Hee-Haw Republicans (Revised, Shortened)

What's happening to the Republicans this week reminds me a lot of an old "Hee Haw" song.

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

It's hard to say what was worse. Bush at 26%, Rudy's South Carolina chair getting arrested on coke charges, Romney's people masquerading as cops--it was all awful. But I think the absolute worst "gloom and despair" moment was reserved for Congressional Republicans. In an interview with the London Times, Gen. Petraeus emphasized that September "is a deadline for a report not a deadline for a change in policy." No matter how good or bad things are in September, Gen. Petraeus is not going to recommend a change in the "surge" policy.

Not to mix John Donne, Hemingway, and Hee Haw metaphors, but the Petraeus interview tolled the bell of imminent death for Congressional Republicans. Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, Gordon Smith, John Boehner, and other Republicans have expected the September report to signal a "change of direction" in Iraq. They viewed the surge as the "last chance" to succeed in Iraq and the September report as the time to start withdrawing if it wasn't working.

Changing policy in September would also have given Republican candidates fourteen months to recover their political standing before the 2008 elections. That would have been fourteen glorious months where troop withdrawals were being regularly announced, American casualties were always falling, and Iraq wasn't front page news.

But that dream is "gone, gone, gone."

What the Republicans have instead is an already failed surge policy stretching out to election day. That means more problems recruiting candidates, more problems problems raising money, and more problems motivating Republicans and potential Republicans to vote. In other words, it means fewer Republicans in Congress. The tolling of the Petraeus bell means perhaps eight years of Hillary Clinton in the White House and Barack Obama waiting in the wings. In a recent interview, Newt Gingrich was being funny when he wondered if the GOP would recover by 2016 or 2020.

In other words, the Republican Party has become an endless "hee-haw" re-run.

Larry Sabato unimaginatively refers to the discouragement of Republicans as the "Bush depression." It would be better to just call them "Hee-Haw" Republicans.

Is Rudy Giuliani Too Poor To Be President, and Other Questions

We may be witnessing the last days of Rudy Giuliani as a Republican front-runner. New flavor Fred Thompson is getting ready to formally announce and my bet is that Thompson will come out ahead of Giuliani in the red state/blue statec smackdown.

But while Rudy is still with us, we can ask a few questions about in relation to his dropping out of the Iraq Study Group to business groups at one and two hundred thousand a pop. Not whether Rudy was "greedy" or whether he knows anything about Iraq like other liberal bloggers and writers. Since when has greed been bad for the Gordon Gekko Party and who said Republican candidates needed to know anything about the Middle East. George Bush didn't know a Sunni from a Shiite and Doug Feith used to filter out job applicants who knew too much about the Arab world. Why do we think Republican voters will care what Giuliani knows?

1. CAN RUDY AFFORD TO BE PRESIDENT? The president of the United States only makes $400,000 a year plus perks. Maybe that's not enough. Remember, Rudy's a partner in a big law firm (no doubt a rain-making partner rather than actually practicing law) and a big-time public speaker. You have to assume that he's living a seven or eight figure life as well--the houses, the cars, the clothes, the trophy wife, all the ex-wives and their kids. Hey! Maybe he lost a lot in the stock market slump of 2000-2001 as well. It adds up. Maybe Rudy really needed the $300,000 he got from those speeches. If that's the case, Giuliani probably can't afford to live on a president's salary and should think about dropping out of the race.

2. HOW WILL RUDY USE MAGIC IN IRAQ? This may not seem like a fair question, but I don't see how Rudy can get around the inference that he is going to rely on magic to solve the problems in Iraq. It's pretty clear by now that Rudy doesn't know anything about the situation in Iraq. He even used the Paris Hilton-y line that "other people" were handling Iraq. So, knowledge isn't going to get it done for Rudy. The Bush administration didn't care about knowledge or expertise either. Instead, Bush and Cheney put their faith in overwhelming American military power. Of course, American military superiority only scared the Iraqis for so long. Then the administration put their chips on the adapting a constitution and holding elections. But that didn't work out either. And the current surge policy is such a dud that I'm sure President Bush will soon start denying that the administration ever had a "surge" just like he denied that he had ever said "stay the course."

In other words, the Bush administration has pretty much exhausted all the options for "winning without knowing anything." So Rudy must have some sort of magic in mind. Maybe a spell or incantation--a little wand waving perhaps. Speaking of Harry Potter, Rudy might be thinking of using legilimency (a mind-reading spell) to break into the brains of the Iraqi insurgents and make them surrender. Or maybe Rudy's going to rely on the magic of American racial fantasies, tap his heels three times, and say over and over that he'll put all those non-white people in "their place."

3. ARE YOU GOING TO NULLIFY THE BRIBERY LAWS? Not that several Bush administration officials haven't been caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, but most of the law-breaking in the Bush administration has been about the abuse of power. Bush's promotion of torture techniques, extraordinary rendition policy, and maintaining of foreign prisons have all violated U. S. law, U. S. military law, the American Constitution, and the Geneva Conventions. To justify their law-breaking, Bush's legal team has argued that 9-11 authorized them to nullify a chunk of the American legal framework.

Needless to say, all of America expects that you would nullify laws limiting your power in the same way as the Bush administration. Nevertheless, given the example of your great friend Bernard Kerik, the country expects that the people you appoint also will be engaged in all kinds of good ol' financial graft with the money appropriated for Iraq. Does this mean that you're going to "reinterpet" the anti-corruption laws to mean that government officials can skim 5% of the money appropriated for their departments without violating the law? Or maybe that increasing their salaries by 100% is legal but 101% is "crossing the line" just like Don Imus crossed the line. Or are you going to claim that defense dapartment officials are both legislative and executive figures because they are carrying out the laws passed by Congress and are therefore not subject to anti-bribery, anti-graft laws, or any other laws? Of course, if you also nullified the laws that applied to defense contractors, then everybody would make a lot money from the war.

If the Bush administration has taught us anything, it's taught us that some people have more important things to do than serve the public or obey the law. We just want to know how you're going to achieve your goals for American government.

The Jackhammer of New Reality

It looks like my idea of writing in my B&B room is out the window. The jackhammer started at 7:41 this morning. On to Plan B, whatever that is.

12:37pm--Actually, the hammering stopped just before 8:00am and I managed to get some writing done on the Philadelphia workingmen's movement this morning. Not much, but it was a start.

I'd like the hammering more if it weren't literally in my back yard, but I like it anyway because jackhammering is the sound of economic vitality--of new things being built and old buildings, roads, and sidewalks being torn down to make way for them. I've always admired construction because of my grandfather's work as a bricklayer, but I really learned to see construction as an indicator of vitality when I first came to Philadelphia in 1983. Although this sometimes sets me at odds with my anti-development friends, I follow Marx in generally seeing the creative destructiveness of capitalism as a good thing.

The Cancer of Right-Wing Normality

At the recent Take Back America progressive conference, the blogger Digby received an award on behalf of all liberal bloggers and gave a speech defining what bloggers have in common. What caught me eye in a generally excellent speech was her statement about the right-wing.

But there's no disagreement among us that the modern conservative movement of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush has proven to be a dangerous cultural and political cancer on the body politic.

This is absolutely true and I devote a lot of my own blogging to attacking the right and the many elements in the mass media and Democratic party who kowtow to the right.

But this is also a very disturbing truth from a red state perspective.


Lots of my students in Eastern Kentucky are committed right-wingers. I can think of four or five in one class alone. Two of my sisters in North Carolina would count as right-wing true believers. So would one of my aunts in South Carolina. Wherever Aunt Betty lives, she's probably a right-winger as well. Hard to tell about Uncle Jack in Texas. Maybe him too.

It's hard to think of my relatives and many of my better students as a "cultural and political cancer." Glenn Greenwald's even tougher. His post today on Norman Podhoretz is entitled "Face of a Psychopath" because Podhoretz would so blithely subject Iran to a bombing campaign. In a way, I agree with Greenwald. Calmly contemplating the murder of thousands of people certainly does sound psychopathic. But, I'm sure that my sisters and aunts would put a lot of enthusiasm into their own advocacy of bombing Iran. The same with my students.

Does that make them psychopathic?

I'm not sure that Greenwald who writes out of New York or Digby who bunkers in Santa Monica have this kind of problem. But the fact that my relatives and students are all either "normal" or normally screwed-up people actually makes the situation worse. The right-wing is not just Newt, Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. It's at least 20% of the populatio. It's mostly in the Southern and rural red-state areas and it's mostly pretty average or even fairly admirable people. This is what makes the American right so dangerous to the American democracy and to global stability. It's become "normal" in large parts of the country and might even be the majority in states like South Carolina.

The conservative movement is a cancer on American society. What's worse is that it's become a well-established cancer or a cancer of right-wing normality.

Hillary: The Danger has Passed

Not the danger that Hillary Clinton would be elected president. That's alive and well. If anything, Hillary has solidified her lead for the Democratic nomination with a 14 point edge in the RCP average and leads in all the early states except Iowa (otherwise known as John Edwards' living room).

Given that Hillary isn't going to be handicapped with all the problems plaguing the Republican candidates, she has to be thought of as a favorite for the general election as well.

No! It's the danger that Hillary Clinton would be elected president without a single puff piece being written about her. The Washington Post puffs today on Hillary's base campaign team, the fact that it's almost entirely women, the lower middle-class origins of many of the women involved, the "day care" atmosphere of Hillary offices, and Hillary's eagerness to help the members of her team juggle work and motherhood.

As puffing goes, it's not horribly bad. The Hillary team seems human and there definitely aren't any of the weenie boy, pseudo-macho crap that dominates the Bush administration and that was the intended effect. The idea was to make the "Hillaryland" team look seasoned and tough without the frantic Bush chest-beating that has been such a disaster for the country.

And it works pretty well.

Reconfiguring the Left-Center Relation: More Thoughts on Gerstein

In Dan Gerstein's second reply to me, he ended with this call to a common purpose.

All of which is to say that, instead of getting bogged down in this unproductive and increasingly irrelevant left versus center fight, I would much rather field a diverse group of dynamic, authentic, and innovative-thinking Democratic candidates who can help us reframe the discussion about the past versus the future and convince voters we are the party that can meet the challenges of the 21st Century.

I also want to get beyond the "left versus center" fight in the Democratic and the best way to do is to change the relationship between the center and the left in the Democratic Party. During the Clinton and early Bush years, "triangulation" meant primarily that the Democratic party leadership in the center would be "open" to the right-wing proposals but wouldn't want to go as far. The Democratic center was always compromising with right-wing initiatives, but was basically telling the left, unions, and African-Americans that they had no place else to go.

The Bush administration and the Republican majority first undermined this strategy by either refusing to negotiate or framing issues in such a way that centrist Democrats could not compromise without starting rebellions among Democratic constituencies. Sticking a "no union" poison pill provision in the legislation for the Department of Homeland Security to ensure Democratic opposition is a good example of this. When the Iraq War relegitimized the left, the triangulation of the centrist Democratic leadership was further undermined. The anti-war left was almost as disgusted with the Democratic leadership as it was with the Bush administration and has been contemptuous of the leadership's continued desire for "center-right" compromises.
I'd like to see the center-left relationship in the Democratic Party reconfigured in such a way that the left-wing (white progressives, African-Americans, hispanics, gay rights activists, consumer activists, etc.) became the primary source for policy initiatives. They would also maintain their role in providing much of the party's fighting spirit and small donor base. In this context, Democratic centrists would still be forging the compromises needed to get legislation passed and programs enacted. It's just that the direction of compromise would change. Instead of compromising from a right-wing idea base in a leftward direction, they would be compromising left-wing ideas so that they would be acceptable to moderates and mild conservatives.

Reconfiguring the center-left relationship would involve a lot of change on both sides. For the left, it would mean coming up with more policy ideas, better framing them in terms of legislation, and better promoting those ideas in terms of mainstream white values and culture. As long as the U. S. is a 70% white country and the white population remains relatively conservative, that kind of promotional work is a crucial element in political success. Lots of people on the left are working to re-frame foreign policy in non-neoconservative terms, Al Gore has had some success in linking environmental initiatives to economic growth, and there's been a lot of work on health care initiatives. There just needs to be a lot more of these kinds of initiatives.

For centrists, this kind of reconfiguration means that they would start looking on the left more as friends and allies and less as self-righteous pains in the butt. Not that people on the left can't be self-righteous pains in the butt, but they also have many virtues that need to be integrated into the core of Democratic Party functioning.

Philly Brings Out My Inner Neo-Con

Philadelphia is a majority minority city--just barely. The white population is 45% and the African-American population with about 5% Asians. But being "white" isn't quite the same in Philly as it is in Eastern Kentucky where there isn't much ethnic differentiation among the largely Scots-Irish white population. In Philadelphia, there are substantial Italian-American, Jewish, gay, and other white sub-populations.

The Clinton Street part of Center City is more white than other areas I've lived in, but there is a playground two blocks away with a basketball court and a lot of tall African-American guys hooping it up. They're good too--strong D, good form on their jumpers, and able to make shots at tough angles. They're certainly a lot better than the guys playing on that same court in the mid-80's. Another block over is South Street and a whole foods store with a lot of thin, tanned, and prosperous looking white people hanging around there. And then there's the largely white dog walkers always out in force. The only thing really missing is little kids. The dog to child ratio is tilted heavily in favor of the canines.

Maybe people think dogs are easier to raise, but walking a dog three times a day in the city isn't the world's greatest experience either.

Anyway, I'm following the advice of Bill Bennett today and being relatively color blind because the thing I notice above everything else is the presence of so many short guys. There's always a substantial number of short women around because women are shorter than guys on average. But my areas of Philadelphia has more tiny guys than any other place I've been. Short white guys, short black guys, short Italian-American looking guys, short young guys, short old guys--just a lot of short guys around 5' 2' and 5' 3". I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm 5' 10 which is the average height for American males. On my college campus in Eastern Kentucky, I'm on the short side. But here in Philly, I'm looking far down at a lot of the guys I see on the street.

The neo-conservative in me likes that feeling of imaginary domination.

Maybe I can talk the 5' 2" Mrs. RSI into moving here. She'd feel right at home too.

Juneteenth and Celebrate America Days: A Proposal

Juneteenth is the celebration of the emancipation of African-Americans from slavery. June 19, 1865 was the day in which the Emancipation Proclamation was brought by federal troops into Galveston, Texas and has been celebrated as Emancipation Day ever since.

If liberty is the most important anchor-point for the collective self-image of most Americans, then Juneteenth should be just as important a holiday as the Fourth of July and much more important than Halloween or Thanksgiving. For that matter, there should also be a celebration on July 2 for the enormous expansion of liberty for African-Americans, women, gays, the eldeerly, and other groups triggered by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like the Fourth of July and Juneteenth, the turmoil of the Sixties was fundamental to the broad social and political liberties that we enjoy as Americans today. The Sixties should be commemorated with a national holiday to celebrate the most important political accomplishment of that era.

In fact, the whole period between Flag Day on June 14th and the Fourth of July should be designated as the "Celebrate America Days" and most of the U. S. should shut down in the same way that most European cities shut down during August. One of the big disadvantages of living in the U. S. is the general lack of vacation time. I've read someplace that Americans only average ten days of vacation a year. Designating a three-week patriotic vacation period would make everybody a little happier, a little saner, a little more energetic, and probably a little more productive for the rest of the year.

Let's make Juneteenth a big part of the Celebrate America holidays. It's the least we can do to recognize the importance of Emancipation in American history and the least we can do to introduce enjoy the liberty that so many of our ancestors fought for.

Strangers in the Village

I'm staying in a bed and breakfast on Clinton Street almost in the middle of Center City. The population of Philadelphia is 1.5 million but I've always had the impression that Philadelphia was a collection of relatively small towns. That's not the case with this part of Center City. Piled pretty tightly on top of each other, people encounter a lot of strangers as they go about the business of shopping, walking their dogs, and exercising. And they don't like people looking at them. The people working in the crowded stores are friendly, but one suspects that most folks find their "villages" among their friends and families but not on the streets of their city.

In some ways, this is the exact opposite of Morehead, Ky. In Morehead, people are expected to look at each other because they're expected to make some gesture of friendliness. Whether you know it or not, you may be connected to them through family, schooling, or some community activity. Nobody is ever more than one or two degrees of separation from anybody else. In fact, someone like Mrs RSI can't really walk around town in any kind of expeditious way because she stops and talks to so many people.

But I think it's more the situation than the people. In a place like Morehead, the institutional interconnectedness is so thick that people hardly ever see a real stranger. So, they're friendly with everyone. In Center City, most people are strangers. Consequently, people develop ways to distance themselves mentally from the eyes and voices of people they'll never know. If more people were strangers in Morehead, everyone would live at a greater distance.

Hillary Borrows Campaign Song From Guantanamo Play-List

The Hillary Clinton campaign has been running a contest for a campaign song. Evidently, the only people voting were Limbaugh ditto-heads because they chose Celine Dion's "You and I."

Actually, Dion does have the kind of soaring power of positive thinking/romantic stuff that political campaigns can use. But "You and I" is just painfully bad.

How bad?

So bad, it would be a good torture song at Guantanomo.

Dan Gerstein's Disappeared Liberal Self

Continuing my exchange with consultant and Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein:

As any regular readers of Red State Impressions and my MyDD diary know, I have been engaged in a discussion with Dan Gerstein, a Democratic political strategist and consultant, about whether Gerstein is a conservative or not. Gerstein made his name working for Joe Lieberman and as a critic of liberal bloggers. He's now writing for The Politico and appearing occasionally on Fox as well as doing his consulting work. I'm a government professor at Morehead State University in Kentucky. In my opinion, the main significance of this discussion is that it gives Gerstein a chance to connect with the liberal blogging community in a non-antagonistic though still critical forum. My response to Gerstein's post denying that he is a conservative is below.

Dear Dan,

Unfortunately, I'm still sick although not in a major way even though I have a blanket over my legs to keep me warm. But my mother-in-law's 90th birthday was one of the happiest and most loving events I've ever attended and my drive to Philadelphia was uneventful and pleasant. I even got some work done on a book proposal today.

Hopefully, I'll be able to keep this reply relatively short. Nevertheless, I did read all of your blog posts and your linked op-ed pieces for 2007. I still very much see you as a center-right kind of person. From my perspective and my type of liberal-left perspective has become part of the political landscape since the Iraq invasion, that makes you a conservative. At the same time, I also believe that most people with Democratic Party perspectives would look on you as a conservative.

Here's my thinking.

The Disappeared Liberal. In your last reply, you list 20 bullet points concerning views that are consistent with liberalism or the left and opposed to conservatism. Fair enough. I'll gladly concede that you have a liberal heart or a liberal self. But outside gay rights and general (and very brief) references to Bush's "botched handling of the war" (Jan.12), almost none of that appears in your blog or your op-ed writing. I don't see anything on abortion, anything on government regulation of business, or anything on safety net. You have a couple of notices on gay rights and gay marriage, but I wonder if you would have stuck up for such "risky" liberal issues if your mother and sister weren't gay. In general, you seem to have "disappeared" your liberal self. Maybe your liberal self was sent to prison in my original home region of Upstate New York. There's lots of state prisons there. Maybe it was subject to extraordinary rendition. Or maybe you just left your liberal self at a campaign event. Whatever happened, your liberal self is almost entirely gone from your blog and other writing.

If you want an idea of how little of your liberal self is present in your blog and op-ed writing, take a look at your bullet points again. Your disagreements with conservatives and criticism of the Bush administration in your reply to me far outweigh the whole sum of critical comments you made about them in all your published writing in 2007. Your May 18 and June 12 columns for the Politico are exceptions, but otherwise nobody would know that you are a partisan Democrat. There's no commentary on the war, little or nothing in the way of pithy little comments about Republican policies or personalities, and no shots at easy Bush administration targets like Dick Cheney or Condoleeza Rice.

I want to draw special attention to your writing on Rudy Giuliani. Your April 9 New York Post op-ed is so positive about Giuliani that it could have been written by Giuliani's own staff. In fact, it could have been published in TownHall.com as well. All of your criticism is reserved for liberal and netroots misperceptions. Indeed, you seem to find almost as much pleasure in Giuliani's victories over liberals in New York as Giuliani himself would. By way of contrast, when I post on Giuliani, I refer to him trying to sell a "race narrative" in which he's promising to control overseas non-whites in Iraq and Iran the same way he brought African-Americans under control in New York. In a discussion of Giuliani's personality at Matthew Yglesias' site, I (accurately) refer to Giuliani as a "super-asshole" for his treatment of Donna Hanover. Other liberal posters talk about Giuliani's dictatorial character, personal creepiness, and family problems at length. You let all of these things go because you like him as a "strong leader with a deep independent streak" (to paraphrase your March 30 post). You said in your reply that "I guess I just don’t think in those strictly partisan terms." What an understatement! Like I said, your liberal self has been disappeared.

The Real Enemy. I don't want to get too much further into your work with the Politico and appearances on Fox. You're right. You're appearances do nothing to change Fox. You're an extremely Republican-friendly Democratic commentator and I'm sure that's why both The Politico and Fox view you as attractive pundit material. You're their peculiar idea of "balance."

Instead, I want to talk about your "real enemy," the Netroots. If your blog and op-ed writing doesn't offer much criticism of the Republicans and conservatives, you certainly maintain a constant critique of progressive bloggers, the Netroots, liberals, and kossacks. Where the Republicans aren't subject to any kind of negative characterization (except for the two Politico articles), liberal bloggers are viewed as "myopic," "polarizing," "despising Republicans," as filled with hatred, or as containing a "Mao Meets McCarthy" atmosphere. In fact, it would be fair to say that you miss few opportunities to bait liberal bloggers in your blogging and journalistic work. They (more precisely "we") are your real enemy.

Why You're a Conservative. In your last reply, you claim that my argument that you're a conservative "hinges a lot on guilt by association, not on reason and logic." In fact, politics entails associations and much of the reason and logic of politics concerns associations. That's one of the reasons why Aristotle begins his Politics with a discussion of types of association rather than morality or logic. In terms of association, you're a center-right person who looks at Republican figures of the center-right with respect and affection. In a Jan. 11 post, you refer to the "sensible center-right" as a counter-point to Bush's disastrous policies and you like figures like McCain and Giuliani. That is what I was sensing when I asked about Susan Collins versus Maxine Waters. As a "very sensible" center-right senator, Susan Collins of Maine (bias alert--Susan Collins was a year ahead of me at St. Lawrence in Canton, NY and she's always made me proud as an alumni), you would like Susan Collins better than Maxine Waters. That's what makes you a conservative. When you look at people in the center-right or right, you see friends and allies, potential friends and allies, and now employers and potential employers. When you look at people on the left, you see enemies and potential enemies. You're basically the consultant version of Mickey Kaus at Slate. This is also what figures on the right see in you and that's why you're Fox's and The Politico's kind of Democrat.

Perhaps you're last reply to me and your recent Politico articles represent an effort to relocate your liberal self. If that's the case, good for you. From the evidence of your writing though, a relocation effort was necessary.

Sorry I didn't answer all your points, but I wanted to get to the heart of the issue as I saw it.

Best,

Ric

Who's Running the War?

General Petraeus was on Fox News Sunday saying that the the "'many, many challenges" would not be resolved "in a year or even two years." Similar counterinsurgency operations, he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, "have gone at least nine or 10 years.'"

One measure of how badly the surge is going is that Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have to spend so much of their time as spinners for the Bush administration.

You have to wonder who's actually running the war.

RSI Goes To Philly

Tomorrow, I'll leave for a month of historical research and writing in Philadelphia. I'll keep blogging but it'll be Red State Philly Impressions.

The End Isn't Near Enough

At midnight, Mrs. RSI gave me my father's day present--a Bush count-down clock. As of this moment, there's 582 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes and 13 seconds left in the incompetent and ill-fated administration of George Bush.

The end is near but not near enough.

Is Fred Thompson a Slut, Gay, or What? (Under Construction)

This is the second day of my mother-in-law's 90th birthday party and I'm also packing for my month-long research trip to Philadelphia. So, I'm going to get this post out gradually.

Let's start with the question of whether Fred Thompson is gay.

According to that nice girl Ann Coulter, he's be at least "latently homosexual."

When Coulter was doing her second promotional tour for Godless (the first was interrupted by the killing of al-Qaida leader al-Zarqawi), she claimed that Bill Clinton was a latent homosexual because he had so many affairs. The idea for Coulter was that gay men have a lot of promiscuous sex (not that dear Ann deals with stereotypes) and the Bill Clinton was acting like a gay man when he had affairs. As a result, Coulter could claim that Bill Clinton was gay.

Anyone who accepts Coulter's argument on Bill Clinton would also have to apply it to Fred Thompson because Thompson exhibited so much promiscuous behavior when he was a Washington lobbyist.

According to the Washington Post, Thompson claims that " I was single for a long time, and, yep, I chased a lot of women ... And a lot of women chased me. And those that chased me tended to catch me."

Like Bill Clinton, Fred Thompson might have thought of himself a hetero while he was chasing skirts, but Ann Coulter would call this "homosexual behavior" and I don't remember any conservatives objecting to Ann's analysis.

Come to think of it, who would I be to argue with Ann either.

Dan Gerstein, Political Consultant, Replies to RSI

In my June 12 MyDD diary and RSI post on Mudcat Saunders and Regional Stereotyping, I characterized Dan Gerstein as a conservative along with Mickey Kaus and Saunders himself. Surprisingly enough, I got an e-mail reply from Dan Gerstein disagreeing with my characterization of him as a conservative, inviting me to read his blog, and also inviting me to ask him some questions about politics and policy.

Having taken him up on those invitations, I defended my characterization of Gerstein as a conservative and posed four questions for him which he answered today at some length.

I thought that RSI readers would be interested in hearing from a political consultant who worked on the Lieberman/Lamont senatorial campaign as well as a gubernatorial campaigns in New York. So, I’m reprinting the whole exchange below. The only significant editorial change I made was to place my questions immediately before his answers so people could better keep the questions in mind as Gerstein replied.

I'll post my reply to Gerstein's most recent thoughts tomorrow.


Dan Gerstein:
Hi Ric. I came across your post on Mudcat, and enjoyed your perspective. But have to say I was surprised to see you labeled me a conservative.

I’d appreciate it if you would take a moment to read my blog before going further with that assumption. You can find it at: Http://dangerstein.blogspot.com/ In particular, you might want to read this post I did partly in response to the Greenwald piece you linked to http://dangerstein.blogspot.com/2007/05/dangerstein-myth.html We may disagree on some issues, and we most likely disagree a lot on tactics, but think you will see I am hardly a conservative. If you have any question as to my stand on issues or approach to governing, I’d be happy to answer them.

Thanks.
Dan Gerstein

Dear Dan, Thank you very much for your e-mail. I sympathize with your broken wrist. I myself have been stuck in allergy-bronchitis hell since early May with my allergies reviving the bronchitis every time I venture outside.

You'll be disappointed to learn that I still think of you as a conservative after looking at your blog. The Lieberman connection, the criticism of Larry Lessig for insulting Bush, the on-going bashing of liberal bloggers, your association with Fox and the Politico--it all reads as conservative to me. There are also some things that aren?t there that signify a conservative Democrat to me--almost nothing on the war, nothing on the Bush administration?s efforts to set up a series of extra-judicial penal colonies, nothing on racism, and no suspicion of big business. You don't seem to find of the right-wing as being asmorally appalling or dangerous to American democracy as most Metropolitan and Kentucky liberals I know either. Like a lot of conservatives, you also seem to have significant resentments toward the kind of liberal activists who worked against Joe Lieberman last year. That seems to be why you flirted last year with leaving the Democratic Party and becoming an independent. To be clear, I don't mean conservative like Dick Cheney/ Tom DeLay/ Karl Rove but more in the neo-liberal--Joe Klein--Mickey Kaus-- vein (though you're not as ggressive about it).

A caveat. I realize that you?re focused mostly on political tactics as a political consultant. Perhaps that's why you don?t address some of the issues I mention above. I should also acknowledge that you did view employment rights for gays as a viable issue in 2008.



Dear Ric:

I am glad to have a chance to engage on these questions, and appreciate your interest in my views. Please feel free to post my comments on your site, and I will do the same.Let me start by saying I wish there were more openness to these kind of exchanges on all sides. We as Democrats must be able to have thoughtful debates, whether we are disagreeing on policy or tactics, if we are to keep adapting and growing. I don’t like it when anyone with something meaningful to say is getting shouted down, whether it is Howard Dean or the DLC.This is why I am generally a big fan of the blogosphere — and sometimes a critic. It is such a dynamic, empowering, democratizing medium, with the potential to fundamentally transform our politics.

But I am afraid that potential will be squandered if we as Democrats don’t work toward a more
honest and less hostile discussion online. And I include myself in that “we” — there have been times when I have spoken too broadly and not respectfully enough about the Netroots. I regret that, and I am focused on being more balanced in my commentary going forward.Now to the overarching issue of what and who is a conservative. It’s clear from your note that we come at this from dramatically different perspectives and that’s where the disagreement stems from (along with the assumption that I share 100 percent of Lieberman’s views).

On the one hand, I am applying what I consider a conventional and largely normative definition to a label that admittedly is somewhat of a moving target in the Bush era. (Let me preface the rest of my comments by saying I believe most common political labels today are obsolete to the point of being misleading — Bush and his acolytes are often more radical than classically conservative, and many self-proclaimed liberals are often more reactionary than truly progressive).According to most dictionary entries, conservatism is defined by a reverence for tradition and a resistance to change. In the Goldwater-Reagan era of American politics, it has come to be more specifically defined as standing for limited government, hostility to regulation and the welfare state, low taxes, high military spending, family values, and, through the increasing influence of social conservatives, opposition to abortion rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_conservatism).By this general standard, there is just no logical way to conclude I am a conservative. To wit:

· I am disdainful of tradition for tradition’s sake and embrace social, economic, and technological change.
· I am a contrarian by nature, constantly questioning authority and conventional wisdom (on both the left and the right).
· I believe the federal government can and should be an agent of social and economic progress.
· I believe the federal government has a fundamental responsibility to regulate markets to protect consumers and investors and the environment, as well as to guarantee transparency and efficiency.
· I believe that the federal government was right to establish a national social safety net to protect the most vulnerable in our society and that Social Security and Medicare were two of the greatest governmental successes in modern history.
· I have believed for some time that we spend too much of our federal budget on defense and with far too little scrutiny.
· I am pro-gay rights, including gay marriage, and pro-choice.
Now let’s look more specifically at where I stand on the Bush agenda. Other than No Child Left Behind, which I considered a flawed bill but an important paradigm shift in our national education policy, I have opposed pretty much every major Bush initiative and then some.
· I oppose Bush’s tax cuts, which I consider not only fiscally reckless but the fundamentally wrong approach to growing the economy and spreading opportunity in the Information Age.
· I oppose Bush’s broad, across-the-board assault on environmental standards.
· I oppose Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.
· I oppose Bush’s special-interest driven Medicare prescription drug plan.
· I oppose Bush’s Federal Marriage Amendment and his partial birth abortion ban.
· I oppose Bush’s allowance for the use of torture.
· I oppose the FBI’s warrant-less wiretapping program.
· I broadly oppose Bush’s unilateralist, arrogant foreign policy.
· I oppose in particular Bush’s unilateral decisions to pull out of the Kyoto talks on global warming and the International Criminal Court and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
· I opposed John Bolton’s nomination to be U.N. Ambassador.
· I am offended by Bush’s bravado-ist, inflammatory rhetoric on national security (e.g. “Axis of Evil,” “bring it on,” etc.)
· I oppose Bush’s extra-constitutional use of signing statements to defy the will of Congress and subvert the law as it is written.
· And of most importance to you and many of your peers, I oppose the way we went to war in Iraq and Bush’s rigid, incompetent handling of the reconstruction and the insurgency.

On the other hand, you mostly seem to be judging my place on the ideological spectrum relative to your own views and those of my critics in the progressive blogosphere (most of whom have no idea where I actually stand on issues and regrettably don’t seem to care). If I do not fully agree with the consensus Netroots position on a few benchmark issues or tactics; or if I commentate on media outlets the Netroots collectively don’t like; or, more tellingly, if I have not spoken to an issue you care about on my blog or not done so with the same vehemence other progressive bloggers do — then I am a de facto conservative.

Let’s break this down for a moment. You are suggesting I am conservative -- despite all the evidence on my blog and elsewhere that I disagree almost universally with the conservative agenda -- because: 1) I worked for Joe Lieberman; 2) I have criticized progressive bloggers; 3) I write for the Politico and appear occasionally on Fox News; and 4) I have not sufficiently attacked the Bush Administration on (among other things) torture and civil liberties and the war.

With all due respect, I have to say this argument hinges a lot on guilt by association, not on reason and logic, and speaks precisely to the concerns I have about the direction the Netroots are headed in.First off, as I have made clear on my blog and elsewhere, while I greatly admire Joe Lieberman and am proud to have worked for him as long as I have, I am my own person with my own views (some of which diverge from Lieberman’s) and deserve to be judged accordingly. Now with that disclaimer out of the way, I still believe the underlying premise — that Lieberman and his defenders by extension are conservative — is fatally flawed. Barbara Boxer and Eleanor Holmes Norton (among others) strongly supported Lieberman in the primary and actively campaigned for him. I doubt you would suggest they were conservatives for doing so. Nor would they have come to Connecticut if they thought Lieberman was a conservative, regardless of his stance on Iraq.

Second, I don’t harbor resentments against the Netroots after the Lieberman campaign or feel the need to get even. I am professional who has worked in and around national politics for 14 years now, and I have approached every campaign I’ve been involved in just as I have a lifetime playing team sports: fight hard when the game is on, then shake hands and move on when it’s over. That’s what I did after my client Tom Suozzi lost a hard-hitting primary race to Eliot Spitzer for governor here in New York last September — I am now a proud supporter of Governor Spitzer’s reform agenda. And that’s what I did after Lieberman beat Lamont in the general election last November. If you doubt me, just ask Ned Lamont himself — Ned invited me to come speak to his seminar at the Kennedy School in April, and we had a very friendly and constructive conversation in and out of the classroom, in which I went out my way to praise Ned and his campaign for what they accomplished.

To me, this is really a fight about how to build a bigger Democratic Party and broader support for a progressive agenda. My fear is that many in the Netroots have learned the wrong lessons from the conservative movement's rise to power over the past quarter century and are bent on copying their mistakes as well as their successes. To be specific, I am concerned that the many Netroots activists are taking their admirable quest to bring more cohesion and discipline and infrastructural resources to the Democratic Party to an exclusive and self-defeating extreme. Again, you may disagree with this assessment, but I fail to see how raising this concern makes me a conservative. (FYI: You can find a fuller explanation of my views in these two blog posts: http://dangerstein.blogspot.com/2007/05/dangerstein-myth.html; http://dangerstein.blogspot.com/2006/03/straight-story.html.)

Third, I go on Fox, just as Howard Dean does, because it reaches the largest audience of any cable news network by far and that audience is comprised of voters Democrats need to be speaking to to win elections. I can appreciate the arguments that you and some of my other progressive friends have made against legitimizing Fox by appearing on their air, although I obviously disagree (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3108.html). But to use this small part of my resume as a leading indicator that I am conservative — especially when the same standard is not applied to Dean or Chris Dodd or many other Democrats who go on Fox News -- seems pretty specious. (I won’t even get into the Politico piece of this argument — there is just no credible evidence that Politico has a conservative bias.)Fourth, my reasons for blogging in different style than other Netroots writers do is not a function of my ideology, but my disposition. I made a conscious decision when I launched my site that: 1) I was going to write on a limited, quality-over-quantity basis, hence the mostly essay-ish posts; and 2) I was going to use my limited posting primarily to challenge conventional political wisdom and raise issues and questions and concerns that were not getting the attention I thought they deserved.

So in some sense, it’s precisely because you and so many other progressive bloggers have been working overtime holding Bush and the corrupt, backward Republicans in Congress accountable that I have chosen to focus on other subjects that are of particular interest to me. (FYI: Here is the post I wrote explaining all this to launch the site: http://dangerstein.blogspot.com/2006/01/opening-day.html.)It’s fair to say that some of the issues progressive bloggers care most about and that I have not commented about are not as big of priorities to me, or that I may have more nuanced positions. For example, I disagree with the warrant-less wiretapping as practiced by this Administration, but I am not outraged by it like many progressives are. That’s because I believe that we have to be aggressive in collecting intelligence on potential terrorist threats, and while Bush drew the wrong line in the balance between liberty and security, I want the FBI listening to Al Qaeda through any lawful means.Now, one could say that I am making a mistake in not taking this largely theoretical threat more seriously, and we could have a legitimate argument about that. But to suggest my lack of outrage, at the exclusion of my actual position, makes me a conservative seems totally illogical to me. If I am conservative because I don’t oppose wireless wiretapping loudly enough, what does that make those who vocally support it?

This gets to one of the biggest problems I have with what too often seems to be the Netroots’ prevailing approach to politics. It’s this rigidly binary, with-us-or-against-us mentality that narrowly defines what a Democrat or progressive is and lumps anyone who fails that litmus test into one or two enemy camps — either a DLC sellout or a Bush sympathizer. Apply these exclusive standards to John Kennedy, who was a hawk by nature and dedicated tax-cutter, and he would assuredly have been deemed a bad Democrat. Apply them to voters today, more importantly, and we would assuredly get a smaller party and waste the opportunity we have now to cement a bond with the independents and Clinton Republicans who are now leaning our way.All of which is to say I think we would all be better off if we stopped getting hung up on crude, empty labels and started engaging in serious arguments about big ideas for governing and effective strategies for persuading voters and winning elections.Now to your more specific questions [Caric’s questions will be re-stated, followed by Gerstein’s answers]:

1) [Caric] Many liberal bloggers believe that figures like yourself and Beltway pundits like Joe Klein view moving the Democratic Party in a > more conservative direction (on foreign policy, regulatory issues, religion, and abortion for example) as the most important strategic imperative for Democrats. To what extent do you agree with that or not?

[Gerstein] I would challenge the premise of this question. I am not seeking to move the party in a more “conservative” direction. I am seeking to move the party in a more strategic direction that puts us in a stronger position to win elections and build a sustainable majority. Let’s use abortion as an example. I don’t advocate Democrats compromising their principles or changing their positions. I do advocate, as Hillary Clinton has done ( http://clinton.senate.gov/~clinton/speeches/2005125A05.html), changing the way we talk about this issue to get off the defensive and show the Republicans are the ones who are out of touch. Thus, instead of falling into the pro-choice versus pro-life trap, we should be focusing on the one goal that most Americans agree on — reducing abortions and preventing women from ever having to make this difficult choice — and articulating a positive agenda for eliminating unwanted pregnancies and protecting women’s health. Then we can force the Republicans to explain how they can say they are for reducing abortions while at the same time blocking access to birth control.

2) [Caric] Liberal bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and Matthew Yglesias believe that the mainstream news media has embargoed war opponents and Democratic Party liberals and generally kept them out of interviews and off debate shows. To what extent would you agree that your own > appearances on Fox and affiliation with the Politico serve as an example of how more conservative Democrats get air time while more liberal and anti-war Democrats get excluded?

[Gerstein] Again, I would challenge the premise of the question. First off, nothing I do is going to influence Fox’s behavior — the only thing that is going to affect them is their audience and their ratings. Second, as I indicated above, it seems unfair to single me out for blame for Fox’s programming bent or booking habits when Howard Dean and many other prominent Democrats are going on their air and not getting the same kind of criticism. Heck, even Ned Lamont went on Fox News during last year’s campaign. Third, almost every time I am on Fox these days I am defending Democrats, and I believe we as a party are better off responding to baseless attacks on Fox or any other major outlet than ignoring them to make a symbolic point (as opposed to the Shrum approach to the Swift-boating campaign).

3) [Caric] One of my own hypotheses is that consultants and commentators like yourself think better of traditional or moderate Republicans than you do of the liberal or activist wing of the Democratic Republicans. In this sense, you would think more highly of Susan Collins of Maine or David Iglesias than you would a Maxine Waters or Juan Cole the anti-war blogger. To what extent would that be the case?

[Gerstein] Let me clear up one thing up about my consultancy — I am not a political consultant in the traditional sense. I do advise some candidates here and there, but that’s not how I make my living. Most of my clients are non-profits and progressive advocacy groups who need strategic communications help in marketing ideas or winning debates (http://www.dangerstein.com/clientlist.html). In terms of who I like better, liberal Democrats or moderate Republicans, I guess I just don’t think in those strictly partisan terms. All things being equal I will always support the Democrat over the Republican and I think it is more imperative now than ever for Democrats to be in control of our government. But at the same time I admire smart, principled, independent thinking leaders on both sides, especially those who know how to bring people together to get things done (hence the Lieberman connection). Two of my political heroes are Paul Wellstone and Ted Kennedy, who are to the left of me ideologically, but who I love for their conviction and respect for their ability to get Republicans to work with them to advance their causes. I cannot say the same for Maxine Waters. (FYI: My first paid gig as a political advisor was for Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum and techPresident, in his Net-driven race for Public Advocate here in New York City, which should give you some more indication about my belief in the positive power of online politics.)

4) [Caric] Another hypothesis of mine is that folks like yourself believe that you represent the farthest left that a legitimate Democratic or American politics could go? Thus you wouldn?t view those to the left > of you as fully viable or creditable? To what extent would you think that would be the case or not?

[Gerstein] I am just not sure this question has much relevance to today’s political arena. All my experience tells me most average voters don’t think like us political geeks -- which is to say, their primary barometer is not ideology or party or even a candidate’s stance on specific issues (outside of single issue voters like gun owners and pro-lifers). How else to explain Minnesota electing Wellstone and Rod Grams to the Senate at the same time, or New York Pat Moynihan and Al D’Amato, or Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden from Oregon? More often than not, as long as the candidates’ positions are within certain bounds, voters tend to look first at personal traits like character, values, likeability — along with their record if they are an incumbent. And then if they feel they can trust either or both of the candidates, they’ll give their ideas and agendas a listen. This is a test that Kerry failed — the Bush team did a highly effective job of disqualifying Kerry on cultural and character issues with a big bloc of swing voters, and largely as a result he never had a real chance to get a fair listen to his policies and plans. All of which is to say that, instead of getting bogged down in this unproductive and increasingly irrelevant left versus center fight, I would much rather field a diverse group of dynamic, authentic, and innovative-thinking Democratic candidates who can help us reframe the discussion about the past versus the future and convince voters we are the party that can meet the challenges of the 21st Century.

Thanks in advance for your consideration of my comments. Hope your bronchitis clears up soon.

Sincerely,
Dan Gerstein

The Coulter Conservative Kool-Aid Stun Gun Test

Ann Coulter isn't impressed with Fred Thompson. When Sean Hannity asked about Thompson as a conservative, Coulter sneered that Hannity would make the better candidate. More generally, she went on to express a preference for Blue State candidates like Rudy Giuliani over Red State Republicans in general. Coulter worries that Republicans from conservative states like Thompson's state of Tennessee know they have to show a minimum conservatism to be elected but don't have to be authentically conservative. I guess conservatism is easy to fake.

But how can you tell who's an authentic conservative or not?

Coulter implies that Rudy Giuliani has been a conservative all along but was forced (poor baby!) to pretend to hold liberal positions in order to get elected in New York City. But what's to say that Giuliani isn't faking conservatism now in order to win the Republican nomination and that he won't revert back to he liberal ways once he faces the general electorate?

If being a Republican, saying you're a conservative, and taking conservative positions is not a sufficient guarantee for being a "real" conservative, then there has to be some other kind of way to establish conservative authenticity. No more of this George Bush "compassionate conservatism" and we value our Mexican neighbors stuff. Real conservatives want to know that they're getting a real right-winger when they vote for someone in a Republican primary.

Let me suggest the "Coulter Conservative Kool-Aid Stun Gun Test" (with apologies to Thomas Wolfe's classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). It would be easy to test whether a candidate has swallowed the right-wing kool-aid or not. Bring an Arab-looking person out onto the stage of a Republican debate, tell the candidates that the person is an recalcitrant terrorist, and ask them to interrogate the "suspect" and shoot him if necessary with a gun rigged Russian roulette style with five stunners and one live bullet.

The real Coulter conservative would shoot and would have a smile on his face when he pulled the trigger.

Why?

Of course, Coulter conservatives aren't concerned with the rights of accused criminals and are even less worried about whether accused Arabs are really terrorists or not. Ann herself wrote about the travesty of the Warren Court's expansion of rights for accused criminals in Godless. Moreover, a real conservative wouldn't care whether the "accused terrorist" was actually a terrorist or not. Eighty to ninety percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib have no connection to terrorism. However, that has not deterred conservatives from the large-scale incarceration of Iraqis or collective punishment of the Iraqi Sunni population. So what if a few innocent civilians are captured in the broad sweep of populations that support terrorism.

Moreover, real conservatives support, and in Limbaugh's case, revel in torture techniques like "water-boarding," sleep deprivation, religious humiliation, and the like. What harm would a little public display of "aggressive interrogation" do to a recalcitrant terrorist? None if you're a real conservative! In fact, a conservative might argue that the possibility of dying before an enemy audience might just be the thing that would finally break down a terrorist.

What if the candidate fires the bullet that kills the "terrorist?" A conservative would go "so what." Conservatives support the death penalty, are all for the rigorous treatment of accused terrorists, and have made noises about bringing back public executions. No real conservative would mind seeing a terrorist die if it advanced the American cause in the war on terror.

An added bonus of the Coulter Conservative Kool-Aid Stun Gun Test is that it would put Republicans on the front-line. Liberals are always ridiculing conservatives all the time as chicken-hawks and weenie boys and the Bush administration is getting tired of it. The Coulter Conservative Test would make every real conservative among the Republican candidates an active participant in the fight against terror. Also, once elected, a real conservative could participate in more interrogations as an on-going testimony to conservative authenticity. It would be the political version of continuing to take communion in church after a conversion experience.

The Coulter Conservative Kool-Aid Stun Gun Test--the only way to know who's a real conservative.

Fred Thompson Speaks to the Woman in Chris Matthews

Here is some more dialogue from Mr. Man-Love, Chris Matthew of NBC's Hardball, about Fred Thompson (via Glenn Greenwald):

Does [Fred Thompson] have sex appeal? I'm looking at this guy and I'm trying to find out the new order of things, and what works for women and what doesn't. Does this guy have some sort of thing going for him that I should notice? . . . Gene, do you think there's a sex appeal for this guy, this sort of mature, older man, you know? He looks sort of seasoned and in charge of himself. What is this appeal? Because I keep star quality. You were throwing the word out, shining star, Ana Marie, before I checked you on it. . . . Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man's shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of -- a little bit of cigar smoke? You know, whatever.

I'm surprised Matthews didn't start moaning an orgasmic "Oh! Oh! Oh!" in mid-sentence. I won't test the patience of readers by restating points from previous posts about the importance of exaggerated masculinity for the weenie-boys of the right-wing or the significance of male homoeroticism in media odes to Republican masculinity.

However, I do want to focus on Matthews' supposed interest in "what works for women and what doesn't."

I haven't seen any female writers swooning over the "manhood" of any of the Republican candidates, including Fred Thompson. Arianna Huffington isn't writing anything like "I won't vote for Fred Thompson but my what a manly man!" Maybe Helen Thomas has an "if only I was ten years younger," op-ed out there about Thompson but I haven't found it. Even Ann Coulter (who isn't impressed with Thompson) doesn't appear to be writing anything about Thompson or Romney "looking" presidential. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the candidate who seems to be most attractive to women and Hillary doesn't seem to smell like cigar smoke at all.

Matthews is addressing "Ana Marie" in talking about Fred Thompson but he seems to be basing his understanding of what women want in a presidential candidate more on introspection than anything else. Ultimately, Thompson is speaking to the woman in Chris Matthews and she appears to like him a lot.

To Pardon or Not to Pardon

JUDGE WALTON DECIDES. As was expected, Judge Walton ruled today that he was going to remand Scooter Libby to prison now rather than let Libby wait till his appeals are exhausted before serving his 30 month sentence. Of course, "now" means six or eight weeks from now as Libby appeals the decision to send him to jail and gets his affairs in order.

That leaves President Bush six or eight weeks to decide whether to pardon him or not.

"MY ADMINISTRATION IS NOT FILLED WITH CROOKS." Like most observers on the left, I believe that Bush will pardon Libby. This would be primarily because refusing to pardon Libby for obstruction of justice and allowing him to go to jail would imply an admission on Bush's part that Libby in fact committed a crime.

Why is this significant? Columnists on the right have been emphatic that Libby did not obstruct justice. They believe that Libby just got mixed up about what he was telling which reporter.

Of course, the right-wing cover story is non-sense. As Patrick Fitzgerald claimed, Libby lied to the prosecutor to keep the investigation from reaching Dick Cheney.

But that's not the point here.

What would be important from President Bush's point of view is that his administration has been filled with actions that Republican appointees like Patrick Fitzgerald or Judge Walton could view as criminal behavior. These include his own decisions about interrogation techniques, indefinite detention, Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, kidnapping people on foreign soil without any kind of due process, and the like. It also includes Karl Rove's apparently systematic efforts to violate the Hatch Act against political activity by Civil Service appointees, the efforts of Brad Schlozman and others in the Department of Justice to prosecute Democrats for non-existent vote fraud, and obstruction of justice in the firing of federal prosecutors.

If President Bush does not accept conservative rationalizations for Scooter Libby's criminal actions, he is leaving himself open to the slippery slope of having a big chunk of his administration considered a criminal enterprise.

In other words, Bush's pardoning of Scooter Libby is the equivalent of saying "my administration is not filled with crooks."

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POLITICS? But the Libby pardon does raise a difficult political problem for the President. If President Bush does pardon Scooter Libby, it's a big nail in the coffin of Republican hopes for the 2008 election. Why? A Bush pardon would mean that all the Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul would be called on to defend the pardon in a way that would tie them to Bush. However, if the reactions of Bush appointees like Patrick Fitzgerald and Judge Walton to Libby's claims are any indication, a big majority of the public is going to be just as disgusted with a Libby pardon as they are with the war in Iraq. By pardoning Libby, President Bush would be tying Republican candidates to the mast of yet another hugely unpopular Bush political decision and further damage their chances in a general election. I would bet my bottom dollar that Democratic political strategists recognize and are secretly hoping for a pardon.

Of course, letting Libby go to jail would leave Republican activists, op-ed writers, and bloggers extremely unhappy but it would be like the immigration battle in having the consequence of freeing them from George Bush. Ironically, Bush could help the Republicans best by sending Libby to jail and leaving them to their sense of betrayal, bitterness, and resentment.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, Bush will pardon Libby. He'll probably think that he'll be defying the Democrats, the liberal media, bloggers, and anti-war activists by keeping Libby out of jail. In reality, he'll be taking one more step toward giving us almost complete control over the federal government.

The Surge is Failing!

MSNBC has a pretty good article up on the non-existent "surge" effect in Iraq. There are several negative trends since the beginning of the surge in February. There are more civilian deaths with more than 100 civilian casualties per day. Casualties for American troops are also up and that's no surprise given that the total number of attacks is also up and 75% of those attacks are directed against American troops.

But reading between the lines reveals that the surge is doing even worse than the numbers reveal. The key consideration is that the the number of attacks and casualties have risen despite the fact that Shiite militias have been relatively quiet. As a result, it is necessary to conclude that Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda have become significantly more active since the beginning of the surge. One of the key objectives of the surge was to decisively weaken Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. To say the military has failed in these objectives is an understatement. If anything the Sunni insurgents look stronger and the Shiite militias have not been affected at all since they've been out of the fight.

Another important consideration is that the American military has not been able to protect Shiite populations from Sunni attacks. The blowing up of the minarets on the Samarra mosque is yet another indication of the inability of the Iraqi government and the American military to provide security.

Advocates of the surge argued that increasing the American troop presence would provide the security space needed for Iraqi politicians to work out the compromises needed for national reconciliation. American troops aren't providing enhanced security and Shiite and Sunni politicians have failed to pass needed legislation and constitutional changes.

So far, the surge is failing all around.