Category Archives: The Nation

In praise of an honest man

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It was really refreshing to read Ted Rall’s latest piece. Here’s an anti-war man of the old school, one who doesn’t mess about with half-measures. Disagree vehemently with his perspective if you will (and I’ll be with you on that) but you’ve got to admire his honesty.

He starts off by expressing his contempt for the inconsistency he sees around him:

"Support the Troops, Oppose Their Actions," reads the oxymoronic headline of an April 2005 essay at antiwar.com.

But he’s just warming up. He goes on to slice and dice the very "support the troops but oppose the war" position that I have objected to in this space — only from the opposite direction. While I support the troops and their mission, I have to appreciate Mr. Rall‘s consistency in opposing both:

If we are, as Jean-Paul Sartre posited, defined by our actions, most of
the blame for the murder of more than 100,000 Iraqis belongs to our top
government officials. But Bush’s armchair warriors couldn’t have
invaded Iraq without a compliant and complicit United States
military–one that, it should be noted, is all volunteer. These
individuals, who enjoy free will, fire the guns and drop the bombs. If
personal responsibility is to have any meaning, the men and women of
our armed forces have to be held individually accountable for the
carnage.

Oh, and by the way, he doesn’t stop at condemning soldiers who have done things that most of us would censure, such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib. He goes far beyond that:


Even if U.S. forces were not violating the rules of war in
Iraq–torturing, maiming and murdering POWs, robbing and subjecting
civilians to collective punishment, dropping white phosphorus and
depleted uranium bombs on civilian targets–the war itself, based on
false pretenses and opposed by the United Nations, would remain a gross
violation of American and international law.

So, you’re wondering, is he saying that soldiers and marines and sailors who just go to Iraq are war criminals? Well, I refer you to his next paragraph:

Soldiers,
they say, must obey orders. However, "just following orders" wasn’t an
acceptable excuse at the Nuremberg trials, where the charges included
waging a war of aggression. Do our government’s poorly paid contract
killers deserve our "support" for blindly following orders?

How bracing it is to read such rhetoric! None of that namby-pamby "support the troops by bringing them home" pablum for our Ted! The men and women who willingly bear untold sacrifices on our behalf are "contract killers" to him. No doubt where he stands.

Enter his world for a moment. It is a world in which the commander-in-chief is "an unelected imposter," and in which:

Every
order to deploy a soldier, aviator or sailor to fight in Iraq is by
definition an unlawful order, one that he or she is legally and morally
bound to refuse.

So what’s a soldier to do? Well, Mr. Rall’s got it all figured out:

The
military used to be an honorable calling. Not under Bush. Ethical
Americans considering a military career should seek a civilian job
until a lawful, elected government has been restored in Washington and
we have withdrawn our forces from occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Those
who are already enlisted should refuse to reenlist. Soldiers trapped by
"stop loss" orders should apply for conscientious objector status
(which is difficult to obtain) or refuse deployment based on the
unlawful order principle. And if all else fails, there’s always
desertion.

OK, so there are a couple of places where he slips into the ambivalence that has characterized the current anti-war movement — such as when he says "The military used to be an honorable calling." (That assertion begs for elaboration, of course. When was it honorable, by Mr. Rall’s standards? Until January 2001? For about four years in the early 1940s? Up until 1783?) And there’s a confusing bit toward the end where he seems to hold up actions by the anti-war folks during Vietnam to "support the troops" as somehow backing his position.

But for the most part, he resolutely refuses to wimp out. He recovers quickly at the end, with a breezy, "OK, lefties? You can drop the ‘support the troops’ shtick now." You’ve got to give him that.

At this point, I should say that I’m sure there are thousands upon thousands of people who are honestly sincere in saying they "support the troops but oppose the war." But then, I’ve noticed time and again in my 52 years that the human brain has an almost limitless capacity for rationalization. That’s what enables people to say, "I’m not pro-abortion; I’m pro-choice," or "I’m not a racist, but…."

But set that aside. I’m sure there are many people who love the troops and hate the war and are not rationalizing, but are sincere about it from the bottom of their souls, both consciously and unconsciously.

I have to wonder, though: How many others out there, deep down, really and truly despise the troops themselves for fighting and dying (and killing) for us? Well, we seem to be at one and counting.


Finally

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Finally, voices of reason
talk back on Iraq
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
FINALLY.
    Finally, after weeks of serious talk about taking the suicidal step of pulling American troops out of Iraq — driven by the steady drip of relentless news coverage of a casualty one day, two the next, and virtually nothing else; by poll numbers that fed on that coverage; and by political opportunism on one side of the partisan aisle, and political cowardice on the other — some people who knew better started talking back.
    It started about 10 days ago.
20051126issuecovus400    That’s when The Economist sent out its last week’s edition, with these words on the cover: “Why America Must Stay.”
     After going on at length, with brutal frankness, about the mistakes the Bush administration has made in Iraq (and I urge you to go to my blog — the address is at the bottom of this column — and follow the links to read this and the other items I will mention), the piece gave both the positive reasons and negative reasons why we have no choice but to maintain our force there until the job is done. The “positive” reasons had to do with political and military progress achieved. Some “negative” reasons: “The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher. By fleeing, America would not buy itself peace. Mr. Zarqawi and his fellow fanatics have promised to hound America around the globe. Driving America out of Iraq would grant militant Islam a huge victory. Arabs who want to modernize their region would know that they could not count on America to stand by its friends.”
    Then, on Saturday, political scientist James Q. Wilson wrote in The Wall Street Journal of the kind of speech he’d like to hear President Bush deliver. He complained, quite rightly, that the president was wasting time “arguing against critics of the Iraq war who are trying to rewrite history,” when “What most Americans care about is not who is lying but whether we are winning.”
    And we are winning — a fact of which most Americans are tragically unaware. Mr. Wilson went on to tell how the president should explain that. A sample: “We grieve deeply over every lost American and coalition soldier, but we also recognize what those deaths have accomplished. A nation the size of California, with 25 million inhabitants, has been freed from tyranny, equipped with a new democratic constitution, and provided with a growing new infrastructure that will help every Iraqi and not just the privileged members of a brutal regime. For every American soldier who died, 12,000 Iraqi voters were made into effective citizens.”
    Then on Tuesday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman wrote — once again, in the Journal — a piece headlined “Our Troops Must Stay.” Informed by a recent visit to Iraq, his picture of a nation moving towardLiebermaniraq becoming a vital democracy (as long as we don’t abandon it) was even more compelling than the others. But my own anti-partisan heart was probably warmed most by this passage:
    “I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November’s elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.” Amen.
    Why such a flurry of similar statements of good sense all at once? It may be that the voices of grim reason finally piped up in alarmed reaction to the fact that the American people were actually starting to think of doing the unthinkable. They also wrote (very specifically, in Mr. Wilson’s case) in reaction to the appalling leadership vacuum left by the failure of the president of the United States to explain, and keep explaining, to his people the stakes in this war.
    Then finally, finally, finally, the president reported for duty on Wednesday. As he should, he counseled “time and patience.” But he did more important things than that. He not only explained why we must think not of timetables for withdrawal, but measures for success. He also spelled out how we will achieve those goals. He showed a way to outcomes that too many Americans have Bushvictory_1stopped being able to imagine.
    And he addressed the mad talk about timetables for withdrawal, promising that “decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders — not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.” In other words, by the brave men and women fighting this fight, rather than by Democratic opportunists and Republican cowards.
    “Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw,” he said, “would send a signal to our enemies — that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends.” Not only that, but it would tell them exactly how long they have to wait — and that would be insane.
    The president’s speech was accompanied by the release of a 35-page “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” In greater detail than the address, it set out the definition of victory, and the plans for achieving it. It also stated what should be obvious: “(T)he terrorists, Saddamists, and rejectionists do not have the manpower or firepower to achieve a military victory over the Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces. They can win only if we surrender.”
    There remains much left to be said, and even more to be done. But it is gratifying and reassuring that the president and others are now discussing, in de
pth, the actual situation and what should be done about it. Finally.

Keeping the ‘Un’ in ‘Unparty’

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A comment by GS Gantt deserves a prominent reply, so I’m making a separate post of it. He wrote, in part:

Your "UNPARTY" idea has merit in that it would be in opposition to
the Democrats and Republicans, such opposition being desperately
needed. But I’m sure you know full well how terribly difficult and
expensive it would be to actually create a "third party". Besides, the
Dems/Repubs would fight this vehemently and they would probably win.
Incumbency plus money equals POWER!, and they’ve got all three.

If you’re serious (and I don’t think you are), why not pursue the
only option that has a chance of unseating the career politicians? This
would be the WRITE-IN campaign vote. Such an option would require
nowhere near the money or politics it would take to actually create a
real third party.

Mr. Gantt, I’m not sure what you mean by "serious." I’m as serious as a crutch about the need for alternatives to the current situation. My job is to throw out the ideas — and have fun doing so when I can — and hope some of them will take root and lead to action.

I’d love to see somebody run for office on the Unparty ticket. It would be really interesting to see how the public reacts. Personally, I’m hopeful, given the statistics in a recent David Brooks column. He wrote that a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that only 24 percent of Americans see the Republicans as representing their priorities, and only 26 percent see Democrats that way.

That leaves 50 percent for us to work with. None of that stuff about money and organization worries me — let the actual political parties worry about that. This is about the power of an idea, which can be like a mustard seed.

And the idea is that parties don’t matter. People matter. Ideas matter. The good of the country, and of the whole world, matter. Doing the right, smart, practical thing for the greater good matters. But parties, and ridiculously abused terms such as "liberal" and "conservative," do not.

It doesn’t matter whether a new party comes into being, as long as the grip of the other two is loosened, and people see beyond the limits of partisanship. Then the smart ideas — rather than the politically correct dogmas of right or left — will come to the fore, people who advocate them will be elected, and the country and the world will be better off.

How’s that for an Unparty manifesto? Or the beginning of one, anyway…

Unparty column

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It’s my party, and I’ll vie if I want to
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
INSPIRED BY Ariel Sharon’s decision to abandon the Likud Party he helped build and start another, more centrist one — one that immediately began to catch on to the extent that it looks as though it will propel him past the established factions and into another term in office — I posted a blog item last week that asked, “Why can’t we do this here?”
    Excited at the idea of “giving those of us in the sensible middle an actual alternative to the mutually exclusive, mutually loathing Democrats and Republicans,” I got right to the business of setting up my own faction, posing such questions as: What would be the precepts of such a party? What should we call it? Who would be some good candidates? What animal should be our mascot?
    My respondents quickly brought me down to Earth. I heard from both sides of the partisan divide, and the more ardent were soon ignoring my questions and clawing each other. But both sides seemed to agree that those of us who eschew the current phony ideologies don’t believe in anything ardently enough to get things done.
    What a relief when “David” spoke for me by writing, “I am always intrigued by this argument that moderates aren’t passionate about anything…. I take every issue on its own merits and when I make up my mind, I am as passionate and diehard about that position as any conservative or liberal could ever be.”
    Exactly. Why is it so hard for partisans and ideologues to understand that we might hold our own values and positions even more passionately than they hold theirs, for the simple fact that they are ours. We didn’t do what they did, which was to buy an entire set of attitudes off the rack, preselected and packaged by someone else, and chosen based on nothing deeper than brand name.
    Is there anything wishy-washy about the stands taken by such “moderates” as John McCain and our own Lindsey Graham? Was Joe Lieberman being a fence-sitter when he helped push through the Iraq Liberation Act, which way back in 1998 made the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the official policy of this country?
    These are the people who take the independent risks that make things happen, from campaign finance reform to banning torture. Without them as pivots, giving ideas credibility by virtue of their own independence, we’d be forever in a state of stalemate, unable to settle any difficult issue.
    And those of us who support their like are the ones who decide elections
— not the partisans, who can be taken for granted.
    The best thing is to have no parties. But it’s still fun to imagine what kind of party we who despise them would create if we were so inclined. Let’s give it a go.
    Right off, I’m stumped as to a name. So for now, let’s just call it the “Unparty.” (After all, the “Uncola” caught on for a while.)
    Are there any fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets? Sure:

  • First, unwavering opposition to fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets. Within our party would be many ideas, and in each situation we would sift through them to find the smartest possible approach to the challenge at hand. Another day, a completely different approach might be best.
  • Respect for any good idea, even if it comes from Democrats or Republicans.
  • Contempt for any stupid idea, even if it comes from our own party leaders.
  • Utter freedom to vote however one’s conscience dictates, without condemnation or ostracism from fellow party members.

    Every Unpartisan would have his or her own set of positions on issues, having worked them out independently. But to banish the thought that Unpartisans don’t take strong stands, here would be some positions I would bring to the party table (and remember, this is just me, not the editorial board of The State):

  • Respect for life. Opposition to abortion, the death penalty and torture of prisoners.
  • Belief in just war theory, and in America’s obligation to use its strength for good. (Sort of like the Democrats before Vietnam.)
  • A single-payer national health care system — for the sake of business and the workers. If liberals and conservatives could stop driving a wedge between labor and capital for about five minutes, we could make this a reality.
  • Universal education — as a state, not a national, responsibility. Go ahead and shut down the U.S. Department of Education, and make sure you provide equal educational opportunity for all on the state level.
  • A rational, nonideological energy policy that will make us independent of despotic foreign regimes: Drill in the ANWR. Impose strict efficiency standards on Detroit. Build more refineries. Since we are at war and they are helping the enemy, build internment camps for Hummer drivers. (OK, scratch that; just make the Humvee like automatic weapons — banned for all but military use. In fact, what was wrong with the Jeep?) Launch a Manhattan Project to find something better than fossil fuels. Take the advice of Charles Krauthammer and set gasoline permanently at $3 a gallon — when the price of crude drops, raise the tax to keep the pump price at $3. Unlike Mr. Krauthammer (who’d use the proceeds for tax cuts), I’d make like a real conservative and balance the budget.

    Such ideas are not left, right or wishy-washy. Admittedly, in my zeal to debunk the myth that we “moderates” (an inadequate word, really, for independents) don’t take strong stands, I’ve deliberately chosen some ideas that are attractive to me but are too out there for my own editorial board. (Although the issues they address are similar to some set out by potential Unpartisan Paul DeMarco in comments on my blog.) But wouldn’t that make for some lively Unparty conventions? And wouldn’t they be more worth watching than those scripted, stultifying pep rallies that the Democrats and Republicans hold every four years?
    I certainly think so. In fact, that’s one point on which most of us Unpartisans could agree.

Reform!

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This piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal was fascinating. The writer, a member of the Journal‘s editorial board, struggles mightily to figure out John McCain. He just can’t understand how someone could be so admirable and yet not recognize the "obvious truth" that economic policies should be structured to reward wealth.

And I just don’t understand why he can’t understand.

An issue for the Critter Committee

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Finally, one or two people who actually like my idea of a political party for the rest of us responded to my post on the subject. And Paul DeMarco even gave serious thought to my question of what sort of animal should symbolize our party. I was impressed that he came up with one that was actually high on my own list: the owl. As he put it, the owl is "Quiet, wise, but no-nonsense and a swift and skillfulOwl predator when the need arises."

Good idea. I’m not ready to settle on it, but it’s a good start.

Of course, as surely as we will hear stories of the Pilgrims and Squanto on this day, we had an item in the paper reminding us that Benjamin Franklin advocated the wild turkey as our national symbol. I think he was serious about that one, but you never know; ol’ Ben was a bit of a raconteur, and may have been sending us up.

On the subject of birds, I had already thought about the one that won out over the turkey. The bald eagle would be ideal in some ways. First, it would say we align ourselves with the nation itself, rather than with any ideological segment. Also, the traditional rendition of it, grasping the arrows with one foot and the olive branch with the other, would say that on the federal level at least, we concern ourselves with the main business of the national government — our conduct with other nations. (Yes, Bald_eagleI know it’s supposed to regulate interstate commerce and such, but one thing I want to do is distance ourselves from some of the sillier battles that the donkeys and the elephants have over domestic Kulturkampf issues that aren’t properly any of the federal government’s business — such as manger scenes in town squares, and comatose patients in Florida.)

In some ways, though, the eagle is limited. For one thing, it always looks fierce. I like the idea of a mascot that can look fierce when it needs to, but the eagle doesn’t seem capable of any other expression. Also — and this will seem silly, but remember that I work every day with a cartoonist for a living — I can’t see the eagle working well in political cartoons. Maybe that’s just because I haven’t seen it done enough yet. Robert Ariail could most likely anthropomorphize the noble bird into characters just as hilariously human as his donkeys and elephants, but I have trouble picturing it.

Maybe we should look beyond birds. Birds are good, given that the United States is the world’s first and greatest air power, and our party would be open to the judicious use of that power. But as I think on cartoons — and we need to be open to being lampooned — I’m thinking four feet might work better.

Of course, you can come up with an objection to almost any symbol:

  • The Owl: Never available in the light of day. Too close an association with Hooters.
  • The Turkey: Essentially American, and admirable in many ways (very tasty, for instance), but too ugly and ungainly — not to mention that "turkey" has unfortunately come to be a putdown in modern slang.
  • The Eagle: Drawbacks listed above. One other: Too obvious.
  • The Bull Moose: Already taken, and proven to be electorally unsuccessful, even with a strong candidate.
  • The Bison: VERY American, but too, well, bovine. Any animal that’s so easy to creep up on and kill in such large numbers to the point that you have to make special efforts to keep it from going extinct is problematic (ditto the eagle, come to think of it).
  • The Lion: Not indigenous, and too associated with royalty. We could go with the cougar, but I’m just not a cat person. I like dogs.
  • The Dog:  Noble, loyal, friendly but willing and able to tear your head off if you mean to do ill to anyone or anything that it has taken under its protection. Note that I’m not talking Chihuahuas or French poodles, but real dogs — preferably a big mutt (symbolizing the melting pot), with some retriever, some setter, some shepherd, some chow, and some plain old hound dog. Probably can’t be a yaller dog, because that would be encroaching on the Democrats’ territory, and it is too suggestive of blind party loyalty, which we would abhor.

And there are other drawbacks to the dog — for instance, the fact that it would make us an object of contempt among Arabs and some other cultures, and we’ve got enough problems over there as things stand. But the dog has promise.

Ultimately, I remain stuck on this one. I guess, once we get this party organized (but not too organized, because that would be unlike us; we should strike a good medium between the Democrats and Republicans on that point), we’ll have to send this issue to our Critter Committee.

Or, we could just leave it to the cartoonists to come up with their own way of symbolizing us. They’ll do that anyway, unless we propose one that they find irresistible.

Anyway, enjoy your turkey today. And think no political thoughts while doing so, but remember to thank the One from whom all such blessings flow.

Bison_2

Why can’t we do this here?

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I find this to be pretty exciting news, because of the possibilities it suggests. Basically, Ariel Sharon is quitting the Likud Party he helped found in order to form a new, centrist party that turns away from the extremes of both Likud and Labor.

This, coming on the heels of Sen. John McCain’s visit here over the weekend, prompts me to ask the following questions of my readers (and if you give me some good answers, maybe I can get a columnSharon_1 out of it, and maybe even get a movement started; who knows?):

  • Why can’t we do this over here, giving those of us in the sensible middle an actual alternative to the mutually exclusive, mutually loathing Democrats and Republicans?
  • What would be the precepts of such a party? (I have some ideas of my own on this score, but I’d like to know what you think.)
  • Who would be some good candidates we could run under our banner?
  • What should be the name of our party?
  • What animal, if any, should be our party symbol?
  • Do you think such a party would, given time to grow, actually have a chance to make a difference and help us find a way to move forward as one country, leaving the destructive bitterness of the two dominant parties behind?
  • If you believe it does, what’s stopping us?

I guess that’s enough conversation starters to go on for now. I look forward to your feedback.

Speaking of ‘mature’ industries…

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Newspaper companies may seem a bit hapless as they flounder about trying to adjust to new business models and market conditions, but for sheer cluelessness and self-delusion, it’s hard to beat that supreme icon of American capitalism, General Motors.

In its weekend edition, The Wall Street Journal quoted GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner as saying early this year:

"We’ve been ahead 73 years in a row, and I think the betting odds are we’ll be
ahead for the next 73 years."

That was in the context of this story, which led with this statement:

Toyota Motor Corp. is making a big bet that it can ride a host of new
models past struggling General Motors Corp. next year to become the
world’s biggest maker of cars.Toyota_1

This is something I can look at with somewhat greater objectivity than I can the news biz, and my snap reaction to the move by Toyota is, "More power to them."

Why? Because Toyota has produced a higher-quality product at a reasonable price (or at least "reasonable" by 21st century standards). Given that, the company deserves to come out on top. Does it hurt my national pride a little to see my country outstripped by something it has historically done best? Sure. But by our own standards of fair play, Toyota at this point it entitled to take the lead. If the American company starts doing its thing better again, it will retake the honors.

Instead, GM’s reaction is the standard, knee-jerk, stock market-driven reaction of many threatened companies: Cut costs. Having retrenched on benefits, the maker of Chevrolet et al. is planning to lay off 4,000 employees — a tenth of its white-collar work force. It’s a little hard to get all sentimental about an American company that is putting that many Americans out of work.

Meanwhile, Toyota will be hiring Americans to build its cars, possibly even in Michigan itself. Toyota isn’t contracting, but growing. How? Through quality and innovation. Toyota not only makes the world’s most reliable cars, it also has earned the reputation of being the industry leader in new technology. Next year, the Camry will be available as a hybrid. And personally, I think the company is being overly conservative predicting it will only sell 30,000 of them.

As I’ve said before, I’m no biz wiz, but I continue to have this gut belief that the way to grow a business is not to cut costs, but to improve the product.

Despite what some Japanese guy said awhile back about Americans being "a work force too lazy to compete with Japan," I think we can do that over here. We just need to go back to doing what we used to do: Make the best product. The first step is to stop being complacent and wake up to the fact that right now somebody else is beating you at that game, fair and square.

Talk amongst yourselves

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I see I didn’t get around to posting anything yesterday, and that’s a shame because I had meant to post this editorial from Wednesday’s paper, which was based on this news story in Tuesday’s. I wrote it (and I don’t write all that many actual editorials these days, spending most of my writing energy on columns and this forum), because I knew it would come more easily to me than to anyone else on the staff. No one else was as ticked off about it.

Anyway, in lieu of an actual posting this morning, I thought I would throw this topic out and see what your reaction is. I know what Shell Suber, Richland County Republican Party chairman, thinks about it (more or less), because we discussed an op-ed he’s sending me in response. It was an amicable discussion, as always. Even though he and I are bound to disagree about the local party’s outrageous intrusion into nonpartisan preserves, he is in other matters a reasonable man.

So until I can get back to my keyboard, in the immortal words of Linda Richman, talk amongst yourselves. Later, we’ll have some cawfee, and we’ll awl tawk. No big whoop.

Jumping the gun

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The sides in the culture war that is smothering America’s judicial selection process couldn’t wait to get started fighting over the nomination of Samuel Alito. The sooner you attack, the sooner the other side attacks back, the sooner everybody gets really ticked off, and the more money you can raise, so you can pay your advocacy group’s staff, so you can keep on attacking, so … well, you getAlito2_1 the idea.

Anyway, the prize for being the first out of the gate this time — judging by nothing more reliable than my e-mail — was the ever-feisty People for the American Way. President Bush announced his new nomination at 8 a.m. The "American Way" folks couldn’t wait that long. My first release from them came in at 7:58. Either that, or 6:58. (I’m not sure whether my e-mail had switched over to standard time yet, since my desktop didn’t ask my permission to make that move until a couple of hours later.)

Anyway, the release proclaimed, in all capitals,

BUSH PUTS DEMANDS OF FAR-RIGHT ABOVE INTERESTS OF AMERICANS WITH HIGH COURT NOMINATION OF RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST ALITO

No point in throat-clearing or small talk. Might as well get to screaming right off the bat.

The same group weighed in again a couple of hours later. It wasn’t until a few minutes after that that the second party was heard from. At 10:04, Jim DeMint declared that:

Judge Alito is one of the most respected judges in America. His constitutional credentials are unquestionable and his judicial philosophy is verifiable…. In 1990, Judge Alito was unanimously confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate because he commanded respect across party lines. Now that he has been nominated to the Supreme Court, I hope Democrats will resist the temptation to obstruct the process and deny him an up-or-down vote. Judge Alito is a dignified man and he deserves a dignified process. He deserves a fair hearing and a fair vote. People in South Carolina and across the nation want a judge who will carefully listen to the arguments in each case and make thoughtful decisions. Americans want a judge who will strictly interpret the law, not legislate from the bench. We have a critical confirmation process ahead of us and I am confident Judge Alito will clearly demonstrate his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court.

Then, at 11:30 came a piece headlined:

Christian Coalition of America Praises the Nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.

It went on to quote CCA President Roberta Combs as saying, "President Bush has hit a homerun with this nomination."

Then, at 12:02, The American Civil Liberties Union got the opposition back up on the scoreboard with one headlined, "ACLU Urges Senate to Explore Supreme Court Nominee Alito’s Record on Reproductive Rights, First Amendment." On that side of the Kulturkampf, "reproductive rights" is seen as rolling off the tongue more smoothly than the simpler "abortion." Don’t ask me to explain.

Being a moderate, Lindsey Graham didn’t hit me with a release until 1:27 p.m. (He said that John Roberts hit a home run. But since I have yet to see instant replays on either of these taters, I’m waiting until the official score is posted.) But he made up for his tardiness at 5:58 with a breathless anouncement that the senator would be meeting with Mr. Alito on Tuesday.

And that’s just the start. There’s plenty of action to come, sports fans.

Sunday, Oct. 30 column

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Profiles in (incremental) courage
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
SEVEN U.S. senators tried to inject a little sanity into the federal budget last week. We can take pride in the fact that two of them were from South Carolina.
    Aside from Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, the group of Republicans included John McCain of Katrinacost_2 Arizona, John Ensign of Nevada, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Sununu of New Hampshire.
    Their proposals don’t go nearly far enough. But the sad truth is that by Washington standards, the initiative by these seven counts as a really bold move.
    They would:

  • Freeze cost-of-living pay raises for federal employees (including Congress), except those in the military and law enforcement.
  • Delay implementation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, set to begin in 2006. Lower-income folks would still get $1,200 to help pay for medicine, while upper brackets would pay higher Medicare premiums a year earlier than planned.
  • Eliminate $24 billion worth of earmarked pork projects in the recent $286 billion highway bill.
  • Cut discretionary — that is, non-entitlement — spending by 5 percent across the board, exempting only national security.

    Fine, as far as it goes. But consider:

  • This is billed as a way to pay for Katrina relief. It would free up $125 billion. But with a deficit of $318.62 billion in fiscal 2005, and a bigger deficit projected in the year just begun, these moves would be inadequate if we didn’t spend a dime on disaster aid.
  • Folks in Washington were actually celebrating the fact that the deficit was only $318.62 billion. It was expected to be higher. But it’s still the third-highest deficit in history, though dwarfed by the $412.85 billion shortfall in 2004. Another South Carolinian, Democratic Rep. John Spratt, noted that the Bush administration had once predicted a $269 billion surplus for 2005. As he told The Washington Post, that means 2005 turned out “$588 billion worse than the Bush administration projected when it sent up its first budget in 2001.”
  • The new drug benefit should not be merely delayed. It should be thrown out. The original cost projection of $400 billion over 10 years has risen to more than $720 billion. The legislation deliberately avoided obvious steps to lower drug prices, even forbidding the government to use its purchasing clout to force down costs. Kicking this can down the road doesn’t solve the problem.
  • Speaking of can-kicking: Baby boomers will soon start retiring in droves. And nothing has been done yet to pay for their Social Security and Medicare.
  • While federal employees still serving their country would lose raises, those who have retired from federal service will get a 4.1 percent increase in their pension checks starting in January. Nothing against retirees, but this is the biggest cost-of-living increase in 15 years. Is this the time for it?
  • About 48 million Social Security recipients will also get a 4.1 percent increase in the coming year — the biggest since 1991. What with higher energy costs, I doubt that many will be taking luxury cruises on an average hike of $39 a month. Still, do you expect a pay raise of 4.1 percent in the coming year? I don’t, and I don’t think I’m in the minority.
  • Any across-the-board cut — a favorite remedy on the state level in South Carolina — is a cop-out. It avoids tough decisions, and hurts efficient, vital functions of government just as badly as wasteful programs that should be eliminated entirely. If senators can exempt national security (which they should), they can go further and specify what gets cut and what doesn’t elsewhere.
  • Rethinking tax cuts — some of them, anyway (such as $70 billion in new ones proposed in the 2006 budget) — should at least be on the table. Republicans believe religiously that they are necessary to prosperity. I’m an agnostic on this point. It makes sense that some tax cuts would give a kick to the economy. Of course, so can federal spending. Maybe that’s why the GOP has pursued both courses so zealously since gaining control of the political branches. But I can’t believe all tax cuts are created equal in terms of their salutary economic effect. To refuse to reconsider any of them is to be blinded by ideology.

    I don’t expect any of my concerns to gain serious traction on the Hill. The modest proposals put forth by the sensible seven were, of course, immediately assailed by Democrats. Our own Rep. Jim Clyburn complained that these cuts would be unfair to poor and middle-class citizens.
    But Democrats always say things like that. What’s more relevant is what Republicans do, since they’re running the show. And what they’ve done is cut taxes while presiding over the biggest expansion of the federal government (not counting the military, which should have expanded) since Lyndon Johnson. Remember the huge intrusion into state and local affairs called No Child Left Behind? The latest farm bill? The $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska (merely a symbol of billions in spending on unnecessary asphalt)?
    Speaking of LBJ — we’re at war, folks. Everybody, rich and poor, should be giving up something Katrinacost2_2 to help us win it. Our volunteer military is doing its part, but almost no one else is.
    As for Katrina relief, the Republican leadership is talking about maybe cutting $50 billion or so — an absurdity in times when we consider deficits of over six times that worthy of applause.
    So what Sens. Graham and DeMint and five others are talking about deserves our praise and encouragement. It might not go far enough, but at least they want to do away with the Alaska bridge. That’s a start.

Harriet Miers was a BABE

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This might seem like a strange thing to bring up now that Harriet Miers’ nomination has been withdrawn. In fact, it would be an odd subject even if her nomination were still operative. But I’m not the one who first brought it up, and when I ran across something interesting while hunting for art for my last posting, it seemed to call for a mildly interesting footnote on the whole affair.

A lot of people (tacky people, mostly) said unkind things about Ms. Miers’ personal appearance — something that, it should go without saying, should have no bearing on her suitability for a seat on the court. Even one of our own letter writers (none of whom can be described as tacky, of course) remarked upon her makeup in a way that was not complimentary.

But that was nothing compared to the nasty, catty stuff out there in the Blogosphere. Such was to be expected, of course, from the incorrigible Wonkette, who said Ms. Miers reminded her of "an LPGA contestant," and then conducted a "poll" on the subject of her readers, who said she reminded them of, among others, Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne.

Plenty of others joined in, as you can see by the links from this posting.

But allow me to have the last word. I discovered this morning that Harriet Miers was a babe. At Miersbabe_3 least, she was once upon a time (in 1963, when she was in high school, to be exact). Beauty may fade as bitter experience does its worst upon us, but at least this former Supreme Court nominee can say (if she ever wants to) that she was once better looking than any of those making fun of her.

Not that it matters, of course. I just thought it was interesting.

So long, Harriet

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What does it all mean, Mr. Natural?

Well, any one of a number of things:

  • That the president has finally learned a valuable and long overdue lesson, which is don’t stick by a bad or questionable decision (and I would still put Harriet Miers in the "questionable" Miers2 category; this process didn’t get far enough for me to judge whether it was bad). This would be good news. Now maybe he’ll get rid of Rummy, and start prosecuting this war the right way.
  • That Karl Rove is too busy sweating out what the grand jury will do to remind the president to stick to his guns, come hell or (quite literally) high water. This would be good, too.
  • That Mr. Bush caved in to the ideologues on the right. This would be bad. Not that I disagree with folks who oppose abortion. But both sides insisting upon having a huge fight over that one issue with everyone nominated for a federal court is extremely destructive to the judiciary.
  • That without a solid front on the right, he feared he could not get her past the ideologues on the left. Also bad.
  • That the president is so weak politically that he can’t mount this fight effectively. This would be bad for the country because having a president weakened to such an extent when you’re at war is profoundly dangerous.

Actually, all of those things could be factors. But you know what I suspect it really was? Senate Judiciary was poised to chew her up and spit her out, and she wasn’t up to that. You could see it in Miers3 her eyes. She looked like a scared soldier willing to do her best, but wishing with all her might she had not been given this assignment. And I suspect that Mr. Bush, out of friendship and gallantry, let her off the hook.

Maybe I’m wrong. That’s quite likely. But what do you expect from stream-of-consciousness opinion writing?

Got Pull?

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Hah! And you thought I was paranoid when I said the reason so many food products contain unnecessary ingredients that are deadly to me is because "This country has for decades been run from behind the scenes by the dairy industry."

Well, the proof is in the policy. Look at what happened in Washington just yesterday.

Finally, Congress has started trying to inject a little sanity into runaway spending, and one of theCow1_1 targets is our swollen agricultural giveaways. So they vote to save $3 billion by cutting farm commodity payments over the next five years.

Good enough so far. But one subsidy is left intact. Which one? You’ve got it! Milk.

The excuse is that small dairy operators have to have it. That’s kind of like the famous "Big Bird" defense, whereby S.C. ETV staved off budget cuts years ago by claiming the network would have to cut "Sesame Street:" Big Cheese’s lobbyists plead on behalf of their most sympathetic clients. The big ranchers out West don’t even want it.

This column contains no allergens

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‘Disinterested observer’
corrupted by a can of soup
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
    BIG BROTHER is about to step in and make my life — and the lives of a tiny handful of others — better by imposing broad regulations that will probably cost the food industry billions without benefiting the overwhelming majority of Americans one whit.
    And I’m fine with that. But the fact that I’m fine with it does make me a tad uncomfortable.
    I’ve never wanted to be part of an interest group. That’s why I throw away those membership solicitations from AARP (even though I sometimes feel a wee bit envious of the discounts my wife, who lacks such scruples, enjoys).
    For one thing, it’s a liability in my business. Even though I write opinion these days rather than “objective” news, I value detachment. Like the human computers called “mentats” in Frank Herbert’s novels, I prefer my judgments to be generally untainted by “feelings” or self-interest.
    I can be passionate about issues, but they tend to be fairly abstract (say, government accountability) or involve groups to which I don’t belong — such as poor, black, rural children who get the short end of the stick on educational opportunity.
    I cling to the great self-delusion of the Average White Guy, which is that I don’t belong to a group. If there’s a group trait among us white guys, it’s that we don’t see ourselves as having group traits, or interests in common. I look at a rich white guy and don’t celebrate his success (he’s not sharing it with me). And when he goes to the slammer for insider trading or whatever, I’m as likely to feel Schadenfreude as a member of any other ethnic group.
    You can’t even characterize me as a WASP. I’m a half-Celtic mutt, and I’m Catholic. But I refuse to feel aggrieved when secularists (vicious, slanderous dogs that they are) attack the Church. I tend to snort at whiny releases I get from the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights (“Yahoo! Displays Bias Against Catholics”), and sneer at politicians’ ham-handed efforts to corral the “Catholic vote.”
    Not that bias against Catholics doesn’t exist. It’s just that I refuse to join the pity party.
    But there are limits to my detachment. I’m no mentat, but a three-dimensional human being, and to fail to recognize that is to fail to see the world accurately (as any mentat would tell you).
    I think it would be great if somebody really did do something about the trains that keep me and others who work on Shop Road from getting downtown and back in a timely fashion. And as an asthmatic, I welcome all the restrictions recently placed on smoking in public places.
    But I can rationalize those. Eliminating train delays would also benefit football fans (a group to which I definitely don’t belong), fairgoers, Farmers Market shoppers, folks trying to get to I-77, and the residents of Arthurtown, Taylors and Little Camden. And everyone is harmed by cigarette smoke; those of us who suffer more immediately are merely the canaries in the coal mine.
    But this latest thing I just can’t rationalize away. On Thursday, I finally became corrupted by the unoriginal sin of narrow interest. That was the day I read in an article (it wouldn’t let me link directly; search for "Zhang" and "allergens") from The Wall Street Journal that a new federal food-labeling law taking effect Jan. 1 will not only cause packagers to highlight the presence of milk, eggs and wheat (to which I am allergic, in the first two instances to a life-threatening degree) and other major allergens, but it will go to the next level — letting the less-savvy know that “whey” and “casein” mean milk just as surely as do butter and cheese. (I was an adult before I realized why I was getting sick from consuming “non-dairy” products containing traces of sodium caseinate.)
    Best of all — and this is the really sweet part — some manufacturers are going so far as to simply eliminate the allergens from their recipes, when they are not key ingredients. You may ask yourself why the allergens were even in there if they were not essential. If so, congratulations! You have finally thought to ask a question that has driven me nuts my whole life. I have to remove my bifocals and press labels against my nose to read the fine print on every packaged product I consider consuming. And more often than not, I find that some innocuous-sounding product such as beef-vegetable soup, or an oat-based cereal, has been inexplicably poisoned with whey or another form of dairy. It doesn’t look creamy, and you can’t taste it, but it’s there.
    And there’s no acceptable explanation for it; the soup or cereal would taste fine without it. As often as not, a competing brand right next to it is made without the offending materials, and with no damage to quality.
    So how to explain it? Why would a food processor go to the expense of buying mass quantities of an irrelevant ingredient, arrange to have it delivered, and put it in the product? Other interest groups have their paranoid conspiracy theories, and here’s mine: This country has for decades been run from behind the scenes by the dairy industry. Don’t try to “reason” with me on this; no other explanation satisfies.
    Yet the iron grip of Big Cheese must be loosening. How else could the FDA be getting ready to enforce these new regulations? How else could Campbell Soup Co. — an outfit that produces a gazillion products, of which I can safely consume about four — be on the verge of purging its products of unnecessary allergens?
    In any case, it’s wonderful news. To me. Suddenly, grocery store aisles are going to seem a lot less like minefields. To me.
    And there’s the rub. I just can’t get around the fact that in this case, I am a member of a hyper-narrow interest group. Sure, millions have “allergies,” in the sense that they get seasonal hay fever, or suffer a little rash when they eat strawberries. But not that many of us have real allergies, in the sense of a clear and present danger of going into deadly
anaphylactic shock from exposure to a common food. Oh, everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has “this bizarre thing about peanuts,” but that’s about it. The Journal article says about 150 people die from food allergies a year. So in one sense, the entire food industry is going to be retooled to save about one in every two million people.
    And I think that’s great.
    So I’m human. Sue me. But don’t try sneaking any of your spoiled bovine secretions into my tucker. If you do, Big Brother’s gonna getcha.

‘Band of Brothers’ to go to Iraq

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I had thought that this was good news out of Iraq this week, and that this was even better.

CurraheeBut I probably took more heart from this news than from anything I’ve seen in a while. I realize the other things are probably more substantially significant, but there’s something reassuring on a gut level about the 506th PIR being resurrected, even if it isn’t technically a Parachute Infantry Regiment any more.

That unit distinguished itself to such a degree in Normandy, Holland, Bastogne and Germany in 1944-45 that the young men who haveCurrahee2_1 adopted "Currahee" as their battle cry (after the foothill near Toccoa, Ga., that the original soldiers of the 506th had to run up and down — three miles each way — as a routine, daily part of their initial training in 1942) have a tremendous tradition of honor to live up to. From what I’ve seen from our soldiers and Marines in the field in this war, I’m sure they’ll meet the challenge, and old heroes such as Dick Winters and "Wild Bill" Guarnere will be proud to call them brothers. 

The dark beast of American politics

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I was particularly struck by this passage in Cal Thomas’ column on today’s op-ed page:

If Harriet Miers is “pro-life” and if she believes, as has been reported, that aborting a pre-born child is the taking of an innocent human life, why should she not be expected to favor overturning Roe v. Wade if the opportunity presents itself? Not to do so would be hypocritical.

I’ve got to disagree with Mr. Thomas’ rather narrow view on this matter. If she is confirmed, she should not help overturn Roe v. Wade because she has personal, religious objections to abortion.

No, she should help overturn Roe v. Wade because it was a bad decision, based upon faulty reasoning. Moreover, I would like to see the court overturn it because it has perverted not only the constitutional processes created by the Framers for selecting judges, but it has distorted our entire political world to a painfully destructive degree.

The ruling was based upon the fanciful creation, in the earlier Griswold v. Connecticut, of a right to privacy. It seems there was this penumbra — a shadow that had been lurking in the Constitution for almost two centuries without anyone noticing it. And yet this half-shadow was so sharply defined, it turns out, that it overrode whatever the political will of the people of the various states might be with regard to first birth control, then abortion.

Since then, the shadow has extended — like the darkness coming out of Mordor to overcome Tolkien’s Middle Earth — to cover every aspect of our politics today. It’s not just THE subtext of practically every question asked of judicial nominees, it’s THE unresolved conflict in the nation’s political subconscious.

Just as confirmation hearings have become all about abortion, presidential campaigns have become — among the bitterest partisans — mostly about abortion. That one issue, the emotional center of which underlies so many others (assisted suicide, stem cells, removal of feeding tubes, etc.), has become perhaps the chief determinant of whether people identify themselves as Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. You can be for the war in Iraq (or against it) whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, but it’s awfully hard, if not impossible, to get nominated if you’re not on your party’s side on abortion.

And which side they have chosen determines whether they think Roe v. Wade should be overturned or not. But you know, you would think both sides would want to see it gone. The partisans are spoiling for a fight, so why not have a real fight, according to the rules of American politics? This is about the deepest values each of us hold, and as citizens we should be allowed to decide the issue’s outcome by electing lawmakers who reflect our values — lawmakers who are not prohibited by the courts from making this most political of decisions.

And then we can go back to choosing justices based upon their knowledge of and faithfulness to the law, rather than playing these bitter guessing games, doing anything and everything we can to try to divine how they will rule on this one thing.

I know the partisans aren’t sick of the current state of affairs the way I am, but I don’t see why they’re not. From where I sit, it appears that this issue is eating them away, from the inside out. And it’s doing the same thing to the country.

On second thought, never mind

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Anything strike you as odd in this item from the "What’s News" briefing in The Wall Street Journal‘s weekend edition today?

Louisiana is asking up to $750,000 of FEMA for a media campaign to get storm-scattered residents to vote absentee in coming elections.

If you were an elected official in Louisiana right now, and you wanted to get re-elected, would you go out of your way to get the people who have suffered so much from your incompetence to vote? As dumb as some people think he is, I doubt that the president would try very hard to get those folks toMayor the polls — if he were running again.

There may be an explanation, though. What I just quoted was the print edition that came to my house. In the PDF version of the same item online, there is an added datum:

The mayor wants New Orleans gambling to expand.

I guess Louisiana politicos’ taste for risk explains the request for FEMA. If so, you have to admire them. Usually, when politicians advocate gambling, it’s so they can rip off other people — and mainly the poor and uneducated. In this case, they’re risking their own phony-baloney jobs. That’s putting your sinecure where your mouth is.

The conflicted conservative

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I sort of felt sorry for George Will on Sunday. That was a pretty conflicted column. You could tell he didn’t want to disagree with those "conservatives" in Colorado who favor arbitrary spending limits. But he had to, because he actually is a conservative, and must therefore reject such radical measures that undermine the very concept of representative democracy.

I’d very much like to see the radicals who are inclined to follow our governor‘s similarly intemperate proposal to consider Mr. Will’s concluding words:

Is a political creed that is so monomaniacal
about taxation that it allows no latitude for tacking with shifting
fiscal winds a philosophy of governance or an ideological fetish?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the correct, conservative answer to that question is, "the latter."

Mr. Will is far less conflicted on today’s op-ed page. He doesn’t hesitate at all to trash President Bush’s latest Supreme Court nominee. And why does he do that? Once again, for true conservative reasons. Too often, people confuse conservatism with loyalty to the Republican Party, its leaders and all their works. Mr. Will is too intellectually honest for that.

Oh, by the way, I’m not endorsing his condemnation of Harriet Miers. I really haven’t formed an opinion on that score yet. And anyone who can draw fire from both the left and the right stirs a certain sense of kinship in me. But Mr. Will does make some excellent points.

Totally irrelevant postscript: I enjoy typing "Mr. Will." Each time I do so, I hear Sally Field‘s voice addressing John Malkovich‘s character in "Places in the Heart," which was a really good flick, with what would easily make my top five all-time favorite movie endings. Of course, I enjoyed Mr. Malkovich more in "In the Line of Fire," my favorite Clint Eastwood vehicle. But I digress…

Two birds with one deal?

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Being busy with lots of other stuff last year, I never really focused on new Sen. Barack Obama. I didObama notice sort of peripherally that the Democrats seemed to be really excited about him.

I can sort of see why, after a colleague today shared with me this excerpt from a story in The Washington Post:

Last month, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) offered a proposal to raise
federal fuel-economy standards in cars and trucks by 3 percent a year
in exchange for the federal government picking up the costs of retiree
health care. Detroit automakers say the costs are a crippling burden in
competition with foreign rivals.

Talk about killing two birds — increasing fuel economy and lowering the price of automobiles. Of courses, that assumes that automakers would pass on the savings to us (estimated at $1,500 per vehicle), which I realize is quite an assumption. But it could happen.

I have to say, though, that while solving automakers’ health care cost problem is nice and all, how about the rest of us? I don’t know what the solution is, but I agree with Nicholas Kristof when he writes in a column that will appear on tomorrow’s page that something a tad more comprehensive is called for. (I’ll go back into this in the morning and link to it.)