true" and that anyone who rejects those stereotypes is morally questionable as a snob, (most likely a) hypocrite, and a "politically correct" kind of person. The spirit of segregation may have died in American law, but it dominates American popular culture. Of course, Michael Richards is going to be exiled culturally because he crudely spoke what a great many white people think in vague and unselfconscious ways. But his racist tirade spoke something that was very true of white thinking.

New Sand Castles on the Right

One thing you can't say about the right-wing is that they're not boring. In the two weeks since the election, they've developed several new rhetorical sand castles to deny any significance to their defeat. Some of them would sound almost plausible if the right hadn't claimed that Bush's two percent win over Kerry was a landslide. Here's a partial run-down.

The Six-Year Itch. This is the idea that two-term administrations normally lose a lot of seats in Congress during their sixth year and that Republican losses were about the same as average. But it doesn't quite work. Two of the administrations cited, FDR's and Lyndon Johnson's, were working with huge Congressional majorities which shrunk in their sixth year but were far from disappearing altogether. The other case was the Eisenhauer administration, but Eisenhauer's losses might be considered a re-affirmation of the long-ruling Democrats rather than a repudiation of Eisenhauer. To the contrary, the 2006 election was a decisive repudiation of the Bush administration for its failures in Iraq, the Republican Congress for its endless scandals, and the right-wing for carrying the Republican Party's water.

Republicans Got Away From Principles. Under Bush, the Republicans have not only not been the party of small government, they engaged in significantly more domestic spending than the Clinton administration. According to current Republican commentary, this means that Repubicans were trying to buy re-election rather than govern according to principles. What the right doesn't acknowledge is that their principles are costly. To get tax cuts and other controversial bits of legislation through Congress, the Republican leadership had to bribe both moderate Republicans and some conservative Democrats to get their votes. There was no way around it. They had to give out tons of pork. Otherwise, they wouldn't have had a governing majority at all. David Stockman had to do the same thing to get Ronald Reagan's first budget passed. It's a curious irony, but the Republicans will always practice very big government as long as they are so devoted to the right-wing ideology of small government.

Conservatism Didn't Lose. According to the right, Heath Shuler of North Carolina is the poster boy for the new Congress. Because Shuler and a couple of guys from Indiana are more conservative than Nancy Pelosi, there wasn't an ideological shift in Congress. That's a big mistake because there has been a profound shift away from moderation. Because the GOP beat up so badly on Democratic moderates in 1994 and 2002, the Democratic caucus is much more liberal than it was when Bill Clinton became president. I seriously doubt that Nancy Pelosi will have to use her whip skills to get minimum wage legislation, medicare reforms, and repeals of oil company tax breaks passed in the upcoming session.

Leaving Iraq Would Be Worse. The right has finally gotten around to admitting that the situation in Iraq is a disaster. But, they insist, things will get that much worse if American troops are withdrawn. Of course, it's increasingly hard to see how things can get much worse. Yesterday's gruesome attack on Shiite Sadr City in Baghdad was followed by today's even more vicious revenge attacks. Our 15,000 troops in Baghdad aren't making any more impact on the sectarian conflict than Paris Hilton and Kevin Federline are making on the history of music. Likewise, a combined American and Iraqi operation has taken five months to retake half of Ramadi. Michael Fumenti of the Weekly Standard finds reason for hope in the painfully slow progress and exults that the patrol he was embedded with captured three suspected "bad guys." But three bad guys a day doesn't keep the spectre of failure away. The American mission in Iraq is looking more futile all the time.

Bush, Perle, and Other Vacancies at Reality Hotel

In some ways, the rift between the Bush administration and the neo-con promoters of the disastrous Iraq invasion is a mirage. Bush, Cheney, Perle, and Frum might not be doing lunch anymore, but it isn't like the neo-cons are checking in to Reality Hotel either.

President Bush and Dick Cheney are convinced, maybe fanatically convinced, that staying in Iraq at all is a victory over the insurgents. To the extent that I can translate this for people who have contact with reality, this means that Bush believes that the "terrorists" expect the United States to give up on the occupation and leave. Therefore, keeping the American military in Iraq constitutes victory. As George the First said the other day, his son isn't going to cut and run.

Neo-cons may be criticizing the occupation at this point, but they haven't left la la land either. Sure, Richard Perle concedes that the occupation has been a failure, but he argues that the administration should have adapted his original position of handing Iraq over immediately to exile leaders like Ahmed Chalabi after Saddam was removed. By "exile groups," Perle of course means the secular Iraqi groups as opposed to Shiite groups like SCIRI.

Like there was a chance that would have worked!

The Iraqi exile groups had no armies, no police forces, no financial assets, and no constituency in Iraq. Handing the country over to them would have been an even bigger disaster than the American occupation.

Neo-conservatism has always been a delusional state of being. The only difference between the Bush administration and their current neo-con critics is that they're now attached to different delusions.

Why I Like Santa Better

I like Santa Claus a whole lot better than Jesus. I know that the figure of Santa Claus is too commercialized in the United States, but I also believe that the deification of Santa is one of the really good things about American society. At a time when our workaholism gives us all a lean, hungry, and cynical look, it's a wonderful relief to contemplate Santa's boundless generosity, bottomless well of happiness, and most pleasing plumpness. Santa's become even better over the last few decades as naughty/nice lists and the specter of coal have faded into cultural memory.Santa is also one of the few white European figures who translates easily into other cultures. In our pale-faced household, we have a black "Rocking Santa" figure who sings “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in Peggy Lee's voice. Multi-racial, transgendered--Santa makes is an extremely flexible symbol of a giving spirit who demands nothing in return. We also have a "Saxophone Santa" and the Christmas season doesn't really get under way until he belts out a couple versions of "Jingle Bells."

To the contrary, I really don't understand the appeal of Jesus. Although I had a half-hearted Christian upbringing, the Jesus story is becoming increasingly less attractive and plausible as the years go by. Where Santa is a carnivalesque figure of fun, merriment, consumption, and over-consumption, Jesus strikes me as an essentially Lenten God of suffering, self-denial, and other-worldliness. How many gods condemn human happiness with the finality that Jesus condemns laughter in Luke. “Woe unto you that laugh now! For ye shall mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:25). How many would tell their followers to hate their fathers, mothers, wives, children, or brothers, “yeah and his own life also?” (Luke 14:26) In many ways, Jesus is the pre-eminent Western god of violence against self. Of course, it is not hard to understand why we identify so much with Jesus in the United States. Given the unhappy, over-extended character of so much of our lives in the United States, most of us chronically feel like we're bearing our own cross. However, just like I often hope for a better society, I also hope for a better god--a god who represents a joy that is not contingent on walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

The other extremely unattractive element in the Jesus story is the weird narcissism of the Christian God. Where most gods are adjuncts to family, clan, and nation, the Christian god needs men and women to love him more than they love anything else in the world. Doesn't Jesus call on people to put him before their families and everything in their earthly lives? Why? Why have a god who needs so much? Why have a God who cooks up the unlikely plan of tearing his substance apart in order to create a "son" who is man, god, and spirit all in one. Why make the gruesome sacrifice of that son into the key evidence of the God's "love" for humanity and human kind's only hope for escaping an eternity of suffering? I'm not sure there's much difference between the Christian God's killing of his son to demonstrate his love for humanity and John Hinckley's shooting Reagan to demonstrate his love for Jody Foster.

Moreover, isn't there a big element of petulance in throwing into the flames of hell anybody who doesn't believe the whole implausible story? I know that lots of people like a little sadomasochism with their narcissism and neediness. After all, Mel Gibson isn't the only action hero who is a macho version of Jesus.To the contrary, Santa Claus does not demand that we love him in return. Santa gives and gives and gives without expecting anything in return. I’ve seen conservative columnists refer to people as worshipping Santa. But that’s precisely wrong. Worship is an exchange relationship in which people pray to, praise, and reverence the god in exchange for the god’s favors. Santa is one of the few divinities who give to us without demanding anything in return. It’s this spirit of generous freedom that carries the most promise of “peace on earth, good will among men.”

School Daze

The White People's Party--The College Republicans of Boston University are offering a "whites only" scholarship and argue that they are focusing attention on the inequities of affirmative action.

Yeah, right. And Trent Lott was satirizing Strom Thurmond as well.

Race neo-cons like William Bennett have been pushing "color-blindness" as a moral position on race for years. But the color-blind ideology is mostly just a politically-correct fallback position for white bigotry. Once segregation was over, the same people who engaged in various kinds of abuses against African-Americans began to adapt the language of color-blindness as a new code for expressing their racial hostility. Complaining about affirmative action began to replace complaining about black "ingratitude," black "trouble-makers," and blacks "staring" at white women.

The Republican Party is troubled by the development and has already disaffiliated one group of College Republicans for adapting the "whites only scholarship idea." However, the Republicans have taken advantage of racist, anti-immigrant, and homophobic bigotry for so long that they can't shake the reality that they've become the "white people's party."

Iraq: Withdrawal as a Time-Buying Strategy

Bigger than 9-11--According to the UN, 3709 civilians were killed in Iraq last month--more than were killed at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania combined on 9-11. The U. S. occupation of Iraq may turn out to be the biggest terrorist bonanza in history.

Make It Matter or Move Them Out--There are 15,000 American troops in Baghdad and 20,000 in Anbar. The American military command is at least four months into its enhanced operations in Baghdad and still hasn't figured out a way to make American forces relevant to the sectarian battles between the Shiites and Sunni insurgents. If American troops can't be made relevant to the situation in Baghdad, they should either be redeployed back to Anbar or sent home.

The Crunch--Likewise, there are not enough American troops in al-Anbar to defeat the Sunni insurgents and global jihadis. That's been the situation for at least 18 months. It's getting pretty close to crunch time in Anbar. The current stasis in which the American military is only "contains" a slowly gaining insurgency is unsustainable. American public has lost patience with the war and the Bush administration will probably initiate a general withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq before the 2008 election.

The difficulty with al-Anbar is two-fold. If the U. S. withdraws, there is a real possibility that global jihadis will establish Taliban-type regimes in Anbar cities and start using them as bases for attacks on the West in general and the U. S. in particular. At the same time, the only way that the U. S. could subdue Anbar completely would be to put America on a war footing, re-institute a draft, and dramatically increase the number of American troops in the region.

Buying Time? But do we need to subdue Anbar to prevent terrorist initiatives against the U. S.? Not necessarily. If the U. S. withdrew it's troops from Iraq, it may be that a combination of Sunni insurgent groups and tribal militias would prevent the jihadis from using Anbar as a terrorist launching pad. Right now, nobody knows how the relations between global insurgents, nationalist jihadis, and the tribal structures would play out after an American withdrawal. The situation might take months or years to shake out completely.

In this sense, an American withdrawal from Iraq might be viewed in terms of preparing for future conflicts. Perhaps it would be best to put the U. S. on a war footing anyway as a way to prepare for extended conflict in Iraq if it looks like global jihadis are gaining the upper hand or if there is going to be a wholesale sectarian genocide. That certainly would mean reinstituting a draft of young men and women to increase the number of troops and raising taxes to support an enhanced military. It would also mean retraining the entire military apparatus, especially the high command, for political, humanitarian, and occupation duties as well as traditional warfare.

The U. S. was not ready for a war on terror when we were attacked on 9-11. Perhaps a withdrawal from Iraq would allow us to buy the time needed to get ready.

Optimism for the Dems

The Constitution of the U. S. was established in order that the federal government could "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The question for the Democrats in Congress is how are they going to further all the goals for which government was established in the United States. Do seeking articles of impeachment against President Bush, re-establishing the draft, and pushing for national health care "promote the general welfare" in any way?

All other things being equal, the answer would be yes. But, all other things are not equal. The U. S. has a strong activist right wing and pursuing an aggressively liberal agenda at this time would lead to the re-establishment of a Republican majority and more wars, higher deficits, the privatization of social security, abridgement of free-speech rights, and other disastrous consequences.

As long as the right-wing is a political threat, the most important way that the Democrats can serve the "general welfare" is to prevent the Republican Party--the party of the right-wing--from regaining majorities.

Given this consideration, Nancy Pelosi's extremely modest agenda is the best course for the Democrats. Pelosi wants to "raise the minimum wage, cut interest rates on college tuition, expand stem cell research, and make health care more affordable." That isn't going to do much to make the United States a better place to live, but success in pursuing this agenda would enable the Democrats to prevent the right-wing from making the U. S. a much worse place.

Right now, it looks like the Democratic leadership will have success getting this agenda through Congress and onto President Bush's desk. If she accomplishes this much, Pelosi will be doing the country a real service.

The Blair Truth Project

Yesterday, Tony Blair let it slip that the invasion of Iraq was a "disaster." Blair's press people say that it's disingenuous to conclude that Blair actually meant what he said.

But what would happen if people in the Bush administration slipped into "truth-telling" mode.

Alberto Gonzalez would have said, "of course, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, and data-mining are threats to freedom in the United States. I'm a threat to freedom in the United States."

And Dick Cheney would have countered, "not as big a threat as me."

George Bush would have gone on, "you don't understand that people in my administration and a lot of conservatives in general don't like freedom in the United States. Yeah, flying the flag is great, but elections, political dissent, opposition parties, poplear culture, the right to free speech, and the right to privacy--we don't believe in that anyway. That's the purpose of the war in Iraq, to get rid of all this freedom stuff and get back to the good old days like when I was a kid. "

Too bad it's been suchh a disaster."

Signing off from Philly--only a sixteen hour trip back to Morehead.

Against "Bo-stalgia"

You have to give Bo Schembechler and his doctors credit. Having lived 37 years after his first heart attack, he was a miracle of modern medicine and the determination to live that makes it possible for modern medicine to work.

But that doesn't make Bo Schembechler a great football coach.

Schembechler was to football what General Motors was to cars. General Motors thrived for decades because their only competition was Ford. They didn't have to innovate; they didn't have to streamline; they didn't have to care. After all, they could sell 50,000 units of anything at a good profit. GM wasn't a very good company but they didn't have to worry because they could make a lot of money anyway.

Schembechler didn't have to care either. At a time when the Big Ten was the Big Two and the Little Eight, he was in the ideal position of not having to worry about competition. Sitting on prime football recruiting grounds in Michigan and Northern Ohio, Schembechler was always going to have big-time players. Likewise, Ohio State was the only team that Bo had to take seriously every year. As a result, Bo didn't have to worry about keeping up with new defenses, wishbone offenses, or innovations in the passing game. All Bo needed to do was line up his big, fast, and talented players against the smaller and slower guys at Northwestern and Illinois and call the same run left, run right, and run between the tackle plays he had always called. He won every time. Bo didn't need to worry about Ohio State either because Woody Hayes was just as committed to the stale old ways as him.

In many ways, Bo and Woody were like Bear Bryant and the last generation of segregation coaches in the South--great coaches as long as they didn't have to play outside their particular little sandboxes. Likewise, just as the continued idol worship of Bear Bryant masks a deep nostalgia for segregation among Southern whites, the urge to glorify Bo Schembechler masks a longing to return to the days of effortless domination.

It's unfortunate. If there was anything admirable about college football in the seventies (and that's a big "if" given the huge recruiting scandals), it would have to be found in the Southern Cal, UCLA, and the wishbone teams out of the Southwest. Those were the teams that moved the game forward while the work of Darrell Royal, Barry Switzer, John McKay, John Robinson, Terry Donohue, Dick Vermeil, and Bill Walsh turned Bo Schembechler into a nostalgia item long before he retired.

Philadelphia Blogging

I've been in Philadelphia since Wednesday with a student honors conference. I haven't gotten any sleep to make up for the fifteen hour train ride from Kentucky.

But . . . here we go!

Gotta Love Philly. It's just a relief to see so many people who aren't white and straight. Morehead is 98% white. In Center City Philadelphia, there can't be more than 6 whites out of 10 people you see. And a lot of the white guys are gay, especially in the area near the archives where there is a mostly gay gym.

But who said that ethnicity is everything. Not me. Morehead State University is a real "trudging" kind of town. Students move with about as much enthusiasm as the guys playing concentration camp prisoners in Nazi movies. Outside campus, there's a kind of Eastern Kentucky "I'm not in a hurry because I don't want anybody to know that I give a shit" depression and slowness. In Philly, the only people who have that determined slowness might be sitting beggars. Otherwise, there's a bounce and energy to movement that puts a little more bounce into my step.

Gotta love it.

Baghdad on My Mind

Escalating Irrelevance: American troops raided the homes of al-Sadr's aides today as part of their effort to break into the civil war between the Shiite milita death squads and the Sunni insurgents. As the street war in Baghdad escalates, so does the irrelevance of the 15,000 American troops in Baghdad.

Falluhahs as Far as the Eye Can See: "Solving the civil war" this way a losing proposition anyway. Sadr's Mahdi Army and SCIRI's Badr Brigades can be defeated, but only at the cost of turning Baghdad (and several other cities) into another Fallujah or Ramadi.

The Best Bad Solution to Date: I'm beginning to think that the best bad solution is for the U. S. Military to give up Baghdad to the Shiite death squads and focus their efforts on clearing as many insurgents as possible from Anbar before the whole revolting mess causes us to withdraw.

Out of Our Leagues: Pres. Bush has been out of his league ever since the insurgency took route in 2004. But the situation is so bad now that the entire U. S. political apparatus is struggling to find its footing. Michael Kinsley points out in Slate that the Baker/Hamilton Commission isn't likely to come up with anything very fruitful. Maybe it's time to start planning for the bad consequences of failure.

A Pox on Both Their Houses

John Murtha vs Steny Hoyer for the Majority Leader in the House. What an awful choice!

Murtha is a card-carrying member of the Republican culture of extortion. Before he became an anti-war hero, Murtha made a living coercing Democratic reps into voting for bad Bush administration legislation in exchange for earmarks.

Hoyer isn't any better. As minority whip, he used a lot of his press availability to talk about the Democrats' need to be more like the Republicans.

All of this illustrates the weakness of the House Democrats--a thin leadership bench, the poor public relations skills, and the legacy of kowtowing to the right wing. That's why it was important to elect more Ned Lamont types to Congress--Democrats who wanted to act like Democrats instead of Republican wannabees.

Wait a minute. It's time for liberal bloggers to start "carrying the water," to use Rush Limbaugh's phrase, for the Democratic leadership.

Murtha vs Hoyer--two great statesmen and patriots. You couldn't ask for better men.

The Weekly Standard Tries Reality

William Kristol and Robert Kagan try reality in the Weekly Standard online. Leaving the dumb assumptions, deceptive historical analogies, and ad hominem attacks aside, the neo-conservative stalwarts make a determined empirical case for increasing the number of troops in Iraq. It's too bad that Kristol and Kagan decided to try reality so late in the game. Still, their analysis is worth taking seriously.

Kristol and Kagan's idea is that 50,000 more American troops would be needed to stabilize Baghdad and then they could engage in clear and hold operations in Western Iraq. If we withdraw over the next two years, the authors argue plausibly that President Bush would handing over both a genocidal ethnic cleansing and a series of al-Qaeda havens to his successor.

They've not so plausible when they suggest possible invasions by Iran and Turkey. Who besides the Bush administration would have enough hubristic stupidity to occupy Iraq now?

Still, the American military now has almost 15,000 troops in Baghdad. Fifty thousand more would increase the number to 65,000.

Would they have a chance of success?

Probably not.

The problem is that stabilizing Baghdad would mean launching an invasion and occupation of Sadr City, the slum stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. While defeating the Mahdi Army wouldn't be that much of a problem, attacking Sadr City would be a serious problem. Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army have become a major pillar of Nouri al-Maliki's Iraqi government. Attacking Sadr City would weaken Maliki, weaken the Iraqi military and police forces (many of whom would fight with al-Sadr), and make the Iraqi government much more dependent on the American military.

Likewise, once American troops occupy Sadr City, they would have to hold it against a large, determined, and trained (largely by the Americans) Shiite resistance movement. Kristol and Kagan think that the 50,000 American troops could move on to Anbar once Baghdad was stabilized. It's more likely that the U. S. would need the 50,000 troops to hold Baghdad and 100,000 more troops to perform operations in Anbar--50,000 to clear out the insurgents and another 50,000 or more to occupy and hold the Sunni cities.

The problem here is that raising the number of American troops from 150,000 to 250,000 or 300,000 would require the Bush administration to put the United States on a war footing. The Bush administration did not have the credibility to do this in 2003 when it was first needed. As last Tuesday's election shows, the Bush administration has far less credibility with the American public now.

A new administration would have to be in place before any big increase in American troop levels could be contemplated. Even then, it's not very likely that the American military could stabilize Baghdad or the country as a whole.

The Spleen in the Mirror

Ann Coulter's post-mortem on the "pathetic gains" of the Democrats is so spiteful that you can imagine her telling the Democrats to "shove their victory down their whiny little throats."

But if Coulter wants to understand the election, she should look in the mirror.

The voters held President Bush and the Republican Party in exactly the same kind of contempt that Coulter feels for the Democrats.

The Strongest Contender: Hillary!

One of the curiosities of political discourse is the mainstream media's continued silence over the presidential prospects of Hillary Clinton. Every poll for at least the last eighteen months has shown her as the leading prospective Democratic candidate for the presidency and a strong contender with any Republican.

Yet, while the media has showered attention on Mark Warner and Barack Obama, there have been almost no stories about a prospective Hillary candidacy from the mainstream media--nothing on Hillary as being the first female favorite for a party party nomination, no evaluationg of Hillary's qualifications, and no puff pieces extolling her Chicago roots, Methodist training, or her steadfastness during the Monica Lewinsky scandal . Hillary gets a lot of "mentions" as the leading contender, a polarizing figure, and liberal in the stories about other candidates. But the mainstream media seems to have an embargo on directly addressing Hillary's candidacy.

However, it's clear from the polling released by Newsweek that Hillary will be a very strong contender for the presidency. According to the survey, Hillary's numbers are about the same as Rudy Giuliani and John McCain's.


Hillary Clinton: Strongly likely--33%, Somewhat likely-- 20%, No Chance-- 45%
Rudy Giuliani: Strongly likely--24%, Somewhat likely--30%, No Chance-- 32%
John McCain: Strongly likely--20%, Somewhat likely --34%, No Chance-- 32%

The conventional wisdom is that McCain would beat Hillary Clinton head to head because of her huge negatives at 45%. However, the number of voters either likely or somewhat like to vote for Hillary is over 50% and she has a significantly stronger base of strong supporters than McCain at 33-20. That means that Hillary will have an easier time raising money than McCain and that she'll be better protected against the consequences of whatever gaffes she makes. That would be tough for McCain because his volcanic temper means that he would make more gaffes than the highly self-disciplined Sen. Clinton during the course of a tough campaign.

Moreover, McCain has been faltering lately. McCain's strong public support of President Bush and the war in Iraq has put him in a difficult box. Supporting the unpopular president weakens his appeal among the overall voting public, but abandoning President Bush would be very unpopular with hard-core Republican primary voters and make him vulnerable to right-wingers like Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback. Indeed, Fox published a poll a couple of weeks ago showing Hillary beating McCain 51-45 in a head-to-head match-up.

Right now, Hillary Clinton is the best positioned of all the serious 2008 contenders. Perhaps it is time for the mainstream media and Democratic elites to look more optimistically at her chances.

Is Pelosi Presidential?

One of my retired friends watches a lot of TV and says that he thought Nancy Pelosi has seemed "presidential" in the broadcasts he's seen since Tuesday.

My friend's a moderate to conservative Democrat who's a very religious Bible Belt guy.

Maybe Pelosi will be a more appealing face for the House Democrats than anyone thought.

If Karl Rove's Genius?

What was the impact of Karl Rove's micromarketing, get out the vote operation on Tuesday's elections?

It's actually an important question that should have a big impact on Democratic thinking over the next two years.

Let's consider the consequences of Rove's operation having a big impact. If Rove's 72 hour plan had a big impact, it means that Rove's still a genius, but it also means that the Republicans were in danger of losing by even bigger margins. As it was, the Democrats got a 53-47% majority of the vote, picked up 6 seats in the Senate, and gained 30 in the House. If Rove's operation had a four per cent impact, that means that the Democrats were within striking distance of a 57-43% margin. That would have meant picking up 40-50 seats in the House, and having a real working margin in the people's chamber.

The implication for the Democrats is that they should bust their butts to match the Republican GOTV effort in 2008 and should do their best to motivate the liberal activists who would be expected to do the grunt work.

What if Rove's efforts had little impact and the Democrats would have made the same gains anyway. That means that the Democrats can feel pretty comfortable about their own GOTV operation and can focus on solidifying their nice 6% in a year when the Republicans probably won't be putting up a strong presidential contender.

The Democrats are in good position now whichever way you slice it. However, if the genius of Karl Rove's ground game was the only thing that prevented a Democratic landslide in 2006, then it's time for the Democrats to get a lot more aggressive about pursuing big majorities in 2008.

Taking Up the Limbaugh Challenge

Today, Rush Limbaugh challenged the mainstream media to start speculating about how the Republicans could make a comeback.

But I've beaten him to the punch.

As I said yesterday, the key to any Republican comeback is understanding that the Republicans are a natural minority. If they are going to make a comeback, the Republicans have to create appealing new wedge successors to gay marriage, keep feeding red meat to the right-wing attack media, and raise obscene amounts of money to keep their smear campaigns going.

Otherwise, the right-wing political machine might fall apart, leaving the Republicans scrambling to maintain their viability as an opposition party.

The Cold Hard Facts of Bi-Partisanship

It's 2000 all over again with a lot of talk about bi-partisanship between the Bush administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress.

But, believe me, bi-partisanship is not going to happen and its not going to happen because the Republican Party can't afford to have it happen.

The cold hard fact is that the Republicans are a natural minority party and have been so since the Great Depression and the New Deal.

Of course, the Republicans used to be a minority party because the upper and middle classe whites they represented were smaller than the Democratic constellation of the working class whites, blacks, liberals, and the South. Things have changed dramatically since the seventies, but the Republicans still emerge with a minority. Now, its because their Southern and rural base is declining. Urban areas like Phoenix, Denver, and Las Vegas are mushrooming while reliably white Republicans are leaving places like rural Colorado, Nebraska, or North Dakota and are being replaced by Hispanics and telecommuting Californians. That's why the Democrats are becoming more competitive in Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada and why the "natural base" of the Republicans is beginning to shrink back to depressed farm areas and the old Confederacy. The Republicans still control most of the land, but a majority of the people are leaning toward the Democrats.

Consequently, the Republicans don't have many options. I guess one can imagine that the Republicans can give up their base and try to out-Democrat the Democrats like Schwarzenegger is doing in California. If Bush does try to do bi-partisanship this is exactly what activist conservatives will accuse him of doing. However, given the hostility of blacks, hispanics, and independents to the right-wing, this doesn't seem viable. And it's not like the administration has any bi-partisanship skills to start with.

No, if the Republicans hope to win elections outside their Southern and rural base, they have to keep diggging deeply into their traditional bags of tricks. Even then, the Republicans are in a tough spot. Perhaps most importantly, the Republicans need to come up with a new stream of wedge issues to turn independents and traditional Democratic constituencies against the Democratic leadership. There are some candidates out there--mostly warrantless wiretapping, anti-immigrant proposals, support for Bush judicial nominees, and attacks on gay marriage. Maybe Republicans could rally around McCain's idea of putting 100,000 more troops on the ground (They could call it "Really Winning") and challenge the Dems to either put up or shut up on Iraq. However, the Republican think tanks haven't developed much in the way of new wedge ideas since privatizing Social Security and invading Iraq. The Republicans have both the presidency and an extensive communication apparatus in Fox and talk radio for promoting divisive new ideas. They just don't have the ideas to work with.

The Republicans also need to engage in a relentless demonizing of Democratic Party and liberal personalities as a second method for turning independents and traditional Democratic constituencies against the Democrats. Here, they are on stronger ground. Fox News, right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and religious and conservative activist groups are just as committed to demonizing the Democrats as ever. Limbaugh is especially skilled at micro-analyzing Democratic documents and events to reveal the inevitable hypocrisies, absurdities, and self-contradictions. Likewise, Bill O'Reilly will continue his one-man cultural war and Ann Coulter will show as much contempt toward liberals as humanly possible. But if the conservative media is going to have any success at this game, they need the Bush administration to continue to feed it the red meat of creative new wedge issues. If the Bushies go bi-partisan, the talk show zealots won't want to, or be able to, help them.

The third dimension of any Republican come-back would have to be relentless negative advertising against the Democrats on every important issue before Congress. Every debate would have to be a hundred million dollar debate like the health care debate in 1994. One Republican tactic has been to be so aggressive that a battle-weary public is willing to go along with them just to bring the issue to a close. Perhaps the Republicans would have to go to the mat on every issue in order to make a comeback. But the Republicans could only enhance the present permanent campaign if they had even more obscene amounts of money than they have now. Really obscene money hard to raise when the Republicans don't have the leverage to extort it from business.

The Republicans have little choice. Their only chances for success are either continued hyper-aggression or waiting for the Democrats to blow it. However, I've never felt that waiting was part of the right-wing game.

Kentucky Might Avoid Embarrassment After All

If the Democrats get a majority in the Senate, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell will NOT become the Senate Majority leader. The whole country can breath easier. Now that Tom DeLay is out of politics, McConnell is the leading practitioner of the politics of extortion in the United States. As outlined in a recent newspaper expose, McConnell's office and affiliates are famous for hitting up potential corporate donors as legislation affecting them is being considered. It would have gotten a lot worse if McConnell became Majority Leader. The apparent success of the Democrats has saved the nation, the state of Kentucky, and probably McConnell himself from a lot of scandal and embarrassment.

RSI Gets Close

No one got the election more right than Red State Impressions. I had the Dems gaining 25 in the House and six in the Senate. The current numbers have the Dems up 28 in the House and up four and ahead in two in the Senate.

Not Too Bad

My predictions last Tuesday are looking pretty good. I predicted that the Dems would gain six in the Senate and 25 in the House. At 1:30am on Wednesday, the Dems are five up for the Senate and 24 up for the House according to CNN.

Not Too Bad!

Big Win for Dems in Kentucky

This might be a good sign for Speaker Pelosi. Ann Northup, a twelve-year Republican member of the House from Louisville lost to her Democratic opponent, John Yarmuth. Northup has always been considered vulnerable because of the large Democratic registration edge in Louisville. This year, the Democrats finally turned the corner on her.

Bonus Comment: If the Dems do take the House, Speaker Pelosi will lead a retreat from Tom DeLay's "culture of extortion" to the more normal "culture of corruption."

A Not So Unlikely Couple

Two thoughts that go together--Saddam Hussein is guilty and the American occupation of Iraq has failed.

Happy About Tuesday

Right now, I'm pretty happy about the mid-term elections on Tuesday even if my prediction about the Democrats gaining majorities in the House and Senate don't pan out. No matter what happens on Tuesday, the 2008 election is setting up very well. Rick Santorum is way behind and George Allen is no longer a legitimate presidential candidate even if he is re-elected. That means th the rigjht-wing doesn't have a strong candidate for the Republican nomination.

John McCain might be a strong candidate of n0n-right Republicans, but he seems to be shrinking before our eyes as he campaigns for other Republicans. The conventional wisdom is that McCain would beat Hillary. I'm beginning to think that the conventional wisdom is way off track.

The Republicans might have one more round of success with baiting liberals, but the formula is weakening and success would mean that the Republicans would be accountable for the next two years of the war in Iraq.

It couldn't happen to nicer people.

The only cloud in my silver lining is the possibility that Santorum could win re-election in Pennsylvania.

Predictions for Next Tuesday

It's November, there's elections, and I'm a political scientist. So, it's time to predict.

House--Democrats pick up 25 seats and Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker, but they don't have a "working majority." Karl Rove has an impressive get out the vote operation, but the Republicans won't be able to get enough of their new voters from 2004 to vote again. As a result, the Democrats pick up a lot of seats in Rust Belt states from Indiana to Connecticut. The main effect of the Democrats' very small, ten seat majority, is that they will be able to play their "hedgehog" game of obstructing the Bush administration's initiatives more effectively.

Senate--The Democrats pick up the six seats they need to form a majority but not enough of a majority to have a lot of effect on the Bush administration. To make this prediction, I'm relying on Claire McCaskell to win in Missouri and James Webb to win in Virginia. It looks like Harold Ford is going to be defeated after a brilliant campaign.

The Kerry Apology Challenge

Democratic candidates should distance themselves from Kerry's remarks about the military, but that isn't all they should do. Democratic candidates should also challenge their opponents to apologize for their support of the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration's conduct of the occupation, and the tremendous waste of American and Iraqi lives involved.

The statements of Democratic candidates should go like this. "John Kerry's remarks on American soldiers were inappropriate and offensive. If American soldiers had not performed so magnificently in Iraq, the situation would be even worse than it already is. At the same time, I call on my opponent to admit that the invasion of Iraq was misguided and that Bush administration's incompetence has guaranteed the failure of the occupation. Admitting the failure of the current course of action is extremely important if we're ever going to act more effectively and my opponent should dissociate him or herself from the ineffectiveness of the Bush administration now."

Kerry Pulls a Cheney

John Kerry's comment yesterday about students needing to stay in college so they don't get "stuck in Iraq" was stupid. The comment demeaned American troops in Iraq by implying that they weren't smart enough to go to college and it's an example of a real weakness among liberals--a bias against working-class guys. Kerry's remark was also false because a healthy percentage of the National Guard members would have college degrees.

Yet, Kerry should keep trying. Prominent Democrats need to be aggressively stupid until they figure out a way to be aggressively smart. Usually, it's figures like Dick Cheney who make aggressively over-the-top comments and the Democrats who are "outraged," "offended," and demanding apologies in response. These exchanges always make the Republicans look aggressive and strong and the Democrats look weak and whiny. Cheney's telling Kerry to "fuck yourself" on the Senate floor is a great example of this. Likewise, Kerry himself looked pretty strong yesterday when he lashed out at the Bush administration in response to their outrage over his comments.

Prominent Democrats have been ducking in their political foxholes for too long. They need to take a more aggressive stance toward the Bush administration, the war, and the Republican culture of extortion in Washington. Kerry blew it yesterday, but his over-the-top skills will improve if he gets more practice.

How Appealing the Naivete?

Last night I participated in a forum on the mid-term elections on my campus at Morehead State University. My contribution was to emphasize the importance of next Tuesday's elections for determining the strength of the right-wing.

But the audience had other ideas. They wanted the conflict between the right-wing and the rest of the country to be over. A couple of the African-American students talked about reconciliation and healing. It's an appealing naivete. The students want an America that is more hopeful and less vicious than the one we have right now. They just don't understand the extent to which that better world has to be fought for.

Much like the Confederates that so many of them admire, the last thing that people on the right want is any kind of reconciliation with liberals, African-Americans, feminists, gay rights activists, or even moderates and traditional conservatives. For prominent media figures on the right like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Gordon Liddy, a slashing viciousness and vindictiveness is their preferred way fo life. The same was the case with Tom DeLay. Moreover, that's precisely what their followers admire in them. If there were any kind of genocide in the U. S., they would all be eager to pick up their NRA-protected weapons and start shooting.

It's precisely because of their relentless aggression that the activist right will remain a dangerous force even if they lose their power in Congress next Tuesday. And they will remain dangerous until they no longer control the Republican Party.

Webb pulling ahead?

Talking Points Memo has a couple of polls with Jim Webb pulling ahead of George Allen in Virginia. If Webb wins, the Dems will have to win one of the two Senate races in Tennessee and Missouri to move into the majority. Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri are all red states. They would all be extremely disappointing for the Republicans.

Instead of viewing this election as another 1994, I see it as the beginning of a sea change. As the Republican Party moves right, the Democrats are gradually cleaning them out of the Northeast, making progress in states like Colorado, and are beginning to flip Ohio to blue. Having made themselves into the party of rural whites, the Republicans are beginning to pay the price.

Rove Still a Genius?

Will Karl Rove still be a genius next Wednesday? Perhaps. When the campaign began, Rove had a depth strategy for minimizing the Republican losses that could be expected as a result of the failed war in Iraq, Republican scandals, and the general bumbling of the Bush administration. The bottom line was that Rove wanted to defend Republican majorities by making the Bush administration the "lion that roared." Rove had Bush and Cheney on the road promoting the dichotomies of Republican "resolve" vs the "cut and run" Democrats and Bush's "toughness" on interrogation against the willingness of the Democrats to give rights to terrorists. Rove could count on every bit of red meat rhetoric being echoed effectively by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of the attack media.

Second, the huge Republican money edge would make it possible for Rove to carpet-bomb Democratic candidates with attack ads over the last three weeks of the election. Rove talks a lot about making elections "local." What he means is that he'll use negative advertising to make the elections about their smear campaigns.

Finally, Rove and his allies have built up a get out the vote apparatus that is far superior to anything on the Democratic side. Rove has a comprehensive knowledge of the American political landscape down to the precinct level and he has built up an organizational apparatus that had enormous success in getting out potential Republican voters in 2004.

Rove has already lost the policy dimension of his strategy and might be losing on the negative advertising as well. The problem Rove faced all along as a strategist was that the bad news kept piling up for the Bush administration. September and October have been no different. The Bush administration didn't look very strong when North Korea held their nuclear test. Likewise, the Mark Foley scandal, replaced the "strength and resolve" that Rove wanted to project with an image of sleaziness that was even more powerful than the Abramoff scandal. The situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate as the American military's efforts to stabilize Baghdad bogged down. Right now, there's not much lion left in the Republican Party. Even the attack media has struggled. Limbaugh and Hannity are practically begging Republicans to turn out next Tuesday.

The main question now is the extent to which the right-wing roaring machine is still formidable. Blanketing the airwaves with negative advertising, the Republicans have struggled to take unfavorable issues like the war and the economy out of the Senate campaigns in Virginia and Tennessee. Even where negative advertising has not forced them to focus on defending themselves, it has bullied candidates like Harold Ford and James Webb into devoting their resources to attacking the advertising. In this way, Rove has been successful in making elections local because they've transformed the key Senate contests into referendums on his own advertising.

Even this may not be working. Despite George Allen's attempts to smear Democrat James Webb for passages in his novels, Webb moved ahead in at least three of the polls that were published yesterday. Rove's candidate in Tennessee hasn't established any distance from Harold Ford despite the focus on the racist advertising of the Republicans.

If the Republican ground game doesn't inspire rural and exurban white voters to go to the polls in much larger numbers than predicted, Rove will have failed and the Democrats will win majorities in both the House and the Senate. But does that mean it was a bad strategy. I don't think so. To the contrary, I believe that Rove has been very effective in working with a particularly bad hand. Given the thoroughgoing failures of the Bush administration and the foolishness of Republican candidates like George Allen, Conrad Burns, and Kurt Weldon, there was every reason to expect the Republican right-wing to be dispirited and unfocused. Indeed, it's easy to imagine a lot of Democratic strategists giving up the ghosts. Indeed, many Democrats are still worried about "blowing it" despite their many advantages.

For their part, Rove and people like Ken Mehlman have energetically sought to turn every misstep and scandal into more attacks on the Democrats. In Ken Burns's documentary on the Civil War, the late Shelby Foote emphasized that Robert E. Lee was brilliant on defense as well as offense. In the same way, Karl Rove has been brilliant in defense of the increasingly hopeless Bush administration.

The Unstable Stasis

In some ways, there actually isn't much at stake in this election. Stasis rules now and stasis will continue to rule after next Tuesday. Even if the Democrats win the House and the Senate, the political landscape won't change much. The Bush administration will still be pursuing the failed war in Iraq, torturing Afghan farmers, and fighting off corruption charges from the DeLay/McConnell years. Nothing's going to change there.

There won't be much change from the Democrats either. The Democrats are not going to push for exit from Iraq legislation and tax increases. They won't be doing that many investigations either. Instead, the Democratic leadership will continue to spend most of their energy fending off the right-wing attack media.

Because of the on-going stasis, both sides will be gearing up for the more decisive election in 2008.

Can't You Feel the Earth Move?

Elections 2008: Hillary Clinton has moved ahead of John McCain, 51-44%, in polling for the 2008 presidential election. Obviously, the poll is not a reliable indicator of who's going to win in 2008. The first primaries are still fifteen months away. But it's still significant. Democratic Party insiders assume that Hillary is unelectable because she's too "polarizing." However, Hillary's 51% matches the best that George Bush has done in two presidential elections. The 2008 election will probably be polarizing anyway. As a result, the most important question is who can squeak through to win a toxic political environment and who can govern in a polarized country. Hillary not only looks electable, she is the best qualified to govern in an environment that will still include a hyper-aggressive right wing. She's tough, disciplined, and smart, and she's not above going toe-to-toe with right. All of those qualities are going to be needed because any Democratic president is going to have to stand up to 12 hours a day of hostile examination by right-wing radio.

Can't You Feel the Earth Move: Of course, things could get worse. The tide of anger and bitterness over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq keeps rising. It can be seen in the the on-going disgust over the incompetent response to Katrina, popular reaction to the Mark Foley scandal, and Lou Dobbs' campaign against the "war on the middle class' on CNN. Today, Kevin Tillman, the brother of Pat Tillman, the slain poster boy for post-9/11 war fever, came out with a scorching denunciation of the Bush administration on Truthdig.com. Referring to the Bush administration, Kevin Tillman wonders why "the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country." Although I agree with Tillman, his eloquent rant introduces the possibility that American politics will start to fragment the same way that Iraq is fragmenting. If the Bush administration is filled with "incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals," the Democratic opposition has been characterized by incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous opposition. If both of them are nominated for the presidency, Hillary Clinton and John McCain may find themselves appealing to an electorate that is holding them both accountable for the disasters of the Bush years. As polarized as the nation has been during the Bush years, the situation may be worse by 2008.

Another Wild Card in the Deck. The other wild card in the American deck will be the activist right-wing--the religious right, anti-abortion activists, disappointed neo-conservatives, small government idealists, neo-confederates, and their fellow travelers. There is not going to be a major party candidate on the right-wing of the Republican Party in 2008. The three Republicans who poll best are John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich--none of whom is affiliated with the right. All of the potential right-wing standard bears have been disqualified by failures in leadership (Bill Frist), revelations of their racism (George Allen), upcoming electoral defeat (Rick Santorum), and lack of name recognition among Republicans (Sam Brownback). If the right runs a third-party candidate, they will be guaranteeing their worst nightmare--a Hillary presidency. If McCain or Giuliani win, the right knows that it's in at least four more years of condescending pats on the head. Disgusted with the Bush administration for failing to deliver on its promises and disgusted with the American people for our tolerance of divorce, pre-marital sex, the sin-soaked popular culture, and gay rights, the right might be another source of seething anger for 2008 and beyond.

Bush Folding His Cards In Iraq

Donald Rumsfeld announced yesterday that the Bush administration is still committed to its strategy of "clear, hold, and build" in Iraq. The idea is for American troops to clear areas of insurgent forces and for the Iraqi Army to hold those areas and gradually engage in a social and economic rebuilding process.

But it's just not happening.

The situation for the American military in Iraq is somewhere between retreat and irrelevance. American forces have retreated from the strategy of clearing insurgents out of the cities and towns of Anbar province. Instead, American military units are posted on large bases outside Anbar towns and cities. This keeps American troops safer. It also avoids the ineffective sweeps of 2005 where American troops would move into a town to find that the insurgents (and all men of military age) had simply moved on to other towns. What made the sweeps useless is that the U. S. did not have enough troops to stay continuously on the offensive. As a result of ending the sweeps, however, Anbar has become "an al-Qaeda stronghold" according to one senior American officer.

In other words, the safety-conscious American military is no longer doing the "clearing" necessary for the "clear, hold, and build" strategy to work.

One of the problems with the situation in Anbar is that the U. S. moved troops to Baghdad to address the sectarian bloodshed that was unleashed after insurgent attacks on Samarra in March. Nevertheless, despite the concentration of American assets, the U. S. military has not been able to make itself relevant to the sectarian bloodshed. American policy has been to engage in "sweeps" against both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, but death squads and assassins on both sides continue to carry out their work as if American forces aren't there. The Shiite militias pose a particularly difficult problem. Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and SCIRI's Badr organization are not only integrated into the Maliki government, but are the strongest and the most popular forces associated with the government. To the contrary, the Iraqi Army is a creature of the American military. To destroy the Shiite militias would make the Iraqi government even more of an empty shell and make the American occupation even more unpopular with the Shiite population than it is now.

In other words, the price of making of the American Army making itself relevant in Baghdad might be destabilizing the situation even further. American units might end up staying in their bases in Baghdad just like they're staying in their bases in Anbar.

Of course, if American troops are mostly staying in their bases and DAB (driving around Baghdad) rather than clearing out the enemy, perhaps they're not serving a useful function at all.

Sifting Through Amara

Everything about the the Mahdi Army partial takeover of Amara yesterday was disastrous. Most importantly, it was the first open assault on an Iraqi city by anti-American forces since the American re-taking of Falluhah in November, 2004. Keeping large-scale insurgent forces from taking over large cities (Amara has 340,000 residents) has been one of the few claims to success that the American military can make over the last two years. Along with the continuing large-scale violence in Baghdad, the take-over of Amara is an indication that the situation in Iraq is regressing and that the American military is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the many little civil wars that are going on.

Perhaps more important, the Mahdi army's activity in Amara looks like a strong indication of the balance of power between the militias and the Iraqi army and police. The militias are stronger. This presents the Maliki government with a dilemna. If Maliki goes along with the American idea of dismantling Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and SCIRI's Badr Brigades, he would be destroying the most effective sources of power in the Shiite community and making all Shiites more vulnerable to Sunni insurgents and terrorists. If Maliki does not go along, the Shiite community itself might splinter into a Hobbesian war of all against all and lose the support of the American military.

It's hard to tell which option is worse. However, there can't be much doubt that both scenarios represent a further weakening of the American position in Iraq.

Dick Cheney Used to Be a Genius

Dick Cheney--Vice President Dick Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh yesterday claiming that the government in Iraq was doing "remarkably well." In a way, you have to admire the brazen quality of Cheney's lies whether it's about mobile bio-labs, "six months and we're out," "they'll greet us with flowers," or the insurgency is in "its last throes." After his term is up, Cheney could open up an interactive, online exhibit where he tells his favorite lies. He can call it Dick Cheney's fantasyland. But all is not well in Dick's fantasy world. The fact that the veep could not come up with an exciting new lie this close to the election is a sign that he and his staff aren't fully engaged.

Lou Dobbs--One of the things that's killing the Bush administration is that conservative figures like Lou Dobbs and Joe Scarborough are becoming dismissive critics. From all appearances, Lou Dobbs used to be a business-oriented media guy. Now, however, Sweet Lou is taking up class warfare in opposition to the Bush administration and the Republicans. According to Dobbs,

"It's been a tough decade for the American middle class, which has been experiencing stagnant wages in the face of rapidly increasing costs for health care and prescription drugs, soaring energy prices and escalating tuition costs. But worst of all, the middle class is up against a Congress that is driven by powerful corporations and dominant special interests."

If the Democrats were more committed to being coherent, that would be the Democratic attack line on the Bush economy.

Karl Rove--I'm one of the people who think that Karl Rove is a real political genius. The same for Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich for that matter. They've remade American politics since the 1992 election. Jacob Weisburg at Slate, though, is a skeptic who thinks that this election is the first real test of Rove's abilities and that Rove will prove himself a genius only if the Republicans keep their majorities in the House and Senate. Talk about overly high standards. Hannibal, Napoleon, and Robert E. Lee all lost in much bigger ways than Rove is going to lose, but they're still bona fide military geniuses. What makes Rove a genius is that he has created a seamless architecture of money, policy, and media for electing Republican candidates despite the unpopularity of the conservative agenda and the weaknesses of his own candidates. Given the disastrous war in Iraq, the incompetent response to Katrina, popular unhappiness with the economy, and the endless litany of Republican scandals, the Republicans deserve to lose both the Senate and the House by wide margins. As it is, the Republicans still have a good chance to hold the Senate even if the House is lost. If Rove can hold the lost Republican seats in the House under twenty and maintain a tie in the Senate (that can be broken by Dick Cheney), he would still be a bona fide genius in my book.

O'Reilly another Cronkite--Sort of

President Bush didn't sound very good during his interview with Bill O'Reilly today. Bush had the usual array of excuses and rationalizations for the failure of his Iraq and North Korea policies. But O'Reilly was almost as skeptical of Bush's ideas as Keith Olbermann and Steve Colbert and that falling away from the faith on O'Reilly's part made Bush look just as bad as Lyndon Johnson looked when Walter Cronkite gave up on the Vietnam War.

Republicans: We Deserve to Lose

This is the quote from a David Broder column that appeared in today's Lexington Herald-Leader:

"If I have heard it once, I have heard it a dozen times: Major Republican figures, including top officials of several past GOP administrations and Congresses, say, "We deserve to lose this election."

I wonder if Newt Gingrich was in that group.

Was It Just Optimism?

The chief of the British Army, Gen. Richard Dannatt came out in favor of a British withdrawal today. According to Gen. Dannatt, the presence of British troops are "exascerbating" the security problems in Iraq rather than making them better. Gen. Dannatt added that the original Bush/Blair plan for Iraq might have relied more on "optimism" than anything else.

"Optimism" might be a mild term for the Bush administration's initial ideas for occupying Iraq.

Plan 1:
The first Bush "plan" was to:
1. install Ahmed Chalabi as the new Iraqi leader;
2. retain most of the Saddam Hussein administrative apparatus;
3. pay for Iraq's reconstruction through oil revenues.
4. Get out after six easy months.

Plan 2
The second Bush plan was to train an Iraqi military to take over the fight against the insurgency from the American military with an assumption that the U. S. would have drastically weakened the insurgency.

Under Plan 1, the new bosses would be pretty much the same as the old bosses except that the Chalabi at the top would be answerable to the Bush administration instead of the ghost of dictators past like Saddam.

However, Chalabi was a convicted felon in Jordan, had no popular base in Iraq, and could not be taken seriously because of his lack of connection with the Shiite religious establishment.

There also was no chance that the long-suffering Shiite majority was going to tolerate the continued operation of Saddam's bureaucratic apparatus.

The first Bush plan was ludicrous from the beginning.

Plan 2 was not as obviously hopeless as the original plan, but still has failed.

The primary problem has been the Iraqi military and police forces. At best, the Iraqi military is more loyal to their ethnic groups and militias than they are to the Iraqi government. At worst, they have been riddled with insurgent infiltrators.

The middle ground is also discouraging. The Iraqi military and police often been unwilling to fight the insurgents the American way, preferring to form death squads on the side. In a weirdly ironic development, the death squads have replaced the American military as the primary opposition to the insurgency in Baghdad. As a result, American generals are in the awkward position of trying to make the world's best army relevant to the Iraqi sectarian bloodbath. There's some implicitly "good"news there in the sense that the Shiite population can defend itself, but it now looks like the American legacy in Iraq is going to be years, perhaps decades, of slaughter.

Right now, it takes optimism to see any kind of stable situation emerging in Iraq. Anything else is just delusion.

Five Things I Think About North Korean Nukes

1. Axis of Evil 2, Bush 1. With North Korea testing it's nuclear weapon despite five years of Bush administration blustering and the Iranians bankrolled Hezbollah's successful defense against the Israelis, the Bush administration's only win against the Axis of Evil has been the invasion of Iraq, a victory that divided American government, undermined American global credibility, and weakened the American military. Like the Greek king Pyrrhus, the Bush administration can't afford many more such victories.

2. Did the Bush Administration win or lose? It would appear that the Bush administration's strategy of cutting off contact with the North Koreans didn't work. The Bush administration certainly failed to successfully pursue the American interest of keeping the North Koreans from having nukes. But does the Bush administration care about American interests. It seems not. Once the North Koreans didn't cave in to the Bush administration's blandishments, the Bushies seemed to lose interest. Maybe they didn't care whether North Korea had nuclear weapons.

3. Birds of a Feather. Evidently, the North Korean test did blow off nuclear material even though it was generally unsuccessful. That creates a symmatrical status quo. The U. S. has a failed missile defense system to protect us against North Korea's failed bomb.

4. The Democrats. Do the Democrats have a North Korea policy or did they get lost on the way to the game? Again

5. The Real Threat. Sure, Kim Jong-il is eccentric and unpredictable, but North Korea's bomb is only half the size of Hiroshima, North Korea doesn't have al-Qaeda supporters in its military and intelligence services, and Kim doesn't have to deal with a weekly assasination attempt. That's why I'm much more worried about Pakistan than I am about North Korea.

The Bad Grammar of Hyper-Aggression

The Republicans let the nation know over and over that the real war for them is the war against the Democrats. The Bush administration says it's on the offensive against global terrrorism, but American policy in Iraq is an essentially defensive, keep casualties as low as possible, let's not have the war on the front page position. However, the administration and the Republican leadership keep the offensive going against the Democrats at all costs.

Today, Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia sent a note to Nancy Pelosi demanding to know if Pelosi and the minority leadership were keeping the Mark Foley scandal under wraps until just before the election. I would say "democratic" leadership, but Kingston insists on the bad grammar of "democrat leadership. Like most conservatives, Kingston assumes that ignorance and macho aggression are closely allied.

Here's the quote from Kingston's statement:

"Just as it must be determined whether any Republican members or political operatives were aware of and attempted to conceal Mr. Foley's activities, it must also be determined whether any Democrat members or political operatives were aware of and attempted to conceal these same activities."

I guess it's an interesting possibility, but Kingston has no more evidence that Pelosi was covering up the Foley scandal than the Bush administration had for WMD in Iraq.

The key point is that evidence and truth matter just as little for the Republican leadership in the U. S. anymore than they've mattered in Iraq--perhaps less. Perhaps the Bush administration and the Republican leadership would do better if they fought al-Qaeda with the same intensity they fight the Democrats.

Notes on the Foley/Hastert Scandal

What would you have done if you were in Dennis Hastert's shoes and you had heard that a powerful ally like Mark Foley had sent some sexually inappropriate messages to pages?

That's a fair question. Would you have negligently ignored the issue like Dennis Hastert? Would you have believed Foley when he claimed he was innocent? Or would you have pushed the issue to ensure that the congressman was not sexually propositioning congressional pages?

I know what I would have done because I've been in a version of that situation. As an interim department chair, a female student and her brother brought me a series of inappropriate e-mails from a faculty member. Those e-mails were MUCH less salacious than Foley's messages to pages, but the messages made it clear that the faculty member was engaged in a seduction campaign against the student.

My immediate response was to file a sexual harassment charge. That would ensure that the matter would be further investigated and that the university affirmative action officer would come to a decision. Dennis Hastert should have done the same thing. He should have ensured that the Mark Foley accusations were further investigated to find out if there was more. Instead, Hastert just took Foley's word that he wasn't engaged in anything appropriate. Foley was lying, but Hastert was negligent to believe him without engaging in furher investigation.

Good News--More American Troops Dying in Iraq

Unfortunately, the headline is true. The biggest danger the American Army has in Baghdad is not being relevant to the sectarian struggles between the Shiites and Sunnis? The fact that thirteen American troops have died in Baghdad over the last three days is a strong indication that somebody sees the American military as worth attacking. There's not much doubt now that the U. S. military is a player in Baghdad. The big question now is whether the military can achieve its objectives of diminishing or eliminating the sectarian bloodbath. Right now, there's no evidence that such is the case.

The Two Sides of Rummy's Survival

There's a lot of speculation from Bob Woodward's upcoming book on the pressures to fire Donald Rumsfeld after the 2004 election.

The obvious reason is that firing Rumsfeld would have been a political disadvantage. Letting Rumsfeld go would have made it look like Bush actually was dissatisfied with events in Iraq while he was telling everyone how wonderful things were. In other words, Bush decided to keep failing in Iraq rather than make himself look like a liar.

But, I think that Bush has deeper reasons for keeping Rumsfeld. Bush admires aggressive, over-powering men like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Nolan Ryan, or Roger Clemens of the Houston Astros. Wishing that he had an overwhelming personality or athletic ability himself, Bush has a deep admiration for other men like that. In this way, Bush likes the way that Rumsfeld runs roughshod over the military because he's always wanted to run roughshod over things himself.

Conversely, George Bush has a deep empathy for failure. Having failed with four oil companies before being set up with the Texas Rangers, Bush knows the frustration, futility, and impotence of doomed projects more than the vast majority of men and women. As a result, Pres. Bush would have more empathy with Rumsfeld's failures as defense secretary than he would for people who are having success.

So, Rumsfeld survives even as Baghdad falls apart. The wannabe in Bush admires the arrogant brashness of Rumsfeld while the loser in Bush commiserates with Rumsfeld's failures.

How Much Bolder Can They Get

Tonight President Bush claimed that withdrawal from Iraq would 'embolden the terrorists.' Probably, but how much bolder can the terrorists be than they are now?

Falling Off a High Wire

There is a report on CNN that Terrell Owens, celebrated wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on pain pills, and was saved from such a gruesome and wasteful death by a friend.

I'm glad to see that someone was there to help him.

Owens has been on the high wire of making high levels of demands on his environment and even higher levels of demands on himself for years. It's a good thing that someone was there when he fell off.

George Allen's Head

This week's George Allen crisis involves a college teammate at the University of Virginia saying that Allen often used the n-word with other whites on the UVA football team. According to Dr. Ken Shelton's interview with Salon, Allen once took the head of a deer that had been killed by a member of his hunting party and put it in the mailbox of a nearby black resident.

Everything about the incident was vintage racism--looking for an opportunity to intimidate and disgust his friends, employing blacks as a kind of "favorite target," and then treating it as a huge joke. Dr. Shelton decided to go to the press after he saw clips of the "macaca" incident: "When I saw the look in his eye in that camera and using the word 'macaca,' it just brought back the bullying way I knew from George back then," Shelton said.

For George Allen, racism was attractive because traditions of white racism in the United States provided what was for him an extremely appealing outlet for his bullying. Unlike a lot of "passive racists" who react to things they see and hear about blacks, Allen went out of his way to engage in racial harassment and surround himself with Confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy. For Allen, the virulence of his racism was an outlet for the aggressive bullying at the core of his personality.

Decoding the NIE

“Key Judgments” of the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate have been declassified. To put the issue simply, initial U. S. operations in Afghanistan “seriously damaged” al-Qaida, but the invasion of Iraq has resulted in a reversal of that progress and led to the growth and diffusion of the “global jihadist movement.” Because of the weakening of al-Qaeda, there is less of an immediate threat than there was in 2001, but the growth of the global jihadist movement will lead to more attacks on U. S. interests “at home and abroad.”

How has the invasion of Iraq led to growth in global jihadism?
1. “The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre. for jihadists, breeding a deep
resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for
the global jihadist movement.”

2. “ . . . the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and
operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the
struggle elsewhere.”

In other words, the jihad against the American occupation in Iraq is creating a new wave of terrorist leaders, operatives, and fighters trained in operations against the American military. When those terrorists return to their home countries, they are greeted by an audience that is highly receptive to the global jihadi message because of the intense and widespread Muslim resentment of the occupation.

If it were not for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, the global jihadist movement would be much weaker. The NIE mentions several reasons for this. Most importantly, the jihadist program of sharia based governance is unpopular with the majority of the Muslim population. Likewise, many important Muslim clerics oppose global jihad and there has been at least a potential for democratization. However, the enormous resentment of Arab and Muslim populations over the U. S. invasion of Iraq keep these factors from resulting in a weakening of global jihadism. At this point, the appeal of jihadism is based on resentment over the American occupation of Iraq and the endemic corruption and stagnation of Muslim nations. The NIE gives the impression that the invasion of Iraq has become the most important factor stimulating the growth of global jihadism.

The NIE engages in a little wishful thinking concerning how global jihadism could be countered. Encouraging the “Muslim mainstream” to disavow the global jihadists, the possibility of defeating the jihadists in Iraq, and the death of high profile leaders like bin Laden and al-Zarqawi in “rapid succession” are all posed as developments that could reduce the appeal of global jihadism. However, the NIE doesn’t express much confidence that any of these events will happen soon (although Zarqawi, of course, has been killed).

Right now, the major factor cited by the NIE as discouraging attacks on the U. S. is that Europe presents such an inviting target. Despite our $500 billion military, cultural and geographical isolation appears to be the strongest weapon in the American arsenal.

The NIE Key Judgments are written in the driest possible bureaucratic language. However, it is necessary to point out that the NIE’s emphasis on connecting the occupation of Iraq to the growth of global jihadism makes the NIE a left-wing document. Left-wing war critics of the Bush administration have been arguing that an invasion of Iraq would stimulate global terrorism since even before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Being correct is no consolation for the disastrous outcomes of the Iraq invasion, but acknowledging that the invasion was doomed to make the war on terrorism worse is an important element in rethinking American policy for the future.

Bushies Focusing Their Delusions

Today, Condoleeza Rice is claiming that the Bush administration did "at least as much" as the Clinton administration to fight al-Qaeda before 9-11.

I doubt there will be any investigation of Rice's claims, but Rice is wrong and she knows she's wrong. That's a nice way to say she's lying.

Before 9-11, the Bush administration was completely focused on promoting missile defense as their most important defense priority. Missile defense was one of those peacetime defense scares where people like Donald Rumsfeld promoted the idea that Chinese and North Korean missiles were a threat to the U. S. that could be met once and for all by anti-missile missiles. It was all non-sense. North Korea has only the crudest nuclear bombs, if that. They're at least as long a way from having nuclear missile technology as the U. S. is from having a functioning missile defense. When North Korea does have missile technology, it will be easy for them to evade missile defenses. It turns out that evading defensive missiles is a lot easier and cheaper than developing them.

Because they were focused on selling the whole missile defense delusion, the Bush administration downgraded the reality of the terrorist threat. In fact, Bush's national security team dismissed the concerns of the Clintonistas, pushed counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke out of the "principals meetings" down to the deputies meetings, and laughed off the warnings of both Clarke and George Tenet. Just as George Bush spent all of August, 2001 on vacation in Texas, the Bush security team was taking a vacation from counter-terrorism.

Unfortunately, the reality of 9-11 didn't disconnect the Bush team from their delusions. They merely switched from missile defense to invading Iraq.

Bob Schieffer Preacher

Going for the easy patriotism points, Bob Schieffer decided to use his soapbox on Face the Nation to lecture about American democracy by comparing the Bush/McCain compromise on torture to the state of things in Venezuala and Iran.

"It's not a perfect plan, but it shows how we do things in a democracy — out in the open — and in accordance with the law even when dealing with the worst of the worst. "

Unfortunately for Schieffer and patriots everywhere, things don't look so good in the real world of the Bush administration. In fact, the Bushies have been doing everything they can to flout the Constitution, the War Crimes Act, military regulations, and international law concerning the handling of prisoners. Likewise, the Bush administration prefers to do everything in secrecy and kept Congress and the public in the dark as much as possible about CIA prisons, the rendition of detainees, torture practices, and various exercises in data mining. If anything, the Bush administration has been making an effort to be as much like the "worst of the worst" as possible.

Schieffer compared Hugo Chavez to one of the comic arch-villain in the old Batman series. It was an apt comparison. But the Bush administration doesn't escape the shame of Batman comparisons. Like Michael Keaton's obsessive, murderous Batman, the Bush administration is scarcely more moral than the insurgents they are fighting even if we are more moral than our Iraqi government allies who are taking chain saws to people as they kill them. The Bush administration is also like Adam West's Batman in being so comically inept that you have to wonder if they'll make it to commercial. And whether the Bush administration is Keaton-murderous or West-inept, the bad guys are far from intimidated and global terrorism keeps getting stronger now that it has a new home in Western Iraq.

However, unlike Batman or Hugo Chavez, the murderous ineptitude of the Bush administration has real world consequences for the well-being of Iraq and the United States.